Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
Those measures mentioned above will also make hitting the carrier much more difficult. Every pound of payload taken by including decoys, fins or motors for a maneuvering warhead and guidance for non-standard trajectories takes away from the size of the warhead.
The Russians found that out with their SS-NX-13 and compensated for the lack of precision by including a nuclear warhead.
It should be remembered that the Russians have been the only sea power to attempt an ASBM
Nike X please don't bring this SS-NX13 to the discussion It is product from another era and time and has no relevance to the ASBM. It is like comparing Mustang 1980 to Porsche
To begin with this missile work on different principle than ASBM .
SS-NX-13, homed on targets using a radar direction-finding sensor tuned to detect only specific
U.S. Navy radars. and not network centric ASBM.
The other thing Rorsat is primitive ocean surveillance system compare to what China has now. Just Yaogan series alone has 12 satellites and 5 more coming next year. Not counting Shijian, Haiying and other maritime surveillance satellite
They were not withdrawn because of failure but in order to comply to SALT treaty
If you want to know I include this reference about SS_NX13
SS-NX-13, homed on targets using a radar direction-finding sensor tuned to detect only specific
U.S. Navy radars. Since this approach could not offer the homing precision of a terminal radar
seeker, SS-NX-13 carried a megaton-class nuclear warhead. This way, the warhead could miss
the targeted warships by few tenths of a mile and still annihilate it along with any nearby escorts.
SS-NX-13 was to be carried aboard Soviet Project 667A (NATO designation: Yankee) nuclearpowered
ballistic missile submarines, and a fire control system was developed that would have
allowed a Yankee’s crew to target the missile against warships up to 600 nautical miles away
using downloaded RORSAT/EORSAT contact data. The Soviets never operationally deployed
SS-NX-13, however, as the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) treaty counted
submarines’ ballistic missile tubes against the treaty’s strategic missile inventory limits. The
The Soviets developed two types of satellites for this mission. The first, known as US-A
by the Soviets and the Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite (RORSAT) by NATO, used a SAR
to scan the ocean’s surface for large ships.96 Following eight and a half tumultuous years of
development and testing, the Soviets launched their first operational RORSAT in1974. RORSAT
was designed to download its contacts’ coordinates only on command from the SOSS ground
control station in Moscow, and it could execute the download only for the few minutes per orbit
it flew within the station’s line of sight. In theory, SOSS operators could use the data received
from RORSAT pairs whose orbits allowed them to scan the same waterspace 20-30 minutes
apart to calculate detected ships’ approximate courses and speeds. After the two RORSATs
revisited the same area 90 minutes after their respective initial passes,
SOSS operators could
confirm their tactical picture’s accuracy. Specially-equipped surface combatants, submarines,
and bombers could also receive direct downlinks from RORSATs, but to do so the Moscow
ground station had to instruct the RORSATs to transmit a ‘download in the blind’ when they
passed over a designated ocean area at a designated time. This meant an equipped ‘shooter’ had
to be guided by SOSS controllers into the designated area on time—hardly a simple coordination
task amidst the friction of war. While two-hour time-latency RORSAT contact coordinates were
considered acceptable by SOSS controllers, it is important to understand that a warship steaming
at 30 knots could mathematically be anywhere within a 11300 square nautical mile AOU after
96 As will be discussed later in this section, evidence from the 1980s strongly suggests that RORSAT’s SAR lacked
the sensitivity and discrimination capabilities needed to image its contacts.
that length of time.97 RORSAT, therefore, could provide cueing to help second-layer SOSS assets
redetect a battleforce but could not provide targeting-quality data for ‘shooters’ except under
ideal circumstances.98 The Soviets did not maintain constant RORSAT presence in orbit, but
rather launched one or two at a time in response to Western naval activity.99
The second satellite type, known as US-P by the Soviets and the ELINT Ocean
Reconnaissance Satellite (EORSAT) by NATO, employed RF direction-finding/ELINT sensors.
Although the Soviets launched several general-purpose ELINT satellites during the 1960s, most
were incapable of detecting U.S. Navy radars’ emissions. EORSAT was designed to fill this
specific Soviet capability gap.100 First launched in 1975, EORSAT could localize a radartransmitting
U.S. warship within a 1.3 nautical mile AOU. If this or another EORSAT later
redetected the same warship, SOSS operators could use the fix history to estimate the warship’s
approximate course and speed. More importantly, SOSS operators could correlate EORSAT data
with RORSAT contacts. This in turn informed their decisions on where to dispatch second-layer
SOSS assets. Like RORSAT, EORSAT stored its data until the Moscow ground station directed
a download to either the SOSS fusion center or a waiting missile-shooter at sea.101 This delayed
reporting problem was amplified by the hours-long gaps between EORSAT revisits of a given
area.
Revisit gaps of 6-14 hours were common for waters bordering the Soviets' northern
periphery, and gaps of over a day were not uncommon closer to the equator. Although
Soviets were apparently unwilling to trade away any part of their strategic nuclear arsenal for a
tactical ASBM capability
