Anti-Carrier Trump Card

MIGleader said:

thats my point. the orels were suppoesed to be the dream carriers to hold 50+ planes. the kutznev and varyag are kutznev class.

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I think you are talking about the cancelled Ulyanovsk Class. It's suppose to displaced 70,000 tons with steam catapults, USSR's 1st true carrier.

It was scrap at 60 percent completion because USSR fell apart.

china has radars that can see a ship ans shoot it with asm without a helo

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So does every country. However China doesn't have a radar which can target or "see" a ship at long ranges. Like all surface radars, the radar is blind to surface targets once it hits the horizon. This is exactly why a naval AWACs and Helo's are critical for navies. There's no point in having a 100 Km or 200 KM ASM if you cannot launch it from that range.

not neccascerily. according to sinodefence, the yj-83 and 85 can see fire at a target at over 200 km without a helo. its radar can do that. the u.s has radars like that too, but its missles dont havce the range.

Well, what really determines the range of modern naval weapons today is not the performance of the weapon itself, but rather the instruments used to detect/track a contact. Missiles with fire-and-forget systems can (in theory at least) be fired in the general direction of a hostile ship, and then the missile itself would find it's target. The problem is that such a move would probably not result in a hit, simply since the sea is too big. You need to know exactly where a hostile ship is until you can attack it and count on hitting it. Also, a missile fired can be detected, giving the enemy an idea about where you are, which is something you definitly not want to happen.

Bottomline: usually firing at anything that you do not have a radar (or some other kind of sensor) track on is nearly always a waste of tax money.

detection range also depends on the altitude of the target and the mast height of the radar. Sure you can detect a major surface combatant at 200+ km, but whatabout a harpoon skimming at 10 meters above the water? Some minor calculation shows that the detection range for that would be around 30 kms.

vincelee said:

detection range also depends on the altitude of the target and the mast height of the radar. Sure you can detect a major surface combatant at 200+ km, but whatabout a harpoon skimming at 10 meters above the water? Some minor calculation shows that the detection range for that would be around 30 kms.

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That's why it's harder to destroy a sea-skimming missile.

vincelee said:

detection range also depends on the altitude of the target and the mast height of the radar. Sure you can detect a major surface combatant at 200+ km, but whatabout a harpoon skimming at 10 meters above the water? Some minor calculation shows that the detection range for that would be around 30 kms.

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thats still alot of time to see it. even if was detected at 30 km, the chinese would only be able to use a ciws on it at around 4 km. the jyjs are sea skimming aswell, but fly faster.

vincelee said:

detection range also depends on the altitude of the target and the mast height of the radar. Sure you can detect a major surface combatant at 200+ km, but whatabout a harpoon skimming at 10 meters above the water? Some minor calculation shows that the detection range for that would be around 30 kms.

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In case of AEW, you need to have a very good radar that can distinguised a sea skimming missile from the sea clutter.

As it goes, the faster the missile means a bigger the fuel load, which means a bigger missile, which equals easier to see.

it's not the radar, but the software.

A Harpoon travels at 855 km/h, if detection range is 30 km, that means that it will cover those 30 km in just over 2 minutes. That is very little time to launch any SAMs at it in, and CIWS is not some kind of an almighty missile barrier, it is a last ditch effort to use when everything else has failed.

On detecting a sea-skimmer, it can be done using a pusle-doppler radar, since for anything that travels at such high speeds there will be a quite strong doppler effect. The waves do present some background clutter, but a modern radar with a good filter software should be able to overcome it quite easily.