Forum: F-35 versus XYZ

arkadyrenko wrote:

Remember: the US has already built a radar guided ballistic missile. Granted, it wasn't an intercontinental ballistic missile, so the range and speed weren't as extreme. But, the principle has been demonstrated that one can build a guided ballistic missile.

Buddy tanking is a bit of a stop gap measure, one which reduces the carrier's striking capacity. It can help, but it is decidedly not a optimal situation.

There is probably a hard range limitation on radar guided ballistic missiles. What was the US radar guided missile?

F-16.net Sponsor

The Pershing 2.

If I've got this right, the Pershing 2 had a max range of a little over 1000 miles, and a reentry velocity of about mach 8. I guess that is slow enough for radar to penetrate whatever plasma sheath exists. I wonder how hard it would be to decoy the radar targeting of a modern guided ballistic missile.

There probably is a speed limit on a terminal guided ballistic missile, though one doesn't know what it is. If we take the Pershing 2 to be the upper end of guided ballistic missile range, that is still a pretty sizable stand-off distance for the carrier battle groups.

Personally, I think the weakest part of the Chinese ballistic missile system will be a combination of targeting and terminal guidance. With respect to targeting, the Chinese will need to be certain that they're actually shooting at a US carrier battle group, as opposed to a helpless container ship or a decoy. I can imagine a profitable role here for unmanned surface vehicles with radar reflectors as well as stealthy escorts using complex formations.

Next, when the missile enters the terminal homing phase, it will have to search out the location of the battle group. Given a 15 minute flight time and 30 knot formation speed, the missile will have search something on the order of a 7 nm circle (at best, there's still the time delay from RORSAT observation to missile launch). The fleet can deploy decoys, heavy directed jamming, etc., to give the missile too many targets and inhibit its ability to select the optimal target. Here, the speed of the missile may play against it, as it does not have a lot of time to differentiate between a decoy and an actual warship.

However, the existence of possible countermeasures shouldn't lead one to think that the missile problem is by any means useless. The anti-ship ballistic missile is perfectly feasible and the Chinese are pursuing it. Its final combat effectiveness remains to be seen. That unknown quality will probably exert great psychological influence on both sides of the conflict. Ranging from over-confidence in the weapon's capability to a fear of entering its killing range.

The ballistic missile is not a space shuttle, it does not have significant cross range reentry capabilities. During the Mercury & Gemini programs, the capsules landed significantly off-target due to minor deviations during reentry itself. It would be likely that a ballistic missile tracking a moving vessel would have trouble tracking ground targets without loss of energy.

The Pershing II apparently targeted by making an elevation map of the ground bellow it and comparing that to a pre-loaded target. For a ship target, an RV using that mechanism would have to be able to pick out the ship's elevation above the ocean. Unless the RV has an AESA radar, it probably wouldn't be hard to make small unmanned sea craft to jam the radar, provided the guidance mechanism if relatively well understood.

neurotech - two points: first, we're talking about a maneuvering re-entry vehicle, so it is designed to have significant cross-range capability and the ability to conduct high-g turns. It also wasn't designed to slow down gracefully, unlike the designs of space capsules. Second, the rumored CEP of ICBMs is <100m, I'm sure that it a sufficiently small CEP to allow the missile warhead to maneuver towards a target.

May I also note that maneuverable re-entry vehicles have been under development for the past 30 years.

count_to_10 - That's true, the radar guidance will not be the same. However, surface search radars exist and radar technology has advanced in the past 30 years.

I think the best way to look at the anti-ship ballistic missile is this: the Chinese would not have fielded it, nor would the US Navy be so afraid of it (why is ABM and long range UCAV suddenly the cat's meow?) if it was not technological feasible. The problems right now probably lie in the systems capability under high-tech battlefield conditions. The missile, warhead, and proposed targeting cycle probably already exist.

I am new to the board but have been reading it for some time and admit I am a novice when it comes to discussing the topics. I did have a question though. As many people have already mentioned above, the anti-ship missile could rely on internal guidance systems. These come with their own disadvantages already spelled out in great detail in previous posts. Can they deploy a missile that would receive outside guidance from any type GPS/IR targeting satellite. IIRC, the Chinese are actively developing and deploying their own satellite constellation with the goal of having constant surveillance of the pacific etc. It seems to me, if they could identify the US carrier, these satellites could constantly update on the position of the target.

Also, I totally agree with arkadyrenko about the psychological effect of such a weapon. Even if China is unable to accurately target a US carrier, it may be enough to keep the US at a certain distance which may suffice for their needs of accessing Taiwan/South China Sea etc knowing that they likely wouldn't win a face to face confrontation with the US Navy. After reading Kissinger's "On China", winning the psychological battle in warfare seemed to be a pillar for much of their military strategy for hundreds of years.

The whole ballistic anti-ship missile has two major problems 1) with modern technology, MIRVS can hit stationary targets with modern technology, but hitting something that moves can be rather tough. Much easier to hit the shore infrastructure than the ships. If you want to hit moving targets, you almost have to go high yield nuclear. 2) You have to trust the country that just fired a ballistic missile that its non-nuclear. There's good reason why this was never pursued by either us or the Russians.

Another consideration: if the RV is going slow enough to have radar targeting, it is slow enough to receive data link communication. If you have a satellite that can visually acquire the aircraft carrier and provide instantaneous targeting data to a GPS or initially guided RV, that could be difficult to get around.

http://www.usni.org/news-and-features/c ... ill-weapon

U. S. Naval Institute - March 31, 2009 wrote:

While the ASBM has been a topic of discussion within national defense circles for quite some time, the fact that information is now coming from Chinese sources indicates that the weapon system is operational. The Chinese rarely mention weapons projects unless they are well beyond the test stages.

If operational as is believed, the system marks the first time a ballistic missile has been successfully developed to attack vessels at sea. Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.

Along with the Chinese naval build-up, U.S. Navy officials appear to view the development of the anti-ship ballistic missile as a tangible threat.

After spending the last decade placing an emphasis on building a fleet that could operate in shallow waters near coastlines, the U.S. Navy seems to have quickly changed its strategy over the past several months to focus on improving the capabilities of its deep sea fleet and developing anti-ballistic defenses.

Quote:

As analyst Raymond Pritchett notes in a post on the U.S. Naval Institute blog:

"The Navy's reaction is telling, because it essentially equals a radical change in direction based on information that has created a panic inside the bubble. For a major military service to panic due to a new weapon system, clearly a mission kill weapon system, either suggests the threat is legitimate or the leadership of the Navy is legitimately unqualified. There really aren't many gray spaces in evaluating the reaction by the Navy…the data tends to support the legitimacy of the threat."

How can the US counter an ASBM ilke the DF-21?

No defense? The Navy has operational anti-ballistic missile interceptors, don't they?

They do, but there might be a question as to whether they have enough...

U.S. Naval Institute again and I don't agree with some of the assumptions made in the following report but then there is the fact that the USN seem to be taking the threat seriously. http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/74ed ... and-U-S--A

I don't think the DF-21 is the threat it has been made out to be. At the ranges and speeds we're talking about, a CVN is actually a very-quick, very-small bulls-eye for a conventional warhead. The technical difficulties of guiding a MARV onto a moving target are extreme because of the sheer speed of an incoming IRBM warhead, which makes for an extremely limited engagement envelope. Someone brought up the Pershing II, but I would say that's a poor analogue unless it was capable of finding and hitting an SS-20 launcher while it was going 40mph on a twisting road. Assuming they've solved the issues of terminal guidance, that still leaves them with targeting, for which they don't have nearly enough assets to provide their "carrier killer" with the constant mid-course updates necessary to ensure a hit, and though they are working to build such a capability, said assets are still vulnerable.

On the political side of things, I'm not really sure why China is expending effort on this system anyways (if they even are). If it came to them wanting to sink an aircraft carrier, I'm pretty sure things would be well beyond limiting themselves to conventional weapons. If the "carrier killer" does exist, I suspect it is actually nuclear-tipped. As for the possibility of export, none of China's clients have the wherewithal to locate and target a maneuvering target in the open sea, so no worries there.

Forum: F-35 versus XYZ

F-35: Super Hornet hedge