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The Chinese have multiple geostationary orbit satellites with enough resolution to target a carrier. Meaning that by the time the missile reaches the orbit of t
by sudosysgen 4y ago
The Chinese have multiple geostationary orbit satellites with enough resolution to target a carrier. Meaning that by the time the missile reaches the orbit of the satellite (around 5 hours), the Chinese would have had the time to track and sink a carrier about 14 times over.
On top of that they also have a fleet of unmanned submarines and an unmanned supersonic observation drone program as well as a sonarphone network.
Beyond this the carriers are so slow and the missiles so fast that assuming they fire the missiles within a few minutes of their satellites being shot down, the carrier is still unlikely to avoid the missiles target acquisition zone.
- jeffbee 4y agoEven the idea that the U.S. could promptly launch a kinetic weapon into geostationary orbit is a bit fanciful.
- QuadmasterXLII 4y agothe kinetic weapons are almost certainly already in geo
- sudosysgen 4y agoIt's often less efficient and slower to hit a target in GEO from GEO than from the ground
- echelon 4y agoThere are presumably countermeasures already within striking distance from adversarial satellites. Kinetic, laser, radio jamming, clandestinely placed surface mines... The DoD has been thinking of space warfare since the 60's. The space shuttle program was built for defense purposes. Now they have X planes to carry out these missions, and they're continually launching classified payloads.
- sudosysgen 4y agoSpace warfare is hard. You can't easily hide anything, so keeping a weapon very close is not feasible. Lasers don't work very well either because if the heat is enough to overheat the other satellite it's probably enough to overheat yourself. Jamming doesn't work very well in the age of super directional communications (see: SpaceX in Ukraine, which is not even designed to withstand jamming).