Re: China Tactics Against USN Carrier Groups
- From: hot_esteban@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 5 Apr 2006 13:22:27 -0700
buff82driver wrote:
I was wondering what opinions some may have on tactics China might useWhat would I do if I was China (in addition to nomal big-boy military
to counter USN Carrier Groups? Its my opinion and I'm no expert that
sneaking missiles past AEGIS ships, fighters, and close in gun defenses
will be quite hard in all but the very largest of mass attacks.
toys):
1. Get means to (at least approximately) locate where is the Carrier
Group located.
- many options, none of them cheap:
- space based radars
- opportunistic elint/spotting
- even a ballistic missile launched radar, lobbed to some
1000km altitude and
looking at maybe 2000x2000km swath, if I was really
desperate
- mass launch of cheap reconnaisance drones
+ means of secure (space-based?) communication with them
(no need for high
bandwidth, so tougher to jam)
2. Develop autonomous flying and targeting software and accompanying
sensor suite
- video/IR/electronic sensors, ECM-proof, but nothing really fancy,
focus on the AI
(chips and memory are cheap and fast, high quality sensors are $$$)
- no need for fancy identification/IFF, everything floating and big
enough in the right
killbox is a target, focus on video as that is almost impossible
to jam/decoy (but
combine with IR/radar to improve accuracy/failproofness)
- + add some fancy recognition for close-range targetting of ship
components (radars,
bridge, catapult, aircraft on deck, close range AA guns/phalanx,
missile boxes, ...)
- use randomized target choosing algorithms, so different targets
are attacked by
different drones (e.g. with 10 drones, 5 out of 20 available
targets will be attacked,
instead of all 10 drones attacking the same target) even with very
little or no
communication between them
- does not need to work all weather, 24/7, but in half decent
visibility conditions should
be doable (meaning it works 50%+ of the time, no need for 99%+) --
there is lots of
public information how US warships look like and what is where and
how it looks, slow
flight (see below) helps as well
3. Develop the cheap drones
- essentially cruise missiles, no need for high reliability, focus
on low cost
- perhaps two classes:
a) with cca 100hp piston-engine, like Predator but without all
the
fancy electornics gear, 200-250km/h cruise, 20h endurance, useful
200-400kg
payload, targeted cost: around 10k (you can build a comparable
(somewhat
slower, but you don't need cabin, landing gear, slow-flight
capability) Rotax-powered
ultralight for about 30k, using commercially produced
kits/engines, if
components are mass produced by Chinese, no problem to get down
that to 10k, ok,
allow additional 10k for electronics/sensors)
b) 'normal' cruise missile, using a small jet engine (like
Williams FJ33, but much
cheaper locally produced version, lifetime required: 5-10
hours)
- can put more 'bang' and faster, but more $$$
- requirements:
- cheap, easy to mass produce, transport (e.g. wings fold
for transport) and
launch (any 300m of straight road/beach will do, or a
small catapult on the
back of a truck), focus on cheap, not on maximizing
capabilities/reliability
- make it as ECM proof as possible, to get it down, you
will have to shoot it
down (limiting fancy electronics stuff pays off here),
frying with radar should
not work
- cheaply done stealth features are a bonus (small engine
helps a lot), but not
essential
- flies in sea-skimming mode, slow speed allows really
low flight, no need for
all-weather ability (but night flight/fog necessary)
- possibly needs some sort of close-in defence against
fighters/helos (so if a
fighter wants to splash it using wake turbulence by
flying close by, it will get
a sting in its ass)
- 3km detection and 500m engagement range are
probably more then
sufficient, well within the range of
manpad-like missiles
- this will be one of the toughest to do, but
close ranges help a lot
4. What to do when(if) a drone arrives 'on target'
- the payload and speeds are not sufficient to severaly disable
the taget ship by just
hitting it, a more sofisticated approach targeting vital, but
necesserily exposed
components: radars, catapults, missile launchers,
close-defense guns,
antennas, communication dishes, aircrafts on the deck, arrestor
gears,
bridge, maybe something can be thrown into air intakes to
disable engines as well
- each drone has maybe 200-400kg useful load, many different
ways to use it,
some will try to fly all the way close range (e.g. for
attacking catapult, aircraft on
board), other will unload several relatively small missiles
from out of Phalanx range
to attack radars (maybe explosively, maybe just with metallic
glue/combination)
and such relatively easier targeted goals
- there are also other nasty things you can do with 200kg
delivered close to the
ship
- a small smart ultra-short range air-dropped torpedo
that goes for the screws
- lots of small charges on a long line, the drone flies
to the side of the ship
near the waterline, the first charge attaches (nails
itself in) to the ship, the
others are dragged by the ship movement to be aligned
with the
waterline (and slightly below) and then exploded after
few seconds to create
a long gap in the hull and a fancy workload for damage
control
- you can use dozens/hundreds reconnaisance drones with extra
high endurance
(e.g. 80hours at 150km/h, no armament) fanning/zig-zagging
throughout the area to
locate the carrier group if you have no other means to do that
(you still need
secure satellite communication)
5. Overall organisation of the attack: Once you have the approximate
fix (and decided to fight), mass launch literally thousands of them. No
need to achieve time-on-taget within few minutes, within few hours is
sufficient. The goal is not to really overwhelm the carrier's group
abvility to respond to simultaneous attacks, but to empty its stores of
defensive missiles. Fly Mig21 harassing missions to distract the
aircraft/radar operators and allow more drones to penetrate sooner.
After a couple of hours (not enough time to really flee far enough),
the carrier group will sit naked for the big antiship missiles -- the
defensive missiles used up and the radars damaged.
Of course, everybody will find dozens of reasons why this would not
work. At least be honest and assume that the Chinese have brains (e.g.
do not point out flaws that can be easily fixed, but I just did not
include in this post how to solve them). Of course, none of this is
working right now (but would not be surprised if there is serious
development work on several aspects), but given a bit of time, it is
not inconcievable at all.
Again, I would like to point out that what the Chinese would have to do
is NOT to do it the US way (fail-proof, all-weather, superior
capability, huge $$$, distinguish friend/foe), but brute force, as
cheap as possible, kill-everything-floating in the killbox, when there
is opportunity. It is an assymetric situation.
Stefan
Jeff
.
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