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Few modern Iranian missiles were intercepted in the last attack. Almost none. And these aren't as flat flying or as evasive as Iskander. Jamming satellites might work perhaps but it has inertial guidance so who knows how well..
That's your supposition, yank. Ask yourself what is a carrier group going to do when 128 maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicles appear over it.
Ask yourself how the carrier group is going to fare when it has what, 200 anti missiles. Even with perfect interception rates that's only 100 intercepted inbound missiles. Chinese LOVE large number production and they dug 1000kms of tunnels in mountains north of beijing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Great_Wall_of_China
They can shoot a lot of missiles out from China.
The earlier version solved this elegantly, the missiles just delivered guided bombs with a speed of
1000 m/s high up, maybe terminal 800 m/s. You can have seekers then no problem. It'd still probably work because100 of these would be very tough to intercept and even 5-10 hits would seriously degrade operations from a carrier. Ships are hard to sink but the internal operations aren't very redundant for reasons of space.I'm not sure how the later version solve this, the HGV ones.
I mean - the DF-series has limited range, and carriers give a fleet a huge advantage over hostile fleets even if they are forced to stay out of it. Having a floating airfield is pretty neat, and forcing them away from shore does not make them obsolete, it makes them less
Well this sort of assumes some things - I think you're smart enough to know about the kill chain problems with anti-ship ballistic missiles. The US has the same (perhaps better) apparatus to kill Chinese missile launchers that China does to kill carriers, does that make ASBMs obsolete? (The answer is no). I don't think this makes ASBMs useless or carriers invulnerable, it just means that they aren't some sort of magic invincible weapon.
Are you asking realistically, or at full capacity? At full capacity a single Burke can carry nearly 400 surface-to-air missiles if it is simply going for quantity by quad-packing ESSMs. Most likely it will be carrying a mix of anti-air and possibly anti-surface stand-off, and any carrier will likely be escorted by a Tico and two Burkes, maybe more. That's about 314 cells. So even if they don't have full cells because US industrial capacity sucks and some other cells are full of Tomahawks and ASROCs, I think you can guess something like 300 anti-air missiles conservatively (50 x cells dedicated to ESSM, 100 x dedicated to Standard, 100x Tomahawk, 50x empty or ASROC) before getting to SeaRAM/CIWS, and of course the carrier itself can carry hundreds of AMRAAMs and the new AIM-174 which can likely intercept anti-ship missiles.
Now, I don't rate the ESSM as much against ballistic missiles (although they might be useful in terminal defense, I suppose, apparently they can pull 30gs - but I would not count on them) - you're really looking to the Standards to provide you with air defense. Of course, if the Navy really intends to get dirty and play with ballistic missiles, they would know this and so, at the cost of a great deal of time, you might see them send two CBGs with something like two Ticos and a dozen Burkes (the Navy has more than 70). Both the SM-3 (of which the US has probably a couple hundred) and the SM-6 (of which the US probably has four-figures) have ABM capability in theory, so you could in theory put let's say 600 ABM-capable missiles on such a fleet easily.
And, since the carrier can generate strike packages outside of the known range of the DF-21 (albeit with great difficulty due to Dick Cheney canning the A-12 and advanced F-14 variants) the BIG question is if 500 Standards can intercept the DF-26s in the Chinese arsenal, assuming we want to split the difference with the carrier group and let it operate at extreme range rather than risk the more numerous DF-21. Assuming also that the Chinese haven't burned all of their DF-26s on Guam (which frankly is probably a better idea than trying to shoot at a carrier if China can catch the planes there on the ground) they have, what, 200 missiles to shoot at the carrier group realistically (launcher was revealed in 2015, I found a 2021 .mil source that said 100 missiles or so, so let's assume they've doubled that and ignore the question of how many of those are earmarked for nuclear warheads by assuming zero.)
Now in a "shoot shoot look shoot" doctrine the US can "shoot shoot look shoot" all 200 missiles.
I think intercepting ballistic missiles is hard and would personally prefer never to be in a situation where I was trusting my ABMs to intercept ballistic missiles. Even if you make optimistic assumptions (50% inception rate, for instance) you can still run into bad situations where leakers get through just due to bad "rolls" and contra your suggestion that 5-10 hits would seriously degrade operations from a carrier I am going to courageously suggest that even a single ballistic missile warhead will absolutely ruin a carrier's day unless it is very lucky.
Fortunately, the US Navy doesn't just have to rely on interceptors - the missiles will be using radar, most likely, for terminal targeting. [ETA: it looks like they are also believed to have optical sensors, which have both advantages and disadvantages over radar. I'd say this makes me slightly more bullish on the DF-series if true, but it's not as if optical systems are invincible either.] And radar sucks, modern ships could employ barrage or seduction jamming as well as decoys and chaff. My intuition is that this is especially true if they are actually going to descend on a glide profile rather than a straight-down profile, there are a lot of soft-kill options.
Now, you can sort of "adjust the sliders" to make the assumptions you want here - if you assume US softkill systems work reliably, then you barely need to worry. If you assume Chinese long-range sensors are neutralized early in the conflict, you barely need to worry. If you assume that the Standards will work poorly, or that the Chinese have say 300 or 500 DF-26s they are willing to launch at ships (neither of which seem implausible to me), then it starts to look much worse for the carriers.
All that being said: I would not want to be on a CBG that was going into DF-26 range. There are too many things that can go wrong, and ships don't have a lot of room for error. (This is...worse for China than for the United States in a Taiwan scenario). It's possible the US has Secret Sauce Technology that makes them much more confident in their carrier defense; the same is plausible for Chinese missiles. My main point in writing this up is simply to say - the situation is much more complex than simply "I have a missile with a 3000 mile range and an anti-ship guidance system, checkmate."
(As an aside, I found out while researching this long reply that the Chinese are latecomers to the ASBM game: the Soviets fired the first anti-ship ballistic missile in 1973.)
Also that China does have satellite dazzlers ready. In short US wouldn't be likely to acquire these launchers, wouldn't have much to hit them with - cruise missiles aren't great at following moving targets and also planes wouldn't be able to get near.
I am familiar with the SCUD hunt. I also know what SENTIENT is. Are you familiar with Soviet attempts to find carrier battle groups?
To establish air supremacy or superiority, yes. Obviously it did not take the Ukrainians weeks to penetrate the Russian air-defense grid once they got the right capabilities, nor would it take the US weeks to penetrate it if they wanted to.
I do not necessarily think stealth aircraft are the best assets the US has against mobile ballistic missile launchers. Nevertheless we've learned that modern air defense systems do not render even non-stealthy aircraft incapable.
Now frankly I think it would likely be stupid to waste munitions on something the size of a ballistic missile launcher that might move at any moment. (And my understanding is that US doctrine was actually to avoid striking Chinese launchers anyway.) But my point is that the US having the theoretical capability does not make the missile useless! I agree with you that there are countermeasures against targeting mobile ballistic missile launchers! It's hard to do!
And the US has ways of operating despite dazzlers - stealth satellites, [likely] high-altitude hypersonic recon/(strike?) aircraft, maneuvering spacecraft, non-optical recon satellites, some dude with a quadcopter, SIGINT, etc.
Moving the launchers around constantly is unlikely (although moving them consistently is). (And, for the record, at least some modern cruise missiles are capable of hitting moving targets, although I agree with you that the moving complicates matters.) But as I said above, I think it would be a dumb use of munitions. Which, again, goes to my point: having the theoretical ability to destroy something does not mean that such a course is easy, or even a good idea.
Really, everything you've said about hunting missile launchers is also true of hunting carriers, although carriers are much larger and more valuable targets, making them much more reasonable to target than a single ballistic missile launcher.
I'm familiar China has a satellite constellation for the same and rocket propelled hypersonic drones. And also recently tested a pulse detonation engine for really high speeds.
I don't think is a problem for them. You can't intercept mach 5 drones 35 km up that evade at 15 G.. you simply don't have the dV for it.
China is a panopticon state with a nationalist population.
They only need to deter the carrier groups long enough to secure Taiwan.
Yeah, the Russians also had a satellite constellation. By your telling carriers have been obsolete for 50 years. (Not necessarily implausible but...I doubt it).
I don't think this is true at all, THAAD and the SM-3 are both much faster than Mach 5 and should have the dV. I do think their fast drone is one of the better backup solutions for sea control, but the Russians had plenty of MPA aircraft too, and they had trouble finding US carriers even in peacetime when their patrol aircraft weren't at risk of getting shot down.
But if it is true that hypersonic vehicles can't be intercepted, that's...not necessarily good for China.
I am not really sure that carrier groups are needed to defend Taiwan at all.
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