Limited areas of conflict?. You mean like the Sea of Okhotsk or the South China Sea or the Barents Sea you mean?. Yep well that does narrow things down a bit I suppose…it does sort of cede everywhere else to the USN for strategic movement though. Nice of you to acknowledge that…finally!.

Strategic movement that would make them relatively useless for a conflict that pertains to this planet Jonesy. Roaming around firing Tomahawks doesn’t win wars. Not against anyone of significance at least.

Any attempt to choke off the Russian economy long term over some small military spark, or the Chinese one for that matter, will end in nuclear fire. So that’s out of the question.

The Russians might even return the favor and litter everything US economy-related with their rather capable new Kh-555 and Kh-101 cruise missiles.

Has the first Liana actually been launched yet?. Also ELINT does have the odd little drawback doesnt it….seeings that the target must cooperate and emit on something recognisable that is powerful enough to be detected.

They were supposed to launch within the last week! It seems that the one of the satellites has been sent back to the factory as they discovered a defect somewhere in the onboard computer if I recall correctly!

I would bet they could even use their Kobalt-M satellies to take digital snaps of areas in question. Nothing like a nice fat Nimitz! 🙂

China of course, I have no idea about – they don’t possess any advanced space-radiological recon equipment to my knowledge. But who knows?

You would accept though that fixed sites ashore are more easily targetted than mobile ones offshore?. I dont fantasize about any of this – having a slightly different perspective on guided missiles than most who haven’t had to try and get them working.

Of course, but let’s face something else. It’s also much easier to REINFORCE the prime TLAM targets once you feel that sh1t can hit the fan right? Defenders always have the advantage. Always. You should know this. Whether it’s pure ground combat or naval bastion defense.

Mobile short-range SAM systems like the TOR can be very very very effective at this sort of thing.

Exposed to what though. If we accept that the USN is putting down sufficient firepower ashore to make theatre entry possible it stands to reason that the first targets engaged are those intended to counter-detect. The whole point of theatre-entry is to be able to get your force into a position where it can make an ingress to a desired operational area inshore. If the threat is not reduced sufficiently to go inshore then the fleet doesnt!. That is the whole point of the strategic mobility that carriers provide!!!.

Sufficient firepower would be what, only Tomahawks? Against China and Russia, while they are on high alert, 1 or 2 carrier groups may not even have enough to saturate reinforced defenses. Against the Russians any 1 pronged assault is a great way to commit suicide, as strategic bombers can be rushed from other parts of the country on rather short notice!

….just as it can give away the position of a SAM trap set for the responder aircraft who come out to collect it.

Well well well, now then we just have to see who is smarter at that game huh?

I know they got a big shock when certain RN vessels, that will remain nameless, nipped off with some of their sonobuoys after they conducted an ASW exercise ‘up north’. I know that the USN had all sorts of fun with the Far East mob out of Vladivostok….Cdr Pico has a marvelllous story online somewhere of the Soviets getting the shock of their days seeing a Midway tagged E-2 (his) flying with an F-14 escort. I’ll let you work out why that was instructive of the Soviets level of marpat ability in that theatre of operations. I know how poor the Soviets were at this. You care to try and prove that they were on top of their game and were tracking us everywhere we went?.

Oh wow, stories about stories? Come on now, some blog of a USN commander is hardly meaningful about Soviet naval capability! Don’t waste my time please.

At this rate, you can take everything SS-26 posted against the USN as gospel truth too. 😀

Who has sufficient recon and intelligence assets?. Russia? No – they are in the process of trying to build up their own version of BAMS – or were until the price of oil yanked the rug out. China?. No – they have less ocean recon than the Russians. India, Holland, Myanmar perhaps???.

Echo we’ve been through this before and we both know you haven’t a clue about what ocean reconnaissance actually is and fall back on talking about coastal surveillance systems like AWACS. Then, when you are asked what happens if the carrier group initiates strikes beyond the ranges of those coastal systems, you start talking about SAMs destroying every TLAM that the USN could possibly launch…as if saturation doesnt enter in to the picture. Then you just tell us all it would never happen anyway and that we would be fools to doubt the mighty Russian armed forces.

Can we just skip forward and pretend that we have already done all that this time eh?.

Ahahaha.. Here comes the Jonesyrussophobia at its best again. Typical for a Brit, don’t worry.Yes, coastal surveillance is exactly how Russia or China are going to find those carriers, due to limited areas of conflict.

Russia could also use satellites – Liana/Lotos-S ELINT birds.

I start talking of SAMs stopping MOST, not all TLAMs. Don’t pretend like you don’t fantasize of the US fleet stopping every missile that gets shot at it either. :rolleyes:

The moment a carrier takes any MEANINGFUL action against Russia or China, it WILL be exposed. Very very quickly. An airbase lost for a whole fleet potentially lost is not a great proposition for the US Navy! 😎

Or wait, are F-18s invisible? And do they disappear off the screens of radar once they are done with their mission?

Hell, an E-2 on patrol can give away the position of the carrier.

Why do you think its clandestine?. The Soviets knew on many occaisions that US CVBG’s were operating off Vladivostok and off the North Cape. They didnt find them. Knowing that a naval group is around somewhere and engaging it are two completely different things. USN wrote the book on deceptive manoeuver and are evolving and refining it all the time….new technology is helping this.

Seriously the only system I’ve seen that offers the potential to stop a US CVSG from theatre-entry is the US BAMS system and I’m not wholly convinced it could do the job every time either. To put it into some kind of context for you just the UAV-only portion of BAMS is going to cost over $1bn. Who else is spending that on ocean surveillance right now?.

You know nothing of what the Soviets did or did NOT know. Don’t pretend to be some all knowing messiah of naval warfare here. It’s a very interesting fantasy of yours, when you really think you know what the USSR was tracking, or not tracking, over the period of the Cold War. 😀

Whatever you think you know about the US “deceptive” maneuvers, the Russian Navy, along with China, know 10x more. Don’t you worry about that.

50 divisions moving in and out of Georgia inside of 96 hours is proof of prior planning enough. Moving a division, let alone 50, takes coordination at the strategic level.

Or maybe the Russians are just that good at land warfare? Oh geez, no way right?! :rolleyes:

Well, if we’re talking PAC-3 sites, then each launcher has 16 missiles. Secondly, the ARM will be travelling much slower than a TBM, which the PAC-3 has the capability of engaging. Thirdly, which scenario are we discussing again, where a squadron of Fencers is going to get within 200km of a location being defended by Patriot batteries? That’s why I brought up the fact earlier, that the bigger threat to the Fencers would be the USAF/USN, and the Patriots would mop up anything that got through.

It’s not the ARM’s RCS that’s of biggest concern here, but the Fencer’s.

Avoid complicating the matter with other armed forces.

Whatever the Patriot might be rated to engage, (cough cough how did it perform before?) – even however improved it is, it’s hit probability is unlikely to pass 90%. That leaves plenty of room for the radars to be damaged.

Exactly! The Patriot battery has a longer reaction time to respond, than had the missile been fired closer, and from low altitude(so that the launching aircraft might have the element of surprise).

This is why an entire squadron of Fencers will empty its payload into a Patriot battery. 4 – 8+ missiles to be exact.

The Patriot will have 2 minutes exactly to react from launch position.

Now you need to assume the Patriot will be able to successfully lock onto the missile as its RCS isn’t exactly the size of a bomber. . .

A 25% improvement would be 150km vs. 120km, and this is based upon a high launch speed. To get 200km(and a lower launch speed) would be a LOT more than a 25% improvement.

You are talking about the Kh-58.

25% improvement over Kh-55E for the Kh-58U.

To put this simpler: Kh-58U = Kh-58UshKE > Kh-58E > Kh-58 (Original)

56.25% improvement over the baseline Kh-58 for the Kh-58U.

This gives us approx 187.5KM range for Kh-58U from that launch altitude, which is well out of the danger zone of the Patriot itself.

24 cruise missiles is a nice load.

650mm tubes are also a good thing.

Surprises me that there aren’t any nice pics at all of the Yasen right now 🙁

Now I get it. You’re on the “every nation is stupid enough to buy downgraded systems” bandwagon. Russia really pulled one over on everyone, didn’t they? They even got them to accept SAM systems with identical engagement envelopes, so that they could sell them downgraded ARMs!

The Kh-58 is not going to have a large enough performance increase, IF ANY, over the Kh-58E to make a 200km shot at medium altitude and low speed possible. That has nothing to do with Cold-war biases regarding Russian technology and everything to do with mass, inertia, kinetic energy, specific impulse, and other aspects of physics.

Besides, I’m suprised nobody has mentioned that this is a failed argument in the first place. The Kh-58 series was originally conceived to blast through the HAWK air defense line in West Germany. The missile optimized for attacking Patriot, and therefore the more likely weapon to be employed, is the Kh-31P.

SOC, the Kh-58U is a multiband seeker from 1991. It can engage multiple targets. The Kh-31P in its original version it’s got half the range of the Kh-58U. Hardly a safe weapon of choice against the Patriot.

The Kh-58U could pretty much engage anything, AEGIS ships included.

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How could you possibly say there will be no increase? If there is 25% better performance. . .

That’s nonsense SOC!