Satellites and over-the-horizon radar. China's recent advancements in space exploration tech are all a handy mediatic smokescreen/testbed for their increasingly more technologically advanced satellites.
How does that information get processed and sent to the KV in real time as it is performing reentry and has a white-hot plasma shield in front of it? Sure, a network of satellites providing 24/7/365 coverage of the relevant parts of the Pacific could do this but whether that capability exists is unknown and also untested.
It's certainly a credible threat but I think a lot of this "death of the carrier" rhetoric is coming way too soon, especially when midair refueling exists.
It's funny that this makes the naval commanders nervous about sailing carrier groups in the South China Sea, but sadly that just makes them ask for yet more weapons that our government is all too happy to provide.
I'd imagine it works like any other ballistic missile, even the ones used by the west. The difference lies in the fact that a carrier is technically a moving target, unlike a city. My theory is that the KV-satellite acquires some sort of firing solution before re-entry then just beelines towards where the target is going to be. While carriers are surprisingly nimble for their size, they have little warning of the incoming munition, typology, and intended target, and may not be able to outmaneuver the projectile. Just baseless speculation on my part, btw.
The death of the carrier to me is probably somewhat overdue, precisely because of tech like midair refueling, but also due to the commanders' own shyness about committing a carrier into open battle against a peer opponent with their own military and navy. Even without wunderwaffen like the DF-21, basic-bitch anti-ship missiles can simply saturate their targets and overwhelm their defenses for a fraction of the production and deployment costs of a carrier.
It’s funny that this makes the naval commanders nervous about sailing carrier groups in the South China Sea, but sadly that just makes them ask for yet more weapons that our government is all too happy to provide.
This has been the case for a while; it's all theater, a farce put on by ghouls in the MIC and their former West Point buddies in the Navy and Pentagon to keep the cycle of grift going on in perpetuity. In reality these weapons were almost never meant to be fielded in anger, because if either A) The weapons are fielded and don't work against a real opponent -or- B) Escalation of conflict harms the economy to the point they can't continue the grift, then they lose out.
I’d imagine it works like any other ballistic missile, even the ones used by the west. The difference lies in the fact that a carrier is technically a moving target, unlike a city.
Which therefore means it cannot work like any other ballistic missile...
they have little warning of the incoming munition, typology, and intended target,
Ballistic missile launches are easy to detect and their trajectories are predictable. If China sends a few up on a trajectory that's consistent with the location of a carrier group, the US is going to know exactly what is coming and the carrier will take evasive actions and at this point we get to the unanswered question of how the KV does terminal guidance and how well it can hit an evading carrier, which you're right are surprisingly nimble.
Thankfully, commanders haven't really had an opportunity against a peer state (in that we didn't have open war with the Soviets and haven't yet with China) and hopefully that doesn't change. Agree with the rest of what you said. The cited sources for this article are exactly the kind of people you described.
Which therefore means it cannot work like any other ballistic missile…
According to Wikipedia, the DF-21's reentry vehicle looks similar to the US military's Pershing 2 RV, the later of which has control surfaces and is able to pull up to 25G maneuvers in atmosphere, which is comparable to some AAMs like the Soviet R-60 or mid-cold war variants of the US AIM-9 sidewinder. Assuming the DF-21 is at least as maneuverable as the Pershing 2, then it should theoretically be able to hit a maneuvering carrier, assuming the initial trajectory put it close enough to the ship. This would also somewhat solve the problem of ballistic missiles being easy to detect, since it could theoretically be able to make evasive maneuvers to dodge anti-ballistic missile systems.
Ballistic missile launches are easy to detect and their trajectories are predictable.
Aside from maneuvering, the missile also has two other things working for it that would make it harder to counter: it has a mobile launcher, and it probably runs a relatively low risk of being picked up by NORAD or other land based early warning radar systems, due to the fact that the missile is relatively short range, and generally only going to be used against targets that are close to China. This means that US fleets being targeted by the missile are going to be mostly on their own when it come to detecting and countering incoming DF-21s, and due to the mobile launcher, they also can't have any preset interception courses since they won't know where exactly the missile is going to come from. On top of that, China has even recently developed an air-launch version capable of being mounted on the H-6K bomber, which would further increase the unpredictability of where the missile is coming from, though this version isn't going to be in service for a few more years. Also, the short range of the missile works in its favor as well, since it means that its flight time is going to be much less than that of an ICBM for example.
unanswered question of how the KV does terminal guidance and how well it can hit an evading carrier
In terms of terminal guidance, Wikipedia lists terminal active radar guidance, which probably means the KV is able to just lock on to the largest object it can find and head towards it, assuming the initial trajectory was accurate enough to put the carrier in the radar's field of view. The skepticism about whether it can actually hit the carrier is warranted though, as the DF-21 hasn't yet been tested against targets moving at speed. Electronic counter measures are another issue. The Russian military has come to the conclusion that ECM is the only way in which the DF-21 can be defeated, which is a big positive in terms of the missile's ability to get past all other forms of evading it or shooting it down, but if it's able to be countered just with radar jamming or chaff, then it would still be a massively flawed weapon. However, I couldn't find anything about how easy it is to fool the missile with ECM.
The question isn't whether the KV can maneuver to hit a moving target, the question is how the KV gets real-time terminal guidance to that moving target, so it knows exactly where to maneuver to. It's doing reentry so it cannot see in front of it; radar is blinded, never mind the visible or IR spectrums. Some kind of satellite relay from earth or space based radars is possible but whether they have developed that capability isn't known.
Also, large ballistic missile launches will always be easy to detect by satellite so long as they burn fuckloads of fuel. As for radar, the navy wouldn't be relying on ground based radar in the first place, carrier groups will have multiple ships with AEGIS radars and they've been tweaking some of them for ballistic missile defense since at least the Bush administration. It's gonna be detected.
It comes down to how quickly the American carrier can react versus if and how the KV can react to evasive maneuvers, and both of those questions involve things we just don't know.
The question isn’t whether the KV can maneuver to hit a moving target, the question is how the KV gets real-time terminal guidance to that moving target, so it knows exactly where to maneuver to. It’s doing reentry so it cannot see in front of it; radar is blinded, never mind the visible or IR spectrums.
From what I could find, the missile doesn't go straight down in the terminal phase, rather it levels out in atmosphere near where the target is and then goes straight down when it gets over it, which would give the KV much more time to look for its target without interference.
As for radar, the navy wouldn’t be relying on ground based radar in the first place, carrier groups will have multiple ships with AEGIS radars and they’ve been tweaking some of them for ballistic missile defense since at least the Bush administration. It’s gonna be detected.
This is correct, and I should have been a bit more clear. In terms of detection, its always going to get detected no matter what, but when it gets detected matters as to how much it can be countered. ICBMs are easy to detect since they go hundreds or even thousands of kilometers into the sky, which means that often they are going to be well above the enemy's horizon for upwards of 10 minutes, and thus give a decent amount of reaction time. Short and medium range ballistic missiles are obviously going to be above the enemy's horizon for a much shorter period of time, which in turn gives a shorter window to react to the incoming threat. Add in the fact that the missile could come from an unexpected direction, and this could lower reaction time even more.
In terms of ship based missile detection, I know ships have their own radar system that are easily capable of detecting incoming missiles, my thinking was that ship based radar has to be more general purpose and looks for multiple types of threats, where as land based anti-ballistic missile early warning radars are more specialized towards only looking for incoming BMs when they are hundreds of kilometers above the earth's surface. But you are correct, ships radars should be just as good as land based radar in this scenario since ships have shot down satellites before, and the trajectory of a short/medium range ballistic missile is going to be much lower than an ICBM, meaning that detection range shouldn't be an issue.
No one who knows the answer would risk the jail time to divulge it. Fortunately, for me, I don't know the answer, but I know enough about other naval weapons to spitball here. This is all open source, available on Wikipedia and other platforms.
Missiles have few possible guidance systems, falling into four broad categories:
Active
Semi-active
Passive
Location
Active seeking is an onboard RADAR transceiver.
Passive seeking relies on the target's own electromagnetic radiation. This category contains heat (infrared) seeking missiles as well as seekers that home on RADAR and radio emissions. It also contains video guided missiles, although those are not historically very common.
Semi-active missiles contain a RADAR receiver, but no transmitter of their own. The transmitter is based on a friendly platform (usually the ship it was launched from), and is typically called a director or illuminator. The missile will either fly along the transmitted beam or the director will illuminate the target and the missile will seek it. The US's Standard Missile series is an example of this type.
Location is either GPS (or equivalent) or Inertial Navigation (gyros and accelerometers). These aren't useful for attacking ships, as they're not stationary, but it can get a long range missile within range to turn on it's seeker.
Capable anti ship missiles use a combination of the above.
An aircraft carrier is always in a strike group and surrounded by other ships.
Viewed from above, a carrier has a large, flat surface that can't be coated with radar absorbant material, due to the extreme wear and tear flight operations put on the flight deck. That makes it an enormous RADAR reflector, especially compared to the surrounding ships, many of which are designed to have reduced radar cross sesctions. While the ocean is also a large reflector, the signal wouldn't be nearly as strong due to the irregularity of the sea surface, especially in rough places like the South China Sea.
American super carriers are nuclear powered, which means they don't have big exhaust stacks, so Infrared seekers are out.
Each type of ship has different radio emissions, based on the types of radars and communications that are onboard. This can be used to discriminate between classes of ships, and can even be used to identify specific ships (ships operate RADARS on slightly different frequencies to prevent interference. Also, each RADAR and radio transmitter has unique irregularities in it's signal which can be analyzed and used to determine its source). With how the physics of electromagnetic radiation in the radio spefctrum works in the atmosphere, a passive receiver can detect and identify a transmitter at twice the RADAR's effective range, so passive detection is an extemely effective way to locate a target. The downside is that it only gives you direction, not range.
A semi-active seeker is extremely unlikely.
GPS satellites would be very juicy targets in a war between the US and China. Both countries have demonstrated the capability to destroy satellites. I am not aware of a China based GPS-like system, and the US controls the GPS system, to the point where, in wartime, the system would shift to encrypted only, making it useless to all non-NATO receivers. But, an Inertial Navigation System (INS) is pretty simple and effective with modern components.
So, to conclude, the likely DF-21D guidance is:
Inertial navigation to get in the area
Passive EM seeking to get near the target and discriminate between targets
Active RADAR seeker in the terminal phase
Sorry if you already know this stuff. To get into any further depth, I'll have to find what else is freely available.
I've yet to hear anyone explain how the DF-21D's kill vehicle gets or performs terminal guidance.
Satellites and over-the-horizon radar. China's recent advancements in space exploration tech are all a handy mediatic smokescreen/testbed for their increasingly more technologically advanced satellites.
How does that information get processed and sent to the KV in real time as it is performing reentry and has a white-hot plasma shield in front of it? Sure, a network of satellites providing 24/7/365 coverage of the relevant parts of the Pacific could do this but whether that capability exists is unknown and also untested.
It's certainly a credible threat but I think a lot of this "death of the carrier" rhetoric is coming way too soon, especially when midair refueling exists.
It's funny that this makes the naval commanders nervous about sailing carrier groups in the South China Sea, but sadly that just makes them ask for yet more weapons that our government is all too happy to provide.
I'd imagine it works like any other ballistic missile, even the ones used by the west. The difference lies in the fact that a carrier is technically a moving target, unlike a city. My theory is that the KV-satellite acquires some sort of firing solution before re-entry then just beelines towards where the target is going to be. While carriers are surprisingly nimble for their size, they have little warning of the incoming munition, typology, and intended target, and may not be able to outmaneuver the projectile. Just baseless speculation on my part, btw.
The death of the carrier to me is probably somewhat overdue, precisely because of tech like midair refueling, but also due to the commanders' own shyness about committing a carrier into open battle against a peer opponent with their own military and navy. Even without wunderwaffen like the DF-21, basic-bitch anti-ship missiles can simply saturate their targets and overwhelm their defenses for a fraction of the production and deployment costs of a carrier.
This has been the case for a while; it's all theater, a farce put on by ghouls in the MIC and their former West Point buddies in the Navy and Pentagon to keep the cycle of grift going on in perpetuity. In reality these weapons were almost never meant to be fielded in anger, because if either A) The weapons are fielded and don't work against a real opponent -or- B) Escalation of conflict harms the economy to the point they can't continue the grift, then they lose out.
Which therefore means it cannot work like any other ballistic missile...
Ballistic missile launches are easy to detect and their trajectories are predictable. If China sends a few up on a trajectory that's consistent with the location of a carrier group, the US is going to know exactly what is coming and the carrier will take evasive actions and at this point we get to the unanswered question of how the KV does terminal guidance and how well it can hit an evading carrier, which you're right are surprisingly nimble.
Thankfully, commanders haven't really had an opportunity against a peer state (in that we didn't have open war with the Soviets and haven't yet with China) and hopefully that doesn't change. Agree with the rest of what you said. The cited sources for this article are exactly the kind of people you described.
According to Wikipedia, the DF-21's reentry vehicle looks similar to the US military's Pershing 2 RV, the later of which has control surfaces and is able to pull up to 25G maneuvers in atmosphere, which is comparable to some AAMs like the Soviet R-60 or mid-cold war variants of the US AIM-9 sidewinder. Assuming the DF-21 is at least as maneuverable as the Pershing 2, then it should theoretically be able to hit a maneuvering carrier, assuming the initial trajectory put it close enough to the ship. This would also somewhat solve the problem of ballistic missiles being easy to detect, since it could theoretically be able to make evasive maneuvers to dodge anti-ballistic missile systems.
Aside from maneuvering, the missile also has two other things working for it that would make it harder to counter: it has a mobile launcher, and it probably runs a relatively low risk of being picked up by NORAD or other land based early warning radar systems, due to the fact that the missile is relatively short range, and generally only going to be used against targets that are close to China. This means that US fleets being targeted by the missile are going to be mostly on their own when it come to detecting and countering incoming DF-21s, and due to the mobile launcher, they also can't have any preset interception courses since they won't know where exactly the missile is going to come from. On top of that, China has even recently developed an air-launch version capable of being mounted on the H-6K bomber, which would further increase the unpredictability of where the missile is coming from, though this version isn't going to be in service for a few more years. Also, the short range of the missile works in its favor as well, since it means that its flight time is going to be much less than that of an ICBM for example.
In terms of terminal guidance, Wikipedia lists terminal active radar guidance, which probably means the KV is able to just lock on to the largest object it can find and head towards it, assuming the initial trajectory was accurate enough to put the carrier in the radar's field of view. The skepticism about whether it can actually hit the carrier is warranted though, as the DF-21 hasn't yet been tested against targets moving at speed. Electronic counter measures are another issue. The Russian military has come to the conclusion that ECM is the only way in which the DF-21 can be defeated, which is a big positive in terms of the missile's ability to get past all other forms of evading it or shooting it down, but if it's able to be countered just with radar jamming or chaff, then it would still be a massively flawed weapon. However, I couldn't find anything about how easy it is to fool the missile with ECM.
The question isn't whether the KV can maneuver to hit a moving target, the question is how the KV gets real-time terminal guidance to that moving target, so it knows exactly where to maneuver to. It's doing reentry so it cannot see in front of it; radar is blinded, never mind the visible or IR spectrums. Some kind of satellite relay from earth or space based radars is possible but whether they have developed that capability isn't known.
Also, large ballistic missile launches will always be easy to detect by satellite so long as they burn fuckloads of fuel. As for radar, the navy wouldn't be relying on ground based radar in the first place, carrier groups will have multiple ships with AEGIS radars and they've been tweaking some of them for ballistic missile defense since at least the Bush administration. It's gonna be detected.
It comes down to how quickly the American carrier can react versus if and how the KV can react to evasive maneuvers, and both of those questions involve things we just don't know.
From what I could find, the missile doesn't go straight down in the terminal phase, rather it levels out in atmosphere near where the target is and then goes straight down when it gets over it, which would give the KV much more time to look for its target without interference.
This is correct, and I should have been a bit more clear. In terms of detection, its always going to get detected no matter what, but when it gets detected matters as to how much it can be countered. ICBMs are easy to detect since they go hundreds or even thousands of kilometers into the sky, which means that often they are going to be well above the enemy's horizon for upwards of 10 minutes, and thus give a decent amount of reaction time. Short and medium range ballistic missiles are obviously going to be above the enemy's horizon for a much shorter period of time, which in turn gives a shorter window to react to the incoming threat. Add in the fact that the missile could come from an unexpected direction, and this could lower reaction time even more.
In terms of ship based missile detection, I know ships have their own radar system that are easily capable of detecting incoming missiles, my thinking was that ship based radar has to be more general purpose and looks for multiple types of threats, where as land based anti-ballistic missile early warning radars are more specialized towards only looking for incoming BMs when they are hundreds of kilometers above the earth's surface. But you are correct, ships radars should be just as good as land based radar in this scenario since ships have shot down satellites before, and the trajectory of a short/medium range ballistic missile is going to be much lower than an ICBM, meaning that detection range shouldn't be an issue.
No one who knows the answer would risk the jail time to divulge it. Fortunately, for me, I don't know the answer, but I know enough about other naval weapons to spitball here. This is all open source, available on Wikipedia and other platforms.
Missiles have few possible guidance systems, falling into four broad categories:
Active seeking is an onboard RADAR transceiver.
Passive seeking relies on the target's own electromagnetic radiation. This category contains heat (infrared) seeking missiles as well as seekers that home on RADAR and radio emissions. It also contains video guided missiles, although those are not historically very common.
Semi-active missiles contain a RADAR receiver, but no transmitter of their own. The transmitter is based on a friendly platform (usually the ship it was launched from), and is typically called a director or illuminator. The missile will either fly along the transmitted beam or the director will illuminate the target and the missile will seek it. The US's Standard Missile series is an example of this type.
Location is either GPS (or equivalent) or Inertial Navigation (gyros and accelerometers). These aren't useful for attacking ships, as they're not stationary, but it can get a long range missile within range to turn on it's seeker.
Capable anti ship missiles use a combination of the above.
An aircraft carrier is always in a strike group and surrounded by other ships.
Viewed from above, a carrier has a large, flat surface that can't be coated with radar absorbant material, due to the extreme wear and tear flight operations put on the flight deck. That makes it an enormous RADAR reflector, especially compared to the surrounding ships, many of which are designed to have reduced radar cross sesctions. While the ocean is also a large reflector, the signal wouldn't be nearly as strong due to the irregularity of the sea surface, especially in rough places like the South China Sea.
American super carriers are nuclear powered, which means they don't have big exhaust stacks, so Infrared seekers are out.
Each type of ship has different radio emissions, based on the types of radars and communications that are onboard. This can be used to discriminate between classes of ships, and can even be used to identify specific ships (ships operate RADARS on slightly different frequencies to prevent interference. Also, each RADAR and radio transmitter has unique irregularities in it's signal which can be analyzed and used to determine its source). With how the physics of electromagnetic radiation in the radio spefctrum works in the atmosphere, a passive receiver can detect and identify a transmitter at twice the RADAR's effective range, so passive detection is an extemely effective way to locate a target. The downside is that it only gives you direction, not range.
A semi-active seeker is extremely unlikely.
GPS satellites would be very juicy targets in a war between the US and China. Both countries have demonstrated the capability to destroy satellites. I am not aware of a China based GPS-like system, and the US controls the GPS system, to the point where, in wartime, the system would shift to encrypted only, making it useless to all non-NATO receivers. But, an Inertial Navigation System (INS) is pretty simple and effective with modern components.
So, to conclude, the likely DF-21D guidance is:
Sorry if you already know this stuff. To get into any further depth, I'll have to find what else is freely available.
China has the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System as an alternative to GPS.