US panic at China's new ship killer

[denem]

Source: SMH (Australia)

(September 29, 2009) In March, an analyst with the US Navy Institute, Raymond Pritchett, wrote that the news of this new weapon had "created a panic" in the US Navy.

The weapon? It is a ballistic missile designed to strike ships at sea. The US Navy Institute's headline on the report was more dramatic: "Chinese Develop Special 'Kill Weapon' to Destroy US Aircraft Carriers."

The institute's report said the Dong Feng missile was thought to have a range of about 2000 kilometres and a speed of Mach 10: "The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a US supercarrier in one strike."
(snip)

"The Russians couldn't do it. If it works, it will have the range of a ballistic missile and the accuracy of a cruise missile.

"The Chinese would have the ability to hold our carriers at a great distance - it almost makes the aircraft carriers obsolete.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/us-panic-at-chinas-new-ship-killer-20090928-g95b.html

---

The Dong Feng missiles are apparently the product of thirteen years development following the 1996 Taiwan Crisis when the US sent two aircraft carrier battle groups to stand off the Taiwan Straits.

[Tace]

1. From What I Understand, Most Warships Are Obsolete

They are highly vulnerable to just this kind of attack.

[Democracyinkind]

3. yes, and this was known since the 70's even in the US. "Supercarriers" my ass.

When I come to think of it, "Superpower" my ass.

Loss of naval importance is what prompted the drive into the heartland, IMHO.

[denem]

5. But rather effective in 1996 in the Taiwan Straights.

QED

[Democracyinkind]

7. Thats' under the premise that the Chinese were actually planning something, not just talking about

... it.

I'm not that sure that the narrative of the 1996 incident is based totally on reality. I have yet to see evidence that the chinese were willing to risk something and that it was the carriers that stopped them.

What I meant with my post was simply that the theoretic pillars of combining long range missiles with the accuracy of a cruise missile were made by the 70's and the implications that had for naval warfare were (as documented) realized even before the appearance of the actual missile. I didn't want to question the usefullness of carriers under the old paradigm, just wanted to point out that we spent billions on weapons even after we knew that they were strategically obsolete.

[denem]

9. That's on the basis that a sea blockade was still an effective tactic,

when the battle would have to be fought in the air. From the article, the Chinese turned their attention to the carriers:

"Schriver, a former navy intelligence officer who went on to become deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific in the second Bush administration, says the implications are profound: "After the Taiwan crisis in 1996, the Chinese looked at it and said, 'what do we need to do to prevent the US intervening like this again?'"

[Democracyinkind]

12. good point. thanks.

[Submariner]

13. The Panama Canal is being expanded, and in 2014

it will be able to pass super-carriers through the locks. With one missile hit of a carrier in the locks, or even in the middle of the canal, canal passage could be blocked for years.

[Captain Hilts]

18. Huh?

[mudplanet]

19. Most SURFACE warships are obsolete

and have been for forty years.

But only in case of war. They seem to work ok as long as the other side is afraid of your ICBMs.

Thank god we finally have a president that recognizes the necessity of nuclear disarmament.

[TexasProgresive]

40. Still need them to transport troops and equipment.

That means some kind of ships to offer protection. The Aircraft carriers can put planes up that give some protection.

[liberal N proud]

2. Maybe we need to do this:

Modern Mechanix magazine. October, 1934.




Or we could try something totally radical, PEACE!

[Democracyinkind]

4. There's no profit in peace, the paradigm says.

[denem]

6. There's no obvious counter military-industrial program in this instance.

A fundamental piece of naval / military strategy is heading for the museums.

[RaleighNCDUer]

34. sure there is - plasma cannon.

They will take out incoming missiles at the speed of light.

Using missiles against missiles is a concept that was outmoded before it became technically feasible.

The next big thing is energy weapons as anti-missile defense systems. The REAL Star Wars.

[happyslug]

43. Do you understand the energy requirements of a Plasma weapon?

You are looking at high energy inputs, can be done by oil/coal but the better source is Nuclear energy. Further remember in the atmosphere the air will absorb much of the energy, thus making such a weapon marginal on or near the surface of the earth (It is much more usable in Space, no air, no air to absorb the energy, less energy needed to get to the target to destroy it).

Now, a further complication is how close the surface can this missile travel. If a ship is on the ocean floor the curvature of the earth prevents seeing anything beyond about 20-25 miles (thus even the Cannons of the Iowa Class Battleship were able to hit target beyond their range of site). Radar has the same limitation (Unless Airborne, the greater height the greater range over the earth the radar can detect). Now most carriers have airborne radar planes to help detect long distance threats, but in the far East you have the additional problem of the islands providing covers from such radars. All this reduces the time available to get the plasma weapon on target. Multiple launchings from multiple launch sites means you need TIME to defend the ships. Now I suspect a Mach 10 missile has been invented, March 3-4 is much more possible. Just image a missile traveling close to the surface of the ocean going 2000 mph. Even if you have radar coverage of over 200 miles, you are taking in terms of minutes, maybe seconds, not part of an hour. At 2000 mph you will have six minutes to detect the missile and get the Plasma weapon on it. Now 2000 mph is only Mach 3, if this is Mach 5-6 then you will have three minutes MAX before the missile hit the Carrier (and if the launch site is closer then 200 miles and fires so that radar is blocked by island groups you will have even less time to engage and destroy).

Lets be honest, the purpose of a high end missile such as this one is suppose to be, is to force the Carrier force to the other side of the Philippines and Japanese Islands. In those open ocean the Plasma weapon would easily detect and defeat such missiles, but also extend the range of any attacking air craft from such carriers, requiring the US to use more fuel do to the greater distance and giving the Chinese more time to prepare for the air Strike then if the Carriers were just off the Coast of China. Yes, Plasma weapon can defeat these missiles, but the cost to do so (Both is the price of developing such Plasma weapons AND adopting a policy to never permit the Carriers between the Islands of Japan and the Philippines AND China may be to high. China may win just by forcing the US away from its coasts, and that seems to be the Chinese policy, so plasma weapons are NOT a serious threat to deployment of this missile.

[14thColony]

63. Totally digging your post, but just one thing...

a lot of people seem to be missing the part about this being a ballistic missile, NOT a sea-skimmer like Exocet or SS-N-3 or the like. This thing will be plunging down from sub-orbital altitude at about a 60 degree angle, and Mach 10 is a pretty normal terminal velocity for a ballistic reentry vehicle like this.

I think that makes your point even more valid -- first the radars have to even be able to elevate that far, then they have to lock and track something that small at that high a velocity with a tiny radar cross section, then the energy weapon has to to put on target long enough to generate a thermal kill against a target designed to shed high heat levels to survive. Sounds like it makes it even worse?

[happyslug]

75. Actually when I wrote the above I assumed it was a surface skimming missile

For such a missile is the hardest thing to detect no matter what its speed. The faster it goes, the less time you have to detect it (and to react to it). A high trajectory weapon is even easier to detect. Now when I was in the Field Artillery in the 1980s one of our plans was to fire out 105mm Howitzers at a high trajectory on the grounds the shell would go above the enemy anti-artillery radar and they would NOT be able to detect where it came from or where it went. Two problems killed this plan, first we could NOT get the air space free to do the fire (The Air Force wanted to fly some planes at the same time) AND even in the 1980s Soviet air craft radar were believed to be able to detect shells and once detected calculate where they would fall. The same today, if the missile goes ballistic i.e. once detected we can determine where it will land. Now this missile should NOT be truly ballistic, it has to have some sort of terminal target device (may be radar, may be laser I do not know or care). The Terminal Target Device can be used to change where the missile is going, both to make sure its re-entry causes the least harm to the payload AND to hit the target. Given that most of its time will be in space, hear from friction is less of a problem (No air in space), but once it re-enters the atmosphere heat becomes a player. A solid Ceramic coated projectile would be all you would need (and what I mean by Solid Ceramic Coated is a projectile with several layers of Ceramics, as each level fails the next layer comes into play, thus as it nears its target it get lighter as more and more of it burns away, but if going Mach 5 plus once it hits a Carrier it will go right through it (i.e. no real payload, just a solid piece of metal, at that speed will do a lot of damage if it hits the engine, or any other part of the drive train of the Carrier, including the Nuclear core).

As I have said above and elsewhere, such a missile would drive the US Carriers out of the Sea of Japan and the South China Sea, but their effectiveness in the actual Pacific will be much more marginal. As I wrote below, this reflects the strengths of the Carriers and their weaknesses. This was best shown by the how Battleships and Carriers were used in WWII (In the open Ocean the Carrier were supreme, but in areas closer to land, the Battleship held its own for many of the same reason this missile is a great weapon off the coast of China, but a marginal weapon in the open Pacific).

Anyway this weapon is less effective then a missile that operate closer to the surface but close to land where detection between launch and hitting the target is within just a few minutes this is a very effective weapon. More time between Launch and hitting the target the less effective it will be for it will be detected and "defeated" one way or another. I still believe a surface missile with less then half the speed of this missile (i.e. mach 5) would be more effective do to the fact it will be harder to detect, but this missile may be all China need to drive the US Carriers out of the Sea of Japan and the South China sea, and that is all China wants in the foreseeable future.

[14thColony]

87. We agree more than we disagree!

but a couple of 'dissenting views' if you would indulge me:

- I agree 100% that detection at launch and in boost will be relatively easy - our Cold War IR sats early warning sats were designed exactly for this scenario, and within a few seconds to a minute they'll have calculated the missile's impact footprint (assuming it stays pure ballistic, which we all know it won't, but it's close enough for warning). So the fleet will know they are under threat and when to expect it to arrive over them for its terminal phase. But a whole lot of variables will determine whether or not an SM-2-armed ship can get its radar elevated high enough to lock it early enough to maximize its number of engagement opportunities. As you know very few radars can orient their beams even close to vertical, so the lower the beam the later the lock-on and engagement, meaning less margin for error in the entire sequence.

- I do think an ASBM has a few major advantages over a traditional AShM. As mentioned above, it's coming in on a vector that traditional air defense (even HIMAD) isn't really optimized for. Even a fast SS-N-22-class AShM is still an airplane coming in on an airplane flight profile (albeit very low) and at airplane speeds (albeit way at the high end). Modern fleet air defense is all over that like stink on shit. Stand-off detection by the carrier's E-2C/Ds will get the F/A-18 CAP sent onto them, and even a Mach 5 missile of that size is not a complex problem for the AIM-120s to deal with -- this will be where most of them die. The ones that survive that come up against the outer ring of AD pickets, which while not AEGIS-equiped (mostly), they're not too shabby and they'll be queued where exactly to look. The ones that survive that go up against the inner defenses - AEGIS cruisers and destroyers with SM-2s will then take a toll, then finally the RAMs/Sea Sparrows and CIWS will try their best and might bag one out of sheer luck. Compare that with the reentering ballistic kill vehicles, which bypasses most of this crap. Only the AEGIS ships will have a decent chance of engaging them. And since some reports indicate the ASBM DF-21 could be MIRV'd, I'd bet every known AEGIS ship will have one assigned to it, so they may have to shoot in self-defense instead of to protect the carrier(s).

- Finally, if we compare the hypothetical one AShM that gets through versus the one ASBM RV that gets through, it gets real lopsided in favor of the ASBM. Modern warship damage control kinda assumes a hit from "the side" (of course at various angles of impact) because up till now it was some sort of AShM, torpedo, or guided or unguided bomb that was going to hit them. Even as basic a maneuver as heeling the ship hard into the incoming AShM will pretty much ensure the damage is kept away from the waterline, saving the ship from possible uncontrollable flooding. But the ABSM is diving on the target at 60 deg or greater angle, ensuring a hit on the flightdeck, and at those impact velocities a solid penetrator warhead has a good chance of shooting straight through the ship and out the bottom. That's gonna be a tough one for DC to deal with. Imagine if the guidance package has a thermal imager or an IR scanner accurate enough to try to target the engineering plant?! Put a 1m wide hole straight through the reactor and that carrier is done, regardless of what DC does. Unlikely an SS-N-22 class missile could manage one-hit lethality to that level.

For what it's worth...

[hack89]

50. What about AEGIS BMD? nt

[Libertas1776]

22. Wow

Now that looks pretty damn cool. Amazing the things they dreamed up back in the 1930s. Of course, its always more profitable, evidently, to build things that blow the ever loving shit out of anything than amazing marvels of technology that have the power to reshape our world for the good.

[zonkers]

25. Cool picture. where is it from?

[liberal N proud]

56. Modern Mechanix magazine. October, 1934 cover

Dreamers

[paparush]

26. That Reminds me of "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"

Flying aircraft carriers.

[Regret My New Name]

51. Microsoft had a cool game about ten years ago with similar airships...

I can't remember the name of it, but I remember I thought it was fun.


*edit... Crimson Skies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Skies

[AlexDeLarge]

37. Solar Powered!!! In 1934!!!

What happened to this country. If we'd have built this thing or even started to investigate the possibilities, we could have been WAY ahead of the curve in alternative energy by now.

[happyslug]

49. The USS Akron of the 1930s, ahead of its time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Akron_(ZRS-4)

and its sister ship the Macon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Macon_(ZRS-5)

Now Rigid Airships use by the US Navy ended in 1939, but the use of NON-Rigid airships continued till 1962:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZPG-3W

In 2006 the US Navy re-started their lighter then air program:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MZ-3A

[Pavulon]

64. This is covered under MAD. The use of that weapon would either be the first act

or last act of a nuclear war. Strategic Nuclear Assets, carriers are. This weapon is useless.'

[denem]

8. 2000 kilometres, speed of Mach 10. OMG! Palin was right!

Wasilla is only 768 miles from Russia. Ships Ahoy!

[One_Life_To_Give]

10. Or strategic leak to get more funding for ABM Cruisers

Curiously this comes information comes both when funding for the missle defence programs is in question. At least deployment into Poland etc is sure to be cut back. And yet the US Navy has in it's arsenal the ability to intercept long range ballistic missiles. Although perhaps not enough of these ships to defend all of the carrier battlegroups at once.

[thunder rising]

11. Ballistic flight 2000 kilometers and a speed of Mach 10?

Mach 10 is 10 * speed of sound hence 6000ft/sec(ish) so lets say a mile a second. 2000 miles is 2000 seconds (33 minutes) and the detection range should be at least 100 miles (hint, coming from China), so a ship has 90 seconds to change it's course. This will keep radar crews alert.

Second, how are they targeting the boat? 2000 KM is farther than Russia from Wassila, Maybe that's where that Chinese submarine that surfaced within 10K yds of an aircraft carrier comes into play? The subs are not there to engage but to target.

[denem]

15. The "Dong Feng" is best thought of as a cruise ICBM

An ICBM can reach Mach 12, but is considerably longer in range. At a guess, I suppose they would be land based, creating an umbrella where it would no longer be safe to station Carriers / the 7th fleet, without the necessary diplomacy.

[14thColony]

16. Course changes won't save the target

The kill vehicle will employ a homing system to detect, identify, track, and guide onto the intended target - and probably more than one system to provide redundancy.

The choices at that point become a) jam all its homing systems early enough to allow accumulated guidance errors to cause a miss - not easy if its homing systems are a mix of active and passive, or b) destroy it somewhere in flight, probably in its terminal phase when it is smaller than at launch, moving very fast, and with a very low angular rate of change relative to the target.

And unless these things are made of solid platinum encrusted with diamonds, they won't just be firing them one at a time...

Targeting data can be passed from submarines as you point out, but a carrier puts out big signatures of various types that recon aircraft and satellites can detect and locate from hundreds of km away (thousands for satellites). Depending on how sensitive the missile's sensors are, and what they're looking for, it could already be searching for the carrier during re-entry. And since the kill vehicle will by definition have to be able to maneuver to hit the target, it can possibly scan hundreds of sq km of ocean to locate the target and then adjust its trajectory to bring it into the kill window over the target.

One wonders if it even needs a warhead. I imagine a 1000kg piece of case-hardened steel or depleted uranium shaped like a spike and moving at Mach 10 would quite possibly break a carrier's back. I'm willing to bet it would punch straight through it at least.

[ForeignSpectator]

27. Break its back or pierce through its nuclear powered heart,

a mini-chernobyl at sea...

[driver8]

41. I used to operate nuclear power plants on a Nimitz carrier...

that would be ugly.

The shielding surrounding the nuclear reactors on a carrier is very thick, but if one of these missiles were to make it through to the reactor, it would be all over. There would be radioactive water and high pressured steam everywhere -- not to mention the contamination.

[Pavulon]

60. Strategic nuclear asset. These would be fired right before or right after

we incinerated the population of china.

[Xipe Totec]

17. the speed of sound is ~1,000 feet per second

The speed of sound is 343 meters per second (1,125 ft/s). This equates to 1,236 kilometers per hour (768 mph)

[RobMan]

29. Bad math......

You are off by a factor x2.

Mach 1 = 768/mph @ nominal temp/pres. Mach 10 = 7680/mph, or, 128 miles a minute, or 2.13 miles per second.

:-)

[fob]

45. You also turned 2000 Kilometers into 2000 Miles

There is 1.6 km to the mile so 2000 KM = 1,250 Miles

[Haole Girl]

14. Interesting. nt

[LeftHander]

20. Each warhead contains 8 Somali Pirates....nt

[HamdenRice]

21. China has been a DEFENSIVE power for 4000 years, from the Great Wall onward

and this is another example of their thinking.

Other powers have tended to counter offensive weapons systems, like aircraft carriers, with similar offensive weapons.

A missile that is hundreds of times cheaper than an aircraft carrier is an example of that kind of strategy.

The Chinese generally focus on cheap defensive asymetrical systems. For example, rather than match our fighter aircraft, they are alleged to be developing huge "swarms" of unmanned aerial vehicles that, if they can't shoot down our aircraft would just ram them.

[14thColony]

23. Good points

Historically, it's the military that establishes the new paradigm that rises to dominance, not the one that tries to challenge the masters of the old paradigm. The Chinese approach to defensive warfare could end up creating one of those paradigm shifts all over whoever attacks them.

[Ghost Dog]

33. Yes. China only needs to defend itself

and its ability to do business with the rest of the world.

One would have thought the same would apply to the US - indeed to most countries - but... history has shown otherwise in some (a few) of these (but never in China's) cases...

[Bonhomme Richard]

24. If history teaches us anything. Whenever a new weapon is developed....

the initial reaction is that it will change the status quo. Over time the opposition always comes up with a way to neutralize the advantage.
The advantage is knowing about before you go to war.

[bhikkhu]

69. ...it costs us a shitload of money

and defense contractors get richer.

[bertman]

28. If the Chinese really wanted to bring us to our knees they'd just threaten to stop sending

shit to WalMart.

Knife to the heart of Amerka.

But seriously, I'm under the impression that they don't need no stinkin' aircraft carrier killer missiles. They've been cranking out conventional submarines by the thousands apparently with the thought in mind that you can kill a bunch of them but you can't get them all.

They also have a huge strategic weapon simply by having the ability to shut down commerce through the Straight of Malacca which is the most vital trade link between the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean--think oil tanker traffic that keeps our allies Japan and South Korea supplied (WalMart goods from China come through there too). The Straight is very narrow and could be shut down by sinking an oil tanker in a strategic spot.

There's more than one way to stop a military attack by your enemy. Cunning, imagination, and flexibility in one's approach often make the difference.

[JDPriestly]

32. And all of this military development is funded by American and other western

corporations -- greedy corporations who took the jobs away from Americans and sent them to China, not thinking about the fact that American dollars were also being sent to China. What traitors they are. The greedy outsourcers made the funding of China's military machine possible. So free trade: is it really an excuse for giving aid and comfort to a potential enemy of your own country?

[bertman]

48. I wish I'd thought to put that part in my post. Great points, JD.

[Historic NY]

36. bingo.

[psychopomp]

73. That strait doesn't seem like an insurmountable obstacle shouldit be closed

Why wouldn't traffic reroute to just south of the Indonesian archipelago? It's not like the Strait of Hormuz where there is but a single possible route.

[Turbineguy]

30. 7700 MPH

might be very difficult to obtain at or near sea level. The missile would burn up prior to contact due to air density.

[happyslug]

46. I think Mack 10 is an error, the heat at such speeds is to high even for titanium

And thus you have to use some sort of Ceramic cover. Ceramic has high heat Resistance but generally NOT easily bendable (Just look at the flat surfaces of the M1 tank, which also uses ceramic armor, Ceramic Armor can absorb high heat levels, like from an RPG or similar HEAT anti-Tank round, but is almost impossible to make except as a flat surface. The M1 tank handles this by having multiple plates at angle to each other. Could be done with many small plates over the nose of a missile, but would be expensive to make (Over and above the electronics to operate the Missile).

I suspect a Mach 4-5 missile, still very fast but down to a level where you do not need a break through in heat absorbing technology. People forget that in addition to the extreme size of Mach III fighters proposes in the 1960s do to the fuel needed to get to and maintain mach III speeds, you can NOT use Aluminum on such a plane, It melted at the heat generated at such speeds (Thus the US opt for Titanium while the Russian opt for much cheaper but still heat resistant Steel on their Mach III planes) Once you get over Mach III, even Steel and Titanium are marginal (You are nearing their melting points of just over 2000 Degree).

Steel melts at 2800 degree Fahrenheit:
http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Iron

Titanium melts at 3034 Fahrenheit
http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Titanium
http://www.keytometals.com/Article122.htm

Aluminum Melts at 1220 Fahrenheit:
http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Aluminium

Germanic melts at even higher temperatures, but suffer from other problems at such temperatures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic

The space shuttle survives temperatures of over 3000F on re-entry using Germanic technology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_thermal_protection_system

To give you an idea of how high temperatures a ceramic can take see the following and its 3000 C (5432 F) Temperature (Usable up to about Mach 7):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_diboride
The Mach 7 reference is in this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_reentry#History.27s_most_difficult_atmospheric_entry
\

[14thColony]

58. Uhhhh...what?

Perhaps I'm missing the point, but you seem to be going to great lengths to prove that the Chinese can't do something they and several other countries have already done. The DF-21 is a proven and tested design. It has gone up, and its RV has come down without turning into slag in the process.

Mach 10 equates to 3.43 km/sec, as compared to IRBMs and ICBMs which are going about 4 km/sec in reentry (about Mach 12), so these two longer-range classes of missiles experience slightly higher thermal shocks on reentry than the DF-21 would. But they can survive the thermal shock because they're only in the really dense lower atmosphere for a few seconds, and the entire flight from the top of the atmosphere (at 100km) to impact is about 2min for typical velocities; too short a time to melt anything. Otherwise we wouldn't have had ICBM RVs back in the 1950s well before modern ceramics and other such advanced materials were developed.

So Mach 10 seems to be a pretty normal speed for the reentry vehicle to be traveling, unless I've missed your point.

[happyslug]

74. Mach 10 in space is not much of an achievement, no friction

As to re-entry, if you read the site I posted, most reentry work by using some sort of buffering using air and then rapidly reducing its speed to below Mach 1. Thus it is a very short time period. This missile, to be combat effective have to operate close to the surface, so they will be easily detected and with modern computers during the calculation shot out of the sky using Phalanx cannons as their near their targets. The advantages of speed is lost if you have to a long distance to travel. Thus this is an effective weapon in the South China Sea and the Sea of Japan, but much less effective in the Pacific Ocean itself.

My point was this weapon is to push the US Carriers out of the Sea of Japan and the South China Seas. In that regard a mach 4 or 5 missile is fast enough, and at such speeds you can get a ceramic cover to protect the warhead from the excessive heat produced on the warhead at that speed. If this is a high trajectory weapon, we have had radar to detect Mortar and Artillery shells since Vietnam to detect such fires within seconds of they being launched. With more modern computers and detection devices such high trajectory weapons will be detected just as fast. The way to defeat such radars is to fire at a low level so detection is hard, either the radar does not go that close to the grown, or the grown itself blocks the radar, providing time for the missile to get close to the target before detection. To do that you need a missile that goes close to the surface and with that requirement you have to address the issue of heat for a prolong period of time. Now we are not talking about hours but it is more then the few minutes even the space shuttle endures heat when it re-enters the atmosphere.

Just an observation of the combat environment of the last 40 years, anything operating above 600 feet in the air will be detected as soon as it reaches that attitude. To avoid detection you have to fly below that attitude so the other side can NOT intercept the weapon, shoot down the weapon, or just get out of its way. At that level you have the most air and thus the most friction caused by air. One way around this is a missile with a high but less then Mach 1 Speed for most of its range (Thus permitting less fuel to be carried and used) and then a Mach 5 or higher speed only in its terminal mode i.e. at the last 50 or so miles. The Ceramics used on the Shuttle could do that but you will need a break through in heat Resistance material to do higher speeds for longer periods of time. A break through I do NOT see coming (Might but I would NOT bet on it).

Just comments on this type of Missile and modern Combat environment. Very useful to force the US Carries into the Pacific proper but less effective once the Carriers are in the Pacific. People forget the first Battleship- Carrier fight was in 1940 during the German Invasion of Norway, the German Battle cruiser SUNK the Carrier for the Carrier waited to long to recover its planes, permitting the Battleship to move close enough to sink it with its guns. In the North Sea the Battleship was still supreme in 1940 and would remain so till the end of the war (As long as the Battleship had some sort of Air Cover, but in the long winter nights Battleships were more effective then Carriers). On the other hand in the Pacific the Battleship quickly fell to second place for the range of its guns could NOT compete with the range of the Carriers and as long as the Carriers had room to maneuver the carriers could launch wave after wave of planes at the Battleship well staying out of range of the Battleship's guns.

I bring up the Battleship -Carrier conflict of WWII for its show one of the problem with Naval Warfare, that is to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of various weapons you have to accept that the strengths of a weapon can become weaknesses (and vica-versa) if the weapon is place in the wrong (or right) combat environment. In Europe and the North Sea, the Battleship was still supreme (The US understood this as late as the Summer of 1946 when the US sent the Battleship Missouri off the coast of Greece to help the US supported side in the Greek Civil War. The US did not send a Carrier, but a Battleship for its guns could operate 24 hours a day (Carriers planes were not quite ready to do that till the 1950s, at which point the US finally retired its non-Iowa Class Battleships). In the Pacific the Carrier had room to maneuver and were supreme by 1942 (if not 1941 i.e. before Pearl Harbor). In the Atlantic where surface to surface action was infrequent after 1941 the Carriers were slowly withdrawn, but the Battleships stayed on and engaged in action primary near the coast lines. The same can be made of this high speed missiles, in the Sea of Japan and the South China Sea these weapons can provide a fast attack on any carriers operating in those areas today. In the Pacific itself, such weapons have no cover to reduce the detection time and thus less effective. My point was to show not only that these weapons are effective, but that they have limited effectiveness in the open ocean. Yes, these weapons are much like the WWII Battleships, effective in areas of limited maneuverability and where enemy forces can engage you as you detect them not long after you detect them. On the other hand in areas where you can maneuver and can detect the enemy while before they can engage you, the Carriers will still be supreme. Given time to detect such missiles, the Carriers can be protected, you can maneuver the Carrier out of the weapons way (or even move a Destroyer into the weapons way to make sure the weapon does NOT reach the Carrier), you can intercept it with a missile or if it gets to close to the Carrier you can shoot it down with a short range anti-missile system (Like the Phalanx).

[ItNerd4life]

92. Dang, nicely done. I wonder how many people are actually reading this.

You also hint at moving the destroyer in front of the carrier. All of our carriers are in battle groups and surrounded by destroyers and frigates and such just so they protect the carrier.

Interesting discussion.

[The Stranger]

31. Apparently, "the size of this missle" -- called the "Dong Feng" -- is creating a "panic."

Holy phallic meanings everywhere!

[Turbineguy]

44. Maybe they need a name change

Hung Dong

[The Stranger]

52. Magnifique!

[bhikkhu]

97. Hung Dong Bang?

[lovuian]

35. carriers are obsolete

all Iran has to do is buy ONE and the Kitty Hawk is gone

now that is a reality check isn't it

[bhikkhu]

68. Its a developement, but carriers are already vulnerable

In a war with any power better equipped than Saddam carriers are likely to keep their distance, as China and Russia have had weapons out on the market for awhile that could take them down fairly reliably. The difference hear is not that it can destroy aircraft carriers, but that it can destroy them from such a great distance. Bound to happen, sooner rather than later.

[Bigmack]

38. You guys are missing the point...

We've got to... excuse me... WE'VE GOT TO BUILD A COUNTER-WEAPON!!1111 NEVER MIND HEALTH CARE, THE INFRASTRUCTURE, OR GLOBAL WARMING, WE NEED TO BUILD A BIGGER MILITARY!!111

Deep... dark... :sarcasm: intended.

[depakid]

55. UAV's

[Bigmack]

80. UAV's? Why not health care and infrastructure repair?... here! nt

[depakid]

84. Fear of the other

and resource depletion.

[Pavulon]

61. Were good. ICBM and SLBM tipped with Nuclear weapons

are the counter system. This weapon would be the opening or closing act in a nuclear war that would reduce the population of china by 60 % or so. 3000 megatons of response would be used.

[Bigmack]

79. Jesus Fucking Christ! Dr. Strangelove lives!..... nt

[Nihil]

86. Now, now ... don't go spoiling it for him ...

... he must be nearly ready to shoot his load there as CinC of the
Strategic PC Nuclear Command ... your comments could make him go
all limp and dribbly instead!

:freak:

[kiranon]

88. Is HARP the answer? Who knows? n/t

[Holy Moly]

39. Panic not

Panic not, mah fellow fearless Amurkhans,
but have faith. The awesome power of our almighty patriotic prayers will save us from mere mach 10 missiles.
For God art on our side and shalt
ever always be on our side,
unto eternity,
or unto the Second Coming,
or unto the Tribulation,
or unto the Rapture,
or until Obama drones Osama,
whichever shalt cometh first.
For God shalt surely patriotically smite down those terrifying unchristianized commie missiles before they can striketh any of our almighty sacred super carriers, no?

[Pavulon]

62. MIRV is a motha fucker..

the use of this weapon would set the sun on the population of china.. The response would be thousands of warheads.

[14thColony]

65. US nuclear doctrine disagrees with you

You honestly think the US would launch a nuclear attack on China in response to China using a conventionally-armed anti-ship ballistic missile to sink an aircraft carrier in the open ocean? Sink one US warship with 5,000 sailors on board and you seriously think we would vaporize Chinese cities in response? No way on earth.

I'll do you one better: they could drop a conventional ballistic warhead into downtown LA and our retaliation would not be nuclear. This is nuclear policy 101 - you only reply in kind, especially against another nuclear power.

[Pavulon]

66. NPR classifies those ships

as strategic assets and the only way china would attack one is right before or during a nuclear war. Policy dictates you respond asymmetrically. That would mean sinking the ssbn subs we are following right now and launching nuclear weapons.

You have it backwards.

[14thColony]

70. You are all over the shop here!

But I mean that in nothing but the nicest way!

In post 64 you state that carriers are "Strategic Nuclear Assets." But as a matter of policy US carriers have not sailed with nuclear weapons aboard since 1992. Just because they CAN carry nukes, and have planes that CAN employ nukes, does not make them strategic nuclear assets any more than every F-16C is a strategic nuclear asset just because it can carry a B-61 gravity bomb. Strategic assets, YES, strategic nuclear assets, NO, since they don't actually carry them.

"The only way china would attack one is right before or during a nuclear war." - let us clarify that this is your opinion and nothing more. An entirely plausible scenario based on the events of 1996 could go like this: China declares its intentions to seize Taiwan and builds up its naval and air forces across the Taiwan Straits. We send a couple of carrier like we did in 1996. For whatever reason, things get nasty and the carriers end up launching airstrikes against Chinese naval installations along the coast, or against amphibs crossing the straits -- maybe we do it to pre-empt them, maybe we got fired on first, whatever. China decides they're in too far to pull out now, and they need to neutralize the US carriers in order to be successful. They launch a salvo of DF-21 ASBMs which sink one carrier and badly damage the other, forcing it to retreat. With no more carriers to interfere, the Chinese continue their operation to secure Taiwan. At no point do they launch nukes or even consider it. A conventional response to a conventional threat.

But in your view, China would say "fuck it" and immediately go nuclear even though conventional weapons had done the job? For what possible purpose besides playing a giant game of "I wonder what I'll mutate into in the post-apocalypse desert"? Their objective was already met, why go nuclear? And go nuclear on what? They'll blast US cities because...they sank our carrier? There would be no reason to escalate in this scenario.

And for sinking a US carrier, you believe we would vaporize (dozens? scores? hundreds? ALL?) Chinese cities even though they had not actually used a nuke and had no clear intention to do so? For 5,000 sailors we would lose a couple dozen US cities to their counter-strike, but you're certain that's what we would do? Over one bloody carrier?

Sorry, but I have never read, been taught, nor experienced anything in my career concerning US nuclear doctrine that would lead me to believe we would initiate a thermonuclear nuclear exchange for the loss of one or even two carriers to a conventional weapon. Perhaps you have different experiences, and perhaps you are right. If you are, then I'm amazed we and the Soviets didn't vaporize each other a few times over given some of the mistakes and errors that were made in the Cold War.

[Pavulon]

72. Dont remember any Soviet attacks on american ships

we explicitly did not target ships supplying the NVA with weapons in hanoi harbor because they were russian. I will repeat my earlier and current statement. Any nation USING an ICBM to sink us carrier(s) will be in the middle or beginning of a nuclear war. Simple as that. In your scenario a weapon with a ballistic apogee is useless. China has no interest in an open war conventional or nuclear.

Errors are not an act of war.

[14thColony]

85. The limitations of complex conversations via posts...

I've got a feeling if you and I sat down over a cup of coffee and explained our positions to each other in detail we'd probably end up seeing that we're not too far off from each other. Unfortunately it's just too hard to do this way. Nonetheless it was an interesting exchange and your views were well-taken.

[Pavulon]

96. Agree, and I certainly hope

an agreement could be made to spin down active weapon systems around the world.

[rollingrock]

78. Well, thank God the lunatics in the Bush administration

are no longer in charge.

[Bigmack]

81. You need :sarcasm: on your post...

seems like a lot of the same thinking is kicking around... in D.C. and in DU, too.

[2Design]

42. when you are a country with a lot of wmd's others want to protect themselves too

the bigger and better weapons to kill - when will it stop

[jayfish]

47. Translation:

"Please keep funding SDI"

Yours truly,
The Military Industrial Complex.

[DainBramaged]

53. Please keep funding everything......

They should be concentrating on the potential for Alien attacks and asteroid collisions.

[Furry Dance]

54. The source

The original article about the "Chinese kill missile" can be found here: http://www.usni.org/forthemedia/ChineseKillWeapon.asp

[harry_pothead]

57. Carlin was right - missiles are shaped like dicks.

[hack89]

59. Now if they can find a way to detect and target carriers at sea. nt

[jobendorfer]

67. maybe I'm missing something

Guys in fighters and fighter-bombers were killing carriers a long time ago.
See: Battle of Midway

Okay, so this thing flies faster than a manned fighter.

The increase in risk seems rather incremental, to me.
This thing doesn't do anything that the Chinese Air Force can't already do, if it had a mind to.
(Yes, carrier groups have formidable defenses. But you can only carry so many SAMs and so much gatling ammo.)

J.

[14thColony]

71. Yes, you are missing quite a lot.

[jobendorfer]

91. okay: enlighten me, maybe I'll learn something

There's lots of ways to kill carriers:
submarines, remotely piloted torpedos, mines, aircraft attacks, antiship missiles, ad endless nauseaum.
Here's one that flies far and fast. What makes it so much more dangerous?

J.

[14thColony]

94. Okay

Although you are pretty well-informed as it is.

Imagine a carrier battle group's defenses as a donut centered on the carriers. Anything entering that donut-shaped zone is in serious trouble, as the carriers and their escorts are optimized to kill anything in that zone, whether aircraft, anti-ship missile, or submarine. With a modern USN carrier battle group, I wouldn't bet a dollar on any aircraft surviving long enough to release its weapons, and even then even the fastest anti-ship missiles would not be a tremendous challenge to shoot down, given how many different platforms would get a shot at them as they flew the 30, 60, or 100 nautical miles from their release point.

But there's a big cone-shaped dead zone - the donut's hole - that few of the battle group's defensive weapons can effectively engage into. Some can, like the SM-2 anti-air missiles, especially when fired from the AEGIS-equipped escorts. But even then the incoming ballistic kill vehicles (there will be more than one) are moving at extremely high velocity, executing evasive maneuvers to confuse the fire control computers trying to track them, and potentially deploying decoys to further confuse things. Descent for a typical reentry vehicle from 100km to impact is about 2min - not a heck of a lot of time to sort all that out and get off enough SM-2s to destroy all the kill vehicles. Add to that that a well-planned attack will involve targeting all the AEGIS vessels as well, and the carriers' defenders might be too busy trying to save themselves to protect the CVs.

And one hit might well be all she wrote, unlike for most torpedoes, bombs, and cruise missiles. A cone-shaped dart of hardened steel moving at that velocity could conceivably punch straight through a carrier and out the bottom. I have no idea the forces that would be exerted on impact, but I could imagine the energy released being enough to even buckle the ship itself. In any event what's left of the crew is going to be hard-pressed to keep that ship afloat.

[Vidar]

76. Good for them, since we are the main threat to world peace.

[rollingrock]

77. That is true, unfortunately

Unlike both Russia and China, which have signed "no first strike" accords, the US reserves the right to launch unilateral pre-emptive nuclear (and/or conventional) strikes against any opponents. According to current US nuclear doctrine, this includes the right to strike against non nuclear states, and to use nuclear weapons against states who are not engaged in any form of military hostilities with the US.

Your statement isn't just hyperbole. The US is the only major power since Nazi Germany to maintain a first strike policy...and they have carried it out in the case of Vietnam, Iraq, etc. World War 3 will be started by the US.

[proteus_lives]

83. Yeah, because China is so kind and pure.

Wait, what?

:eyes:

[Vidar]

89. They suck, but we are responsible for far more wars & coups.

[ItNerd4life]

93. Too bad you don't have any facts to back up your statement. nt

[New Dawn]

82. We need to get out of Taiwan immediately. BTW, aircraft carriers are already "obsolete"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0np6B33YM30

[zonkers]

90. Either China dismantles those missles or we flood the market with U.S. Treasuries. So there.

[JPZenger]

95. "we're going to need a bigger ship"