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Future Carrier (Including Costs)

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Future Carrier (Including Costs)

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Old 31st Jan 2013, 08:08
  #3341 (permalink)  
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Ares/Intercept: China Tests Carrier Killer DF-21D Missile; Sinks US Aircraft Carrier



Taiwan-based Want China Times has published suggestive evidence that China has tested its Dong Feng 21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), also known as the “Carrier Killer” to fans.

This missile will keep the “dog” out of China’s “backyard.”

According to the January 23 article, “PLA ‘sinks’ US carrier in DF-21D missile test in Gobi,” the “People’s Liberation Army has successfully sunk a US aircraft carrier, according to a satellite photo provided by Google Earth, reports our sister paper Want Daily — though the strike was a war game, the carrier a mock-up platform and the ‘sinking’ occurred on dry land in a remote part of western China.”

“A satellite image reveals two large craters on a 200-meter-long white platform in the Gobi desert used to simulate the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. The photo was first posted on SAORBATS, an internet forum based in Argentina. Military analysts believed the craters would have been created by China’s DF-21D anti-ship missile.”

“While claiming that the missile has the capability to hit aircraft carriers 2,000 kilometers away, the nationalistic Chinese tabloid Global Times stated that the weapon was only designed for self-defense; the DF-21D will never pose a serious threat to US national security because it is not even able to reach Hawaii, the newspaper said, though fully aware of the US naval deployment in the Western Pacific.”

“Underlining this point, Global Times took a common line from China’s national defense doctrine before the country acquired an aircraft carrier of its own — namely that carriers are an offensive weapon while anti-ship missiles are defensive. ‘It can be used like a stick to hit the dog intruding on our backyard, but it can never be used to attack the house where the dog comes from,’ the paper’s commentary said.”
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 09:03
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Ballistic missile hits static target at known co-ordinates.

Lets get rid of all our airbases then.........
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 09:30
  #3343 (permalink)  
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Ballistic missile hits static target at known co-ordinates
If it didn't use final guidance, it's a fantastic CEP, 200m being considered the best the Russians can achieve. If it did use final guidance, it proves it works.

Doesn't mean it will work against a moving target using counter-measures, but it shows they're getting there.

Last edited by ORAC; 31st Jan 2013 at 09:32.
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 10:02
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If it didn't use final guidance, it's a fantastic CEP, 200m being considered the best the Russians can achieve. If it did use final guidance, it proves it works.

Doesn't mean it will work against a moving target using counter-measures, but it shows they're getting there.
Do we really know what caused those craters and hitting a large area of mud might not be the same as hitting a moving target. A fool would ignore this intelligence but talk is cheap.
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 12:39
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If it didn't use final guidance, it's a fantastic CEP, 200m being considered the best the Russians can achieve. If it did use final guidance, it proves it works.

Doesn't mean it will work against a moving target using counter-measures, but it shows they're getting there.
Agreed (although ISTR some of the US stuff has a lower CEP) but the harder part is actually maintaining a tracking solution post-launch.

Point on fixed targets still stands though. If they can do that for a small moving target, how difficult is it going to be to fit shorter range BMs with a similar head (or GPS) and trash bomb farms, fuel farms, runway intersections?
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 15:44
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Landlubber alert:

When US carriers are on patrol, the USN sees fit to provide an extensive array of escorts: anti-air, anti-surface, etc etc.

Presumably the QEC carriers, major capital ships that they are, will attract all kinds of attention from explosive-loaded suicide RIBs to sophisticated air, surface and sub-surface threats and, assuming the job is to be done properly, will require similar protection to the USN carriers. Given the size of the surface fleet, I further assume it will be impossible to provide a comprehensive level of escort to a carrier on patrol and still fulfill all other obligations. So what will give - will the vulnerable and hugely expensive ships be put in harm's way without adequate protection - a sort of modern version of the Repulse and PoW - or will other priorities be binned? I assume, based on its slash and burn track record, that this government will never permit the sufficient expansion of the fleet to allow both roles to be performed properly.

Final thought, what defensive armament will the QEC's have?
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 16:47
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Even with a CEP in excess of 200m you still might get a DH. The CEP means that it is probable (can't remember the exact %) that your hit will be within the CEP distance of target.

N
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 16:52
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50% of shots will fall within the CEP circle
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 17:07
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If there were known coordinates, why do whatever they did to color the target?

Two reasons: 1 - They were testing optical detection/tracking, either in the weapon or another platform (satellite?). 2 - They wanted to show off.

(On the other hand they might have painted the rectangle around the craters, a technique acquired by their cyber-espionage campaign against the US defense industry.)

It would be nice to have the original Google Earth image. Then we'd know if the Argentine guy was right about the size matching the centroid of a US carrier.
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 19:30
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1. Anyone else think that those two craters are surprisingly dissimilar?

2. Anyone really care? We still buy aeroplanes despite the SA-20. We still train soldiers despite the bayonet having proved very effective against them for some time now.

3. Still fairly embryonic if they're testing a long range, maritime, moving target capability against a short range, static target - feet dry.

4. Let's be honest. All they've actually demonstrated is a similar capability to that demonstrated by Withers DFC in 1982.

Last edited by orca; 31st Jan 2013 at 19:30.
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 20:43
  #3351 (permalink)  
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4. Let's be honest. All they've actually demonstrated is a similar capability to that demonstrated by Withers DFC in 1982.
And those Japanese, they'll never build decent cars....
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 20:45
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Still find it hard to believe we are building these two giant floating targets instead of a useful number of smaller fighting ships. Nearly as bad as spending the remaining future defence budget on a handful of gold plated large-ish aircraft..Oh no...we have!

OAP
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 20:57
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ORAC,

I think the point is that you can dream up future weapons or extrapolate current capabilities into frightening new ones, but you still have to apply a 'So what?' test to them.

I buy the fact that a nation that is traditionally viewed as a threat by the USA is developing a weapon that is specifically designed to counter balance the USN's footprint in the region by targeting one specific surface combatant.

However, one is an actual capability and the other one isn't.

Even if fielded today we have no idea what the kill chain employed would be or whether the US has a plan for breaking it. As with all kill chains it will be complex and therefore theoretically 'breakable' even if this proves difficult to do.

At the same time, targeting this system would require a kill chain of its own, and simply going by the fact that it appears to be land based with a possible space component - this might be eminently do-able.

Lastly. To actually use this complex, un-developed, not-fielded capability, it has to work, the threat nation needs the will to employ it, a trigger event or set of circumstances to invoke this will - and the ability to live with the consequences.

Simply don't follow the argument to this point myself.

BZ the Chinese though for putting two weapons onto a piece of concrete that could house all the UK's deployable fast jets. Maybe we should put an outline of the pan a Goia on the picture and then scrap the RAF.
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Old 31st Jan 2013, 21:04
  #3354 (permalink)  
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Lastly. To actually use this complex, un-developed, not-fielded capability, it has to work, the threat nation needs the will to employ it, a trigger event or set of circumstances to invoke this will - and the ability to live with the consequences.
That's the worrying bit, isn't it?
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Old 1st Feb 2013, 14:54
  #3355 (permalink)  
 
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A milestone has been reached in the construction of the new Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers.

The Forward Island of the first carrier, which contains the bridge, has been finished and will shortly be transported to Scotland to be attached to the rest of the superstructure.
British Forces News
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Old 5th Feb 2013, 07:43
  #3356 (permalink)  
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Abaaaart Face!!

Having done the morning stroll on frequent occasions, this is looking a bit like a sudden encounter with fiscal wisdom?

Carrier Jet Chaos





Imagegear

Last edited by ImageGear; 5th Feb 2013 at 07:55.
 
Old 5th Feb 2013, 07:55
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just the usual wise after the event parliamentary scrutiny
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Old 5th Feb 2013, 08:10
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Inteesting that, as usual, the terms "Ministers", "MoD" and "Government" are used to shift blame around. Notice that

It was announced in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review that the Government would adopt the carrier variant of the US-built F35 Joint Strike Fighter
and that

Ministers argued that the carrier variant was a more capable aircraft and that it would increase "interoperability" with other navies
which was almost certainly correct.

But then

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond announced the MoD was reverting to the jump jet version
and the decision to change

was taken without the MoD understanding how the change could be implemented
And as things get worse it becomes very much the MoD's fault:

example of how little the MoD understood
We urge the MoD to learn the lessons
Now, none of that is necessarily incorrect, but the wording tends to give the impression that it's all gone wrong because of those faceless wonders in uniform in the big expensive building next to the Thames.

Last edited by Courtney Mil; 5th Feb 2013 at 08:10.
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Old 5th Feb 2013, 10:51
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Criticism of the back-and-forth between the two versions is valid in that nobody had agreed on the cost of switching the ships to CATOBAR or when it would be paid for.

On the other hand, if we're talking about dependence versus independence on non-UK equipment, it is not good to be totally dependent on a single sub-type of a foreign product, that has only one customer other than the UK.

And as we have since discovered, timing is a bit of a non-factor since combat-ready JSFs don't appear to be in the cards before 2020.
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Old 5th Feb 2013, 11:14
  #3360 (permalink)  
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The UK has paid at least an extra £100 million to have no aircraft to fly from an aircraft carrier for years.
Only £100 million? A mere bagatelle. Why the money involved around Chris Huhne's court case, before the money thrown at the follow up byelection is only about 1% of that.
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