The Glade 4.0

You can fly bombers a really long way with air refueling, but you have to land to re-arm them. Once you eliminate the antiair escorts, you don't need standoff antiship missiles to sink the ASW escorts; you can just use guided bombs or really even iron bombs, although getting hits on moving ships with them is going to be chancy, or expose you to good old gunfire.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Oh yes, the bit I forgot.

This all came about because Monty thought the Chinese advances in technology were "scary" and that they were somehow" kicking our asses in green technology" or something like that. He felt that there was a real risk that they might come pouring across the Pacific and take over.

The real fact of the matter is that no, they aren't going to invade California or even Alaska and Hawaii, but if we allow our military to atrophy then that ould be a real possibility, especially if our allies near China find themselves feeling vulnerable.

The big point, however, is that just because a country has a burgeoning industry and a lot of guys with guns does not mean they are about to take over the world.

If you look back to the air defense engagement scenario, you'll see why. A carrier protected by 4 of the best air defense ships in the world is almost impossible to sink with missiles... but China has no such carriers, and while it does have the 4 escorts, that's really pretty much it. That engagement relied on the incredbile AEGIS system to stop a major missile attack, but without AEGIS it gets a lot harder.

In other words, it has nothing to do with whether anyone's workers are as dedicated or engineers are as smart as ours. It still takes time to learn to build a modern military, especially a navy, and mroe time to physically build it. A carrier is a big, complex machine, and it takes a lot of smart guys to design it and year to contruct it.

This is not WWII anymore. We cannot rush designs to the drawing board anymore, nor can we sit around with a pitiful excuse for a military and decide to build a bunch of stuff when we suddenly need to fight. That era has passed.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What about the sunburn (I think that's the name?) nuclear anti-ship cruise missile they have been working on? It is over-the-horizon no?

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Sunburn is tricky because it actually refers to two completely unrelated missiles. Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union they were misidentified as the same missile because their launchers look the same.

One version, the P-80 Zubr, seems to be essentially unused any more and was only carried on a few destroyers, corvettes, and submarines.

The other version is the P-270 Moskit, which is a missile that seems to have a high-lo flight profile. It is very fast, mach 3 at high altitude and mach 2.2 at low altitude and it skims the water at 15-20 meters. It is estimated to give only 25-30 seconds warning, and comes in (evidently) air and surface-launched versions.

In theory, the missile's flight profile makes it very hard to stop because of the very short time one has to engage it from when it comes over the radar horizon (which is typically about 1/3 farther than the visual) until impact. You can see from the AS-6 example earlier how getting the missile in closer before it can be engaged would greatly reduce the number of missiles that could be fired by the defender.

However, getting that through four or more AEGIS defenders would still not be easy. If there is a submarine-launcher version, that is rather more disturbing because the sub can fire them from a standoff distance before being detected.. if it can localize the target; it is likely that the P-270 would greatly outrange the detection of the sub's sonar, although sonar range is hugely variable based on sea conditions. However no sub-launched version appears to exist.

Air and surface launched versions of any anti-ship missile make it much easier to detect and engage the launch platform before it can fire. F/A-18s for example, could launch considerable numbers of Harpoons at P-270-armed destroyers from much farther away than the destroyers could fire at the carrier and escorts. Of course, the destroyers carry SAMs and might be able in some cases to engage the F/A-18 before it can fire it's Harpoons, but that is why you use ECM and fire as far away as possible; Hopefully the fighters will be able to launch, turn, and escape before the SAMs can fly that far. Low-observable/stealth technology can also help you get in closer without being detected before launch. Of course, that works both ways; enemy ships and aircraft with lower observability can get closer to us before being detected too.

There are lots of varieties of anti-ship missile out there, with lots of capabilities, and the Chinese have a lot of those varieties. A lot of them seem very scary, but every one of them has its limitations as well.

I purposefully left nuclear weapons out of the initial scenario mainly because they render it irrelevant; China simply isn't going to go on a mad rush for conquest in view of the risk of nuclear war. They might risk attacking Hawaii or Alaska if they felt we lacked the will to use nuclear weapons to defend those states and they otherwise felt they had the ability to take them, but that's purely speculative.

Nuclear warheads make it much more critical that no "leakers" get through since any hit will be fatal, and they make it harder to stop with point defense, decoys and ECM because the warhead doesn't need to hit, just detonate fairly close by. However, one nuclear detonatin is unlikely to destroy more than a single ship. Task forces at sea are not like in photo ops where they steam a couple hundred yards apart. They spread out considerably; a carrier might not even visually see its escorts at all. Therefore, if you do get a nuclear leaker you'll most likely lose a ship.. but probably just one, and hopefully not the carrier.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What is the effect of a sub surface nuclear detonation in terms of range of the resulting water displacement shockwaves? Subsurface of water that is.

That's a very complex question because it depends greatly on yield and depth. Shallow explosions produce different effects than deep explosions, and what's shallow for a large warhead might be deep for a small one. It also depends how deep the ocean floor is at that point.

Here is a discussion of the effects from the tests in the 1950s of both shallow and deep explosions.

I don't know the degree to which it would be practical to make an antiship missile deliver its warhead into the water and transmit a blast wave that way, if that's what you're thinking about. I do know that a nuclear antisubmarine missile did exist which did essentially that and I suppose that an actual ASM could do something similar.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Actually the Chinese invasion has been going on for many years. And has been quite successful. It just hasn't been military in nature.

Perhaps he meant a torpedo or mine carrying a nuclear payload?

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Torpedos are a real possibility, although I don't know if China has any nuclear-tipped models. The problem with torpedos is that they are short-ranged compared to missiles, so there's not a lot of point in torpedos for use on surface targets from a surface or air launch platform. It has to be a submarine firing it for all intents and purposes.

China's had some good luck in recent years sneaking its diesel-electric boats in close but those aren't fast so the situation has to be right. Nuclear boats I'm more confident in our ability to detect and sink because they're noisier and China has few of them so it's easier to account for where they might be.

Mines are really not useful for anything in this scenario. Mines don't move. You use them to protect areas or deny them to the enemy, and China is the attacker here. If you could sneak a nuclear mine into a harbor, that might have some value, but why not just fire a nuclear torpedo in there? The Russians actually had plans to do that back in the late 50s and early 60s when they had little credible deterrent. Blow up coastal cities with nuclear torpedos.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I was thinking more the effect a nuclear torpedo (or three or four) from 25 miles out would have an a carrier battlegroup. You could in theory knock out all of their AEGIS escorts in the first volley and have your surface ship follow up with a conventional or nuclear missile barrage.

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You could do that if you have torpedos that reach out that far and you haven't already been detected. Carriers and their escorts have lots of helicopters that hunt submarines, and usually have their own submarines along with the battle group.

Trying to get a solution on ALL of the Aegis escorts at once would be challanging, to say the least. You wouldn't be able to just launch a volley of torpedos at the escorts at one time. You also really don't need to use nuclear warheads on torpedoes to cripple or sink surface warships.

The problem with the follow-up is of course that the surface ship has to avoid getting sunk itself prior to the attack by the sub, and that part isn't easy, while still staying close enough to make a follow-up attack in some reasonable time.

Really, if you're going to go the nuclear route, you may as well go straight for the carrier in the first place.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It seems to my limited recollection, that the modern tactic for a torpedo is not to penetrate the hull, as in WW2, but to detonate directly under the ship and break the keel, sinking the ship. Again, based upon poor research, I recall that with modern, conventional torpedoes, the detonation has to be relatively close (few hundred feet) to be effective against modern structural framing.

I was curious at what range a modern nuclear warhead would need to detonate to cause the same keel breaking shockwave, and the potential effects it might have on ships at the ranges you mentioned typical for our modern groups.

Reading that article you linked (thanks btw, very interesting), made me also wonder about the effects of a shallow water detonation by one of the 200 KT warheads that China has for their cruise missiles (10x the Baker test).

What is the effect on ship based radar of a radioactive cloud with heavy water content 3+ miles across?

Perhaps this is all fantasy, but using your diagram, if the screening destroyer has a nuclear cruise missile (of the anti-submarine variety) or torpedo detonate under neath or in promixity, its probably going to sink the ship, either by breaking the ship, or sinking it due to loss of buoyancy (interesting side effect from the deeper water explosion). What secondary effects are of the most concern to the remaining ships, obviously other than losing a screening destroyer. Will the high density cloud render their radar blind to that area? Will the sub-surface shockwaves/noise destroy their SONAR? etc.

I think the detonation is actually closer than that and yes, you do want to get it under the keel. In WWII I believe they tried to do this with magnetic detonators with varying degrees of success.



That depends entirely on the size of the arhead and the water conditions.. and of course on how the ship is built.



Again, depends a lot on the distance from the ships of the detonation, and the water conditions. I ahve not been able to find an explosion effects calculator for underwater explosions.



That would depend a lot on the direction and distance of the cloud. I don't know of any direct effect that radioactivity has on radar after the explosion. EMP from the explosion could damage the radar, but that would not be a factor of the cloud.

I also don't imagine the cloud would remain in the air very long with a heavy water content; most of the water would fall back down.



The noise could very well have serious effects on the sonar operators if they have their headphones on. The sonar itself I imagine has some sort of protection from sudden noise spikes built in, precisely in case of such an event. I doubt the details would be publicly available.

I think EMP would be the most serious secondary effect, and possibly the radioactive effects on the crew. I don't think a cloud of water will really create that much of a "blind spot" if any; the sky is really big, and the ships are usually far enough apart that a big cloud won't occupy a huge percentage of it.

Remember also that if this big cloud suddenly blinded them, any additional enemy missiles, ships, airplanes, etc. on the other side now can't see them, either.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

DE...you make a me wanna buy copy of Harpoon III.

I've got one. If I can figure out the scenario builder, I might try and run some of these scenarios and post some reports, although that's going to be VERY time-intensive and partly rely on my skill and making the Harpoon game do what I want.

I don't really like to use games or fiction, but I make an exception for Harpoon, since it's designed to be as accurate as possible, and even has a version that is sold as a professional trainer.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So, its looking like China almost *does* have a carrier.

Sorta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_air ... te_note-13

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Holy shitsnacks!

Yes, they've had access to a carrier that someone else built for 8 years and still don't have either it or one of their own design operational. They also acquired ex-Kiev, ex-Minsk and ex-Melbourne and have studied them as well.

Despite having purchased 4 carriers they have yet to put one into operation or build their own, although evidently they plan on having one in operation by 2015 plus possibly ex-Varyag as well.

This ought to illustrate how hard it is to build a working aircraft carrier. Despite Monty's protests that "they're jsut as smart and work just as hard as we do!" that really doesn't matter. These are large, complex pieces of machinery and you can't figure out all the issues just by being smart and thinking about it hard enough.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well, they turned the Minsk and Kiev into Theme Parks.

More than likely though, the Varyag will be a training carrier. Maybe.

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Holy shitsnacks!

That seems like the course they are taking, since it only displaces about 33,000 tons whereas the estimates for their designs are up in the 50,000 ton range and presumably could carry more aircraft. Varyag only carries 26 fixed-wing types.

But here's the little secret: There's not a lot of difference between a "training carrier" and an actual one. You could leave off a lot of the combat electronics and such to save money but it can still launch and recover aircraft just fine, so in the case of war you can either add the electronics really fast or just have it in company with another carrier and a lot of escorts. Either way, it represents aircraft capacity even if its officially a "training carrier".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

How much of this is difficulty of design, and now much of it is lack of consensus in their military about the need/desire for a blue water fleet other than their submarines?

I see a few mentions of "intent" and "rapid modernization" of the PLA naval branch, but even that has been relatively recent, and still lacks a lot of the components of more focused navies.

That's a good question, mainly because the PLA Navy is actually the naval arm of their army, not a separate branch like we have.

In addition to the fact that they are much more a land-oriented country in the first place, that subordination of the navy to the army would necessarily make its needs subordinate. While China has been looking seriously at aircraft carriers for 25 years, they seem to just now be getting really serious about actually building one.

China has undergone a lot of modernization and change in its military in general, trying to move to a smaller but more mechanized force rather than the "hordes of infantry" it utilized from the Korean war until the last 15-20 years.

Part of that seems to be getting serious about its Navy. I don't know to what degree consensus in their military is even necessary, because China is sill run by a Politburo with political goals, and the decision to build aircraft carriers is in many ways just as much political as military. Russia, Britain, France, the U.S. and a few other countries have carriers operational in various forms but China doesn't. Yet they see themselves as the next challanger to the U.S. Part of that is having aircraft carriers which are pretty much a necessity to a serious blue-water navy. Submarines can conduct blue-water operations, but they can't really project power in the way a carrier can.

There's also the fact that China wants to be the big dog in its neighborhood and would really like to have the smaller, but economically formidible nations around it more in line with Beijing than Washington.

Then of course there is Taiwan.

Basically it comes down to China moving forward as a country, and looking out for its own interests. China wants to be one of the top world players, and it wants to be one in such a way that it doesn't need to rely on politicking other nations into supporting it. Part of moving forward as a major world power is having at leas some ability to secure your sea lines of communication and control the sea in the event of conflict. Aircraft carriers are pretty much mandatory for that; submarines are limited in doing more than just attacking and information gathering.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You may find this series interesting DE:
http://steeljawscribe.com/2008/10/01/of ... als-part-i

http://steeljawscribe.com/2008/10/08/of ... y-seals-ii

http://steeljawscribe.com/2008/11/05/of ... -seals-iii

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Holy shitsnacks!

I haven't had time to come up with a dedicated test scenario yet, but I did run something on Harpoon Advanced Naval Warfare that might illustrate the missile defense issues.

The scenario was circa 1985; 7 NATO warships have to stop an equal number of Warsaw Pact ships from breaking out into the Atlantic in a dash through the English Channel. There were no subs and only the helicopters carried on the ships for aircraft.

NATO forces consisted of 1 Ticonderoga pre-VLS AEGIS cruiser, one Leahy-class CG, one Spruance-class destroyer (ABL Tomahawks, not VLS) and 4 other ships that I should ahve written down but didn't; they were a mix of English, German and I think French, but generally of comparable quality.

Warsaw Pact ships included a Slava and modified Kara (Azov, with better SAM capability) for cruisers, a Soveremenny class destroyer, an Udaloy-class destroyer, 2 Grisha class corvettes and Tarantul class Corvette.

My general plan was to locate and identify the Soviet ships with my helicopters and then missile-spam them to death. There wasn't much room for either side to maneuver or hide in the English Channel so it wasn't like I had a lot of choice.

This was complicated somewhat by the presence of at least 2 neutral merchant ships in the Channel. I wasn't supposed to attack them and presumably the Russians didn't either due to a need to conserve ammunition.

I initially launched 2 helicopters to scout the north and south halves of the channel while I zigzagged my ships up the channel west to east. My southern helicopter located a single ship initially which I was leery of attacking; wisely it turned out. I sent the helicopter in closer and determiend it was a merchant ship.

About that time my northern helicopter turned up a whole bunch of ships in close proximity. AHA! I sent my second helicopter to assist it in identifying the ships. Unfortunately I got a little too aggressive with the helos and ended up getting them both shot down, but this ended up being worthwhile because I discovered there was a neutral ship right in the middle of the Soviet combatants.

At this point, the complex Harpoon interface reared its ugly head, since I ddon't have all the finer points of controlling it down yet. I had at least 5 more helicopters available, but the damn AI settings were cycling them through formation ASW patrols, despite the lack of any submarines in the scenario. Hence I didn't have any helos actually available for launch. I suppose I could ahve detached one on patrol but like I said.. still learning the interface.

However, I knew where they were, and this being the English Channel it wasn't like they were going to get away. They further obliged me by launching a large salvo of ASMs at me.

This is where AEGIS really showed its value. Despite not having a VLS launcher, I was able to knock out the entire incoming missile salvo. Of the Russian ships, only Slava could engage at this range, so I was faced with 16 SS-N-12s coming in 2 at a time. My SAMs made short work of them.

Having a good location, I started launching missiles at the enemy ships. Unfortunately I was still to far away for Harpoons or Exocets - my first mistake. All I could launch was Tomahawks. I relied on the low-altitude flight profile of the Tomahawk to get through, but this ended up not being enough. I managed to get only one through the SA-N-6 SAMs of the enemy cruisers, for a hit on a Grisha. I was also too far away for much damage assessment but I figured a Tomahawk would do the little bastard nicely.

I continued to close and kept launching missile as I went, bringing Harpoons into play as soon as possible. These faired no better; I managed to get only one hit on the Tarantul and was down to just one Harpoon and no Tomahawks. In the meantime, however, I'd picked off most of the Soviet helos with SAMs and the destroyers had fired their SS-N-22s at me with no more effect than the SS-N-12s had.

My last Harpoon I fired at the Udaloy, hoping it might sneak in undetected as a single sea-skimming missile. What luck! I hit the Udaloy! This wasn't enough to sink it, however.

At this point the AI/interface reared its ugly head again. I moved in closer knowing that my SM-2 SAMs could be used in antiship-mode as well as could my Sea Sparrows and I still had some Exocets ont he French ship. Well and good. Unfortunately, I didn't account for the game engine and how it handles close-rnage engagements. The SM-2 is primarily designed to shoot down incoming missiles or aircraft; therefore if a target survives to get really close it just starts spamming missiles at it rahter than shooting, looking, then shooting again to conserve missiles.

The problem, of course is that it can only engages ships in LOS unlike Harpoon or Tomahawk.. and LOS to a ship is only possible at what would be close range for an air target because of the horizon. Therefore as soon as I was in range all my SAM ships went berzerk spamming every SAM I had left at the Udaloy! Worse, it takes a while for a ship to sink and SM-2s fly really fast, so before the poor destroyer could sink it ended up absorbing probably about 30 or 40 SAMs.

I decided to vent my ire on the Slava, since I only needed 4 sinkings to win. I launched the exocets I had left, but with no luck.. I was forced to commit to a gun range battle. This actually ended up working out well; as I closed I I was able to bring all my formation's 127mm and 114mm guns to bear on the Slava plus the few Sea Sparrows I had left from the rear ships in my formation that didn't spam them at the Udaloy. The Slava was sent to the bottom in fairly short order, and I damaged the Kara as well.

This would have been a clean sweep except that int he process of this gun battle, one of my German ships and my Leahy class cruiser took torpedo hits and went down. Evidently Russian ASW torpedos can be used on surface ships - which American ones can't! Curses! My Spruance also took minor gun damage and a hit or two from Russian SAMs in an anti-ship roll; these were very small SAMs though, and not very effective. I could have had a clean sweep!

Still, this scenario demonstrates the power of AEGIS. Not a single Russian missile got through. Conversely, I got 3 missiles through and really I could have done better if I'd packed my salvos together more. Still, the Russian defenses were tough and both sides were reduced to using torpedoes and guns after shooting themselves dry of ASMs.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't think China is a real threat at all. I mean, they are so over populated that they are likely to just snap off, falling away from the mainland, and capsize. Our military objectives should be to smuggle as much lead into the country as possible.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Rynar you fool, the tidal wave China's collapse would cause would flip Japan and probably swamp Hawaii. It may eventually happen anyway, but we shouldn't try to induce it.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones