Behind the China Missile Hype

s002wjh said:

well consider you gonna have other ships DDG and platform etc nearby, sending all sort of jamming, noise, while the carrier would be silent. the sensor must be really good and accurate to pick out the carrrier under those condition. even during terminal phase the area of coverage is pretty large for ballastic missiles. the internal sensor has to know the target and other ships, tracking it under combat conditon.

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Don't forget a carrier is much larger than a jetfighter and it's going to be difficult, probably impossible, to hide something as large as a carrier using countermeasures. No one is saying the AShBM will have a free ride. There'll be countermeasures, and then in return, countermeasures against the countermeasures but how effective those measures would actually turn out to be?

Quickie said:

Don't forget a carrier is much larger than a jetfighter and it's going to be difficult, probably impossible, to hide something as large as a carrier using countermeasures. No one is saying the AShBM will have a free ride. There'll be countermeasures, and then in return, countermeasures against the countermeasures but how effective those measures would actually turn out to be?

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its not about physically hiding it. during combat condition, carrier will be silenced, and its battle group will turn on all their jamming, noise etc. the DF21 will use either active or passive RF sensor. if its passive then it will have issue to locate the carrier, and pick up EM signature within all the noise generate by other ships jamming, thats only if china know EM signature of US carrier, which i don't think they do(also US carrier will have minium EM generation from the ship).
for active sensor during terminal phase, due to size of missile you can't put something large and powerful in the nose of missile. so putting something near field high resolution RF is a better choice. but the algorithm of sensor, capability has to be relly sophiscated in order to punch through the jamming etc. if the receiver is not able to pick up the missile emission, then its effectivally blind. remember during terminal phase after black out, its missiles sensor against ALL US CVBG jamming, noise etc.

missile sensor won't have countermeasures. it need room for other stuff. most likely it will be some active sensor with frequency hopping, pulse on pulse type emmssion. to do that you need very sophiscated algorithm, digital hardwares, and has to be real time to the micro/milli second. especially if the communication between missile and satelite is lost due to all the EM noise in the area. if even a part of emmssion is not receive could cause targeting failure in the system.

I love this theme that people here know but the Chinese don't think about these things.

And people are assuming China justs lobs ASBMs as if they can only do one thing at a time. Like China isn't thinking about how to deal with it? That's like the thinking that China is going to go to war before they're ready so they ask why build a carrier or a stealth fighter. If electronic warfare worked 100% of the time then there would be no worries. If it's believed China always forgets something important which what they always think then China should not alarm others. I know people get bothered when the Kitty Hawk incident or the Seersucker that hit Kuwait City without being seen by AWACs, Aegis, and Patriot systems are brought up and you make excuses but that's called what happens in war. If everything works according to what paper says, then that Seersucker would've been detected to the least in the middle of a war where everyone is on alert and the highest situational awareness. There's no ifs, ands, or buts in war.

AssassinsMace said:

I love this theme that people here know but the Chinese don't think about these things.

And people are assuming China justs lobs ASBMs as if they can only do one thing at a time. Like China isn't thinking about how to deal with it? That's like the thinking that China is going to go to war before they're ready so they ask why build a carrier or a stealth fighter. If electronic warfare worked 100% of the time then there would be no worries. If it's believed China always forgets something important which what they always think then China should not alarm others. I know people get bothered when the Kitty Hawk incident or the Seersucker that hit Kuwait City without being seen by AWACs, Aegis, and Patriot systems are brought up and you make excuses but that's called what happens in war. If everything works according to what paper says, then that Seersucker would've been detected to the least in the middle of a war where everyone is on alert and the highest situational awareness. There's no ifs, ands, or buts in war.

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no one said. EW work 100% time, its really the ODDs of penetrating a entire CVBG network, EM, jaming with missile in terminal phase, espeically it lost communication to its satelite due to jamming. its about how diffcult to acheive this. hey if NASA want to goto mars, they can but at cost of tremendous diffculty, resource, and time.

also even chinese admit there is alot diffculties in DF21D, it really depend if they continually pushing it or some top level general decide its too diffcult to do it right now and give up.

i won't use kitty hawk incident as way to say its easy to penetrate CVBG defense. for starter, it wasn't in combat condition, not in a battle group support by multiple subs, ddg activelly seeking target, jamming etc, the chinese sub was waiting, there is no AWAC coverage etc etc.

nothing is impossible but there diffcult stuff then there are really diffcult stuff.

s002wjh said:

no one said. EW work 100% time, its really the ODDs of penetrating a entire CVBG network, EM, jaming with missile in terminal phase, espeically it lost communication to its satelite due to jamming. its about how diffcult to acheive this. hey if NASA want to goto mars, they can but at cost of tremendous diffculty, resource, and time.

also even chinese admit there is alot diffculties in DF21D, it really depend if they continually pushing it or some top level general decide its too diffcult to do it right now and give up.

i won't use kitty hawk incident as way to say its easy to penetrate CVBG defense. for starter, it wasn't in combat condition, not in a battle group support by multiple subs, ddg activelly seeking target, jamming etc, the chinese sub was waiting, there is no AWAC coverage etc etc.

nothing is impossible but there diffcult stuff then there are really diffcult stuff.

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EW has been around a while and people act like China didn't get that memo. Why produce any guided weapons then if it can be brought up about the ASBM?

Did anyone say the Chinese faced no difficulties? The fact is new guided weapons are designed and produced still to this day so if EW were so effective why would they bother?

I would use the Kitty Hawk incident because I see it saying a lot more than you think. For this dicussion I won't bring up the speculation of what happened on the Kitty Hawk side. But it does say something about the Chinese side. How did they get an inferior noisy Chinese sub within torpedo range with superior LA class sub escorts and all? Whether it was a successful network of coordination on the PLAN's part or something as simply as a Chinese SSK silent running and the Kitty Hawk came into in its trap, those are more realistic scenarios than staged tests. China is not going to the US to fight a war. The US will be coming to China. Just like I've brought up how one Gotland SSK sunk the Royal Navy, it's realistic that can be at play with Chinese SSKs. So a safe conclusion can be made either that Chinese technology and tactics are better than you believe or the other side is not as you think.

I think we need to face the fact that the challenges people have lined out for DF-21D have already been solved by existing weapons.

• Mid course guidance via datalink is the same principle as ICBMs receiving GPS guidance.
• Terminal guidance with high mach re entry has existed through the likes of pershing ii and iskander, which worked without the plasma problem affecting either of their seekers.
• Blackout from re entry -- well first you have to ask if this is a challenge at all, because during re entry will datalinking still be necessary? By then it should've switched to terminal homing anyway. But even if datalinking is necessary, there are ways around it (re the space shuttle and tianlian satellites).
• Hitting a moving target, let's be fair, it is true that no one has demonstrated hitting a moving surface target with a ballistic missile. But ABM weapons have existed for decades, and they have intercepted exoatmospheric ballistic missiles with equally fast hit to kill warheads. Remember a ballistic missile in flight is far smaller and faster than a 30 knot CVN. If ABM is like using a bullet to intercept a bullet, AShBM will be like using a bullet to hit the side of a barn.
• C4ISTAR -- I think we've settled that the chinese can set up a decent network through UAVs, satellites, OTH, PLAN vessels, sonar, submarines, fishing boats, MPA etc, all linked through to data relay satellites to support AShBM in mid course, given continued time and investment. Destroying one satellite or one OTH station will not bring down the whole network. The multitude of sensors complement each other and provide redundancy. They are not linked to each other so that if one falls the other will fall too, it does not work like that. However data relay satellites could potentially be a bottleneck, but that again has to do with how many data relay satellites there will be compared to ASAT weapons.

That's most of the supposed "inbuilt" challenges responded to.
As for jamming, ABM, "miracle smoke" etc, that is a matter of countermeasures vs counter-countermeasures. My point is that the technologies necessary to support DF-21D have been around for years. Yes it would be best of the weapon was tested against a realistic moving target to prove to the world it works, but that's against the PLA's cloak and dagger strategy to keep their foes guessing about their capabilities.

s002wjh said:

its not about physically hiding it. during combat condition, carrier will be silenced, and its battle group will turn on all their jamming, noise etc. the DF21 will use either active or passive RF sensor. if its passive then it will have issue to locate the carrier, and pick up EM signature within all the noise generate by other ships jamming, thats only if china know EM signature of US carrier, which i don't think they do(also US carrier will have minium EM generation from the ship).
for active sensor during terminal phase, due to size of missile you can't put something large and powerful in the nose of missile. so putting something near field high resolution RF is a better choice. but the algorithm of sensor, capability has to be relly sophiscated in order to punch through the jamming etc. if the receiver is not able to pick up the missile emission, then its effectivally blind. remember during terminal phase after black out, its missiles sensor against ALL US CVBG jamming, noise etc.

missile sensor won't have countermeasures. it need room for other stuff. most likely it will be some active sensor with frequency hopping, pulse on pulse type emmssion. to do that you need very sophiscated algorithm, digital hardwares, and has to be real time to the micro/milli second. especially if the communication between missile and satelite is lost due to all the EM noise in the area. if even a part of emmssion is not receive could cause targeting failure in the system.

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That's going to be the same sort challenges any opponent would face in an electronic warfare, so it's not something that's going to be very different that the anti ship missile will have to deal with.

Things are more complicated with a carrier though. The escorting warships need to be close to the carrier in order to effectively jam signals directed at the carrier. Not a good idea to be in a close group if you've too many missiles targetting at you and your jamming signals can end up being the signal source for targetting (HOJ) with the additional problem of not having the speed of a jetfighter to speed out of danger. Optical passive sensors such as IRST are even more difficult to jam. There is no way they're going to hide the IR signature of jetfighters doing their usual operation on a carrier.

Bltizo said:

I think we need to face the fact that the challenges people have lined out for DF-21D have already been solved by existing weapons.

• Terminal guidance with high mach re entry has existed through the likes of pershing ii and iskander, which worked without the plasma problem affecting either of their seekers.

That's most of the supposed "inbuilt" challenges responded to.
As for jamming, ABM, "miracle smoke" etc, that is a matter of countermeasures vs counter-countermeasures. My point is that the technologies necessary to support DF-21D have been around for years. Yes it would be best of the weapon was tested against a realistic moving target to prove to the world it works, but that's against the PLA's cloak and dagger strategy to keep their foes guessing about their capabilities.

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If you didn't know, the Iskander doesn't move at hypersonic speeds on it's terminal phase. The biggest problem with the DF-21D is still it's terminal guidance system. The DF-21A, which is the only DF-21 variant with an Active Seeker, is only known to have an accuracy of 200 m CEP, which is, pretty terrible when you're trying to hit a carrier.

Quickie said:

That's going to be the same sort challenges any opponent would face in an electronic warfare, so it's not something that's going to be very different that the anti ship missile will have to deal with.

Things are more complicated with a carrier though. The escorting warships need to be close to the carrier in order to effectively jam signals directed at the carrier. Not a good idea to be in a close group if you've too many missiles targetting at you and your jamming signals can end up being the signal source for targetting (HOJ) with the additional problem of not having the speed of a jetfighter to speed out of danger. Optical passive sensors such as IRST are even more difficult to jam. There is no way they're going to hide the IR signature of jetfighters doing their usual operation on a carrier.

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Depends on your definition of "pretty close". The AESAs on the F-22 for example, can literally fry enemy radars and missiles with it's sheer output power from about 1 km away. The AN/SPY-3, is obviously a much larger AESA radar, and I don't doubt that it can fry enemy radars or jam them from farther away than the F-22 can.

jaming from DDG or other platform has pretty long range, its not necessary a ship per say, could be a plane or UAV etc. lets assume china able to detect, ID, and track the CVBG in real time. The problem with terminal guidance to a moving target under EW, combat condition does has its diffculties.

so if mid-course correction location is stored during blackout.
after bloackout the missile will essentially be on its own. and its still pretty far from carrier, there are other ships around.
now the missile must ID the carrier, continue track it when carrier is dead silent and all other ships/plane try to jam the missiles.
for stationary target this does not matter, no active RF sensor is required, just store coordinate of the target, so EW won't able to stop the missiles. for a moving target which require detection, ID, tracking algorithm and a RF sensor, EW become a obstacle. also the sensor must know which ships is the carrier and track it in real time, adjust the missile course, probably something in the us/ms accuracy due to speed of missile. the algorithm has to be sophiscated, and the sensor has to be powerfull and compact. stationary target don't require these changes, just GPS coordinate is enough.

now i'm not sure what type of sensor for current supersonic anti-ship missiles, IR, visual, UV, RF?? ballistic missile probably can only use RF due to outside temp.

---------- Post added at 10:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:53 AM ----------

Bltizo said:

I think we need to face the fact that the challenges people have lined out for DF-21D have already been solved by existing weapons.

• Mid course guidance via datalink is the same principle as ICBMs receiving GPS guidance.
• Terminal guidance with high mach re entry has existed through the likes of pershing ii and iskander, which worked without the plasma problem affecting either of their seekers.
• Blackout from re entry -- well first you have to ask if this is a challenge at all, because during re entry will datalinking still be necessary? By then it should've switched to terminal homing anyway. But even if datalinking is necessary, there are ways around it (re the space shuttle and tianlian satellites).
• Hitting a moving target, let's be fair, it is true that no one has demonstrated hitting a moving surface target with a ballistic missile. But ABM weapons have existed for decades, and they have intercepted exoatmospheric ballistic missiles with equally fast hit to kill warheads. Remember a ballistic missile in flight is far smaller and faster than a 30 knot CVN. If ABM is like using a bullet to intercept a bullet, AShBM will be like using a bullet to hit the side of a barn.
• C4ISTAR -- I think we've settled that the chinese can set up a decent network through UAVs, satellites, OTH, PLAN vessels, sonar, submarines, fishing boats, MPA etc, all linked through to data relay satellites to support AShBM in mid course, given continued time and investment. Destroying one satellite or one OTH station will not bring down the whole network. The multitude of sensors complement each other and provide redundancy. They are not linked to each other so that if one falls the other will fall too, it does not work like that. However data relay satellites could potentially be a bottleneck, but that again has to do with how many data relay satellites there will be compared to ASAT weapons.

That's most of the supposed "inbuilt" challenges responded to.
As for jamming, ABM, "miracle smoke" etc, that is a matter of countermeasures vs counter-countermeasures. My point is that the technologies necessary to support DF-21D have been around for years. Yes it would be best of the weapon was tested against a realistic moving target to prove to the world it works, but that's against the PLA's cloak and dagger strategy to keep their foes guessing about their capabilities.

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there is difference between ABM vs AsBM operation
1 ABM is not jammed by hostile force, its not in hostile defense area, AsBM is in the sphere of CVBG, EW, defense area, and the entire CVBG is try to protect the carrier vs nothing is protecting the AsBM.
2. ID,tracking for ABM is done by other platform, it doesn't worry about jamming from BM or other source, so its datalink is secure. also i'm not sure SM3 has any sophiscated active sensor onboard since majority of information are calculate by other platform, then upload to missile or maybe just calculate the trajectory of ballistic missile and lunch the ABM toward the path of that trajectory.
3 find something in the air vs in the ocean is different. for starter there are much more clutter due to ocean, ships is diffcult to track. which mean the AsBM terminal sensor system has to be more powerfull, sophiscate than ABM.
4. AsBM become independent during terminal phase agains entire CVBG EW/SM3, ABM never has this issue, US can upload new info if necessary.

IronsightSniper said:

Depends on your definition of "pretty close". The AESAs on the F-22 for example, can literally fry enemy radars and missiles with it's sheer output power from about 1 km away. The AN/SPY-3, is obviously a much larger AESA radar, and I don't doubt that it can fry enemy radars or jam them from farther away than the F-22 can.

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How reliable is this claim? Under what condition it was claimed it can fry the enemy radar? Would it take more than a few seconds on a fixed spot as what we have seen for laser weapons? At 1km, you would rather destroy the enemy's missile completely using RAM or CIWS guns rather than to risk having to guess whether the missile's radar has been disabled and to just ignore the missile while it's still basically heading your way.