Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

Spartan95

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

I think the vernier thruster will be only used for the initial launch, and won't play much of a role in the actual terminal phase, correct me if I'm wrong.

Beats me really. There is no public information on how the vernier thrusters will be used. And the way the video shows the the thrusters being used, I doubt that they are 1-time use only. There is just not enough information on it either way.

If the seeker head's destroyed, and the target ship is still powered then it should be able to manouever out of the missile's final trajectory? Or maybe not, considering how fast the missile would be in the first place. But the laser would be a hard kill and should cause the missile to veer off course at least.

The BrahMos travels at Mach 3, which means ~1km per second (Mach 1 is ~330m/s). If a laser takes 10 secs to destroy the seeker head, the missile would have travelled ~10km.

Whether the missile's trajectory is affected depends on how the missile is programmed to react when it loses its seeker head. It can be programmed to just continue the original trajectory. And this seems like a fairly simple solution to laser based defence.

I'm not sure how powerful a laser has to be to cause a minimum hard kill for say, the Brahmos -- 100 kw? 200?

Quite a few factors involved, with perhaps the most important being range to target, and time needed to cause damage by the laser on the target. 100kW or 200kW laser may not be powerful enough to damage the BrahMos sufficiently in a short period of time (i.e., less than 10 sec).

Even if the laser has an effective range of 20km, it will be constrained by line of sight issues (due to the sea skimming nature of BrahMos, the engagement horizon is likely to be less than 20km anyway). Thus, the laser needs to be able to destroy the BrahMos quickly before it gets into the terminal dive phase. Assuming the engagement horizon to be 15km, the laser need to destroy the missile before it gets too close. There are 2 important factors to consider here:
1. How powerful is the laser at 15km?
2. How much atmospheric scattering is there?

In some places and depending on season, visibility is less than 15km due to pollution, haze, and any other number of atmospheric factors. This reduces the effective range of lasers.

There is also the issue of power efficiency of lasers. Currently, if I'm not mistaken, most lasers have efficiency of ~30%. That means that for a 100kW laser output, it needs to be powered by more than 300kW of energy. This is 1 of the key limiting factors why laser weapons are not widely used, particularly on ships. Given the foreseeable technological advancements, laser weapons are only practical on nuclear powered vessels (such as an aircraft carrier) in the next few years. Smaller ships simply don't generate enough power for lasers.

Burn through the surface, ignite the propellant? Boom? There will be detriments (fog, cloud etc, as you said) and some countermeasures (surface coatings and the like) which may limit the laser's potential, but they will keep getting more powerful and imho I think you're kidding yourself if you think lasers will not supplement or even supercede conventional ciws systems within the coming decades.

It's just my 2 cents anyway. :/

The issue for trying to ignite the propellant of a missile coming directly towards the laser platform is that the propellant is behind the warhead, which is behind the seeker head. Thus, to get through to the propellant of an incoming missile requires the laser to burn through close to half the length of the missile itself. Not exactly a quick method.

And here's a list of possible counter-measures listed on Wiki for Tactical High Energy Laser:

1. Reflective coatings which attempt to reflect a large proportion of the incident radiation which is incident upon the aimed projectiles.
2. Modification of projectile geometries to take into account the possibility that laser light radiation might be used to neutralize the projectiles.
3. Enveloping gas/substance the use gaseous envelopes around a missile would ensure that a sufficiently cool gas will carry away a portion of the incident radiation energy which is incident upon the missile by both convective and diffusive effects.
4. An oscillating or chaotic trajectory will increase the difficulties in the use of the THEL system due to guidance. If guided into windy or turbulent environments, such a chaotic trajectory would also ensure that there is more of a turbulent gaseous flow around the missile.
5. Heat Resistant Coating Layers (HRCLs). Similar to reflective coatings. However, in the case of HRCLs, internal capillaries/coolant mechanisms could ensure that excessively large amounts of heat could be dissipated.
6. Multi-stage projectile systems which “dummies” a THEL kill.
 

Ambivalent

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

In other news...

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4000km ranged AShBM anyone?
Regardless this weapon will just add to the A2D capability of the 2nd Artillery, though I'm not sure what the article means by "total coverage in both defense and attack, and capable of dealing with various threats from land, sea, air, space as well as cybernetic attacks"

The statement "total coverage in both defense and attack" says to me that the missile will have numerous variants for land and sea and space (conventional ballistic missile/AShBM/ASAT respectively) and even air, to an extent if we classify ICBMs and IRBMs as air... but cybernetic? Does that imply it's more secure from cyber threats as in... better onboard guidance or such?

Either way it's good news, as other countries are beefing up their anti missile capabilities, and shows that China's still developing and looking into the future for their next generation systems.

Thoughts, anyone?

EDIT: My bad, this new missile is meant to be part of a "network" with defense and attack... not necessarily meaning the missile itself will be capable of defense and attack. I kind of get why the US keeps calling for more transperancy, it gets quite frustrating trying to read between the lines all the time.

Sometimes I have to wonder how much of the press from the 2nd Artillery are driven by inter-service rivalries and self promotion as opposed to actual usable hardware. Absent demonstrations of capability it's difficult to determine.
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Sometimes I have to wonder how much of the press from the 2nd Artillery are driven by inter-service rivalries and self promotion as opposed to actual usable hardware. Absent demonstrations of capability it's difficult to determine.

Considering how much coverage the PLA and 2nd Arty respectively get (both very little) I think not many if any of the press would be due to that.
I mean the Chinese military isn't known for exaggerating their hardware and development, and usually underplay them if anythng to get potential foes to underestimate true capabilities so most of the time when there's a media disclosure it means the specified weapon system should be quite far in development.
 

Ambivalent

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Beats me really. There is no public information on how the vernier thrusters will be used. And the way the video shows the the thrusters being used, I doubt that they are 1-time use only. There is just not enough information on it either way.



The BrahMos travels at Mach 3, which means ~1km per second (Mach 1 is ~330m/s). If a laser takes 10 secs to destroy the seeker head, the missile would have travelled ~10km.

Whether the missile's trajectory is affected depends on how the missile is programmed to react when it loses its seeker head. It can be programmed to just continue the original trajectory. And this seems like a fairly simple solution to laser based defence.



Quite a few factors involved, with perhaps the most important being range to target, and time needed to cause damage by the laser on the target. 100kW or 200kW laser may not be powerful enough to damage the BrahMos sufficiently in a short period of time (i.e., less than 10 sec).

Even if the laser has an effective range of 20km, it will be constrained by line of sight issues (due to the sea skimming nature of BrahMos, the engagement horizon is likely to be less than 20km anyway). Thus, the laser needs to be able to destroy the BrahMos quickly before it gets into the terminal dive phase. Assuming the engagement horizon to be 15km, the laser need to destroy the missile before it gets too close. There are 2 important factors to consider here:
1. How powerful is the laser at 15km?
2. How much atmospheric scattering is there?

In some places and depending on season, visibility is less than 15km due to pollution, haze, and any other number of atmospheric factors. This reduces the effective range of lasers.

There is also the issue of power efficiency of lasers. Currently, if I'm not mistaken, most lasers have efficiency of ~30%. That means that for a 100kW laser output, it needs to be powered by more than 300kW of energy. This is 1 of the key limiting factors why laser weapons are not widely used, particularly on ships. Given the foreseeable technological advancements, laser weapons are only practical on nuclear powered vessels (such as an aircraft carrier) in the next few years. Smaller ships simply don't generate enough power for lasers.



The issue for trying to ignite the propellant of a missile coming directly towards the laser platform is that the propellant is behind the warhead, which is behind the seeker head. Thus, to get through to the propellant of an incoming missile requires the laser to burn through close to half the length of the missile itself. Not exactly a quick method.

And here's a list of possible counter-measures listed on Wiki for Tactical High Energy Laser:

1. Reflective coatings which attempt to reflect a large proportion of the incident radiation which is incident upon the aimed projectiles.
2. Modification of projectile geometries to take into account the possibility that laser light radiation might be used to neutralize the projectiles.
3. Enveloping gas/substance the use gaseous envelopes around a missile would ensure that a sufficiently cool gas will carry away a portion of the incident radiation energy which is incident upon the missile by both convective and diffusive effects.
4. An oscillating or chaotic trajectory will increase the difficulties in the use of the THEL system due to guidance. If guided into windy or turbulent environments, such a chaotic trajectory would also ensure that there is more of a turbulent gaseous flow around the missile.
5. Heat Resistant Coating Layers (HRCLs). Similar to reflective coatings. However, in the case of HRCLs, internal capillaries/coolant mechanisms could ensure that excessively large amounts of heat could be dissipated.
6. Multi-stage projectile systems which “dummies” a THEL kill.

A couple of comments. The distributed electrical system of the Ford class CVN is designed specifically to support the power demands of future directed energy systems. The same is true of the DDG-1000 class and the Type 45's in RN service. These ships were designed with an eye on future conversions as directed energy systems and rail guns come on line.

The little laundry list mentioned above ignores the detail that space and weight are in very short supply on a missile. Everything mentioned will detract from the speed, payload and range to a greater or lesser degree. Analysts will study the degree which each of the mentioned "countermeasures" buys effectiveness against the performance that has to be sacrificed. If you notice, there are few if any anti-ship missiles equipped with countermeasures simply because there is no room or payload for these. Speed, stealth and/or terminal maneuvers are about all that can be built into a practical air to surface or surface to surface weapon.
Missiles weight and dimensions are determined by existing VLS cell dimensions and maximum weight limits. Air launched missiles have to be compatible with the launch aircraft and available launch rails. Unless the mission is so critical the user is willing to pay for a major modification program for the launch platforms, most missiles end up being limited in size, payload and maximum range by the platform that launches it.
Enveloping the missile in a cool gas? Laughable. Does the person who wrote this understand the difficulty there is just keeping an IR sensor cooled long enough to complete the flight of a missile? Where is all this cooling gas going to be stored? Has this author ever seen an argon bottle from an IR missile and understand how it operates or how long the gas lasts, even when metered in the minute amounts necessary to cool a typical IR seeker?
 

delft

Brigadier
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

There are few if any anti-ship missiles equipped with countermeasures simply because there were few defenses to protect the missile against.
The IR seeker can be cooled by expanding pressurized carbon dioxide. The cooling gas for the missile is mostly likely steam, generated from water heated by the incident laser energy.
 

jantxv

New Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

The discussion of systems that could be developed to counter directed energy weapons is just that, discussion. Until practical demonstrations of "anti" laser systems are witnessed, it is all just so much hot air.

Here is a demonstration way back in 2006 of a test system that is taking simple mortars out in mid flight. Since then, the directed energy systems are getting much faster and more powerful.

[video=youtube;LThD0FMvTFU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LThD0FMvTFU&feature=related[/video]

Oh, the so-called "mirror" defense is quite laughable in electro-optic circles, we all know that a mirrored coating on a radial surface like a missile would be vaporized in a fraction of a second. Second, simply spinning the missile will only delay the inevitable by only a fraction of a second. As lasers become more powerful, that fraction of a second will become vanishingly small.

This second video from a couple years ago shows the effect on a truck being attacked from a flying US Air Force NC-130H. It is important to note that the laser is a sub-megawatt class in this demonstration. Missiles in flight are fragile objects, the loads on them are tremendous, the slightest structural compromise will cause catastrophic missile failure. The accuracy demonstrated in this test is formidable too, that little square could as well be at the driver's, or a pilot's, head.

[video=youtube;qfmEUqmgsK4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfmEUqmgsK4&feature=related[/video]
 
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Ambivalent

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

There are few if any anti-ship missiles equipped with countermeasures simply because there were few defenses to protect the missile against.
The IR seeker can be cooled by expanding pressurized carbon dioxide. The cooling gas for the missile is mostly likely steam, generated from water heated by the incident laser energy.

The cooling gas for an IR missile is never pressurized carbon dioxide. You don't have storage space for this for one thing. IR weapons use argon, nitrogen or more recently they can be cooled by pressurized and highly filtered atmospheric air, which is mostly nitrogen. All of these have problems with either storage or generation of the gas in the field.
If the missile comes as a sealed unit with the gas bottle inside it is almost alway argon and there is never more than a few minutes, maybe ten max, of cooling time on the missile seeker. If the missile uses an outboard source for cooling such as a nitrogen bottle or HiPAG mounted in the launch rail of an aircraft, it can have hours of cooling time on the launch rail, but once launched, the total cooling time remaining is measured in seconds. Keep in mind we are talking a pinhole cooling orifice in the seeker and not trying to cool the exterior of a missile.
One other method is a cryoengine, a little pump that uses vibration to cool gas (the vibration can compress gas on one side of the process and cool it on the other) but these things are closed loop.
Water is 8 lbs per gallon. Where is the excess payload capacity in any missile for a quantity of water to be carried along with it? And then you have to build a means to distribute this water when a laser impinges on it, assuming such a system could work fast enough to defeat the laser. These ideas are not informed by any experience with such systems.
A laser of sufficient power will blow through "cooling gas" or steam. It would not have to impinge on the engine either. Put enough energy on any part of the missile and you will destroy it. The challenge is to build a laser with "enough" energy.
 
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Ambivalent

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

There are few if any anti-ship missiles equipped with countermeasures simply because there were few defenses to protect the missile against.
The IR seeker can be cooled by expanding pressurized carbon dioxide. The cooling gas for the missile is mostly likely steam, generated from water heated by the incident laser energy.

Not true. In real world naval warfare, the great majority of anti-ship missiles fired in anger have been defeated with ECM alone. The Israeli's thwarted around 40 Syrian and Egyptian anti-ship missiles with ECM during the 1973 war. Every missile the Egyptians and Syrians fired was defeated this way as the Israeli's had no other means of protection against them.
The US Navy defeated multiple Iranian anti-ship missiles fired at our ships during Operation Praying Mantis. Some of these were anti-surface versions of Standard we sold them, and the engagements were inside 25 nm using supersonic missiles, in other words it was a close in brawl with multiple supersonic missile tracks on the display screens. ECM alone defeated them.
In the Falklands, three of seven Argentine Exocet fired at RN forces hit targets, and of these, one was successfully seduced away from an RN carrier, but reacquired the Atlantic Conveyor afterwards. The other four missiles were defeated with ECM and fell harmlessly into the ocean. It was bad luck that it wasn't five of seven successfully defeated by ECM, but such is warfare.
ECM alone has a pretty good track record against anti-ship missiles in real world combat, as opposed to fan boi fantasies.
 

Spartan95

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

A couple of comments. The distributed electrical system of the Ford class CVN is designed specifically to support the power demands of future directed energy systems. The same is true of the DDG-1000 class and the Type 45's in RN service. These ships were designed with an eye on future conversions as directed energy systems and rail guns come on line.

This is based on the belief that effective directed energy weapons can be successfully developed and deployed in the future, which is fair for planning considerations. However, directed energy weapons does not necessarily equate to lasers. There are also microwave and acoustic (rather short range and non-lethal) weapons.

The little laundry list mentioned above ignores the detail that space and weight are in very short supply on a missile. Everything mentioned will detract from the speed, payload and range to a greater or lesser degree. Analysts will study the degree which each of the mentioned "countermeasures" buys effectiveness against the performance that has to be sacrificed. If you notice, there are few if any anti-ship missiles equipped with countermeasures simply because there is no room or payload for these. Speed, stealth and/or terminal maneuvers are about all that can be built into a practical air to surface or surface to surface weapon.
Missiles weight and dimensions are determined by existing VLS cell dimensions and maximum weight limits. Air launched missiles have to be compatible with the launch aircraft and available launch rails. Unless the mission is so critical the user is willing to pay for a major modification program for the launch platforms, most missiles end up being limited in size, payload and maximum range by the platform that launches it.
Enveloping the missile in a cool gas? Laughable. Does the person who wrote this understand the difficulty there is just keeping an IR sensor cooled long enough to complete the flight of a missile? Where is all this cooling gas going to be stored? Has this author ever seen an argon bottle from an IR missile and understand how it operates or how long the gas lasts, even when metered in the minute amounts necessary to cool a typical IR seeker?

Space & weight is certainly an important factor. It also depends on the size of the missile. Given that the BrahMos is currently 3 tons, that makes it quite a bit bigger than the Tomahawk or Harpoon. It's range of 290km can be sacrificed to make space & weight for counter-measures. Also, future developments or upgrades of BrahMos will likely take into account the emerging missile defence capabilities (such as against laser). The same will apply for next gen anti-surface/ship missiles unless the developer is looking to develop something cheap/obsolete.
 

Spartan95

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

The discussion of systems that could be developed to counter directed energy weapons is just that, discussion. Until practical demonstrations of "anti" laser systems are witnessed, it is all just so much hot air.

Here is a demonstration way back in 2006 of a test system that is taking simple mortars out in mid flight. Since then, the directed energy systems are getting much faster and more powerful.

Nice demo video.

Now, given your experience in solid state lasers, can you explain why the Israelis chose to go with projectile weapons (Iron Dome) to defend against mortars and home-made rockets instead of a laser system even when the per use cost of the laser is easily the cheapest?

Oh, the so-called "mirror" defense is quite laughable in electro-optic circles, we all know that a mirrored coating on a radial surface like a missile would be vaporized in a fraction of a second. Second, simply spinning the missile will only delay the inevitable by only a fraction of a second. As lasers become more powerful, that fraction of a second will become vanishingly small.

That is precisely the point, to delay (not prevent) the laser from destroying the missile until the missile gets to its target.

This second video from a couple years ago shows the effect on a truck being attacked from a flying US Air Force NC-130H. It is important to note that the laser is a sub-megawatt class in this demonstration. Missiles in flight are fragile objects, the loads on them are tremendous, the slightest structural compromise will cause catastrophic missile failure. The accuracy demonstrated in this test is formidable too, that little square could as well be at the driver's, or a pilot's, head.

[video=youtube;qfmEUqmgsK4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfmEUqmgsK4&feature=related[/video]
\

Again, nice demo video.

So, can you explain why this weapon is not used in Iraq/Afghanistan? Is it because there is too much dust in Iraq/Afghanistan's environment?
 
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