Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
Carriers are hard to sink, but not that hard to mission kill for short to medium periods. The escorts are far less sturdy as well.
The point of a massed missile saturation attack is to strip a CVBG of its escorts and missile kill the carrier long enough for the next wave to come in an unload on it. No ship is unsinkable, you put enough dints in it and she will go down.
I think all this talk of 'carrier killer' is part hyperbole and partly because a 1 ton+ warhead traveling at M10+ could feasibly one-shot-kill a carrier (especially when it is diving in almost vertically) where no other conventional weapon could.
However, I have a feeling that the AShBM programme might have been born from two other separate programmes instead of being something the Chinese actively set out to do.
It would make sense if someone had a look at the PLAN's maritime monitoring and tracking programme (which they need to develop to counter USN carriers no matter what means they ultimately employ to try to sink them with if it came to that), and the Second Artillery's ballistic missile accuracy improvement programme, and had a epiphany.
By focusing so much on whether the AShBM works as a whole system, we may be missing the equally, if not more significant developments in the PLA's maritime tracking and targeting field, and the Second Art's general ballistic missile modernization programme.
If I am right, it would also partly explain why there has not been a full sea test yet (apart from the secrecy consideration of course), as developing an AShBM may well be a happy spin-off of the two programmes I described above, and that it's success or failure is secondary to the parent programmes' independent success.
If the PLAN has developed the means to have a high percentage possibility of finding USN carriers and tracking and ultimately targeting them, then that is a significant development in itself as the PLA does have the resources to launch a saturation attack with conventional strike fighters and cruise missiles that will have a high probability of inflicting significant damage on a USN CVBG.
Additionally, the Second Art's ability to massively reduce the CEP of their thousand+ ballistic missiles deployed against Taiwan will also significantly shift the balance of power across the straits.
This is significant, because the PLA's ideal battle plan if they were forced into a war over Taiwan, would be to quickly overwhelm the island's defenses before the US has time to mobilize and get directly involved in the fighting.
If the PLA ends up having to fight the US to take Taiwan, Beijing will already consider that a failure, as doing so will have significant negative consequences for China and its economic growth and development even if the do manage to defeat the US militarily.
Thus, while having the ability to take out USN carriers would be a key objective, it is very much a secondary one to weapons that will aid the PLA take Taiwan quickly enough that the US does not even get the chance to get involved in the fighting.
