ricnunes wrote:The X-Band radar is a Fire Control radar and not a search radar. This means that first the incoming missiles would need to be detected by the Type 346B AESA Radar and only then the X-Band radar would get into action controlling the ship's SAMs and CIWS.
Both JSM and LRASM can be programmed to approach and attack the ship from the front which would not only expose the missiles to the lower position frontal antenas but would also take advantage of the targeted ship's closing speed in order to have a somehow shorter flight time to target.
The X-band radar on Type 055 is a multifunction radar, so it can search/track/guide missile to target, similar to how a fighter radar can do all these tasks. It isn't an CW illuminator like SPG-62 so there no need to wait for a seperate search radar to track target first. X-band radar is is used as fire control system because you can have narrower beam width with higher frequency, narrower beam lead to more accurate shot. But it is also better for detection of target at low altitude, because you can use smaller antenna for higher frequency to get the same Gain, and it is easier to put smaller radar to greater height. X-band is also better for multi path detection.
ricnunes wrote:This doesn't take away the fact that if the ship based Air Defenses were nearly as effective as you claim to be than missiles like the JSM and LRASM would never be developed at all.
If there's something that the US Navy is extremely good at is to know how good is the effectiveness of such missiles against such air defenses. Yet the US Navy is co-developing the LRASM and moreover the LRASM is a very expensive missiles (around $3 Million USD per unit), so
I don't think that logic apply because US Navy also developing the AEGIS air defense system, which I think cost a lot more than LRASM program, with 3 millions/missiles, even if you launch 50 missiles to destroy something similar to Aleigh Burke, the cost still in your favor because the destroyer is about 1.83 billions USD
ricnunes wrote:Don't forget that there's a 'cooldown' time between each ripple fire. I would say this 'cooldown time' could be something like 2-3 seconds (you mentioned 2 seconds on one of you last posts). So if during 6 seconds you can launch 3 missiles it means that the 120 missile number of yours is already reduced to half or close to half (and by this factor alone).
From what I heard, the cooldown time is the 1 second between each consecutive missile launch
ricnunes wrote:Moreover, you are assuming that as soon as the incoming missiles comes into the line-of-sight of the ship's radar that they will instantaneously pop up on the ship's screens/displays as fully trackable and identifiable contacts (Tracks) which can be engaged instantaneously. Even AESA radars need to perform a few sweeps in order to actually detect an incoming target/missile and even more sweeps to effectively ID and track that incoming target/missile. This takes more seconds from a reaction that already needs to be done in seconds.
AESA radar scan by wave interference between elements so they can scan near instantaneously, sending dozens of pulses down the target direction shouldn't take more than fraction of a second. Secondly, if the active hard kill protection radar on a MBT can identify target within fraction of a second. I don't think it is too hard for the much more sophisticated radar on the ship to do the same
ricnunes wrote:You seem to be forgetting that not only the missiles (JSM and/or LRASM) are stealth but they are flying against a huge waterbody background (such as the ocean) if we put ourselves in the ship's radar perspective. This makes the incoming sea skimming missiles even harder to be detected (i.e. even more stealthier) by the ship's radars compared if they were flying at higher altitudes.
You are correct, but comparatively Ship radar are > 100 times more powerful than fighter jet radar . Secondly. with fighter, the engagement distance is much greater while for the ship in our discussion, they are tracking targets only 20-25 km from their location. Thirdly, ship have multiple radars operate at wide range of frequencies
I know they do, but not to the level of fighter aircraft because they don't have the wing area of an aircraft and they certainly don't have the kind of excess power that fighter jet have