Ambivalent
Junior Member
Re: How Do You Sink A Carrier?
Well, the Pershing did have a MARV warhead, but it was not ever intended to use this against a moving target. A ballistic missile warhead in a pure ballistic trajectory has a certain CEP, that diameter inside which the warhead has a 50% probability of landing inside. That is what CEP means. There is a 50% chance the warhead might land outside the diameter of that CEP. You want a warhead to have a blast radius equal to it's CEP to have a reasonable chance for a hit within the CEP to score a hard kill. If the blast radius is smaller than the CEP, like it is for many iron bombs, you will need more than one warhead to assure a kill.
The use of a maneuvering warhead on Pershing II meant the warhead could make some pretty limited manuevers to reduce it's CEP to an acceptable figure. It used an active radar seeker to find the target and then could manuever to a very limited degree to improve accuracy against a fixed target. For this to work, the ballistic trajectory had to be pretty accurate already, or the warhead would be deployed too far off course for it's limited maneuverability to overcome.
This points out one of the questions I have regarding these so called ASBM's. So far, no one has demonstrated any ballistic missile that can hit a moving target, much less a ship at sea. Nothing remotely close to this capability has ever been demonstrated. So far, the ASBM is an imaginary threat. What China could do would be to launch hundreds of nuclear armed ballistic missiles at the region of the ocean where US forces were concentrated, but that would guarantee a nuclear response from the US. I consider this possibility to be in the realm of fantasy for certain advocates of a Sino/US showdown.
I also challenge the notion that the US Navy is helpless in it's face. SM-3 is designed precisely to counter such missiles, and SM-2 Block IV has upgrades that permit it to engage individual warheads in the atmosphere during their end game. THAAD is land based but can hit such missiles outside the atmosphere before the deployment of the warhead or any countermeasures.
I also question the ability of China to reliability find a CSG and bring it down to targeting criteria. It is one thing to have a rough idea that a CSG is out there in a general direction, but these ASBM must hit a single ship maneuvering at sea, implying it must find this ship from at least 160,000 meters altitude on re-entry. As a warhead falls, it's maneuvering footprint on the Earth's surface narrows quickly. The USN routinely hid from Soviet recce satellites, using weather fronts, night and electronic countermeasures to spoof them successfully, yet we are supposed to believe Chinese forces can find and target maneuvering surface ships at will hundreds of miles from the Chinese coast. Lets say that until this ability is demonstrated I remain doubtful.
Well, the Pershing did have a MARV warhead, but it was not ever intended to use this against a moving target. A ballistic missile warhead in a pure ballistic trajectory has a certain CEP, that diameter inside which the warhead has a 50% probability of landing inside. That is what CEP means. There is a 50% chance the warhead might land outside the diameter of that CEP. You want a warhead to have a blast radius equal to it's CEP to have a reasonable chance for a hit within the CEP to score a hard kill. If the blast radius is smaller than the CEP, like it is for many iron bombs, you will need more than one warhead to assure a kill.
The use of a maneuvering warhead on Pershing II meant the warhead could make some pretty limited manuevers to reduce it's CEP to an acceptable figure. It used an active radar seeker to find the target and then could manuever to a very limited degree to improve accuracy against a fixed target. For this to work, the ballistic trajectory had to be pretty accurate already, or the warhead would be deployed too far off course for it's limited maneuverability to overcome.
This points out one of the questions I have regarding these so called ASBM's. So far, no one has demonstrated any ballistic missile that can hit a moving target, much less a ship at sea. Nothing remotely close to this capability has ever been demonstrated. So far, the ASBM is an imaginary threat. What China could do would be to launch hundreds of nuclear armed ballistic missiles at the region of the ocean where US forces were concentrated, but that would guarantee a nuclear response from the US. I consider this possibility to be in the realm of fantasy for certain advocates of a Sino/US showdown.
I also challenge the notion that the US Navy is helpless in it's face. SM-3 is designed precisely to counter such missiles, and SM-2 Block IV has upgrades that permit it to engage individual warheads in the atmosphere during their end game. THAAD is land based but can hit such missiles outside the atmosphere before the deployment of the warhead or any countermeasures.
I also question the ability of China to reliability find a CSG and bring it down to targeting criteria. It is one thing to have a rough idea that a CSG is out there in a general direction, but these ASBM must hit a single ship maneuvering at sea, implying it must find this ship from at least 160,000 meters altitude on re-entry. As a warhead falls, it's maneuvering footprint on the Earth's surface narrows quickly. The USN routinely hid from Soviet recce satellites, using weather fronts, night and electronic countermeasures to spoof them successfully, yet we are supposed to believe Chinese forces can find and target maneuvering surface ships at will hundreds of miles from the Chinese coast. Lets say that until this ability is demonstrated I remain doubtful.
