https://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-apparently-gets-its-ass-handed-to-it-in-war-games-2019-3

  • CarlTheRedditor [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    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.

    • SpookyVanguard64 [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      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.