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Asaturation attack orswarm attack is a military tactic in which the attacking side hopes to gain an advantage byswarming and overwhelming the defending side's technological, physical and mental ability to respond effectively.
During theCold War and after, the conventionalsaturation missile attack against naval and land targets was and is a much feared eventuality.
Taking the design of an anti-ship missile as a theoretical example, one can begin with the goal of creating a missile which will get through and destroy its target 100% of the time. It is also understood, however, that an opponent will develop counter measures if given enough time, meaning that the missile will, at some later date, no longer be 100% effective. Therefore, given that even the best designed missile will only ever be less than 100% effective, it is more practical and cost-effective to instead develop a missile that will get through to the target 70% or even 50% of time, for example.
Launched individually, a missile with a 50% chance of getting through to its target will only get to its target 50% of the time, but with a salvo of two such missiles, the chance of at least one missile getting through is 75%, with three missiles 87.5% etc. The probability that at least one missile will get through to its target becomes closer to certainty with each missile fired. If each missile has a warhead capable of destroying the target, then no individual missile can be ignored by the target warship and counter-measures. Thus,SAMs andCIW resources will have to be expended to defend the target. To further overload a target's ability to defend itself, an attacker can attempt to launch multiple missiles from multiple directions using different guidance options.
The main subscribers to the concept of the saturation missile attack were theSoviet Union and its client states. TheKomar class missile boat for example being designed and operated around the calculations that it would take 12P-15 Termit missiles to destroy a single NATO destroyer. At a time when British destroyers were equipped with just four anti-ship missiles, Soviet ships were going to sea with anything up to 20 anti-ship missiles, with even destroyers fielding 8 large missiles. With theNATO allies having followed the route of individually smaller and lighter missiles, NATO warships had the appearance of being underarmed when compared to Soviet ships with their multiple missiles in large container/launch tube housings.
Thebomber stream was a tactic pioneered by theRAF to overwhelm German air defences during the Second World War. The tactic relied on routing a greater number of bombers through a defensive sector than the amount which Germans could generate interception sorties. Although it was certain that bombers would be lost, it was impossible for the defending fighters to destroy every bomber and stop the bombers gaining their objective.[1]
During theCold War British and American air defences aimed to stop massedSoviet bomber streams, leading to the US fielding nuclear tippedNike missiles,[2] and at a later date the British equippingtrainers as interceptors in order to have enough fighters.
During the Cold War, United States Navy aircraft carriers were the primary target of saturation attacks fromSoviet Naval Aviation. In response the United States adopted the doctrine of attempting to destroy Soviet missile aircraft before they could launch their missiles. This led to theDouglas F6D Missileer, which gave rise to theNorthrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye andGrumman F-14 Tomcat/AIM-54 Phoenix pairing.
In naval warfare, the incorporation of stealth technology in surface combatants, the general adoption ofvertical launching systems, modern radar systems which can simultaneously scan, track, and engage multiple targets, and fire and forget close in defense missiles has decreased the utility of saturation attacks by unsophisticated anti-ship missiles.
