I know y'all know everything about weapons and stuff. So, is this a game-changer or is it just much ado about nothing...?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100805/ap_on_re_as/as_china_us_carrier_killer
I know y'all know everything about weapons and stuff. So, is this a game-changer or is it just much ado about nothing...?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100805/ap_on_re_as/as_china_us_carrier_killer
It brings up several intersting technical and political questions.
First from what I have read this is supposed to be a Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile(ASBM) not a cruise missile but fitted with a conventional warhead. Being a ballistic missile it is very, very fast and would come at the ship from nearly straight up.
This does a few things:
1. Makes the carriers CIWIS useless becasue I don't think those guns can elevate to nearly straight up and the warhead is traveling too fast for them to track.
2. Decreases the reaction time of the Ageis ships defending the carrier group and decreases the kill bubble around the warhead. Ageis cruisers can hit inbound ballistic warheads but it is hard and takes multiple kill vehicles to do.
Think about it like this.
For an target traveling at subsonic speeds the kill bubble around it, space around the object where an exposion will damage or destroy the target, is shapped like an irregular sort of egg shaped oval. The target is positioned towards the rear of the oval with most of the kill zone in front of it. This is because an explosioni too far behind the target won't hit it because of the speed it is traveling. An explosion of the same size can be well in front of the target and still do damage.
As you reach transonic and go into supersonic the rear area of the kill bubble decreases in size. At hypersonic or ballistic velocities there is no rear portion of the kill bubble. The kill bubble becomes a narrow cone or funnel where the target is the point of the cone. At high enough speeds even an explosion just to the side of the target won't reach it before its high velocity carries it out of range as the target is traveling faster then the explosion.
This is why many of the kill vehicles currently being developed for ABM use or satellite kills don't even use explosives. They are kinetic kill vehicles because your only reach chance of killing the target is to hit it directly.
So that is some of the defensive problems that this causes the US Navy.
On the offensive side there are huge techical problems too. Currently Ballistic missiles are only guided for the short launch portion of their flight. The sub-orbital and re-entry portion are unguided and they simply follow the rules of orbital mechanics and ballistics. That makes ballistic missiles good for hitting large static targets but not so good for hitting medium sized or large moving targets like a ship.
China has to figure out a way to at least give partial active guidance to the warhead for the re-entry portion of the flight. They don't have to hit the ship directly as at the speed the warhead is traveling even a hit nearby in the water will cause damage to the ship. Modern torpedos work the same way. The torpedo dives under the hull of the ship and explodes a few meters away creating a bubble from the shockwave. The bubble lifts the ship up and stresses the hull/keel in just a small area breaking the back of the ship.
A ballistic warhead hitting close to a ship would cause a large shockwave even with a conventional warhead because of the kinetic energy. Hell even without a warhead made of a dense material like say tungsten would have enough kinetic energy to do massive damage.
Still it will be very hard for them to hit a moving target like a current Nimitz class carrier that can hit 30 plus knots. The new Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier will be even faster and more manuverable plus it will have some stealth tech on board with new defensive systems.
A guy I went to engineering school with is helping design the new
Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System for the Ford class. The new electromagnetic system is much more efficient and much lighter then the old steam system.
I would guess the way China would use this missile is something like this.
First you would need multiple waves to hit even a single ship or group of ships. Lots of the warheads are simply going to miss or cause minimal damage that doesn't slow the target down. The Ageis ships will be able to shoot some of them down.
Newer classes of US warships may have railgun defenses to replace the older
CIWS system. and the new
Evolved Sea Sparrow missile is already online with the US navy. Not sure if it can hit ballistic targets but if it can hit supersonic cruis missiles it can probably at least have a chance to hit a ballistic target given enough early warning.
The goal of the first wave is to damage the target ship to reduce its speed and maneuverability. Once the target is stationary or mostly stationary there is a better chance of hitting it with a second wave. The second wave would probably be the kill wave for most ships but a carrier might take a third wave.
The thing is would we give the Chinese a chance to even mount a second wave let alone a third? We would know within seconds of a Ballistic launch from China. There are satelites watching for that very event. What we wouldn't know would be the target or if the missile was carrying a conventinal or nuclear warhead. The target would be known within a few mintues as the missile was tracked but the warhead wouldn't be known at all.
That gets to the political challenges. Would China risk a multiple ballistic launch when the US wouldn't know if they were equipped with conventional or nuclear warheads? Depenging on the tension level the US might not wait to find out. We could strike with nuclear ballistic missiles destroying all of the China's launchers before a second wave is even launched.
It looks like we are going to leave some of the new
SSGN Ohio Class subs in the area around China on a permenant basis. A SSGN fully loaded can carry 154 Tomahawks equal to what an entire surface battle group would carry. They change the force projection that the navy can offer away from just carriers too. That gives us a covert and conventioinal strike capablity for outside the range of the proposed Chinese ASBM. The navy is working on supersonic and hypersonic cruise missiles too.
Lets say the Chinese launch a wave of ASBMs and we see it happeing. There is a carrier group within in the target area so they are ordered into evasive manuvers and to spread out some. Most of the warheads are intercepted or miss but a few do minor damage but not enough to prevent carrier opperations. Even if they did do enough damage to prevent carrier opperations a SSGN in the area, probably attached to the carrier group but by itself miles away, could strike at the chinese launchers stopping a third wave from being launched. The second wave would be launched before cruise missiles could get there but I bet a third wouldn't make it out in time.
Gonna have to leave it at there for now. This computer is threatining to crash and I need to get some other work done.