Actually a three-trick pony as there is no reason why the missile load out would have to be exclusively SAMs. Still could embark a decent TLAM onload along with the SAMs and there is always the spec forces accomodation and apparent SDV capability. The main ‘trick’ though – the discrete, invulnerable to SEAD, siting of a large battery of of active, area, SAMs is something not easily achieved by any other platform. Even if I accepted the one-trick comment, from an already-paid-for hull, its a pretty good trick!

Except that in order to perform this latest trick, the boat will need to get far closer to a hosile coast while also forgoing the defence of stealth. That puts the boat at a far higher risk then if it was quietly inserting spec-op units or firing tomahawks from a thousand miles away.

What more, the SSGN SAM is far from a complete system. Its nothing more then a glorified SAM carrier that has zero independent engagement capacity. If you take out or force away the sensor platforms and/or was able to disrupt communications, then the whole thing is rendered useless.

Now, if there was a way of allowing SSGNs to search, lock-on and engage air targets completely independently, then you would have what you and other advocates seem to suggest an SSGN SAM would be, and that would be a different kettle of fish. But thats not the case nor will it be anytime soon.

Poor attempt at misdirection there PLAwolf – the advantage of siting the missiles on a submerged, largely invulnerable, platform over that of a surface escort is very obvious in the threat environment.

Not really. One of the key arguements for this system is surviverability and that is linked to range. If the SSGN is not armed with a 200mile SAM, then the geography of the region would force them into the Taiwan strait bottleneck that would make it far easier to counter them.

If the arguement was for them to be equiped with SM2s, then you’d see that to counter them by creating too much risk for the USN to ever allow their use would involve little more then the PLAN deploying its SSK fleet in the strait.

Its the 200mile range SM6 that gives this suggestion any credibility at all, but with a 200mile ranged missile, an Aegis DDG can do a far better job for a fraction of the monetary and opportunity costs not to meantion a far lower risk.

Crobato – least thats what he seemed to be saying?

Well I’m not responsible for his remarks or he mine. 😉

Oh please dont give me that launch transient junk AGAIN. Shout out for an accoustic barrier round the SSGN, just before firing, and that blocks any kind of transient detection – a couple of escorts banging away on active would probably be sufficient to mask the silo hatch opening and the missile deployment – certainly for any PLAN battery-powered SSK set likely to be in theatre.

PLAN late model Songs and almost certainly Yuans have flank array sonar and thats nothing to sniff at.

Besides, how close would your escorts need to be to create an effective barrier? Depends on the sonar the PLAN uses doesn’t it? But thats one thing you can’t know unless you have some very good and accurate human intel, and since thats not something US intelligence agencies are famed for, lets just assume the USN does not know the PLAN’s sonars better then the PLAN. How are you going to set the range for the escorts? Too far away and your subs are at risk, too close and your escorts are at risk.

You would have been better off guessing that PLAAF AWACS might get a radar hit on the missiles point of origin when they get airborne Wolf!

Thats not a reliable means to pinpointing a lauch location as a missile is rather fast, and even a slight delay in detection can throw the area way off.

Still consistently a believer in sending your naval forces out to their unfortunate demise in shoddy boats then PLAWolf?. Last time we discussed PLAN ops you sacrificed all the PLAN FAC crews on the Taiwan altar…least the Mings crews will have some company in the afterlife eh?!

Thats the price one has to pay when facing a technologically superior foe. I would not get too snobby about the need to make sacrifies in war least your forget the exchange rate between shermans and german leopord/tigers. Unless you are advocating surrender as soon as your opponent has kit better then yours, I would suggest you take a more mature attitude unless you can come up with a strategy to take out the USN with the PLAN and not expect to take serious losses.

More importantly one wonders precisely what the SSGN skipper would be doing letting a noisy old SSK, banging away on its active gear, get a hit on him, for the other SSK types to exploit, when he should have been creeping off in the other direction at the first hint of an active sonar pulse.

Don’t you see that thats the point? Any skipper with half a brain would be heading the other way = you are herding them away. The lurking Songs/Kilos/Yuans are there to deal with any skippers feeling reckless enough to go take a shot at the Mings.

The transient thing has been covered, firing does not automatically give the game away, besides how many engagements do you anticipate this boat staying in for?. Even with a couple of hundred SM’s its going to go through them within a relatively short timeframe. Optimistically one might give the subsurface SM-6’s a, real-world, pK of 0.5 i.e two missiles on each target. Finding 100 or less air targets over PLAAF assembly areas and the Taiwan Strait shouldnt be difficult…so you are probably looking at two, perhaps, three engagements tops, within a short duration, then the sub is creeping off for reload.

And what makes you think the PLAAF is going to be assembling over water? Remember they are no longer reliant on short-legged J7s. In fact, any attack package against Taiwan is likely to assemble far from the coast so as not to give the game away.

As for shooting Sm6s in huge waves. Well bare in mind the limitations of the gear. How many missiles will an AWACS be able to guide at the same time?

We also have the composition of a large strike package. Any large fighter formation is likely to have AWACS and dedicated EW plane support. That means far greater reaction time and survival rates for large formations (especially against the small nose cone seekers on missiles as opposed to more powerful and expansive platform sensors).

And lastly we have durability. How many SSGNs does the USN have and how long can they stay on station if they use up their missiles so quickly? And how long is it going to take for them to get back to port, rearm and get back on station?

Its just not a viable defensive strategy. Its a silver bullet nausense weapon that I think would more interest the PLA then the US military.

The mere presence of such a discrete capability is going to impact PLAAF planning and if the ‘one shot wonder’ accounts for 70-80 downed air targets on its own if called into action, all for the price of a few modifications to the launch systems on the SSGN and a CEC/buoy comms fit then, IMO, its quite probably a successful system.

That 70-80 downed air targets figure would require a boat to carry nothing but SAMs. And even then its an extremely high figure.

Such a system would change the PLA’s planning, and that would further limit the number of targets such SSGNs are likely to bring down.

And, as usual, you pay no attention to how the cost-benefit analysis would pan out if you lost an SSGN or two in the process. 70-80 fighters will probably cost about the same as your SSGN depending on type, but those 70-80 pilots get ejection seats whereas the crew of your SSGN will all go down with the boat with zero chance of escape.

Wow PLA Heavy Rocket Artillery units have a 1000 ballistic missiles that they would be able to fire on a seconds notice (so as not to tip off RoCAF to scramble aircraft) and they can fire them simultaneously can they?. Impressive if they can get the whole RoCAF on the ground, before an airforce, well-used to staring down the barrel of ‘1000 TBM’s’, can get some aircraft aloft?!

I never said they can fire 1000 missiles at the same time, nor would they want to even if they could. The hundreds of missiles that will be fired in the first wave can give the RoCAF as little as 5 minutes warning time. A lot of fighters can get into the air and many would, but I don’t expect many E2s to be in that rank. And anything that does get aloft is going to be overwhelmingly outnumbered, and even if any does survive long enough to require a base to return to, the runways are going to be in no condition to allow them to land.

Its improbable that the PLA would be able to keep the entire RoCAF grounded
or destroy them all in one swoop, but big lumbering E2s and tankers are almost certain to play no part in any war except in the opening hours.

Many have been binned without being ‘fatally flawed’ as I stated initially though…this sub-surface-to-air concept does have a habit of resurfacing every now and again…if you’ll forgive the pun!.

And they will keep bobbing up and down in limbo until the PLA starts to rival or even over-take the US military.

Unless something has been pruposely design from the start to do a job, its unlikely to be terribly good at it if it has just been modified, even more so if you try to make the mods as cheap as possible. And with the many problems faced by an SSGN SAM platform, we can see that this is not going to be one of those rare exceptions.

The problem is that given the choice, the US high command is going to want F22s and carriers over dedicated SSGN SAM because those weapons are just so much more effective, and you just can’t beat the ‘awe’ factor either.

It allows for constant contact as long as the buoy stays on the surface. When to deploy it will be based on a paging service using other comms equipment like the Deep Siren system.

But there will almost certainly be a sizeable time delay. Not what you want for an AD asset.

The SSGN is a defensive asset? You don’t know what you’re talking about.

I was refering to sferrin’s idea of using SSGNs to truck SAMs.

Communications equipment like these allows for SSGN and other submarine assets access into Forcenet and all the possibilities that Forcenet provides. Even defensive assets gain tremendously from the access to offboard information.

And no one has ever disputed that. This would be a big improvement over currently fielded stuff, but its still nowhere near the quantum leap forwards you would need to be able to use Subs as an effective air defence asset.

What about it? It would be less than an SSN towing a towed array.

And you are basing this on?

I can tell you for a fact that it won’t be less because a towed array because towed arrays stays under the water, thus it does not cause any turbulance when the sub is moving. However, for a transmitter as you are describing, you will be dragging the surface bouy across the surface of the water. Even in totally calm waters that is going to create noise, which can easily be conducted by the cable (which could act like a guitar string if the boat is draging the bouy at speed and the cable becomes very taught).

Not really. I wasn’t suggesting to use it as a permanent fixture, but more just to have the ability to break up major attacks.

And how would the sub know when it should use the bouy and when it shouldn’t?

Not in this case. All it would be doing is providing addition cells. Any “control” would come from other assets.

You missed the point on two levels, thats pretty impressive. Firstly, you are neglecting the fact that effective AD means 24/7 coverage. That means your boat need to remain within a small area to stay within missile range. That dramatically reduces the piece of water your enemy need to monitor.

Secondly, these ‘other assets’ you speak of becomes the only and obvious target for the enemy in such a case, and its unrealistic to think that your sub SAMs will be able to protect them alone. That means more assets to protect your sensor platforms, and so on. And what role will your SSGN SAM boat do in such a force? Little more then what an Ageis DDG will be doing but less effective as the sub can’t do squat if the off-board sensor platforms are destroyed or forced out of range.

What does that mean? Its ineffective and totally overpriced for what it can do.

What are you talking about? I’m referring to SSGNs.

The SSNs you want to escort these SSGNs of yours.

You ever heard the term “line of sight”? How about “surprise”.

What happened to your vaunted ‘cooperative engagement’? SM6 on DDGs can hand targeting off to AWACS or other assets just as easily as SSGNs.

As for suprise. Well you might be able to ambush some figthers at the start, but as soon as you announce your presence, simple tactics can vastly reduce the ability of your SSGNs to mount suprise attacks and could easily lead your boats into traps that can cost you several billion dollars and hundreds of lives a pop.

Besides, if your conventional assets are anywhere near as good as you seem to think they are, there shouldn’t be anything for your SSGN to suprise.

Who said it can’t?

So whats it going to do about targeting if there is no off-board sensor platforms around to guide its missiles?

Incorrect. Go back and reread (several times if necessary) what I’ve been saying.

The only one who needs to do re-reading is you.

Again, incorrect. Sounds like you still haven’t figured out what “cooperative engagement” means.

It only ‘sounds like’ that because you are not grasping the point I have been making. Its not hard to understand.

Your SSGNs are totally dependent on off-board sensor platforms to function as SAMs. That makes your sensor platforms the most obvious and easy target. So what you gonna do when the enemy throws everything he has against your AWACS? Your SSGNs alone are simply not going to be able to ensure the security of your AWACS or whatever else you are relying on for targeting, and the only thing that will come close to offering the level of protection that is adequite are carrier battlegroups.

When the enemy goes for your sensor platforms, its going to also attack your carriers and in such a battle, your SSGNs will be less effective then Ageis DDGs for many times the price.

Yeah because a carrier is the only thing with a radar on it. :rolleyes:

Read above. Its the only thing that has a decent enough chance of being around long enough for those radars to do what you want them to.

LOL! If you say so. Coming from someone who could drown in a teaspoon of water though I’m not exactly shattered.

Yawn.

Yeah because the ONLY thing it would ever do is fill up with SM-6s and wait for airplanes. :rolleyes:

So you’re going to use those SM6s as cruise missiles now? :rolleyes:

If you load them with SM6s and not use the SAMs, then thats valuable tomahawk space wasted. Whereas if you load them with cruise missiles and SAMs, you have a jack of all traits. It hasn’t got enough cruise missiles to work as a true SSGN, and it hasn’t got enough SAMs to do area AD.

You’re right, that narrows it down to several hundred thousand square miles. No doubt the titanic fleet of bleeding edge SSKs will sink it instantly. What was I thinking. :rolleyes:

Not a lot considering the quality of your posts.

The PLA is so vastly superior to the ROCA that as soon as the PLA get ashore in any numbers, the game is up. For that to happen, the PLA needs to win air superiority and use that to keep the waters open and coastal defences from functioning, which in turn requires the destruction of Taiwan’s AD network at some point. It would also like to take out key c&c, military hardware, transport nodes etc to make the land war as easy and quick as possible, which would ideally mean close air support, but is not essential.

To do all of that except CAS, the PLA only need to open up a narrow air coridor. They might want more, but they can get away with that.

With stand-off munitions, the PLAAF can strike at targets from hundreds of miles away. Most of those weapons have ranges that would not require PLAAF planes to fly over any part of Taiwan to strike at the entire island (some don’t even require PLAAF jets to leave the Chinese mainland). That means your SSGN cannot operate anywhere to the east of Taiwan and will have to move into the straits itself to use its SM6s.

The straits is about 200km wide to give you an idea of how much reach the SM6 might have. And what you don’t seem to realise at all is that to function as an AD asset, the area of operation of the SSGN will be decided entirely by the PLAAF, because the PLAAF alone controls where its planes fly.

If they limit themselves to, say a 10km wide air corridor in the middle of the straits, then use a compus and draw two lines 210 miles north and south of that corridor and that is the size of the area an SSGN can operate in as a SAM platform. Obviously the PLA might expand that area, but even if they enlarged it by 50%, its still a small space. Now assume that each PLAN SSK has a killbox of 10 miles from its location to represent the range of its torpedos, and draw a circle with a 10 mile radius for each modern SSK the PLAN have and scatter then in that area and you can see just how steep the odds are against an SSGN operating as a SAM platform in the Taiwan strait. Considering the fact that those subs will know instantly where the SSGN is when it fires a SM6 and will be moving in to engage it, the chances of survival for the SSGN are reduced greatly again.

Factor in ASW planes that have a far greater reaction time and it will be a near suicide mission to shoot one volley never mind expect the SSGNs to maintain any kind of effective and reliable area air defence.

And that is the most conservative approach the PLA can take, where it not even tries to go after the sensor platforms.

Well somebody needs to draw YOU one because you obviously don’t know WTF you’re talking about.

Its seems I over estimated your ability to think independently, so I drew you a nice verbal image. Feel free to render it onto paper if picturing it in your mind takes too much effort.

Not having aircover? Has anything I’ve been saying even slowed down on it’s way to your circular file?

So now you are back tracking and saying that not only does your SSGN need off board sensors, but also air cover to operate?

You mean the ASW ac fleets that are busy getting shot down? I don’t know about you but I certainly wouldn’t want to be trawling around in one of those buckets in that situation. The term “turkey shoot” comes to mind. As for SSKs the SSGNs would be able to stay well outside the strait itself and those SSKs can’t be everywhere at once nor can the move very fast for very long either. Do the math.

I have no idea what kind of scenario you dreamed up where the PLA went out of its way to make it easy for you to pick them apart, but in anything like a real world scenario such as the one I described above, the only ‘turkey shoot’ will the one against any SSGNs stupid enough to think it is a SAM truck.

Which part of “200 mile range SAM” don’t you understand?

The part where you seem to think a weapon with a 200 mile range can engage targets well over 200 miles away. Comments like ‘SSGNs would be able to stay well outside the strait’. :rolleyes:

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that it’s either/or. They could do both.

Every cell used for SM6 is a cell not used for tomahawks. Opportunity cost. Look it up.

You mean the ones that are busy being shot down?

And what’s supposed to be shooting them down again?

Yeah that’ll be effective because the SSGNs wouldn’t need to come to them.

Well if the SSGN wants to be an effective AD assets, then it will have to. Otherwise its just going to be an SSGN with half its cells carrying uselss SM6s instead of tomahawks.

200 mile range missile. And if they ever decided to do something along these lines they could EASILY up that to much higher.

And China can make a 200mile+ hypersonic AWACS killer missile and buy Foxhounds to carry it.

I let you get away with the completely unsubstantuated 200 mile range for the SM6. Don’t push your luck with ‘might happen’ range extensions.

LOL! Don’t go to Vegas.

Smart people don’t make uneccessary bets when the odds are stacked against them. Its called risk minimisation, and its what you need to do to avoid getting your multi billon dollar sub sunk in war time.

That post actually says nothing. The point stands that by comparison to the US SSN fleet the PLAN submarine force is a joke and the USN could mince meat it for fun. BTW I was including the Songs as modern boats but if you have so little faith in them then we shall remove them from the list of credible PLAN assets.

No body said a single system could win a war by itself so you are just arguing with yourself which is even more pointless than arguing that the PLAN SSK fleet represents a serious threat to the US SSN force.

First you started with the farcical claim that the Virginias and Sea Wolfs can take out the PLAN SSK fleet in ‘seconds’. Then when I called you on that, you suddenly went all offensive, attempting to save face by expanding Sea wolves and Virginias to the USN SSN fleet as a whole.

The PLAN SSK fleet is no match for the USN SSN fleet, but it far from the walkover you seem so desperate to believe for the USN to take out the PLAN SSK fleet in Chinese littoral waters.

And just FYI, I said ‘older Songs’.

Excuses excuses. This time I suggest that you go an count how many ‘modern’ SSK’s China has and how many SSN’s the USN has.:rolleyes:

You started with Sea wolfs and Virginias being able to wipe out the PLAN SSK fleet ‘in seconds’, and now its suddenly changed to the entire USN SSN fleet when your exaggerations became painfully obvious. Make up your mind. :rolleyes:

Besides, even the entire USN SSN fleet are still large SSNs, and their operations would be majorly limited in the shallow littoral waters around the strait. Not only could the smaller SSKs go places the SSNs can’t, their captains also have intimate knowledge of the local topography and water conditions.

You are further showing how shallow your thinking into the matter is by focusing only on modern SSKs. The older mings and songs might be rubbish, but that does not make them useless. You can deploy them in groups and maybe also have a pack of modern Songs, Kilos or Yuans lurking around nearby.

Add in ASW aircraft and the odds against the SSNs lengthen even more.

SSNs are great, but they are not superweapons no matter how much you want them to be. They function best as a part of the entire military machine, but if you send them off on their own expecting them to defeat the entire enemy by themselves, then you are in for a rude awakening. I would have thought that recent experiences of US apaches in Iraq would have been a wake up call to everyone who thinks a single system can win a war single-handedly. :rolleyes:

Yes in the Taiwan Straights US SSN’s would slaughter Chinese submarines

And what exactly is that assessment based on? Nothing but outdated models and personal bias.

Even if you dismiss the report of a PLAN sub surfacing of its own accord a few miles from the Kitty Hawk, the USN’s own excerises against Swedish SSKs have shown just how deadly these boats can be. While the PLAN’s Kilos, Songs and Yuans might not be quite as good, they are nothing to sneer at either, especially not in their home littorals.

You have still not explained where these hordes of Chinese ASW aircraft are coming from, you might want to check their orbat.:rolleyes: As of now Chinese ASW capabilities are pathetic.

The ‘hordes’ was used to describe the PLAN’s SSK fleet. Besides, if you are hunting a SAM spammer, the requirements for ASW aircraft changes from having to comb the ocean to rapid response. For such a mission, even the PLA’s small ASW aircraft fleet would be enough.

Crobato:

I wrote you a lengthy response, but internet explorer ate it and I have no intention of reproducing it. Fact of the matter remains you cannot prove that the picture is a fake, and the scientific approach is to accept something you cannot disprove as ‘true’.

You can disagree and come up with more of the same arguements based on probability and linking the picture with what some internet poster wrote when posting the picture, but that proves nothing.

We have continued with this excerise for long enough and its clear we cannot convince the other to change their minds so lets leave it at that and not waste any more time trying.