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India First To Build a Supersonic Cruise Missile
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "India successfully tested Sunday a 'maneuverable' version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile which it has jointly developed with Russia, news reports said. The vertical-launch version of the 290-kilometer range BrahMos was tested from a warship in the Bay of Bengal off India's eastern coast, the PTI news agency reported. 'The vertical-launch version of missile was launched at 11:30 (0600 GMT) hours today from Indian Navy ship INS Ranvir and it manoeuvred successfully hitting the target ship. It was a perfect hit and a perfect mission,' BrahMos aerospace chief A Sivathanu Pillai was quoted as saying. 'After today's test, India has become the first and only country in the world to have a manoeuvrable supersonic cruise missile in its inventory,' Pillai said."
The first?
Seems to me that cruise missiles have been around for a while, and one of the defining properties is that it 'steers'
I didn't hear that coming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-500_Bazalt
Possibly first to deploy, but not the first to build, by a good 50 years.
I guess we can outsource our military development to India. Hitler's German was prohibited from making weapons prior to WWII (part of the WW1 peace treaty), so he outsourced the industry to Russia, and used the weapons against it. Obviously, after WWII got started, Germany developed its own military industry.
...Soviets had supersonic air to surface cruise missiles and surface to surface missiles. It's where the Indian tech comes from. Kitchen and Sunburn were the ones that spring to mind immediately.
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The headline says, "India First To Build a Supersonic Cruise Missile". In order to even accurately reflect the article, it should read, "India First To Build a manoeuvrable Supersonic Cruise Missile". But even so, the article is wrong;
from wikipedia, P-500 Bazalt
The P-500 Bazalt (Russian: -500 ; English: basalt) is a liquid-fueled, rocket powered, supersonic cruise missile used by the Soviet and Russian navies. Developed by OKB-52 MAP (later NPO Mashinostroyeniye), its GRAU designation is 4K80[1]. Its NATO reporting name is SS-N-12 Sandbox. It entered service in 1973 to replace the SS-N-3 Shaddock. The P-500 Bazalt had a 550 km range and a payload of 1,000 kg, which allows it to carry a 350 kT nuclear or a 950 kg semi-armor-piercing high explosive warhead (currently only the conventional version remains in service). The P-500 Bazalt uses active radar homing for terminal guidance, and can receive mid-course corrections by the Tupolev Tu-95D, the Kamov Ka-25B and the Kamov Ka-27B.
So many levels of fail in this submission
screenshot or it didn't happen
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
I doubt Pakistan can be happy at all about this development. It's one thing to have a nuke, another to be able to deliver it. This makes a first strike weapon from Hell. About the time you figure out the war is on....it's over.
smallfurry from SZ?
Riiight, because until today, they really weren't interested
Tech Support: Thank you for calling Maneuverable Supersonic Cruise Missile tech support, my name is Tom, how may I help you?
Missile Owner: Hello. My maneuverable supersonic cruise missile isn't the first.
Tech Support: I do apologize for this inconvenience. Am I correct to understand that your maneuverable supersonic cruise missile is not the first?
Missile Owner: Uh, yeah. I was told it would be the first.
Tech Support: I do apologize. Have you tried flashing the BIOS?
Missile Owner: WTF?
Hard-liners in the middle east don't give half a shit about what India does. The Pakistanis do sure, but they already are nuclear. The hard-lines in the middle east want to go nuclear because of Israel.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
If you're targeting ships, especially carriers, over water there isn't a lot of terrain to get in the way, and not too many people to hear the sonic boom. Carriers on the other hand, are generally the best protected ships in a fleet, with things like anti missile missiles and metalstorm batteries, not to mention other ships, to protect them.
If you're coming in towards a carrier, the faster you're going, the harder you are going to be to acquire as a target and then hit with defences.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
India, the Barney Fife of nations.
You probably don't want to hear how the world things of the US. Okay, here's my current favorite, from the fantastic In the Loop: "You know they're all kids in Washington? It's like Bugsy Malone, but with real guns."
Later...
Malcolm Tucker: Linton! Linton! ...between breast feeds and playing with their Power Rangers. So, an actual grown-up has been asked to fucking bail you out.
Linton Barwick: Mr Tucker, isn't it? Nice to see you again.
Malcolm Tucker: Are you fucking me about?
Linton Barwick: Is there a problem, Mr Tucker?
Malcolm Tucker: I've just come from a briefing with a nine-year-old child.
Linton Barwick: You're talking about AJ. AJ is one of our top guys. He's a Stanton College Prep, Harvard. One of the brightest and best.
Malcolm Tucker: Well, his briefing notes were written in alphabetti spaghetti. When I left, I nearly tripped up over his fucking umbilical cord.
Linton Barwick: I'm sorry it troubles you that our people achieve excellence at such an early age. But could we just move on to what's important here? Now, I understand that your Prime Minister has asked you to supply us with some, say, fresh British intelligence, is that true?
Malcolm Tucker: Yeah, apparently, your fucking master race of highly-gifted toddlers can't quite get the job done...
Linton Barwick: All right.
Malcolm Tucker:
What could India want with a manoeuvrable supersonic cruise missile?
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
That plus a nuke warhead sounds great for killing big carriers. If push really comes to shove kiss power projection in the Indian Ocean goodbye. I wonder how long it will take China to buy one.
I think China is really the one that should be worrying about the Indian military.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
That's more or less an economic question - is it cheaper to deploy supersonic anti-ship missiles to take out a cruise, or to saturate it's defense screen with a huge amount of subsonic ones?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Arguably, one of the shortcomings is that the US has more (a lot more) than one bullet, and isn't afraid to use them. Unlike either Sheriff Andy or Deputy Barney, the US can be quite unlovable.
Oh, don't give him a hard time.
Personally, as a guy from a military background, and enjoying military strategy games, etc, I agree with him completely, I don't see much advantage of SS cruise missiles over a ballistic missile, at least for most countries and most situations.
The advantage a subsonic cruise missile has over a ballistic, is primarily payload fraction. Consider a tomahawk that weighs 3000 pounds of which 1000 pounds is warhead. Put another way, if you want 1000 pounds of boom on target, and want to use a subsonic cruise missile, you get to haul an additional 2000 extra pounds of missile around, instead of an additional 2000 pounds of aircraft fuel or food on a submarine or whatever.
In comparison, lets consider an ancient ballistic missile, a Polaris carrying a W47. A W47 only weighs 700 pounds or so, in comparison to 1000 pounds of "boom" on a tomahawk. Yet, a Polaris weighed freaking 28000 pounds. So, you can VERY QUICKLY deliver a mere 700 pounds of boom on target, if you're willing to haul around an extra 27300 pounds of missile.
Supersonic missiles combine the fuel efficiency of a ballistic missile, with the simplicity, reliability, and low cost of a cruise missile. Note the slight sarcasm. Pretty much a total failure EXCEPT that they can deliver extremely quickly.
If you dominate the air land and sea, you get quick delivery by stationing a boring old fashioned B-52 directly over the target and dropping a simple iron bomb straight down. Or, if you're not planning a pre-emptive nuclear strike, you simply don't need that capability to reach your goals. India, on the other hand....
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"What?, it must be a supersonic missile idiot!" "Improbable sir, this one is curving and making acrobatics on the screen, actually I think it is trying to spell something" "What does it say?" "Catch me sucker!"
Oh, I dunno, just about anything can blow up if you treat it right.
Q. What's the difference between electrical engineers and civil engineers?
A. Electrical engineers build weapons systems; civil engineers build targets.
Isn't this just a really fast surface to surface missile? The operational range is 1/10 of a Tomahawk. How is this any different from a short range ballistics missile, other than the trajectory? I don't mean to criticize an impressive achievement but I foresee it being very different in use from something like a Tomahawk. A Tomahawk can be fired from a huge standoff range and hit its target. With this missile, the attacker has to get relatively close to its target, thus making it vulnerable to defenses. A big part of the value of a cruise missile is that the attacker can stay relatively safe. I think this weapon is much more defensive in nature and this is perhaps a reflection of India's strategic outlook.
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Weapons like the BrahMos are primarily aimed at ships. Yes, you could also use it as a precision-guided land attack cruise missile, but Pakistan's navy is small and almost irrelevant for conflict with India.
This weapon - and, indeed, much of India's military development - is about maintaining military competitiveness with China, and to some extent the ability to discourage the US from interfering if India conducts military operations in areas it regards as its sphere of influence.
The US Navy is apparently upgrading its cruise missile defences on its ships, replacing the Phalanx gun-based system with a missile-based version, because of missiles like the BrahMos.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
If you're using tactical nuclear warheads like you really need to against a modern carrier, then I'd say probably yes.
Of course, if you only send one or two super-sonic nukes AND saturate with sub-sonic conventional warheads, you'll probably get the most reliable results.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Can we PLEASE start spending all this cash on things that don't blow up?
Seems awfully inefficient to me. After all, it's a lot easier to kill people with stuff that does blow up.
We have the first superkalafragilisticexpialidosious cruise missle in 3D!
The hard-lines in the middle east want to go nuclear because of Israel.
I'm guessing by 'hard-liners' you mean Iran and Syria, since no one else really seems interested in acquiring nuclear weapons in the middle east, and I'm further going to suggest that they aren't so afraid of Israel (who doesn't really have a history of aggression) as they are of the United States (who definitely has a history of aggression, in particular against Iran).
I don't even particularly blame them, either. If I were Iran, I would be working very hard to build nuclear weapons as a defense, it's only logical. On the other hand, I am not Iranian, I am American, and I don't particularly favor a country who has an official chant "Death to America" getting nuclear weapons. I am aware that it is not entirely 'fair' for America to have nuclear weapons and Iran not, but in this case my self-preservation instinct over-rules any desire for fairness.
Qxe4
Bah. Wake me up when they have a maneuverable superluminal cruise missile.
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I believe what the GP meant (and how I interpreted what he wrote) is that there's no apparent benefit of a supersonic cruise missile over a supersonic ballistic missile. If you are going for speed, it can be detected, so you might as well make the missile ballistic and go for maximum speed. If you are trying to be stealthy, you make a low-flying cruise missing without much of a signature so it is hard to detect. A low flying supersonic object will not be stealthy at all.
It's not the first maneuverable supersonic CM either. Russian P-500 Bazalt missile was both supersonic and maneuverable and it entered service in 1973 (!). Brahmos is an adaptation of previous generation Russian missile technology, and not even the most advanced variant of that. Russians don't export their latest stuff, particularly the kind of stuff that if push came to shove could be efficiently used against them.
A ballistic missile is pretty obvious. A cruise missile isn't quite so.
Huge market for such a device. Particularly if it was nuclear capable. Boom. There goes Washington DC. No clue who hit it. It takes the Mutual out of MAD.
Deleted
> If I were Iran, I would be working very hard to build nuclear weapons as a defense, it's only logical.
A lot of the Arab world looks up to Iran as a country willing to defy the US. As for nukes, they sometimes make sense as a deterrent, but almost never as a defense. Setting them off in almost any circumstance is also a violation of international law.
Biggest problem in Iran isn't so much the Iranians as it is the government, AFAICT. (As far as I can tell.) If they could get a government in power which weren't run by a couple of psychopaths, then maybe having a nuclear deterrent would make sense. But as long as the government is threatening to wipe other governments off the face of the earth, NOBODY should let them NEAR a nuke. Same holds true for every other government. You should not get a nuke if you're someone who would seriously consider using it when there were less than a few million lives at stake.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I don't think India has ever faced any credible direct security threat from the U.S., well aside from aid to Pakistan, and the threat of war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. India has very strong ties with Britain, vibrant trade with the U.S., developed nuclear weapons early, plays amongst the big boys economically, we idealize Gandhi, etc.
India projecting sea power more effectively definitely impacts China's trade routes however, especially with the middle east. India causing an increase in China's manufacturing costs would benefit industry in India, the U.S., and Europe.. and generally be cheered by all non-tools.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I'm pretty sure that they were firmly Sub-sonic.
I don't know how fast a commercial jet can fly but they were going slow when they hit the towers.
-- Sig under construction...
now now, you two, let's not start a war with name-calling.
Table-ized A.I.
It is ironic that the technology that goes into such a missile, from the computers and materials to the social networks that plan and test such things could instead bring abundance to everyone in the world. Yet people still build such things from a scarcity-based mindset, not recognizing the total irony. The tools of abundance all around us now (robotics, computers, networks, biotech, chemistry, nanontech, nuclear technology, and so on) are so powerful -- we will destroy ourselves if we use them from a scarcity mindset. If used from an abundance mindset, we could instead make the world into a much happier place.
As Albert Einstein said, "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind."
We need to change our hearts towards providing abundance for all, before we all die of the unrecognized irony.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I was watching a recorded Rick Steves episode the other day about traveling in Iran. I'd actually like to go there now. He said the people were more friendly than many European towns. People kept saying "We love Americans" and that they wish our countries governments could get past our disagreements.
During a fundraising break, he mentioned he was sitting in a cab in horrible traffic and the cab driver said "death to traffic." He asked the cab driver what he said, and the driver said they say "death to..." when they are irritated by something. It was at this point, Rick realized when they say "Death to America," what they mean is "Damn America!" And given what we have done to the political situation in the middle east, especially by deposing their democratically elected government in 1953 to keep the oil tap open, it is hard to argue with them.
But if it's for ships due to land drawbacks, then why not use ballistic missiles? They're a lot cheaper, for one.
Table-ized A.I.
Actually, the hardliners in the mid-east will consider nuclear because of Iran. Iran is not in the mid-east. Syria has an identity crisis coming. They are run by the Alawites (sp?) which are considered a branch of Shi'ism. However, the pop. is about 80% Sunni. The Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni gang, managed to get a foothold in Syria and Papa Assad leveled the city Hama, which the Muslim Brotherhood had taken over, in 1982. Then he invited the press in to get his point well made. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are mainly worried about Iran, Israel doesn't directly threaten them unless it is to get the rank and file Muslins upset and when they get upset, those governments get nervous. Jordan is caught between the Palestinians living within the country and the rest (more or less evenly divided or a 60-40 split but I cannot recall which has the edge). In any case, they aren't Shi'ite.
The main threat the Sunnis see is the Shi'ites. The U.S. fucked the Sunnis over royally by giving them the Shi'ites their first Arab country, Iraq, which could make a difference. Syria doesn't count because they will be hamstrung by their Sunni majority. And the Shi'ite in Iraq are one pissed off bunch. They've been screwed by the Sunnis under Saddam for 30 years. Then they got double crossed by the U.S. after the first Gulf War and Papa Bush encouraged them to rebell. They did, the U.S. didn't help. They got fucked.
The Iraqi religious (not the political) Shi'ite leadership, which al Sadr is not a member of (some wag called him the Al Sharpton of the Shi'ites), is not sympathetic to Iranian influence since they are mainly Arab and consider themselves THE Shi'ite authority. They are working behind the scenes to corral Iranian influence in Iraq. No one knows if the Iraqi Shi'ite religious leadership will prevail.
So right now, the Persian regime is promoting themselves as the Jew-Killers, the successor of the Nazies in an effort gain an edge over Sunni Islam. This is anathema to the Sunni who like dead Jews just as well as the next Muslim but would rather die than have Shi'ism become the dominant face of Islam. And Iran is in the ascendancy. It scares the heebie-jeebies out of the Sunnis and if Iran gets nukes, they will find a way to get them too.
If it is similar to the nuclear powered aircraft we considered building, but let good sense prevail, thank goodness. The nuclear powered airplane would have sprayed so much radioactive fallout during operation, that it didn't need to be armed with anything. Just flying around over a populated area would kill most of the residents within a couple days if they didn't GTH out.
After 9/11 Iran was one of the few countries where candle light vigils were held to mourn the tragedy.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/photoessays/vigil/
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Supersonic cruise missiles should be hitting the market just about the time that shipboard anti-missile lasers do.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
In comparison, lets consider an ancient ballistic missile...
Reading that gave me a vision of the ancient Greeks launching a Polaris missile at one another. Spar-taaaans! You will set 1-MQ to missile firing! Designate target package Athens! Spin up missiles I-VI and VII-XII! Commence hover maneuver and stand by to rain fire on our enemies! HA-OU! HA-OU! HA-OU!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If Israel wasn't there Iran would be trying to go nuclear because of Saudi Arabia. If Iraq hadn't been pummeled in 1991 it'd be Iran's "justification" for going nuclear. Or Pakistan would be.
Its easy to blame Israel for Iraq and Iran trying to go nuclear but thats just it, the easy answer. Its similar to the justification for the US/UK to go nuclear, Germany was the motivator but when they failed the threat became Imperial Japan and then the Soviet Union.
And when we look at the rhetoric, Israel has never threatened a neighbor with nuclear weapons, the closest they came was to fly high performance fighters over Cairo, Aswan High and Damascus during the October War to show that the integrated air defense networks wouldn't protect against a strike.
Iran on the other hand has been more vocal about intentions towards Israel. "...the Zionist Regime that is a usurper and illegitimate regime and a cancerous tumor should be wiped off the map."
Actually, they were going damn fast. The terrorists felt free to break all FAA air traffic rules. They were going hell bent for leather at very low altitude; something commercial planes never do. The speed at the time of striking the buildings has been variously estimated (by examining frames of video) from 503 to 590 mph at approximately 1000 feet altitude. It was possible to reach this speed at such a low altitude, in dense air, because they were in a shallow dive. Yes, this is subsonic, but I would hardly call it "slow." This is part of the reason for the devastating effects of the strikes. The buildings had been designed for jetliner impact, but it had been assumed that any jetliner at that altitude was in a landing or takeoff phase, and would have been going not much over 200 mph.
> The nuclear powered airplane would have sprayed so much radioactive fallout
> during operation, that it didn't need to be armed with anything. Just flying > around over a populated area would kill most of the residents within a
> couple days if they didn't GTH out.
A gross exaggeration, but the thing would have been leaky. However, as it was intended to fly over the Soviet Union dropping H-bombs, that hardly matters.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No, they're cruise missiles because of their long range and small size. It's hard for a small ballistic missile to have a range of hundreds of miles. These missiles have a cruise mode where they can travel long distances. The long distance ability then encourages their other characteristics.
You move from the false assumption that Iran's official and national chant is "Death to America". The truth is, they don't really care about you. They just want to live a peaceful and long life, as most human beings are trying to do.
Most Iranians, at this point, are conflicted by their government. They want freedom of speech and expression. They want to be able to discuss issues openly, without having to worry about disappearing one day.
Bottom line is, don't blame a whole country because a misinformed and misguided government is oppressive. Don't send your troups either, you'd be amazed at how powerful a people can be when provoked sufficiently, even if that means putting an end to their own government. The Iranian people are a good people, with honest beliefs, good schools and diverse, however oppressed political opinions.
I'm sure you'll notice that only the last point is a problem, all the rest are good things.
The other obvious advantage of a cruise missile is that it can fly a sea-skimming trajectory. That's a big issue for penetration of defences. And that's the main driver for this kind of missile: if they just wanted to hit things that couldn't shoot back then a subsonic weapon would have been cheaper and much lighter. You can carry four harpoon for the weight of one of these monsters and as the Russians say, quantity has a quality all of its own.
Sea-skimming is especially important if you intend to fight someone with an air defence system which is long-range but horizon-limited, e.g. the USN Aegis. Which is where this missile's Russian antecedents came from.
Maybe India is seeing the US as its most important potential enemy? Doesn't make much sense to me - I'd be worried about China - but maybe they think capability is more important than intentions. Or maybe they just think supersonic is cool.
This is nonsensical. For one thing, The Chinese already have ballistic nuclear missiles. If they actually decided to uncork the nukes there's no need to use something like this. Ballistic missiles are much harder to stop than cruise missiles.
What about those nifty anti-missile gatling guns on American ships? Can they or any other tech reliably intercept these things? I've seen the sentiment that America spending billions to build carriers may be foolish if a few $200,000 "Sizzler" missiles can take one out. I don't how severe that threat actually is but it is an argument I've seen either as the merits of a supersonic cruise missile or questionable investment in expensive capital ships vulnerable to them.
I would think that supersonics would be harder to shoot down given all the interest in shooting down missiles.
...that we know of.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
The first?
This is incorrect. In the late 1950's the US developed the 'Hound Dog' AGM-28 (GAM-77/GAM-77A under the designation system at the time). In Service in 1960, the Hound Dog was unique in that the turbojet that it carried could be run off of the carrying B-52's fuel, practically allowing the use of the engines on Both Hound Dogs during takeoff. While not as fast as BrahMos, the Hound Dog could fly Three and a half times further, and could carry a nuclear weapon (no doubt in my mind that the Indias have a nuclear BrahMos in the works).
Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-28_Hound_Dog
Given that a W47 is thermonuclear it is hardly fair to count that as "only" 700lbs of "boom" on target. The first model of the W47 had a yield of 600kilotons. Practically speaking, that is 1,200,000,000 pounds of boom on target. Not 700. You right about the physical mass fraction but compare the actual resulting "boom fraction" and it is a very different story.
Ahem, what about the cruise missiles the USA built in the 1950's?
Over a billion big fat 1950's dollars spent on those.
Just off the top of my head, the Hound Dog, the Snark, The Navaho, the BOMARC, the Boojum, the Triton, and the Mace.
I believe what the GP meant (and how I interpreted what he wrote) is that there's no apparent benefit of a supersonic cruise missile over a supersonic ballistic missile. If you are going for speed, it can be detected, so you might as well make the missile ballistic and go for maximum speed.
Except, I can shoot down your ballistic missiles a whole lot easier than I can your Cruise missiles because your ballistic missiles are over the horizon for a lot longer. Literally shooting down ICBMs is easy - think skeet shooting with computers, and you have a good idea. Systems integration is a bitch, but it always will be.
A low flying supersonic object will not be stealthy at all.
There is nothing inherently unstealthy about supersonic. The F-22 is supersonic [cruise] and stealthy.
Heat. Supersonic at low levels means lots of heat. Moving fast at low speeds makes it easier to find you in the radar clutter as we can filter out everything moving bellow say, 500 miles and hour.
You're comparing apples and oranges. Conventional warheads on ballistic missiles are pretty damn rare compared to nuclear ones, for the exact reason the GP mentioned - missile to payload mass ratio.
Conversely, nuclear warheads can very easily be delivered via cruise missile. The Tomahawk (his example, not mine) was designed to carry the W80 before SALT. That's a good deal more than 1000 lb of "boom".
I see your point, but doubt its applicability to the discussion.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
According to the Wikipedia entry for the BrahMos, its payload capacity is 300kg, 1/10 the missile's mass, giving it about 3/5 of the Tomahawk's payload capacity while weighing twice as much. Its range is also only 290km, while the Tomahawk has a range of 2,500km. So not only do you have to carry around twice as much missile, but you have to get eight times as close to use it. I expect that the primary purpose of the BrahMos is similar to that of the P-270 Moskit (NATO SS-N-22 Sunburn), which is to have an extremely fast missile that passes through the engagement zone of a target too fast to allow effective engagement by hard- and soft-kill systems.
THink that it can outdo a rail gun or a laser? Yeah, exactly. but that Russian supersonic cruise missile WILL be useful against China.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In comparison, lets consider an ancient ballistic missile...
Reading that gave me a vision of the ancient Greeks launching a Polaris missile at one another. Spar-taaaans! You will set 1-MQ to missile firing! Designate target package Athens! Spin up missiles I-VI and VII-XII! Commence hover maneuver and stand by to rain fire on our enemies! HA-OU! HA-OU! HA-OU!
Well, you do remember King Leonidas kicking the Persian emissary into the missile silo in "300", don't you?
The main defense for any aircraft carrier is the billions of dollars of support ships floating around it, such as hunter-killer submarines, destroyers, and guided missile cruisers.
In particular, the AEGIS system is designed to counter missile and aircraft threats. The SM-3 missile used in the AEGIS system recently shot down a satellite, and is being considered for deployment as an anti-missile shield against Iran and North Korea. Aircraft carriers may be big targets, but they're not just sitting around alone waiting to get blown up.
If you manage to get through all that, a carrier can lob a few of the new RAM anti-missile missiles at incoming targets, but honestly, if it gets that close you're pretty much fucked from the momentum of the debris anyway.
Meanwhile, the great advantage of an aircraft carrier is the hundreds of airplanes it can send into the air to perform all kinds of missions. Time and again, we've seen the value of the American aircraft carrier fleet in force projection. Even if they were the most vulnerable ships in the universe, they'd probably still be worth building for that reason alone.
Firstly, most of Irans ruling council is not actually Persian, they are Arabs mostly originating from southern Iraq (hence the large Shia influence in Iran). The Persians and Arabs don't exactly get along, this is why the Islamic Republic maintains a large well equipped private military, the Basij (religious police and republican guards fall under the Basij) which is almost exclusively comprised of Lebanese (Hezbolla) and Palestinian (Hamas) Arabs.
Also there have been a lot of protests against the Iranian government recently and things have not gotten better. Huge racial issues are cropping up in Iran fanning the flames of old Persian/Arab hate. The acts of the Iranian government are not representative of the desires of the Persian people.
The biggest reason the Iran will never invade (or try to kill) Israel is because the Persians and Jews get on like a house on fire. There are several Persian members of the Knesset as well as the headquarters of the Baha'i religion being located in Israel (Baha'iism originated in Persia (Iran) in the early part of the 20th century). A lot of the Persians that fled Iran in the 80's did so through Israel. Any invasion would be an unmitigated disaster for the Iranian government as Persians simply refuse to fight or worse yet, get reunited with old friends from before the Islamic revolution. Even today most Iranians who travel east (to Asia) do so through Israel's Ben Gurion airport due to few nations allowing Iranian airliners to land and even fewer international airlines willing to land in Iran.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Of course, it is amazing how fast lasers and mach 10 rail guns operate compared to these SUPER SUPER SLOW cruise missiles. Yes, compared to the rail gun, or the speed of light, anything that China can throw against BIG CARRIERS will within another 5 years will be protected by both lasers and railguns. And the railgun operates up to 500 km, and the laser at over 1000 km.
Finally, I would not worry about China buying one. They will have stolen the tech by now.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Because they are cheaper TODAY. That is about to change. Once production ramps up, the supersonic cruise missile will be cheaper. And of course, that is why America is skipping the supersonic and developing the hypersonics, as well as effective defenses against super and hypersonics. Now, we just need to keep China from stealing it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I take it you've played Civilisation before?
:).
Should I send my good old veteran[1] Phalanxes or Nuke em...
[1] Yeah they're definitely veterans by that stage
Russia built a series of supersonic anti-ship missiles with ranges in the cruise category. They were mostly fit aboard submarines and destroyers and designed for saturation attacks, which our missile defense systems were poorly equipped to deal with.
Using modern technology (higher temperature alloys, ceramic composites, and CFD optimization) it would be easily possible to build a cruise missile in the 1000nm range. In fact, because subsonic cruisers have to combat with launcher dimensions, their form factors are ill-suited for subsonic drag reduction and supersonic missiles might have an aerodynamic advantage.
ATK is currently developing a hypersonic cruise missile for the 800km range, which is an important gap filler between what artillery, short-range missiles, and ballistic missiles can hit quickly. This range is currently filled by subsonic cruise-missiles which can take over an hour to reach the target. Time-critical-strike it's called.
The issue with a supersonic cruise missile is that it needs even more than a subsonic cruiser to fly at high altitude in order to achieve satisfactory range. Aerodynamic heating is difficult, perhaps limiting at low altitudes for more than a short terminal phase. Flying at high altitude means they are easier to detect (not that look-down-shoot-down isn't standard, but ship-based phased-array radars won't be looking down) albeit harder to intercept due to their higher velocity.
What's really scary are the Chinese developed anti-ship ballistic missiles. Stealthy re-entry vehicles that can perform course changes. This is an interception nightmare and likely driving the US Navy ballistic.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
Hit the spot. For the payload and range, there's an obvious gap in the current capabilities in the US fleet and most of the world's armed forces. The Polaris example is a little bit overkill, as a Polaris can hit pretty much anywhere on the globe and VERY fast relative to any atmospheric flier. The range diagram works a bit like this:
Artillery ~20-30km with RAP etc
Supersonic Surface-skimming Rockets ~50-100km
Cruise Missiles ~1000km
Ballistic Missiles ~1500km-infinity
What you notice in this analysis is that all of the options are fast except the subsonic cruise missile. Currently, there are some very cool missiles out there like the MBDA Meteor and the ages old SA-6 etc which use integral rocket boosters to go supersonic and then use ducted-rockets to increase their specific impulse to equal or more than hydrogen rockets without any of the mechanical complexity. Very slick concept. These missiles can get around the inability of ram-rockets to provide static thrust and make good use of the volume taken up by the ram-rocket combustion chamber. It's one of those serendipitous design coincidences.
Count on seeing a lot of development in both shorter range ballistic missiles and super/hyper-sonic cruise missiles. Who wants to build fighters and carriers etc when you can just shotgun an enemy with cheap low-observable warheads at M > 1 speeds at any range you find convenient?
The world is headed towards a race to build the cheapest missiles and anti-missles that can fit on the cheapest ships and submarines. Big rockets with dual-burn solid motors and the large hulls for carrying large numbers of them will become a financial burden. We're going to see more and more focus on the ability to detect and intercept low-observable, low-emission warheads with the cheapest sensor that will get the job done.
The end result is probably more submersible vessels to avoid compulsory spamming anti-missile destroyers. The US Navy better get used to lying low. 100m below the surface and undetectable. A bunch of metal on the surface is going to increasingly be a liability. The generals won't like it, but there's a reason Kelly Johnson said "don't deal with the Navy." Grow up or cry about Chinese ASBM's. That's the future.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
and I'm further going to suggest that they aren't so afraid of Israel (who doesn't really have a history of aggression)
I think 1.5 million palestinians in the Gaza Strip would disagree.
Sorry mate, taking action to prevent your neighbor from lobbing qassam rockets over your border is in a completely different ballpark than invading Iran would be.
Qxe4
Maybe because ballistic missiles are, by definition, unsteered? Keep the target maneuvering and there's a good chance any single missile will miss. Hell, back in WW II, ships dodged bombs all the time, and the time from drop to impact was a lot shorter than the travel time of a missile!
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What you say is logical, but I still don't think you will end up being right; I think the USNs experiments with mass drivers and directed energy weapons will quickly make any new type of missile a great big "meh".
Actually, if you think about that, it would probably take us back to the battleship era; surface combatants with a mix of conventional and ablative armor, active defenses consisting of smaller mass drivers and directed energy weapons and a few missiles, with offensive batteries of large mass drivers, and possibly pulsed laser missile warheads?
or I could be wrong. i just think we'll have a game changer before we are all reduced to using submarines.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Taking action? Such as leveling entire city blocks and burning and melting civilians with phosphor bombs?
The collective punishment of Gaza population every time a few idiot extremists decide to toss their makeshift rockets into Israel is rather drastic "action taking".
Not to mention the other kind of "aggressiveness" of Jewish settlers, building on occupied land against international law but with support of the current government.
They've been selling AK's to anyone with cash, coffee, diamonds, etc for years and then had them used against their own troops. they also wanted to sell of their nuke boats to power Singapore a few years back until the SG gov't blocked that.
Indeed. If Mexico suddenly started lobbing missiles into San Diego, I guarantee the US response would be much more than leveling entire city blocks. Especially if all of Mexico voted for the government party whose publicly stated goal was to destroy the US. And I would support that response.
Once again, settlements are a completely different animal than attacking Iran. I'm pretty sure you can see that.
Qxe4
Even if they were the most vulnerable ships in the universe, they'd probably still be worth building for that reason alone.
No, they wouldn't be. They'd be part of some reef-building exercise instead. That's what "most vulnerable ships in the universe" means.
For example, in the latest budget, there was no increase in spending, w.r.t increase in the GDP etc., For an economy that grows more than 7% every year, the defense spending does not follow this curver
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
It sounds like WMD was a translation error.
This is really gonna maintain power balance in South Asia. Keep it up the good work!! http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/muscle-boost-review-does-muscle-boost-really-work-1972189.html
It's a fundamental tracking problem between large and small targets. In order for ships to be reasonably well off sitting on the surface, they need to be able to track incoming warheads and shoot them down with missiles etc. Ships can be made low observable. Missiles can be made low observable. Ships can use gigantic phased array antennae. Missiles have less tracking power, but are looking for a bigger target. The ship might have an excellent radar, but it's trying to direct fire onto a small target.
Putting up a defense will require a lot of devices that, while possibly made small on radar/IR/visual, will still be additional vectors of detection. Couple all that with the possibility of passive terminal phase warheads, and surface ships will have to be constantly blasting away with their phased arrays. So much for low EM emissions.
The situation keeps looking worse as you start considering the possibility of saturation attacks with multi-warhead launch vehicles from long ranges at high speeds. Any defense mechanisms will eventually get overwhelmed. It's as easy as increasing the number of inbound warheads.
Navies can either try to go stealth and battle with the issue of hiding massive targets from increasingly cheap and effective sensors or they can put a little water in between themselves and what might be out there.
In terms of cost effectiveness, Naval vessels will fall behind missiles every time. Especially when you start looking at the cost of constructing small lines of ships in specially equipped dry-docks, like those used to build nuclear powered carriers. Mass-produced missiles packaged in sealed rounds on mobile launchers will drive carriers 3000km from the coast at one hundredth the cost of the carrier.
Few aircraft, and almost no carrier-born aircraft, have the capability to operate at that range without giving up all of their payload weight fraction. Either the Navy adapts to emerging threats fast or the US is going to be trying to negotiate foreign policy with billion dollar paper-weights.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
No, cruise missiles are cruise missiles because of their flight profile. Ballistic missiles travel in a ballistic arc, like rocket artillery, and don't fly like airplanes. Cruise missile, however, do: they fly through the atmosphere like airplanes do, with wings, with a most of their journey being level flight as they cruise to their targets. They are airplanes, in fact, just expendable ones.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
I didn't know the Spartans used Roman numerals...
The Basij mostly Lebanese and Palestinians? Very doubtful. It sounds like you are attempting to white wash the fact that Iranians are killing Iranians.
It is true that Iran has several minorities, but they are not in a position of power.
Last we heard from the Baha'i in Iran, they were swinging at the end of ropes. The Shi'ites believe they are enemies of Allah.
You are bring up Iran invading Israel? Why? What does that have to do with the Arabs feeling threatened by Iranian nukes enough to demand their own.
The main defense for any aircraft carrier is the billions of dollars of support ships
I'm not saying you'e wrong,but: cost != value :)
Ya, the only way it can be considered the first supersonic "manueverable" (emphasis on the quotes from the article) cruise missile is if you define "maneuverable" to mean "controlled entirely by on-board systems".
The P-700 Granit is considered "probable" when it comes to "mid-course correction" which seems to imply it's not very 'maneuverable'.
The P-500 Bazalt is considered to be able to make mid-course corrections, but relies on a controlling craft in order to do so, it doesn't do it on its own.
And I have this sneaking suspicion that both the Russians as well as the US already have such capability, but neither country's military is known for publishing full technical capabilities of the advanced weapons systems which they have available.
Yes, the Gaza population voted Hamas into power, but the situation on the ground is more complicated than that. There are too many splinter groups operating independendly from another to attribute every attack on Israel to the "Gaza government".
Anyway, indiscriminately targeting civilians is how terrorists operate, not how a sovereign, democratic nation should operate. Terrorist groups like Al-Quaida justify killing american civilians because "they are responsible" for the government they voted into power. To terrorists, civilians are legitimate military targets due to this reasoning, the same reasoning Israel often applies and that you are applying right now.
I believe democratic nations should distance themselves from that kind of reasoning and keep civilian casualties to a minimum. Something Israel repeatedly fails to do, even though they claim otherwise.
I guess you have never heard of the term supercruise then. If it's ok for airplanes to cruise at supersonic speeds, then it's also ok for a cruise missile. And general consensus on the net does not agree with you.
Hard-liners in the middle east don't give half a shit about what India does. The Pakistanis do sure, but they already are nuclear. The hard-lines in the middle east want to go nuclear because of Israel. I will fix that to you : The hard-lines in the middle east want to go nuclear because of the country they perceive as a threat, and which already have a nuclear arsenal : be it Israel or the US.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Then what does that have to do with you calling Persians (Iranians) Jew-Killers. Do you see the rather obvious link now.
Stop getting your information from Fox News. Your post was full of factual inaccuracies, half truths and blatant propaganda.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Cheneyish to English.
Human behavior is a product of many things, genetics, parenting, history, nutrition, community, environment, and others...
As I see it, you are asking, what do we do about psychopaths, and their lesser cousins, bullies?
"[p2p-research] The psychopath as peer?"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005499.html
As Jacque Fresco suggests in the following two videos, you can change the physical and social environment, and that will change a lot of human behavior in a healthier way, which is much better than passing laws:
http://www.youtube.com/user/jacquefresco#p/a/u/2/pbtbGcKiLiM
http://www.youtube.com/user/jacquefresco#p/a/u/1/PSbKfdOTRpY
And as you suggest, today's prisons in the USA create criminals. The USA has many times more people in prison than other industrialized countries,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
in large part because the sentences are way longer (part of that is that the prison industry is profitable to many who lobby for harsher laws or prevent removing harsh laws). For example, in New York State:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702834.html
"Then in November, Democrats captured the state Senate for the first time in years. The State Assembly in the past had proposed repealing the drug laws, but the effort was always blocked by Senate Republicans, many of whom represent largely rural, Upstate districts where most of the state's prisons are located."
And consider what was recently discovered in Pennsylvania:
"Pennsylvania rocked by 'jailing kids for cash' scandal"
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges/index.html
Where else in the USA does this happen?
A basic income could remove much petty theft and physical crimes of mugging and armed robbery:
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
Being non-violent does not mean being passive. We can actively work to create a better society that works for most everybody as an active process, especially in a democracy:
"Social Movements and Strategic Nonviolence"
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html
The same as with terrorists, you may not be able to prevent individuals from planning to do harmful things, but what you can do is take away their social support network that enables them and provides cover for them to plan large scale harm. That goes for whether the terrorists are alienated fundamentalist extremists pursuing some radical cause, or ostensibly mainstream elected government officials invading other countries to remain in power and to create business opportunities for their friends.
Again, Voyage from Yesteryear is one picture of such an alternative society (even if it is not the only possible one).
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
Because we live in such a schooled society, where most people have been broken and trained
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Awesome post.
These semantic/linguistic differences are very important to understanding a culture. For example, most Americans wouldn't say they want to kill Iraqis, or that the Iraq war was about religion. But they might call it a Crusade. Most Americans think that word means "very important thing worth dying for" but historically, and especially in the Middle East, it means a war of the holy Christian cross. I wonder how it is translated in the Iraqi media.
To echo your point on religion, here is another thing Albert Einstein wrote:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"""
For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.
"""
You might like the rest there too.
As I mention here:
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1937-unnatural-acts-breaking-the-fever-of-militarism.html#comment-2450
We the People, based on deeply held humanistic and spiritual values, need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. In order to end arms races, promote world peace, and also save money we can direct to civilian needs, we need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety")
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working").
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I seriously doubt Israel is specifically targeting civilians (there is no reason to do so). When the targets of their attacks are hidden in populated areas, it's not surprising that some civilians will die. And Hamas certainly doesn't try to avoid the civilian deaths, they like the propaganda value. In the case of Hezbollah, pictures were photoshopped trying to make it look like there were more civilian deaths than actually occurred.
Qxe4
That doesn't really answer my question though. I know that anti-missile systems are at least somewhat effective against standard anti-ship missiles and cruise missiles.
These things are supersonic and can dodge and weave. Do we have an effective counter?
I didn't call the Persians Jew killers, I called the Persian regime wannabe Jew killers. Given their statements, that's rather hard to deny.
Fox News has nothing to do with it since I do not watch any TV news nor visit Fox's web site.
Now about these factual inaccuracies, half truths and blatant propaganda, which were those exactly?
Air-burst nuclear weapons are completely ineffective against naval ships. What do you think the pacific naval nuclear tests were for? They towed about dozens of WWII decommissioned ships (including carriers) out to the pacific and air-burst (IIRC) a ~500 Kiloton nuke over the fleet in two separate tests, Able and Baker (http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq76-1.htm). Able was an air-burst that sunk 5 ships (a Heavy Cruiser [captured Japanese Ship], 2 destroyers and 2 transports). Baker was a submerged blast, where the nuclear weapon was held submerged below a ship. Baker sunk 8 ships (2 battleships, 1 carrier, 2 submarines, 1 auxiliary, 2 landing craft and a district craft). During Able the ships with the old teak decks were the most likely to sink. The lesson of these tests was the air-burst nuclear weapons are highly ineffective against naval ships and that effective use of nuclear weapons involved a submerged blast where the concussion wave could damage the hulls. As an aside during the Able test the ships with external fire suppression systems going full blast were barely damaged and in fact the radioactivity level dropped to safe levels within a day on almost all ships. Part of that may be because Able was several hundred feet off target but realistically with the size of blast the distance probably didn't make a bit of difference.
Now if you are talking about aiming a nuclear weapon and hitting the ship with the weapon rather than air-bursting then yes, you could probably sink the carrier, but the rest of the fleet won't even be damaged. With the Aegis system the carrier fleets use it would likely be a terrible waste of a nuclear weapon. Aegis can track more than 100 incoming targets (the actual number it can track and shoot at is classified and Aegis 2 is supposed to be a major improvement). A typical carrier fleet includes at least 2 missile destroyers that can fire double digit missiles per second. And that doesn't even include the cruiser's, sub's, and all the other ships which carry anti-missile missiles. The Baker test showed that the key to nuclear use against a carrier fleet is to drop the nuke into the sea (in the middle of the fleet) and burst it a few dozen feet underwater. Doing so with a cruise missile, even a supersonic one is going to be damn near impossible. The only effective way to do so would be a ballistic missile, probably an ICBM that put the projectile into low earth orbit where it's approach would be damn near impossible to stop. ICBM's have to be shot down before separation of the nukes, otherwise it's near impossible to stop them. On approach the nuke would be going nearly 20k mph directly down. Now how to trigger it a few dozen feet underwater and how to stop the force of the impact with the water from blowing it to pieces is another question all together.
As far as Supersonic Cruise Missiles, realistically you have to wonder why the US abandoned supersonic cruise missile research. Something came up that they realized they missiles are pointless, something that the Indians have obviously overlooked.
As I said, cruise missiles use a cruise mode for their long range travel. They do indeed use airflow lift in cruise mode, but it is their long range cruising which makes them different from other missiles. The lifting surface is needed to achieve the long distance; it is not the lifting surface which defines them (some antiship missiles and drone aircraft also use lifting surfaces). Your ballistic missile example is overly simplified, as there are other types of missiles such as antiaircraft missiles and antiship missiles which are not generally considered cruise missiles. Antiaircraft missiles (particularly air-to-air) usually are thrusting all the way to the target and are thus not ballistic. There are also many antiship missiles which are not ballistic, and have many of the characteristics of cruise missiles except that most antiship missiles have much shorter ranges than cruise missiles have. Antiship missiles are also designed for use over water and thus have simpler navigation systems, but that's a side effect of the shorter range; cruise missiles need complex navigation systems so they can produce better results at long range. Some antiship missiles have ranges in the cruise missile range, but are probably classed as antiship rather than cruise missiles due to not being very useful outside of naval warfare due to limitations such as targeting limits (being able to lock on to a ship's radar profile but not a building), armor-piercing design, or terminal-phase behavior (high-speed popup, overhead targeting of vital area, and close-in defense countermeasures). Yes, there are cruise missiles which are used against ships, but it's the long range which is the major characteristic of the class.
Biggest problem in
{Iran, Egypt, Syria, Israel, Turkey, Russia, China, The UK, America, etc.}
isn't so much the
{Iranians, Egyptans, Syrians, Israelis, Turks, Russians, Chinese, _ Americans, etc.}
as it is the government, AFAICT
You missed someone in the second list :-)
Sorry, thumbfingered it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Antiship missiles that fly to their targets are also known as cruise missiles: they're usually specified in literature as antiship cruise missiles. Long range is *not* a requirement of cruise missiles: see the V-1, which had a shorter range than the V-2 and pretty much all other ballistic missiles. But I think we're entering nit-picking territory here.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
In comparison, lets consider an ancient ballistic missile...
Reading that gave me a vision of the ancient Greeks launching a Polaris missile at one another. Spar-taaaans! You will set 1-MQ to missile firing! Designate target package Athens! Spin up missiles I-VI and VII-XII! Commence hover maneuver and stand by to rain fire on our enemies! HA-OU! HA-OU! HA-OU!
Well, you do remember King Leonidas kicking the Persian emissary into the missile silo in "300", don't you?
And why were the ancient Greeks they using Roman numerals? It's a conspiracy I tell ya!
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
In what alternate reality is my perfectly correct explanation of what "Ballistic" means "Flamebait"?
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Agreed. Nits targeted, entering terminal phase.
perhaps I should introduce myself a bit; I was a Aviation Fire Control technician, rate AQ, last century.
I did intermediate level repair, worked on mainly the F/A-18, but also the F-14 and anything else that had similar hardware and needed something more complicated than swapping out black boxes.
Based on what I know, and i realize that their are a lot of people in the world who know a whole lot more, the only real limiting factor even then was computing power; sure, you have a margin of error with your defensive weapons even if you have a perfect solution, but the controller takes account of that, also, and assigns overkill fire missions to account for it.
As time passes, and computing power gets cheaper, I simply can't see how a battery of directed energy weapon with a decent recycle time would fail to take out ANY missile threat, except in conditions of extremely reduced visibility or, obviously, human error. if the sky was so full of missiles you could walk on them I could see a problem, but if you are in a situation like that, you obviously have some human error in the loop.
The only thing i see as a REAL danger to a intelligently designed and crewed warship of this type would be, obviously, subsurface, or from LARGE incoming projectiles, like from a "main gun" mass driver or cannon.
NOTE: I have no reason to think the US navy currently has a workable, deploy-able directed energy or mass driver weapon; I just think we WILL have before surface combatants are obsolete.
I probably still can't give Too many details, especially when I look at Wikipedia entries on some things I'm very familiar with and see obvious, blatant, (and i have to think purposeful) errors, but any time the carrier I was on was over 50km from land, I was not concerned with any possible threat except potentially subsurface threats.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
(in other words, we REALLY SHOULD hang on to the Iowa and the Wisconsin for a while.)
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
If detection is mostly reliable, tracking is difficult, and the speed is high, then interception is going to be almost impossible. For ballistic missiles we're talking about M > 10 flight. For any type of gun-system, we have to detect the incoming projectile at range, track it even if it's maneuvering, and both pinpoint the location and actuate the gun system with enough accuracy to get a hit. Although high speed projectiles or lasers will reduce the need for predicting the flight-path, the real issue is still going to be tracking a high speed low-observable warhead at sufficient range to shoot it while it's in the weapon's effective envelope. That time will get shorter and shorter against faster warheads. The accuracy of the system will be hard-pushed by low-observable to generate a good track at range while the guns will be hard-pressed to aim at shorter ranges where angular velocities will be higher.
The thing that's going to allow us to get out of the stealth vs detection engineering/technology cat & mouse game is a rarely (if ever) employed implementation of radar that uses wavelengths on the order of the vehicle being searched for. Once the wavelength size is about the size of the object, nothing is invisible to radar. The trouble is that this method can't produce sufficiently accurate information for interception.
However, once the general area of the target is known, it would be easily possible to get an interception vehicle within the vicinity of the flight path. Tracking at closer ranges affords more detection options and better accuracy. If we're going to do an intercept against supersonic and hypersonic targets with low-observable technology, it's going to take everything available when it comes to accuracy. We'll have to push really push sensor designs and squeeze out a lot better kinetic performance from the rockets.
I'm expecting a combination of stealth compromising radar, less easily defeated illumination technologies, and high performance intercept vehicles with robust sensor design working in tandem with ship-based high-power painting or even coordination with UAV's.
Even if it's not missile saturation attacks from long ranges (where at least we can detect the launches due to boost motor signature) there's still the issue of the inevitable stealth aircraft penetrating defenses and launching a saturation attack at short range. The aircraft would effectively be an efficient cruise stage for a package of small missiles that only need to boost for a supersonic dash into the target. Small missiles with relatively large warheads and little warning for intercept. In terms of aircraft and missile weight (and cost) it would be very effective.
Look at it this way, we can talk all day about how to protect open-water naval ships from saturation attacks with low-observable warheads, and it will usually work out okay if we start packing enough detection and interception firepower in the correctly sized area (most anti-ship missiles designed for saturation will communicate with each other and prioritize targets), but compare how much that will cost and how much hardware we will have dedicated just to giving us the ability to sit on the surface compared to making higher value targets (ahem, giant carriers that are already nuclear powered and will always and forever more be easy to target) less vulnerable to begin with. If we can put 100m of water in between us and ASBM's, that's a lot better margin for survival than if the interception vessels take hits and suddenly it's a defenseless carrier vs. ASBM saturation attack.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
Maybe you've noticed that Iran, for example, has lots of pretty barren land that invading forces need to cross. Boom. No real damage to their country. And would "Russia" decide to retaliate with nukes? Against a civilian target? For having their troops blown up on foreign soil? That would be a tough sell to the rest of the world. As for North Korea, what are you willing to bet they wouldn't nuke any invading forces, and damn the collateral damage?
Besides, as you point out, news outlets love to talk about how dangerous an invasion of a nuclear armed country is. Strangely, most of the world's nuclear powers are democracies, which means the people (the same ones the news outlets talk to) are in charge. A democracy can't really start or wage a war that the populace is massively against. A country with a few nukes (or possibly with a few nukes) doesn't have to be an actual credible military threat. It just has to sound good.
I don't actually disagree with anything you are saying; The only reason I think you might not be correct in your forecast of future naval weapon system design is that I think we're going to be handed a game changer soon, in the form of directed energy weapons, incredibly fast, and smart, point defense systems, and advances in phased array radar and optical detectors.
Ii do NOT think aircraft are going to be survivable, in either of our projections.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.