The penetration against a Mach 3 supersonic ASCM might even be greater than the GAU8's, given that the relative impact speed would be near doubled.
PLAN close in weapon
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
Yeah i forgot about addition of velocities. So kinzhal or yj-21 will get shredded by CIWS despite armor piercing cap. The faster the missile go, the less lateral evasive maneuvers it can do, so that's also a huge malus against these monster 20000rpm CIWS with 20 barrels.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Up to a point, since the amount of penetration a sabot can achieve is also dependent on the length of the penetrator as it looses material as it punches through armour. The power of the 1130 and what sets it apart from other CIWS is in its sheer rate of fire more than from using sabots.
asif iqbal
Lieutenant General
No
the faster the missile the less time you have to detect, track and engage
Hypersonic missiles are extremely hard to shoot down and I dont believe a single source which says that the Patriot shot down the Russian Kinzhal
the kind of capability you need is a set of BMD Warships which have the ability to first detect such a missile, once detected it needs to be tracked and then engaged
to have all 3 things done not so easy
Existing warships can already do BMD so I dont understand why youre making it out to be some super hard thing. The USN did it with SM-3 and Aegis/AMDR, the PLA should already have an equivalent in the form of SC-19/whatever, the Frenchies has Aster.
Kinzhal being shot down by a PAC-3 is nothing to boast around but also nothing to laugh off. ERINTs were intercepting which was an IRBM-class target back in the early 2000s. Kinzhal is a not-very-maneuverable aeroballistic missile, shooting it down is not something suddenly out of the ordinary. But it does validates the capabilities of PAC-3 in a way, I'd suppose?
The thing about gun-based CIWS intercepting hypersonics is that it's suicide. At mach 5 even tiny fragments will shred radars, electronics and other exposed components. Gatling-style CIWS using sabots has an effective range of 2-3km depending on the gun and ballistics, ignoring elevation, attack angle and such. At that distance a manuervering HCM or HGV would retain enough velocity to literally shrug off DU/WHA sabots and sink the target. That's why navies facing threats in the form of hypersonics are building not more Gatlings but rather large-bore cannons armed with guided rounds ie MADFIRES or HVP. Against hypersonics you want standoff not close-range hard kill.
Kinzhal being shot down by a PAC-3 is nothing to boast around but also nothing to laugh off. ERINTs were intercepting which was an IRBM-class target back in the early 2000s. Kinzhal is a not-very-maneuverable aeroballistic missile, shooting it down is not something suddenly out of the ordinary. But it does validates the capabilities of PAC-3 in a way, I'd suppose?
The thing about gun-based CIWS intercepting hypersonics is that it's suicide. At mach 5 even tiny fragments will shred radars, electronics and other exposed components. Gatling-style CIWS using sabots has an effective range of 2-3km depending on the gun and ballistics, ignoring elevation, attack angle and such. At that distance a manuervering HCM or HGV would retain enough velocity to literally shrug off DU/WHA sabots and sink the target. That's why navies facing threats in the form of hypersonics are building not more Gatlings but rather large-bore cannons armed with guided rounds ie MADFIRES or HVP. Against hypersonics you want standoff not close-range hard kill.
What about the HHQ-10? This short-range SAM should have 9-10 kilometers of interception range.
How effective is the HHQ-10 for intercepting high-supersonic and hypersonic AShMs?
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
Having gun based CIWS is nothing like opting to use it as your primary line of defence. PLAN warship main guns all have secondary AA capabilities. They are also going with gun and missile based CIWS on all their newest warships. Their 1130s are an additional layer of defences on top of everything else.
The PLAN is the only navy who actually gets to do live fire drills with and against hypersonics, so I think they have a much better idea of what is needed compared to others who only game it out in simulations. I think it’s no coincidence that the PLAN is the only navy who demand insane RPM from its gun based CIWS and uses sabots as opposed to HE like everyone else. The 1130 is designed to shred targets, not just hit them like western gun based CIWS.
Even with the 1130, there is still a chance of missile debris doing damage. But that’s infinitely better than eating a whole missile isn’t it?
Guns are generally less competent at this than shorad. The PLAN certainly agrees with you on this.
DEWs however, I think are much less suitable for defending against supersonic anti-ship missiles. Against hypersonics, laser DEWs are next to useless since hypersonic missiles are designed to withstand the level of surface heating that a laser would be throwing onto it. We don't even need to talk about the kinematics.
Supersonic missiles can easily throw off the laser beam with movement, you simply cannot focus a laser beam directly onto the same surface of a moving supersonic missile. Adjust your line of sight of laser and do some quick numbers, unless the laser is so powerful (like orders of magnitude more powerful than existing lasers) that it can melt through the surface of a supersonic missile in under 2 or 3 seconds when focused on the same patch of surface, the missile would be making contact with your ship before your laser deals enough damage. Remember that many supersonic AShM fielded by China are sea-skimming, that the horizon is around 20 seconds flight away at 3m or so above sea level, and that lasers operate on line of sight. Speed of light in comms between radar and guidance of beam is fast but the resulting delay and factoring in processing time is still well into the 0.x seconds. Meaning that by the time your laser beam is moving to trace the missile target, the beam would be falling upon a different patch of surface.
Supersonic missiles can also be designed to rotate or have a better thermal protection surface layer that just needs to eat up another 500K for a few more seconds. The jury is out for laser ship defence... absolute pipedream until 1000KW lasers and near instant processing.
DEW lasers are good against drones that fly slow and are easy to burn.
PLAN, PLA, and USN lasers are all designed to be anti-drone or anti-slow moving cruise missile at absolute best. All this well within 30km of line of sight. Against even supersonic sea-skimmer missiles, this is a hopeless defence.
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Firstly, we do know that:
1. On average, Chinese surface combatants have fewer (U)VLS cells per ship than their American counterparts of comparable types;
2. Chinese (U)VLS is not known to possess the capability to multi-pack short-to-medium/medium-range SAMs into individual cells (at least for now), unlike their American counterparts with the quad pack-capable RIM-162; and
3. (Though not for discussion here) The PLAN is not yet equipped with a sufficiently-large and powerful carrier-based aviation arm that can contribute significantly to allied fleet air defenses (i.e. through fighter-launched and UCAV-launched AAMs).
Hence, if SAMs are the only viable solutions for intercepting enemy supersonic and hypersonic AShMs in the naval combats of today and future - Then this does present credible problems for naval forces that either does not carry enough of them, or does not have sufficient air-defense support from allied units, or both.
Therefore, until/unless newcoming major surface warships of the PLAN see the implementation of more (U)VLS cells per ship, and/or the capability of multi-pack short-to-medium/medium-range SAMs into individual (U)VLS cells - I do wonder if the further development on the HHQ-10 could alleviate such issues, at least to a certain degree?
The idea being that the HHQ-10s would be significantly upgraded into new variant(s), such that this variant(s) is/are capable of intercepting enemy AShMs that are travelling at high-supersonic (Mach 3-4) and low-hypersonic (Mach 5-7) speeds, preferably with effective interception ranges that are similar to that of the RIM-162 (40-50 kilometers).
(For note: Mach 5 = 1.7 km/s, Mach 7 = 2.9 km/s and Mach 10 = 3.4 km/s)
However (and naturally), doing so will result in upgraded HHQ-10 missiles that are physically larger and heavier than the original HHQ-10 missiles, meaning that either:
#1 - The launcher will have to be larger and heavier in order to fit similar number of upgraded HHQ-10s (hence greater procuring, operating and maintaining costs and complexity); or
#2 - The launcher will only be able to fit smaller number of upgraded HHQ-10s with similar size and weight limitations as the launcher carrying the original HQ-10s (hence fewer missiles that are available for interception efforts).
Option #2 can be remedied by:
- Making the missile launcher modular, i.e. both original and upgraded HHQ-10s can be fitted on the same launcher; and/or
- Having two (lined along the ship axis) or three (one on the ship axis, and one for each side of ship) HHQ-10 launchers installed per ship.
Of course, doing so definitely will increase the related-costs required for having more than one HHQ-10 launchers per ship.
However, think about this: With the growing proliferation and deployment of supersonic and hypersonic AShMs across major navies around the world today, which generally have greater probability of one-hit mission-kill, if not one-hit ship-kill any warships that isn't a flatdeck today than previous-gen AShMs; alongside the possibility of enemy AShMs (and/or LACMs) being nuclear-tipped - Maybe no cost can ever be too high, especially when everything could be at stake...
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Wrong wording on my part there. I was commenting on the effectiveness of gatling-style CIWS, not gun systems as a whole.
The PLAN is in no way the only navy to test hypersonic defense. It's also quite something to assume that only other navies do in on simulations ( which are also quite effective as opposed to certain wordings here). Vandal, Zombie, various surrogate ICBMs, and X-51s quite literally existed, matured, and underwent testing. The PLAN's 11-barrel gatling is sorta one-of-its-kind, but that's because Myriad never went into production, and the USN, ROCN, and Italian Navy all use sabots for their CIWS so that's kinda moot. Props to the pizza guys for making a guided dart round tho.
That's not counting Western prototypes for hypervelocity ( or hypersonic if you may) rockets, both guided and unguided, or novel propellant gun ( ETC, liquid, SCRAMjet, light-gas).
Finally, it's quite a reaching assumption to say that:
1- The 1130 is explicitly designed to counter hypersonic threats.
2- The 1130 would be more effective than my proposed solutions of large-bore guided rounds at knocking out hypersonics missile ( as inferred from your last sentence). I have no idea on the PLA's stance on this, but drawing from my reading on western experiences with AGS, EM railguns, and boosted shells; all points towards the latter being more preferred as opposed to just spitting DU rods at 2km.
Just from my /really bad/ memory, the 45mm CTAS ( GIAT 1990s era, licensed ARES design) had a Thales-designed, subcaliber CLOS/laser guided Starstreak-type shell for CRAM and short-range hypersonic defense.
Guns would remain, ironically enough, as naval gunfire support systems, when advances in resistant electronics and power generation allows for fitting 100mm EM gun assembly inside VLS cells. The USN proposed a VGAS mounted inside Ohios' Trident tubes that would fire shells from the littoral for NGFS. And for all the flak AGS got...