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Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

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Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#91

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

tptacek wrote: post #10
echelon wrote: post #2

As I understand it, China has hypersonic missiles and nukes, whereas the US does not. Should a conflict in the South China sea break out, China could nuke US carrier groups assuming their satellites aren't taken out first. That spells game over for US projection of power if successful. China could deploy air and submersible drones to get around downed satellites, but these have the potential of being jammed with EMP,…

Is the premise here that carrier groups would be survivable in the absence of hypersonic missiles? They... aren't at all, are they?

Eh, you see a headline every so often alleging this but they're pretty far off the mark.

CSGs are defended by the entire system operating in layers. During conflict conditions they'll have airborne early warning radar flying to see threats coming a long way out. There's usually at least 4 AEGIS equipped ships. The carrier air wing will be doing patrols and intercepting threats at great distance. The carrier itself will be practicing emissions control and hiding within the sizable perimeter created by all of the above. And there's a lot of sophisticated EW decoys and such, that we don't know much about from open sources other than they're taken very seriously.

There's plenty of room for debate about just how effective this all is against a nation like China that has a lot of satellite intelligence/surveillance assets, but the simplistic "carriers have no defense" articles are just empty clickbait. These articles usually assert that there's no defense whatsoever against ballistic missiles, which ignores that 2 of those 4 AEGIS ships will be specialized to do exactly that, and have demonstrated it in testing.

One interesting tidbit is a few years back the US Navy submitted a request to do an exercise where they'd demonstrate taking down an inbound salvo of several 100 missiles simultaneously. Congress declined to allocate the budget for it.

Military planners certainly aren't omniscient or infallible, but they're a lot more sophisticated than the content free contrarian takes you see thrown around on the internet a lot. It ends up being a doomsayer about military technology is a pretty easy grift as nationalists on various sides drink it up uncritically and people with authoritative knowledge on the topic are constrained from openly rebutting it. All that said you do see some pretty in depth open info from GAO reports, stuff from CSBA, etc.

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#92

Post by Quinner »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #29
tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the premise here that carrier groups would be survivable in the absence of hypersonic missiles? They... aren't at all, are they?

Yes, no, maybe? As far as I know, with existing known technology and defenses, there's probably a number n, such that if you launch more than n simultaneous non-hypersonic cruise missiles, an aircraft carrier is going to be unable to deal with them all. This of course assumes you can launch that many missiles, in range of the carrier, simultaneously, without advanced warning. Now, the navy also isn't dumb, so I'd ven…

The Navy isn't dumb, and that's why they build submarines.

Carrier Groups still have an important role to play in lower-intensity conflicts, but in a Pacific war with China they'll be about as useful as Battleships were in WWII.

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#93

Post by AnimalMuppet »

krisoft wrote: post #81
tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the premise here that carrier groups would be survivable in the absence of hypersonic missiles? They... aren't at all, are they?

Every time the navy is asked about the survivability of the carrier groups they seem to start talking about the “whole kill-chain” of the enemy weapons. It sounds like they plan to knock out the targeting satelites before they could target them instead of trying to catch the missiles. Or at least thats how I read the tea leaves.

They're not going to target one link. They're going to target the whole kill chain. Satellites, sure, and the satellite ground stations, and the missile launch sites, and the update path from the satellite ground stations to the missile launch sites, and jamming radio reception for the missiles in flight, and optical chaff or some other kind of confusion, and radar chaff, and probably some I haven't thought of.

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#94

Post by fnord77 »

would a MARV-tipped ICBM be able to reach a target faster than flying straight at it at Mach 5?

I was looking for MARV reentry velocities, couldn't find any numbers. A regular ballistic missile hits mach 20+ on reentry but I don't know if it maintains that speed all the way to the target.

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#95

Post by ethbr0 »

foobarian wrote: post #88
rektide wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One key consideration that I only got recently is the difference between a cruise & ballistic missile. A ballistic missile launches at great velocity, then more or less falls at it's target (over an extended distance) using a ballistic trajectory. A cruise missile is under power for a large part of it's journey, typically flying much lower, & able to navigate/direct itself. A ballistic missile is often quite superson…

I was pretty surprised by how slow cruise missiles are when I read up on them recently - similar to big airliner speeds. I always had a mental image of missiles as these "fastest in the sky" things that you could only dodge but not outrun. It's possibly true for Sidewinders but even they top out around Mach 2.5, so the hypersonic developments are a huge step forward. Still kinda surprised there aren't fast missiles t…

Rocket engines require onboard oxidizer (or equivalent), so you have to carry a substantial additional amount of mass along with you.

Air-breathing engines are able to save all that mass by using atmospheric oxygen.

This matters, because it's the rocket equation in reverse: no onboard oxidizer = lighter vehicle = less fuel needed = even lighter vehicle = longer range / more payload

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#96

Post by coupdejarnac »

bllguo wrote: post #69
evilos wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What if X happens?" "Shut up, Y is bad." Uh.

Okay, then give me the reasons to believe in imminent Chinese military aggression. And why I should take the word of a nation that has been basically ceaselessly at war for decades, off the heels of yet another senseless conflict in Afghanistan. I think you are projecting the warlike tendencies of the US onto China.

Are you completely oblivious to China's provocations in the South China sea? I know how things are being spun back in China, but I assume you occasionally read non-CCP-approved news, right?

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#97

Post by twic »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #29
tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the premise here that carrier groups would be survivable in the absence of hypersonic missiles? They... aren't at all, are they?

Yes, no, maybe? As far as I know, with existing known technology and defenses, there's probably a number n, such that if you launch more than n simultaneous non-hypersonic cruise missiles, an aircraft carrier is going to be unable to deal with them all. This of course assumes you can launch that many missiles, in range of the carrier, simultaneously, without advanced warning. Now, the navy also isn't dumb, so I'd ven…

I would think a conservative estimate for n is roughly (number of surface-to-air missiles ready to fire in the battle group) + (number of hits needed to sink a carrier) / (probability of hitting). I suspect the first term will dominate.

If the battle group has one Gerald R. Ford class carrier, two Ticonderoga class cruisers, and three Arleigh Burke class destroyers, then it has up to 2 * 8 + 122 * 4 + 96 * 4 = 888 RIM-162 ESSM missiles and 2 * 21 = 42 RIM-116 RAM missiles, for 930 missiles total.

The carrier also has Phalanx. Three guns, 1550 rounds each, maybe ~100 rounds per kill, effective range just under 1.5 km - a distance which a missile doing Mach 0.7 will cross in under seven seconds. My vague impression is that these can't be relied on to make much difference to the numbers.

Maybe there are lasers and whatnot around now. Not enough to make a significant difference.

Note that these numbers assume that the escorts' VLSs are loaded entirely with ESSM, and that all the carrier's weapons can be brought to bear on the incoming missiles, neither of which are realistic assumptions. But it's also assuming the carrier's air wing doesn't get to do any air defence, which is probably also not realistic.

Anyway, given all those assumptions, 1000 missiles and you have a very strong chance of a kill. 2000 and the carrier is toast.

If cruise missiles cost 1.5 million dollars each (roughly what Harpoon and Tomahawk cost, although what things cost in defence budgeting is a bit of a metaphysical question), the toast option is 3 billion in ammunition, plus there will be costs for launchers and various other sundries. The carrier alone is 10+ billion, so that looks like decent value.

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#98

Post by ranger207 »

foobarian wrote: post #88
rektide wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One key consideration that I only got recently is the difference between a cruise & ballistic missile. A ballistic missile launches at great velocity, then more or less falls at it's target (over an extended distance) using a ballistic trajectory. A cruise missile is under power for a large part of it's journey, typically flying much lower, & able to navigate/direct itself. A ballistic missile is often quite superson…

I was pretty surprised by how slow cruise missiles are when I read up on them recently - similar to big airliner speeds. I always had a mental image of missiles as these "fastest in the sky" things that you could only dodge but not outrun. It's possibly true for Sidewinders but even they top out around Mach 2.5, so the hypersonic developments are a huge step forward. Still kinda surprised there aren't fast missiles t…

Most missiles do use rocket engines. Solid rockets are much easier to store and use than liquid fueled engines, whether rocket or turbojet. They can get pretty fast, too: the AMRAAM is supposed to go mach 4. The downside of any rocket engine is that the fuel and oxidizer run out quickly; the AMRAAM goes that fast in order to have a long range, as the motor burns out fairly soon. A few newer air to air missiles, like the British Meteor, have air breathing liquid fueled turbojets in order to increase range. Cruise missiles with their air breathing engines are the odd one out in missile tech.

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#99

Post by sbierwagen »

SonicScrub wrote: post #90
hmm320 wrote: post #82

Don't the Russians have missiles that fly >5x faster than this, at mach 27? https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a30346798/...

That vehicle is a sub-orbital vehicle with a re-entry trajectory similar to a ballistic missile . It reaches it's highest speeds only at altitudes where the atmosphere is more individual particles than a continuous gas (it's apogee of 62 miles is well above the Karmen line). The definition of Mach number only makes sense within a fluid. A vehicle that travels 20,716 miles per hour is NOT travelling Mach 27. You can s…

>highest speeds only at altitudes where the atmosphere is more individual particles than a continuous gas (it's apogee of 62 miles [...] )

Isn't velocity lowest at apogee?

Re: Hypersonic HAWC missile flies, but details are kept hidden

#100

Post by evilos »

bllguo wrote: post #69
evilos wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What if X happens?" "Shut up, Y is bad." Uh.

Okay, then give me the reasons to believe in imminent Chinese military aggression. And why I should take the word of a nation that has been basically ceaselessly at war for decades, off the heels of yet another senseless conflict in Afghanistan. I think you are projecting the warlike tendencies of the US onto China.

That's not even what is being discussed. The question is: what is the proper response to a hyper aggressive China?

No one is saying something like that is likely. We are discussing hypotheticals. There's no need to be so upset.

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