1) Advanced targeting/locking/guiding system will be required. You will need a perfectly well working system and/or perfect satellite reconnaissance in place to achieve a valid lock-on at aircraft carrier group before your warhead will start re-entry. This is a bit complicated to achieve and the ability of target to actually move is not making it easier. Ballistic Missiles are good at shooting to standing targets, not the moving ones.

2) Re-entry speeds over Mach 10 means that your warhead is closing in to its target at speeds excesing 12.000 km/h (sorry for metric system units, I’m from Europe, Czech Republic, not that good in miles and that stuff…). If your guidance system was working as expected so far, you achieved a valid lock-on, your warhead corrected its trajectory slightly because the target is moving and your warhead is now diving to the estimated aircraft carrier position and travelling 3-4 km every second. Because re-entry usually starts at height of 100-150 km over ground, your warhead has some 30 to 40 seconds to the target. Your terminal guidance software has to be state-of-the-art as with every passing second, the imaginary cone in front of the warhead, where it can score hit is getting tighter and tighter (due to inertia mechanics).

3) Even if you correct trajectory well before re-entry, you have to be able to do some terminal phase corrections, because you cannot expect target to be a sheep being taken to the slaughter. This is going to be very tricky and it assumes you did some extensive research on steering vehicles at very high hyper-sonic speeds. We all know, from latest US financed research on high hyper-sonic unmanned vehicles, how complicated is to achieve this. To put it to normal speech, things that are fragile have tendencies to break up in the midair if you are trying to change its course. At speeds over Mach 10, warhead is definitely a fragile stuff. Also you would need some system to steer it, either by means of auxiliary rocket maneuvering system or some sort of flipped steering pads.

Now, considering all of this, it is unwise to think that the rocket would hit aircraft carrier out of surprise. There would be a warning at launch, you have NORAD with its extensive launch warning satellite system exactly for that purpose. NORAD will calculate in real-time possible impact areas based on trajectory, speed etc and they will update this impact area every second until they will find out where it aims. At the moment they will find out you are aiming at blank see, do not expect that somebody will not say, hey, wait a moment guys, don’t we have a carrier over there in target zone? That will give the aircraft carrier group at least 2-3 minutes to maneuver, group will spread and every ship can move for 2 to 3 kilometers before impact.

As I said, killing a ship this way is possible, though unlikely. Also, you have some fancy projects going on, US Navy was planning to build some 5-6 modern nuclear driven anti-missiles cruisers, larger then Ticonderoga class and equipped with laser guns and large rail guns as soon as these are available. I do not know if this idea was scrapped due to lack of funds, but exactly this system would provide excellent protection against BM strike. So the situation is not that black and white as it seems to be.

Now, back to your downsizing ideas. If USA wants to keep it’s superpower status, then it needs to be able to actually project power. And power was always projected by Navies, it scaled up during centuries, from simple frigates and heavy frigates to first class ships-of-the-line and battleships and to aircraft carriers. Basically battleships and aircraft carriers are for diplomacy, what was gold for legal tender when it was cover by it. You can have some very nice ideas that you want some other not very friendly countries to adopt, but they will keep laughing at you. Until your battleships or aircraft carriers will arrive to shooting distance of their ports. Then you will get things done. Also it is a well known fact that whomever controls the seas, controls the trade. Considering how much dependent is USA at this moment on foreign trade, you have to be able to protect your trade lines, at the very latest. And because your trade lines are pretty much ocean wide, you need something bigger to keep them safe, then some lousy gunboat or fast attack boat. Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are not sunny Mediterranean see, much harsh conditions to operate in.

Then, ballistic missiles are good at hitting hard programmed predefined targets, like war factories, cities (though city busting is now widely considered a counterstrike option in case of surprise first decapitating strike and as such lies on the back of missile submarines), nuclear missile silos and other like that hardened targets. When it goes up, it will hit its target in some 20-30 minutes, almost no matter what, if said target is on the other side of the world. But the speed comes with its prize. Steering such a vehicle is very hard and to effectively steer the warhead in speeds well over Mach 10, you have to start steering it before it re-entry the atmosphere. Even MIRV and MARV warheads will not buzz over your head like some overgrown bees. They will split in the very outer layers of atmosphere, maybe do some trajectory changes from one to another target before making final dive in and then go down to its target, literally “in flames”.

So in the hypothetical scenario you described, USA ships having no ballistic protection against PRC ballistic missiles, we would have the situation that PRC army or navy is shooting at targets not very far away. The flight time of these warheads would be some 5 to max 10 minutes. You cannot shoot the bm’s on depressed trajectory in this case, because that would lower the accuracy. You need to launch them ballistic at very high speeds. You have to positively acquire target, very quickly calculate and extrapolate where the target would probably go and where it will be in another 5 to 10 minutes, program it to the missile warhead and launch it. Ship sailing at speed of roughly 30-32 knots, which is the speed of modern carriers, will make it roughly 10 kilometers in any possible direction. So shooting a ballistic missile is like a trying to find out a needle in a pile of hey. Sure, you can find it, but most likely not. Unless you go nuclear. But if you go nuclear, you do not even have to use ballistic missiles for that and whatever delivery vehicle you will choose, the receiving side will go nuclear as well.

I would not be that skeptical about abilities of your Navy. Also I would not prize PRC weapons that much as you do.

http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-china-joins-the-yacht-club/

Synopsis: China’s got one (1) carrier they’re building, which is an old half-finished 1980s-era USSR hulk they bought for cheap through intermediaries. Hardly a “mad rush”.

Also this blog waxing on and on about carriers its funny how China is now on a mad rush to build many super carriers so apparently they dont agree with you about them being useless.

same best work from you in the future as well.

Baby Merino nz

At 90% oil imports China isnt becoming the next global hegemon. They’d be coming at you on donkeys and ho fun electric bikes, the donkeys become the rations when the batteries run out.

But in the great game they intend to mean business. And they’re just so big you cant square up to them. Dont forget that.

Like ourselves a Chinaman loves something tasty at the weekend, but theyll pass on that for a nice bit of gear. Its just not as easy to get hold of as it was in great, grandfathers day.

This is why the Brits are busy securing that ‘age old’ gap in the market. Our ‘modern’ expedition force are ‘carrying on up the kyhber’, ramping our demand led supply interventions, straight into the Turkic backside of Chinaland (we got our familiar HK drop off points too).

Its pretty easy to shift that stuff in China, they lurve it, even keeps them from gambling, perhaps. Think about those cheap shipping containers going back every hour of every day, emptied of shite but not always!. Customs officials like a bit too.

North Americans can ask Olly North about this kind of thing, but us Brits been there long time, we got Tea shirt.

We would be better off using those carriers for ‘deliveries’. Better chance of pacifying the natives, they’d love us too!

chin chin

For those who held Aegis as their “Messiah” needs to understand… Them CG’s and DDG’s carries a limited amount of SAM’s. The Carrier group WILL survive one or perhaps 2 Swarm attack. but what about the third? what will they do? throw coke can’s at them?

A CSG (that’s Carrier Strike Group USN speak) consists of 1 or 2 Ticonderoga CG’s and 2 or 3 Arleigh Burke DDG’s

There’s only so much SAM’s the whole Carrier group can carry. The Ticonderoga’s carry 80 SAMs and Arleigh Burke’s carry 50 odd. That’s 300-350 effective SM-2′s, the standard procedure is 2 SAM’s per incoming threat. In which case the carrier group will run out of SM-2′s by the second Swarm wave. then the carrier group will become floating targets.

Yes yes I heard y’all screaming “ESSM”! Hey, if you have to use ESSM and CIWS against incoming missle you know you are in knee deep shit.

The United States is aware of the asymmetrical Chinese missile threat, along with China’s belligerent conventional military, and is acting accordingly.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/04/26/world/international-us-russia-weapon.html

http://original.antiwar.com/reed/2010/04/23/damn-the-torpedoes-fools-greed-ahead/