Saudi Arabia Harpoon training exercise

Royal Saudi Air Force Boeing F-15SA fighters recently participated in Naseem Al Bahr XIII, a bilateral maritime exercise with Pakistan.

During the exercise F-15SAs from the Saudi 29th Squadron operated from their base at Dhahran on the Arabian Gulf coast of Saudi Arabia, using A330MRTT tanker support to reach the exercise location off the coast of Pakistan, where they fired live AGM-84L Harpoon anti-ship missiles at ship targets. This demonstrated the RSAF’s ability to strike maritime targets at considerable range.

Saudi Arabia’s continuing reliance on oil makes it heavily reliant on maritime trade routes into and out of the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf, which have potential choke points in the shape of the Bab-el-Mandeb (the ‘Gate of Tears’ – a strait between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa) and the Strait of Hormuz. Protecting these is absolutely vital for Saudi Arabia.

Facing a regional threat from both the Iranian Navy and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy in the Persian Gulf and further afield, powerful anti-ship capabilities are a real defence priority for Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s maritime strategy requires it to maintain a significant and persistent presence in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Aden, where it increasingly faces a challenge from the Iranian Navy. Iran has increasingly operated outside its traditional operating areas in the Gulf and has projected its naval power into the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean and even to South Africa and the Baltic, meaning that the ability to attack naval targets beyond Gulf waters is vital.

The Royal Saudi Air Force bought some 102 BAe Sea Eagle anti-ship missiles for its Tornado strike/attack aircraft and this provided a robust anti-ship capability, though the retirement of this weapon by the UK left it increasingly difficult to support, and the RSAF began looking for a new anti-ship weapon for the 154 F-15SA and F-15SR Advanced Eagles that it ordered in 2010.

The weapon chosen was the Boeing AGM-84L Harpoon Block II. Harpoon is a is an all-weather, over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile that was first deployed in 1977, and that has been progressively developed to produce new versions of ever-greater capability. The Block II version, with improved accuracy and a littoral water capability, entered production in 2011, incorporating technology from the SLAM-ER, which was itself a land-attack derivative of the original Harpoon. The Block II incorporates a combined GPS/inertial navigation system (INS) guidance package that can provide mid-course updates to improve accuracy and has an active radar seeker for terminal guidance. The weapon has a 500-pound high-explosive warhead and a range of at least 75 miles.

Plans to integrate the AGM-84L Harpoon Block II on the F-15SA emerged in 2016, with the announcement of a contract with Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) with integration work to be carried out by Boeing. The Saudi government requested the purchase of 400 AGM-84Ls as part of a wider $6.8 billion weapons buy, and then ordered 402 more Harpoon Block IIs last year, though some of the latter may have been ship-launched versions.

Harpoon had previously been integrated on Korean F-15K SLAM Eagles, and is being supplied with Qatar’s F-15QAs, while the related AGM-84H/K SLAM-ER land attack missile forms a core part of the F-15’s arsenal.

While the combination of the F-15SA and Harpoon provides a highly efficient and extremely potent means of prosecuting attacks against enemy ships, Saudi Arabia will also deploy Harpoon on board the four Multi-Mission Surface Combatants (MMSC) being acquired from the USA, and, if a sale is finally agreed, on the Boeing P-8A Poseidons that Riyadh is known to be interested in acquiring.

Warships from the Pakistan Navy and the Royal Saudi Navy, and their embarked helicopters, also took part in Naseem Al Bahr XIII, some of them launching anti-ship missiles.

The recent training exercise with Pakistan is interesting. Although Pakistan is an important ally for operations in the Arabian Sea, the Pakistan Navy also conducted joint naval drills with Iran – Saudi Arabia’s biggest rival, earlier this year.