US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
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Yeah, this ship isn't getting built. They will go back to the DDG(X) design from last year. The FF(X) will also be in trouble because I doubt they can really make it into a competent frigate.
You realize the expensive part of these things isn't the launcher right?
It's more complementary with AWACs
The answer is getting a similar capability, actually low thousands is what's required for constant sub-m res global coverage, tens of thousands would only be for resilience, China currently has close to 500 earth observation satellites, still a long way to go, Also, the americans have more to lose against such an aircraft tracking capability tbh.
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It could possibly replace AWACs if these satellites could do what they claim, aka true space based AMTI then there really wouldn't be a need for AEWC, atleast not big plane with a giant radar antenna thing. Depending how good the in orbit system is for actually processing and distributing data, they might still need some kind of frontline command center of sorts for real time updates to units.
Theoretically, such a system would be able to track aircraft (possibly even stealthy ones given that modern stealth aircraft aren't really designed in mind with receivers being positioned directly above it) effectively anywhere given a large enough constellation which is already huge for intelligence work even if it might not be able to automatically vector units or distribute data.
None of those 500 satellites are AMTI capable though, to my knowledge China doesn't seem to be pursuing such a capability in the near future and even optimistically assuming they are and are atleast as advanced as the US, Chinese launch capacity lags behind the US by nearly if not over a order of magnitude right now by payload mass meaning deployment of such a system is quite unrealistic in the near term (Or on a competitive timeline against the US) especially considering there is a massive backlog of constellations awaiting deployment like QF/GW and some other smaller private/commercial ones.
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China has demonstrated in-orbit identification of ships with satellite in the Jilin-1 constellation many years ago. It was one of the sat around few hundred kilos, it was optical. The image recognition was done by the sat itself, only result was transferred to the ground to compare with marinetime tracking broadcast. Jilin-1 has equivlant radar sat in the same weight range. Jilin-1 and other constellations were evisioned to provide real-time coverage. Jilin-1 alone is planned to be 300 sats in space by 2nd phase and it is not the end. Essentially China already has a priliminary system similar to what Pantagon is planning.
What US announced recently is neither a new idea nor new capability that China does not have or working on already. It is not even new to US itself, US has similar constellation already except they have not demonstrated the capability of doing most of the capturing, recognition and tracking in orbit yet which China has done years ago. This new announcement that involves SpaceX is just one of the link (communication between sats) for the whole system to work. And even this isn't ahead of China who has demonstrated intra-sat laser communication.
All in all, this is a nothing burger as far as China is concerned. Think about it as another Artemis moon race with China, it is not about China but about US itself. And US is trying to catch up with China in some areas.
What US announced recently is neither a new idea nor new capability that China does not have or working on already. It is not even new to US itself, US has similar constellation already except they have not demonstrated the capability of doing most of the capturing, recognition and tracking in orbit yet which China has done years ago. This new announcement that involves SpaceX is just one of the link (communication between sats) for the whole system to work. And even this isn't ahead of China who has demonstrated intra-sat laser communication.
All in all, this is a nothing burger as far as China is concerned. Think about it as another Artemis moon race with China, it is not about China but about US itself. And US is trying to catch up with China in some areas.