Forum: F-35 versus XYZ

How? How do you reach those antennas which, like the OTH radar facilities, will be hundreds of miles inland. The ground stations are the Chinese C&C centers, the TELs are all highly mobile trucks! What are you suggesting, submarine launched cruise missiles targeted using real time satellite fixes to kill part of the Chinese c&c structure and as many of the tels as you can find? Then the CG races in to launching range of the coast? I'll tell you right now how that's going to end, and it won't be pretty.

The OTH's are easy to find and target, so are the various ground station antennae for the satellite links.

imho, its no to the latter half. Sat ground receivers are passive. The sats detect and beam down. It might be "easier" to jam at source ie at the sats but counter-jam techniques aren't that difficult either. "easier" is used in the context of satellites which exactly don't fly slowly.

There are sat control stations but the loss of these won't bring down the system. That's not taking into account mobile back-up control stations (even vessel bound). Taking down the sats is theoretically possible. It will need to take down a substantial number of the 30 that would be in place by 2015 plus any they put up in replacement.

It's a little scary reading on here all the reasons why folks (who I assume are not professionals in the field???) think the carrier task force can withstand the threats that will be prevalent in a 2020 high intensity fight. As a senior officer with an air defense background, I hope our Naval leaders are not so blinded and resistant to change. Based on our investing billions in a new class of super carriers (super targets) it seems though that this is the case. Aegis is great, but there are so many ways to cripple, blind, or overwhelm it during the critical window, it's naive to think the Chinese won't figure several of them out.

As far as targeting, the Chinese will have redundant space based systems. In fact, if they were really going to pull the trigger on this thing, they'd likely have Mark 1 human eyeballs in orbit calling in coordinates. You are simply not going to hide a carrier group in the year 2020. Particularly when the short range of the carriers' aircraft necessitate close deployment to Taiwan. I fear if this thing ever goes down, those of you (and possibly our naval leadership) won't be convinced until it's too late.

It's the same as the battleship navy of the 30s. The western admirals would not accept reality until the Japanese had put several American and British battleships on the bottom or left the ones still afloat in shambles or simply rendered them irrelevant. The Bismark was done in by a bi-plane! Yamamoto understood all of this, that's why he didn't press his massive invasion fleet on to Midway after his carriers were destroyed. 80 years later, will we make the same mistake again - blindly holding on to what we have been doing rather than adapting to modern realities?

Probably, if the situation arises. Based on our investment in a new class of carriers loaded with short range planes, it seems the die is already cast. If they choose to go after Taiwan and we choose to oppose them full out, the Chinese will jam, EMP blast, and simply overwhelm a carrier group's defense with sheer land based ballistic numbers.

Of the hundreds (if not thousands) of vampires fired at the carriers, only a few have to get through to render the carrier group combat ineffective.

I think it is a good article. I would love to find the time to read the book on Chinese airpower he quotes. I think the "saturation" strategy he describes is a very viable one. That is also why a strategy of shooting down every ASBM/cruise missile the chinese send at us may not be realistic. We just may not have enough missiles (ala "Independence Day")

On 11 July 2011 PLA Chief of General Staff General Chen Bingde became the first Chinese government official to confirm publicly that China is developing the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM). According to an English-language China Daily article, the missile has “a maximum range of 2,700 kilometers” (1,678 miles). Of note, General Chen did not in any way ascribe a range or other specific missile performance parameters at the press conference. Indeed, an official in his position would be unlikely to do so. This was the China Daily’s own (likely erroneous) inject. China Daily was probably citing the DF-21A’s range, which SinoDefence and Wikipedia both list as 2,700 km. The reporters and editors at China Daily most likely mistook the DF-21A range figure for that of the DF-21D.

The SM-3 ASAT was fired from a center pylon of a F-15. The SM series missiles were originally designed with air-launch capability.

They're passive but their design and location can be mapped by existing recon assets - I'm tolerably sure the extent and location of the various stations can be indentified.

Destroying the satellites would be a risky undertaking in that the resulting debris would bugger up the orbits concerned so I suspect it'd be something both sides would shy away from.

Any ship bound sat receivers -- how big and complicated are we talking about the antennae having to be ?

Is it likely to require a dedicated ship or is it just something else in the antenna farm on an existing ship ?

It is something you could determine if looking through a periscope or optical mast is what I'm thinking...

Pardon my ignorance, but is there any credible evidence at all that this ASBM system has actually been tested in an all-up configuration against a semi-realistic target? The impression I've had is that the Chinese have been developing it, but hadn't actually flown it.

There has never been any such beast fired from an F-15. That was an ASM-135 which has absolutely 0% in common with the SM-3.

IF they needed a long range AAM today the best, cheapest, bet would be to go with either an air-launched ESSM or an AIM-120 with the 10" dia motor. This has been chewed to death dozens of times on this board over the years.