2 ms·

Missiles don’t just get fired to one position, they can adjust their heading to hit a moving target.

• chomp 6y ago
  While this is true, there’s limits to the capabilities of many ballistic missiles, some are incapable of changing trajectory. A sufficiently advanced missile should be able to predict course of the carrier and intercept, but I’m sure enemy capability would be taken into account in a high tension scenario.
• credit_guy 6y ago
  Yes, but homing on a moving target hundreds of miles away is no easy feat. The missile obviously can't do this by itself (like an air-to-air missile). It needs external guidance. There is no radar that has this type of range so you either need a satellite, or an AWACS airplane. In other words, the kill-chain will be quite complex. You can bet there are multiple countermeasures that can disrupt such a kill-chain (shot down the AWACS airplane, blind the satellite with laser, jam the spectrum for the incoming missile, deploy a smoke screen, etc). The simple indication that the "carrier killer" missiles are not such a sure thing is that the Chinese are busy building aircraft carriers themselves. Are they really stupid?