Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

[jacobdcoates]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

I agree with your conclusion that it is about saving the ABM development $$$.


But a Pershing II missile is a short range ballistic missile(range initially of ~900miles) and it terminal velocity is about 4000mph, a respectable speed no doubt, But nothing like an ICBM where terminal velocity can hit 20,000 mph. More over the Pershing II missile used a very basic radar it simply matched a radar signal against a pre-stored map of its pre assigned target. and can be accommodated with in the relatively low heat environment of the Pershing II missiles delivery system(compared to MRBM or ICBM's.). The Pershing I&II is properly characterized as a SRBM. The supposed anti ship missile weapon system developed by the Chinese would be a MRBM and depending on the apogee of the the particular missile can reach terminal velocity of 10-12,000 mph, which is vastly more heat the the Pershing missile will ever endure.

[jtabeb]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

I have always wondered about the prospects of this approach. Caveat, I know nothing about warfare. Does this work, or is it on the drawing board?

It worked on the Pershing II ICBM, it took the CEP down from 2000 feet in the pershing I to 120 feet on the Pershing II.

Yes it works, been around for years, tried, tested , and validated technology.

[jtabeb]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

The Tungsten Kinetic Energy Weapons system have been Design, Developed, and Scrap as far as my knowledge goes.




"Highly accurate CEP<100ft Radar Mapping terminal guidance has been available for decades."- for cruise missiles, not ICBM or MRBM.

.

Not correct, see terminal guidance for the Pershing II ICBM (actually a SRBM)

120 Feet CEP, improved from over 1200 feet CEP on the Pershing I. (Yes, I know the numbers, I'm in the AIR FORCE, this is public data BTW)

[jtabeb]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

Ulimately this argument is academic......it's likely far less about GENUINE military capability and more about saving ABM $$$ programs.

True 'dat!

[jtabeb]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

I agree with your conclusion that it is about saving the ABM development $$$.


But a Pershing II missile is a short range ballistic missile(range initially of ~900miles) and it terminal velocity is about 4000mph, a respectable speed no doubt, But nothing like an ICBM where terminal velocity can hit 20,000 mph. More over the Pershing II missile used a very basic radar it simply matched a radar signal against a pre-stored map of its pre assigned target. and can be accommodated with in the relatively low heat environment of the Pershing II missiles delivery system(compared to MRBM or ICBM's.). The Pershing I&II is properly characterized as a SRBM. The supposed anti ship missile weapon system developed by the Chinese would be a MRBM and depending on the apogee of the the particular missile can reach terminal velocity of 10-12,000 mph, which is vastly more heat the the Pershing missile will ever endure.

Dude, we have MIRVs, they are guided and they sit on ICBMs, don't see your engineering argument about heat dissapation holding up.

Read up on the SCRAM, they covered the thing in a rubber coating that burned away as the missile flew (this is a air dropped weapon of course), thereby keeping the heat load with-in tolerance of the guidance package. That is a very old design, BTW.

I mean we have GPS Guided 155mm howitzer shells now, impossible a decade ago.

[jacobdcoates]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

I was in the navy, so I know the numbers too. The MIRV's on a missile are pre-preprogrammed prior to launch for a specific target. I never claim ICBM or MRBM have no electronics which would be silly. In order to qualify as a missile it must have some form of guidance, otherwise it is a rocket. I only stated that they do not have radars (more properly they do not have search and/or target acquisition radars), although simple radars are employed on SRBM's, the proposed Chinese Weapons is an MRBM. MIRV's do not have radars they have stellar inertia guidance(star maps). MIRV's on a ICBM are packaged on the BUS(which has the guidance sensors) which feeds the data to the MIRV's prior to separation from the BUS after it has exited the atmosphere. Ultimately we are talking apple, oranges and lemon as the developed technologies and physical limitations of SRBM, MRBM and ICBM are different, while they do employ the same basic technologies(rocket motors and some form guidance)

yes you are correct MIRV's they do use ablative shielding, as I mentioned earlier.

Ultimately the supposedly NEW Chinese weapons is justification for another large expensive defense project or continuation of one, to keep the defense contracts in business through some rough time, it been done before and will be done again.

[jtabeb]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

I was in the navy(Electronic Warfare), so I know the numbers too. The MIRV's on a missile are pre-preprogrammed prior to launch for a specific target. I never claim ICBM or MRBM have no electronics which would be silly. In order to qualify as a missile it must have some form of guidance, otherwise it is a rocket. I only stated that they do not have radars more properly search and target acquisition radars). MIRV's do not have radars they have stellar inertia guidance(star maps). Ultimately we are talking apple, oranges and lemon as the developed technologies and physical limitations of SRBM, MRBM and ICBM are different, while the do employ the same basic technologies(rocket motors and guidance)

yes they do use ablative shielding on MIRV as I mentioned earlier.

My point is that precision guidance (GPS, RADAR) has already been developed and deployed operationally on ballistic missile platforms. So it is not a leap of faith to project the technical feasability of the chinese system in question.

(very feasable, IMHO)

[jacobdcoates]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

I agree that it might be technically feasible for the US, Russia and maybe even Japan to do it, as for the Chinese I have still have my doubts about their ability to homegrow the technology to do it, at least right now. they are catching up fast though.

[reallife]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

Here's an interesting article on how the Soviets (and perhaps Chinese) may have obtained quiet propeller technology:
http://www.japanlaw.info/lawletter/april87/fdf.htm

I remember the Toshiba incident well. I have never bought another Toshiba item (knowingly) since 1987. I vote with my feet whenever possible. :p

[Yaowarat]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

It was only a matter of time....https://www.usni.org/forthemedia/ChineseKillWeapon.asp

As a Naval Reserve officer this concerns me greatly, but this should disturb every citizen. If one of our carriers was attacked by an ASBM, I am certain that we would retaliate with profound devastation of the attacking nation. The carriers are considered 'sovereign territory' and are absolutely critical to forward projection of US power and defense of the homeland. This is a very disturbing development.....:eek:

I've got an idea that will keep us safe:

Stop sending warships to the coastline of China.
This is a very "disturbing" practice.

[c1ue]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd...ill-die/all/1/

I’ve been saying for a long time that aircraft carriers are just history’s most expensive floating targets, and that they were doomed.
But now I can tell you exactly how they’re going to die. I’ve just read one of the most shocking stories in years. It comes from the US Naval Institute, not exactly an alarmist or anti-Navy source. And what it says is that the US carrier group is scrap metal.

The U.S. Navy, Stuck With Its Own Harpoon

All day I’ve been thinking about the Navy and the fact that it has no defenses at all against ballistic missiles. The main point, the one I was trying to make in my last story, is that when something comes along like this and you’re tempted to say, “Well, they must have thought of that already, they must have some defense in mind…”-when you start talking like that, just slap yourself and remember all the other military traditions that kept going long after anybody with sense knew they were finito.

The most obvious example is European heavy cavalry trotting into longbow fire again and again. Crecy demonstrated that knightly charges were suicide against the longbow in 1346. But the French aristocracy had so much invested in prancing around on their damn steeds that it took another demonstration, at Agincourt in 1415 to even start to get them thinking about it. I’m no math wiz but I think that 1415 minus 1346…yup, that’s 69 years between catastrophes.

Lessons learned? None.

These dodos always have one thing in common: whether it’s knights charging with lances on very expensive horses or top gun brats like McCain zooming onto carrier decks in history’s most expensive aircraft, you’ll always find that the worst, most over-funded services are always the ones where the rich kids go to show their stuff.

Seriously: why are there aircraft carriers? For asses like John McCain to crash on. Why do they keep getting funded long after they’ve been shown up? The same reason knights were galloping around pretending that the longbow hadn’t turned half their friends into pincushions: because it was a way of life for the richest and dumbest people in the country and they weren’t about to let it go.

In other words, the Harpoon does a last-minute transformation from wave-skimmer to ballistic missile. If you diagrammed its flight path, seen from the side, You’d get a capital “P” lying on its back, with the loop of the “P” being the pop-up maneuver.

The reason the Harpoon was designed to hit the target from above rather than the side is simple: a ships defenses are configured to stop planes (and missiles, even though they don’t work against missiles and everybody knows it) coming in diagonally or horizontally. To repeat that sentence again–and I’m going to keep repeating it till everybody realizes what it means–”ships currently [just like in 1977 when the Harpoon entered service] have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.”

So we have the Navy’s own weapons system testifying against it: way back in Carter’s time the Navy bought a weapon that was designed to hit ships like a ballistic missile, yet now, forty years later, USN ships have no defense against ballistic missiles.

It gets worse. The Navy didn’t even want the Harpoon at all. It was only adopted because after seeing Soviet-made anti-ship missiles destroy the Israeli destroyer Eilat in 1967, a few of the more honest R&D guys at the Pentagon forced the Navy to shop for their own model. The Navy-remember, they’re just like the French heavy cavalry brass of the late 14th century, trying real hard not to think about the real world-didn’t like the idea of anti-ship missiles at all. They were the equivalent of the longbow: unmanned, longrange, un-chivalrous weapons, and you couldn’t drink with them at the officer’s club.

But the Eilat sinking was so embarrassing it forced a few hungover sober moments. Here’s the pride of the Israeli navy, the INS Eilat, formerly HMS Zealous, doing what surface ships do best: lookin’ good and being completely useless. Yes, useless. I’m sick of softplaying it and I’ll say outright: any surface vessel bigger than a patrol boat is useless scrap iron, and the story of the Eilat proves it.

It’s October 21, 1967. A few months after Israel’s big stomp of the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies in the Six Day War. The Eilat, all 1700 tons of it, has an easy mission: gunning its engines back and forth in front of Port Said to intimdate the locals. Why not? It’s the “war of attrition,” a sort of lukewarm war between Israel and Egypt, a little sniping, the odd bombing, nothing much. The Eilat is just there to say “Nyah nyah,” basically, which is about all big surface vessels are good for anyway, but what the Hell, it’s 1967, gas is still about 25 cents a gallon, and Israel is victorious everywhere, what could go wrong?

This: two Egyptian missile boats-small craft carrying big bad weapons, the only sort of surface craft that make any military sense-come out of the port and fire Styx missiles (SS-N-2). The Eilat was hit by between two and four Styx, depending on whose story you read, and sank very quickly. 47 of the crew died, and 41 were wounded. That’s an awful lot of casualties when you consider that the IDF lost less than a thousand soldiers taking all of Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Especially because the guys on the Eilat died for nothing, just showing off.

[vanvaley1]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

Maybe I've misread an article some time ago but wasn't a retired US aircraft carrier stationed as a target of a missile attack exercise back east? Couldn't find out if there were any results announced.

I tend to agree with your assessment that the aircraft carrier ain't the most defensible object in the water. It can be found relatively easy and any sustained attack of more than a few missiles oughta be able to sink it or make it useless rather quickly.

They're pretty. They project an image of power. Power to do what? Can't ya wreak just as much damage from a flotilla of subs on an infrastructure as ya can with these large floating cans? But I wonder how potent they really are when up against a determined foe using ingenuity and surprise against sloth and tradition as ramrods of defense.

Their only purpose seems to be to deliver a limited number of airplanes to isolated areas where we can't or aren't allowed to build airfields in certain theatres of operation.

My father was a career Navy man so I'm not against the Navy or a peacenik as I enlisted during the Vietnam war. But I'm tired of wasteful spending by the military, the congress, and the corporations that run this country who expect its citizens to pick up the bill and volunteer their bodies for maiming and death to satiate corporate and military fantasy appetites.

[jacobdcoates]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

I prefer to get to get my defense analysis for some place other that a Russian online rag with overt political overtones. The example of the Eilat is over 40 years old, anti-ship missile technology has progress considerably since then. We have CIWS, Rolling Airframe Missiles, SM2&3, high speed 5" artillery and other passive and active counter measures. In the Eilat's time there simple was no way to shoot down or decoy anti-ship missiles. Same for the Brits in the Falkland War, which is why the Developed the Goalkeeper weapons system for anti-ship missile and they learned not to build their ships completely out of aluminum, Because aluminum ships burn to the waterline when you catch them on fire.

While is is true that subs will always have the first strike advantage and considerable advance afterward due to there inherent stealthiness. They are not the end all and be all of naval warfare. They have their place just like every other piece of equipment. Carrier are not expected to survive on there own these days, which is why we have battle groups the cruisers and destroyers and frigate are there to protect the carriers. In navy doctrine the frigates are the first to be sacrificed in the event of war, then destroyers then the cruisers.

[c1ue]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

Jacob,

You again show your pathetic ignorance.

Exiled Online was so 'pro-Russian' that it had to leave Russia and set up operations in Panama.

EO has consistently and constantly picked on Putin, Medvedev, Russian Oligarchs, etc etc.

As for the War Nerd - he absolutely can be wrong, but as a dork from Fresno, California he hardly has an axe to grind vs. the US military.

As for your so-called rebuttal, note that the missiles in question were SS-2: the first generation of missiles. Similarly the Exocet wasn't top of the line in the Falklands era.

Sure, there has been progress made on anti-ship missile defense technology.

But we've not yet had real tests of these.

The performance of anti-missile systems like the Patriot aren't very encouraging; SCUDs are very slow yet success rates against SCUDs seem to be quite low.

Either way - the point was that the original article pointed out that there are no existing US Navy defenses against a ballistic missile system. You failed to counterpoint that - instead choosing to point at defenses against other types of missiles.

As for the 'sacrificing' a frigate to save the carrier - not sure that helps if there is a nuclear warhead on the missile. Unless the spacing is in the order of miles - in which case I'm not sure how much defense against submarines there is.

[occdude]

Re: Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

I don't know what one of these missiles costs but it cant be that much compared to an aircraft carrier. I think we need to be VERY careful about projection of power.

The Chinese again are showing their superior knowledge of economics by devoloping a low cost, efficient countermeasure to a ponderous western elephant. I think when a country "gets into the economic zone of thinking" they truly do become great in ALL aspects because they get it. The "it" being that efficiency is paramount, doing more with less is key and that "cause and effect" are principles that should run a peoples thinking.

Resources are scarce and have to be adequately deployed despite individual preferences and a one missile to carrier ratio is pretty devastating, even if it took a hundred missiles to one carrier.

The Chinese are on the ascendence. I don't take any joy in that statement, but they sure look a lot like we used to look like. One can only hope we rediscover what truely made us great and to pursue those principles again.