China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

[SimaQian]

There is no more doubt this is real even if we dont see any video proof. It just a matter of iteration of engineering solution.

 

[ougoah]

Actually hitting a moving object on the surface on earth like a warship, is much more difficult than hitting a satellite in low earth orbit.
In space there is nothing, very thin air to none. The air is more dense at sea level.

Since DF-21D and DF-26 are ballistic missiles, so there must be some limited maneuverability of the warhead in the terminal phase of the ballistic trajectory. Hitting a moving target requires continuous position update of the target.
If the target position is updated to the warhead until 1 minute before impact at mach 10,
the ship can only move max 18 meters (at 35 knots), so the larger the ship, the greater chance it
will get hit even without explosives.

So the US navy is right, the only chance to counter this in the mid flight phase - the war head is still attached to the missile.
Once in terminal phase, their ship will be hit before they can finish praying "Hail Mary".

When has the US navy said this?

 

[SimaQian]

Well, they have THAAD. And it says has a max speed of Mach 8 at 200km range. They can try to shoot a Mach 10 DF21d and df 26. The reaction time needed is a little over a minute if they can hit it.

 

[Temstar]

Good analysis, but I would suggest that the sensor package would be much easier and effectively deployed as a mini-satellite. Because if it is deployed in atmosphere, it would already be past the plasma sheath phase of re-entry, and would have to have its own heat shield and slowing and stabilising mechanisms, and would be very little time to sort itself out, find the target and that would leave very little time for the warhead to do any meaningful course corrections.

Deploying the sensor package (as well as other decoys) once the AShBM has left the atmosphere would then serve the stated purpose of decoying (only mid-course intercept would have any realistic chance of success, so I don’t think they would even bother with terminal phase decoys); and also provide much more timely course updates for the warhead before it starts it’s re-entry phase.

During the re-entry phase, the mini-satellite would be able to see both the warhead and its target and thus can provide high precision, lag-free course update data to the warhead to guide it such that once it clears the plasma sheath, it’s own sensors would be perfectly aligned to acquire the target.

This is an excellent practical engineering solution that exemplifies Chinese problem solving at its best. Rather than trying to brute force an impossible seeming challenge, they neatly sidestep it instead to delivery practical solutions without ridiculous budget and time investments.

Oh yeah that's excellent point. Once the sensor package is deployed it can be kicked with a very small solid fuel rocket motor to a slightly higher suborbital trajectory so that it can overfly the intended target area of the warhead while the warhead reenters without having to bother with heat shield and all that nonsense. Hell if a group of such missiles attack at the same time these little guidence modules might even be able to link with each other so they can decide on how to best distribute the warheads across a carrier battle group.

It's suspected that

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might also play a role in this kill chain and function as "temporary satellite". A H-6 would drop one and it would overfly a carrier battle group at incredible speed and altitude with its rocket engines to provide terminal guidance data for a AShBM attack.

 

[plawolf]

Oh yeah that's excellent point. Once the sensor package is deployed it can be kicked with a very small solid fuel rocket motor to a slightly higher suborbital trajectory so that it can overfly the intended target area of the warhead while the warhead reenters without having to bother with heat shield and all that nonsense. Hell if a group of such missiles attack at the same time these little guidence modules might even be able to link with each other so they can decide on how to best distribute the warheads across a carrier battle group.

It's suspected that

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might also play a role in this kill chain and function as "temporary satellite". A H-6 would drop one and it would overfly a carrier battle group at incredible speed and altitude with its rocket engines to provide terminal guidance data for a AShBM attack.

I am not sure if a sensor net is strictly necessary, we are taking about carriers and destroyers rather than stealth fighters or bombers here after all. But the added redundancy would certainly be useful in case the Americans decide to try to focus on targeting the sensor package rather than the warhead.

The WZ8 would be an important part of the kill chain, but I think it’s role would be more for recon rather than guidance.

Don’t get me wrong, it would certainly provide targeting support if possible, but odds are given the speeds involved, the WZ8 would be out of range by the time the AShBMs started to arrive.

The WZ8s would act as back-ups and supplement to satellite recon (as satellites can be blinded or even directly attacked in such situations) in providing initial target acquisition and launch co-ordinates for the AShBMs to aim for. Once the warheads have breached atmosphere and deployed their own sensor packages, they should be able to deal with mid-course and terminal guidance largely autonomously. This would mean that rather than having one big long and cumbersome kill chain, you have multiple, discrete sections that can act as one massive mutually supportive network, or function as small independent tight loop networks.

The more I think about this the more sense it makes.

Not only would the sensor package provide mid course and terminal guidance, it will also be able to give immediate damage assessments. If the target managed to survive the first salvo, the sensor net left in space would be able to provide immediate launch co-ordinated for a follow on attack.

If the enemy managed to dispute your initial detection segment by WZ8s and Satellites, you can salvo fire a small number of AShBMs to cover a huge area that the enemy fleet could be in, and redirect warheads mid course once a sensor package detects the enemy.

Even if you cannot vector all the warheads across in time, you have still have pinpointed the enemy fleet for a much more focused second, larger salvo strike.

 

[SPOOPYSKELETON]

Here's the flight path from someone on Weibo. Lots of rumours on what the circles and rectangles are. One theory is this is related to why some media are reporting the test as four missiles, in fact what might be happening is to get around the re-entry radio blackout due to plasma sheath each missile deploys a high drag sensor package behind the warhead. This sensor package rapidly slows down and so is not surrounded by a plasma sheath, it looks for the target then sends the telemetry data to the warhead from its rear where there's no plasma sheath. The warhead then performs terminal guidance based on this data, before it's slowed down enough that it emerges from plasma sheath and then relies on its own onboard sensor. The sensor package also serves as a decoy warhead to confuse missile interceptors.

Ingenious!

 

[ougoah]

Well, they have THAAD. And it says has a max speed of Mach 8 at 200km range. They can try to shoot a Mach 10 DF21d and df 26. The reaction time needed is a little over a minute if they can hit it.

I'm asking because I'm not familiar with the reasons why it's considered impossible to intercept the warhead as it's right above the carrier. The target will be known and the warhead itself is trackable. Why can't an SM-6 intercept the warhead 3km or so above the carrier. It's not like they have to fire the missile while the warhead is within range if they can anticipate the cone of approach since they will probably know the target.

 

[horse]

I'm asking because I'm not familiar with the reasons why it's considered impossible to intercept the warhead as it's right above the carrier. The target will be known and the warhead itself is trackable. Why can't an SM-6 intercept the warhead 3km or so above the carrier. It's not like they have to fire the missile while the warhead is within range if they can anticipate the cone of approach since they will probably know the target.

I do not know anything about this stuff, yet I am sure of the answer here.

The carrier killer missile is too fast at terminal phase to be intercepted.

Just watch a hockey game. The slower player rarely can ever land a hit on a faster player. Here, we are talking about the faster player only has one or two steps on the slower player.

The carrier killer missile is two or three times faster than the interceptor missile, and that we still have to account for minute variations to the flight path due to wind or turbulence.

If the missile force knows where that ship is, it is gone and will be wiped off the face of the map.

 

[plawolf]

I'm asking because I'm not familiar with the reasons why it's considered impossible to intercept the warhead as it's right above the carrier. The target will be known and the warhead itself is trackable. Why can't an SM-6 intercept the warhead 3km or so above the carrier. It's not like they have to fire the missile while the warhead is within range if they can anticipate the cone of approach since they will probably know the target.

Nothing is impossible, it’s it’s extremely hard and unlikely.

You need to remember the carrier does not carry any SM6s, meaning is escorts who will be making the shot.

Even ‘close’ protection in wartime scenarios is like 15km.

Also SM6 isn’t going to be going anything like M8 when it leaves the tubes, it will probably not even come close to that speed even 3km out.

You need to get the SM6 warhead within a few dozen metres of the AShBM when at its minimum, you have a speed differential between the missiles of nearly 700m/s with a maximum combined approach speed of 4,800m/s if you lucked out and have an escort directly in the AShBM flight path.

And you are trying to hit an actively manoeuvring target that is constantly making tiny course corrections to try to hit the carrier.

I’m too lazy to do the math, but the least amount of course correction needed by the AShBM warhead to make the shot impossible for the SM6 to correct for would be hilariously tiny.

The only semi-feasible way to try to intercept would be to forget about attempting to track it, and just spam lots of missiles in a grid like pattern to maximise your chances of the AShBM coming close enough to at least one of your SAMs for it to have a chance of intercepting it.

US land based BMD tech demonstrators cannot even successfully intercept non-manoeuvring ballistic missiles going much slower than the DF21 max speed of M10 while being able to track the target the whole way.

An SM6 will be relying overwhelmingly on luck to successfully intercept a DF21 never mind DF26. Even something as innocuous as turbulence could make them miss.

 

[Max Demian]

I'm asking because I'm not familiar with the reasons why it's considered impossible to intercept the warhead as it's right above the carrier. The target will be known and the warhead itself is trackable. Why can't an SM-6 intercept the warhead 3km or so above the carrier. It's not like they have to fire the missile while the warhead is within range if they can anticipate the cone of approach since they will probably know the target.

SM-6 is a long range SAM. Completely wrong weapon to use at such short range. 3km is probably beyond its minimum engagement range, given that it’s launched with a booster. Not to mention that it is not designed to engage hypersonic targets. While its radar might see the BM, its flight control loops are not capable of guiding it close in enough for a kill.

On the other hand, the SM-3 would be the right weapon to engage DF-21 and DF-26. It will attempt an exoatmospheric kill up to 2500km away from the AEGIS launch platform, with the latest variant.