F-35 best loadout combination to penetrate Type 055 defense

[eloise]

The Pk against VLO missiles is going to be lower than .3 first of all.

I don't think shotdown VLO missile is as hard as shotdown VLO aircraft. Because VLO fighter are more maneuver , faster, and equipped with additional ECM and IRCM but for all 5 generation fighter whether it is F-22, F-35, J-20 , Su-57 then an internal load of 4-6 BVR missiles was deemed sufficient for them to carry

[eloise]

10a9bced0872c295d891540204bf12d1.jpg

And what about the towed decoy? Does this only come in handy on egress? I think the biggest question is can the F-35 fire all external weapons and return to stealth mode,
While still successfully breaking the type 55s kill chain.
My bet is on the F-35s jamming.
Its almost unfair like the F-35 is fighting with its hands tied.
Any way
I thought the F-35 stations 10,9,3,2 are all rated for
2500lbs this should be enough for 8 sdb on each station correct? Or am I missing somthing?
Also since we have to close the gap in Beast mode
I want 2 Mald jammers in my internal bay and 4 Jassm-er on the wings. The double wammy of jamming decoys + the APG-81 would almost guarentee a kill.
How big is MALD? Can you fit more that 1? Could you put in 1 mald J + a 500lb Jdam on each side?
The Jdam would be the finishing blow.

Towed decoys can work for ingress as well but not enough to protect the F-35 in beast mode and at only 70 km from Type 055
You can't return back to stealth mode after dropping all the bomb because pylons can't be ejected except for fuel tank pylon
There is no racks with 8 mounting location for SDB so you can't carry 8 SDB on each pylon even if the max weight of the pylon allow it
MALD-J is small enough that you can put them on dual rack like BRU-55/57/69 so you can have 1 MALD-J and 1 JDAM on each pylon

[mmm]

No one has tried 24 LRASM against a single DDG have they? Historically success rate in cruise missile defense haven't been very high. I'm willing to bet that the survival of USS Mason was due in no small part to extensive prior intelligence on missile battery, existence of prior victims to attacks, the active mast mounted FCR for the battery somewhere ashore that gave everything away, and not the least active radar seeker on missiles. It's quite unlikely to operate high power air search radar 24/7 for a lot of reasons, also it's not quite a certain radar will detect a certain target at exactly x km away 100% of the time, or that a response will come exactly y seconds later. I can imagine what the scenario looks like in CMANO, as soon as missile approach within the detection range of DDG radar 100 point defense SAM came out of VLS, any leaker met with another 2,3 allocated to each incoming missile. Anything left there's F&F RAM knockoff with practically unlimited fire rate and close in guns. The rest is Pk dice roll but guess you found out what happens already.

Even in the case of USS Mason they can't say if hard kill missiles actually hit anything or even if a later attack actually happened at all. Or it's the missile's failure or the soft kill countermeasure, or a combination of any of the above. A major surface combatant being "assassinated" when it's not expecting a high likelihood of being attacked, from an unexpected direction(because it's from the air), found and fixed by passive sensor attacked by weapons with passive seeker is on the other hand more likely IMHO. Say you're the crew have things set on only semi automatic mode, and for reasons the sensor detected the attack. Even then you have to take a second wondering if it is false alarm or misidentification that could get you court martialed for shooting down airliner afterward.

[ricnunes]

Good point, so for a more accurate estimation I put the image in paint with scale ruler
Type 055 is 180 meters in length and it takes up 1220 units so each unit represent 0.147 meters
The destroyer has 4 Type 346 S/C-band radars, the 2 front Type 346 radar are at lower position, start at unit 80 and end at unit 105, so it start at 11.8 meters and end at 15.4 meters
So the radar horizon to a missile 1 meters above sea surface is 18.2-20.3 km => LRASM/JSM need 59-66 seconds to fly this distance
The 2 type 346 radar at the back are at slightly higher position, start at unit 100 and end at unit 130, so it start at 14.7 meter and end at 19.18 meters
So the radar horizon to a missile 1 meters above sea surface is 19.9-22.1 km=> LRASM/JSM need 65-72 seconds to fly this distance
The X-band low altitude search/fire control radar is at higher position, start at unit 160 and end at unit 170, so it start at 23.6 meter and end at 25 meters
So the radar horizon to a missile 1 meters above sea surface is 24.1-24.7 km => LRASM/JSM need 79-81 seconds to fly this distance

Type 055.PNG

Type 055 sensor.PNG

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.

I think that has to do a lot with the fact that traditionally supersonic missile are either much bigger or have much shorter range than subsonic missiles. For example: SLAM-ER range is 280 km while HARM range is only 150 km. To attack a surface fleet with AEW&C, it probably safer to stay at long range

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...

It seem that you are right, so every second, Type 055 can launch 1 missile from the front VLS group and 1 missile from the rear VLS group, when target is closer than 10 km it can launch 1 additional missile from FL-3000L launcher. So total 3 missiles/second.From our radar horizon calculation above, in best case scenario, LRASM/JSM need about 60 seconds from when pop up above radar horizon till impact. In that amount of time, the 2 VLS groups can launch 120 missiles

I would assume it can guide at least as many missiles as the number of target it can attack at the same time. HQ-9B and HQ-9C have an active radar seeker and IIR seeker so there is no need for CW illuminator

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).

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.

I don't think shotdown VLO missile is as hard as shotdown VLO aircraft. Because VLO fighter are more maneuver , faster, and equipped with additional ECM and IRCM but for all 5 generation fighter whether it is F-22, F-35, J-20 , Su-57 then an internal load of 4-6 BVR missiles was deemed sufficient for them to carry

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.
Moreover, these missiles - JSM and LRASM - actually perform High-G evasive maneuvers. You can read about this in the following document:
https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovclou ... bright.pdf

Highly Agile
- High-G evasive maneuvers to counter CIWS and other short range defense systems

[ricnunes]

@mmm,

I fully agree with your post

[jessmo112]

Im also skeptical of Chinese Air defenses, and counter measures. The U.S. systems have been tried in the SEA of battle. The American systems work, the Chinese systems have never been fully tried.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reu ... SKBN12G004

I think a great boxer once said everyone has a plan until they get hit.

[eloise]

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.

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

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

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

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

Moreover, these missiles - JSM and LRASM - actually perform High-G evasive maneuvers. You can read about this in the following document:
https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovclou ... bright.pdf

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

[eloise]

I can imagine what the scenario looks like in CMANO, as soon as missile approach within the detection range of DDG radar 100 point defense SAM came out of VLS, any leaker met with another 2,3 allocated to each incoming missile. Anything left there's F&F RAM knockoff with practically unlimited fire rate and close in guns. The rest is Pk dice roll but guess you found out what happens already

Not quite, missiles are attacked after they came quite close, about 10 nm, but I have never success with pure LRASM and JSM or pure AARGM-ER

[wrightwing]

Your line of sight calculation doesn't seem accurate. According to this calculator:
http://www.ringbell.co.uk/info/hdist.htm
the distance to horizon on a 27 meter mast is 18.6 kilometers and a 1 meter altitude flying missile should be 'seen' at a slightly farther range (1 kilomoter more or even less perhaps?) but anyway not the 25.5km as you claim which alone reduces the time on target to something like 64 seconds.

Radar horizon is slightly longer than visual horizon because radar wave refracted slightly more than the visual spectrum

image079.jpg

I used this calculator
http://members.home.nl/7seas/radcalc.htm
The visual horizon on a 27 meters mast to the surface is 18.55 km, the radar horizon on 27 meters mast to the surface is 21.4 km
The visual horizon from the 27 meters mast to missile 1 meter above the surface is 22 km and the radar horizon to the same target is 25.5 km

Moreover and since "an image is worth a thousand words", look here:


Which means that the detection range of the incoming missiles by the Type 055 destroyer is even much lower than the numbers mentioned above which by its turn means a much short reaction time (again the incoming missiles)

Good point, so for a more accurate estimation I put the image in paint with scale ruler
Type 055 is 180 meters in length and it takes up 1220 units so each unit represent 0.147 meters
The destroyer has 4 Type 346 S/C-band radars, the 2 front Type 346 radar are at lower position, start at unit 80 and end at unit 105, so it start at 11.8 meters and end at 15.4 meters
So the radar horizon to a missile 1 meters above sea surface is 18.2-20.3 km => LRASM/JSM need 59-66 seconds to fly this distance
The 2 type 346 radar at the back are at slightly higher position, start at unit 100 and end at unit 130, so it start at 14.7 meter and end at 19.18 meters
So the radar horizon to a missile 1 meters above sea surface is 19.9-22.1 km=> LRASM/JSM need 65-72 seconds to fly this distance
The X-band low altitude search/fire control radar is at higher position, start at unit 160 and end at unit 170, so it start at 23.6 meter and end at 25 meters
So the radar horizon to a missile 1 meters above sea surface is 24.1-24.7 km => LRASM/JSM need 79-81 seconds to fly this distance

Type 055.PNG

Type 055 sensor.PNG

Look, if what you said was completely accurate nobody (in this case and namely the US and Norway) would develop subsonic sea skimming missiles like the LRASM or JSM and would instead develop those 'magical' supersonic missiles instead, wouldn't they?

I think that has to do a lot with the fact that traditionally supersonic missile are either much bigger or have much shorter range than subsonic missiles. For example: SLAM-ER range is 280 km while HARM range is only 150 km. To attack a surface fleet with AEW&C, it probably safer to stay at long range

Comparing the active defense system of an armored vehicle with VLS launcher in terms of reaction time is very odd at best. For instance the active defense system of the ground vehicle shoots straight at the incoming missile while the VLS SAMs are launched vertically, fly straight upward in order to clear themselves from the VLS and then start turning towards the incoming missiles and so here you will lose some more precious few seconds.

I was talking about the reaction rate of the radar and launcher. But some tank active hard kill protection do follow the same sequences as VLS launched missile

A 'quick sequence' is NOT 'simultaneously'! From the picture on the document that you share it seems that there's at least a (1) second between each missile launch sequence. So a ripple fire of 3 missiles takes around 3 seconds to complete (and again does not happen instantaneously).

It seem that you are right, so every second, Type 055 can launch 1 missile from the front VLS group and 1 missile from the rear VLS group, when target is closer than 10 km it can launch 1 additional missile from FL-3000L launcher. So total 3 missiles/second.From our radar horizon calculation above, in best case scenario, LRASM/JSM need about 60 seconds from when pop up above radar horizon till impact. In that amount of time, the 2 VLS groups can launch 120 missiles

Yeah, and how many missiles can be guided at the same time?

I would assume it can guide at least as many missiles as the number of target it can attack at the same time. HQ-9B and HQ-9C have an active radar seeker and IIR seeker so there is no need for CW illuminator

The radar horizon isn't the same thing as the detection range. It only refers to when an object comes into the radar's FOV.

The VLS system on a ship have nowhere near the reaction time as Trophy, Strike Shield, etc.... If the crew isn't alert, and the system is in standby or manual, they might not get a single missile off.

Type 055s don't carry 120 SAMs. It's been pointed out on several occasions that the VLS cells carry a mix of SAMs, anti-ship missiles, land attack cruise missiles, and anti-sub missiles.

[mmm]

I can imagine what the scenario looks like in CMANO, as soon as missile approach within the detection range of DDG radar 100 point defense SAM came out of VLS, any leaker met with another 2,3 allocated to each incoming missile. Anything left there's F&F RAM knockoff with practically unlimited fire rate and close in guns. The rest is Pk dice roll but guess you found out what happens already

Not quite, missiles are attacked after they came quite close, about 10 nm, but I have never success with pure LRASM and JSM or pure AARGM-ER

But they are ALWAYS detected at 20nm and subsequently defeated in game, I don't imagine that's how things in real life work. Against an alerted air warfare destroyer a salvo of certain size always have a chance of success of exactly 0%. I'd even say there's a chance an attack is never detected meaningfully before impact, or only a percentage of the salvo is, I know the 0.0001m° RCS say it's a 1/10 detection range not 0. Close in guns/missiles operating independently with far less powerful fire control radar might have problem to respond as well.

USS Mason case also exposed just how difficult to assess whether a kill has occurred or not, against a salvo of maybe 2 or 3. How do you decide on whether you fire a follow up shot or not, or maybe you were just shooting debris field? By the way you have 5 seconds to decide, enough time for a disabled missile to still look like a missile on radar.

Guiding a dozen ESSM class missiles simultaneously, is after all purely theoretical as well, as with "saturation attack". As in neither are demonstrated even under test range condition by anyone. But given you can have the volume of fire on a single attacking platform, whether it's a single B-1B(LRS-B in the future maybe?) or DDG/SSN with maritime strike Tomahawk, I say attacking is more likely to be put into practice than defense in general.

[hornetfinn]

Here is some interesting info about what kind of problem very low flying anti-ship missiles present to the ships radar based defences. Basically the sea clutter results in power gain of about -30 dB when the missile is flying at very low levels (below 20 meters ore so). This means that if the radar could detect the missile 100 km away in free space (against sky background), then it could only detect the same missile 20 km away when it's sea skimming.

Source:
https://www.sto.nato.int/publications/S ... 239-12.pdf

[jessmo112]

Here is an example of what I mentioned earlier.
The U.S. puts its ships and airceaft through extensive training senarios. Im not sure if foriegn nations
Have evolved to this level of training (unless its with the U.S.)
I think both aircrews and ship crews are the deciding factor.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3 ... r-training

Here is a exercise off point mogu.

Are the Chinese building this level of training and integration? Thats the missing factor. The crews.

[eloise]

Here is some interesting info about what kind of problem very low flying anti-ship missiles present to the ships radar based defences. Basically the sea clutter results in power gain of about -30 dB when the missile is flying at very low levels (below 20 meters ore so). This means that if the radar could detect the missile 100 km away in free space (against sky background), then it could only detect the same missile 20 km away when it's sea skimming.

Source:
https://www.sto.nato.int/publications/S ... 239-12.pdf

Good point, that also explain why destroyer with RCS of 1000-2000 m2 can still be very hard to find

message-editor_1609102978376-23423553253.jpg

Here is an example of what I mentioned earlier.
The U.S. puts its ships and airceaft through extensive training senarios. Im not sure if foriegn nations
Have evolved to this level of training (unless its with the U.S.)
I think both aircrews and ship crews are the deciding factor.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3 ... r-training

Here is a exercise off point mogu.

Are the Chinese building this level of training and integration? Thats the missing factor. The crews.

possible but I'm interested in discussing the system more than the training

[jessmo112]

I dont know much about the FC radars on these Chinese destroyers. How do the compare to the ground based S-400 and HQ-9 respectively?

[eloise]

But they are ALWAYS detected at 20nm and subsequently defeated in game, I don't imagine that's how things in real life work. Against an alerted air warfare destroyer a salvo of certain size always have a chance of success of exactly 0%.

I have very high chance of success when I used a mix of 12 SPEAR-EW and 2 AARGM-ER, almost 35-40% success rate. It almost unbelievably high. Though to be fairs, they don't have Type 055 so I have to test with Type 052