Your statement contradicts itself. You say “you need BAMS to do that job.” followed by “That being extra and over conventional assets.” So now BAMS is both needed and yet extra? Previously you said BAMS was critical. However, the job could clearly be done without the aid of BAMS. Therefore, BAMS is not critical. “Simple.”

You need BAMS-equivalent to do the job. Nowhere did I say scrap all existing assets and just use BAMS?. Not sure how you have misread a very simple premise?.

The Japanese were an exception as most of their boats were focused on achieving maximum surface performance, but this often came at the expense of submerged performance. They were also one of the least successful sub forces. You conveniently omitted the 9-10 knots cruise speed of U-boats because it proves my statement to be correct.

I didnt omit them I just couldn’t be bothered looking the precise details up so I noted that they were less long-legged than the Japanese boats but much more so than a conventional SSK of today. Are you saying that the fleet boats of the Kriegsmarine didnt have superior transit range than modern SSK’s and didn’t predominantly travel on the surface just because I didnt quote the numbers?.

Utterly absurd statement! For the most part, aircraft carriers (and many other warships) haven’t gotten any stealthier, but the sonar and radar systems capable of detecting them have improved enormously. Find me WW2 hydrophones or airborne radar capable of detecting a carrier at hundreds of kilometers! You can’t. A modern SSK can detect a carrier at ranges that WW2 SS’s could have only dreamed of. As a result, a modern sub can monitor an area vastly larger than one of WW2.

The same modern sub can now be detected at a vastly longer range than in WW2 as well. Unless you will point out where SONAR2087 was fitted to period escorts?. Escorts have gotten significantly stealthier by the way and counter detection/signal intercept systems have increased at the same pace as search sensors. The analogy you are trying to make is deeply flawed.

1) Far lesser susceptibility to air attack, so in contrast to a WW2 SS, it is capable of maintaining speed throughout the day thereby increasing area covered.

Airborne sensors in WW2 were in their infancy. Detection chances against a surfaced U-boat were proportionately lesser than they would be today plus the boats back then had snorts just as todays do. Then we come back to the simple range equation that the WW2 boat is out on station longer and covers more territory.

2) Dramatically improved sensor area. A modern SSK can monitor a vastly larger area than its WW2 predecessor thanks to huge improvements in sonar and esm.

A modern SSK can monitor a larger area than a WW2 boat could do submerged – even now though an SSK’s footprint is pretty much limited to direct path on the bow, flank and intercept arrays. Japanese and Aussie boats with tails change that of course, but, we arent talking about Aussie and Japanese boats here are we!?. German U-boats had ESM which sufficed to the threat level posed by the ASV radar of the day and the visual horizon is pretty much the same limiter now that it was 65 years ago!. As stated above – the advantage in submarine sensors is easily offset by surface vessel sensors and escorts with organic aviation today.

You should take your own advice and not put words into someone’s mouth. I never stated that Taiwan is the only scenario that applies (again, see my mention of a Korean scenario). Taiwan is focused on because it is by far the most likely scenario and hence any use of the ASBM is most likely to be in that situation. I’ve asked you several times now and I’m going to ask you again: Outside of Taiwan and possibly Korea, what other scenario is likely to occur? Why is the ASBM a “wasted investment” if it is applicable to the two most likely scenarios?

Pedantry. The ASBM is a wasted investment if it is ONLY applicable to a situation which isnt even close to being likely in the first place!.

You made a silly generalized statement that “ARH missiles dont get launched and left to do the discrimination all by themselves!. That is a great way of wasting missiles.” I noted an example of where that does happen and thereby proved your statement false. Instead of simply acknowledging that you were proven wrong or ignoring the point thereafter, you go on a tirade which has nothing to do with my response to your original post.

Pedantry. The context was clear and you conjured up some tenuous linkage to a completely different operational environment. So, yep, points for technical accuracy but well done for the display of small-minded pettiness.

1) If proven wrong by actual specifications, you’ll turn around and pretend that they are a conspiracy. Yes, let’s all believe Jonesy’s conspiracy theory that Kockums, HDW/TNSW, DCNS, etc have all independently managed to fool the Germans, Greeks, Italians, Koreans, Turks, Indians, Portuguese etc. Must be one of the greatest conspiracy theories ever devised!

You think you are reading actual real-world performance specifications in the glossy brochures?. OK. You think that the Germans, Greeks, Italians, Koreans and all the rest dont have the experience to factor in a modifier based on their own operational environments?. You think a sub sailing in the Baltic gives identical performance to one operating in the Eastern Med?. More fool you if that is what you think!.

2) Even the figures you present are in the days, not hours as you originally claimed.

I never said single hours – you just assumed that – I said hours because that is the time unit that battery charge on the boats is usually calculated in and they dont go up as far as weeks with it!.

Repeating this over and over does not remove the huge dependency on luck from your strategy.

I never said that it did. I noted the difference between a defensive deployment of a weapon system that depends on luck and an attack strategy that balances risk and reward. Ignore what I write as much as you like, but, dont try to deny that I wrote it!.

Common misunderstanding? You meant to tell us that the Americans, Russians, Germans, British, etc. have had a common misunderstanding all these years? Better let them know that!.

Just because you dont understand it means that they dont?. Thats a fairly big claim to make!.

As for the strategic bomber, its primary mission falls under the definition of strategic bombing (bombing to destroy the opponent’s capacity to wage war) therefore it’s – shock and awe – a strategic bomber!

Nope. Is one bomber capable of destroying the oppositions capacity to fight?. No it isnt. Is the bomber, individually, a strategic weapon. Nope. Its range allows it to be used to deploy weapons strategically and, if you have WMD in your arsenal, it can be used to deliver strategic weapons. The aircraft itself though is not a strategic weapon.

The two phrases do not mean the same thing. English Comprehension 101. A weapon can be part of a larger system and not alter the planning of an opponent.

Again I never said they did mean the exclusively the same thing?. They dont have to for the point to be valid?.

Yes, you did infer it. Which means that, to you, if the weapon fails to deter it becomes useless. In which case, it might as well be dismantled.

Dismantled means they built it in the first place. I’ve already stated just above that I dont believe they would build the weapon unless it could do the job that would be needed of it – that job not being to scare a CVN out of the Taiwan straits but, rather, to stop USN carriers from breaching the first island chain without tacit agreement!. That is what an ASBM, done properly, would be capable of!.

Bottom line though Wilk if this is going to just come down to more pedantry and a thorough investigation of semantics I cant be bothered with it. You also argue with the same style as someone I thought was an utter moron when I argued with him under his original posting name and I have no time for muppets who keep coming back to forums, where theyve been banned, under different posting names. So reply if you wish, but, I’ve made all the points I need to on the original topic so dont be suprised if you get the last word ok?!

That looks very much like an RAF 60ft GP Pinnace. More general purpose boats used for seaplane tender and safety boat duties than dedicated A/SR. Not a lot of information out there on them on the net it seems.

Good luck in your search.

This USN is only “kidding around” unless it’s firing nukes? The USN is going to start a nuclear war over Taiwan? If not Taiwan, then what situation do you expect the US to be nuking China that doesn’t involve a Chinese ICBM launch?

What has Taiwan got to do with this?. You are simply trying to obfuscate the fact that, in both cases Chinese and Soviet, the challenge they faced was to prevent USN theatre entry with their carrier groups. As a technical problem the situation is identical. Throwing up all this nonsense about nuclear or conventional attacks is not going to work.

Please point out where I said that their contribution (to the war effort) was meaningless. You made the claim that they were critical in sinking carriers. You were clearly wrong. Now you’ve changed your story into “well they made a contribution doing other stuff.”

Pedantry and obfuscation. I said, from the kick off, that squadrons of patrol aircraft and UAV’s i.e BAMS-like components were necessary. You howled and said that wasnt the case. WW2 showed this apparently. When it was pointed out the assets that were used in WW2 were precisely squadrons of aircraft you now try taking the point down to the fact that we were talking solely about carriers and not the general problem of finding ships at sea in WW2. If you want me to be equally pedantic look back at my post – I stated ‘capital ships’ in my post as there was so, relatively, little anticarrier work done in WW2!.

Bizarre references? Submarines provided one of the greatest contributions to detecting and sinking carriers. According to you, that’s impossible since they are not BAMS! As for operating patterns, do I need to explain to you that sensor and weapon ranges have increased dramatically since then?

You are the one trying to make a comparison between WW2 sea denial and that of today so you can forget comments of sensor and weapon efficacy!. The simple fact is that WW2 subs were surface raiders running on diesels predominantly. They could cover far more ocean than todays boats, designed for discrete submerged performance, could achieve. Your attempt to draft them in to support your argument about BAMS is exactly ‘bizarre’.

If it’s not Taiwan, then what is it? Korean conflict? In either case the theater of operations is relatively small in comparison to the size of the Chinese coast.

Irrelevent is what it is. Unless you are going to say that the weapon system is purely intended for the Taiwan scenario…when its blatantly obvious that Taiwan is not going to be a militarily resolved issue…so the missile is a collossal waste of time and money by your reckoning is it?!.

Why would they need to be spread out to cover the entire coast if the theater of operations only accounts for a portion of the coast?!

Usually because you cant predict the theatre of operations with 100% certainty.

Nope, wrong. Please try again. What part of “supplementary system to improve target identification in a situation where many vessels similar to the target would be in the scan area” is difficult to understand? Obviously, if you’ve got two small frigates and you want to differentiate between them, SAR helps greatly. But this discussion is irrelevant. I presented Moskit as an example that even a small radar decades ago was capable of accomplishing things you implied were impossible.

Small radar….Moskit….really?. What you have inadvertently managed to do is confirm what I was saying. Try the obfuscation all you like but the fact is that ARH missiles dont get launched and left to do the discrimination all by themselves!. That is a great way of wasting missiles.

Even IF the RV seeker has an ISAR mode to correctly define the target in its FoV the fact remains that the missile would need to be launched on a confirmed target box in the first place. That means your ISTAR must be up to the job I originally stated – it HAS to complete the targetting cycle.

Yes, additional information before launch can increase PK. So for any autonomous weapon, it is desirable, but not required.

So its not required…..unless you want a high probability of a hit?.

Hours? Try weeks.

Hours. All AIP does is charge the battery remember – the more you use the battery the quicker you drain the AIP tanks. Bottom line you get to stay discrete but you dont cover much territory.

If if if… funny that for a guy who bashes any strategy that seems to rely on even a hint of “luck,” your own is totally dependent on it.

…and still more obfuscation. I ‘bash’ defensive plans that rely on luck. You cannot hinge your national defence on weapons that may or may not be effective!. The difference is that attack strategy’s can, and do, balance varying degrees of risk against varying degrees of reward. Warfighting 101.

Even if all of that miraculously works out, that STILL doesn’t answer how the SSKs are as valuable to the attacker as to the defender.

Its been explained to you in very simple terms. If you have a comprehension problem I’d suggest a spell in remedial education.

The SSKs are not going to go down without a fight and the ASBMs are still going to hit something. In addition to that the attacker has been forced to commit and perhaps lost a significant number of ASW assets/decoys/SSNs.

SSK’s against SSN’s the gradiant generally favours the SSN….especially if the SSK screen has to come out of the shallows to undertake sea denial. The attacker is forced to commit resources, of course, but those resources are committed in support of the strategic aim which is the general idea anyway.

No one in their right mind uses that as an overall definition of “Strategic Weapons” because, as you yourself agree, any weapon can be used to do that. Therefore by your definition any and every weapon can be defined as a strategic weapon!.

Its a standard definition. I said any weapon can be strategic in context not just that any weapon can be strategic!. Convenient misinterpretation on your part?. IF the weapons system is powerful enough to alter the strategic planning of an opponent then, by definition, it is a strategic weapon. If it is not powerful enough then it is not.

Did you see the Germans and the British redefine their fighters as “strategic fighters” when they forced the other side to switch to night bombing? Of course not! And even if they had, that still wouldn’t have removed their capacity to be used tactically!

You really dont understand this do you?. The ‘fighters’ you talk about were the effectors in a strategic system which was the British integrated air defence system. The fighters were tactical but the system they were part of was strategic. It is a failed comparison with the ASBM because the fighters could be used independently outside of the IADS in tactical roles. The ASBM has no role outside of its system. It is designed for a task – access denial – not just potting ‘small frigates’ 100km downrange!.

Your assertion that a weapon becomes valueless if it fails to alter an opponent’s strategy is preposterous!

No. To develop a weapons system like the ASBM and use it to try and take potshots at carriers steaming around Taiwan is preposterous. That is why the system would not be used for that. The Chinese understand that just as the Americans do. This is why it is talked about as an anti-access weapon.

YOU made up the context of theater denial. I think I’ve repeated this a dozen times now: an ASBM does not become worthless just because a carrier has entered the theater. Claiming otherwise is total nonsense.

You have repeated it a dozen times and been wrong a dozen times. Go and learn something about the nature of warfighting. Understand what anti-access systems are and what their value is. Then you might just expand your mind to the point where you understand why this is not just another antiship missile….IF it is anything more than a Chinese fantasy that the USN have latched onto for a 21st century Missile Gap scare story!.

How does a CG or DDG deal with wakehoming torp fired at up to 40-50km range? AFAIK only AB has sufficient detection capability and no ship has countermeasures against wakehomers.

IF the SSK has the sensor capability to take a shot without direct path then the answer to the question of dealing with a 40km inbound wakehomer is to outrun it!. Wakehomers follow a zig-zag or snake pattern in order to fix the wake boundaries. A 30knt ship with a 40km head start has a good chance in a flat out race with a fish that has to bounce around an indirect tailchase course!.

USN carriers are going to be lobbing nuclear weapons into mainland China in a Taiwan scenario?! Obviously that’s extremely unlikely, and hence any comparisons to the USSR’s situation are totally invalid.

Mindless pedantry. Your comment was, I believe, something to do with the necessity for the Soviets to strike anywhere globally etc. I have shown that what the Russians needed to do was to deny theatre entry to US CVBG’s. What the actual warloads deployed by the carriers would be is irrelevent.

Solely at Midway? Do you know any history whatsoever? Why don’t you try listing the sunk carriers tracked by the supposedly critical aircraft you listed. Then, compare that to the list of aircraft detected and tracked by subs and fighters. Good luck with that. Actually, considering submarines alone accounted for about 40% of fleet carriers detected and sunk, you’re going to need a miracle.

Further mindless pedantry. You are trying to make a distinction where none exists that carries any relevence forward. The point here is that in the range of ASV search operations in WW2 predominantly the search assets were long range patrol types. Luftwaffe anti-convoy, RAF surface raider hunts etc are no less applicable because they didn’t culminate in the detection of an aircraft carrier. The principles of broad area detection, contact evaluation and strike direction were identical.

You’ve been trying to convince everyone that BAMS and “squadrons of dedicated MPA” are critical to tracking a carrier, but now you’ve just admitted that even a fighter on patrol can do that… what happened?

Well you got me there. I hadn’t considered that anyone would propose the use of manned fighters, flying 1000km deep segments, on SURCAP covering the whole Chinese coastline 24/7 in the 21st century. I have to admit that would work just as well as BAMS would. It would be a fascinating exercise to calculate the number of fighters needed to undertake such a campaign – ballpark I’d guess at several hundred in relays – supported by continuous tanker sorties – how many tankers do PLAAF possess these days?.

Or….back in the real world. You field a BAMS equivalent that does the job without tying up your whole damned fighter and tanker forces on monotonous overwater patrols!.

What kind of argument is that? One would assume that if you’ve developed an ASBM, you’ve actually built a few of them and that they can, indeed, be fired.

Its a simple question of logistics. How many ASBM’s do you have covering one sector?. These missiles aren’t going to be cheap and the PRC hasn’t historically built high numbers of the more advanced missiles. The baseline DF-21 weapons system is, according to DoD, about 60 launchers with, perhaps, 1.5 missiles per launcher. Look at the situation – say the ASBM build is similar at 60 missiles total – given ‘good’ operational availability rates of 80% you have a readiness force of 48 missiles. Spread over 4 firing points around the coast for coverage thats 12 missiles per sector. Is that kind of figure one where you believe you have missiles to waste on unidentified targets?.

In its search mode, the Moskit seeker has a detection range of 75 km for a large destroyer or cruiser and over 100 km for an aircraft carrier…The radar is activated and all search and ID functions are performed in a short time frame at the end of the “hi” mode. Total flight time of the missile is about ~1-2 minutes max. This is what a small seeker on an ASM developed 15-20 years ago can do. But hey, Jonesy “knows the score!”

So not a fighter radar anymore then?. Glad we’ve at least got you off that idiocy. The Moskit seeker uses range profiling for its target identification. Originally it fed this data back through the LIGHT BULB datalink for final target selection which was a huge achilles heel of the system – it was pretty much a LOBL weapon otherwise you could easily waste missiles if the target you expected to see wasn’t detected in sensor FoV on seeker switch-on. I would assume thats probably been resolved now, but, the range profiling factor remains. How do you use range profiling with a radar seeker on a weapon with the ASBM RV attack profile?.

You said that the defender’s SSKs are just as valuable to the attacker. THAT is clearly nonsense. Unless you convince them to defect, no amount of strategy and tactics can do that.

Of course it can. Just like a defensive minefield can be used by an attacking force, on land, to convince defending ground troops of an attack from a false threat axis. Just like Saddam Husseins coastal defences were used, in Desert Storm, to convince the Iraqi’s that an amphib attack was under way – you show the enemy what he is expecting to see. In this case the SSK screen would be sited looking for something…if you attack that line and, at the same time, provide indications of precisely what that line is there to look for you can trigger a predictable response. The most basic tenent of warfighting is to get the other guy to react to you and to do so in the fashion you can most readily predict and counter.

Your own post where you claimed it would trigger a response:

No, I said this: A heavy and concerted attack by SSN’s on an identified barrier line could be made to look like an attempt to penetrate a specific sector was underway – coupled to decoy ops nearby triggering a response. See above.

Why develop SSBNs when you’ve already got silos with ICBMs? Why build tanks when you’ve already got men with guns and cannons?

Meaningless drivel. The weapon is strategic in nature. It is an anti-access weapon….understand what this means.

The power of any weapon is both in its ability to threaten and in its ability to destroy. No weapon becomes worthless just because the other guy decided that it’s not a threat. You need to understand that.

More drivel. If a weapon is not perceived as a threat by an attacker then it serves no deterrent effect.

There’s an ASM that can destroy a target 1500+ km away in about 10 minutes from launch? Can you let us know which ASM can do this?

So you do know that the value of the weapon is that it can engage targets at strategic range within a practical launch-to-strike cycle time – why do you say this is a tactical weapon then?. Its value is in the very fact that it can achieve a strategic aim, access denial, which normal ASM’s cannot?.

No one here claimed that China is capable of deploying the level of assets the US is. Guess why? Because it really doesn’t have anything to do with this discussion. Saying that China can’t threaten a carrier because it doesn’t have “innumerable other assets like that other guy” is disingenuous.

Absolutely not. You need surviveable assets to maintain presence. To cover the Chinese coastline to the depth required to prevent theatre entry you need a lot of assets. Until then you are trusting to luck that the carrier will wander into the sensor footprint of something that will be able to ID target, hold contact and relay back a posit for the ASBM shot.

Why would they need a dozen MPA squadrons? Why would Chinese UAV’s be flying to the Persian Gulf? The Chinese have no intention of targeting carriers anywhere besides their own back yard. They are not the USSR.

They have the same problem as the USSR though. I think part of your problem here is that you aren’t grasping the point of an ASBM. The whole value of it hinges on it denying naval task groups theatre-entry. That means engaging at ranges beyond that of the carrier groups weapons. Not much point waving the banner about how your ASBM has sunk a carrier when you have wrecked naval bases and disabled C4I from USN missile fire that is allowing follow-on forces cheap access!.

Those assets are beneficial, but *NOT* critical, no matter how much you keep pretending that they are. UAVs, satellites, etc did not exist in WW2 but carriers were tracked and sunk regardless.

Do you even know how carriers and capital ships were hunted and tracked in WW2?. Answer: Primarily with the dozens of MPA squadrons you said earlier were *not* necessary!.

Rather hypocritical that you would say that, seeing as how you were the one calling this discussion “utterly irrelevant” whilst providing no supporting evidence whatsoever.

There is plenty of evidence just not the convenient little soundbytes and links that you seem to class as ‘evidence’. It needs some comprehension and a little experience of the problems involved in finding ships at sea. Then it needs a sober look at the assets arrayed to achieve that function in support of the notional ASBM weapons system. The two, in the Chinese model as it stands, do not correlate.

The problem with your premise is that you appear to assume that OTH-B is guiding the ASBM all the way to impact. This is simply not true and not required. OTH-B only needs to provide the ASBM with initial targeting information to get it to a point where the missile’s own sensor(s) stands a good chance of detecting the carrier.

…and you are not understanding that it cannot do even that. You cannot go firing ASBM’s on the guess that the unidentified contact you have on the OTH scope is an aircraft carrier!. Even if you care nothing about the potential for non-combattant casualties surely you must recognise that as the most ridiculous wastage and something that a smart opponent would exploit.

400km2 sounds huge until you realize that it is only an area 20 km x 20 km. Point any modern fighter radar at that… suddenly finding a carrier in the area is not difficult, in fact, it’s trivial.

You arent pointing a fighter radar at it though!!!. You are pointing a seeker head on the nose of an RV with limited processing power and an extremely small scanning time-interval. That time limitation means that your seeker scan field has to be small and your targetting has to be done, principally, before launch.

A carrier will be more easily identifiable due to the presence of aircraft, narrowing down the list of possible targets. This greatly increases the probability that an ASBM will be fired into an area with a carrier, as opposed to one without.

Remember that skywave radar is range dependent in resolution. Optimal figures are within about 300-400km from the emitter. Beyond that and cell size increases – all you have is a surface return and a nearby air contact with a velocity readout. That is not hard to replicate for a decoy….especially when you consider that at pre-theatre entry ranges the carrier would not necessarily be launching all that many aircraft. then we come to the subtle point that USN carriers have, in fact, operated successfully in the face of Soviet OTH radar for a considerable time period.

Furthermore, other platforms, such as SSKs (which the Chinese have no small number of) can be vectored at unidentified OTH-B contacts to confirm, or at least deny the presence of a carrier.

Traditional search assets, as I alluded to earlier, SSK barrier lines would be a natural option for PLAN sea denial ops. Problem is that they can also be used in deceptive ops and can work for the attacker as much as the defender. A heavy and concerted attack by SSN’s on an identified barrier line could be made to look like an attempt to penetrate a specific sector was underway – coupled to decoy ops nearby triggering a response from OTH and a picture can be presented that is wildy inaccurate. What you need to counter this is lots of high-resolution capable assets to follow up initial detects….see earlier point!.

Moments ago you were talking about Legenda as required. Now it’s BAMS. What will it be in your next post? What does “reliable” even mean? 24/7 1-meter-resolution realtime tracking anywhere around the world? Obviously, the Chinese do not need anything like that in order to threaten a carrier around Taiwan.

Who is talking about Taiwan?. If the USN is anywhere near Taiwan the ASBM has already failed in its entire raison d’etre. If you are serious about exploiting ASBM’s to keep the USN out of weapons range of the Chinese coast you NEED 24/7/365 10m-resolution out 1000km offshore backed with very-long-range passive sonar. THAT is the real price of your miraculous ASBM!.

FYI: You are not doing yourself any favors by making up one-sided scenarios that are not even applicable to the topic.

Likewise you are not helping the debate by confusing an inherently strategic weapon, an ASBM, with a tactical one. When you understand what an ASBM actually means, in warfighting terms, come back and discuss.

Assuming that the defender will just sit still and rely on luck is simply stupid. Woe to the admiral expecting to forever avoid “steaming blithely” over SSKs just because he was on a threat-reduction exercise.

When you have stopped rolling your eyes go and find out what a threat reduction exercise is!.

From the Chinese perspective, the group does not have to be destroyed or even engaged before it’s in range of its weapons. The sooner, the better, of course. But the Chinese certainly have enough resources to play a game of attrition.

All focused in one spot these boundless Chinese resources are they?. No idea about the warfighting tenents of local superiority and manoevre warfare either???.

You naturally assume, when a familiar ‘faces’ presence on a forum drifts off, that they have gone on to another, new, forum or they’ve had a lifestyle change such that they dont get net time anymore. A few names spring to mind from the ‘old days’ that fit that category of people who you would wish to know were happy and doing well in their lives somewhere.

Harry was such a person and this news is miserable to read. A spirited opponent and a strong ally by equal measure. One of relatively few people I have encountered on the net who was able to cope with his natural bias and apply a sense of objectivity and perspective. The world could use more like him.

On a personal note – wherever you are Harry – I changed my opinion on the E-2….you were right all along!. Rest easy.