MRVd ASBM with EMP warheads.

pla101prc said:

that's not much of a problem, its like saying since there are all these modern air defence systems, should we stop making fighter jets? even China has EMP resistant gears
i am not actually concerned as much about disabling the electronics on the ship (though it would be nice) as disabling the electronics on the fighters and helicopters. hopefully it'd create an opening for the subarmines and airforce to get close enough.

Click to expand...

Not exactly. I don't know enough about this technically to say you're wrong with 100% certainty, but based on what I know of how EMP and the technology to counter it works, I can say fairly certainly that it's not exactly like an air defense vs. fighter situation. I mean, the electrons either get through and fry the circuit or they don't. Now I don't know that someone hasn't been working on some sort of super EMP pulse that can beat Faraday cages and whatever else they use to protect circuitry, but from my understanding of it, properly protected circuits are essentially impregnable to an EMP. It's easier to protect against than it is to attack with. And fighters and helicopters are protected as well I'm fairly certain about that.

lilzz said:

how to change the title of the thread?

instead of EMP,

I like to change to Cluster bomb and EMP. can the mods change that?

One EMP and 9 Cluster bomb warheads(hundred of bomblets /w tungsten darts) to maximize the spread of areas ,

Click to expand...

i like the cluster idea, with 500kg warhead, it should have a blast radius of about 500m. so even a CEP of say 300m would suffice.

around early 2000, US report that China testing ballistic missile warhead cooled by liquid hydrogen.use of LH was to defeat or conceal the warhead during the terminal rentry from being detected IR camera.

challenge said:

around early 2000, US report that China testing ballistic missile warhead cooled by liquid hydrogen.use of LH was to defeat or conceal the warhead during the terminal rentry from being detected IR camera.

Click to expand...

Still going to need an unfeasibly large amount of liquid hydrogen, to the point where there is no room for guidance or a payload.

pla101prc said:

what would be the blast radius be though? its gotta be significantly larger than the CEP.

Click to expand...

If the warhead can receive the last target update and correction before the blackout, it will splash in 4 minutes, during that 4 minutes, the carrier can try accelerate, decelerate, turn left, turn right, but due to inertia, it's possible location would in a fan shaped area of around 40 square km. The area of the carrier flight deck is approximately 20,000 square meters, 200 darts will ensure one hole per 100 square meter, sufficient to render take off and landing impossible, so a density of 10,000 darts per square km is desirable. If each dart weighs 100 grams, a DF-21C will be able to carry 20,000 darts, and 20 missiles will cover the entire 40 square km area. Basically, a pointy metal shower in a small area.

King_Comm said:

If each dart weighs 100 grams, a DF-21C will be able to carry 20,000 darts, and 20 missiles will cover the entire 40 square km area. Basically, a pointy metal shower in a small area.

Click to expand...

If the warhead is large enough to carry 20.000 darts and a sophisticated dispenser, and if the warhead can dispense those 20.000 100g darts at M 6 perfectly equal, and if the darts remain stable at M 6, and if the darts at only 100g are heavy enough to maintain that speed to deliver the energy to penetrate the flight deck at impact, and if every single dart is made of a material to withstand the heat at M 6.
Wich I tent to doubt.

lol you can launch a whole bunch of df-21's all together. say 6 or 7, even if half of them were intercepted or missied the target, it rest should be enough to damage and litter the flight deck to delay or prevent aircrafts from taking off for quite sometime.

i am not as worried about concealing the launch of the missiles though, you can always blend them in with the missiles directed at Taiwan...or just launch a lot of them

Scratch said:

If the warhead is large enough to carry 20.000 darts and a sophisticated dispenser, and if the warhead can dispense those 20.000 100g darts at M 6 perfectly equal, and if the darts remain stable at M 6, and if the darts at only 100g are heavy enough to maintain that speed to deliver the energy to penetrate the flight deck at impact, and if every single dart is made of a material to withstand the heat at M 6.
Wich I tent to doubt.

Click to expand...

A 100g tungsten dart is basically the penetrator of a 20mm APFSDS round, which are usually fired at a muzzle velocity of around M 3, doubling the speed will not melt them. And 20,000 of them will occupy less space than a conventional warhead of the same weight. And the distribution of the darts don't have to be perfect, the density is achieved by multiple warheads. And the darts don't have to penetrate the flight deck.

challenge said:

around early 2000, US report that China testing ballistic missile warhead cooled by liquid hydrogen.use of LH was to defeat or conceal the warhead during the terminal rentry from being detected IR camera.

Click to expand...

Or to keep the nose cool enough to allow target acquisition sensors to be put in there.

Re the darts,

Well I liked the idea when it was first mentioned several years ago, and I think the most desirable outcome would be not to actually fully penetrate the flight deck.

If you get full penetration, you might get at the planes parked below, but unless you put a ridiculous number of holes in the deck to the point where the integrity of the whole thing is compromised, the carrier will still be capable of conducting flight ops with some very quick patching up, and if a large portion of the carrier air wing happened to be in the air at the time of the attack, those planes can just land and carry on as normal.

However, if the darts only manage partial penetration, and you got hundreds of darts half embedded in the flight deck, then that's going to make the carrier useless until those can be cut. Any plane trying to land before that happens well shred their carriage and crash. Any planes caught in the air during the attack will have to head to a land base if their are in range, or ditch in the sea.

I also think you don't have to limit yourself to 100g 20mm darts. If you can get the CEP of the missile down small enough, you could try some 125mm APFSDS. Place a few missiles with those sabots on an escort and you can easily mission kill the thing. Do that for all the escorts and cover the flight deck with darts and it'll be the easiest kills the follow on airstrike will ever hope to make.

The problem with EMP is that it is not a directed weapon. A blast suitable to destroy a carrier's electronics would also destroy China's and everyone else's satellites. That was the lesson of a US EMP test in the 1960's. The fallout persisted for many months, it ruined some satellites and blacked out Hawaii. China would do as much or more damage to itself as it would to any US carrier it attacked, and as pointed our earlier, all of our ships are well hardened against EMP. Likewise, carrier based aircraft have to have full EMP hardening for no other reason than the concentration of radars and other emitters present on the island of a carrier. The electronics of non-hardened aircraft would quickly be ruined by shipboard radars and radios. EMP is only a threat to non hardened civilian infrastructure.