China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread
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The comment section for this piece is surprisingly un-dismissive of China compared to the usual on that site.
Thats the only way to "discipline" the West. You have to strike fear into their hearts so they will start taking you seriously
Something similar to Japan's love for whoever beats it the most
They had a good few years of saying "china can only copy" , now they can watch China surpassing
However if you want to consider the military application he brings up an interesting point: the US NGAD 6th gen fighter program intends to achieve "Penetrating Counter Air" using a very high degree of stealth. Suppose we take Penetrating Counter Air as the goal, one could also achieve this with an aircraft that foregoes stealth completely and can penetrate deep into enemy controlled air space relying purely on speed. Suppose I have an aircraft with hypersonic performance and very long range, I could simply fly directly at high value targets like aerial tankers, fire my hypersonic missile while hypersonic then go home and no one with existing weapon could step me on account of my speed.
For cases like USAF in Western Pacific which may be relying on multiple aerial refuelling to get their F-22 into and out of fight such hypersonic aircraft could take out the key tankers and collapse the whole system in short order.
You are making a couple assumptions that may not be accurate. While you are correct about both SM-6 and Aegis capabilities, the missing component is the launch detection. For now, we believe a hypersonic glide vehicle has to be on a ballistic missile in order to achieve the necessary speed. So until we get confirmation otherwise, that means locations (static and road mobile) where such a missile could be launched are under constant satellite surveillance. The fact the US already saw and tracked the test vehicles, means there is a capability to look for these missiles and their payloads. Even if it was after-the-fact, that capability will be rapidly built out. So, that means the element of surprise is gone.
But, to your point, detection is only half the game. Interception is another. While direct contact destruction is highly unlikely, a tactic of launching a swarm of missiles ahead of a glide vehicle's possible path and detonating before arrival (the sm-6 uses a fragmentation warhead) is a possibility. Of course that assumes enough sm-6 missiles in the vicinity. And, a 240km range is not much margin for error against something moving at 1.7km/s. But its a possible (if not plausible) defense.
These unnamed sources are playing national security games via the media. What is really going on here is that the US is telling China that it knows what it is doing and can detect it. When China counters the allegations, the US lets out just a little bit more detail. But never enough detail that China or anyone else will completely know what the US surveillance capabilities are.
This game is as old as civilization.
If all this hot air is supposed to be US trying to send a message I must say they are laying it pretty thick; "OMG physics defying!" "OMG sputnik moment!".....
I'm pretty sure the actual PLA guys are laughing at it right now.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
What if they can detect the launch. How does that make intercept more likely? It's all the same when they said the US can intercept Chinese ICBM launches. The only way they're going to be able to intercept is to have their assets hover over the launch site before it takes off because anytime else it's too late. Is it like how they think SM-6s can intercept China's hypersonic vehicle? They have to get their Aegis in the path to intercept. Thirty plus knots vs. hypersonic speeds... Who has the advantage? Or else they can build Aegis ships to cover every four hundred miles of open sea. When it's in space it can maneuver in whatever direction and by then the US will need as many Aegis ships out there as I described. When it comes to the US, it seems there's this assumption the US has unlimited money to make all these things. No need to scare Americans about China into giving money to the Pentagon then. How much money will it cost to surround the US with interceptors pointing in every direction?
I remember reading an article years ago that said US ABM will need eight interceptors per incoming warhead to have a 40% at interception. That article only carried more weight when the US cancelled ABM in Alaska in favor of something not yet developed. In Alaska they only had under a hundred interceptors. If they needed eight interceptors to take on one warhead for an only a 40% chance, how many would they need for a hypersonic vehicle that can make many course corrections?
Your opinion has some value and is correct, but it doesn't reach a conclusion.
What we have:
The American version: FOBS + HGV + One released object
The Chinese version: A spaceship.
Departing from the Chinese interpretation, comments are being driven by the American version.
Let's go to the American version:
If this really is what the US is revealing, then the system set up would look like this:
When the test took place in July/August, what was essentially said to be confirmed was precisely an FOBS with HGV, but the longest-reaching HGV in China was the DF-17 with a range of 2500 km, even with the possibility of attacking by the South Pole, American radars could still see something when the vehicle releases the HGV, so the American dedicated ABM radars might have some chance of detecting the FOBS, because of the short range of the HGV. Afterwards, Hytten confirmed that the released vehicle had an intercontinental range, the HGV therefore actually had a range above 5500 km, this until then was new for the whole world, as China had never tested this glider with this range that it is in the same category as the Avangard.
What then changes from 2500 km to 5500 km? Everything.
As American radars do not have a precise resolution above 4500 km of range for altitudes above 1,000 km, and the altitude of the FOBS which is below 150 km of altitude was already unfeasible in terms of missile detection, now everything changes with this new news. With a range of 2500 km, it would mean that the FOBS would have to remain in orbit up to the height of Jamaica if it attacked from the South Pole, a mobile radar like Aegis or even the SBX could detect the missile if it were under the height of Miami, as soon as the HGV performed the maneuver by re-entering the atmosphere, it could be tracked continuously until it reached Washington.
Already, an intercontinental range HGV changes everything. The FOBS could carry out the movement in orbit up to the height of the Equator calmly that as soon as it arrived in that position, the vehicle would release the HGV, therefore, the HGV would come gliding until reaching Washington. Even with Aegis and SBX aimed at the South Pole, the detection range would be greatly reduced due to the gliding altitude of the HGV, giving even less time for the American anti-missile system to respond. China has simply rendered the entire ABM apparatus useless with this supposedly new tested weapon.
And that's more, now the HGV releases another vehicle or missile or countermeasure. This demonstrates that the Chinese are not pro-reactive, but pro-active, they have even thought of a possible countermeasure to increase the missile's chances of success. In terms of hypersonic technology, this demonstrates that the Chinese are way ahead of Russia and the US, the Americans themselves have recognized this and that's why Milley claimed to be a Sputnik moment for the US.
Some conclusions lead to believe that Americans, knowing all this, are already able to detect hypersonic missiles, but this is just an untold part of the story.
What I said earlier about current ABM radars are true, but they don't explain how the US manages to track China's hypersonic missiles. Let's first point out that the released missile was in the SCS (South Sea China) and the north facing ABM radars are not able to track a missile in the SCS. That's why this need to have a satellite detection and tracking capability is impossible to achieve with land, naval and air sensors and is the reason for the HBTSS and the American Blackjack. What Americans have today in terms of this are land, naval and air sensors in the SCS (South China Sea), not a few but many around China and in the SCS.
For example, last year when the DF-21D and DF-26B were launched at the SCS, the US already knew in advance that the shooting would take place and took off with the RC-135S Cobra Ball, there are three such aircraft currently in service at the ACC, although apparently permanently operating under the PACAF, has seen the many North Korean and Chinese tests at SCS, which are currently based either in Guam or Japan. These aircraft are responsible for collecting ballistic missile information last year, when there was that incident where the Chinese launched the two missiles, the RC-135S tracked the DF-21D and DF-26B when they were accelerating in the reinforcement phase and re-entry, the aircraft was able to track that the missiles had hit the ship that was moving nearby in the Paracel Islands, which was mentioned in the ONI report as Naval published. Some reports even said that there was a tracking of 4 missiles instead of the two previously launched, some conclusions here even hinted that this is a technology released for communication in atmospheric reentry.
Today, these RC-135S Cobra Ball aircraft and some MASINT-capable spy satellites are permanently operating on the SCS precisely because of the Chinese and North Korean hypersonic rise. But this tracking capability is small and located in SCS, unable to perform a global tracking, this will change with HBTSS and Blackjack, which are a set of MASINT, ELINT, SIGINT sensors... acting together, this was impossible until then , there was no coordination between MASINT and the other forms of sensors, this changed a few years ago, not even two decades ago this change, this coordination between the different space sensors will give the chance of successful interception anywhere on the planet, after For successful screening, the question that remains is the intercept that would have to rely on interceptor missiles capable of intercepting at the required range and speed.
What the Americans have today in terms of hypersonic missile tracking are land, air and naval assets that actually have insufficient range to maintain a large area covered by radars, which explains the large number of these sensors around the SCS, mainly from China , not even an ASBM launch can be covered up, the US achieves it through these sensors based on land, air and sea, but the range is small. What the US has in terms of satellites with MASINT sensors are spy satellites, which act rigidly in one area, making tracking globally impossible, and even these satellites are unable to communicate with other satellites, this would limit the concept of automatic acquisition of targets, but the evolution of technology today allows retransmission of MASINT data with other forms of sensors ELINT, SIGINT... among others and this will happen to the Americans through HBTSS and Blackjack and the new interceptor missile, the GPI that will probably be placed first in Guam.
Japan is doing the same thing. It will build a constellation of 3 satellites to track a hypersonic missile.
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