5 ms·

I am not a weapons expert, but some questions pop in my mind: How do you hit a moving target from 2000 Km away? Using satellite images? UAVs serving as spotter

by Rod 18y ago

I am not a weapons expert, but some questions pop in my mind: How do you hit a moving target from 2000 Km away? Using satellite images? UAVs serving as spotters? Well, worst-case scenario the U.S. carriers could release collosal amounts of smoke and create such a thick smoke-screen that no light or IR radiation would penetrate. The Chinese could try to guide the missile remotely with a human operator being fed with "real-time" video, but good luck steering a missile at Mach 10 with a joystick, LOL. Moreover, at Mach 10 the transmission delay could be a serious problem. After all, electromagnetic radiation takes some time to travel 2000 Km -- approx. 7 ms (to which one must add the processing delay) -- and controlling a missile with super-fast dynamics with a 10 ms delay is not trivial. A thought experiment: try driving your car on the highway at 200MPH, with your windshields covered and with no sensing other any "real-time" video of the road ahead which has a delay of 100 ms. Good luck! If the enemy missiles use radar, they're giving away their position. Advanced high-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARM) could perhaps try to intercept them. A desperate counter-measure could be to release immense ammounts of metal strips to fool the missiles' radars. If I remember right, the U.S. Navy had plans to equip carriers with super-mean machine guns capable of shooting 1 million bullets per minute, thus creating such a thick cloud of lead that no enemy missile would be able to pass through. Sounds low-tech, but it could work, right?

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
We think alike. A carrier group is moving at 20 knots. Taking 10 minutes to reach the target, the group has moved 3 or 4 nautical miles in any direction. And it's not like you can have a radar lock on the target from the instant you launch. Launching has its own perils. Assuming your launch system survived a first strike, or you start a sneak attack, satellites, airplanes, and ground support personnel can watch a missile being launched. There exists an intercept for ballistic missiles in early boost phase from several platforms: laser and anti-missile-missile come to mind. But let's say you reach apogee and you have radar lock -- after all, a carrier is nothing if it isn't a big hunk of flat metal in an otherwise noisy ocean. So you're 100 miles or so up at mach 10 and you're heading straight down at the carrier. At this point the Aegis system kicks in with the RIM-161 system. It's another proven system designed to do what -- that's right, take out ballistic missiles. Assuming you make it through that, then you've got the phalanx system, a system which uses radar to throw up a hailstorm of lead at a missile headed for the carrier. Now I've said nothing of Electronic Counter-Measures. You can be assured, however, if you're using radar that radars can be jammed, fooled, and made to spit out confusing data. There are all sorts of other fun games you can play with ECM, but I'll leave that for another day. I think there's a real danger, no doubt. But the end of carriers? All carriers are rotting scrap heaps? Please. That's a lot of yelling and attention-seeking blogging, not serious analysis. (Not that I know anything, but I do know a few things)
- Rod 18y ago
  "I think there's a real danger, no doubt. But the end of carriers? All carriers are rotting scrap heaps? Please. That's a lot of yelling and attention-seeking blogging, not serious analysis." I wholeheartedly agree. In my most humble opinion, an emerging fad is to announce the collapse of all things American. This meme has been gaining momentum for years. Now we hear stories like: - the U.S. dollar will soon be worthless and the American economy will collapse. - the U.S. will disintegrate into a bunch of smaller countries. - all American technical jobs will move overseas, mainly to India and (guess what?) China! - the U.S. Military is at its most vulnerable point in History. I will believe in doomsday scenarios when I have the numbers to analyze. Like John McCarthy once said: "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense."
  - sho 18y ago
    While I agree to a point, I would like to add that this meme has not sprung spontaeneously from a vacuum - in my opinion, it is a fairly well-deserved reaction to American hubris on a wide spectrum. One only need turn on Fox News for a few minutes to hear the familiar "I believe America is the greatest nation on earth", "greatest country on earth", "greatest nation in history" - you may not personally be a fan of Fox News but the fact remains it is the most popular news network in the USA, so must be considered to have some representative credibility - or if you don't believe that, just listen to George W. Bush's similar words. As a native of another country, I can attest to the laughter, then annoyance, then sneering cynicism about all things American such oft-repeated nonsense provokes. And I am far from anti-American. I don't personally believe that America is headed inevitably for ruin and poverty, but its post-WWII shine is definitely wearing off as it takes its more rightful place as just another country - a big, rich, successful country mind you, but not the God-appointed Country of Countries in the minds of the "Greatest, Free-est, best nation on earth" crowd. It's not hard to understand the schadenfreude this inspires as the hubristic boosterism drifts yet further from reality. Everyone hates a braggart. Everyone rejoices, at some level, when the braggart is shown up to be the vain fool he always was. There's an element to this in the meme you describe, I think.
    - 18y ago
rjurney 18y ago
I'm not a weapons expert, but I believe this is a solved problem since the Falklands conflict. Target tracking a carrier by a simple missile traveling very fast a few feet above the water is not hard. Shooting down one such missile at a time is also not hard. Whats relatively new is the idea is that no carrier group could live through 100 or 500 or 1000 missiles as advanced as the Exocet from the 80s launched simultaneously from small boats and planes. These new guidance systems make the problem much worse, because shooting down even one is hard.
- Rod 18y ago
  The Exocet's range is what? Let us imagine that it's 200 Km. Any aircraft that gets that close to an aircraft carrier will be intercepted. Now suppose that the Chinese come up with an Exocet-like missile with 10x the Exocet's range. You fire it at where you think a carrier group is located. How does the missile distinguish a carrier from a destroyer? Optical signature alone? Still, the missile would have to go through all the protecting ships of the carrier group. Swarms of small boats and planes launching 100s of such missiles would be a big problem indeed. But the response could be to have swarms of UAVs equipped with anti-missile technology, covering an area within 500 Km of the carrier group.
  - rjurney 18y ago
    Thats a great response, but as far as anyone knows it does not exist yet.
    - Semiapies 18y ago
      Nor do rains of super-Exocets.
iamwil 18y ago
Not that it's impossible, but I thought I'd also mention that the backscatter reflection off the sea also makes it hard to discern your target.

by Rod 18y ago

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

We think alike. A carrier group is moving at 20 knots. Taking 10 minutes to reach the target, the group has moved 3 or 4 nautical miles in any direction. And it's not like you can have a radar lock on the target from the instant you launch. Launching has its own perils. Assuming your launch system survived a first strike, or you start a sneak attack, satellites, airplanes, and ground support personnel can watch a missile being launched. There exists an intercept for ballistic missiles in early boost phase from several platforms: laser and anti-missile-missile come to mind. But let's say you reach apogee and you have radar lock -- after all, a carrier is nothing if it isn't a big hunk of flat metal in an otherwise noisy ocean. So you're 100 miles or so up at mach 10 and you're heading straight down at the carrier. At this point the Aegis system kicks in with the RIM-161 system. It's another proven system designed to do what -- that's right, take out ballistic missiles. Assuming you make it through that, then you've got the phalanx system, a system which uses radar to throw up a hailstorm of lead at a missile headed for the carrier. Now I've said nothing of Electronic Counter-Measures. You can be assured, however, if you're using radar that radars can be jammed, fooled, and made to spit out confusing data. There are all sorts of other fun games you can play with ECM, but I'll leave that for another day. I think there's a real danger, no doubt. But the end of carriers? All carriers are rotting scrap heaps? Please. That's a lot of yelling and attention-seeking blogging, not serious analysis. (Not that I know anything, but I do know a few things)

Rod 18y ago
"I think there's a real danger, no doubt. But the end of carriers? All carriers are rotting scrap heaps? Please. That's a lot of yelling and attention-seeking blogging, not serious analysis." I wholeheartedly agree. In my most humble opinion, an emerging fad is to announce the collapse of all things American. This meme has been gaining momentum for years. Now we hear stories like: - the U.S. dollar will soon be worthless and the American economy will collapse. - the U.S. will disintegrate into a bunch of smaller countries. - all American technical jobs will move overseas, mainly to India and (guess what?) China! - the U.S. Military is at its most vulnerable point in History. I will believe in doomsday scenarios when I have the numbers to analyze. Like John McCarthy once said: "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense."
- sho 18y ago
  While I agree to a point, I would like to add that this meme has not sprung spontaeneously from a vacuum - in my opinion, it is a fairly well-deserved reaction to American hubris on a wide spectrum. One only need turn on Fox News for a few minutes to hear the familiar "I believe America is the greatest nation on earth", "greatest country on earth", "greatest nation in history" - you may not personally be a fan of Fox News but the fact remains it is the most popular news network in the USA, so must be considered to have some representative credibility - or if you don't believe that, just listen to George W. Bush's similar words. As a native of another country, I can attest to the laughter, then annoyance, then sneering cynicism about all things American such oft-repeated nonsense provokes. And I am far from anti-American. I don't personally believe that America is headed inevitably for ruin and poverty, but its post-WWII shine is definitely wearing off as it takes its more rightful place as just another country - a big, rich, successful country mind you, but not the God-appointed Country of Countries in the minds of the "Greatest, Free-est, best nation on earth" crowd. It's not hard to understand the schadenfreude this inspires as the hubristic boosterism drifts yet further from reality. Everyone hates a braggart. Everyone rejoices, at some level, when the braggart is shown up to be the vain fool he always was. There's an element to this in the meme you describe, I think.
  - 18y ago

rjurney 18y ago

I'm not a weapons expert, but I believe this is a solved problem since the Falklands conflict. Target tracking a carrier by a simple missile traveling very fast a few feet above the water is not hard. Shooting down one such missile at a time is also not hard. Whats relatively new is the idea is that no carrier group could live through 100 or 500 or 1000 missiles as advanced as the Exocet from the 80s launched simultaneously from small boats and planes. These new guidance systems make the problem much worse, because shooting down even one is hard.

Rod 18y ago
The Exocet's range is what? Let us imagine that it's 200 Km. Any aircraft that gets that close to an aircraft carrier will be intercepted. Now suppose that the Chinese come up with an Exocet-like missile with 10x the Exocet's range. You fire it at where you think a carrier group is located. How does the missile distinguish a carrier from a destroyer? Optical signature alone? Still, the missile would have to go through all the protecting ships of the carrier group. Swarms of small boats and planes launching 100s of such missiles would be a big problem indeed. But the response could be to have swarms of UAVs equipped with anti-missile technology, covering an area within 500 Km of the carrier group.
- rjurney 18y ago
  Thats a great response, but as far as anyone knows it does not exist yet.
  - Semiapies 18y ago
    Nor do rains of super-Exocets.

iamwil 18y ago

Not that it's impossible, but I thought I'd also mention that the backscatter reflection off the sea also makes it hard to discern your target.