Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Bltizo said:

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

Click to expand...

The heat shield is also an insulator for protecting whatever inside that re-entry vehicle - thick. So any added heat hot enough to start damaging the shield would need time to burn through. This is not what CIWS laser appears to be designed for, as such laser is intended for targets with no protection and thin skin like cruise missile. Being CIWS, such system is also meant as a last ditch defense, so the range thus time to engage a re-entry vehicle is going to be short.

Having said that, such laser system has not been tested against an ASBM's re-entry vehicle. Neither has ABM been tested under heavy ECM against a re-entry vehicle released by ASBM. Although ABM has intercepted ballistic missile before, we all know that a SCUD-like missile is no where comparable to ASBM. Any talk of defense against ASBM is just speculation at this point.

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.

Click to expand...

But could one use the laser particle beams along with the heat could knock the re-entry vehicle out of its trajectory course? I'm curious if that could work.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

The ASBM and ballistic missile defence are probably at two other ends facing the same issues and problems.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Hendrik_2000 said:

From the horses mouth

Click to expand...

Exactly, and here's what he had to say in more detail:

General Chen Bingde said:

He took pains to emphasize, however, that China’s ASBM is “still in the research stage” (还处于研究阶段), and “has not yet achieved operational capability” (尚未形成作战能力). Specifically, “the DF-21D is undergoing research, development, and testing, has not developed into an operational capability [or developing into capability is not an issue at present]” (东风21D正在研究, 正在科研, 在试验之中, 还没有形成能力问题). Xinhua paraphrases General Chen as explaining that he “hopes Chinese experts can contribute in this regard, but this sort of high-technology advanced weapon is very difficult to bring to maturity” (希望中国的专家们能在这方面有所贡献, 但是这种高新技术的尖端武器很难成熟). It quotes him directly once again as stressing that doing so “requires funding inputs, advanced technology, and high-quality talented personnel; these are all fundamental factors constraining its development” (要经费投入, 要先进的技术, 还要有高素质的人才, 这都是制约它发展的根本因素). The English-language China Daily article renders this as “It is a high-tech weapon and we face many difficulties in getting funding, advanced technologies and high-quality personnel, which are all underlying reasons why it is hard to develop this.” Specific documentation for these and other quotations is provided in the articles appended below.

Additionally, in YouTube and other footage of the 11 July press briefing with his closest American counterpart, Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which General Chen takes questions from reporters, it appears that he also uses the phrase “numerous difficulties” (困难重重) to describe the course of the missile’s development. This tone could be interpreted to reflect a high level of uncertainly and ambivalence about the missile’s immediate prospects, directed at a Chinese audience through Chinese media. Viewed in this light, the three factors General Chen outlines (funding, technology, talent) may be viewed as serious constraints, even bottlenecks, in the challenging task of successfully maturing and integrating an ASBM system of systems

Click to expand...

Even the Chinese are admitting it is not operational and facing serious bottlenecks and difficulties in getting there. Sounds like it is still a good distance away...if they pull it off at all.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Equation said:

But could one use the laser particle beams along with the heat could knock the re-entry vehicle out of its trajectory course? I'm curious if that could work.

Click to expand...

Laser is not a particle beam; just a concentrated beam of light. It damages through heat, weakening the structure, resulting in localized stress thus cause a failure of the incoming vehicle. The laser doesn't work by impacting the vehicle.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Jeff Head said:

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.

Click to expand...

currently in this day and age, physical contact is still the most effective way to eliminate incoming missiles. personally i think instead of using a single missile to hit the incoming warhead, a wall of smaller shrapnel released by countering missiles would be much more effective. small shrapnel may be nothing at low speeds, but when both the incoming and countering mass are flying at several times the speed of sound, the sum of the total velocity could easily surpass mach 10. At this speed, even a grain of sand could puncture steel, not mentioning probably a fist sized shrapnel would be used. a typical missile could probably carry few hundred of them, much better than relying solely relying on one single warhead to hit something few thousand kilometers away.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

AssassinsMace said:

The ASBM and ballistic missile defence are probably at two other ends facing the same issues and problems.

Click to expand...

Yeah. One of the point brought up repeatedly is that carrier can maneuver; well, the re-entry vehicle of an ASBM can also maneuver by nature of having to hit a movable target. So, if a big and relatively slow carrier can outrun a missile, then a small and fast re-entry vehicle can equally outrun an interceptor. In view of this, ABM suddenly isn't so reliable anymore.

The thing is, the word "tracking" is not like how your eyes follow a bird in the sky. Tracking in engineering is more like curve-fitting. Consider this exercise: draw half of a good, inverted parabola on a piece of paper. Now, take a perfect parabola which you can magically enlarge and shrink and place it on top of the parabola you drew. That half a parabola you drew is the missile flight path, and the missing portion extended by that perfect parabola is the estimated flight path in the future, which you can launch an interceptor into to destroy the incoming missile.

Now, extends that parabola that you drew a bit, then draw a small bump. Now, the perfect parabola no longer overlaps with the curve you drew. Are you going to let it remain that way, or fit the perfect parabola to the bump? May be you can try making the perfect parabola represents as much of the curve as possible? But no matter how you go about it, that perfect parabola just isn't going to overlap with what you drew. This is what going to happen when the missile and the re-entry vehicle manuver. Prediction of the missile flight path has failed, and any SM-3 launched will have dramatically decreased chance at interception.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Jeff Head said:

Exactly, and here's what he had to say in more detail:



Even the Chinese are admitting it is not operational and facing serious bottlenecks and difficulties in getting there. Sounds like it is still a good distance away...if they pull it off at all.

Click to expand...

Yet the exact same words General Chen used to describe the AShBM programme could be applied with the same accuracy to the current US ABM programme.

Do you not see the contradiction in you insisting that the AShBM cannot be considered as a useable weapon while at the same time insisting that ABM is ready to be used already against AShBMs?

There have been some successful ABM tests, and some failures. But more critically, none of the successful ABM shots have been against the class of weapon as the DF21, certainly not a DF21 class weapon in terminal phase with a maneuvering re-entry warhead.

A DF21 hitting a carrier sized fixed, or semi-fixed target on land is probably closer to being able to hit a moving carrier sized target at sea than an SM3 is to being able to reliably intercept a DF21 class weapon with a maneuvering warhead.

If you are insisting that the DF21 cannot be seen as useable (and there is a big difference between when a weapon could be used to when it is certified as operational deployed) until it has hit a carrier sized moving target out at sea, surely you should also agree that ABM cannot be claimed as being effective against a AShBM until it has successfully intercepted something like a Pershing II in terminal phase?

And of course, this is all based on the assumption that General Chen was speaking the full truth and not putting any sort of spin on the matter for the benefit of Adm Michael Mullen who was taking the press conference with him.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

good point wolfie, i'm amazed you guys can still bring quality to this repetitive subject

carry on guys

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

plawolf said:

Yet the exact same words General Chen used to describe the AShBM programme could be applied with the same accuracy to the current US ABM programme.

Click to expand...

Not at all. The US AEGIS BMD system has been successfully tested and deployed. And it will be, like all US systems, upgraded through various block upgrades throughout its life to improve it against emerging threats. As it turns out, the DF-21D has not emerged yet but is being researched.

plawolf said:

But more critically, none of the successful ABM shots have been against the class of weapon as the DF21, certainly not a DF21 class weapon in terminal phase with a maneuvering re-entry warhead.

Click to expand...

None of which has been tested or proven. it's all still just research and development. No operational tests, no deployment.

Buit the US is already testing against those threats and improving its software and hardware in anticipation of it.

plawolf said:

And of course, this is all based on the assumption that General Chen was speaking the full truth and not putting any sort of spin on the matter for the benefit of Adm Michael Mullen who was taking the press conference with him.

Click to expand...

So...now we cannot put any confidence in what the leading PRC General's have to say? My guess is that if he said it was operational you would be crowing about that...and understandably so...but you cannot have it both ways.

Bottom line is this...AEGIS BMD is deployed and has hit and shot down ballitic missile rentry vehicles...of several varieties.

It has not been tested against a DF-21D per sey because there isn't one.

But the US is modeling and testing this deployed weapons system against the best environment representing future threat environments they expect to encounter. That's the way the US tries to develop its systems all the time..

But, to claim that a system that has never been fired into the actual environment that it is supposed to be designed for...where the military people in chagre of it are stating out right that it is still in R&D phase and a long wasy from deployment is somehow the same as a weapons system that was developed to shoot down ballistoic missiles and has on numerous occassions been tested in live fire tests and done that very thing is just not a good comparison.

The fact is AEGIS BMD is deployed on over two dozen warships right now.

When the DF-21D has been successfully tested...we can have another conversation. Once it has been deployed and is operational, we can have another discussion and see where the US is at that point with its defenses.

Until then...we will just keep going around and around and around.