Posted on 12/02/2014 3:46:48 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
A gang of advanced missiles and a bleeding edge radar unveiled at a Chinese air show could mean big trouble for the Pentagon’s best fighters.
Once, no magic act was complete without the magician’s revealingly dressed assistant. Her job was not merely to be sawn in half but to dominate the mostly male audience’s attention at moments when a focus on the whereabouts of the rabbit might blow the gaff.
That was a useful lesson to bear in mind at last month’s Zhuhai air show—China’s only domestic air and defense trade show, held once every other year.
If anything at Zhuhai was wearing fishnets and high heels, it was the Shenyang FC-31 stealth fighter, which resembles a twin-engine version of America’s newest stealth jet, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But the real tricks lay in Beijing’s growing family of advanced missiles and radars.
The FC-31 prototype was hidden except when it was flying, and not much detail was available. Bu the display was notable for the eruptions of smoke from the engines, most likely Russian RD-93s.
That is important, because until China builds its own fighter engines it cannot build stealth fighters without approval from Vladimir Putin’s desk. That includes the Chengdu J-10B, China’s most modern, in-production fighter, or its bootleg versions of Russia’s Sukhoi Flanker fighter family.
China says it’s working on indigenous fighter and trainer engines, but the samples on show were exactly the same as those seen two years ago.
What was new and important on the Chinese military’s outdoor display line at Zhuhai was a mix of mature and new technology. And by “mature” I mean the 1950s-design Xian H-6M bomber, with something suspiciously like a World War II Norden bombsight visible through the windows of the bombardier station. But the bomber was surrounded by guided weapons, some seen for the first time in public. The same went for the somewhat more modern JH-7 light bomber.
Zhuhai was full of new missile hardware, from the 3 1/2-ton CX-1 ramjet-powered anti-ship and land-attack missile down to the QW-19 manportable air defense system. (China’s military believes in these small air defense missiles, both in their classic standalone form and integrated into small mobile systems.)
Not many of those missiles were individually surprising. The CX-1 is different in small details from the Russian-Indian BrahMos but very similar in specifications. Two-stage short-range surface-to-air missiles borrow the concept invented for Russia’s KBM Tunguska and Pantsyr systems, and so on.
What is impressive, however, is how many of the new Chinese missiles there are, and how they fit together.
One visible trend is the re-use of components to meet different mission needs. Since the CM-400AKG air-to-surface missile appeared at 2012’s edition of the Zhuhai show, it has gathered a lot of attention as a high-supersonic anti-ship weapon. This year, the exhibit strongly suggested that it shares its solid rocket motor and warhead with the surface-to-surface SY400 ballistic missile, and a passive radar seeker with the new B611MR semi-ballistic anti-radiation missile. The B611MR, in turn, has a common motor and controls to the 175-mile-range M20 GPS/inertially guided missile—China’s equivalent to Russia’s Iskander—and both are intended to use the same mobile launcher and command-and-control system as the CX-1. Lots of interchangeable parts: That is how China can roll out so many missile types so quickly.
What is impressive is how many of the new Chinese missiles there are, and how they fit together. A “system of systems” approach was evident in the biggest thinly coded message at Zhuhai. That was the People’s Liberation Army’s outdoor lineup of air-defense hardware, centered on the gigantic JH-27A VHF active electronically scanned array radar—the first of its type in service anywhere, if Chinese officials are telling the truth. Such radars are designed to track stealthy targets. The radar’s antenna, almost 100 feet tall, towered over the rest of the exhibits. Just to the left of it were smaller Aesas, one operating in UHF and the other in the centimetric S-band: that is, complementary sensors with progressively higher resolution, cued by the VHF radar to track stealthy targets, accurately enough to engage them with missiles.
At a conference in London the following week, a senior retired U.S. Air Force commander pooh-poohed counterstealth efforts. I don’t know where such confidence originates, because nothing like the JH-27A and its companion radars exists in the West, and so we know little of how they work.
Further down the line were three vehicles—a radar/command vehicle, a short-to-medium-range LY-60D/HQ-6D surface-to-air missile, and a Norinco LD-2000 seven-barrel 30-mm gun. Like some gun systems used by the West, the LD-2000 is basically a truck-mobile version of a gun system carried by ships to shoot down incoming missiles. But the West uses those systems to defend forward operating bases in Iraq and Afghanistan from rockets and mortars, and China doesn’t need the LD-2000 for that.
Instead, the PLA has made the gun part of a point-defense system against both attacking aircraft and weapons, such as precision-guided munitions. The system is truck-mounted and road-mobile, as are the big and conspicuous radars that stood next to it on display. It is most likely intended to protect those high-value relocatable assets from even a well-executed destruction of enemy air defense operation. Will it be 100 percent effective? No. Does it make China’s air defenses much harder to kill? Assuredly.
Stealth fighters get the attention even though they smoke like Humphrey Bogart, but there is a lot of PLA money going into missiles and reconnaissance systems that can hold naval and other forces—the assets that the Chinese see as their primary threats—at risk from far beyond the horizon, and radars that are designed to detect, track. and target stealth aircraft. That’s the rabbit, and we take our eyes off it at our peril.
Looks suspiciously like an M247 Sgt York turret, but with side mounted missile launchers and the 20mm cannon from the Phalanx ( including the tubular bracing) instead of 40mm Bofors.
Me too!
Who would not think counter measures are developed or in the works?
Who should have the greatest concern for the Chinese? Those nearby and especially anyone connected by land and have significant energy resources, position number one, Pooty.
The Russian trained Serbians figured this out when they shot down that F-117.
I have also heard that the reason, a short time later, the Chinese embassy was ‘accidentally’ hit by a U.S. precision guided ordinance, is because the CIA learned that that the remnants of the F-117 were inside, being examined by Chicom techs.
I can’t vouch for this, personally, but it doesn’t sound impossible. Thanks.
“Actually it was the Strategic Defense Initiative that is given credit for the Soviets deciding they couldn’t win the arms race.”
Yes, it was. The US invited various key figures of the Soviet Union to come here and witness the technology first hand. They also found we did not have plans to attack them in any way and wanted nothing but commerce with them. Some of their key economic leaders saw dollar signs and went back and supported open borders: Glasnost.
You don’t need to hit the jet. Just get close enough where the shrapnel can do its damage.
You know, I really like our back and forth discussions about these technological issues and advancements by the perceived opposition in any future conflicts...
And that’s just it...Perceived...
I do not, at the end of the day, considering the international economic and commerce (trade) we have with these very same global powers, would lead to any substantial military dance off...We are all TOO intertwined to get too froggy with any need to start shooting at each other...It is not in our best, or anyone’s interest...
Sure we need to keep our edge in technology, and training, and at the end of the day, we will smoke anyone like a pack of Kools...We will certainly get a bloody nose in that potential scrape, but I do not believe we will lose militarily...It may be different in the arena of geo-political chest thumping that would come from a war, for lack of a better term...
China and Russia need to maintain, as best as possible international trade, however lopsided, or troublesome it may be. now, or in the future...
If China is taking steps to leap forward (notice I said forward, not ahead) in their military tech, it is only at the behest of the stuff they can reverse engineer from the Russians for the most part...Sure they can gleen shapes and some capabilities from what we have developed, but that can only take you so far...
I do not, and never will believe they will even match us in quality of aviators, tanks, artillery, air defense, and yes, even logistical capability, and our lessons learned in those aspects of military preparedness an application...
These nations may very well have substantial technology, and more important numbers, but that can only mean you have more meat for the grinder...
Where we actually lose is when you have NCA that is about as limp as a biscuit, and weak in the face of blatant bluffs the East keeps foisting upon us...that is a failure on our part to make such blustering un-necessary in these times of economic and relative political stability, despite the threat from the militant and fundamentalist Islamic rabble-rousers...
It is in their (China and Russia) natures to challenge the rest of the world because of their narcissistic nature of their leadership...
We just happen to have such a feckless wonder sitting in the WH right now it begs to be challenged and shamed at every turn...
And I blame the “Ferguson” types in this country for not having the courage to see how wrong they are...
Just my opinion...
Wanna play off-the-shelf, pal? We got off-the-shelf that will wet your britches.
We can all make wishlists and mine is headed by more submarines both diesel and nuclear, and reopening the F-22 line(s) and upping the SLEP program activity rate for our old CV's and CVA's and stopping this "hey, let's see who can scrap the most carriers fastest!" b. s. ..... And have I mentioned dusting off the old F-14D follow-on blueprints today? Let me pound the board again: we positively need, yesterday, a long-legged fleet CAP and strike fighter to counter the air fleet of Sukhoi "Flanker" types the Chinese mean to operate in the very near future, both land- and carrier-based.
You both know I'm a fan of going out to our NATO/SEATO partners if need be to locate good designs we can build right now, in order to be able to put more Mk 48 ADCAP and other useful tools into the water.... And the Australian and Japanese submarines answer the purpose. Do we really need to build new Perry-class DEG/FFG's, or will the British Type 23 and Type 26 designs let us put future hulls in the water quickly? Does it matter if we have our ducks in a row a bout whether we operate such ships as in the past, as part of a CBG or MEU , or as a mothership attending a swarm of missile-hauling "mosquito" hulls? Who cares? Build them!
“Mk 48 ADCAP”?
What about something else like the battery driven DM2A4 “Seehecht” with fiber link?
The MK 48 still runs on a piston engine. A piston engine works with gas pressure and that pressure works against the surrounding pressure of the water. At a given depth a piston engine can’t work. A diesel engine provides about 200 bar working pressure. So a diesel engine can not provide any power at depths over 2,000 m. I guess a swashplate engine offers less pressure.
Propulsion power of an electric engine powered by a battery is not related to static pressure. I guess there is a reason why Yasen-class submarines have a test depth of 600 m. It could be possible that these submarines can outrun the MK 48 at such depths.
There is a reason why electric cars need an additional sound system to warn the pedestrians. An electric motor is to quiet for pedestrians.
Does the MK48 ADCAP Mod 7 already has a fiber backlink to the submarine as once proposed?
The ADCAP Mod 7 just has a broad band sensor while the DM2A4 also has a wide wide panoramic sensor angle ( +/-100° horizontal and +/-24° vertical). Together with the fiber link the torpedo works as a forward positioned sonar system for submarine’s combat system.
Someone might come up with the bright idea (extreme sarc) to upgrade the mission of the littoral ships we are putting out to more “blue water” ops, which is obviously outside their intended design and mission purpose...
That idea to replace the “frigate” mission we are losing when the Perry’s go away finally...
Which is a bad idea, not to have a lighter screen and escort mission that our dwindling DDG’s and CG’s are having to perform...
I was a skeptic at first of the VLS system, but after one of my CO’s (Captain Rodney P. Rempt) was an integral part of the development and deployment of that system, I believe the modular design and capability of that system can be integrated into ANY future ship design giving ANY ship of the line an offensive and defensive capability, literally un-matched anywhere...
Projection of power in the modern sense (since its inception) is a layered system...Air, Land, Sea and now Space (orbital capability) is critical, and keeping to the original mission capabilities of ship design and overlapping systems (commonality) should be the way it is maintained...
Technology IS our advantage, but not at the expense of overloading a ship designs mission...
Those new littoral ships are a wonderful example of modular mission capability, depending on what you plug and play into the ships mission bay...And still be able to own the littoral regions of where (region) you wish to “layer” that projection of power...
What I am getting at is not to do what we did to some of the ideas to “up armor” and “arm up” our HumVee’s...Even though that saved lives, it did take a design (system) and decrease it’s mobility (somewhat), and turned it into a form of light tank, for lack of a better term...Albeit my Army FRiends will disagree...
I’m just saying lets stick to he idea and not try to lump a bunch of stuff onto a system barely out of the “ways” and see what it actually CAN do, before we start sticking a bunch of stuff on it that was never originally intended to be used on that platform in the first place...
I believe a 3500-4500 DWT “Frigate” design should be looked at to complement our existing hulls now...
And as I said before, a long range standoff CAP carrier borne aircraft that has a heavy (Phoenix type) punch should be developed...
Just my opinion...
To speak a moment more of torpedoes, several services responded to the retirement of the U. S. Mark 46 lightweight torp by bringing forward new designs of their own. This is a situation analogous to the withdrawal of the FF/FFG type at the platform level. We ought to emulate those services which designed around the disappearance of the Mk 46 by adopting a similar expedient policy of adopting available designs, even if they are not homegrown, "copacetic" solutions. I mentioned the Type 23/26 as a possible replacement for the current frigate types in the US inventory.
The Royal Navy in 1914 was a cruiser navy. At the end of World War I, they possessed some 71 light cruisers in the 3500-4500 ton range and a few "large" light cruisers in the 6000-ton range. Their big ships were famous and their heavy cruisers imposing, but it was the small cruisers that made the Royal Navy a blue-water, "everywhere" navy.
Active Duty ping.
Bingo!!!
Funny how we would classify a future FFG in the 35-4500 DWT range as a frigate, and the Brits used to call them “cruisers”...;-)
Brits used to be spot on with their torpedo attack procedures...Those “Lance-a-Lots” (phallic humor) were pretty good, but like all WWI and WWII torpedo designs they had their bad lots...On both sides...
30 meter tall radar antenna make good target!
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