What is the Purpose of the Navy's new Griffin Missile?

   The Navy has begun testing Raytheon’s Griffin mini-missiles for use in defending its ships against swarms of explosive-laden, fast-moving small boats.

The Griffin is already being used in combat with great success by the Marines aboard their KC-130 Harvest Hawks that are pinch-hitting as gunships. The sea service is planning on installing the Griffin aboard the Littoral Combat Ships to, protect them against swarms of small boats, among other things.

The Griffin missile is effective in engaging the type of small, fast-moving boats used by swarming threats and pirates. I imagine that terrorists could employ this tactic because it would fit right in to the type tactics that they have to use to offset their size and technology disadvantage.

This tactic would not be very lethal to larger ships but would be bothersome and cause some damage and casualties. If several small explosive laden craft were able to penetrate our defenses it could cause major problems. This tactic is similar to the way that terrorists attacked the USS Cole some years ago. That attack causes US deaths and wounded and did massive damage to the ship. it was successful only because the crew of the Cole was totally unprepared.

Griffin is fully developed, in production, lightweight, precise, and can be easily integrated on a wide variety of vessels, making it an excellent weapon for near-term threats. Three Griffins were successfully fired from a sea-based launcher at three separate speeding-boat targets more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) away. The weapons were guided by laser, and scored direct hits on the target, achieving all demonstration objectives.

The Griffin missile is in production and integrated on the C-130 Harvest Hawk. The combat-proven Griffin A is an aft-eject missile designed for employment from non-conventional platforms such as the C-130 aircraft. Griffin B is a forward-firing missile that launches from rotary– and fixed-wing aircraft and ground-launch applications.

The Griffin enables the warfighter to engage targets via a user interface and guide the weapon to the target using GPS coordinates or laser designation. To maximize lethality, the user can choose to engage the target with height of burst, point detonation or fuze delay. www.militaryringexpress.com