BansheeOne Posted July 25, 2023 Posted July 25, 2023 Actually, most SSKs are oceanic ranged. While the Collins' are at the upper end with a stated 11,500 nm, the Type 214 is also cited with 12,000, the now-Canadian Victorias (ex UK Upholders) and Dutch Walrus with 10,000, Agosta 8,500, Kilo and Lada 7,500, etc.; for comparison, the German Type IX intended for oceanic operations in WWII had 13,500, though some Type VII with 8,500 also patroled off the US east coast. Operationally the modern boats are indeed not any faster than their predecessors though, because while they can sprint at 20-plus knots submerged, they need to run surfaced, snorkel, or travel on AIP at far lower speeds to make those ranges.
Josh Posted July 25, 2023 Author Posted July 25, 2023 6 minutes ago, TrustMe said: I'm not saying it would be easy but it would be do able. In a possible China / US pacific war I do believe given the amount of satelite's in orbit, any surface ship task force would quickly become a target for a number of different anti-ship platforms. The Russians tried to do this during the 1980's but failed but both China and the US (amongest others) now have this Ocean Mapping capability. If a satelite can get the position and bearings of a CSG pretty much soon it would come under sub / surface ship / aircraft / semi-ballistic missile AShM attack. I wouldn't like to be a seaman in those conditions. It is possible, but they have to spend about half their endurance doing it and they will have to spread their force across a large area. They will also have to come and go through the choke point of the first island chain and the deep water just beyond it which I think will be very much a USN SSN hunting ground. The SSK doesn't really have any weapons that would be compatible with a realtime satellite fix outside of being able to fire a very small salvo (4-6) of mostly subsonic cruise missiles. They could definitely use the information to reposition themselves for a more optimal intercept, but again they will be doing so at single digit speed.
Cajer Posted July 25, 2023 Posted July 25, 2023 (edited) This is assuming that no SSK are pre-positioned before the war. Especially as the initiating party would definitely be China. Additionally it’s also ignoring SSN. Regarding the satellite front, SSK can receive commands while snorkeling and position themselves better to engage over the span of a few days. SSN can just receive coordinates of all known good targets with ELF while submerged and pick the one closest to them to engage.  Otherwise I do like the arsenal ship idea. Though I imagine they would become high value targets that are looked for via satellite and would likely get a few hypersonic or semi ballistic missiles tasked onto it. So unless they are waiting until most of those are exhausted before coming into theater, they maybe quickly taken out just like carriers Edited July 25, 2023 by Cajer
Josh Posted July 25, 2023 Author Posted July 25, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, Cajer said: This is assuming that no SSK are pre-positioned before the war. Especially as the initiating party would definitely be China. Additionally it’s also ignoring SSN. They would almost certainly start out there, if they felt that’s where they wanted to operate. That doesn’t solve the long trip home or the shorter time on station. A D/E boat is still endurance limited whether it’s at war or not. Flooding your boats into the area 1-2 weeks ahead of time is also likely to be noticeable and taken as a statement of intent. EDIT: But yes, the PLAN can use D/Es that way if they want to. But making them transit that long and disperse over a wider area still dilutes their effectiveness. Operating that far out and throwing long range cruise missiles down range still degrades the threat. An escort would still be necessary. </EDIT>  The nuke boats are far fewer in number and far noisier in operation.  1 hour ago, Cajer said: Regarding the satellite front, SSK can receive commands while snorkeling and position themselves better to engage over the span of a few days. SSN can just receive coordinates of all known good targets with ELF while submerged and pick the one closest to them to engage. Indeed, assuming the target moves along a predictable path for the SSKs. The nuke boats are fast enough and not endurance limited so they could just close with the target until they acquired it passively. Unsure if China uses ELF but presumably within their means; any meaningful info would likely still arrive via satellite. That said, it isn’t a sure thing that NOSS/SAR/EO satellites will be a reliable source of information in such a conflict.  1 hour ago, Cajer said: Otherwise I do like the arsenal ship idea. Though I imagine they would become high value targets that are looked for via satellite and would likely get a few hypersonic or semi ballistic missiles tasked onto it. So unless they are waiting until most of those are exhausted before coming into theater, they maybe quickly taken out just like carriers A John-Lewis class variant as I propose would likely cost less than an FFGX. The missiles are already built and paid for, with fairly reasonable cost upgrade kits being applied. Edited July 25, 2023 by Josh
Cajer Posted July 25, 2023 Posted July 25, 2023 (edited) I’ve done performance modeling for a SAR satellite before, and they are extremely good. Assuming the Chinese sar constellation of 18+ satellites doesn’t get knocked out (pretty unlikely due to number and tremendous amount of debris it would generate as the US’s main asat weapon is still kinetic) there will be positions updates on ship locations more frequently than each hour. From this a list of high value target locations and vectors could be broadcast via ELF to submerged subs so that they can try converge on these. While still low in number, the latest generation of Chinese SSN are pretty quiet. Also assuming the Chinese SSK have 8-10k nm range, going 1k nm out isn’t going to effect their time on station greatly. Pre-positioning isn't likely to be any more of a give away than: mobilizing large portions of your reserves, assembling a huge amount of ships/ground units for an amphibious landing, or moving most of your aircraft to costalish airbases. I was more referring to the arsenal ship proposals with 200 missiles not a 80 missile one.  I think making a bunch of 80 or even 40 missile load shifts that are completely autonomous may make sense. This way you get distributed lethality at very low cost especially as manning requirements are a large portion of the ships life cycle cost. Also if they are cheap/numerous enough, you can just continuously cycle them back home for replenishment/use them ferry missiles around/replenish your traditional ship’s missile stocks Edited July 26, 2023 by Cajer
Josh Posted July 26, 2023 Author Posted July 26, 2023 8 minutes ago, Cajer said: I’ve done performance modeling for a SAR satellite before, and they are extremely good. Assuming the Chinese sar constellation of 18+ satellites doesn’t get knocked out (pretty unlikely due to number and tremendous amount of debris it would generate as the US’s main asat weapon is still kinetic) there will be positions updates on ship locations more frequently than each hour. I question whether the US ASAT response is limited to kinetic for starters, though I would agree that the US likely won’t kill satellites if the Chinese don’t first. But IMO it’s almost certain that the US has a non kinetic kill capability. I can dig into that more when I have a keyboard. I also question how effective a solar powered satellite radar at 300 miles /500km can be in a SAR mode in an electronically stressed environment. I’ve no doubt they are perfectly accurate in peacetime, but any ship can easily overpower its signal just with white noise. kilowatts one way with inverse fourth power vs megawatts in the other at only the inverse power. It will give away the position of the jammer, but it will preserve the identity of the ship and possibly anything in its immediate vicinity. Also airborne jamming doesn’t seem completely impractical; if nothing else the MQ-4 seems like an ideal platform for wide area satellite service jamming below (GPS) and satellite sensing above (SAR). Outside of jamming, it seems like even a SRBOC chaff cloud could work to conceal identity. That’s something an US coast guard cutter could do. Also potentially air delivered chaff in tactical munition dispensers randomly distributed on open ocean, or even on top AIS emitting neutral traffic, could also make the satellite radar picture even less clear. The US is also hypothetically capable of simply engaging the entire ground segment of a PRC satellite system kinetically. Not a sure thing, but B-2s armed with JASSM ERs could realistically range the whole country (with a lot of risk, admittedly). It’s not a super likely event or capability, but it’s a non zero chance particularly if the PRC were to attack US territory first. All in all, I wouldn’t take SAR sats as a high fidelity source to rely on for an extended period of time.  8 minutes ago, Cajer said: From this a list of high value target locations and vectors could be broadcast via ELF to submerged subs so that they can try converge on these. My understanding of ELF in USN usage was it was only to change ROE or signal to go to periscope depth. Very short character strings. But that should not be problematic in open ocean even if true. The bigger problem is that ELF is still depth limited.  8 minutes ago, Cajer said: While still low in number, the latest generation of Chinese SSN are pretty quiet. Also assuming the Chinese SSK have 8-10k nm range, going 1k nm out isn’t going to effect their time on station greatly. Pre-positioning isn't likely to be any more of a give away than: mobilizing large portions of your reserves, assembling a huge amount of ships/ground units for an amphibious landing, or moving most of your aircraft to costalish airbases. Fair enough, but the wider search area and return trip still applies. Also, now you have less boats inside that range and no quick way to reposition them. Or you have to split your boats across all of this area out to a thousand miles. IMO, if satellites actually can track ships, leave that range band to ballistic missiles. If it was me.  8 minutes ago, Cajer said: I was more referring to the arsenal ship proposals with 200 missiles not a 80 missile one I’m not pro a dedicated warship for the task; I think needs can be met with a cheap existing production line that builds auxiliaries.
Burncycle360 Posted July 26, 2023 Posted July 26, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, Cajer said: I think making a bunch of 80 or even 40 missile load shifts that are completely autonomous may make sense. This way you get distributed lethality at very low cost especially as manning requirements are a large portion of the ships life cycle cost. Also if they are cheap/numerous enough, you can just continuously cycle them back home for replenishment/use them ferry missiles around/replenish your traditional ship’s missile stocks Under what context? How precisely do you envision these autonomous vessels operating? Within a task force of manned ships for line of sight command and control while being protected by the task force's ASW / ASuW and AAW assets? Under this concept of operations the vessels don't need redundant sensors or self defense suites, so you might actually get something approaching "cheap". Or do you envision these operating completely separate from manned ships, on its own? If the former, there's no reason not to have some manning (during peacetime or wartime) for basic upkeep and propulsion maintenance and operation, especially if you're amongst manned ships anyway. If operating independently, I would first say why is it necessary to operate independently (what mission are they fulfilling where they shouldn't be around other ships), what does it do for self protection, and how do you justify leaving hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons and presumably necessary self defense radar and sonar technology unsecured? Furthermore, even if we make a convincing case for an autonomous LUSV in wartime, why would it need to be autonomous at all in peacetime? And if we concede an optionally manned vessel that is routinely lightly manned except for high threat operations, then what happens to that crew on peacetime deployments where conflict breaks out unexpectedly? Are they evacuated? If so, by what asset? Finally, I would posit that they aren't going to end up being cheap at all, because you're introducing a higher developmental risk novel concept of operations (the LUSV) into a known inefficient and corrupt procurement system, that even at the concept of operations stage relies entirely on immature technology and a baseline of network surety which may be spotty in a near-peer conflict unless you are LOS anyway. And if it isn't a near peer conflict, the whole distributed lethality premise is moot, the Taliban aren't using HGVs. All that said, as far as I know we don't replenish VLS at sea, even if the technical capability to do so is there, and even so why would you bring the replenishment missiles on specialized unmanned ships rather than regular resupply vessels? If you are using LUSV to bring replenishment missiles into the theatre of operations, why would you need to replenish the traditional combatants at all? Wasn't the whole point of LSUV being a silo sow to bring extra Mk41 to the fight? I realize the Navy is pushing hard for USVs but this is nonsensical. If the fight is going to happen over the ECS and SCS, and the carriers are operating outside the first island chain and sending aircraft into the fray from a standoff distance, what need do you have of LUSV here? Why should any surface combatants enter the ECS/SCS during the initial phases of the conflict when aircraft and SM-6 umbrellas can extend deep into it from safely outside the first island chain? The only thing that even ostensibly threatens a CSG from here is a notional ASBM or HGV and even then disrupting the killchain is going to be top of mind every step of the operation, and even then there are multiple CSGs in the theatre, plus the USAF, allied nations, plus submarines, plus SAGs, plus USMC EABOs, and so on. The only realistic shot the Chinese have at check-mating the whole CSG paradigm is to go nuclear and try to nail a strike group that way, in which case the point is moot and we respond in kind. Any LUSV under this circumstance is just cluttering up the task force formation to bring additional VLS to the fight that should have gone on the ships themselves are irrelevant anyway. The only reasonable cases for USVs, IMO, are for abnormally high risk tasks in an especially risk averse environment. Examples would include: -A 12m class USV daughtercraft aboard all major surface combatants to provide anti-mine escort in littoral chokepoints as well as long duration ASW gap coverage (ie, Seagull USV) -Outer screen ASW pickets with silly range (10,000 nmi+) so they don't burden the task force logistically, and carrying a serious VDS, as these would be first to eat a torpedo (ie, Sea Hunter USV) -Minesweepers -Radar pickets projecting forward (especially non LO designs, but rendered less critical by AEW, Global Hawk, etc assets) In all cases, the appropriate use case involves the USVs operating under the umbrella of protection for manned ships, every one of them. Finally, and for the third time, we already have distributed lethality now in the form of eleven notional supercarrier strike groups. In contrast, nations like Russia, UK, France, etc do not. The cheapest, lowest risk solution that yields the greatest benefits is an arsenal as previously described.  Edited July 26, 2023 by Burncycle360
Burncycle360 Posted July 26, 2023 Posted July 26, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, Cajer said: I’ve done performance modeling for a SAR satellite before, and they are extremely good. Assuming the Chinese sar constellation of 18+ satellites doesn’t get knocked out (pretty unlikely due to number and tremendous amount of debris it would generate as the US’s main asat weapon is still kinetic) there will be positions updates on ship locations more frequently than each hour. Why would you have to physically destroy them to neutralize them? These assets exist in predictable orbits with limited DeltaV capability (unlike something like X-20) and are tracked 24/7, with EO and radar suites emitting on known wavelengths (predominantly C-Band). Is there any reason to believe they cannot be dazzled and jammed by ground or sea based assets capable of tapping into orders of magnitude greater power? Edited July 26, 2023 by Burncycle360
Cajer Posted July 26, 2023 Posted July 26, 2023 (edited) 2 hours ago, Josh said: I question whether the US ASAT response is limited to kinetic for starters, though I would agree that the US likely won’t kill satellites if the Chinese don’t first. But IMO it’s almost certain that the US has a non kinetic kill capability. I can dig into that more when I have a keyboard. I also question how effective a solar powered satellite radar at 300 miles /500km can be in a SAR mode in an electronically stressed environment. I’ve no doubt they are perfectly accurate in peacetime, but any ship can easily overpower its signal just with white noise. kilowatts one way with inverse fourth power vs megawatts in the other at only the inverse power. It will give away the position of the jammer, but it will preserve the identity of the ship and possibly anything in its immediate vicinity. Also airborne jamming doesn’t seem completely impractical; if nothing else the MQ-4 seems like an ideal platform for wide area satellite service jamming below (GPS) and satellite sensing above (SAR). Outside of jamming, it seems like even a SRBOC chaff cloud could work to conceal identity. That’s something an US coast guard cutter could do. Also potentially air delivered chaff in tactical munition dispensers randomly distributed on open ocean, or even on top AIS emitting neutral traffic, could also make the satellite radar picture even less clear. The US is also hypothetically capable of simply engaging the entire ground segment of a PRC satellite system kinetically. Not a sure thing, but B-2s armed with JASSM ERs could realistically range the whole country (with a lot of risk, admittedly). It’s not a super likely event or capability, but it’s a non zero chance particularly if the PRC were to attack US territory first. All in all, I wouldn’t take SAR sats as a high fidelity source to rely on for an extended period of time. It seems like the assumption being made here is that it's feasible to permanently jam a large 50+ sat SAR constellation (including civilian launches as China is planning to co-opt ROLO ferries already these are likely co-optable also). Emphasis on the parament as a lapse in jamming (depending on how their SAR sats are designed) is enough to spot some formations, not to mention that these have some ability to maneuver out of the way of directional jamming. The only way to be sure is physical destruction of the entire or portions of the satellite either through kinetic, laser (I'm not aware of any US laser based ASAT programs), or hacking. With the numbers involved doing so kinetically would be a very bad idea for space debris. SRBOC chaff cloud can be filtered out easily from decluttering algorithms. I'm not familiar with what the Chinese up/downlink facilities look like. But with the ability to co-opt civilian satellites there's like quite a few options. Also it's quite likely that there's the ability to receive but not transmit with much more common smaller dishes.  2 hours ago, Josh said: Fair enough, but the wider search area and return trip still applies. Also, now you have less boats inside that range and no quick way to reposition them. Or you have to split your boats across all of this area out to a thousand miles. IMO, if satellites actually can track ships, leave that range band to ballistic missiles. If it was me. SSK can also be used to engage resupply ships/convoys that may not warrant HSV/ballistic missiles. There's quite a few straits with higher traffic that SSK could be concentrated in where later joining forces might also have to traverse. They wouldn't just be evenly distributed.  2 hours ago, Josh said: My understanding of ELF in USN usage was it was only to change ROE or signal to go to periscope depth. Very short character strings. But that should not be problematic in open ocean even if true. The bigger problem is that ELF is still depth limited. Fair enough, I was just imagining a simple repeated list of coordinates and vectors which combined with decades of signal processing/read out electronics improvements should be receivable while fully submerged though not at a great depth. 2 hours ago, Burncycle360 said: Under what context? How precisely do you envision these autonomous vessels operating? Within a task force of manned ships for line of sight command and control while being protected by the task force's ASW / ASuW and AAW assets? Under this concept of operations the vessels don't need redundant sensors or self defense suites, so you might actually get something approaching "cheap". Or do you envision these operating completely separate from manned ships, on its own? If the former, there's no reason not to have some manning (during peacetime or wartime) for basic upkeep and propulsion maintenance and operation, especially if you're amongst manned ships anyway. If operating independently, I would first say why is it necessary to operate independently (what mission are they fulfilling where they shouldn't be around other ships), what does it do for self protection, and how do you justify leaving hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons and presumably necessary self defense radar and sonar technology unsecured? Furthermore, even if we make a convincing case for an autonomous LUSV in wartime, why would it need to be autonomous at all in peacetime? And if we concede an optionally manned vessel that is routinely lightly manned except for high threat operations, then what happens to that crew on peacetime deployments where conflict breaks out unexpectedly? Are they evacuated? If so, by what asset? Finally, I would posit that they aren't going to end up being cheap at all, because you're introducing a higher developmental risk novel concept of operations (the LUSV) into a known inefficient and corrupt procurement system, that even at the concept of operations stage relies entirely on immature technology and a baseline of network surety which may be spotty in a near-peer conflict unless you are LOS anyway. And if it isn't a near peer conflict, the whole distributed lethality premise is moot, the Taliban aren't using HGVs. All that said, as far as I know we don't replenish VLS at sea, even if the technical capability to do so is there, and even so why would you bring the replenishment missiles on specialized unmanned ships rather than regular resupply vessels? If you are using LUSV to bring replenishment missiles into the theatre of operations, why would you need to replenish the traditional combatants at all? Wasn't the whole point of LSUV being a silo sow to bring extra Mk41 to the fight?  To being with, I'm not anti-arsenal ship. I'm just pointing out some vulnerabilities. In either independent or within task force operation, there's no reason for them to be manned at all. Most of them can simply sit at base most of their life being maintained by shore crews and surged if hostile intent is detected. With a few being used as training ships for their operators. As let's be real China is the only opponent where these ships would be needed and this would vast reducing wear and tear/costs. In my vision they would they would be fast minimal frill ships with just data-link capability + point defense almost always operating with escort(s) or part of a formation. Once the munitions are expended they could rapidly return to base to pick up more with or without an escort (as they are now lower value having depleted mostly everything of value on them) however returning with one. The US is currently working on regaining the at sea VLS resupply capability and these ships can aid in that, resupply the primary surface combatants. Using these as replenishment vessels will likely be cheaper (due to unmanned) and allow for usage of the missiles during the whole journey back and during the replenishment process. Using these as a replenishment vessel adds an additional capability and reduced cost. Plus with VLS systems you can also use these to replenish air defense missiles in addition to launching ASM's. Unless you just want the hulls to just be sitting around uselessly after they've expended their payload.  2 hours ago, Burncycle360 said: I realize the Navy is pushing hard for USVs but this is nonsensical. If the fight is going to happen over the ECS and SCS, and the carriers are operating outside the first island chain and sending aircraft into the fray from a standoff distance, what need do you have of LUSV here? Why should any surface combatants enter the ECS/SCS during the initial phases of the conflict when aircraft and SM-6 umbrellas can extend deep into it from safely outside the first island chain? The only thing that even ostensibly threatens a CSG from here is a notional ASBM or HGV and even then disrupting the killchain is going to be top of mind every step of the operation, and even then there are multiple CSGs in the theatre, plus the USAF, allied nations, plus submarines, plus SAGs, plus USMC EABOs, and so on. The only realistic shot the Chinese have at check-mating the whole CSG paradigm is to go nuclear and try to nail a strike group that way, in which case the point is moot and we respond in kind. Any LUSV under this circumstance is just cluttering up the task force formation to bring additional VLS to the fight that should have gone on the ships themselves are irrelevant anyway. The only reasonable cases for USVs, IMO, are for abnormally high risk tasks in an especially risk averse environment. Examples would include: -A 12m class USV daughtercraft aboard all major surface combatants to provide anti-mine escort in littoral chokepoints as well as long duration ASW gap coverage (ie, Seagull USV) -Outer screen ASW pickets with silly range (10,000 nmi+) so they don't burden the task force logistically, and carrying a serious VDS, as these would be first to eat a torpedo (ie, Sea Hunter USV) -Minesweepers -Radar pickets projecting forward (especially non LO designs, but rendered less critical by AEW, Global Hawk, etc assets) In all cases, the appropriate use case involves the USVs operating under the umbrella of protection for manned ships, every one of them. Finally, and for the third time, we already have distributed lethality now in the form of eleven notional supercarrier strike groups. In contrast, nations like Russia, UK, France, etc do not. The cheapest, lowest risk solution that yields the greatest benefits is an arsenal as previously described.  Seeing as the Chinese have land based naval aviation and ASM's that out range the SM-6 along with a large number of surface combatants, they do have the ability to bring the fight out. Aircraft carriers are the least distributed version of lethality. They are huge expensive showcases of national prestige and losing one is a large blow to both capabilities and public morale.  As such they are likely to be the primary targets for opening day hypersonic/ballistic missile strikes. In my time working for the government and talking to people in the warfare modeling groups, the idea of carrier survivability was treated with a snort. I don't think you're seeing the whole picture here. Unmanned vessels aren't only for high risk ships. They should be considered for all types of vessels where feasible as a cost reduction measure. Salaries are expensive and crew accommodations have been trending larger and larger. Additionally navies all over the world including the US Navy are having recruiting issues. Finally losing lives on ships is always unpleasant even if the ships are at "lower risk". Edited July 26, 2023 by Cajer
futon Posted July 26, 2023 Posted July 26, 2023 So how many tomahawks would it take to sufficiently knock out a PLAN vessel? Suppose a target like a Type 54A, a Type 52D, or a Type 71 LPD？ Typically torpedoes are more threatening by bunching a hole under the water. Hits on the surface of the ship may disable a system but had typically been short of a knockout. If the ship is not knocked out or outright sunk, then it can be repaired. Transport ships like LPD may look like easy targets but would one hit really be enough to cause lots of causalties to the landing forces? By being sub-sonic.. that means roughly detection by the targeted ship of an incoming tomahawk about 10km away after clearing the horizon resulting in about 40 seconds until impact. So onboard defensive measures include 3 systems. Smoke screen despensers. HQ10 on some ships like Type 52D (24 rounds) and Type 56 corvette (8 rounds) CWIS such as H/PJ-11 which looks like it means business. With these defenses, a single tomahawk probably should be assumed that it can be defeated. If the tomahawks come as a group, say 5 missiles converging at once, might the smokescreen be capable of disrupting precision aim up to all 5 five incoming missiles? If the five tomahawks approach in serial flight path, separated by say 10 seconds each prior impact, would the HQ-10 and H/PJ-11 still be able to down all five? So after considering that.. should it be assumed that there could be an average number of tomahawks needed to by pass all the defenses and then cause sufficient damage? What would that number be for each class of PLAN ships? 10 for a Type 52D? 5 for a Type 54A frigate?  etc?   If so, the number of needed tomahawks goes up exponentially. Are the stealth versions able to evade detection for some extra seconds by the targeted vessel even after clearing the horizon?
Josh Posted July 26, 2023 Author Posted July 26, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, Cajer said: It seems like the assumption being made here is that it's feasible to permanently jam a large 50+ sat SAR constellation (including civilian launches as China is planning to co-opt ROLO ferries already these are likely co-optable also). Emphasis on the parament as a lapse in jamming (depending on how their SAR sats are designed) is enough to spot some formations, not to mention that these have some ability to maneuver out of the way of directional jamming. The only way to be sure is physical destruction of the entire or portions of the satellite either through kinetic, laser (I'm not aware of any US laser based ASAT programs), or hacking. With the numbers involved doing so kinetically would be a very bad idea for space debris. It isn't easy to jam the entire constellation everywhere all at once. It is easy for any single ship to jam a single satellite when it come overhead, on its routine scheduled orbit. That jamming will make it clear to the Chinese ESM/NOSS constellation that some kind of opponent high energy jamming platform is there (some kind of enemy ship). It will not reveal what particular type of ship it is. And it is possible the USN has some kind of off board SAR jammers as well. But at a minimum, any escort or auxillary vessel has ample power to jam a SAR satellite whenever it is overhead, and the US has an absolute map of every orbit of anything larger than an wrench in orbit. You will know roughly where a formation is by the large amount of jamming; you won't know where each piece of it is. And again, simply chaff can be used instead and that can be duplicated by something as small as a tug boat. There is no way to "maneuver out of the way" of jamming. You send it down, it gets sent up to you at the speed of light. Other satellites can then locate the source of that jamming, but there's nothing a radiating satellite can do to avoid it. In fact, there's nothing a satellite can typically do to even radically change its orbit. It arrives overhead at the same time(s) every day based on its altitude and angle of inclination. There are motors to change that, but if they fired to drastically change orbit, they take orbital life off the satellite. Also the US has tracking stations all over the world, both optical and active radar. Kwalajien, Hawaii, Colorado, Florida, Accession Island, DIego Garcia, Australia, New Zealand. Any orbit change will be classified and reset evaluated inside an hour. The USAF knows where all satellites are al the time, and any changes are registered in minutes not days.   1 hour ago, Cajer said: SRBOC chaff cloud can be filtered out easily from decluttering algorithms. Give me a source for that.  1 hour ago, Cajer said: I'm not familiar with what the Chinese up/downlink facilities look like. But with the ability to co-opt civilian satellites there's like quite a few options. Also it's quite likely that there's the ability to receive but not transmit with much more common smaller dishes. The Chinese don't have very many civilian options. The US and its allies do. But more broadly my point was that the US could destroy the ground segements in China and that China has no such capability against the US: it would have to be able to engage a lot of the targets I already listed that wrap around the world.  1 hour ago, Cajer said:  SSK can also be used to engage resupply ships/convoys that may not warrant HSV/ballistic missiles. There's quite a few straits with higher traffic that SSK could be concentrated in where later joining forces might also have to traverse. They wouldn't just be evenly distributed. If we get to the point of resupply being an issue, we definitely get to the point of SSKs having to go home and come back again. Also unless you are talking about resupplying Taiwan, I don't know what straights you are talking about: its the PLAN that would have to move in and out of a lot of straights to prosecute a war against the US.  1 hour ago, Cajer said: Seeing as the Chinese have land based naval aviation and ASM's that out range the SM-6 along with a large number of surface combatants, they do have the ability to bring the fight out. This entire thread is about weapons that put a range circle at a thousand miles, far outside of SM-6 range. I don't consider the SM-6 to be a significant anti surface capability in caparison to the weapons I discussed in my opening posts. It is mid range at best, with little retargeting capability.  1 hour ago, Cajer said: Aircraft carriers are the least distributed version of lethality. They are huge expensive showcases of national prestige and losing one is a large blow to both capabilities and public morale.  As such they are likely to be the primary targets for opening day hypersonic/ballistic missile strikes. In my time working for the government and talking to people in the warfare modeling groups, the idea of carrier survivability was treated with a snort. No argument. To the extent they could remain survivable in a war with the PRC, they would have to stay outside of most missile ranges. A thousand miles should limit the threat largely to DF-26. That is a much more limited inventory compared to other PRC weapons, and targeting after the opening salvo will suffer from all of the problems I've listed if satellites are the only source of ISR. And likely at that range band, satellites are the only realistic form of ISR. Edited July 26, 2023 by Josh
Cajer Posted July 26, 2023 Posted July 26, 2023 (edited)  13 hours ago, Josh said: It isn't easy to jam the entire constellation everywhere all at once. It is easy for any single ship to jam a single satellite when it come overhead, on its routine scheduled orbit. That jamming will make it clear to the Chinese ESM/NOSS constellation that some kind of opponent high energy jamming platform is there (some kind of enemy ship). It will not reveal what particular type of ship it is. And it is possible the USN has some kind of off board SAR jammers as well. But at a minimum, any escort or auxillary vessel has ample power to jam a SAR satellite whenever it is overhead, and the US has an absolute map of every orbit of anything larger than an wrench in orbit. You will know roughly where a formation is by the large amount of jamming; you won't know where each piece of it is. And again, simply chaff can be used instead and that can be duplicated by something as small as a tug boat. There is no way to "maneuver out of the way" of jamming. You send it down, it gets sent up to you at the speed of light. Other satellites can then locate the source of that jamming, but there's nothing a radiating satellite can do to avoid it. In fact, there's nothing a satellite can typically do to even radically change its orbit. It arrives overhead at the same time(s) every day based on its altitude and angle of inclination. There are motors to change that, but if they fired to drastically change orbit, they take orbital life off the satellite. Also the US has tracking stations all over the world, both optical and active radar. Kwalajien, Hawaii, Colorado, Florida, Accession Island, DIego Garcia, Australia, New Zealand. Any orbit change will be classified and reset evaluated inside an hour. The USAF knows where all satellites are al the time, and any changes are registered in minutes not days. The SPY radars are S/X band where as many of the Chinese SAR sats are L band, meaning you won't be able to jam them with your ship. Satellite tracking currently does not work nearly as well as you think. The ground stations assume predictable paths, and when there is an orbit change it takes at minimum a few orbits for them to re-establish a good track/orbital prediction. This would be ample amounts of time to find the ships of interest. You can see that here where the current aspirational goal is under 24 hours.   Depending on the orbit, there are also points where small burns can make significant changes to orbit. Mil sats are generally designed with large amounts (compartively speaking) dV and the Chinese SAR sats are mostly freshly launched. There also other potential tricks that could be played like moving a SAR sat out of it's old orbit and another sat into that or a very similar orbit, giving you a free SAR sat until that a realized (which from what it seems would be days or weeks). 13 hours ago, Josh said: Give me a source for that. I don't think there's a source that directly states that. It's something you'll realize if you have experience with SAR.  13 hours ago, Josh said: If we get to the point of resupply being an issue, we definitely get to the point of SSKs having to go home and come back again. Also unless you are talking about resupplying Taiwan, I don't know what straights you are talking about: its the PLAN that would have to move in and out of a lot of straights to prosecute a war against the US. 1-2 concentrated missile strike against a CBG say 50+ missiles is enough to deplete most of it's missiles. So resupply will be an issue starting on day 1. It's likely that there will be late arriving forces from the UK, other US fleets, or maybe other European allies (though the latter is quite unlikely) and they may have to transit through the SCS unless they want to take the really long way around. Plus Aus seems to be a US resupply location.  13 hours ago, Josh said: This entire thread is about weapons that put a range circle at a thousand miles, far outside of SM-6 range. I don't consider the SM-6 to be a significant anti surface capability in caparison to the weapons I discussed in my opening posts. It is mid range at best, with little retargeting capability. Sorry some of those comments were not directed at you but Burncycle.  13 hours ago, Josh said: No argument. To the extent they could remain survivable in a war with the PRC, they would have to stay outside of most missile ranges. A thousand miles should limit the threat largely to DF-26. That is a much more limited inventory compared to other PRC weapons, and targeting after the opening salvo will suffer from all of the problems I've listed if satellites are the only source of ISR. And likely at that range band, satellites are the only realistic form of ISR. I have to disagree here. The Chinese have a larger than US surface fleet now and they are building up a carrier capability. That coupled with ground based naval aviation will be able to reach out 1000 miles. 13 hours ago, Josh said: The Chinese don't have very many civilian options. The US and its allies do. But more broadly my point was that the US could destroy the ground segements in China and that China has no such capability against the US: it would have to be able to engage a lot of the targets I already listed that wrap around the world. It seems that you are referring to tracking facilities rather than up/downlink. There's allot more of the latter and those can be improvised. Amateurs are even able to pull images off of weather satellites and communicate with them. Edited July 26, 2023 by Cajer
Josh Posted July 26, 2023 Author Posted July 26, 2023 16 hours ago, Cajer said:  The SPY radars are S/X band where as many of the Chinese SAR sats are L band, meaning you won't be able to jam them with your ship. Satellite tracking currently does not work nearly as well as you think. The ground stations assume predictable paths, and when there is an orbit change it takes at minimum a few orbits for them to re-establish a good track/orbital prediction. This would be ample amounts of time to find the ships of interest. You can see that here where the current aspirational goal is under 24 hours.  I don't see why you think the USN would be limited to the SPY-1 as an emitter. 16 hours ago, Cajer said:  Depending on the orbit, there are also points where small burns can make significant changes to orbit. Mil sats are generally designed with large amounts (compartively speaking) dV and the Chinese SAR sats are mostly freshly launched. There also other potential tricks that could be played like moving a SAR sat out of it's old orbit and another sat into that or a very similar orbit, giving you a free SAR sat until that a realized (which from what it seems would be days or weeks). I don't think there's a source that directly states that. It's something you'll realize if you have experience with SAR. I'm not an expert in such things so I'll concede the point. I do know that that the US maintains constant radar tracks on most everything in orbit, and that even amateur telescope satellite trackers are exceedingly hard to deceive in this regard, so the idea that a satellite would be "missing" for a week, even in the public domain, seems highly dubious to me. The only platform that has achieved anything like that recently to my knowledge is the X-37B, because it has much shorter mission life and can be refueled. 16 hours ago, Cajer said:  1-2 concentrated missile strike against a CBG say 50+ missiles is enough to deplete most of it's missiles. So resupply will be an issue starting on day 1. It's likely that there will be late arriving forces from the UK, other US fleets, or maybe other European allies (though the latter is quite unlikely) and they may have to transit through the SCS unless they want to take the really long way around. Plus Aus seems to be a US resupply location. I think it depends on the missile type. Certainly 50+ cruise missiles is not going to deplete a Burke or Tico, assuming any ESSMs. But I agree resupply will be an issue and that USN forces likely deplete their offensive and defensive weapons in the first week or two. Guam and Japan are reload points for the USN but I would not expect them to survive. Australia likely would be the closest intact location, followed by Hawaii. Note that the same problem applies to the PLAN, though have a shorter trip to re-arm. However unlike the USN, all of their re-arm points would be within Day 1 missile range if the political decision was made to interdict PLAN ships pierside.  16 hours ago, Cajer said: I have to disagree here. The Chinese have a larger than US surface fleet now and they are building up a carrier capability. That coupled with ground based naval aviation will be able to reach out 1000 miles Ground based assets can't reach to 1000 miles without tanking assets. They have old H-6 variants for this and are building a newer variant of the Y-20 to accomplish this. But their tanking operations are going to have to take place around or past the Batanes and/or Ryukus, which seems like a non trivial endeavor. Their embarked aviation is two carriers of ~20 J-16s for the immediate future, with only helos as AEW. It seems likely working up a crew to a new CATOBAR capability will take several years even after commissioning, and while that would bring a real AEW aircraft to the fleet, it is still only a single super carrier. Even more limiting, it seems likely to be limited to 4th gen fighters for the foreseeable future until the J-31 program is a production aircraft certified on the new carrier.  16 hours ago, Cajer said: It seems that you are referring to tracking facilities rather than up/downlink. There's allot more of the latter and those can be improvised. Amateurs are even able to pull images off of weather satellites and communicate with them. I'm referring to the ground control segment, which is separate from receiving terminals.
Cajer Posted July 26, 2023 Posted July 26, 2023 (edited) 2 hours ago, Josh said: I don't see why you think the USN would be limited to the SPY-1 as an emitter. You were referring to jamming onboard current ships. None of the currently deployed radars are a good candidate for L band jamming. Something new would have to be developed and deployed. Which is not likely to be simple on the AB's as they have very growth potential left. Also the DF-21/26 seems to use ELINT (on the weapon itself) to generally determine which direction to go and when it gets close enough, it turns on an active seeker/EO. If this is the case and there is a general idea of battle location, radiating at space constantly is an excellent way to cue in DF-26/21 onto you. 2 hours ago, Josh said: I'm not an expert in such things so I'll concede the point. I do know that that the US maintains constant radar tracks on most everything in orbit, and that even amateur telescope satellite trackers are exceedingly hard to deceive in this regard, so the idea that a satellite would be "missing" for a week, even in the public domain, seems highly dubious to me. The only platform that has achieved anything like that recently to my knowledge is the X-37B, because it has much shorter mission life and can be refueled. Please see THIS link where 24 hours of response is an aspirational goal, this is also assuming minimal movement of other satellites. If there is also mass movement of civilian Chinese satellites at the same time, that would make things even more difficult. As if the tracks are lost it will take both EO and ELINT to identify what that satellite is. 2 hours ago, Josh said: I think it depends on the missile type. Certainly 50+ cruise missiles is not going to deplete a Burke or Tico, assuming any ESSMs. But I agree resupply will be an issue and that USN forces likely deplete their offensive and defensive weapons in the first week or two. Guam and Japan are reload points for the USN but I would not expect them to survive. Australia likely would be the closest intact location, followed by Hawaii. Note that the same problem applies to the PLAN, though have a shorter trip to re-arm. However unlike the USN, all of their re-arm points would be within Day 1 missile range if the political decision was made to interdict PLAN ships pierside. AFAIK the USN doctrine is 2 SM's per inbound missile. So 100+ supersonic cruise missiles would be 200 missiles launched. Due to middle production (few numbers of ESSM scheulded for the next few years) the SAM missile load out per AB is ~70 missiles. Meaning that this would deplete ~3 ships worth, and this is assuming none get closer and no ships are hit/sunk. This could feasibly happen in the first day or two with the opening strikes of the war. To some extent the PLAN are more resistant as they can store some of their their munitions dispersed inland and bring them to the coast as needed, and as you mentioned the trip is much shorter <1000 miles where as US ships (if they don't want to go through any straits to Aus) have a ~4000 mile trek to Hawaii or the long way around to Australia.  2 hours ago, Josh said: Ground based assets can't reach to 1000 miles without tanking assets. They have old H-6 variants for this and are building a newer variant of the Y-20 to accomplish this. But their tanking operations are going to have to take place around or past the Batanes and/or Ryukus, which seems like a non trivial endeavor. Their embarked aviation is two carriers of ~20 J-16s for the immediate future, with only helos as AEW. It seems likely working up a crew to a new CATOBAR capability will take several years even after commissioning, and while that would bring a real AEW aircraft to the fleet, it is still only a single super carrier. Even more limiting, it seems likely to be limited to 4th gen fighters for the foreseeable future until the J-31 program is a production aircraft certified on the new carrier. That's a fair point regarding the carriers.  However regarding ground based avaition I imagine US battle groups will not be at the extreme end of tomahawk range, and would rather be 1-200 miles closer in. This may give untanked JH-7 with a 560 mile combat radius and J-16 with more range + 200+ mile YJ-12 range to reach the battle groups. Additionally there is the option Chinese strategic aviation.  If the tomahawk had a 1200 mile range, it would be much more safe. 2 hours ago, Josh said: I'm referring to the ground control segment, which is separate from receiving terminals. I've known people who've had uplink (not downlink) to satellites with what amounted off the shelf DIY equipment. So that's not an issue. Plus existing numerous civilian satellite uplink facilities (oftentimes a few dishes on top of a commerical building) would also need to be hit. Edited July 26, 2023 by Cajer
Josh Posted July 27, 2023 Author Posted July 27, 2023 (edited) 15 hours ago, Cajer said: You were referring to jamming onboard current ships. None of the currently deployed radars are a good candidate for L band jamming. Something new would have to be developed and deployed. Which is not likely to be simple on the AB's as they have very growth potential left. Why would the system have to be a radar? While it is true some radars are used this way, the majority of electronic countermeasures systems are separate stand alone installations. It is highly unlikely we are even aware of all the installed systems and their frequency bands. For instance the "tomb stone" installation on 7th fleet ships. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29626/shadowy-new-electronic-warfare-system-has-been-installed-on-u-s-navy-7th-fleet-ships I consider it unlikely that the USN simply ignored developing any ECM capability against SAR satellites given their utility and the fact that the PRC has had such for at least a decade. EDIT: it is worth noting that the USN is definitely known to jam GPS signals on exercises (or even accidentally) and that is an L band signal, so some system in their possession clearly has that capability. It is possible it was added to variants of the SLQ-32 system or simply is a stand alone system. https://theaviationist.com/2020/01/23/u-s-navy-now-jamming-gps-over-six-states-and-125000-square-miles/ https://fieldlogix.com/news/navy-accidentally-jammed-gps-system-in-san-diego/   15 hours ago, Cajer said: Also the DF-21/26 seems to use ELINT (on the weapon itself) to generally determine which direction to go and when it gets close enough, it turns on an active seeker/EO. If this is the case and there is a general idea of battle location, radiating at space constantly is an excellent way to cue in DF-26/21 onto you. I've no information on the DF-21/26 guidance. If you can site an English source, I would appreciate it. In any case, I agree the PRC has no shortage of NOSS satellites for detecting ship emissions, so jamming will definitely give away location. SAR jamming would be only to deny ship ID and perhaps obscure an adjacent ship. I agree the use of chaff or smoke based radar obscurants, particularly air delivered, would be preferable.  15 hours ago, Cajer said: Please see THIS link where 24 hours of response is an aspirational goal, this is also assuming minimal movement of other satellites. If there is also mass movement of civilian Chinese satellites at the same time, that would make things even more difficult. As if the tracks are lost it will take both EO and ELINT to identify what that satellite is. While tracking everything in orbit might be difficult, tracking the several dozen most important satellites in LEO during a conflict probably takes a lot less resources. If nothing else, ships and aircraft should easily detect the active signal from a SAR satellite even if spaceforce has issues re-establishing an orbit. 15 hours ago, Cajer said: AFAIK the USN doctrine is 2 SM's per inbound missile. So 100+ supersonic cruise missiles would be 200 missiles launched. Due to middle production (few numbers of ESSM scheulded for the next few years) the SAM missile load out per AB is ~70 missiles. Meaning that this would deplete ~3 ships worth, and this is assuming none get closer and no ships are hit/sunk. This could feasibly happen in the first day or two with the opening strikes of the war. Do you have a source for the bold underlined above? There are thousands of SM-2s in inventory to the best of my knowledge and a quick wiki search indicates a similar number of ESSM produced in total (including all customers, though surely the USN is the largest). https://www.baesystems.com/en-aus/what-we-do/evolved-sea-sparrow-missiles  15 hours ago, Cajer said: That's a fair point regarding the carriers. However regarding ground based avaition I imagine US battle groups will not be at the extreme end of tomahawk range, and would rather be 1-200 miles closer in. This may give untanked JH-7 with a 560 mile combat radius and J-16 with more range + 200+ mile YJ-12 range to reach the battle groups. Additionally there is the option Chinese strategic aviation.  If the tomahawk had a 1200 mile range, it would be much more safe. I'm not aware of either type deploying the YJ-12. While USN ships might not be operating exactly at the thousand mile mark, it also is true that any aircraft launched for the PRC would be somewhat inland of the coast and likely not flying in a straight line either. It seems unlikely a heavily loaded strike aircraft would fly directly over Taiwan or the outlying Japanese islands; even after bombardment there would be a residual SAM threat, possibly even stray aircraft. The only significant gap through Taiwanese and Japanese airspace is only ~100mi/150km wide between Okinawa and Miyakojima. The southern route over the Batanes likely would be even longer depending the target location.  15 hours ago, Cajer said: I've known people who've had uplink (not downlink) to satellites with what amounted off the shelf DIY equipment. So that's not an issue. Plus existing numerous civilian satellite uplink facilities (oftentimes a few dishes on top of a commerical building) would also need to be hit. I think the control segment of recon satellite is probably more complicated than that but I'll concede the point. It still seems likely the US has ASAT options short of engaging ground control stations. Edited July 27, 2023 by Josh
Cajer Posted July 27, 2023 Posted July 27, 2023 (edited)  3 hours ago, Josh said: Why would the system have to be a radar? While it is true some radars are used this way, the majority of electronic countermeasures systems are separate stand alone installations. It is highly unlikely we are even aware of all the installed systems and their frequency bands. For instance the "tomb stone" installation on 7th fleet ships. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29626/shadowy-new-electronic-warfare-system-has-been-installed-on-u-s-navy-7th-fleet-ships I consider it unlikely that the USN simply ignored developing any ECM capability against SAR satellites given their utility and the fact that the PRC has had such for at least a decade. EDIT: it is worth noting that the USN is definitely known to jam GPS signals on exercises (or even accidentally) and that is an L band signal, so some system in their possession clearly has that capability. It is possible it was added to variants of the SLQ-32 system or simply is a stand alone system. https://theaviationist.com/2020/01/23/u-s-navy-now-jamming-gps-over-six-states-and-125000-square-miles/ https://fieldlogix.com/news/navy-accidentally-jammed-gps-system-in-san-diego/  It's not appropriate to speculate on items on which there are absolutely no information, otherwise the conversation will be extremely unproductive. We should only work with known systems. The Russians had a few SAR sats at the end of the cold war yet we still haven't heard of anything designed to jam those on ships despite it being 30+ years later. I wouldn't assume this is a developed capability. GPS signals are orders of magnitude lower power, and civilian GPS receivers are not at all designed to be jam resistant. Additionally jamming SAR is more difficult than normal radars due to it's high processing gain. If you want to jam a SAR sat you will want a highly directed signal with substantial compute capable of some amount of target tracking at which point you basically have a radar. 3 hours ago, Josh said: I've no information on the DF-21/26 guidance. If you can site an English source, I would appreciate it. In any case, I agree the PRC has no shortage of NOSS satellites for detecting ship emissions, so jamming will definitely give away location. SAR jamming would be only to deny ship ID and perhaps obscure an adjacent ship. I agree the use of chaff or smoke based radar obscurants, particularly air delivered, would be preferable. Communication with an object moving that quickly due to plasma issues is going to be a bit difficult. So it's likely that they are fully autonomous once they start reentry for the 21 and whenever the 26 starts going fast enough. During this time it's going to be much easier to pick up radar emissions from ships than communicate. So it's likely that they are using emissions as mid phase guidance. Once you have ship ID's at the beginning of the war, you should be able to generally keep track of which battlegroups are which with solely emissions, especially as carrier battlegroups will always be launching AWACS which provides a way to track which groups have carriers in them. However some amount of trickery might be possible. As mentioned before radar obscurants will not work against SAR and are also not persistent. 3 hours ago, Josh said: While tracking everything in orbit might be difficult, tracking the several dozen most important satellites in LEO during a conflict probably takes a lot less resources. If nothing else, ships and aircraft should easily detect the active signal from a SAR satellite even if spaceforce has issues re-establishing an orbit. They specifically state that a rocket body which broken into 5 pieces took a few days to track down, and that's just 5 pieces which wasn't at all intended to deceive. 3 hours ago, Josh said: Do you have a source for the bold underlined above? There are thousands of SM-2s in inventory to the best of my knowledge and a quick wiki search indicates a similar number of ESSM produced in total (including all customers, though surely the USN is the largest).  https://influenceofhistory.blogspot.com/2018/06/missile-loadouts-arleigh-burke-1991-2018.html This is now a few years old, so may not be totally accurate anymore. But is a good estimate of what AB's and other ships generally carry. I wouldn't expect more than 90 missiles even with an ESSM heavy loadout. With 72 AB + 17 Ticos + 3 Zumwalts + 10 Nitmiz class at (16/16/16/24) ESSM a piece that's over half of the 3000 ESSM built without accounting for reloads, training missiles (fired and training rounds), expired munitions, or foreign sales. Seeing as 45 were built in 2019 and 60 in 2020 with some of these going to foreign sales there's not allot of them to go around. One also has to bear in mind that due to shorter ESSM range, you don't get follow up shots on supersonic missiles + the shorter range means the time to launch vertically and turn becomes significant when the target is going mach 3/4. So a heavy ESSM loadout is likely not ideal. 3 hours ago, Josh said: I'm not aware of either type deploying the YJ-12. While USN ships might not be operating exactly at the thousand mile mark, it also is true that any aircraft launched for the PRC would be somewhat inland of the coast and likely not flying in a straight line either. It seems unlikely a heavily loaded strike aircraft would fly directly over Taiwan or the outlying Japanese islands; even after bombardment there would be a residual SAM threat, possibly even stray aircraft. The only significant gap through Taiwanese and Japanese airspace is only ~100mi/150km wide between Okinawa and Miyakojima. The southern route over the Batanes likely would be even longer depending the target location. https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-s-lethal-new-yj-12-anti-ship-missiles-why-their-deployment-to-the-south-china-sea-worries-the-western-bloc This implies that both the JH-7 can carry the YJ-12 and that the J-16 and other types will be certified too. Either way, it seems that unless there's a physical limitation, it would be foolish to not certify other aircraft to carry it. I wouldn't expect them to fly over Taiwan. It is a longer trip. However, I could also see a flight between Taiwan and the Phillippes tanking over the northern part of the SCS while still under or close to land based SAM coverage. I just don't think it's reasonableto only expect ballistic/hypersonic missiles if you stay around 1000 miles out. 3 hours ago, Josh said: I think the control segment of recon satellite is probably more complicated than that but I'll concede the point. It still seems likely the US has ASAT options short of engaging ground control stations. We aren't aware any capabilities beyond kinetic or hacking, and hacking is a big black box. So I don't think speculating is very useful.  The purpose of these posts is to not have people discount the Chinese threat/capabilities as many do. AFAIK most modern wargames against a Chinese opponent have not ended favorably. Edited July 27, 2023 by Cajer
Josh Posted July 27, 2023 Author Posted July 27, 2023 13 minutes ago, Cajer said:  It's not appropriate to speculate on items on which there are absolutely no information, otherwise the conversation will be extremely unproductive. We should only work with known systems. Fair enough, we'll leave it at that. 13 minutes ago, Cajer said: The Russians had a few SAR sats at the end of the cold war yet we still haven't heard of anything designed to jam those on ships despite it being 30+ years later. I wouldn't assume this is a developed capability. I don't believe the RORSATs were specifically SAR, if that is the system you are talking about. Also they were nuclear powered, which means they probably had a much stronger signal than anything on orbit now. But in any case, we'll agree to drop this subject for lack of information. 13 minutes ago, Cajer said: GPS signals are orders of magnitude lower power, and civilian GPS receivers are not at all designed to be jam resistant. Additionally jamming SAR is more difficult than normal radars due to it's high processing gain. If you want to jam a SAR sat you will want a highly directed signal with substantial compute capable of some amount of target tracking at which point you basically have a radar. Agreed, but my point is that there definitely is some kind of L band transmitter on USN platforms that we are unaware of. So while I can't point to a USN system that does exist, it seems likely one does since there is no technical reason it could not. 13 minutes ago, Cajer said: Communication with an object moving that quickly due to plasma issues is going to be a bit difficult. So it's likely that they are fully autonomous once they start reentry for the 21 and whenever the 26 starts going fast enough. During this time it's going to be much easier to pick up radar emissions from ships than communicate. So it's likely that they are using emissions as mid phase guidance. I'm not sure under what conditions ionization blackout occurs or at what frequency bands. But I would guess that anything that prevented receiving target updates would also likely block receiving radar transmissions. Also it is hard to imagine an ESM receiver with directional capability could be installed in platforms this small to work under those conditions. If anything I would expect a midcourse update to be easier to arrange, and I suspect they are capable of that before re-entry at a minimum. For a semi-ballistic RV, that would be sufficient - the flight time until terminal acquisition must be a handful of minutes post apogee. I think even the DF-26 has a 15 minute flight time total at max range; an update before re-entry should be all that it needs to put the target into the terminal seeker basket so long as the initial aim point was not inaccurate.  13 minutes ago, Cajer said: Once you have ship ID's at the beginning of the war, you should be able to generally keep track of which battlegroups are which with solely emissions, especially as carrier battlegroups will always be launching AWACS which provides a way to track which groups have carriers in them. However some amount of trickery might be possible. That seems like a rather dubious assumption to me. 13 minutes ago, Cajer said: As mentioned before radar obscurants will not work against SAR and are also not persistent. I must have missed part of one of your previous posts, why would an obscurant not work? As for persistence, given the short overhead time of a satellite, that doesn't seem especially difficult. 13 minutes ago, Cajer said: They specifically state that a rocket body which broken into 5 pieces took a few days to track down, and that's just 5 pieces which wasn't at all intended to deceive. I'll concede the point since I don't know what space forces tracking capabilities are. Certainly a radiating satellite should not be any harder to track than an E-2, even by the task force itself. 13 minutes ago, Cajer said: https://influenceofhistory.blogspot.com/2018/06/missile-loadouts-arleigh-burke-1991-2018.html This is now a few years old, so may not be totally accurate anymore. But is a good estimate of what AB's and other ships generally carry. I wouldn't expect more than 90 missiles even with an ESSM heavy loadout. With 72 AB + 17 Ticos + 3 Zumwalts + 10 Nitmiz class at (16/16/16/24) ESSM a piece that's over half of the 3000 ESSM built without accounting for reloads, training missiles (fired and training rounds), expired munitions, or foreign sales. Seeing as 45 were built in 2019 and 60 in 2020 with some of these going to foreign sales there's not allot of them to go around. I wouldn't use any of that as a basis for Aegis loadouts. The link seems like supposition on the part of the author, more to demonstrate increased capability over different Flights of AB using notional missile load outs rather than being truly representative. Also I don't think every AB/Tico has been updated to carry the ESSM, and certainly the USN is under no obligation to evenly distribute them across the fleet nor leave them installed in ships tied to pier or undergoing overhaul. Certainly the very small VLASROC inventory gets heavily cross decked when ships come in and out of port. If we assume ~1000 missiles of the known 3000 manufactured to still be in operation with the USN, then it seems likely any 7th fleet Aegis ship has fairly large numbers of them when deployed. Reloads might suffer during a long conflict. 13 minutes ago, Cajer said: One also has to bear in mind that due to shorter ESSM range, you don't get follow up shots on supersonic missiles + the shorter range means the time to launch vertically and turn becomes significant when the target is going mach 3/4. So a heavy ESSM loadout is likely not ideal. Agreed, but the advantage of quad packing certainly offsets that to a degree. A "heavy" ESSM load out of 64 missiles would still leave 80 launch cells for other weapons. 13 minutes ago, Cajer said: https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-s-lethal-new-yj-12-anti-ship-missiles-why-their-deployment-to-the-south-china-sea-worries-the-western-bloc This implies that both the JH-7 can carry the YJ-12 and that the J-16 and other types will be certified too. Either way, it seems that unless there's a physical limitation, it would be foolish to not certify other aircraft to carry it. That seems like speculation to me. I've see no documented case of it being carried by anything other than H-6, and while I haven't see a documented launch weight either, it we are to believe a 200+ mile range and 500kg warhead it seems like the mass has to be > 3000lbs/1500kg, which I feel most fighters would struggle with. I could believe that J-11 has the capability but J-10 and JH-7 carriage seems very dubious. I suspect there would be a significant range penalty for carrying something with that much mass and drag in any case. 13 minutes ago, Cajer said: I wouldn't expect them to fly over Taiwan. It is a longer trip. However, I could also see a flight between Taiwan and the Phillippes tanking over the northern part of the SCS while still under or close to land based SAM coverage. I just don't think it's reasonableto only expect ballistic/hypersonic missiles if you stay around 1000 miles out. I agree they could make it there; I only was specifying tanking was necessary. 13 minutes ago, Cajer said: We aren't aware any capabilities beyond kinetic or hacking, and hacking is a big black box. So I don't think speculating is very useful. Fair enough. Food for thought: https://breakingdefense.com/2021/08/pentagon-posed-to-unveil-classified-space-weapon/  13 minutes ago, Cajer said: The purpose of these posts is to not have people discount the Chinese threat/capabilities as many do. AFAIK most modern wargames against a Chinese opponent have not ended favorably. I've no doubt both sides would be devastated in a conflict; the purpose of my orginal posts were to indicate where USN anti shipping strategy is going in the near to medium term. My posts after that only discuss specific details I disagree with.
Strannik Posted July 27, 2023 Posted July 27, 2023 Long range drones are coming. USN will need a lot more AD capabilities.
Burncycle360 Posted July 27, 2023 Posted July 27, 2023 Just wait till their cluster bombs start using drone-submunitions that do a little psyops before impacting  Â
Cajer Posted July 27, 2023 Posted July 27, 2023 (edited) 6 hours ago, Josh said: I don't believe the RORSATs were specifically SAR, if that is the system you are talking about. Also they were nuclear powered, which means they probably had a much stronger signal than anything on orbit now. But in any case, we'll agree to drop this subject for lack of information. There was Soviet SAR starting in 1987 with Kosmos-1870. 6 hours ago, Josh said: Agreed, but my point is that there definitely is some kind of L band transmitter on USN platforms that we are unaware of. So while I can't point to a USN system that does exist, it seems likely one does since there is no technical reason it could not. I agree that it's possible, but don't like assuming this capability exists when there has been no evidence nor any information regarding US efforts towards that. I did some more digging and apparently there's Chinese C band sats too. 6 hours ago, Josh said: I'm not sure under what conditions ionization blackout occurs or at what frequency bands. But I would guess that anything that prevented receiving target updates would also likely block receiving radar transmissions. Also it is hard to imagine an ESM receiver with directional capability could be installed in platforms this small to work under those conditions. If anything I would expect a midcourse update to be easier to arrange, and I suspect they are capable of that before re-entry at a minimum. For a semi-ballistic RV, that would be sufficient - the flight time until terminal acquisition must be a handful of minutes post apogee. I think even the DF-26 has a 15 minute flight time total at max range; an update before re-entry should be all that it needs to put the target into the terminal seeker basket so long as the initial aim point was not inaccurate. There's going to be orders of magnitude more power from a shipborne radar than any communications directed at the re-entry vehicle, so it's going to be a much easier task. Both types of rentry vehicles are going to be very maneuverability constrained the the terminal phase. So it's going to be very important for them to have as accurate of a track as possible before then. Additional due to plasma issues as noted before, the active seeker/EO are likely to have poor range/performance necessitating a very good track when they are activated otherwise they may fail to pick up the ships entirely. Assuming great tracking on the US side, and the ships move away right after midcourse correction (~5 minutes till impact) they can displace ~5km at 32kn. Which is possibly enough to have the terminal guidance miss picking up the target. 6 hours ago, Josh said: That seems like a rather dubious assumption to me. I must have missed part of one of your previous posts, why would an obscurant not work? As for persistence, given the short overhead time of a satellite, that doesn't seem especially difficult. There's already going to be enough mil + civ (dual use) SAR sats to ensure around the clock coverage, let alone when the full planned constellations finish in a few years. This means there will frequently be more than one sat over head so multiple angles will need to be covered which will be very difficult when ships are maneuvering and sats can move around. Additionally the radar obscurent smoke is only said to work in the 9-60 Ghz range which does not cover L/C band SAR. A more effective chaff cloud wouldn't work either as that doesn't move the with the ships and would need to be deployed in faster than sub minute intervals. 6 hours ago, Josh said: That seems like speculation to me. I've see no documented case of it being carried by anything other than H-6, and while I haven't see a documented launch weight either, it we are to believe a 200+ mile range and 500kg warhead it seems like the mass has to be > 3000lbs/1500kg, which I feel most fighters would struggle with. I could believe that J-11 has the capability but J-10 and JH-7 carriage seems very dubious. I suspect there would be a significant range penalty for carrying something with that much mass and drag in any case. I was more or less going off of that as similar sources. With a 9000 kg payload and a centerline mount, I could see a JH-7 carrying at least 1 and maybe 2 at the wing roots unless there's a structural issue we are no aware of. I would believe that they wouldn't design something that the most numerous strike craft of their naval aviation forces can't carry. 6 hours ago, Josh said: I wouldn't use any of that as a basis for Aegis loadouts. The link seems like supposition on the part of the author, more to demonstrate increased capability over different Flights of AB using notional missile load outs rather than being truly representative. Also I don't think every AB/Tico has been updated to carry the ESSM, and certainly the USN is under no obligation to evenly distribute them across the fleet nor leave them installed in ships tied to pier or undergoing overhaul. Certainly the very small VLASROC inventory gets heavily cross decked when ships come in and out of port. If we assume ~1000 missiles of the known 3000 manufactured to still be in operation with the USN, then it seems likely any 7th fleet Aegis ship has fairly large numbers of them when deployed. Reloads might suffer during a long conflict. As you said the site definitely does not account for theatre with those loadouts, but it serves as a good starting point for conversation espically as it takes into account number of procured missiles.  Every AB built during or after 1994 (57 ships) should be able to use ESSM, plus some of the older ships have received Aegis baseline upgrades including the first two ships. I know at least 11 Tico's have been upgraded to baseline 9 and 4 additional can do BMD duty (which means they can also fire ESSM). So I assume the vast majority of the fleet can use ESSM's. That's fair regarding munitions swapping but AFAIK that's limited to SM3/ASROC currently. With the current 2 SM per incoming missile doctrine 100 incoming missiles would still deplete your SM's and eat into your ESSM loadouts, and I doubt anyone would be comfortable staying in theatre with little ability to engage missiles until they are ~30 miles out. This is also assuming the best case scenario of no ships being hit or both SM's missing and requiring ESSM's to be launched 6 hours ago, Josh said: https://breakingdefense.com/2021/08/pentagon-posed-to-unveil-classified-space-weapon/ I really hope that's true. I've heard murmurs in my circles of development of space based maneuvering assets to come in close and disable enemy sats non-destructively. Maybe that's what the X-37 is for, as I don't think there's been any extremely odd new sats in orbit. 6 hours ago, Josh said: I've no doubt both sides would be devastated in a conflict; the purpose of my orginal posts were to indicate where USN anti shipping strategy is going in the near to medium term. My posts after that only discuss specific details I disagree with. I really appreciate that well thought out post on new ASM strategy. As I had always been wondering why supersonic ASM's were not being developed. It appears the answer is range, but unfortunately the 1000 mile range is quickly becoming insufficient especially with the long range drones/loitering munitions posted above. Edited July 28, 2023 by Cajer
Josh Posted July 28, 2023 Author Posted July 28, 2023 (edited) 3 hours ago, Cajer said: There was Soviet SAR starting in 1987 with Kosmos-1870. I was unaware of the system, thank you. 3 hours ago, Cajer said: I agree that it's possible, but don't like assuming this capability exists when there has been no evidence nor any information regarding US efforts towards that. I did some more digging and apparently there's Chinese C band sats too. Fair enough. 3 hours ago, Cajer said: There's going to be orders of magnitude more power from a shipborne radar than any communications directed at the re-entry vehicle, so it's going to be a much easier task. Both types of rentry vehicles are going to be very maneuverability constrained the the terminal phase. So it's going to be very important for them to have as accurate of a track as possible before then. Additional due to plasma issues as noted before, the active seeker/EO are likely to have poor range/performance necessitating a very good track when they are activated otherwise they may fail to pick up the ships entirely. Assuming great tracking on the US side, and the ships move away right after midcourse correction (~5 minutes till impact) they can displace ~5km at 32kn. Which is possibly enough to have the terminal guidance miss picking up the target. Detecting the radar seems perfectly possible, geolocating it seems like an incredibly hard task for an RV. It seems to me the Chinese have sufficient satellite communications that they can update before re-entry easily (if in fact ionization is a problem in that envelope; I don't know). I think we're in agreement that the RV likely gets a mid course update of some kind; we just have different ideas as to how. Terminal guidance I won't even guess at -not enough info.  3 hours ago, Cajer said: There's already going to be enough mil + civ (dual use) SAR sats to ensure around the clock coverage, let alone when the full planned constellations finish in a few years. This means there will frequently be more than one sat over head so multiple angles will need to be covered which will be very difficult when ships are maneuvering and sats can move around. Additionally the radar obscurent smoke is only said to work in the 9-60 Ghz range which does not cover L/C band SAR. A more effective chaff cloud wouldn't work either as that doesn't move the with the ships and would need to be deployed in faster than sub minute intervals. I'll conceed that I don't think L band is possible with smoke particles. Ku I think is the published limit and X band seemed to be the primary goal of the Pandara Fog experiment. But I don't see why chaff is unworkable given that the direction and timing of the satellite pass will be largely know, even given an on orbit burn. Even a maneuver between passes isn't going to drastically change the arrival time of a polar orbit or the angle at which it will arrive, and if nothing else a ship or aircraft further north should detect the emissions before it comes over the task force proper. Tough effective chaff use might require turning away from the wind and adjusting speed to match to extend the duration of the cover depending on weather conditions and changes to the satellite orbit altering the arrival window. It doesn't seem insurmountable to me.  3 hours ago, Cajer said: I was more or less going off of that as similar sources. With a 9000 kg payload and a centerline mount, I could see a JH-7 carrying at least 1 and maybe 2 at the wing roots unless there's a structural issue we are no aware of. I would believe that they wouldn't design something that the most numerous strike craft of their naval aviation forces can't carry. The H-6 is the principle carrier. The JH-7 already has a rather marginal range; I can't imagine strapping a weapon of that size to it. I'm going to file it under "capability there is no evidence of" unless there's a primary source or picture of it.  3 hours ago, Cajer said: As you said the site definitely does not account for theatre with those loadouts, but it serves as a good starting point for conversation espically as it takes into account number of procured missiles.  Every AB built during or after 1994 (57 ships) should be able to use ESSM, plus some of the older ships have received Aegis baseline upgrades including the first two ships. I know at least 11 Tico's have been upgraded to baseline 9 and 4 additional can do BMD duty (which means they can also fire ESSM). So I assume the vast majority of the fleet can use ESSM's. That's fair regarding munitions swapping but AFAIK that's limited to SM3/ASROC currently. With the current 2 SM per incoming missile doctrine 100 incoming missiles would still deplete your SM's and eat into your ESSM loadouts, and I doubt anyone would be comfortable staying in theatre with little ability to engage missiles until they are ~30 miles out. This is also assuming the best case scenario of no ships being hit or both SM's missing and requiring ESSM's to be launched I don't think it is remotely unreasonable to swap out ESSM or to limit SM-2 fire to shoot-look and then ESSM fire to shoot-shoot after. But the general point that a limited number of strikes could be absorbed I will agree on. I suspect most ships will expend their offensive and defensive loads inside the first week on both sides, and survivors will attempt to reload. The side that is able to accurately target the other more readily will have an initial advantage and the side that can reload faster will have a longer term advantage. China has the shorter reload path, though it seems likely the US interferes with that process if the Chinese do the same to Japan and Guam first. It also might be a little too optimistic to assume either side will have a significant surface fleet to reload in the face PRC ballistic missiles and US cruise missile armed bombers.  3 hours ago, Cajer said: I really hope that's true. I've heard murmurs in my circles of development of space based maneuvering assets to come in close and disable enemy sats non-destructively. Maybe that's what the X-37 is for, as I don't think there's been any extremely odd new sats in orbit. I think the fact that the US has declared it will not test any KE weapons is a strong indication some kind of non kinetic capability is in place. I would think the easiest mechanism would be some kind of high powered microwave emitter, but we don't know what we don't know. For the moment the US does have a couple of ABM systems that would be LEO KE candidates, though only one has been tested that way. If the PRC engaged satellites kinetically it seems likely the US would follow if that was its only ASAT capability. That would have incredibly long lasting repercussions for the world.  3 hours ago, Cajer said: I really appreciate that well thought out post on new ASM strategy. As I had always been wondering why supersonic ASM's were not being developed. It appears the answer is range, but unfortunately the 1000 mile range is quickly becoming insufficient especially with the long range drones/loitering munitions posted above. To some extent I think the USN strategy is just making the best with what they have. Tomahawk is well established system with a lot of inventory and a lot of firing platforms, MALD is a cheap, fast to produce platform that can be both bought and carried in large numbers, and LRASM is just a hotwired AGM-158B. What these systems all have in common is that they were relatively off the shelf buys with decent range that could be fielded quickly (we can throw in the SM-6 anti ship capability while we're at it). They are not the most capable AShMs, but collectively there's a lot of them in or about to be in inventory. The long term USN AShM solution is HALO, but we have no information on what form that will take and that is clearly next decade. The USAF is much better off with its HACM project, since they are less weight and size limited in what their aircraft can carry and a weapons demonstrator of similar capability and size has flown. Even that is years off though. Edited July 28, 2023 by Josh
Cajer Posted July 28, 2023 Posted July 28, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, Josh said: I'll conceed that I don't think L band is possible with smoke particles. Ku I think is the published limit and X band seemed to be the primary goal of the Pandara Fog experiment. But I don't see why chaff is unworkable given that the direction and timing of the satellite pass will be largely know, even given an on orbit burn. Even a maneuver between passes isn't going to drastically change the arrival time of a polar orbit or the angle at which it will arrive, and if nothing else a ship or aircraft further north should detect the emissions before it comes over the task force proper. Tough effective chaff use might require turning away from the wind and adjusting speed to match to extend the duration of the cover depending on weather conditions and changes to the satellite orbit altering the arrival window. It doesn't seem insurmountable to me. If you have constant coverage you'll need to perpetually deploy chaff at sub-minute intervals (as it loses velocity quickly and does not travel with the ships) and any mistakes will mean imaging of your ships. As the radars will be scanning ships or harbors most of the time. Additionally any course changes will need to be carefully planned. This will mean an absurd amount of chaff rockets. Additionally as the slant angle (the direction from which the radar is coming from) will constantly be changing the ships will have to constantly change course to deploy a wall of chaff. The fact that there will be multiple satellites overhead at times means that a wall will be impossible at time and the ships will need to be entirely enveloped in chaff which is even more difficult.  1 hour ago, Josh said: Detecting the radar seems perfectly possible, geolocating it seems like an incredibly hard task for an RV. It seems to me the Chinese have sufficient satellite communications that they can update before re-entry easily (if in fact ionization is a problem in that envelope; I don't know). I think we're in agreement that the RV likely gets a mid course update of some kind; we just have different ideas as to how. Terminal guidance I won't even guess at -not enough info. I agree the mid course correction (before re-entry) will be via satellite. However I believe there needs to be additional corrections after that before EO/active terminal guidance is activated due to both extremely limited terminal phase manurvability and like reduced sensor performance due to plasma. You don't need to precisely geolocate the ships, having rough heading/velocity and comparing that to your previous data would be extremely helpful to determine if they have changed direction. Additionally you can get rough distance data by comparing intensities and how that changes with your and their movement.  1 hour ago, Josh said: I don't think it is remotely unreasonable to swap out ESSM or to limit SM-2 fire to shoot-look and then ESSM fire to shoot-shoot after. But the general point that a limited number of strikes could be absorbed I will agree on. I suspect most ships will expend their offensive and defensive loads inside the first week on both sides, and survivors will attempt to reload. The side that is able to accurately target the other more readily will have an initial advantage and the side that can reload faster will have a longer term advantage. China has the shorter reload path, though it seems likely the US interferes with that process if the Chinese do the same to Japan and Guam first. It also might be a little too optimistic to assume either side will have a significant surface fleet to reload in the face PRC ballistic missiles and US cruise missile armed bombers. You simply don't have enough time to do shoot-shoot with ESSM if the incomings are M4 and there's more than a few. Shoot-look is the same assuming SM-6 has 200 mile range. Assuming you launch at 200 miles, by the time you assess wheatear your missile as hit and fire another one, the incoming is at 75 miles in and this is for the first missile you engage as it takes some time to launch the others. By the time assess the follow up missile, they are well under 30 miles in meaning you lose allot of your ESSM launching opportunity. Unless you fire an ESSM at it to intercept at 30 miles before before knowing the result of the second shot, potentially wasting a large portion of your ESSMs. This is also the math for the first missile engaged, it only gets worse the more missiles each ship has to engage. I guess my point is that reloads will become important after 1-2 engagements (1-2 days) and you think it will stretch out to a 3-4 days.  Either way having the now empty autonomous arsenal ships stream back to port to pick up more munitions (to refill expended SAMs from the air defense ships will be useful) they could be escorted back by late joining ships.  Fair enough on the JH-7's. 1 hour ago, Josh said: To some extent I think the USN strategy is just making the best with what they have. Tomahawk is well established system with a lot of inventory and a lot of firing platforms, MALD is a cheap, fast to produce platform that can be both bought and carried in large numbers, and LRASM is just a hotwired AGM-158B. What these systems all have in common is that they were relatively off the shelf buys with decent range that could be fielded quickly (we can throw in the SM-6 anti ship capability while we're at it). They are not the most capable AShMs, but collectively there's a lot of them in or about to be in inventory. The long term USN AShM solution is HALO, but we have no information on what form that will take and that is clearly next decade. The USAF is much better off with its HACM project, since they are less weight and size limited in what their aircraft can carry and a weapons demonstrator of similar capability and size has flown. Even that is years off though. I am a bit worried at the ability of the US to procure hypersonics quickly enough if we look at production rates for other existing missiles, not to mention the fact that they are still well in development. I wouldn't expect significant quantities for at least a decade. The lack of a terminal dash in the tomahawk will create a big problem for the US. As it allows for the Chinese to use shoot-look vs shoot-shoot meaning their air defense missiles will last much longer. Edited July 28, 2023 by Cajer
Josh Posted July 28, 2023 Author Posted July 28, 2023 11 hours ago, Cajer said: If you have constant coverage you'll need to perpetually deploy chaff at sub-minute intervals (as it loses velocity quickly and does not travel with the ships) and any mistakes will mean imaging of your ships. As the radars will be scanning ships or harbors most of the time. Additionally any course changes will need to be carefully planned. This will mean an absurd amount of chaff rockets. Additionally as the slant angle (the direction from which the radar is coming from) will constantly be changing the ships will have to constantly change course to deploy a wall of chaff. The fact that there will be multiple satellites overhead at times means that a wall will be impossible at time and the ships will need to be entirely enveloped in chaff which is even more difficult. Very well, I'll concede it would be extremely difficult to accomplish with chaff given the number of revisits the PRC can now achieve. Some kind of active emitter, ideally offboard, would be necessary. 11 hours ago, Cajer said:  I agree the mid course correction (before re-entry) will be via satellite. However I believe there needs to be additional corrections after that before EO/active terminal guidance is activated due to both extremely limited terminal phase manurvability and like reduced sensor performance due to plasma. You don't need to precisely geolocate the ships, having rough heading/velocity and comparing that to your previous data would be extremely helpful to determine if they have changed direction. Additionally you can get rough distance data by comparing intensities and how that changes with your and their movement. I don't think it possible to do in an object with those size and environmental limitations nor do I think it would be particularly necessary. We'll agree to disagree. 11 hours ago, Cajer said:  You simply don't have enough time to do shoot-shoot with ESSM if the incomings are M4 and there's more than a few. Shoot-look is the same assuming SM-6 has 200 mile range. Assuming you launch at 200 miles, by the time you assess wheatear your missile as hit and fire another one, the incoming is at 75 miles in and this is for the first missile you engage as it takes some time to launch the others. By the time assess the follow up missile, they are well under 30 miles in meaning you lose allot of your ESSM launching opportunity. Unless you fire an ESSM at it to intercept at 30 miles before before knowing the result of the second shot, potentially wasting a large portion of your ESSMs. This is also the math for the first missile engaged, it only gets worse the more missiles each ship has to engage. I'm not seeing the problem. ESSM was intended to be a point defense missile (though it has an almost area like range); engaging inside 30 miles seems perfectly reasonable. SM-2 is generally given a range of 80nm/150km, and there is no need to wait for the target to get into that range bracket - you already know exactly where the AShM is going. I think the long and medium ranged missiles could be expended 1 : 1 with the incoming (as opposed to two missiles per), and anything that misses can get a pair of ESSMs at shorter range. That should conserve medium/long range missiles to increase the number of engagements on the part of the defense. More elaborate engagement scenarios are probably possible; Aegis probably has a huge number of algorithms calculating the "travelling salesman problem" of distributing its SAMs in the most efficient yet redundant way possible, and presumably the loadouts of the Burkes support the intended engagement logic. To the original posit, 1-2 50 missile strikes probably wouldn't empty out a task force's defenses, IMO. A lone 50 missile strike against a single burke would probably survivable (assuming fairly normal failure rates) and a 100 missiles would almost certainly overwhelm it unless it was carrying almost exclusively defensive weapons or soft kill mechanisms were especially effective. Sound reasonable? I think we agree that the number of strikes a typical task force can absorb is in the mid to low single digits and we are just arguing over the exact number.  11 hours ago, Cajer said: I guess my point is that reloads will become important after 1-2 engagements (1-2 days) and you think it will stretch out to a 3-4 days.  Yes, I agree we're just not agreeing on the exact number. Though I would also argue that the number of days isn't relevant; the number strikes and weapons per strike is relevant. That could mean a TF is engaged several times in one day and dies or goes home or it could mean several different strikes are spread over a week. The dynamic is impossible to predict. My 1 week number was just a way of being vague.  11 hours ago, Cajer said: Either way having the now empty autonomous arsenal ships stream back to port to pick up more munitions (to refill expended SAMs from the air defense ships will be useful) they could be escorted back by late joining ships. I was mostly concerning myself with the existing ships in inventory now. There is no arsenal ship on the books and changes to the weapons both sides deploy in the next decade will change all of these dynamics a lot I feel, so I think we can assume what is at sea or under construction now is the fleet both sides will fight with until that fight gets rather unrecognizable to us. The only way I see the USN getting additional launch tubes outside Burke III and FFGX this decade is if the Mk70 TEU launchers are used on auxiliaries or on LUSVs. 11 hours ago, Cajer said: I am a bit worried at the ability of the US to procure hypersonics quickly enough if we look at production rates for other existing missiles, not to mention the fact that they are still well in development. I wouldn't expect significant quantities for at least a decade. There have been a number of contracts for the hypersonic industry that focus just on expanding capability of the supply chain recently. Additionally Raytheon seems to acknowledge that HACM will have to scale. If nothing else, the fact that the combustor is 3D printed should remove the engine as a bottleneck. The physical missile itself doesn't have to be that exotic of a material; it operates in the same speed envelope as some AAMs and SAMs, just for a greater amount of time. I think that program will be on time given the success of the HAWC program (and the continued work on MOHAWC in parallel) and I think it will produce a cruise missile for the USAF that can scale readily. While the US does tend to have a volume problem with its higher end PGMs, the USAF has committed to expanding JASSM production from 550 max to 850 max and has been buying 500+ missiles for several years straight, and the max 550 purchase is proposed for 2024 in addition to money to expand the production line. So I think the USAF recognizes that it has to prepare the infrastructure and commit to a multi year buy right out of the gate to get the volume it needs. HALO on the other hand is a huge question mark. The 15 ' limitation on USN weapons elevators will force a more novel solution that the simple boost -> scramjet of the USAF projects. So HALO won't benefit nearly has much from the HAWC program, where as Raytheon has disclosed HACM will actually take some parts directly from its HAWC demonstrator. From what I've heard, the USN isn't wedded to a scramjet and is willing to adopt any technology that makes it fast and long ranged. NG already got cut from the program and has displayed their model; from the looks of it they went with a simple integral booster with a throttable ramjet akin to a modern ASALM. Honestly that seem like a good simple development path that I would have gone with, not having seen the other two submissions. Even the most optimistic outlook for the program puts it in 2031. Until then the USN will be fighting largely with subsonic weapons (minus SM-6 and whatever Sea Dragon is).  11 hours ago, Cajer said: The lack of a terminal dash in the tomahawk will create a big problem for the US. As it allows for the Chinese to use shoot-look vs shoot-shoot meaning their air defense missiles will last much longer. It is a tradeoff*. It allows for longer range for a given weight class, but the USN will have to achieve larger weapon densities against its targets than the PLAN/PLA-AR. I think they have a decent path forward given what they have to work with, but it seems like developing a long ranged supersonic air breather earlier (LRASM-B) was a huge missed opportunity. *It should be noted that the primary weapon of the PLAN surface and sub force itself is currently YJ-18, which is only supersonic in the last ~20nm/35km. Until that point, it is just as vulnerable as tomahawk and AFAIK doesn't have retargeting features, along with a third of the range.
Josh Posted December 11, 2023 Author Posted December 11, 2023 Slightly relevant here; the SEWIP Blk 3 (v7) has both a high band and low hand emitter for each "face". I suspect the low band jammer would be capable of L band jamming, which like would be effective against SAR satellites in this band (and omni directional datalinks that use it as well).
Cajer Posted December 13, 2023 Posted December 13, 2023 On 12/11/2023 at 8:27 AM, Josh said: Slightly relevant here; the SEWIP Blk 3 (v7) has both a high band and low hand emitter for each "face". I suspect the low band jammer would be capable of L band jamming, which like would be effective against SAR satellites in this band (and omni directional datalinks that use it as well). I hope so. It would be a step in the right direction. However it may not be very useful due to the sheer number of sar sats that will be up
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