Navy ships have for years been able to attack and destroy enemy ships from the ocean with surface fired anti-ship missiles, yet launch points can have little flexibility making it more difficult to establish the element of surprise.
Now, in keeping the the Pentagon’s fast-evolving multi-domain warfare strategy, the Marine Corps has acquired a weapon aligned with its ongoing strategic initiative to develop a land-based anti-ship missile.
NMESIS: Ground Based Anti-Ship Missile
The Corps’ Long Range Fires program office has acquired NMESIS, a ground based anti-ship missile able to support amphibious operations and land-to-sea attack.
Interestingly, the Navy and Marine Corps have been working with the Army to explore the use of Army land-based munitions as weapons able to attack ships at sea. As one senior Army weapons developer put it to me, it does not matter if a target is over the ocean, we can still fire at it and attack from land.”
These kinds of efforts included using land-fired rockets and artillery to target and destroy maritime targets. NMESIS, which is a ground fired Naval Strike Missile, is the first actual fully application of its Ground Based Anti-Ship Missile program. .
GBASM: Ground Based Anti-Ship Missile Program
“While the GBASM requirement can encompass multiple materiel solutions and systems under the GBASM requirement, NMESIS is the first system for the Marine Corps providing that ground-based, anti-ship missile capability,” said Joe McPherson, program manager for Long Range Fires at MCSC, said in a Marine Corps story.
The Marine Corps GBASM is intended to be a disaggregated, multi-domain mix of combat tactics and variables to include advanced maritime, air and land-based operations, including an ability for newer kinds of land-sea “island hopping” amphibious attack wherein Marines and even heavy weapons transport and transition quickly from sea to shore and back .. quickly.
