China artillery force seeks to strike aircraft carriers

United Press International-Asia ^ | Sep 21,2007 | ANDREI CHANG

[sukhoi-30mki]

Analysis: China artillery force seeks to strike aircraft carriers

HONG KONG, Sep. 21

ANDREI CHANG

Column: Military Might

In the event of conflict in the Taiwan Strait, if the United States were to send an aircraft carrier to the scene, it would likely remain in an area 800-1,000 kilometers from the spot of engagement. This is what happened in 1999 when China sent a series of air sorties over the island and the United States sent two aircraft carriers to the area as a warning. This distance poses very complicated and difficult challenges for detecting, positioning and tracking the target when aiming to strike the aircraft carrier with ballistic missiles.

China's DF-21 and DF-15 ballistic missiles use inertia plus gyroscope guidance at the middle course, and as a result the flight trajectories are quite inflexible. Even if new optical and radar image guidance technologies are applied at the terminal course, it is still extremely difficult to quickly adjust the direction when attacking a moving target.

Suppose a DF-21M middle-range ballistic missile were to attack a U.S. aircraft carrier from a distance of 1,000 kilometers away at an average speed of 7 Mach, or flying at a speed of 2,380 meters per second -- the whole course would take approximately seven minutes. Of course, because the U.S. Navy has developed the naval theater missile defense, or TMD, system, about 10-90 seconds after the DF-21M was launched, the DSP-1 infrared detection satellite would catch the signal and transmit the data through the data link to the ground-based joint tactical centre, or JTAG. The JTAG would transfer the data to the naval-based Aegis TMD system.

Almost all the Aegis Class guided missile destroyers, or DDGs, are equipped with joint tactical terminal receivers specifically designed to receive JTAG and DSP-1 satellite data. Even if no action were taken to intercept the DF-21M, the aircraft carrier could still evade the attack at full navigation speed. All of the U.S. Navy's nuclear-powered aircraft carriers have a maximum speed of 32 knots. In other words, they can move 30.866 meters each minute and 216.06 meters within seven minutes.

In line with the latest trends of the Chinese military forces, an upgraded version of the HF sky-wave over-the-horizon backscatter radar is currently under development. The China National Electronics Import and Export Corporation has unveiled some of the technical details of this type of radar system. Documents indicate that the construction of pole-shaped antennae has been completed, and therefore at least one experimental variant of the radar system is in operation.

The transmitting and receiving arrays of the radar are respectively 200 x 100 square meters and 1,100 x 60 square meters, at an elevation of 60 degrees. This transmitting radar array can track 100 different targets simultaneously, and has a detection range of 800-3,000 kilometers. The CEIEC has also introduced an HF surface-wave over-the-horizon radar, which was specifically designed to detect stealthy targets and has an effective detection range of 300 kilometers. Of course, digital image reconnaissance satellites, oceanic surveillance satellites and a variety of signal surveillance systems could also determine the approximate position of the USN aircraft carrier.

Even if the Chinese missiles could not accurately hit the aircraft carriers, shooting them in their direction would allow the Chinese military forces to impose "coercive isolation" on the U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups, keeping them out of the Taiwan Strait combat theater.

There has been speculation that China has developed sub-munitions and canister warheads for the DF-15 and DF-21. What progress has the PLA Second Artillery Force made in developing ballistic missile warheads? The answer to this question can be partly found in China's export of P12 ballistic missiles and the development of warheads for the WS-1B and WS-2 multiple-role rocket systems.

Firstly, China's military has invested heavily in developing blasting warheads, blasting cluster warheads for P12, sub-ammunition warheads, cloud blasting warheads and blasting-burn warheads for ballistic missiles and WS-1B and WS-2, all of which are capable of inflicting mass destruction upon designated targets.

Taking the sub-munitions fitted on the WS-1B as an example, the combat part of the warhead weighs only 152 kilograms; it has 475 munitions; the dispersing area of the sub-munitions is 28,000 square meters, and of course this dispersing area can be reset.

If a DF-15 ballistic missile were fitted with a 500-kilogram warhead, the total number of sub-munitions could be 3.2 times those fitted on the WS-1B. In other words, there would be 1,520 sub-munitions or even more depending on the different weights of the sub-munitions. If the dispersing areas of the sub-munitions were the same, that would mean a dramatic increase in unit strike intensity.

If the ballistic missiles used Russian satellite guidance at the middle course plus a certain kind of terminal guidance system, the threat that a DF-15 could pose to an aircraft carrier is very obvious. Psychologically, this would keep the U.S. aircraft carriers 600 kilometers away from the Taiwan Strait combat theater. And if China chose to launch attacks with DF-21M medium-range ballistic missiles, the so-called "coercive isolation" zone would be much broader. Even if these attacks did not seriously damage the aircraft carrier itself, the sub-munitions assault could destroy the radar, command and communications systems of the aircraft carrier battle group and force it to withdraw from the battle.

If a cloud-blasting warhead were used, the 90-kilogram munitions would have a lethal radius of 70 meters and overpressure lethal radius of 50 meters, while the 500-kilogram warhead would have a lethal radius of 388 millimeters and overpressure lethal radius of 277 meters. Using a blasting-burn warhead, the 70-kilogram combat load would have a lethal radius of 70 meters, whereas the 500-kilogram warhead's lethal radius could be as broad as 500 meters.

--

(Andre Chang is editor-in-chief of Kanwa Defense Monthly based in Hong Kong.)

[Paul Ross]

But wait. Isn’t China our friend?

That's what Thomas PM Barnett kept braying insensately at the Navy brass from his Xlinton-appointed perch at the USN War College.

He claimed, and still claims in the "Pentagon's New Map." that they wouldn't risk losing their markets. LOL!

Barnet Only got fired after the election of '04 when he backed Kerry over Bush. Up until then he was W's and Rummy's best of Globalist trade chums by way of the number of high-ranking power-point blarney sessions he was allowed to perpetrated throughout the government, not just within defense.

[Captainpaintball]

China's DF-21 and DF-15 ballistic missiles use inertia plus gyroscope guidance at the middle course

Hmm...where did they get the technorogy for that?

[KantianBurke]

nice to know our billion dollar carriers are at the whim and potential disposal of Taiwan. How much have THEY contributed to OUR “common defense?”

[Southack]

"All of the U.S. Navy's nuclear-powered aircraft carriers have a maximum speed of 32 knots. In other words, they can move 30.866 meters each minute and 216.06 meters within seven minutes."

LOL! 60 miles per hour is 1 mile per minute. Half that speed, 30 miles per hour, is 1 mile every two minutes.

So while the Chinese think that a U.S. aircraft carrier would move only 31 meters in a minute...Americans know that it can move about a kilometer in that amount of time.

[stevie_d_64]

“Learn or Burn Baby! Learn or Burn!”

Seen that film so many times it is engrained in the membrane...

[Paul Ross]

Last but not least, the US Navy has this nasty tendency to shoot back - and now has a functioning ABM capability - the Standard 3 with a 'smart rock' inertial impact warhead - which in tests has outperformed the Air Force's ABM interceptors.

This capacity is the real key to survival of the carrier, although mobility helps. Frank Gaffney urged Bush when he came in 2001 to immediately deploy another 22 Aegis cruisers with NMD from the get-go, and retrofit the remainder of the 50+ Aegis ships, and to go back and undo the sabotage on the Standard missile that Xlinton's croneys Strobe Talbott/Mad Halfbright had committed. They ordered that the completed Standard design...be reworked, to be slower and lower altitude so that it would not be so effective an NMD. In simplest terms, they shrank the missile. The cut the upper stage dimensions to sub-optimal.

This could be affordably fixed. The fix is called the Flight II(4)A. It restores the dimensions of the upper stage to full width, giving it substantially more fuel...which means significantly closing speed, altitude and range improvements. Unfortunately, Bush has refused the calls to do the "fix" and had his DOD Depty secretary Gordon Englund cancel the other alternative, TBMD.

And as for Aegis numbers, there have been no additional 22 boats ordered, nor, has he been very fast about rigging them for the limited NMD the current SM's 2/3 afford them. Right now, we have 3 Aegis cruisers rigged for NMD. 15 more will be added by 2009. Let's just hope the balloon doesn't go up substantially sooner than that.

The intercept game with kinetic-kill is a simple game of numbers. We need lots more. The Chicoms have over a thousand warheads to flood Taiwan's and our naval assets with. And many of them will be nuke and EMP in character...according to what the Chicoms themselves have boasted.

We need a lot more of these fine vessels

[thundrey]

Most of the world’s microchips are made in Taiwan. Which means it would be a very, very bad thing to give the Chinese carte blanche to invade them....

[wastedyears]

Does China want to lose millions of people?