Take command of air and naval assets from post-WW2 to the near future in tactical and operational scale, complete with historical and hypothetical scenarios and an integrated scenario editor.
You really need to see the live harpoon test with the pop up terminal engagement. There is not much out there that can stop one and anything smaller than a Slava will be a mission kill with a single shot. Most people just does not realize how much the Harpoon scares the USSR when it appeared. Just look at all the Soviet ship design that comes out afterward. Look at the number of CIWS mounts on the Udaloy, Slava, Kirov, Kuznetsov, etc. That's what the Soviet think they'll need in order to have a chance to survive against a carrier strike group using Harpoons. (10 x A-6E with 4 Harpoon each). People have to realize that there are sea skimmers and then there are sea skimmer. There is a reason for the slow speed and large control fins. Given the same CPU for flight control. The faster you fly, the higher you have to fly just to have time to adjust you flight path against wave motion, wind, etc. The Harpoon is the lowest flying SSM of that generation and none of the Soviet long range naval SAM system can engage it.
Does the higher speed of supersonic missiles effect detectability due to higher closure/Doppler effect or is there, apart from higher flight level, another consideration too?
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The Harpoon is the lowest flying SSM of that generation and none of the Soviet long range naval SAM system can engage it.
That's a hefty claim, considering that the SA-10/SA-N-6 was designed explicitly with terrain-hugging/sea-skimming cruise missiles as one of its primary targets. The SA-N-4's land analog, SA-8, although designed before modern cruise missiles, has also proved quite capable of engaging them too.
