The limitations of UAVs today, and the problems of airspace co-ordination and bandwidth, and of realtime monitoring and control, are such that even those now responsible for operating frontline Predators and GHawks will acknowledge that the promise of fully remote operation remains largely unfulfilled, and that for most tasks (especially recce and weapons employment) their platforms need in-area, offboard cueing.

Last time I was in the Middle East the Global Hawk operated out of the same location I was at. The jets were basically controlled through takeoff and landing by a pilot who was deployed out there with the jet, but the mission legs were flown by controllers back at Beale AFB. I got to talking to some of the Global Hawkers out there and they basically told me that the guys were sent out there to fly the takeoffs and landings for training purposes, but that the whole sortie could have been controlled from Beale had they wanted to do so.

MiG-25 Foxbat, which was designed to intercept the B-70 Valkyrie escorted by F-108 Rapier.

The F-108 was actually the predecessor to the F-12B, designed to fulfill the Advanced Manned Interceptor (AMI) requirement. It was not intended to escort the B-70, that was a misconception that came about due to both aircraft being North American Aviation products.

And the MiG-25 was the USSR’s answer to the OXCART, not the Valkyrie. The Valkyrie was a dead airplane militarily before it even flew.

The narrowest part of a USN CVN is the bow, and it is around 26 meters wide at the narrowest part. Ergo, for an ASBM to have a high probability of getting a hit, it needs to have a CEP of no more than 13 meters. Just thought I’d throw that out there. Anyone heard any figures for the DF-21 or DF-15’s CEP?

Only small correction, SOC. the ELS does not say *threat system at these coordinates based on radar interrogation, would you like to blow it up with a bomb or missile, sir?* but *some dusting-eating camel rider father’s Russian crap located, ye wanna drop a poop on the sonnawab!tch, cowboy? yeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaa!!!!!!*. You know the nature of military hardware 😉

Why would a Luftwaffe or AMI ELS in an ECR Tornado be calling the pilot a cowboy…went a bit far with that one this time :diablo:

So an aicraft fitted with ELS would not need a RWR?

Also, does the ECR Tornado fly with ECM pods as a matter of course?

An ELS doesn’t have to preclude an RWR as both have their uses. And yes, the ECRs use ECM pods. The ELS, as far as I know, is a locator, not a jammer.

In very simplified terms, the difference is this:

-An RWR says “threat radar over there”, some of them can tell you what type of system it is, such as an SA-6 or SA-8.

-An ELS says “threat system at these coordinates based on radar interrogation, would you like to blow it up with a bomb or missile, sir?”

Again, very simplified. RWR is for evasion/survival, ELS is for attack.

Ok. This is getting nowhere. China may have an AShBM. It may or may not be the DF-15 variant we’ve seen.

For what reasons would you put fixed fins on an already operational missile?

Who says they’re fixed? There is a precedent-the Pershing II. It added fins to a new RV giving it a MARV to improve terminal accuracy over the Pershing I. That’d be a good idea for a AShBM as well, but the presence of fins doesn’t prove that a weapon is an AShBM.

But, let’s discontinue this speculation for now, because unless the PLA comes out and tells us, we won’t know for sure, right?

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the DF-15 has an AShBM variant. If that is true, and given China’s new ASAT capability, I’d think the prospects of a conflict over Formosa in the near term have increased exponentially.

An AShBM is designed to penetrate defenses and kill a carrier, I think we can agree that’d be the point of such a system. Given that, and the fact that an AShBM may be rendered moot in about a decade when the ABM variant of the AEGIS system is operationally fielded, it is possible that China sees this new capability as a means to a victory, taking the primary threat of US Naval power out of the equation by either deterrence or destruction. So, China has a limited window where they could theoretically actually go into Formosa and win, possibly without even having to take on the USA.

Here are the future critical indicators to a conflict as I see them.

1. A Democratic victory in 2008 would put someone in the White House who is less likely to send a CVBG into an area where over 6,000 people may be killed before they can even intervene in the conflict. Such a person would be more likely to pursue a political solution, especially after the divisiveness of Iraq and the Democratic Party’s apparently anti-war stance for the moment.

2. A well publicized test firing into the Pacific of an AShBM system would indicate that China wants the US to know about the system’s capabilities, just like the publicized ASAT test. That could potentially indicate that China is warning the US of the potential consequences of military involvement.

So, were those two things to happen, it is possible that they could be precursors to Chinese military action. Granted, this is all just speculation and analysis, but you have to admit that if the DF-15 variant works as some people think it does, it presents China with a unique window of opportunity, one that could be closed in a decade or less.

Thoughts?

They haven’t found any sensor that can identify Decoy from the real thing from hundreds of kilometer in the space!

Go back to your PBS source and look at what they say for March 15, 2002. Your GAO report is talking about pre-2000 test firings.