Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

IR sensor at ASBM terminal speed won't work.
the Noise gerenate in the ASBM terminal speed environment for a Active radar system is also a ??? . the guidance system has to identify a single target out of many. can the system recognize/identify carrier vs cruisers vs destroyer vs tanker/commerical ship.
active radar system itself require alot space, on top of that if the missile has GPS, communication, motor, warhead, and other type of sensor/system, it will require large space + alot power, so thats another question mark. the commerical radar don't have size/power limitation

anyway even if china able to fit all those inside the missile, they still has to get through the potential problem in post 109

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Apparently you are not well verse in missile technology. The first generation of infrared missile can easily fooled by flare because all the missile see is big blob of light. So it cannot differentiate between big blob of flare or target. Then they got smarter and store the infra red picture of the target inside the missile now it can see the difference between blob and outline of the target
So it cannot be easily fooled by flare.

China has successfully tested dual mode seeker in air to air missile PL 12 with range of 120km. Probably 6 inch radius missile and it is now in operation that should answer your question


Anybody question the sophistication of China space command and control should see this video demonstrating the capability of China to send control using Tianlian relay satellite Very informative

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

the IR missile can distinguish between flare and engine exhaust is because the exhaust still has larger IR radiation even when there are flares. However the chance for the missile to hit the target is much lower compare to no flares. this is not the case for the IR sensor in the head of missile during terminal phase.

you put a big blob of fire right in front of IR sensor, you won't see anything, the sensor is basically blind!!! thats what happen during ballistic missile terminal stage. ASK any defense engineer, they will say the samething. Many IR sensor even has liquid nitrogen to cool it, to keep the sensor temp lower than target temp. furthermore the IR radition from the carrier is MUCH MUCH lower then the IR radiation surround the missile during its terminal phase.

either way find, identify, tracking, hit something in the open sea is not an easy task. especially when the target you try to hit has its own sophiscated countermeasure.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Ever heard of fairing shield when the missile reenter the atmosphere they will probably discharge the fairing halfway to their target. It is not something that is insurmountable. There is various way to deal with the problem.

Modern missile doesn't need to tail gate their target in order to launch the missile the can hit head on or from the side
Or hitting the target in day light The sun is bright also

If Pershing II can hit moving tank 25 years ago Surely there is much progress since then

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Hendrik_2000 said:

If Pershing II can hit moving tank 25 years ago Surely there is much progress since then

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The Pesrhing II was never designed or meant to hit a moving tank. It was a medium range ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhed to attack massed enemy armor , other troop formations as they approached known, or surveilled locations, enemy anti-air sites, air bases, or with a nuclear earth penetrator to take out command and control bunkers or enemy silos.

Stored radar maps of the target were compared to acquired radar maps of the target from the rentry vehicle (warhead) to determine when to detonate the nuclear weapon. This, along with its inertial guidance gave it a 50m CEP accuracy. It was not, and never meant to be, guided onto a moving target.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

The use of lasers have a long way just as much as any anti-ballistic missile defense. If you can get that kind of power to burn through an object in seconds hundreds maybe thousands of miles away, you would see a lot more applications and not just for the military. China is suppose to have an advanced laser program. We already know they've "dazzled" US satellites with lasers passing over. China could have a nuclear power plant powering a laser and thus instant anti-ballistic laser defense. Is China really that comfortable when it comes to shooting down ICBMs? Yeah the US is ahead but I don't think they're that comfortable either. Shooting down a missile is at the extreme difficult side of things. What about the non-difficult? How about having an airbourne laser flying over a battlefield. A computer can fry enemy soldiers, armor, and aircraft and the battle would be all over in minutes. We hear how everyone should be awed and scared of the power of Prompt Global Strike. This kind of weapon system would be more scary. But we don't hear anything like that. So what does that say for the state of lasers being use for anti-ballistic missile defense?

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

AssassinsMace said:

The use of lasers have a long way just as much as any anti-ballistic missile defense. If you can get that kind of power to burn through an object in seconds hundreds maybe thousands of miles away, you would see a lot more applications and not just for the military. China is suppose to have an advanced laser program. We already know they've "dazzled" US satellites with lasers passing over. China could have a nuclear power plant powering a laser and thus instant anti-ballistic laser defense. Is China really that comfortable when it comes to shooting down ICBMs? Yeah the US is ahead but I don't think they're that comfortable either. Shooting down a missile is at the extreme difficult side of things. What about the non-difficult? How about having an airbourne laser flying over a battlefield. A computer can fry enemy soldiers, armor, and aircraft and the battle would be all over in minutes. We hear how everyone should be awed and scared of the power of Prompt Global Strike. This kind of weapon system would be more scary. But we don't hear anything like that. So what does that say for the state of lasers being use for anti-ballistic missile defense?

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Exactly. I chuckled when somebody made it seems like the re-entry vehicle can get blown up in a second. Laser destroys by heat, but guess what? The re-entry vehicle is built to survive in the extreme heat during re-entry. It would be like trying to use fire to destroy tiles on space shuttle. The Star Wars type of shoot-hit-explosion is still science fiction.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Engineer said:

Exactly. I chuckled when somebody made it seems like the re-entry vehicle can get blown up in a second. Laser destroys by heat, but guess what? The re-entry vehicle is built to survive in the extreme heat during re-entry. It would be like trying to use fire to destroy tiles on space shuttle. The Star Wars type of shoot-hit-explosion is still science fiction.

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Could a high power laser possibly add to the heat of re entry and exceed the RVs "temperature limit"...?

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Engineer said:

Exactly. I chuckled when somebody made it seems like the re-entry vehicle can get blown up in a second. Laser destroys by heat, but guess what? The re-entry vehicle is built to survive in the extreme heat during re-entry.

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Nobody I know of made it seem like a second of contact with the laser would destroy the RV. However, the RV is also at its most vulnerable point during re-entry. The idea is to overload its shield...and use the heat of re-entry in conjunction with the laser to do so.

How long that would take would depend on several factors...but should not be casually discounted.

But the most likely scenario is to hit it after the fact, during terminal trajectory and disable it.

Such an RV, if it ever even gets close...if the attacker ever gets such a device tested to even reliably initially acquire, launch, renter, reacquire and attack the carrier...such an RV will then be up against at least two active defensess and two or more electronic counter measure defenses. The BMD of the AEGIS system is deployed and has been successfully tested, and the CIWS system (at some point to include lasers).

Right now, it is all speculation regarding the DF-21D becasue is it, as yet, a system that has not been tested in any live fire exercise against a manuevering vessel.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Jeff Head said:

Right now, it is all speculation regarding the DF-21D becasue is it, as yet, a system that has not been tested in any live fire exercise against a manuevering vessel.

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From the horses mouth


According to an article by China’s official Xinhua News Agency entitled “China’s DF-21D Missile is Still Undergoing Research” (陈炳德: 东风21D导弹还在研究中), on 11 July 2011 PLA Chief of General Staff General Chen Bingde became the first Chinese government official to confirm publicly that China is developing the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM). According to an English-language China Daily article, the missile has “a maximum range of 2,700 kilometers” (1,678 miles). As Bradley Perrett, Aviation Week, explains, “If the China Daily’s information is accurate, then U.S. aircraft carriers seeking to undertake strike missions while remaining outside of DF-21D range would need aircraft of even greater range than previously assumed.” The 2010 Department of Defense report on China’s military, for instance, lists the DF-21D’s range as 1500+ km (932+ miles).

There may be other factors at play as well: General Chen may be downplaying Chinese capabilities to attempt to minimize foreign development of countermeasures to them. At the same time, the PLA may feel the need to meet a higher standard of testing before it can be confident of a novel weapon’s effectiveness because it lacks the U.S. military’s years of experience in high-intensity combat, sophisticated testing, and simulation. But it would be a mistake to assume that China’s DF-21D ASBM lacks what the U.S. military would consider to be lower-end “operational” capabilities just because it apparently does not yet meet General Chen’s definition. Here an American example may be relevant. The U.S. Air Force did not receive its first E-8 Joint STARS (Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System), an airborne battle management, command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform, until June 1996—meaning that the aircraft officially did not achieve IOC until then. However, two developmental aircraft were employed operationally as early as 1991 in Operation Desert Storm even though it was still in test and evaluation at the time.

Definitional issues aside, the bottom line is that General Chen would likely not be mentioning China’s ASBM in public if the PLA were not confident that it was maturing effectively and already had reached the necessary development level to begin to credibly shape regional strategic thinking in Beijing’s favor. China seeks not to wage war, but to have to have an effective conventional deterrent capability; and, in a worst case scenario, to have a strike capability if deterrence failed. This is why, General Chen is quoted as stressing in the English-language China Daily article, China’s ASBM “will be used as a defensive weapon