Is this system all its cracked up to be? If not, what is the point of spending billions of dollars on aircraft carriers, if they can be sunk by China or any country able to buy, steal, develop or simply receive from the Chinese similar technology? If these missiles are mounted on a submarine, would carriers be safe to use anywhere?
With all the military bases around the world, are carriers really a sound investment? If the era of the aircraft carrier group is waning, what military doctrine will replace it?
They’ve got to find the carrier first. The article doesn’t indicate the range of the missile, but if the aircraft carrier has to be only a little bit further off-shore then that’s manageable.
There may be no good defense NOW (a claim I always find highly dubious anyways).
There will certainly be one soon.
There will always be a need for force projection, and that is what keeps Aircraft Carriers a going concern. However, the nature of that beast may change. I keep hearing a lot of talk about smaller craft, loaded with many more drone craft…
I am convinced that if a big naval shooting war broke out (which would most likely have been during the Cold War between the Russian and NATO navies) that there wouldn’t be very many non-submarine vessels afloat after about a year. CVs have been vulnerable for many years now, but rarely have any of America’s enemies been in a position (tech-wise and/or force-wise) to take advantage.
What I want to know is how is it that China hopes to get any kind of missile within a carrier’s defense grid to hit it? Carriers are protected by all kinds of anti-aircraft systems, including high-powered cannons that would shred an incoming missile.
Carriers don’t operate in isolation. They’re surrounded by ships that exist for the sole purpose of sinking gloriously while defending the carrier. These missiles stand a very good chance of being eliminated on the way in or eaten by a picket ship on purpose.
I’d say that the aircraft carrier isn’t the floating coffin, it’s the destroyers, frigates and cruisers that surround it that are likely going to die so the carrier doesn’t.
The DF-21D (CSS-5 Mod-4) Anti-ship ballistic missile has a range of about 1900 miles, which is greater than the operating range of an F/A-18 Hornet.
It’s a balistic missile which means unlike a cruise missle like the Tomahawk, it travels into space and then reenters the atmosphere to strike it’s target. Exactly like a SCUD missile.
We already have systems that have been proven to shoot down ballistic missiles in flight under combat conditions (ie the Patriot missile) and even more advanced systems are under development.
As Tristan pointed out, with 2/3 of the world covered in H20, the need for a mobile platform for projecting force will not go away. But I do think the nature of warfare will change significantly over the next several decades. Large aircraft carriers (and their battlegroups) are expensive and can only be in one place at a time. Manned fighter aircraft are becoming increasingly obsolete. But countries still like the awe inspiring size and flexibility of the carrier as a capital ship. The US is already designing the Gerald Ford class (CVN 78) to replace the Nimitz class.
Another idea I’ve heard thrown about is the concept of an “arsenal ship”. Esentially it is a relatively small, possibly remote controlled ship with hundreds of vertical missle tubes for firing cruise missiles and whatnot. This concept is currently represented by the conversion of four Ohio class ballistic missle subs (SSBN) into guided missile subs (SSGN) carrying 154 cruise missiles as well as options for deploying UAVs, SEAL teams, various sensors and electronic warfare packages and other fun stuff.
Well they don’t just light and shoot them off like a bottle rocket.
I was responding to Le Jacquelope’s question (which upon review appears to be more about how the missile would get through the Phalanx/SeaRam/SeaDart net). The answer, of course, is that the Phalanx and other ship defense systems probably aren’t very effective against next-generation low-trajectory anti-ship missiles.
I’m assuming that we would just destroy China’s ability to fire the missiles by using tactical ICBMs or similar on the launch sites, and then send in the carriers.
There has always been talk of the Chinese or other nations, Russian and Iran for example, developing these so called “Aircraft Carrier Killers”, in all reality these missiles are just normal missiles with bigger payloads, and in some cases slightly modified guidance systems to deal with carrier defense platforms. Missiles like the P-500 Bazalt, the main armament on the Slava Class Guided Missile Cruiser of the Russian Navy, has been hailed as one of these aircraft carrier killers. In reality, it’s a slow, lumbering giant of the missile family, easily killed by the variety of CIWS weapon systems the USA and it’s allies has to offer.
The basic operation and capabilities of a modern US Navy Strike Group.
The air defense capabilities of a carrier strike group make it impervious to nothing but the most sophisticated anti-ship missiles in the world. Below the water line attacks are fruitless due to the Phalanx and Sea RIM CIWS defense. Terminal missile attacks, where missiles basically hit vertically, are somewhat more plausible as an attack, but don’t hit below the crucial waterline, only damaging the superstructure. Missile attacks aren’t very successful on any ship, unless the other side has exploited an obvious vulnerability on the other ship, mainly since many ships outside of the US navy, have somewhat limited CIWS capabilities, opening them to missile attacks. I’d say that the tiered, layered defense system of the Carrier Strike Groups, provides a somewhat insurrmountable odds against a threat like that. The implicit vulnerability in all CIWS systems however, is how it manages multiple targets. You can still flood and overwhelm even the most sophisticated CIWS systems with overwhelming numbers of in flight missiles, using different attack vectors and launch vehicles. Nothing is safe, but the carrier’s defense structure makes it impractical.
I don’t know much about missiles, etc. other than what I read, but my recollection is that the Patriot missile performed very poorly when Iraq was firing SCUD’s. Am I remembering wrong?
No, but it wasn’t designed to intercept Scuds. It was designed to shoot down aircraft, and adapted in 1988 to provide limited ballistic missile interception functionality. Frankly, it’s something close to a miracle that it was able to intercept Scuds at all.
IIRC the Phalanx can cover up to something like 85 degrees elevation. Or do you mean the newer missiles have some anti-anti-anti-ship missle systems? The Phalanx has been around for quite some time now so it might be pass its “cutting edge” status. I know the navy is/was working on a newer system for longer range defense but I don’t have a clue if it’s in use. Don’t have a cite for that, I just remember it has “RAM” in the name somewhere.
Trying to hit a target traveling at reentry velocity, while your projectile is going about the same speed. It’s like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet. Parabolic trajectories don’t matter, there are thousands of factors that can alter the path of the warhead. The missile needs to correct thousands of times per minute in order to hit that warhead reentering the atmosphere.
You should probably ask Stranger on a Train, but I gather the difficulty is that that the missile is going really fucking fast. That, and the missile’s radar and fuse were designed to detect aircraft sized targets, not missile-sized ones.
New anti-ship missiles come in at less than zero elevation (from the point of view of a missile fire control system located on the deck). Hard to detect and hard to shoot.
Yes, they are moving from the kinetic hit to kill policy using thousands of tungsten bullets, to a Patriot Missile like system of using kinetic kill vehicles.
It’s called the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile(RAM).
The Phalanx Replacement is called the SeaRAM. It involves using the same Electro-Optical tracking system(R2D2) and attaching the missiles instead of a Vulcan 30mm Cannon.
