Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

Skywatcher said:

Well, gee are you sure you aren't some former Russian fanboi who converted?

The warhead can't engage its own sensors, not if it's traveling at Mach 10-15 (guess why?). Jettisoning the outer shell don't get rid of the plasma sheathing. So you won't be seeing anything in those last few minutes, regardless of all your w***ing.

At thirty knots, you're talking about an area of 72 square km in that 4.5 min window. A Nimitz carrier has an area of about 25,500 square meters. That means the Nimitz itself only takes up 0.03% of that area.

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Skywatcher said:

I really shouldn't, but the false equivalency here is just so rich.

The Shenzhou 8 has no problem communicating with the ground crew, because at that point, it's no longer moving at Mach 10-15 speeds.

Sure you could probably put a transmitter to communicate with C4ISR and sensors to find a carrier on the warhead, but they won't do your mission of hitting the carrier very much good if you've managed to slow down enough that plasma sheathing isn't an issue (at which you'll be descending through the ocean to the floor of the Pacific).

Just stick to using YJ-12 AShM (and whatever bigger brothers it will get later) armed strike aircraft escorted by J-20s. That actually works, and the general concept escorted bombers goes back to WWII. The 2nd Artillery might not like losing out the CVN hunting missions (and thus funding) to the PLAAF, but you can't make everyone happy all the time.

You don't happen to own stock in the DF-21 factory, do you?

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Yeah, you're right. Thousands of Chinese engineer is no match for a random internet warrior.

Skywatcher said:

Well, gee are you sure you aren't some former Russian fanboi who converted?

The warhead can't engage its own sensors, not if it's traveling at Mach 10-15 (guess why?). Jettisoning the outer shell don't get rid of the plasma sheathing. So you won't be seeing anything in those last few minutes, regardless of all your w***ing.

At thirty knots, you're talking about an area of 72 square km in that 4.5 min window. A Nimitz carrier has an area of about 25,500 square meters. That means the Nimitz itself only takes up 0.03% of that area.

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Plasma sheathing eh sound like old wife tale from stone age. You sure that it will handicapped communication?. Well I get news for you It dies with Gemini and Mercury Because now they use Satellite relay to communicate .A combination of shape , ablative material will beat plasma sheathing Read this old man

Where do you get 72km2 area=piXr2 = 3.14X(2.23X1.6)2= 40 km2

Now do the Chinese have Relay satellite? Off course they do They just launched the 3rd relay satellite last year called Tian Lian

China launches Third satellite in its global data relay network
by Staff Writers
Xichang, China (XNA) Jul 30, 2012

China successfully launched the Tianlian I-03 satellite on Wednesday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province, completing the country's first data relay satellite network system.


Of course, the blackout period is non-existent now, but older missions faced the loss of signals.

“In a sense, the blackout — the famous blackout — was part of space lore, the way it happened,” Flaherty said.

Mercury, Gemini and Apollo experienced several-minute blackouts during their atmospheric reentry phases. According to an article in The Interplanetary Network Progress Report from California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA conducted several experiments in the 1960s involving Earth atmospheric reentry. The article, written by D. D. Morabito, stated that the use of an X-band telemetry system over lower frequency bands was proposed. Another scientist compared predicted and measured communications blackout boundaries of atmospheric density and velocity profiles for Apollo.
No more blackouts

The solution came about after NASA launched the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. The first satellite was launched in 1983, and the next two went into orbit in 1988 and 1989. (One TDRS satellite was lost in the 1986 Challenger accident.) The system was built to provide communications for all space flights, from launch to reentry.

When the shuttle enters the atmosphere, the brunt of the heat is on the underside of the orbiter. The thermo protection tiles are facedown, so the plasma or ionization layer is open at the trailing end behind the shuttle, providing a hole through which communications with the shuttle can be maintained with the TDRS. Even if the TDRS satellites had been in use when Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were in flight, the spacecrafts still may have experienced blackouts because of their body shapes.

Beside shaping there are many way to beat plasma sheathing


A variation of electrophilic injection might be a strong contender, however, using a heat shield made of an ablative material that vaporizes parts of itself and deionizes the plasma. “In terms of an engineering solution, that seems like the simplest,” Jones says. Meanwhile Lewis considers himself “a stone agnostic. We’ve got a number of avenues to explore, and I think we’re still at the point where all those avenues should be on the table.” Jones has noted that a combination of techniques most likely will be required to meet all anticipated applications.

bd popeye said:

Thanks for posting Lion. Are those missile test conducted unopposed? Is there any ECM present? Before you ask the US military practices against all sorts of obstacles..electronic and otherwise.

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[video=youtube;AM05LBTLiUg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM05LBTLiUg[/video]

Here is another exercise, this one pits two battalions against each other. (first to accurately hit target) There is ECM interferences, and at least two changes that interruption of the normal sequences. The first one is charge of target site, the second one is changing launch site just prior to launch, all have to be done within 1 hour. The new report also said they trained to launched from un-surveyed and un-prepared sites, but I don't know if it is part of this 1 hour exercise or another one. On 1:46 of the video you can them launching 2 rapid salvo 4 missiles each. (On 1:54, you can clearly see 4 trail left by the previous salvo in addition to the rockets)

Jeff Head said:

There have been over 70 tests, and the interception rate is like 53 out of 70 or over 75%, with increasing probablility of a kill as time has gone on. I know there have been tests against at least two missles at once, and perhaps three, but nothing against say 12 missiles at once. It is very likely that there would be swarming missile attacks by crusie missiles, which the system has proven even more capable against. But we are talking about ballistic missiles here and BMD, where it is much less likely that there would be swarming missile attacks because they are simply far, far less numerous themselves then air launched, surface launched, or sub launched cruise missiles.

The point is, the AEGIS system has been and continues to be live fired tested against the type of targets it is meant to engage, at sea against live ballistic targets, and it is shooting them down more and more frequently. Ie. hte percentages of successful engagements are rising over time, with a current overall rate of 75%.

Such tests have not been performed by the DF-21D in live fire operations of any sort against what it is meant to engage. This brings into question, 1st its operational status at all, and 2nd, even if they did place some in the field, its reliability and capability of actually hitting what it is meant to hit.

Sorry, there is no slight meant here...those are just the facts and the way things are at the present time. Perhaps some day, like with the AEGIS system meant to defend the fleet against this sort of threat, we will actually see firm and unquestonable documentation of live fire tests by the Chinese against manuevering targets at sea. Until we do do, as I said, I will consider all of this as much more of an effort to simply dissuade the US from using its assets rather than any kind of real, immenent and deployed threat against them.

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There are real test and there are rigged test Now you be the judge The test was performed under the most idealized condition of no decoy and single missile and single warhead. when in reality it will be swarmed of missile with MIRV or MARV not counting all the accompanying decoy. So the jury is still out as to the effectiveness of SM3

Mr. Obama’s announcement of his new antimissile plan in September was based on the Pentagon’s assessment that the SM-3, or Standard Missile 3, had intercepted 84 percent of incoming targets in tests. But a re-examination of results from 10 of those apparently successful tests by Theodore A. Postol and George N. Lewis, being published this month, finds only one or two successful intercepts — for a success rate of 10 to 20 percent.


Most of the approaching warheads, they say, would have been knocked off course but not destroyed. While that might work against a conventionally armed missile, it suggests that a nuclear warhead might still detonate. At issue is whether the SM-3 needs to strike and destroy the warhead of a missile — as the Pentagon says on its Web site.

“The system is highly fragile and brittle and will intercept warheads only by accident, if ever,” said Dr. Postol, a former Pentagon science adviser who forcefully criticized the performance of the Patriot antimissile system in the 1991 Persian Gulf war.


MIT study by Dr Postol

The forward-based X-band radars will have only a modest ability to discern differences in the radar signals from different objects deployed by ballistic missiles at the end of their powered flight. For that reason, these radars will not be able to guarantee that warheads will be confidently distinguished from pieces of debris or decoys. The radars will be able to observe at a range of thousands of kilometers the bodies of rockets that launch warheads, but the radars will have little or no capacity to track warheads deployed by these rockets at these ranges, as the shape and geometry of such warheads make them inherently stealthy relative to the missile bodies.

If ballistic missile trajectories rise above the curved earth into the line of sight of any low-frequency, low-resolution giant U.S. early-warning radar, all of their components, including the warheads, can be tracked. Unlike the much higher-frequency, higher-resolution, shorter-range X-band radars, however, the early-warning radars have no ability whatsoever to discern differences in the radar reflections from distant objects. In fact, the ability of the low-frequency early-warning radars to tell one object from another is so poor that they could not distinguish warheads from two-foot-long wires. Tens to hundreds of thousands of such wires can be used to create a massively confusing clutter of decoys and would weigh no more than a pound.

luhai said:

[video=youtube;AM05LBTLiUg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM05LBTLiUg[/video]

Here is another exercise, this one pits two battalions against each other. (first to accurately hit target) There is ECM interferences, and at least two changes that interruption of the normal sequences. The first one is charge of target site, the second one is changing launch site just prior to launch, all have to be done within 1 hour. The new report also said they trained to launched from un-surveyed and un-prepared sites, but I don't know if it is part of this 1 hour exercise or another one. On 1:46 of the video you can them launching 2 rapid salvo 4 missiles each. (On 1:54, you can clearly see 4 trail left by the previous salvo in addition to the rockets)

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I don't think it will take a expert to verify if PLA was to take out a carrier, it will only fire one ASBM at it. Multi salvo is always the best way to take out a high asset.

One dozen DF-21D cost price is still dirt cheap compare to a CVN.

solarz said:

Yeah, you're right. Thousands of Chinese engineer is no match for a random internet warrior.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

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I'll take your lack of substance as a concession. Thousands of Chinese engineers (plural, please) are working on things like stealth drones, hypersonic cruise missiles, variable thrust turbofan engines, not wasting time trying to repeal the laws of physics to make some fanboys happy.

Correction: Tens of thousands of Chinese engineers.

There's a difference between communicating with a Shuttle vs. using the onboard sensors of a warhead.

Nice strawman genius.

And can you shrink down the communications package onto a warhead and proof it to military standards?

Hendrik_2000 said:

Plasma sheathing eh sound like old wife tale from stone age. You sure that it will handicapped communication?. Well I get news for you It dies with Gemini and Mercury Because now they use Satellite relay to communicate .A combination of shape , ablative material will beat plasma sheathing Read this old man

Where do you get 72km2 area=piXr2 = 3.14X(2.23X1.6)2= 40 km2

Now do the Chinese have Relay satellite? Off course they do They just launched the 3rd relay satellite last year called Tian Lian

China launches Third satellite in its global data relay network
by Staff Writers
Xichang, China (XNA) Jul 30, 2012

China successfully launched the Tianlian I-03 satellite on Wednesday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province, completing the country's first data relay satellite network system.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Of course, the blackout period is non-existent now, but older missions faced the loss of signals.

“In a sense, the blackout — the famous blackout — was part of space lore, the way it happened,” Flaherty said.

Mercury, Gemini and Apollo experienced several-minute blackouts during their atmospheric reentry phases. According to an article in The Interplanetary Network Progress Report from California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA conducted several experiments in the 1960s involving Earth atmospheric reentry. The article, written by D. D. Morabito, stated that the use of an X-band telemetry system over lower frequency bands was proposed. Another scientist compared predicted and measured communications blackout boundaries of atmospheric density and velocity profiles for Apollo.
No more blackouts

The solution came about after NASA launched the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. The first satellite was launched in 1983, and the next two went into orbit in 1988 and 1989. (One TDRS satellite was lost in the 1986 Challenger accident.) The system was built to provide communications for all space flights, from launch to reentry.

When the shuttle enters the atmosphere, the brunt of the heat is on the underside of the orbiter. The thermo protection tiles are facedown, so the plasma or ionization layer is open at the trailing end behind the shuttle, providing a hole through which communications with the shuttle can be maintained with the TDRS. Even if the TDRS satellites had been in use when Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were in flight, the spacecrafts still may have experienced blackouts because of their body shapes.

Beside shaping there are many way to beat plasma sheathing

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

A variation of electrophilic injection might be a strong contender, however, using a heat shield made of an ablative material that vaporizes parts of itself and deionizes the plasma. “In terms of an engineering solution, that seems like the simplest,” Jones says. Meanwhile Lewis considers himself “a stone agnostic. We’ve got a number of avenues to explore, and I think we’re still at the point where all those avenues should be on the table.” Jones has noted that a combination of techniques most likely will be required to meet all anticipated applications.

Click to expand...

The electrophilic injection is still in research (geez, do you also believe Russian/EU claims of using the MiG-31 and EF-2000 to shoot down F-22s and J-20s?)

And you'll also have to shrink those space comm systems onto the size of a warhead? Has that been done before? And it's pretty obvious that a Space Shuttle is completely different from a ballistic warhead, which is a logical fallacy on your part.

And what the hell does the Tianlian have to do with anything? I didn't say China didn't have a satellite comm network, you nit.

A 4.5 min means 2.25 nautical miles for the radius of the circle. 1.15(2.25) = 2.6. 2.6 X 1.6 = 4.16 km. (4.16^2)3.14 = 54 km2. Guess we were both wrong on that regards.

And this 2013 book from Tsinghua University Press actually talks about communicating with a ballistic warhead during reentry. Chapter 2 states on Page 14 that after leaving the black out phase, there is only 3 secs for remeasurement. They suggest replacing the current PCM-PPK system with a PCM-FM system, which as of this year, has not been tested.

Proceedings of the 26th Conference of Spacecraft TT&C Technology in China:Shared and Flexible TT&C (Tracking, Telemetry and Command) Systems
Chapter Two: "Investigation of a Novel Reentry Telemetry System"
Xingwen Ding, Ming Chen, Xifu Huang and Ling Wu

Chapter 2 states on Page 14 that after leaving the black out phase (note how the complete lack of claim on a plasma sheath proof comm system for a warhead), there is only 3 secs for remeasurement/communications. They suggest replacing the current PCM-PPK system with a PCM-FM system, which as of this year, has not been tested.

When ballistic missile warhead is re-entering the dense layer of the atmosphere,
it will encounter adverse mechanical, thermal and electromagnetic environment.
The overload of warhead is up to tens of times of gravitational acceleration, and its
vibration spectrum up to thousands of Hertz. The temperature of warhead shell can
reach thousands of centigrade because of the friction between the high-speed
reentry warhead and the surrounding air, so that the surrounding air conducts
ionization and forms plasma sheath around the warhead, also called the ‘‘blackout’’,
which can prevent the radio wave transmission. When hitting the ground, the
overload of warhead will be up to tens of thousands of times of gravitational
acceleration. Meanwhile, because of harsh electromagnetic environment in the
warhead, the interference current on the ground wire can be up to tens of amps and
it seriously interferes with the telemetry equipment.
Besides the poor mechanical, thermal and electromagnetic environment, the
reentry telemetry still faces another serious problem: very short time for
measurement. After the warhead flies out from the blackout area, the time for
measurement is only about 3 s. During such a short time, it not only transmits realtime
measurement parameters, but also need transmit the kept measurement
parameters in the blackout area. Even more, the time for measurement of touchdown
signals has only several hundred microseconds.

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So I take it that Ding, Chen, Huang and Wu don't know about "A combination of shape , ablative material will beat plasma sheathing" and satellite relays?

Skywatcher said:

I'll take your lack of substance as a concession. Thousands of Chinese engineers (plural, please) are working on things like stealth drones, hypersonic cruise missiles, variable thrust turbofan engines, not wasting time trying to repeal the laws of physics to make some fanboys happy.

Correction: Tens of thousands of Chinese engineers.

There's a difference between communicating with a Shuttle vs. using the onboard sensors of a warhead.

Nice strawman genius.

And can you shrink down the communications package onto a warhead and proof it to military standards?

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So now you think the DF-21D exists only in the imagination of fanboys?

The very article you brought up suggests that there is a 3-second window for any final targeting adjustment. The article is proposing how to *improve* that window.

Hendrik_2000 said:

There are real test and there are rigged test Now you be the judge. The test was performed under the most idealized condition of no decoy and single missile and single warhead. when in reality it will be swarmed of missile with MIRV or MARV not counting all the accompanying decoy. So the jury is still out as to the effectiveness of SM3 .

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So, hehehe, that's all you have left?

To try and discredit and attack the 70+ live fire, full-up system tests the US has performed with increasing hit rates and increasing difficulty? ...when the DF-21D has none?

Pretty much says it all to anyone watching this exchange.

Facts are simple things. The US has performed 70+ tests of SM3 against ballistic missiles (and literalll hundreds against conventional cruise and anti-shipping missiles over the years) with a 75% hit rate against the ballistic missiles and increasing. You honestly believe the US has rigged those tests and then risks the lives of not only tens of thousands of its own sailors, but perhaps millions of civilians on it? Get a grip man.

The US is an open society, with a free press. I will admit it is not perfect in that sense...but it is far, far less controlled than what goes on in most nations, including tre PRC. If such rigging were occurring, then long before 70 such tests (which I suppose you believe were all rigged) were complete, it would have been exposed for what it is, either by the press...or more importantly, by the engineers and professionals performing the tests who would blow the whistle.

But you will probably tell me that all of that free press and all of thoes individuals are all bought and paid for and part of some vast conspiracy with the military industrial complex or some such nonsense, right? Please...as I said, that is just nonsense.

I personally know people who are involved with the tests, and I know that they are not rigged, and that the results continue to improve and are valid. So, yes, I am pretty confident about the AEGIS system and its ability to intercept incoming missiles of all types.

Is it perfect? Nope. You'll never stop them all, particularly in a saturation attack by intelligent, modern anti-shipping missiles. But a BM is a completely different matter. By the time it arrives, the carrier has moved a many miles, and the speed of the rentry makes its ability to perform temrinal manuevers, particularly if they involve having to back track against its own trajectory, and do so in an ECM envirionment that it will have to face, even if it can re-aquire the target, much, much more difficult. And then, even if it could, the US has already developed a defense to shoot it down. As to a "swarming" BM attack...as I have already stated. For obvious reasons, there wil never be nearly as many, and they have far, far more difficulties to overcome.

Yet, you are left only to try and attack the live fire tests that have been conducted 70+ times, when the system you are trying to defend and being such a fan boy of HAS HAD PRECISELY ZERO FULL-UP, LIVE-FIRE TESTS?

Man or man, the irony of this type of arguement on your part is so rich that it would give most people a heart attack just to eat it for dessert!

I've said all I need to say. The tests are out there. They are widely discussed by professionals and detractors (that's what happens in a truly open society) so you can find view points all over the place. And that is fine. On the other side, with the DF-21D, there are no live-fire, full-up tests...no results to discuss. Just a mountain of white papers, and research. Well, the SM3 has all of that too...but it also has those pesky live-fire, full-up systems tests and the DF-21D does not.

Get back to me when they do.

solarz said:

So now you think the DF-21D exists only in the imagination of fanboys?

The very article you brought up suggests that there is a 3-second window for any final targeting adjustment. The article is proposing how to *improve* that window.

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I do not believe the system only exists in the mind of fanboys. I do not believe Skywatcher has said that either.

I do believe that the system is no where near operationally capable, and that it never will be until they perform a lot of live-fire, full-up systems tests where they actually shoot missiles against manuevering target vessels at sea that mimick carriers and show an ability to hit them consistantly, and improve on that ability over time.

That is a test you cannot hide...and one you must let the international community know about so it is understood that a test is occurring and not an attack.

None of that has ever happened.

Are they trying to devcelop such a system? Sure.

Have they written a lot about it? Absolutely.

Have they perfomred some tests of missiles firing against static targets in the desserts of China? Yes.

But have they never once used a complete C4ISTAR system, with the type of command, control, intelligence, recon, surveil, target acquisition and re-acquisition neceessary and then conducted such a test on a manuevering target at sea...which is what the system is supposedly designed to do.

So, until they do...and show a consistant ability to do so, I will consider the system in its infancy with little real operational capability at all.

OTOH, the SM3 has performed over 70 such tests and has an overall kill rate of what it is designed to shoot down of over 75% and climbing.

Those are significant differences in the systems we are talking about...but I have said this over and over.

There is no diss here of the Chinese...it is a very complex and difficult thing they are trying to develop.

My only real problem is with the notion that because they have talked about it so much, and fired rockets against static targets in the desert that this means they are ready to defeat a US Navy Carrier Strike Group far out to sea, is pure fan-boy postulation that is ignoring reality.

I also recognize that the PRC will take advantage of this situation and (and I cannot blame them for trying to do so because it is a cheap way of negating a strong advantage a potential opponent has) and try and use all of this information to also create a fait accomplai for a system that is no where near ready yet, and creat an impression that it is ready to go and a serious threat simply because some have been deployed...I believe to produce precisely such a result and concern in the minds of their opponetns.

That kind of thing happens all the time.