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The big open ocean is great for IR when weather conditions are clear. But clouds and moisture in general degrade IR imagery pretty quickly. Also, saturation at

by greedo 5y ago

The big open ocean is great for IR when weather conditions are clear. But clouds and moisture in general degrade IR imagery pretty quickly. Also, saturation attacks are expensive. Hypersonic missiles will be very expensive; even Tomahawks are far north of $1m per war shot. Same with the DF-21 type ASBMs. These are very expensive weapons, and while a CVN battlegroup is a juicy target, you'll need a lot to conduct a saturation attack. In the end, I think that ASBMs/Hypersonics etc will dwindle in time as a threat as DE weapons become common. Right now the biggest issue in defending the airspace around a carrier is magazine depth. But DE overcomes this, especially with nuclear powered vessels. In the long run, what the USN needs to worry about is the PLAN developing good submarine capabilities. We've let our ASW defenses wither, and reconstituting them will take decades.

dirtyid 5y ago
I think that's why PRC pursing SAR sensors for targeting as well. And chipping away at progressing in subs. Economics of ABM skew towards offense, defenders need more interceptors than incomings while advanced interceptors as are expensive AF, SM3 IIA used to for ABM defense are like ~35M per unit. There's also aforementioned magazine depth, can only fill VLS with so much defense before it compromises offense. As far as I know DE against hypersonics aren't credible, there was a panel on hypersonic defense by CSIS a couple years where experts concluded only counter against hypersonics are advanced interceptors. There's also some recent (but rough) literature about ineffectiveness of subsonics like tomahawk/tlams against active defense. The TLDR is 1 hypersonic is better at penetrating active defense than salvo of 15 tomahawks. At which point a cruiser with 15 hypersonics has as much offensive capability against actively defended targets as 2 destroyers with ~200 tomahawks. IMO USN would eventually need to move towards expensive attack and defense missiles against peer opponents, or perhaps equilibrium of advanced missiles and missile defense is going to make surface fleet economically obsolete.

by greedo 5y ago

dirtyid 5y ago

I think that's why PRC pursing SAR sensors for targeting as well. And chipping away at progressing in subs. Economics of ABM skew towards offense, defenders need more interceptors than incomings while advanced interceptors as are expensive AF, SM3 IIA used to for ABM defense are like ~35M per unit. There's also aforementioned magazine depth, can only fill VLS with so much defense before it compromises offense. As far as I know DE against hypersonics aren't credible, there was a panel on hypersonic defense by CSIS a couple years where experts concluded only counter against hypersonics are advanced interceptors. There's also some recent (but rough) literature about ineffectiveness of subsonics like tomahawk/tlams against active defense. The TLDR is 1 hypersonic is better at penetrating active defense than salvo of 15 tomahawks. At which point a cruiser with 15 hypersonics has as much offensive capability against actively defended targets as 2 destroyers with ~200 tomahawks. IMO USN would eventually need to move towards expensive attack and defense missiles against peer opponents, or perhaps equilibrium of advanced missiles and missile defense is going to make surface fleet economically obsolete.