Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

Jeff Head said:

What you are talking about is not a given. Has the PLAN or PRC ever demonstrated a capability to send mid-course changes to a ballistic missile in flight outside of the atmosphere? I am not aware of any documented tests of capabilities of that nature.

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Well, for starters, this is more like it. These are the questions that we should be asking and discussing rather than getting hung up on insisting on seeing a very public show test.

How about the Chinese ASAT test? Unless you want to suggest that China managed to fire off such an unimaginably perfect shot that no course corrections whatsoever was needed in order to hit that weather satellite, some pretty precise extro atmospheric course corrections were pretty much a given.

China also tested a micro satellite during the last manned Shenzhou flight that demonstrated some pretty remarkable meneuvering capabilities which would have significant implications for both China's future ballistic missiles as well as ASAT or even SM3 like ABM programmes.

If the vessel is 1,500 km out to sea when the missile is launched, and it takes six or seven minutes for the missile to get there, the vessel will have been able to move something over 5 kilometers in any direction. This means there is an 80+ square kilometer area for the seeker to search and locate the target. I am not aware of a capability in the PRCs C4ISTAR to allow them to make course changes above the atmosphere. So, the missile now only has a few seconds to do so, in what is likely to be a very high electronic warfare environment especially designed to defeat the warhead if it survives physically to that point.

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Well, the Chinese managed automatically dock spacecraft multiple times in orbit. I think that is pretty conclusive proof that China has the C4ISTAR capability to allow them to make course corrections above the atmosphere. OTH radars, AWACS, MPAs, long endurance UAVs and even SAR and electro optic earth observations satellites can all be used to detect and track a carrier sized target that far out to sea. Marrying that locational data with extra atmospheric maneuverering should hardly present an insurmountable technical challenge given everything else China has managed to achieve in these fields of late.

As the misile approaches, the vessel will continue to manuever and its escorts, and ultimately itself, will be shooting at the target, beginning with BMD and continuing right down to CIWS. You make the defeat of these electronic and physical defenses sound like a trivial and simple matter, and the re-acquisition of the target and manuevering as well. They are not, nor will they be.

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We can argue about how survivable those surveillance assets might be in maintaining contact with the carrier long enough to successful direct an ASBM or ECM, or hard kill defences, but then we would be discussing the KP of the missile rather than the possibility of it being operational.

I am not really interesting in discussing the KP of an ASBM or the effectiveness or not of various counters, because for one thing, we don't know enough about the ASBM or the various soft kill and hard kill defence to hope to come to any remotely reliable conclusions, and secondly, because I fear that any attempt to engage in such a discussion will simply end up as a massive pissing contest with all the nonsense and ugliness that goes with it.

And as a very complicated and sophisticated and difficult system, it simply cries out for full testing.

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Indeed it does, but as I pointed about in my last post. It is perfectly feasible to disguises a full test or test various elements separately.

A moving target can be easily simulated by firing the missile off target and then having it adjust its trajectory to move in on target before impact as you would do if you chasing a moving target.

The terminal maneuverering can be testing by the kinds of land tests against large fixed objects that we have seen satellite photos of in the past.

The seeker's ability to lock on to a target at sea can be tested by mounting the seeker on a conventional ballistic missile and firing it at a pattern of radar reflectors on top of poles in the sea, which can be quickly put up and removed again afterwards before anyone else can get a chance to divert assets to snoop. Hell, they could even conduct a full test against radar reflectors and how would anyone know it was an ASBM test and not just another normal ballistic missile test? The missile will only be in the air for a few minutes. It would be a simple thing to find a window of opportunity large enough to set up and conduct the test when no foreign satellites or other assets are close enough to get a good look. And the radar illuminators could all be taken down within seconds if needs up be setting up remote charges on them and the poles holding them up could all be cut with the flick of a switch and leave no traces.

Clearly apples and oranges comparisons on your part, plawolf, no matter how you spin it, just as you said...hehehe, both sides can spin it any way they want.

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Tushay.

The US has conducted full-up, live fire tests against what they excpect the AEGIS BMD to attack, a BM coming in to attack the vessel...with great regularity and increasing success rates against increasingly diffult targets. That's the nature of testing once you have done it against a single, less sophisticated target.

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Right, as I said, I have no interest in getting into a X v Y debate, so my mistake for bring up SM3, lets just drop it and focus on the ASBM.

This is a much more fundamental and basic question, final level, live fire, full up testing. On both systems. It is not related to the multiple threats, sabot rounds, etc., etc. you throw in. Perform a full-up live fire test against a single manuevering target at sea. Very fundamental.

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As I already asked, how can you be so absolutely sure they have not conducted a full on test at sea? They might not have used some super-carrier sized piece of floating metal, but radar illuminators set up to present the same sized radar return to the seeker would serve just as well in terms of validating the weapon.

All of that can be done in relative secrecy and easily disguised as just another regular ballistic missile test.

As I have already pointed out before, the speed difference between even subsonic sea skimmers and a warship is such that hardly anyone even bother to test subsonic sea skimmers against moving, let alone maneuverering targets. A DF21 missile's speed is an order of magnitude greater than a sea skimmer, thus making the maneuverering target requirement even more redundant.

That's the difference and it is a consistant expectation between the two systems. No spin necessary for that, just simple facts.

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Since when did we hold all the facts?

As to overall deterence, as I said, the best thing the PLAN could do would be to obliterate a manuevering, carrier-sized target 1,000+ km to sea a number of times. Doing so would be a game changer. The US is steadily progressing and increasing an already proven capability in this regard.

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Best for whom? The US is making progress on ABM, but slow progress, and there is very chance funding for ABM will be frozen or even cut during the sequester.

Now why would China want to throw the USN this massive bone by proving beyond all possible doubt that it has an ASBM capability and helping the USN to secure all the funding it needs to develop a counter?

Conducting the kind of show testing you described is as much, if not more about sending a message as it is about the science and validating the weapon.

China does not want to send America a message by openly testing an ASBM just yet. They will save that bombshell for when they really need it.

But the PRC hasn't cponducted those very important final system tests, not even once, muich less numerous times to establish the systems reliability and consitancy. No spin will change that until they actually do. And until they have done so, the system is more in question by any measure, than if they had done so.

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As you said, no spin necessary. As I already pointed out above, how could you be sure they have not conducted full tests disguised as regular missile tests?

As I have also pointed out, open, public testing like what the US is doing with its ABM tests is as much about sending messages as it is about the science. The US tested the likes of the F117 in total secrecy, yet did not negatively impact on the operational effectiveness of the weapon?

according to this analysis, external mid-course correction may not even be necessary.

thunderchief said:

Theoretically , SM-3 should be able to attack and defeat single warhead IRBM . SM-2 RIM-174 (SM-6 , SM-2 Block 4 , SM-2 ERAM ... ) is designed to be versatile SAM . As such , it could engage shorter and slower ranged ballistic missiles , but main emphasis is on aircraft and fast (supersonic) cruise missiles . It is something like Russian S-400 for naval purpose .

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I think you may be right. DF-21, which is suppose to be able to do Mach 11, is probably on the outer edge of SM-3's engagement envelop.
The biggest weakness in the Aegis BMD system was tracking, US is develop a new space network to entire flight of ballistic missile and pass on the information to Aegis BMD shooters. Of course the system is still in development phrase. and China hasn't been sitting still, is actively developing anti-satellite technology to counter this.

Not really , SM-2 should be regarded as general-purpose SAM . You can read that between the lines , when they mention blast fragmentation device instead of kinetic interceptor (in other words same as any other SAM )

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Yeah, I agree SM-2 block IV is more of a general purpose SAM, something like Patriot PAC 2 in ABM capability, which is to say marginal.

ABM defense in general works best when intercepting missiles in climbing part of trajectory . That is the theory . In practice , you cannot always achieve that . SM-3 should be able to intercept missiles even in the reentry phase.

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I don't think SM-3 has any capability to engagement missiles after reentry.
Its warhead is the Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectile (LEAP), meaning it can only engage targets outside of the atmosphere.
Which bring up the my previous question, does the SM-3 shooter have to in a position hundreds of kilometers in front of the target it is protecting? And doesn't that put it in the same vulnerable position as radar picket ships were during WWII?

Which fleet will Liaoning be assigned to?

If it was retrofitted in Liaoning province, hence it's name, will it be based on the Northern Sea Fleet?

Phead128 said:

Which fleet will Liaoning be assigned to?

If it was retrofitted in Liaoning province, hence it's name, will it be based on the Northern Sea Fleet?

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Liaoning doesn't belong to any fleet. It is under the direct command of PLAN Headquarter.

Jeff Head said:

What you are talking about is not a given. Has the PLAN or PRC ever demonstrated a capability to send mid-course changes to a ballistic missile in flight outside of the atmosphere? I am not aware of any documented tests of capabilities of that nature.

If the vessel is 1,500 km out to sea when the missile is launched, and it takes six or seven minutes for the missile to get there, the vessel will have been able to move something over 5 kilometers in any direction. This means there is an 80+ square kilometer area for the seeker to search and locate the target. I am not aware of a capability in the PRCs C4ISTAR to allow them to make course changes above the atmosphere. So, the missile now only has a few seconds to do so, in what is likely to be a very high electronic warfare environment especially designed to defeat the warhead if it survives physically to that point.

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Firstly, your unawareness of such a capability does not constitute as a valid argument that such a capability does not exist. Secondly, we know China is fully capable of commanding mid-course changes to objects in space through all the publicized Shenzhou and Chang'e missions. There is no question about that.

Jeff Head said:

As the misile approaches, the vessel will continue to manuever and its escorts, and ultimately itself, will be shooting at the target, beginning with BMD and continuing right down to CIWS. You make the defeat of these electronic and physical defenses sound like a trivial and simple matter, and the re-acquisition of the target and manuevering as well. They are not, nor will they be.

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The argument based on the ship's maneuverability is moot since the speed of the missile is so much higher than the ship that the ship's speed is negligible. As for the hard-kill measures aboard the ship, they will be subjected to ECM and are not guaranteed to be effective.

Jeff Head said:

And as a very complicated and sophisticated and difficult system, it simply cries out for full testing.

But, it has never been live, full-up tested to do this very thing. Simulations with the seeker head are one thing...and are required. Hitting static targets in the desert are another...and also required as you step up the testing ladder. Live tests with the entire sequence, going through all of the intricate C4ISTAR components to prove the very things you are asserting in this response are another thing, and in the end, equally and even more important if you want to have any high degree of confidence in the overall system.

Clearly apples and oranges comparisons on your part, plawolf, no matter how you spin it, just as you said...hehehe, both sides can spin it any way they want.

Trying to compare early and mid-level tests with the equally critical final full-up, live fire tests is simply not comparing the same things.

At the end of the day, this consistent comparison stands, as I said earlier on this thread:

The PLAN has not conducted full-up, live fire, documented tests against what they expect the DF-21D to attack, a manuevering carrier-sized vessel at sea. They do not need to conduct five missiles at once at this stage, nor do they need to employ a blizzard of sabot rounds...they will not be able to do those things if they cannot do it with one.

The US has conducted full-up, live fire tests against what they excpect the AEGIS BMD to attack, a BM coming in to attack the vessel...with great regularity and increasing success rates against increasingly diffult targets. That's the nature of testing once you have done it against a single, less sophisticated target.

This is a much more fundamental and basic question, final level, live fire, full up testing. On both systems. It is not related to the multiple threats, sabot rounds, etc., etc. you throw in. Perform a full-up live fire test against a single manuevering target at sea. Very fundamental.

That's the difference and it is a consistant expectation between the two systems. No spin necessary for that, just simple facts.

Now, I have no doubts that the PRC has tested the missile in computer simulations, and against static targets in the desert. I have never denied this. That is good, and necessary. But it is not complete.

The PRC has chosen to deploy the missile at this stage...and that is certainly their perogative, nor have I denied that they have done so. I have just called into question their level of testing.

As to overall deterence, as I said, the best thing the PLAN could do would be to obliterate a manuevering, carrier-sized target 1,000+ km to sea a number of times. Doing so would be a game changer. The US is steadily progressing and increasing an already proven capability in this regard.

But the PRC hasn't cponducted those very important final system tests, not even once, muich less numerous times to establish the systems reliability and consitancy. No spin will change that until they actually do. And until they have done so, the system is more in question by any measure, than if they had done so.

That is my only point. No talk, or explanation, or rationalization will change that until they simply do so.

But, once again, we are in a circular arguement that is not going to change one way or another until those types of criteria are filled. Until then, things are simply what they are. I accept that, while pointing out the incomplete nature of the tests.

I agree that the PRC has deployed a missile system. I have never denied it.

How effective a system can be gauged based on the level of tests. They are missing the final, most critical system level tests.

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While such test is great for settling an argument (or will it), it is not necessary. Many real-world systems that are deployed are not full-up live fire tested according to your definition.

Jeff Head said:

As to the US having no counter. That is simply not true. The US has been developing BMD against this type of threat for years, and has conducted full-up live fire tests against such missiles on a regular basis, with an overall 75% success rate over the life of 70+ such tests, and a more recent success rate against more difficult missiles of 90% or more.

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Using your own arguments, these would not constitute as a full-up live fire tests since they were performed against physical simulation of enemy ballistic missiles, not against an actual ASBM.

Some of you fellows just love to argue for the sake of arguing. Jeff and others have their point. Many other have a different point of view. The argument is getting old..let's move on to different aspect of this discussion.

bd popeye super moderator

its indeed getting old, i could say US has railgun and laser weapon deployed to counter the missile, since we all know US research on it, and has these capability.

sure lack of evidence does not mean it doesn't exist, but any professional know, to prove something you need sufficient evidence. heck ill say alien exist too, and my evidence is new mexico 1947, the government just cover up and mathmatically the probability of intelligent life within milkway is pretty highs. There, there is my evidence.

s002wjh said:

its indeed getting old, i could say US has railgun and laser weapon deployed to counter the missile, since we all know US research on it, and has these capability.

sure lack of evidence does not mean it doesn't exist, but any professional know, to prove something you need sufficient evidence. heck ill say alien exist too, and my evidence is new mexico 1947, the government just cover up and mathmatically the probability of intelligent life within milkway is pretty highs. There, there is my evidence.

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Actually, those would be considered as evidences. The problem is when evidence is presented, one side would simply resort to saying "insufficient" because it takes no effort to do so.

Way too often, people who argue how US carriers cannot be defeated will gladly accept US being the operator as sufficient evidence to prove that a piece of equipment will work effectively. When it comes to Chinese weapons, nothing would satisfy the same people. Even if a full scale live test were to be conducted, those people would have something else to nitpick about to claim there is insufficient evidence. This is illustrated to the full extent in debates surrounding the J-20.

Engineer said:

Actually, those would be considered as evidences. The problem is when evidence is presented, one side would simply resort to saying "insufficient" because it takes no effort to do so.

Way too often, people who argue how US carriers cannot be defeated will gladly accept US being the operator as sufficient evidence to prove that a piece of equipment will work effectively. When it comes to Chinese weapons, nothing would satisfy the same people. Even if a full scale live test were to be conducted, those people would have something else to nitpick about to claim there is insufficient evidence. This is illustrated to the full extent in debates surrounding the J-20.

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i don't think anyone argue that AC cannot be destroyed, the point here is, is there Sufficent evidence indicate DF21-D is deployed and operation or its working. in my opinion some paper on how the DF21 suppose to work, or limited test is not sufficient.

Its like i design/build a car, and say its good to go without suffice test on the road. you got to test the product in the enviroment you intend to use at least few times before its good to go. its call field test, which every products have to go through.


Now if you guys belief df20 is operational base on few paper or a stationary target in the gobi desert then i hope the PLA doesn't feel that way.
at least some prove that the DF20 was able to hit a moving target, moving at random direction. then we are getting close.

for a complex design, its not out of norm to have 50% or more time spend on testing/debuggin.

then would you said railgun/laser weapon is deployed in US military? I dont belief so, not with the current evidences. i'm sure there are MORE paper published on rail gun and laser than df20.