I did mean WS15 in my last post, not WS20. It was a lapsus.
I do find the discussion of stand off weapons usage as missing the point. Sure, in THEORY, a missile with long enough range is better for certain kinds of missions.
But a simplest very short range guided missile like Hellfire costs around $90 000. (I'll stick to US weapons being bought by USAF so we get a common denominator)
Here are some other missiles and bombs costs. They're mostly all taken from pentagon procurement documents from recent years.
JDAM ~$25 000
SDB I ~36 000 (GPS only)
LGB with GPS ~$40 000
SDB II ~$180 000 (tri mode seeker)
JSOW ~$440 000 (undefined variant. may be average cost af all variants)
JASSM ~$1.3 million
Harpoon blk2 (and slam-er) ~1.6 million
Tomahawk ~1.5 million
Now, how many long range guided missiles does US have, (ground strike only)?
Roughly 4000 tomahawks
Roughly 2600 JASSM/ER
<1000 SLAM/ER
How many unpowered bombs does it have?
Roughly 3000 JSOW (glide bomb, some stand off range)
Roughly 2000 SDB II (glide bomb, some stand off range)
Roughly 28 000 SDB I
Roughly 250 000 JDAM kits
Roughly 300-400 thousand paveways
Even with the JASSM getting to fulfill its 5000 missile plan in the future years, we're talking about roughly 9 to 10 thousand stand off conventional missiles.
Compared to roughly 600 thousand guided bombs of various kind today. (of which some 5000 glide bombs today and some 20 000 in the future, when SDB II procurement plans are met)
Issues with stand off guided missiles are several. They're pricier to buy. They're pricier to upkeep and service. They're more complex and their production takes longer, so sudden surges in procurement take longer.
Then there are mission types.
One needs to scout a location before a strike.
If it's a fixed location like a factory, airbase infrastructure etc, that can mostly be done with satellite. Providing satellites will work in total war scenario.
Damage assessment recon needs to be performed. Satellites can do that though on average they may need hours or days. In some instances there will be higher urgency than that.
Then there are relocatable targets. Like a radar. A SAM battery. Coastal missile battery. Temporary military camp of any kind. Ship in a port. Satellites may need days to spot them as there's just so much ground to be covered. Perhaps not for ships in ports which are fairly known points, but for others - definitely. Usually various other aerial recon methods will spot them first. Various batteries can move around quickly but will usually NOT be doing that 24/7 unless there's a threat from them being spotted.
Finally, there are mobile targets. Not just ones in motion (though those too can sometimes be attacked) but primarily various pieces of equipment which haven't necessarily deployed at the front but are en route. Or artillery parked way in the back. Or we can be talking about individual planes in airbases, sitting around. Any piece of equipment which is likely to move within a few hours unrelated to whether it's being scouted.
The first kind of targets, fixed ones, are the best for stand off missiles. But if one goes just for those, ignoring the others, chances are they're gonna lose. And the usual ratio of targets requiring time crucial hits versus fixed targets is many to one. Possibly dozens to one.
In a lot of those instances there will not be a 100% exact target defined. There will be an area which would first need to be scanned to determine where exactly is that battery or that plane parked or that MLRS or whatever. And recon will need to determine if that's a real target or a dummy. Those sort of recon jobs are not regularly done by U2, Global Hawk or secret spy planes. (even though those too could do it, but those too would need to get fairly close to try to recon) They're done with targeting pods and radar imagining by strike planes' own radar.
Let's look at iraq 2003. 27 700 bombs and missiles were fired. 68 percent were guided. Out of those, perhaps a thousand were stand off weapons.
Now imagine the number of targets needed to be covered in a future US China war. There'd be need for hundreds of thousands of bombs/missiles.
US certainly seems to find stand off missiles to be too expensive and unsuited for most jobs. Otherwise they'd have as many of them as they have other guided bombs.
And stand off weapons are simply not applicable to certain dug in targets. Missiles like tomahawk lack the penetration punch. Even when they use special warheads for that, they still fall behind the penetration power of a 1000 kg bunker buster.
TL; DR No one, not even the rich US air forces with their propensity for guided weapons can afford to wage war with just/mostly stand off missiles. They're used to an extent, to help neutralize the enemy in the opening moments of the battle, or to sometimes reach strategic fixed targets - but those are in reality just a few percent of targets that need to be hit.
If one thinks a war between US and China would be decided only on the seas, hitting ships or perhaps hitting island airbases - they're deluding themselves. In such a war countless islands would be used for countless purposes and *constant, repeated* bombings of those islands and other land masses would be performed. There'd be small scale invasions, there'd be limited scope ground battles, it'd be carnage and persisting air power would be very welcome.
I do find the discussion of stand off weapons usage as missing the point. Sure, in THEORY, a missile with long enough range is better for certain kinds of missions.
But a simplest very short range guided missile like Hellfire costs around $90 000. (I'll stick to US weapons being bought by USAF so we get a common denominator)
Here are some other missiles and bombs costs. They're mostly all taken from pentagon procurement documents from recent years.
JDAM ~$25 000
SDB I ~36 000 (GPS only)
LGB with GPS ~$40 000
SDB II ~$180 000 (tri mode seeker)
JSOW ~$440 000 (undefined variant. may be average cost af all variants)
JASSM ~$1.3 million
Harpoon blk2 (and slam-er) ~1.6 million
Tomahawk ~1.5 million
Now, how many long range guided missiles does US have, (ground strike only)?
Roughly 4000 tomahawks
Roughly 2600 JASSM/ER
<1000 SLAM/ER
How many unpowered bombs does it have?
Roughly 3000 JSOW (glide bomb, some stand off range)
Roughly 2000 SDB II (glide bomb, some stand off range)
Roughly 28 000 SDB I
Roughly 250 000 JDAM kits
Roughly 300-400 thousand paveways
Even with the JASSM getting to fulfill its 5000 missile plan in the future years, we're talking about roughly 9 to 10 thousand stand off conventional missiles.
Compared to roughly 600 thousand guided bombs of various kind today. (of which some 5000 glide bombs today and some 20 000 in the future, when SDB II procurement plans are met)
Issues with stand off guided missiles are several. They're pricier to buy. They're pricier to upkeep and service. They're more complex and their production takes longer, so sudden surges in procurement take longer.
Then there are mission types.
One needs to scout a location before a strike.
If it's a fixed location like a factory, airbase infrastructure etc, that can mostly be done with satellite. Providing satellites will work in total war scenario.
Damage assessment recon needs to be performed. Satellites can do that though on average they may need hours or days. In some instances there will be higher urgency than that.
Then there are relocatable targets. Like a radar. A SAM battery. Coastal missile battery. Temporary military camp of any kind. Ship in a port. Satellites may need days to spot them as there's just so much ground to be covered. Perhaps not for ships in ports which are fairly known points, but for others - definitely. Usually various other aerial recon methods will spot them first. Various batteries can move around quickly but will usually NOT be doing that 24/7 unless there's a threat from them being spotted.
Finally, there are mobile targets. Not just ones in motion (though those too can sometimes be attacked) but primarily various pieces of equipment which haven't necessarily deployed at the front but are en route. Or artillery parked way in the back. Or we can be talking about individual planes in airbases, sitting around. Any piece of equipment which is likely to move within a few hours unrelated to whether it's being scouted.
The first kind of targets, fixed ones, are the best for stand off missiles. But if one goes just for those, ignoring the others, chances are they're gonna lose. And the usual ratio of targets requiring time crucial hits versus fixed targets is many to one. Possibly dozens to one.
In a lot of those instances there will not be a 100% exact target defined. There will be an area which would first need to be scanned to determine where exactly is that battery or that plane parked or that MLRS or whatever. And recon will need to determine if that's a real target or a dummy. Those sort of recon jobs are not regularly done by U2, Global Hawk or secret spy planes. (even though those too could do it, but those too would need to get fairly close to try to recon) They're done with targeting pods and radar imagining by strike planes' own radar.
Let's look at iraq 2003. 27 700 bombs and missiles were fired. 68 percent were guided. Out of those, perhaps a thousand were stand off weapons.
Now imagine the number of targets needed to be covered in a future US China war. There'd be need for hundreds of thousands of bombs/missiles.
US certainly seems to find stand off missiles to be too expensive and unsuited for most jobs. Otherwise they'd have as many of them as they have other guided bombs.
And stand off weapons are simply not applicable to certain dug in targets. Missiles like tomahawk lack the penetration punch. Even when they use special warheads for that, they still fall behind the penetration power of a 1000 kg bunker buster.
TL; DR No one, not even the rich US air forces with their propensity for guided weapons can afford to wage war with just/mostly stand off missiles. They're used to an extent, to help neutralize the enemy in the opening moments of the battle, or to sometimes reach strategic fixed targets - but those are in reality just a few percent of targets that need to be hit.
If one thinks a war between US and China would be decided only on the seas, hitting ships or perhaps hitting island airbases - they're deluding themselves. In such a war countless islands would be used for countless purposes and *constant, repeated* bombings of those islands and other land masses would be performed. There'd be small scale invasions, there'd be limited scope ground battles, it'd be carnage and persisting air power would be very welcome.
