CHINA vs U.S.A. Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Technology

[Marc]

I have the feeling that it won't take long to have most of the satellites on both sides shot down. We don't know exactly how many of them China has, but I would bet that they've got enough to severely hamper our GPS and observation abilities.

This is certainly a strategic concern. But, if the US can gain a quick, functional supremacy in high-energy-beam weapons, perhaps this will give the US the critical edge to reign supreme in space regarding satellite defense/functionality during a total-warfare situation. It would be most interesting to know what's going on in a few secret testing sites out there in California and nearby desert areas.... Thanks for the relevant thoughts. —Best regards, Marc

[vincecate]

I have the feeling that it won't take long to have most of the satellites on both sides shot down. We don't know exactly how many of them China has, but I would bet that they've got enough to severely hamper our GPS and observation abilities.

Years ago I loved reading "Spy vs Spy" in the back of Mad Magazine. No matter what one spy came up with there was some countermeasure that the other spy had. And then there was a countermeasure for that countermeasure. Etc.

The US military has understood the satellite killer missile issue for a long enough time that they might have a countermeasure. There might be missiles or machine guns on the US military satellites that can take out an incoming anti-sat missile.

I would be much more confident that such measures existed with the competence level of 60 years ago than with that government can do today.

[psCargile]

Oh, okay . . . the ASBM is launched from the Chinese mainland to deter US naval air assets from being used against it. The carrier replaced the battleship, and the ballastic and criuse missiles replaced the long-rang bomber (during the Cold War for the purpose of doing bombing runs against the Soviet Union), so what replaces the carrier? Will the Nazi dream of the Paris Gun come to reality in the form of rail-guns, orbital bombardment ordinance, and hypersonic missiles? The way to defeat the Chinese ASBM is not to employ its target. Or use unmanned, high altitude, long endurance fighter/bomber aircraft.

[vincecate]

Oh, okay . . . the ASBM is launched from the Chinese mainland to deter US naval air assets from being used against it. The carrier replaced the battleship, and the ballastic and criuse missiles replaced the long-rang bomber (during the Cold War for the purpose of doing bombing runs against the Soviet Union), so what replaces the carrier?

A B52 loaded with armed fighter UAVs. Quadcopters or regular plane style UAVs with guns or missiles could be very deadly. If carried near they don't need to have long range, so they can be very small and hard to hit. A B52 could carry thousands of these. Some could target ASBM sites. From 8 miles up a UAV might be able to glide 160 miles without even using fuel. If fighters or missiles were launched against the B52 then it could launch some of its UAVs to fight those. The B52 would be automated so that no humans were lost if the plane did not make it back.

It is going to be a bloody war.

[psCargile]

Yeah, I see a point in the future were autonmous drones will be doing most of the war fighting, maybe one or two manned F-22/F-35 type aircraft serving to direct a fleet of robots. And robots will be like any other workforce: keep 'em happy and they wont turn on you, hehe. Equal pay and benefits for robots.

I also think the new weapons will be cybernetic, the malware to disrupt power and communications, and we've already seen that in action against the Iranian nuclear program. If you can shut down or damage a power system without bombing it, then who needs bombers. It would force advarsaries to use regressive technology, which in turn would make the vulernable to advanced technology. I was reading in Aviation Week and Space Technology a few years back about aircraft sending viruses into enemy aircraft via the enemy's own communication or radar systems to disrupt avionics, or tamper with data to confuse radar or even prevent radar returns from appearing on the scope or HUD. Today, fighter aircraft need to be connected to communication/navigation networks to do their jobs against high tech advarsaries, so switching of comm or radar recievers to prevent intrusive algorithms would handicap modern aircraft.

But if war with China broke out relativly soon, then yeah, we'd have to eat some ASBMs and lose some ships until we destroyed the launch sites and distrupted the logics of the weapons. On the other hand, China knows that will happen. The ASBM is probably better as a deterent. I don't think they'll flex their might until they know we can't do much at all to stop them.

[Reality Check]

Oh, okay . . . The carrier replaced the battleship

It might be just as accurate to say that air power, with greater range and speed than the battle ship, replaced the battle ship.

Continuing along those lines space based craft and weapons sitting at the top of the gravity well have a huge advantage over weapon systems launching from the bottom of the gravity well.

Brilliant Pebbles vs ASBM - cost to kill ratio might be in favor of the Brilliant Pebbles occupying the high ground of the gravity well.

Not to mentioned the massive amounts of potential energy stored in an object the size of a marble when it is in orbit.

Such Kinetic weapons are very effective against thin skinned rockets on the long climb into outer space.

[psCargile]

While spacebased munitions have the advantage of gravity boosted kinetic energy, they lack tactical immediacy due to each orbit having its own defined speed.

[Reality Check]

While spacebased munitions have the advantage of gravity boosted kinetic energy, they lack tactical immediacy due to each orbit having its own defined speed.

Interesting conclusion. But there are a lot of variables that would have to be considered in reaching that conclusion.

For example:

1. How fast is the target relative to the spacecraft that would attack it, and,

2. How maneuverable is the target relative to spacecraft that would attack it, and,

2. How many micro-spacecraft are in how many different orbits vs how many targets can attempt to climb into orbit at the same time, and,

3. How much do a thousand micro-space craft already in orbit cost vs the cost of a thousand targets capable of climbing up the gravity well, and,

etc., etc. etc

The bottom line here is a battle ship is much slower, has much shorter weapons range and can be destroyed by a few airplanes.

Airplanes, that is craft that fly through the air at high speed ( compared to ships ) made the most expensive, and must survivable ocean based weapon system obsolete because of the cost differential, range differential, and speed differential that were all in favor of aircraft over battleships.

Any weapon system that has the same advantage over land/sea based ballistic missiles will make such ballistic missiles obsolete.

Ballistic missiles require between 10 and 30 minutes ( depending on range ) to climb up the gravity well, out of the atmosphere and reach the top of their ballistic arc, high in outer space, before falling back to earth.

Micro spacecraft cost a tiny fraction of the cost of a ballistic missile and many of them can be deployed per low cost rocket launched from a high flying airplane months or even years before any conflict.

Space is the high ground, and any country that can place enough micro spacecraft in orbit to deny the use of space to any earth based enemy will control space.

Short range Ballistic missiles, medium range Ballistic missiles, and long range Ballistic missiles all require access to space to work. The side that controls space will be able to use Ballistic missiles, the side that does not will be denied the use of Ballistic missiles.

[psCargile]

Orbital combat will be governed by physics whereby the period of revolution around the Earth is associated with a certain speed, and for a satellite or spacecraft to alter their speed alters their altitude or distance from the Earth. (http://www.braeunig.us/space/orbmech.htm#motions) If you are 160 km above seal level, you are traveling at 7.8 km/s and circle the Earth once every 88 minutes. Slowing down will shrink your orbit causing you to reenter, and speeding up will put you into a higher orbit that will have a longer period and slower velocity. 500 km up gives a velocity of 7.6 km/s with a period of 95 minutes. At 10,000 km, that gives 5 km/s and a revolution of 5.8 hours. Also, spacecraft and satellites can't get from one orbit to another in a straight line as gravitational acceleration forces everything to move in arcs--although, if a spacecraft or projectile weapon is traveling fast enough-- beyond the escape velocity of its orbit--it will be in a hyperbolic trajectory and close enough to a straight line. Even while traveling 17,500 miles per hour in low Earth orbit, getting to the ISS takes a few days of maneuvering using phasing orbits to match the speed and position of the target. Even at the high speeds, nothing happens fast in space.

Popular science fiction is dreadfully inaccurate concerning orbital combat. For instance, if the Battlestar Galactica is in orbit around Caprica and launches its Vipers in response to a Cylon threat, since they are all in the same orbit, the Galactica and the Vipers will be traveling at the same speed, regardless of their sizes and masses. If the Vipers accelerate away from the Galactica, depending on the direction of travel, they will either increase their orbit's eccentricity, putting them into a higher orbit, or do a inclination plane change, or a combination of both. And it could take several hours to a couple of days to reach the Cylon base star on the other side of the Caprica, that would be doing its own orbital maneuvers to thwart a rendezvous that would allow an exchange of weapons fire, the missiles too acting as separate spacecraft under the influence of orbital mechanics. Since a missile launched from an orbiting platform will behave predictably by its direction of travel and speed, a target that sees the missile coming can change its orbit to avoid destruction. Unless it's out of propellant. That's the other problem, the number of maneuvers one can make is determined by the amount of propellent available.

ICBMs could be taken out with relative ease as they aren't meant to evade, provided an orbital weapons platform in LEO is in the right position and has adequate time to react. Or you have hundreds of such platforms. We can't use geostationary orbit to launch warheads against ICBMs because we don't have the propulsion technology to get from 35,786 km to LEO in a matter of minutes. Microsatellites could do damage, but what orbit do you put them in that doesn't jeopardize you or your allies own space interests? Are the microsats maneuverable, or are they simply kinetic impactors? A wide cloud of microsats are not going to stay perched over the hostile country in LEO and they are useless in GEO. If we want to deny Iran the capability of launching ICBMs, then we would need a minefield of microsats at least as wide a Iran banding the entire Earth. Space is pretty damn huge and to cover an effective range of orbits with individually cheap microsats is still going to be costly; the field density has to be such that a rocket can't slip through--we could be talking one microsat for every 125 to 8000 cubic feet, spread over a distance several hundred miles wide, in a band much larger than the Earth's circumference. I don't think it's a practical defense shield. You simply can't deny access and use of all orbits. And there are ways to punch holes in a microsat blockade.

If there is any orbit worth denying it is geostationary orbit and beyond, as it is here were the communication, navigation, and some surveillance satellites are parked.

And for the obvious reason, microwave and laser weapons are best suited for orbital combat.

[widestaringeyes]

"Analysts" always hype new foreign military technology. Always have. They look at in on paper and pee themselves. Even if the threat is actually capable of penetrating the Aegis unbrella, the Air Wing unbrella, the Sea Sparrow unbrella, and then the CWIS (phalanx)unbrella, it will not be a show stopper. Your Navy, as well as the rest of your military forces, have a very long history of overcoming new challenges.
Years ago, these "analysts" saw a particular model of Russian tank and came to the conclusion that the world as we know it was about to end. As Tom Clancy pointed out, these tanks were indeed deathtraps. For the Russians. We popped hundreds of these things open in Iraq. The match-up was not even close.