Issues on Intercepting Hypersonic Missile.

Sea Dog said:

Yeah, but that's not from any observable events. Where there have been events, 5 interceptors fired at one target would be overkill, and a complete waste of resources.

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The observable events are tests against Moskits: 70's era technology -- that's why only 2 are used.

Because Chinese missiles are much more similar to subsonic sea-skimming Harpoons, tests against Harpoons -- which are much harder to intercept (especially in a coordinated salvo) -- can better show how many interceptors are actually needed in a hypothetical China conflict.

Since the Harpoon class of missiles are much more difficult to intercept, I expect 5 or more missiles (more than twice that of the Moskit) need to be launched against each incoming anti-ship missiles to guarantee success.

Sometimes the first hits, sometimes the second hits... but without launching all five, the ship runs a risk of being hit -- that's what guarantee success means.

Sea Dog said:

Sure you can. And the carrier would be even more heavily defended. ESSM is totally suited for this role.

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Asking all the escorts to stay within 50 kilometers of the carrier would alter all tactics. The group would suffer a lot of tradeoffs to stay in this "huddled" position.


Simple Mathematical Model:

Consider that SeaRAM has an advertised 95% success rate in tests against single missiles (different varieties of anti-ship missiles flying different profiles), using two SeaRAM's against each incoming.

If only the most advanced anti-ship missiles are used, and they fly only the most hard-to-intercept profiles, I would expect this success rate would drop to 80% or less.

Using this statistic, we can estimate that the probability of each missile being successful is about 55% against the most advanced adversaries (45% chance of failure). This is why two missiles give a probability of about 80% (1 minus [45% to the power of 2]). Then we can estimate that three missiles will give you 91%, four missiles will give you 96% and five missiles will give you 98%.

If the defenders are willing to live with a 96% success rate (four failed intercepts for 100 missiles), then it will need four missiles for each target. If the defenders want a 98% success rate, it will need five missiles for each target.

This means an AB, with about 100 missiles (150 max) will run out of missiles if an attack of about 20-30 advanced anti-ship missiles are launched at it. Impressive, yes. But launching such an attack is certainly within capabilities. If a squadron of 4 is involved, the number of missiles needed is 80 to 120. Even if one of the ships is a Tico and the carrier is carrying some ESSM too, we can estimate that 100 to 150 missiles will be required.

In a hypothetical China conflict, 100 missiles can be carried by a fleet of 17 H-6K's, and 150 missiles can be carried by a fleet of 25.

crobato said:

Well there is one kind of missile that the tests could not cover and did not cover, because Coyotes and Vandals are incapable of mimicking it. Basically this missile approaches its target in subsonic, sea skimming fashion, low altitude. Then when its terminal, it drops its an entire stage containing its engine and empty fuel tanks, leaving its last stage heading to the target. That last stage is powered by a rocket motor, boosting the missile from subsonic to supersonic in one big massive acceleration.

This missile is called the Klub, the 3M-54E. It has a Tomahawk like sibling, the 3M-54E1, which is much more conventional and interceptible, but we are referring to the supersonic dash version here.

The other kind of problem are subrocs, which are submarine launched missiles, where the last stage drops to the water, being torpedoes.

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Actually, subrocs are launched from surface vessels against submarines, starting off as a surface launched missile and then dropping as a torpedo when over the sub's location.

A sub launched version would be more difficult as it would involve an extra stage, going from subsurface to air travel, and then back again to torpedo. While the technology clearly exists to go from sub launch to air travel (many nations incorporate this into sub surface launched anti-shipping missiles) I am not aware of a successfully deployed system that then reverts back to sub surface torpedo.

I introduced such a system for super-cavitating weapons in my

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, as a secopnd development by the Chinese in the war against America and the West in that novel.

Roger604 said:

If only the most advanced anti-ship missiles are used, and they fly only the most hard-to-intercept profiles, I would expect this success rate would drop to 80% or less.

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Once again, you personally just "exspect" something without any data/ experiance to rely on.

Using this statistic, we can estimate that the probability ...

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So, you estimate something based on a statistic you made up in your mind ?
That's not convincing to me at all.

To me, your further believes are completely flawed therefore.

In a hypothetical China conflict, 100 missiles can be carried by a fleet of 17 H-6K's, and 150 missiles can be carried by a fleet of 25.

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Even if that were realistic, you still assume that 25 H-6Ks would come into launch range, somewhere between 300-500km.
That's where the problems start already.


The Sizzler goes terminal at 60km out I think. (?) That's still under the radar horizon, so basicly it's "just" a supersonic AShM that pops up on the radar at 40-50km. So, what it basicly does foremost is to add range to a supersonic terminal approach. Would that final section of the Sizzler be notably harder to detect than a Moskit or Brahmos?
Interesting to me would be a stealthy Klub missile that only gets terminal once it notices it's being detected. But once again complexity strikes.
And, how about midbody mounted small thrusters to allow quick latteral movement of an AShM?

Even though I'm strongly disagreeing with Roger's views, I have to correct a few things here.

Pointblank said:

Exactly; the longest ranged PLA air launched missile would place the launching aircraft well within range of the Standard SM-2 missile... kill the launch platform before it has a chance of launching weapons.

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Unless SM-2's range tripled recently, this is not true. The issue for any attacking planes is not SM-2 range but the range of super hornets + E-2s that protect the fleet.

I've seen some video's of what you describe. But on another note, I've never seen a video of a Moskit, Onyx, or any Chinese anti-ship missile hit any targets at all. I think I've seen 1 C-802 missile hit a static barge target with no movement nor any simulated FC radars. So I'm sure you must question there reliability...right? Sorry, but videos of those kinds are even less available then what we put out.

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well, I think you are forgetting INS hanit and that was with an old version of C-802, modern YJ-83 is a whole different story. We've seen photos of Bangladesh's new C-802 hitting targets in a recent test. We've read about YJ-83 hitting moving targets in Peace mission 05. We've seen many PLAN target ships. And we also have articles regarding JH-7A + YJ-83 having 98% success rates.

The Sizzler goes terminal at 60km out I think. (?) That's still under the radar horizon, so basicly it's "just" a supersonic AShM that pops up on the radar at 40-50km. So, what it basicly does foremost is to add range to a supersonic terminal approach. Would that final section of the Sizzler be notably harder to detect than a Moskit or Brahmos?
Interesting to me would be a stealthy Klub missile that only gets terminal once it notices it's being detected. But once again complexity strikes.
And, how about midbody mounted small thrusters to allow quick latteral movement of an AShM?

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technically yes, klub is smaller, probably has lower RCS and travels in lower flight profile and is slightly faster. But in practice, we've read so many problems with it, that I'm not so comfortable with how it works in practice.

The problem against a well protected fleet is that the only way you can get through the defense is pretty much with a surprise attack when the defense is not fully set up. When you launch a huge supersonic missile, you are just going to alert all the ships. Something like Onyx or Moskit would light up any radar panel.

Roger604 said:

Since the Harpoon class of missiles are much more difficult to intercept,

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Are you sure about that? Why are they? Are they in all environments or scenarios. Which defensive systems have a harder time with them? What about speed of supersonic missiles? And what about reaction time regarding that speed? Seriously, you're speaking to general about this topic and making too much asumptions of "Harpoon class of missile". I think you mean sea-skimming, subsonic.

Asking all the escorts to stay within 50 kilometers of the carrier would alter all tactics. The group would suffer a lot of tradeoffs to stay in this "huddled" position.

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Really? What trade offs? Do you know the actual ranging capabilities of ESSM? I can see you don't. But seriously, what trade offs do you refer to that determines exactly how far escorts should be from a carrier? Do you believe that there is a set distance escorts are required to be? What tactical considerations do you see at 50 Km vs. 200 Km? If the battlegroup diverges, how would they know which ship is the carrier during any targetting phase? How could PLAN aircraft close with any carrier to attack it with such wide spread considerations? How could they actually avoid SM-2's in this instance. On the flip side, how could you deal with saturation point defenses if they were....say... within 5 miles of eachother. Your post above here is very entertaining and leaves alot of ?????

This means an AB, with about 100 missiles (150 max) will run out of missiles if an attack of about 20-30 advanced anti-ship missiles are launched at it. Impressive, yes. But launching such an attack is certainly within capabilities. If a squadron of 4 is involved, the number of missiles needed is 80 to 120. Even if one of the ships is a Tico and the carrier is carrying some ESSM too, we can estimate that 100 to 150 missiles will be required.

In a hypothetical China conflict, 100 missiles can be carried by a fleet of 17 H-6K's, and 150 missiles can be carried by a fleet of 25.

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The unfortunate part for you is that ESSM was specifically developed for quad packs, with their specific range requirements, to provide the numbers and capabilities shown they could hold. Ignoring this fact, discounting this fact, or pretending that the U.S. would not take advantage of their ability to saturate offensive capabilities of enemy air and surface attacks will not change anything for you. All I can say is continue your fantasy. ESSM was desinged to provide a significant numerical advantage to any attacking threat assessment in any given scenario. In any conflict, even if China or Russia could attack with any significant numbers, a single Ticonderoga can carry more than 400 missiles itself and have plenty of reserves and other munitions in it's VLS. 100-200 missiles carried by any H-6 groups, assuming any survive in getting into a position to fire, simply may not be enough to saturate a battlegroup that could carry more than 800 total AAW missiles, and other means of negating a missile attack. I actually rate the ability of any hypothetical H-6 group to be low probability of even getting into a position to attack. They could launch 50 of them, and a squadron of Hornets with multiple hardpoints carries enough to down 4 times that number. Threat SAG's or surface anti-ship missile groups have an even much more difficult prospect. And subs can't fire enough of them in any salvo, unless you have an Oscar or Ohio class submarine. Saturation on a battlegroup is something that requires large numbers of air, surface, sub-surface platforms with many many missiles, and ways to negate EW advantages already held by USN naval groups in total. Neither China nor Russia currently has anything resembling this.

tphuang said:

well, I think you are forgetting INS hanit and that was with an old version of C-802, modern YJ-83 is a whole different story. We've seen photos of Bangladesh's new C-802 hitting targets in a recent test. We've read about YJ-83 hitting moving targets in Peace mission 05. We've seen many PLAN target ships. And we also have articles regarding JH-7A + YJ-83 having 98% success rates.

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I hear ya tphuang. I was just showing Roger how his bias does not reflect reality when showing missile defense systems in operations vs. anti-ship missiles in theirs. I take those Chinese tests as accurate results of their abilities myself. However, there really is more out there though that shows missile defense effectiveness against ASM threats vs. anti-ship missile effectiveness against ship defenses. I've seen missile interceptors used against target drones in realistic scenarios. I've never once seen an anti-ship missile test showing penetration of multiple layers of defense in any realistic way.

Unless SM-2's range tripled recently, this is not true. The issue for any attacking planes is not SM-2 range but the range of super hornets + E-2s that protect the fleet.

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The SM-2's range need not be tripled. Maximizing the range of anti-ship missiles lowers statistical hit probabilities dramatically. If aircraft hope to actually hit anything, they're simply going to have to come into the jaws of the lion to do so. I see the attackers wasting alot of missiles, and pretty much shooting in the dark (Bearing only launches) beyond 200 km. But beyond that, you're right. Hornets, and other support aircraft are what prevents them from getting anywhere within range to setup an actual attack.

actually, all the track record of missiles got intercepted so far have "No intelligence". They have no awareness of incoming interceptor and no counter measures. Even their "maneuvered evasive actions" are preprogrammed.

I just watched a movie about submarine shooting torpedo at another sub.
The sub that got attacked, when active homing torpedo approached, it try countermeasured by changing direction, dive deeper, speed up and shoot out a bunch of decoys. So, it survived the attack.

Likewise, whether the future missiles are hypersonic or slower stealth mode attack, if they have the sensors and feedback and have evasive countermeasure actions base on the actual situation, "Smart Missile" . It will alot harder to intercept them.

Because the interceptor is coming toward the target missile. Even thought the target missile has lesser sensor capability than the ship, but if the interceptor is close enough, it should be able to be detected.

Jeff Head said:

Actually, subrocs are launched from surface vessels against submarines, starting off as a surface launched missile and then dropping as a torpedo when over the sub's location.

A sub launched version would be more difficult as it would involve an extra stage, going from subsurface to air travel, and then back again to torpedo. While the technology clearly exists to go from sub launch to air travel (many nations incorporate this into sub surface launched anti-shipping missiles) I am not aware of a successfully deployed system that then reverts back to sub surface torpedo.

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Jeff, this kind of weapon was standard ASW and ASuW for Soviet nuclear submarines, the Silex, Starfish and not the least, the Stallion. The latest form is the 91RE1, which belong to the Klub family.

The Sizzler goes terminal at 60km out I think. (?) That's still under the radar horizon, so basicly it's "just" a supersonic AShM that pops up on the radar at 40-50km. So, what it basicly does foremost is to add range to a supersonic terminal approach. Would that final section of the Sizzler be notably harder to detect than a Moskit or Brahmos?
Interesting to me would be a stealthy Klub missile that only gets terminal once it notices it's being detected. But once again complexity strikes.
And, how about midbody mounted small thrusters to allow quick latteral movement of an AShM?

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The definition of terminal is when the target can be acquired by the missile's seeker and its not done at preset distances. In other words the missile while still in jet mode will enter pass the radar horizon to acquire the ship target first before the seeker goes full and the rocket motor goes boom.

The difference between the Klub and the Moskit or Yakhont is that it comes in much lower, much like a conventional sea skimmer, then massively accelerates past supersonic speed, so in effect combines both schools. But the one other difference between the Klub vs. conventional supersonics and sea skimmers is that great burst of speed in terminal. Tracking systems and algorithms are turned to expecting a missile target of with either non changing or falling speeds, but not something that would suddenly boost up its speed tremendously. To the defending target, the attacking missile would appear like a conventional sea skimmer and would anticipate for something with that flight model. But when that white dot suddenly starts to speed up tremendously, you know you have a problem.

That final section would also be smaller and harder to detect. Engine intakes also give away RCS but here in this case, being a rocket, its completely eliminated (I think this is the reason why the Brahmos changed to an forward inlet mouth intake instead of straked intakes at the sides). Since it would be flying subsonic before entering terminal, the body surfaces would not have heated either for easy locking with an IR seeker.

crobato said:

Jeff, this kind of weapon was standard ASW and ASuW for Soviet nuclear submarines, the Silex, Starfish and not the least, the Stallion. The latest form is the 91RE1, which belong to the Klub family.

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Thanks crobato, I had entirely forgotten about the starfish and the stallion. They both do exaclty what we have been talking about.

The long range SUBROC replacement for the US Navy was to be the Sea Lance...it was well on it sway and a production contract had been awarded when the Soviet Union collapsed and then the entire program was cancelled.

The Vertical Launch ASROC now exists for the surface Navy, but tis range is considerably shorter than either the Stallion or Sea Lance.

Sea Dog said:

Are you sure about that? Why are they? Are they in all environments or scenarios. Which defensive systems have a harder time with them? What about speed of supersonic missiles? And what about reaction time regarding that speed? Seriously, you're speaking to general about this topic and making too much asumptions of "Harpoon class of missile". I think you mean sea-skimming, subsonic.

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Is that supposed to be an argument? You point out that there are certain details I do not know to try to refute the fact that I do know this:

Harpoons and other sea-skimming subsonic missiles are harder to intercept than a Moskit (or Vandals and Coyotes that the USN practices on) because they are more difficult to detect, difficult to track and can engage in more violent maneuvers. They also lock on to a ship more accurately and have better EW resistance.

Therefore, the kind of practices that works on Moskits (2 interceptors) is not going to be enough.

Sea Dog said:

Really? What trade offs? Do you know the actual ranging capabilities of ESSM? I can see you don't. But seriously, what trade offs do you refer to that determines exactly how far escorts should be from a carrier? Do you believe that there is a set distance escorts are required to be? What tactical considerations do you see at 50 Km vs. 200 Km?

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LOL. Again, just because I don't know the details doesn't mean you can hide a fundamental fact:

Because in the absence of the range restriction of ESSM, escorts usually try to stay further away from the carrier than 50 km, therefore, when escorts are forced to stick to 50 km of the carrier, this creates limitation on their tactics.

Sea Dog said:

The unfortunate part for you is that ESSM was specifically developed for quad packs, with their specific range requirements, to provide the numbers and capabilities shown they could hold. Ignoring this fact, discounting this fact, or pretending that the U.S. would not take advantage of their ability to saturate offensive capabilities of enemy air and surface attacks will not change anything for you.

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My numbers are based on the fact that using relying mostly on ESSM (as in having 50 quad packs on an AB and 70 quad packs on a Tico) is going to have tactical limitations. On top of that, the ships now don't really do anything except defend area air ship -- now they have very limited land-attack capabilities.

Of course, if you're willing to accept this trade off (all ships staying within 50 km radius and lack of space for LACM), then the carrier group is going to be pretty safe from any feasible attack, just on the basis of having too many point defense missiles for an attacker to overcome.

But any time the number of missiles in a battle group falls below 800 or so, the risk of incoming attackers firing in waves up to 180 sea skimming, highly maneuverable missiles to exhaust those defenses becomes very dangerous.

And yes, despite the lack of information on this subject because all data is secret, this is a very reasonable calculation.