Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Hendrik_2000 said:

Although China still has a long way to go before it has continuous, real-time tactical coverage,even of a regional maritime environment, it now has frequent and dependable coverage of stationary targets and at least a basic ability to identify, track, and target vessels at sea.

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This report is all over the place.

I read it as saying that China is a long ways away from having real-time tactical coverage for maritime applications and particularly moving targets. Right now it has "frequent" (meaning not real time and who knows what frequent means...every 8 hours? once a day? every othe r hour?) and dependable coverage of stationary tagets. Then they say they have an ability to id, track, and target ships at sea...which, IMHO, contradicts their earlier statement.

The money statement is the declaritive one that they are a long ways off from having the kind of system they want and need to be able to go after a nut as hard to crack as a carrier battel group operating in combat conditions at sea.

Again, we will know they are getting close when they do a live fire test out into the ocean, warning other nations in advance to stand clear, and hit a manuevering vessel at sea...then follow that up with progressively harder tests that model a carrier under ECM and hit it.

No doubt they are working hard on it...but that key component has not yet happened.

Then it is a matter of wether their efforts are strong enough to overcome the CSGs continually improving passive and active layers of defense...which have been and are continuing to be tested in live foire tests.

But this is what we have discussed many times. I look forward to the day to find out about and analyze the tests the PLAN performs on this system.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Hendrik_2000 said:

A revised Hagt & Durnin report on the progress of Chinese satellite from strategic to tactical use AKA Bammer eye and ear.Anyone still doubt that China doesn't have infrastructure in place to target CBG read this report. Along report check it out

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The rapid rise in China’s imaging satellites has important implications.The most basic is the distinct improvement in China’s spatialand temporal reconnaissance capabilities. Although China still has a long way to go before it has continuous, real-time tactical coverage,even of a regional maritime environment, it now has frequent and
dependable coverage of stationary targets and at least a basic ability to identify, track, and target vessels at sea.

This is important for specific weapons programs currently under development that would benefit immeasurably from a robust space-based reconnaissance system.

The most immediate and strategically disquieting application is a targeting and tracking capability in support of the anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), which could hit US carrier groups. However,such a system goes beyond supporting any single weapon; rather it could be developed to be dynamic, applicable to numerous defense
scenarios, and with numerous points of redundancy.

It could be a force-multiplier in the service of long-range cruise missiles, stand-off precision attacks, stealth technology, damage assessment, joint

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The article is pretty concise: while China does not have the ability to monitor all of West Pacific 24 hours a day, it already has enough satellites to periodically scan a particular area for a total of 5 hours a day. Considering that sometime it could take a single satellite a few days to come back to revisit an area, and that each revisit would cover the spot for less than 10 minutes, 5 hours total coverage for a single spot in a day is actually pretty frequent.

That being said, the list of Chinese satellites in the article is a bit out-of-date, as the Yaogan series is now up to Yaogan-13. They didn't mention about the Haiyang1 and Haiyang2 series of satellites that are meant to monitor the ocean. Finally, there is no mentioning Tianlian series of satellites that enable real-time monitoring to take place.

Quite clearly, China still have to launch more satellites if it wants to have more reduancy or achieve 24 hours coverage. However, the existing capability is certainly in agreement with Admiral Willard's statement that ASBM has achieved IOC. There is no black-or-white requirement that demands a full constellation must exist before ASBM system can be qualified to be functional. An example being that the Compass system has already achieved regional coverage eventhough it does not have a full constellation.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Completely agree. This study is outdated and the paper also stated that there is not much gap between China and US satellite coverage other than resolution.

The next Yaogan 14 launch should be sometime next month .With ambitious number of launches next year, we will see more launches of spy satellite.

As I say before there is no place to hide for CBG

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Hendrik_2000 said:

As I say before there is no place to hide for CBG

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To the contrary...there's lots of places to hide. The Soviets thought the same. But the Ocean is big and it is not as easy as you imagine to find a carrier or carrier group from space. Cloud cover, other vessels, all sorts of things can make it more difficult.

Certainly having sats is a lot better than not having them, but to presume that sats alone are some kind of end all for locating all carriers is a serious mistake.

The US played these games (as did the Russians) for many years and got quite good at it.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Jeff Head said:

To the contrary...there's lots of places to hide. The Soviets thought the same. But the Ocean is big and it is not as easy as you imagine to find a carrier or carrier group from space. Cloud cover, other vessels, all sorts of things can make it more difficult.

Certainly having sats is a lot better than not having them, but to presume that sats alone are some kind of end all for locating all carriers is a serious mistake.

The US played these games (as did the Russians) for many years and got quite good at it.

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That is donkey years ago.. I can tell you China satelite now are far superior than what Soviet had during the 80's..

Somehow people like to dig up oldies and try to paint it in 2011 scenario.. New technology fly fast. The only worthy vessel capable of going in stealth is submarine. Which is the main reason, PLAN took so long to come to conclusion have a carrier. And the carrier is not to fight USN. It is too intimidate US proxy state or allies. Just like what USN is doing.. It is to bomb third world countries like Somalia. Playing those kind of Major power never goes into direct confront with each other of cold war. Carrier is good to do those kind of power projection against American allies.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Lion said:

That is donkey years ago.. I can tell you China satelite now are far superior than what Soviet had during the 80's..

Somehow people like to dig up oldies and try to paint it in 2011 scenario.. New technology fly fast. The only worthy vessel capable of going in stealth is submarine. Which is the main reason, PLAN took so long to come to conclusion have a carrier. And the carrier is not to fight USN. It is too intimidate US proxy state or allies. Just like what USN is doing.. It is to bomb third world countries like Somalia. Playing those kind of Major power never goes into direct confront with each other of cold war. Carrier is good to do those kind of power projection against American allies.

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I am well aware of the capabilities of modern satellites. I am also aware of the capabilities of USN and other navies capabilities. As I said, the Ocean is a large place and finding a CBG is not going to be the easy task many on this board envision it as.

Like I said, it is far better than not having any satellites...far, far better, but is is also not the end all.

...I expect the analyst within the PLAN whose job it is to keep track of these things are already well aware.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Lion, you hav no clue of the ability of an modern day USN CSG (Carrier Strike Group) to hide and disguise itself ..other wise you would not make such statements.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Lion said:

That is donkey years ago.. I can tell you China satelite now are far superior than what Soviet had during the 80's..

Somehow people like to dig up oldies and try to paint it in 2011 scenario.. New technology fly fast. The only worthy vessel capable of going in stealth is submarine. Which is the main reason, PLAN took so long to come to conclusion have a carrier. And the carrier is not to fight USN. It is too intimidate US proxy state or allies. Just like what USN is doing.. It is to bomb third world countries like Somalia. Playing those kind of Major power never goes into direct confront with each other of cold war. Carrier is good to do those kind of power projection against American allies.

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put it this way, ask your friend drop a needle in a large parking lot, then find it with your own eyes, see how that work for you. if the satelite don't know the location of carriers, then it has to scan the entire area to find it, and ocean is a big place to scan. there also other commerical/military ships in the area which need to be identify and ignored.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

s002wjh said:

put it this way, ask your friend drop a needle in a large parking lot, then find it with your own eyes, see how that work for you.

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Put it this way, ask your friend to place a small and reflective metal object in a large parking lot. Tie a strand of string to it and tow it while using a spot light to scan the entire area. The reflection of the metal object will move and sticks out like a sore thumb.

s002wjh said:

if the satelite don't know the location of carriers, then it has to scan the entire area to find it, and ocean is a big place to scan. there also other commerical/military ships in the area which need to be identify and ignored.

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That's why there are satellites carrying Synthetic Aperture Radar. These are giant AESA radars in the sky capable of rapidly scanning large area in a short amount of time. An example is the , where a single sensor scans all the Earth surface between 60°S and 60°N latitude in just 11 days.

SAR is capable of map creation and detecting moving targets at the same time, and moving objects are distinguishable from cluttered background because of Doppler shift. This capability is used by aircraft with AESA radars now days to map the battlefield and detect ground targets simultaneously. The polarization and attenuation of the returned signal are different for different types of materials, and this is routinely exploited to differentiate different terrain types and even building materials in the field of remote sensing. The top of the carrier isn't water, and this is going to be distinguishable when the returned signal is non-horizontal compared to the returned signal from water. The top of the carrier isn't just bare metal, meaning the polarization and attenuation are also going to be different than the return signal of a commercial ship.

I don't think you gentlemen are aware of how capable modern sensing equipments really are.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Engineer said:

I don't think you gentlemen are aware of how capable modern sensing equipments really are.

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Sorry, engineer, but I know that myself and Popeye have a very firm grasp on how capable modern satellite and sensing equipment are.

We also know what capabilities the US has developed and has operational to avoid being found by them.

As I said, I am quite sure that the analysts within the PLAN are also quite aware of it too.

As to your you analogy of the parking lot...make the cap with reflective metal on it 1/2" in diameter...then have someone use material and other capabilities to mask the reflection...then make the parking lot 20 square miles in size...and at the same time place other similar caps of various sizes and various reflectivity in various places on that parking lot...and then have storms of various intensities going over the parking lot, and have the sensor that's looking for the reflection located 10 miles above the parking lot above the cloud deck.

The fact is, when it doesn't want to be found in the wide blue ocean, it is very hard to locate a carrier battle group...even with today's advances.

That's why most people understand that there are certain places where a carrier has to go if it to accomplish certain types of missions and they will focus their searches there...and hope for the right conditions, and hope that they have overcome the opposition technology should the vessel actually show up there so they can sense it.

In the mean time the US and virtually every other nation that has the resources and capabilites to either build or acquire them continues to add carriers of various sorts to their inventory.