Wouldn't SSNs know the general area of USN carriers as well and therefore have this "axis of attack". If you knew the general area of the launcher why wait for it to show up, why not use other satellite and if possible, uav assets to ID targets and destroy it earlier with cruise missiles instead of complex A2A from uav concepts?
Cruise missiles are slow and could come later. However the main threat are those DF-21D's that are coming your way
And the whole idea of knowing where DF-21D might be is no simple matter to assume, given it's not exactly a ballistic straight line from land to carrier and even if it was, the TEL can be at any point inland few hundred KMs from the chinese coast and still cover a massive portion of westpac.
However the line is straight enough once the missile is launched. Once you start to climb away from your launcher you are committed to your trajectory.
Sure early warning radars and IR sensor assets will pick up the missile but if you're a few hundred kms away (warded by IADS) it won't do you much good. Now tracking the missile will obviously allow midcourse interception (let's get real, boostphase interception is very, very unlikely. simply getting close enough will be a challenge)
The laser armed YAL-747 operates in a similar way to where it stands off and attempts to engage a climbing missile during boost phase. I am proposing that instead of a 747, you have a stealthy drone armed with two long range air-to-air missiles that is covering a sector waiting for missiles to be launched. If you use long range missiles like the AIM-54 Phoenix or Russian K-172 you can stand 100 miles off and make the attempt to intercept the climbing missile. The problem would be of course cueing the UAV to the climbing missile. There are various ways that could be accomplished but it would be a novel way to deal with the ASBM problem
The carrier is somewhere in the Pacific. The launcher might be in Tibet or near Urumqi. Where is your expected line of attack? And how high can you reach with your anti-missile missile carried by the X-47?
How I would handle that is to station the UAVs between the carrier battlegroup and the expected line of attack. With the appropriate long range air-to-air missiles you could be orbiting over Chinese airspace just waiting for DF-21's to pop up over the horizon and then take your shots. Your expected line of attack is between the carrier and any launcher that decides to launch. Other launchers and missiles being launched towards other targets could be ignored because they are not coming towards the carrier. And the UAV knows where the carrier is because it has been pre-programmed to follow a certain flight profile that mirrors the general maneuvers of the carrier battlegroup.
In other words you have these stealthy UAVs guarding a corridor of Chinese airspace orientated towards the carrier. When the mission is completed you recover the UAVs. The problem would be command and control of the UAVs. Difficult perhaps but not impossible
It's called being too late. Is your X-47 going to have complete coverage everywhere? Not likely at all. Like I said before... the Serbs had something like 90% armor in tact at the end of the war. Just like you can believe the US will have a 100% effectiveness in shooting down a missile. I can say the ASBM will have countermeasure to fool any ABM.
As discussed in another post the X-47 doesn't have to cover everywhere. It only needs to cover approaches to the carrier. And the Israelis performed some mission like this, of clearing corridors through a dense air defense system using drones in the The BEKAA Valley Air Battle, June 1982. In the proposal I am making here, stealth would be the deciding factor to where UAVs would be used to operate deep in Chinese airspace and loiter undetected waiting in ambush for ASBM attacks on the carrier battlegroup
Cruise missiles are slow and could come later. However the main threat are those DF-21D's that are coming your way
And the whole idea of knowing where DF-21D might be is no simple matter to assume, given it's not exactly a ballistic straight line from land to carrier and even if it was, the TEL can be at any point inland few hundred KMs from the chinese coast and still cover a massive portion of westpac.
However the line is straight enough once the missile is launched. Once you start to climb away from your launcher you are committed to your trajectory.
Sure early warning radars and IR sensor assets will pick up the missile but if you're a few hundred kms away (warded by IADS) it won't do you much good. Now tracking the missile will obviously allow midcourse interception (let's get real, boostphase interception is very, very unlikely. simply getting close enough will be a challenge)
The laser armed YAL-747 operates in a similar way to where it stands off and attempts to engage a climbing missile during boost phase. I am proposing that instead of a 747, you have a stealthy drone armed with two long range air-to-air missiles that is covering a sector waiting for missiles to be launched. If you use long range missiles like the AIM-54 Phoenix or Russian K-172 you can stand 100 miles off and make the attempt to intercept the climbing missile. The problem would be of course cueing the UAV to the climbing missile. There are various ways that could be accomplished but it would be a novel way to deal with the ASBM problem
The carrier is somewhere in the Pacific. The launcher might be in Tibet or near Urumqi. Where is your expected line of attack? And how high can you reach with your anti-missile missile carried by the X-47?
How I would handle that is to station the UAVs between the carrier battlegroup and the expected line of attack. With the appropriate long range air-to-air missiles you could be orbiting over Chinese airspace just waiting for DF-21's to pop up over the horizon and then take your shots. Your expected line of attack is between the carrier and any launcher that decides to launch. Other launchers and missiles being launched towards other targets could be ignored because they are not coming towards the carrier. And the UAV knows where the carrier is because it has been pre-programmed to follow a certain flight profile that mirrors the general maneuvers of the carrier battlegroup.
In other words you have these stealthy UAVs guarding a corridor of Chinese airspace orientated towards the carrier. When the mission is completed you recover the UAVs. The problem would be command and control of the UAVs. Difficult perhaps but not impossible
It's called being too late. Is your X-47 going to have complete coverage everywhere? Not likely at all. Like I said before... the Serbs had something like 90% armor in tact at the end of the war. Just like you can believe the US will have a 100% effectiveness in shooting down a missile. I can say the ASBM will have countermeasure to fool any ABM.
As discussed in another post the X-47 doesn't have to cover everywhere. It only needs to cover approaches to the carrier. And the Israelis performed some mission like this, of clearing corridors through a dense air defense system using drones in the The BEKAA Valley Air Battle, June 1982. In the proposal I am making here, stealth would be the deciding factor to where UAVs would be used to operate deep in Chinese airspace and loiter undetected waiting in ambush for ASBM attacks on the carrier battlegroup
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