Will Super Anti Ship Missile change who controls the oceans?

[Abraham Gubler]

So the Sweds has crappy submarines?

They might be well built and have good technology but if the concept is so limited it can be crappy. Their submarines were designed and built with a single crew shift. So what happens when people need to sleep... They either have to get back to port or bottom the submarine. Now this is OK if you just want to defend the approaches to Stockholm but you sure as hell aren't going to go out to sea and penetrate a US CVBG with such limitations.

ps People who come in and take a single statement from a complex argument and make an issue out of it by reading stuff into it really piss me off.

 

[Belesari]

"ps People who come in and take a single statement from a complex argument and make an issue out of it by reading stuff into it really piss me off.

I might have a issue with that statment!!!!!

 

[rip]

Seen in the context of the above, the biggest threat is actually not the ASBM but the introduction of the 2,000+km ranged DH-10.

If the chinese can develop sub, sea and air-launch anti-ship versions of the missile (where there is no reason not to be able to), then the possibility of overwhelming CBG defences is always there esp with sat mid-course guidance updates and the ability to track CBGs.

The US on the other hand is not doing nothing. Besides existing softkill options eg jamming, decoys etc, directed energy weapons, once deployed, will remove the issue of SAM inventory being insufficient to counter ASMs. DE has been tested to kill missiles. Since DE weapons don't need to be reloaded, in theory, there is no limit on the number of times it can be used (assuming unlimited power supply eg with nuke reactor). ALTB has already been successfully tested and its value in ABM is recognised.

See last para under "development"
Airborne Laser Test Bed

What is still not being taken into sufficient account about the so called long range ship killing missiles ballistic or otherwise, is the correct identification and targeting for those missiles. I will agree that a CVN task force operating in its standard configuration and operating with its normal emissions routines are the easiest things to spot at a distance upon the ocean but what if they change their routines and exercise some emission discipline, then manybe not? There are hundreds and perhaps thousands of detectable targets at a range of a thousand miles, most of which are neutrals, noncombatants and friendlies.
That is the hardest part of the problem to solve and satellites are not the easy answer some people think they are for use in tactical operations. Someday they will be, after much more development, but not yet today. The US is far ahead of the Chinese in the use of satellites for tactical operations and we are not there yet. They can be useful but not yet for targeting. The range of the missile is unimportant if you can’t identify the correct targets fast enough in moving situations.

 

[weasel1962]

Re:

What is still not being taken into sufficient account about the so called long range ship killing missiles ballistic or otherwise, is the correct identification and targeting for those missiles. I will agree that a CVN task force operating in its standard configuration and operating with its normal emissions routines are the easiest things to spot at a distance upon the ocean but what if they change their routines and exercise some emission discipline, then manybe not? There are hundreds and perhaps thousands of detectable targets at a range of a thousand miles, most of which are neutrals, noncombatants and friendlies.
That is the hardest part of the problem to solve and satellites are not the easy answer some people think they are for use in tactical operations. Someday they will be, after much more development, but not yet today. The US is far ahead of the Chinese in the use of satellites for tactical operations and we are not there yet. They can be useful but not yet for targeting. The range of the missile is unimportant if you can’t identify the correct targets fast enough in moving situations.

The difficulty is growing smaller. Commercial vessels are now increasingly AIS equipped. So if a radar contact is achieved, a simple mapping to AIS info will reveal whether the vessel is commercial or not. AIS mapping is capable of being performed by almost any nation as the computing requirements aren't significant. A few thousand returns from vessels won't overwhelm systems. That takes out the "most" bit.

In fact, sat-based AIS identification is the next phase which not only the US but EU is working on. Once AIS receivers are in place, that's practically oceans tracking at 2 to 10 seconds intervals (or every 3 min for stationary vessels).

I'm not saying that its still that easy to find and track a CBG. The above might even spawn AIS decoys where CVNs emit but using a fake AIS code. Having said that, its not as difficult today as it was 3 decades ago. And in a few short years, it could be even more easier.

 

[gf0012-aust]

A few thousand returns from vessels won't overwhelm systems. That takes out the "most" bit.

Systems already track over a million (literally) events an hour.... we've been doing that for years.

 

[weasel1962]

Re:

Also have not mentioned the impact of IMO's LRIT regs which basically forces commercial vessels not only to adopt AIS but also LRIT wef 2009.

LRIT provides the ability to track vessels of any flag as much as 1,000 nautical miles (1852 km) from coastline.

It will be difficult to take out all of the more than 100+ official AIS receiving stations along China's coast, not to mention id the unofficial ones.

 

[gf0012-aust]

Also have not mentioned the impact of IMO's LRIT regs which basically forces commercial vessels not only to adopt AIS but also LRIT wef 2009.

again, military track management deals with vessels 10,000 kms away (or literally positionally directly opposite on the other side of the world) from the primary sensor station. thats irrespective of whether vessels are compliant or not.

its irrelevant whether vessels comply or not in the long run. once spotted they can be managed. the volume and types of disparate feeds from multiple sources are significant

 

[weasel1962]

Re:

Well, I won't second what the military can do in terms of track management.

However, with a chinese data centre already in place, and a requirement for all chinese flagged ships to be tested by their own appointed tester, it does render identification of their own commercial fleet at any point in time including via sat means.

Öйú-´¬²°LRIT´¬ÔØÉ豸·ûºÏÐÔ²âÊÔ

Similarly, I would expect in a shooting war for similar data centres to apply IMO data sharing to ensure their own vessels don't get whacked.

The point is in an area exclusion scenario eg Falklands, one can rely solely on detection rather than identification of a military vessel before shooting. Any vessel that doesn't register on the chinese LRIT/AIS system, aircraft carrier or otherwise, can become a legitimate target so long as the vessel can be detected.

Considering that a carrier can't operate effectively beyond 1,000nm from chinese coastline in a Taiwan scenario, a LRIT/AIS system effectively complicates operations.

Just an image to illustrate what 1000nm means

 

[gf0012-aust]

Any vessel that doesn't register on the chinese LRIT/AIS system, aircraft carrier or otherwise, can become a legitimate target so long as the vessel can be detected.

This is not a revelation though. The Chinese did this with civil aviation systems when they modified australian/american ADB2 sensors to do the same. Nominally any aircraft in chinese airspace that doesn't throw up an expected return is "non chinese".

like any detection system, there are counters, esp if you were the original builders of said system in the first place....

 

[rip]

This is not a revelation though. The Chinese did this with civil aviation systems when they modified australian/american ADB2 sensors to do the same. Nominally any aircraft in chinese airspace that doesn't throw up an expected return is "non chinese".

like any detection system, there are counters, esp if you were the original builders of said system in the first place....

So let’s be clear, all the Chinese commercial ships of which there are many, and all the foreign flag vessels that are carrying cargo to and from China are going to broadcast their identity and location to the US navy so that they can then be safely escorted out of harm’s way? Now that is interesting. The commercial tracking systems referenced above are used not to control ocean going traffic but by their owners to monitor their time and cost sensitive business, though I am sure there are some safety benefits as well.

The system as you you describeit sounds like a self-targeting system for the US Navy but I might be wrong. Dose this system include fishing vessels of all the world’s countries that sail the Pacific or smaller cargo vessels, and large sea going people carring ferries of all these countries? And if this system is so powerful how come piracy and smuggling has not been eliminated?

I will tell you what my experience is and you can take it for what it is worth, I have participated in several naval exercises where a commercial ships traveling in an area when it was supposed to be restricted, was taken under simulated fire and simulated to have been sunk, and that was within the Radar horizon of the ships firing range and not a thousand miles away. There was one time Northwest of Midway Island, I had the embarrassing experience of sending a message by flashing light to a freighter telling it that it had been sunk by missiles. It was not happey to be so informed. The real target was a ship ghosting behind the freighter. The targethad fired up it gun fire control weapons radar and from behind the freighter which made it look like the real target through ESM intercept because it was coming from approximately the same baring.

If hostilities have already began howeven most but not all of the civilian traffic would have tried to clear the area But what area, a hundred or a thousand miles from china’s cost, that would stop 25% of the worls commerical trafic. Is it not the same thing as a self-imposed embargo on all Chinese commercial traffic, which is not generally considered a good thing and not in China’s best interest?

It is the responsibility of the shouter to know what he is shouting at and not the target. Killing the wrong people has big political consequences with long memories. Case in point when the US mistakenly boomed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. We are still getting shit from that mistake of ours twenty years later and that was only one small mistake.

 

[gf0012-aust]

So let’s be clear, all the Chinese commercial ships of which there are many, and all the foreign flag vessels that are carrying cargo to and from China are going to broadcast their identity and location to the US navy so that they can then be safely escorted out of harm’s way? Now that is interesting. The commercial tracking systems referenced above are used not to control ocean going traffic but by their owners to monitor their time and cost sensitive business, though I am sure there are some safety benefits as well.

no, what I'm saying is that the chinese are mandating civlian systems which are defacto military IFF systems anyway. ie in chinese airspace, if you don't have the approp transponder (and I'm talking supplementary to the normal non chinese civilian transponders) then by rote, as soon as you appear in chinese airspace, without their supplementary transponder, then you would/could be identified as an intruder.... ditto the same for shipping if they try to adapt the terran based system for a satellite based system. similar systems exist in the west already (eg queensland fisheries have a smaller system in service)

 

[weasel1962]

Re:

So let’s be clear, all the Chinese commercial ships of which there are many, and all the foreign flag vessels that are carrying cargo to and from China are going to broadcast their identity and location to the US navy so that they can then be safely escorted out of harm’s way? Now that is interesting. The commercial tracking systems referenced above are used not to control ocean going traffic but by their owners to monitor their time and cost sensitive business, though I am sure there are some safety benefits as well.

The system as you you describeit sounds like a self-targeting system for the US Navy but I might be wrong. Dose this system include fishing vessels of all the world’s countries that sail the Pacific or smaller cargo vessels, and large sea going people carring ferries of all these countries? And if this system is so powerful how come piracy and smuggling has not been eliminated?

I will tell you what my experience is and you can take it for what it is worth, I have participated in several naval exercises where a commercial ships traveling in an area when it was supposed to be restricted, was taken under simulated fire and simulated to have been sunk, and that was within the Radar horizon of the ships firing range and not a thousand miles away. There was one time Northwest of Midway Island, I had the embarrassing experience of sending a message by flashing light to a freighter telling it that it had been sunk by missiles. It was not happey to be so informed. The real target was a ship ghosting behind the freighter. The targethad fired up it gun fire control weapons radar and from behind the freighter which made it look like the real target through ESM intercept because it was coming from approximately the same baring.

If hostilities have already began howeven most but not all of the civilian traffic would have tried to clear the area But what area, a hundred or a thousand miles from china’s cost, that would stop 25% of the worls commerical trafic. Is it not the same thing as a self-imposed embargo on all Chinese commercial traffic, which is not generally considered a good thing and not in China’s best interest?

It is the responsibility of the shouter to know what he is shouting at and not the target. Killing the wrong people has big political consequences with long memories. Case in point when the US mistakenly boomed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. We are still getting shit from that mistake of ours twenty years later and that was only one small mistake.

That is the fallacy of sea level radar. The sensitivity of distinguishing radar signals in depth in the same vector is very different from the air which suffers less from such depth issues due to the angle of signal transmission. Hence I would presume that's the reason why LRIT appears to be sat-based and also why AWACs datalinks is beneficial. .

There is of course the possibility of jamming.

If one deems an exclusion zone, it would also take a brave commercial captain to sail his ship into a war-zone.

 

[gf0012-aust]

That is the fallacy of sea level radar. The sensitivity of distinguishing radar signals in depth in the same vector is very different from the air which suffers less from such depth issues due to the angle of signal transmission. Hence I would presume that's the reason why LRIT appears to be sat-based and also why AWACs datalinks is beneficial. .

which is why you effectively need to either used a combination of OTHR, SBR, eyes upstairs via aicraft or have a marker on the asset to get a positional fix.

sea based radar at sent at sea level to track and tag other surface assets is fundamentally 2 dimensional - unless its bouncing or diverting/redirecting off something else in the sensor chain.

its why SWR is also less effective as originally thought and why most countries dropped development after a few years of grief trying to make it reliable - ie results generated with high levels of confidence.

Its why OTHR or air/upper atmosphere based sensors can generate higher levels of confidence because the 2 dimensional fix is able to dance around surface level clutter. ie a top down validation.

 

[rip]

which is why you effectively need to either used a combination of OTHR, SBR, eyes upstairs via aicraft or have a marker on the asset to get a positional fix.

sea based radar at sent at sea level to track and tag other surface assets is fundamentally 2 dimensional - unless its bouncing or diverting/redirecting off something else in the sensor chain.

its why SWR is also less effective as originally thought and why most countries dropped development after a few years of grief trying to make it reliable - ie results generated with high levels of confidence.

Its why OTHR or air/upper atmosphere based sensors can generate higher levels of confidence because the 2 dimensional fix is able to dance around surface level clutter. ie a top down validation.

Which bring us back to the same point. I am not saying that long range targeting is not possible, it is just very hard to do without mistakes. Because it is hard, it usually requirs several kinds of target verifications to confirm and the range of the weapon in use is not, and usually never has been, the limiting factor in target section, leading up to thefinal order to open fire that cannot be taken back. And getting the target section wrong had big costs, like giving away the missiles launch position, wasting a missile or missiles, exposing your tactics, intentions, and doctrine unnecessarily, and the biggest one of all killing the wrong people. In many cases people who were intending to be natural in the conflict but because of loss of life and property then become your enemies.

In gulf War One 25% of the Collation’s causalities were from friendly fire and that was close order land warfare not long range naval. Try to think less about the capacities of the weapons themselves but more upon the constraints, and challenges faced by the tactical commander. When you add all of the bad, incomplete, extraneous, and miss-information that any commander must wade through to come too his decision, his task is not easy. But that is not all; there are all kinds of deliberately planted deceptions that can confuse the situation even more. Making innocent targets look like real ones and real ones look innocent or to disappear completely.

This problem is much harder to solve than most would think from running their scripted training exercises. But the most important source of target identification has not even been talked about, the Mark one mod Zero eye-ball. The ocean full of shipsthat will have upon them many eyes, many of them friendly to one side or the other and some kind of radio and other communication devices capable of reporting warships positions. In the sneak attack game plan that is the hardest intelligence asset to counter and we havn't even talked about trailing submarines.