Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

s002wjh said:

its indeed getting old, i could say US has railgun and laser weapon deployed to counter the missile, since we all know US research on it, and has these capability.

sure lack of evidence does not mean it doesn't exist, but any professional know, to prove something you need sufficient evidence. heck ill say alien exist too, and my evidence is new mexico 1947, the government just cover up and mathmatically the probability of intelligent life within milkway is pretty highs. There, there is my evidence.

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The DF-21D exists. I grant that. But the PRC has made a decision to deploy it as is, and IMHO that is a political decision with a motivation to accomplish certain things with it...which they are succeeding with to a certain extent.

I am sure they are still testing it and developing it, no doubt. But until it performs a live-fire, full-up test and starts hitting moving ships at sea, it will remain an unproven theory. No need for folks to get upset over this. It's just common sense. Easy to understand without complicated and protratced explanations why it has not been done. Also no need at this point to get into advanced testing with multiple missiles, or multiple rentry vehciles. A single warhead would suffice. It will show that they can acquire, shoot, re-acquire, and hit a vessel manuevering at sea. It will also show that their C4ISTAR is in place, working, and capable of managing all of that.

You worry about all of the ECM, all of the defenses rising to meet the weapon after that...in short, all of the more complicated issues...in follow on tests after you prove numerous times that you can actually do what you are proposing. This is not a complicated principle...it is very standard procedure for any complicated system, and particularly for complicated, very expensive military systems.

At this point, it is clear to me, that the PRC feels the need to not only continue developing their proposed system, but to take political action to try and use a very common Sun Tsu technique to gain ground against the potential adversary by convincing them not to employ what the weapon is designed to attack. Nothing uncommon or complicated about that either.

BTW, for the sake of comparison. the US Navy perfomed another open successful intercept of an incoming ballistic missile with the AEGIS BMD system last week, May 15, 2013. Out in the open, full-up, live-fire test which any nation with the capability could see, measure, and understand...and I am sure that every nation that could, both ally and potential adversary, did.

US Navy said:

May 15th, 2013. An SM-3 Block 1B misisle successfully intercepted a incoming ballistic missile that had been launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands in Kauai, Hawaii. The AEGIS cruiser, the USS Lake Erie, CG-70, detected and tracked the target with its on board AN/SPY-1 radar and successfully inctercepted and destroyed the incoming missile.

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Those successful tests keep piling up, and no white paper, no early test to hit a target on the ground, no amount of ratioanlization will substitutie for that type of testing, whatever else may be said of it. In effect the US has proven the theory numerous times, and itself is continuing to improve the system against more and more difficult systems by continuing to test it in this way.

One day, as soon as they are ready to perform such a test, we will see the same from the PRC for the DF-21D.

Anyhow, for my part, enough said.

With all of this said about the ballistic missile/anti-air threat, I still firmly believe that the most vulnerable area that a Carrier Strike Group has, for any nation, is the sub-surface threat. Either from very fast, long range heavy torpedoes, or from mulitple smaller ones launched from inside the defensive zone by a sub that was able to get past the DDG/FFG escorts, helos, and defending nuclear attack subs. Particulalry if a heavy, supercavitating system is developed and successfully deployed.

The best defense against any of that...after finding and sinking the sub before it can shoot...is to emply systems designed to disrupt the oncoming torpedoe/weapon, either electronically, acoustically, or with physical intercepts using explosive devices detonated in close proximity in front of the oncoming weapon.

Engineer said:

Actually, those would be considered as evidences. The problem is when evidence is presented, one side would simply resort to saying "insufficient" because it takes no effort to do so.

Way too often, people who argue how US carriers cannot be defeated will gladly accept US being the operator as sufficient evidence to prove that a piece of equipment will work effectively. When it comes to Chinese weapons, nothing would satisfy the same people. Even if a full scale live test were to be conducted, those people would have something else to nitpick about to claim there is insufficient evidence. This is illustrated to the full extent in debates surrounding the J-20.

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I've come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people are idiots, and it's actually better for the United States to be blindsided with rapid military modernization of China than to let them be prepared to react to it.

Most of the opinion of the idiots do not matter, so it's best to foment ignorance amongst these anti-China deniers, as it would be their children picking up the pieces of U.S. ignorance when it comes to China's rapid military development.

s002wjh said:

i don't think anyone argue that AC cannot be destroyed, the point here is, is there Sufficent evidence indicate DF21-D is deployed and operation or its working. in my opinion some paper on how the DF21 suppose to work, or limited test is not sufficient.

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Anyone can claim that a whale does not exist because he or she hasn't see one at the beach, then goes on dismissing photos and skeletons as insufficient evidence. As it stands now, little to no evidence has been provided to discredit the content of the papers. What people attempted are dismissals as in the above whale example. However, dismissals of evidence does not mean there is insufficient evidence that ASBM works.

s002wjh said:

Its like i design/build a car, and say its good to go without suffice test on the road. you got to test the product in the enviroment you intend to use at least few times before its good to go. its call field test, which every products have to go through.

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Quite the opposite, not every product has to go through a full fledged field test. For example, ICBMs are not tested with an actual nuclear warhead atop to achieve a nuclear detonation at the end of the flight. In another example, crew survivability is not tested by firing a missile at an actual tank with people inside.

There is no test that can provide 100% certainty on the effectiveness of a system. Even in your car example, the field tests cannot cover every possible driving scenario, since the number of tests is finite yet the number of scenarios is infinite. Tests are only done to satisfaction of engineers. If engineers deem no full fledged test of ASBM is needed, then the system can be considered to work even in the absence of full fledged test. What people here do is demand to see a test to prove 100% certainly on effectiveness of the system. By doing so, they are making a fallacy called ad-hoc reasoning.

s002wjh said:

Now if you guys belief df20 is operational base on few paper or a stationary target in the gobi desert then i hope the PLA doesn't feel that way.
at least some prove that the DF20 was able to hit a moving target, moving at random direction. then we are getting close.

for a complex design, its not out of norm to have 50% or more time spend on testing/debuggin.

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Ad-hoc reasoning which doesn't address the content of the papers in anyway.

s002wjh said:

then would you said railgun/laser weapon is deployed in US military? I dont belief so, not with the current evidences. i'm sure there are MORE paper published on rail gun and laser than df20.

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See, you are trying to confuse the concept between work and deployed. The rail gun prototypes work and laser weapon prototypes work, even though neither system is currently deployed. A piece of equipment must work before being deployed, but the converse is not true. That is to say, the system does not have to be deployed for a system to work.

Using the same reasoning, ASBM works because we can see the theoretical work in addition to indirect evidences to such things including mid-course maneuvers and C4ISR. The issue of deployment is irrelevant to whether the system works.

Latest news about the US efforts to defend against ballistic missile threats, and its numnerous, live fire tests to establish, prove, and improve that capability.

At the longer range, we know that the Standard missile BMD shield is up and working, has been proven successful against ballistic missiles on scores of tests, and is constantly being improved.

Now, the US has developed a kinetic kill, medium range/point defense upgrade to the ESSM which was just tested successfully specifically against a DF-21D surrogate missile, and shot it down:

Chinh News said:

Raytheon tests Anti-Chinese-Missile Missile
By Rich Smith
May 15, 2013

One of the biggest threats facing the U.S. Navy today is a new anti-ship ballistic missile recently fielded by China. Officially designated the "DF-21D," American military men have another name for it: the Carrier-Killer.

Weighing in at a massive 15 tons, the two-stage, solid fuel missile is 35 feet tall and nearly five feet across. With a range rumored to extend as far as 1200 miles, the DF-21D is designed to keep American aircraft carriers at a safe distance (from Taiwan) in the event hostilities ever break out, and to deny access to seas within striking distance of the Chinese mainland.

But in the ever changing arms race of tit meets tat, on Tuesday, Raytheon (NYSE: RTN ) turned the tables on China and announced test results that could (we hope) make the DF-21D irrelevant. Raytheon's solution is the RIM-162 ESSM "Evolved SeaSparrow," an improvement on the basic SeaSparrow air defense missile developed by Raytheon and General Dynamics (NYSE: GD ) . Its mission is to shoot down high-diving, missiles like the DF-21D.

"That's a hit!"

On Tuesday, Raytheon confirmed that in a weapons test at sea, the Evolved SeaSparrow successfully made "skin-to-skin" contact with a DF-21D surrogate, proving its ability to shoot down kill the Carrier Killer.

The company's next move will be to step up marketing of the air-defense missile to the U.S. Navy, and to allies abroad -- and Raytheon's wasting no time in doing so. In the same announcement in which it explained the intercept results yesterday, Raytheon's vice president for missile systems' naval and area mission defense, Rick Nelson, called the Evolved SeaSparrow "truly an international missile."

Whether Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and other U.S. allies in the region will take the hint remains to be seen. But when you consider that the missiles cost less than $1 million apiece -- yet are capable of protecting vital naval warships worth upwards of $1 billion (and anywhere as high as $13 billion for a Ford-class nuclear aircraft carrier), you have to assume a lot of countries are going to consider this product a very economical form of "insurance" against DF-21D "risk."

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This is a part of the Block 2 development of the ESSM which Raytheon has used to upgrade its listed capabilities of the ESSM with the Block 2 upgrade as follows:

Raytheon said:

ESSM Block 2 Risk Reduction: ESSM Block 2 upgrade is a cooperative effort between U.S Navy and NATO SEASPARROW Consortium Nations. ESSM Block 2 upgrade replaces the largely obsolete guidance section with a dual mode Active/Semi-Active X-Band seeker capable of defeating future threat capabilities within the existing envelope, including; smaller signatures, increased raid sizes, and adverse environments including countermeasures. Threat types include; advanced Anti-Ship Cruise Missile (ASCM)s, Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs), surface and asymmetrical threats.

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That article is from Fool.com, not exactly authoritative when it comes to defense news. The Raython press release never mentioned DF-21D, only high diving supersonic target, most likely Talo missile based Vandal supersonic target drone capable of Mach 2.5. That's a huge leap to Mach 11 DF-21D wouldn't you agree? and no, I don't agree that Aegis BMD system has been proven effective against DF-21 class ballistic missile.

shen said:

That article is from Fool.com, not exactly authoritative when it comes to defense news. The Raython press release never mentioned DF-21D, only high diving supersonic target, most likely Talo missile based Vandal supersonic target drone capable of Mach 2.5.

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Well, actually in a prior test the ESSM shot down a Vandal. This test used a faster missile with a high diving profile.

I got my earlier post from which is a site where I have gotten several credible stories in the past regarding any number of issues associated with China.

I do see that this report was also carried by , which has also been the source of several credible stories in the past. It's name does not mean that is it not credibale.

In this case, the test was preformed by Raytheon against a high supersonic, diving missile. The US does not rely on the Vandal missile. In fact, as I said, in an earlier test they already shot one of those down. There are numerous others which can mimick anti-shipping cruise missiles up to Mach 5, (for example, the MA-31 was a Mach 3.5 target, the latest the AQM-37 Jayhawk drones are Mach 4 missiles, the GQM-163 Coyote in its high dive configuration is a Mach 4+ missile) If an anti-shipping crusie missile drone were used, it is my guess that the target was more than likely a GQM-163 Coyote. The US Navy however also employs several ballistic missile targets, some of which can mimick the flight profile of a DF-21D.

We also know that in of the US Congress, that Exhibit R-2A, of the RDT&E Project Justification: PB for the 2013 U.S. Navy, speaks to the Block 2 capabilities of the ESSM in that Exhibit, the 5th point:

Appropriation and Budget Committee Presentation said:

5. ESSM Block 2 : ESSM Block 2 upgrade is a cooperative effort between U.S Navy and NATO SEASPARROW Consortium Nations. ESSM Block 2 upgrade replaces the largely obsolete guidance section with a dual mode Active/Semi-Active X-Band seeker capable of defeating future threat capabilities within the existing envelope, including; smaller signatures, increased raid sizes, and adverse environments including countermeasures. Threat types include; advanced Anti-Ship Cruise Missile (ASCM)s, Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs), surface and asymmetrical.

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It is always interesting to me how those who are so invested in the DF-21D, which has never done a full up, live-fire test targeting what it is supposed to be designed to hit, will claim that irrespective of this, the system is capable and operational. Even though such testing is a standard practice for any complicated defense systemrequiring verifiction of its capability on the way to operational capability.

Yet, those same people, when faced with full operational tests of the systems designed to defend against this DF-21D system, will berate any actual live fire tests which are being performed regularly and with increasing efficacy against ballistic missiles. We know that the US is designing these anti-missiles and their tests specifically to defend against the ASBM threat (among others).

Very serious logical fallicy IMHO...and dripping with irony.

Nonetheless, the ESSM (along with the Standard Missile) is being tested against such targets, and is succeeding, adding another layer of defense against numerous missiles, including the DF-21D...which, as I say, itself has never demonstrated that it can do what it was designed to do.

Oh well. Same old same old.

Jeff Head said:

Well, actually in a prior test the ESSM shot down a Vandal. This test used a faster missile with a high diving profile.

I got my earlier post from

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

which is a site where I have gotten several credible stories in the past regarding any number of issues associated with China.

I do see that this report was also carried by

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, which has also been the source of several credible stories in the past. It's name does not mean that is it not credibale.

In this case, the test was preformed by Raytheon against a high supersonic, diving missile. The US does not rely on the Vandal missile. In fact, as I said, in an earlier test they already shot one of those down. There are numerous others which can mimick anti-shipping cruise missiles up to Mach 5, (for example, the MA-31 was a Mach 3.5 target, the latest the AQM-37 Jayhawk drones are Mach 4 missiles, the GQM-163 Coyote in its high dive configuration is a Mach 4+ missile) If an anti-shipping crusie missile drone were used, it is my guess that the target was more than likely a GQM-163 Coyote. The US Navy however also employs several ballistic missile targets, some of which can mimick the flight profile of a DF-21D.

We also know that in

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

of the US Congress, that Exhibit R-2A, of the RDT&E Project Justification: PB for the 2013 U.S. Navy, speaks to the Block 2 capabilities of the ESSM in that Exhibit, the 5th point:



It is always interesting to me how those who are so invested in the DF-21D, which has never done a full up, live-fire test targeting what it is supposed to be designed to hit, will claim that irrespective of this, the system is capable and operational. Even though such testing is a standard practice for any complicated defense systemrequiring verifiction of its capability on the way to operational capability.

Yet, those same people, when faced with full operational tests of the systems designed to defend against this DF-21D system, will berate any actual live fire tests which are being performed regularly and with increasing efficacy against ballistic missiles. We know that the US is designing these anti-missiles and their tests specifically to defend against the ASBM threat (among others).

Very serious logical fallicy IMHO...and dripping with irony.

Nonetheless, the ESSM (along with the Standard Missile) is being tested against such targets, and is succeeding, adding another layer of defense against numerous missiles, including the DF-21D...which, as I say, itself has never demonstrated that it can do what it was designed to do.

Oh well. Same old same old.

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Not all AShBMs are created equal. Iranians also claim to have an AShBM, a short range one. Intercepting a Scud range ballistic missile is a very different game to intercepting an intermediate range ballistic missile. That's just simple physics.
As far as I'm aware, that Motley Fool article is the only source that links the latest ESSM test with DF-21D. All other sources refer back to the Fool.com article. I'm sure you've looked, please let the board know when you've found a more reliable source.
Actually we know very little about important specifics of the Aegis BMD tests. Most of the time, all we know is that the test has failed or succeeded. I've raised specific questions about the capabilities of Aegis BMD in this thread in the past which I'm not going to repeat here. Aegis BMD is been managed with the same concurrency principle as the JSF program. Which means it was introduced into service with very basic capabilities. Just because we hear about successful tests doesn't mean the system has matured to a level that makes it capable against DF-21 class threat. In fact, and correct me if I'm wrong, we don't know if Aegis BMD was ever designed to engage threats with the reentry speed associated with the range that we know DF-21 is capable of.

here is the original Raytheon press release,
ESSM intercepting DF-21D story is been taken apart here,

Jeff Head said:

Yet, those same people, when faced with full operational tests of the systems designed to defend against this DF-21D system, will berate any actual live fire tests which are being performed regularly and with increasing efficacy against ballistic missiles.

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Aegis ABM system was never designed to intercept ballistic missiles flying around 15 Mach , irrespective of DF-21D's capabilities (or lack of) . Its real capabilities should be Mach 5 class of weapons and all the test implicitly point to that .

Chuck Hagel, US Defense Secretary during the Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore on 1 June 2013, warned China over cyber spying. I wonder to what extent has this effected US weapons' systems? I can only assume that counter-measures have been taken.

thunderchief said:

Aegis ABM system was never designed to intercept ballistic missiles flying around 15 Mach , irrespective of DF-21D's capabilities (or lack of) . Its real capabilities should be Mach 5 class of weapons and all the test implicitly point to that .

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thunderchief said:

Aegis ABM system was never designed to intercept ballistic missiles flying around 15 Mach , irrespective of DF-21D's capabilities (or lack of) . Its real capabilities should be Mach 5 class of weapons and all the test implicitly point to that .

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Sorry, chief, that is incorrect.

The AEGIS BMD system is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles both outside the atmosphere, and once they re-enter. That would mean of course intercepting them at escape velocity above the atmosphere, and at whatever terminal velocity they have after re-entry.

Now, when we speak of advanced anti-ship cruise missiles, AEGIS is indeed being designed to defeat those missiles up to the Mach 5 speed, with all sorts of flight profiles up to and including that speed.

But those are two seperate threat envelopes, and they use two seperate missiles to engage them.