There aren't exact thresholds, but hypersonic generally refers to speeds fast enough that fluid heating can no longer be approximated away and chemical reactions and ionization in the air start to dominate.
Aerodynamics is a practice of which physical phenomena you can ignore. At low speeds you can pretend the speed of sound is infinite / air is incompressible (these are equivalent), as you get faster you have to start paying attention to compression, then shock waves, heating, ionization, and the mechanics of individual particles.
And to give some examples, while you could maybe ignore ionization for the aerodynamics of an F22 travelling at Mach 3, you probably could not ignore them for a school bus travelling at Mach 3.
It's a speed regime. Under Mach 1 is subsonic. From Mach 0.9 through 1.2 or so is transsonic. 1.0 and greater is supersonic. Above Mach 5ish is hypersonic.
Mach 25 is approximately orbital velocity, but since Mach is actually related to air pressure, it's not a very meaningful comparison except to note that anything moving that fast isn't going to be in-atmosphere for very long.
In subsonic flight, the air behaves as if it's incompressible (like a liquid).
In transonic flight, some parts of the airflow are starting to become supersonic, and compressibility starts to become a factor. Something called "wave drag" is important in this regime, as the compression wave is moving along with the aircraft.
In supersonic flow, compressibility of the air becomes the main thing and the flow is defined by the positions of the various shock waves. Ramjet engines work in this regime (the aircraft is moving fast enough that the forward movement is enough to compress the incoming air to the engine, without compressor blades). In a conventional ramjet engine, the flow within the engine is subsonic (the compressed air, being more dense, moves more slowly within the engine), so combustion works the usual way.
In hypersonic flow, temperatures are getting very high (air is heated by compression). Scramjet engines become a thing (the "SC" is for supersonic combustion: air flowing through the combustion stage at supersonic speed).
Fun, unrleated fact. Transsonic is very bad for rifle accuracy, as it tends to be somewhat unpredictable. For most rifle calibers this isn't a big deal, because they spend their entire flight time in the supersonic flight regime. But for 22lr, this is an issue because even the fastest 22lr around is going to be subsonic within 100 yards or so for reasons[0]. The result is a shot that’s laser accurate until 100 yards or so, and then suddenly becomes unpredictable beyond that. So "match" 22lr ammo tends to be subsonic even out of the barrel.
0 - The reasons are due to maximum allowable pressures, and barrel rifling. At max pressure for a 40gr bullet you’re going to get maybe Mach 1.1, maybe. If you want to go faster without increasing pressure above spec, the solution is a lighter bullet. But lighter bullets often like different rifling, and virtually all off the shelf 22lr barrels come with 1:16 rifling, unsuitable for extra light bullets. Also, lighter bullet get pushed around by the wind more; you’d often rather compensate for more drop than wind, since drop is more predictable.
Lots! The maximum chamber pressure allowable for a given civilian caliber is set by one of two regulatory bodies, SAAMI (US) or CIP (EU). In some countries firearm barrels will be tested (“proofed”) at 125% of set pressure to ensure consumer safety, and then stamped with a proof house specific mark. My understanding is that the US doesn’t require this, but any imported barrels will be stamped.
Specifically CIP sets the maximum pressure of 22lr at 24,646 psi. An extremely high number considering, but pretty pedestrian compared to other cartridges. For example NATO sets a maximum pressure of 62,366 psi for its primary rifle caliber, 5.56x45mm. It’s genuinely amazing that rifle barrels don’t regularly explode, to be honest.
The speed of sound in air (or mixtures of diatomic gasses) is a function of temperature only, independent of pressure and density. Or it depends on pressure and density in a way which cancels out and leaves only temperature as an independent variable for equivalent mixtures of gasses. (i.e. the speed of sound is the same at 20 atmospheres or 0.1 atmosphere as long as the temperature is the same) This becomes untrue when air is very very hot or very very cold, but generally those conditions aren't experienced on this planet outside of hot hypersonic flight.
Water vapor content, not being a diatomic gas does very slightly change the speed of sound but usually to a degree which can be ignored.
(people generally don't believe that the speed of sound in air depends only on temperature when you tell them)
It's worth noting that at these speeds a "long" period need only be ~1 hour to reach a target from launch. A flight from Hawaii to Taipei would be 1.3 hours at Mach 5, and 54 minutes at Mach 7.
These weapons represent an ability for both the US and China to conventionally intervene from their mainlands to any location within the Pacific.
> It's worth noting that at these speeds a "long" period need only be ~1 hour to reach a target from launch. A flight from Hawaii to Taipei would be 1.3 hours at Mach 5, and 54 minutes at Mach 7.
> These weapons represent an ability for both the US and China to conventionally intervene from their mainlands to any location within the Pacific.
Is that the kind of range these have? Almost 9,000 miles from LA to the South Western most corner of the Pacific. If you meant the North Pacific then even the western edge of the US to the yellow sea is over 5,500 miles.
Ballistic missiles of course have these kind of ranges and can carry conventional payloads.
>Ballistic missiles of course have these kind of ranges and can carry conventional payloads.
Just call while the missile is on the way to let the people it's going to kill know its not a nuclear bomb headed their way so they shouldn't fire a nuclear bomb back.
It's an expensive asset though. You'd think planners would only considered large missiles like this for nuclear weapons. There's got to be a risk that using a conventional warhead would get mistaken for a nuclear attack. I think hypersonic weapons will be largely stranded assets.
A ballistic missile at Mach 25 is an easily detected threat that the other side wouldn't be able to determine was inbound for the mainland or some fleet off the coast. Odds are inbound hypersonic weapon would avoid detection until it's directly within radar range.
This would likely mean the weapon hits its non-mainland target prior to the other side taking notice for a retaliatory strike. In the event the other side did notice - it's likely they wouldn't treat it as a nuclear incursion unless the weapon was heading inland towards missile silos or other infrastructure that would motivate a nuclear retaliation.
To your point on stranded assets - these weapons make performing any large military action in the pacific much riskier with greater probability for missteps or stalemates. Assuming a cost of 20-100 million dollars per missile I wouldn't be surprised if they are cost competitive with high risk carrier based F-35 operations in a hypothetical Pacific conflict. It's probably cheaper to stock pile such missiles than maintain additional carrier strike groups for the sole task of participating in a great power conflict.
> This would likely mean the weapon hits its non-mainland target prior to the other side taking notice for a retaliatory strike. In the event the other side did notice - it's likely they wouldn't treat it as a nuclear incursion unless the weapon was heading inland towards missile silos or other infrastructure that would motivate a nuclear retaliation.
Why not? If it was carrying a nuclear payload and was destined for strategic sites on the mainland, it could be too late to retaliate if they waited to see where it is going, particularly if it was aimed inside the first island chain.
I don't know exactly how the game goes. I'm sure there is no one single solution to it.
If China detected nuclear capable missiles heading toward their country then they would have to consider the possibility their second strike capability is not a sufficient deterrent (including being compromised in various ways such as their subs being all located) so there seems like a large incentive to retaliate before missiles land.
Would there be enough time for them to watch and wait it out and see if it approached their missile installations? If it was a very stealthy missile, could they be sure they had detected them all?
No, armies do not have their finger on nuclear trigger with a time horizon of 30-ish minutes. We are not in the 1960s when at times it was literally true.
The concept of nuclear triad is that, yes, armies very strongly depend on their second-strike capability. So, the game is for the subs to not to become compromised.
> No, armies do not have their finger on nuclear trigger with a time horizon of 30-ish minutes.
> We are not in the 1960s when at times it was literally true.
You are claiming that not only China, but the US and Russia don't have the capability of launching strikes from 30 minutes? (i.e., well beyond the time to respond to ballistic missile launch detection)? Do you have a source for this?
Launch-On-Warning
One source of ambiguity in the implementation of China's no-first-use policy is the ongoing debate in China regarding the pursuit of a launch-on-warning posture. Recent doctrinal publications and Chinese interlocutors indicated that the debate has yet to be resolved. On one side, some members of China’s strategic community argued that a launch-on-warning posture would ensure the survivability of its nuclear deterrent if its opponent has robust targeting intelligence. The Science of Military Strategy states that a launch-on-warning posture "is in accordance with China's long-standing no-first-use policy, and may effectively protect China's nuclear forces from sustaining even greater losses, improving the survivable nuclear counterstrike capability of China’s nuclear missile forces." China's first priority should be to prevent its adversary from precisely locating its missile launch positions. If China is able to reliably ascertain that an adversary has already launched nuclear missiles at China, however, China could quickly launch its nuclear missiles for a counterstrike "before the enemy has been able to actually inflict nuclear destruction." Launch-on-warning would therefore provide China with an option for nuclear retaliation if a nuclear adversary were able to overcome Chinese efforts at concealment, deception, and mobility to ensure that its forces survived a first strike.
This touches on what I was talking about too. The next few paragraphs interestingly provide a counter-point that disagrees China would take this posture, but not because they don't have the capability to retaliate quickly enough, but for other reasons.
Yes, I was writing about launch-on-warning posture although I can now see I could have been more clear. As far as I know no country is presently assuming that it is able to detect, interpret, and authoritatively decide to enter full-scale nuclear war within ~25 minutes of enemy ICBMs' launch. (Leaving say ~5 minutes to implement the decision.)
What you cited is sad, but firstly it is still an "ongoing debate", and secondly the road from declarations to the actual ability is long with this one. And may it never materialize again.
> Yes, I was writing about launch-on-warning posture although I can now see I could have been more clear. As far as I know no country is presently assuming that it is able to detect, interpret, and authoritatively decide to enter full-scale nuclear war within ~25 minutes of enemy ICBMs' launch. (Leaving say ~5 minutes to implement the decision.)
Do you have a source for that?
The sibling comment says Russia and USA have a prompt alert which can launch in under 15 minutes. Other articles say the US president could be contacted and approve in under 30 seconds, not sure how the Russian chain of command goes.
The decision process does not begin when nukes are detected of course, that's the end of the process. Pre agreed criteria have already been met. Quite likely there is no decision about entering a full scale nuclear war because they are already in one.
Pretty much this, both sides know that a large surprise attack against the entire triad would be effective. That’s why monitoring of military exercises and other precursors is critical. It’s very hard to kill all nuclear capable aircraft when they are already in the air. Placing all submarines on an alert posture also helps prevent the possibility that they’ve been intercepted. An around the clock war room helps ensure the president makes the decision to launch.
Actually, since the invention of ballistic missiles we are permanently 30 minutes from death. There are around 900 flight ready warheads both in US and Russia.
Is this a lot? Missiles are quite expensive in general. $3.8 BN is not the budget for this single program, but for several, 8 per this source [1] (although, now it might be 1 or 2 less).
For this particular weapon, a somewhat similar weapon I can think of is the European Meteor [2], which is ramjet (rather than scramjet) powered, and reaches Mach 4, rather than over Mach 5 as this one is supposed to do. Meteor comes at a cool cost of EUR 2 MM per piece. Think about it, you fire one missile like that, and it's like destroying 10 Ferraris.
One key consideration that I only got recently is the difference between a cruise & ballistic missile. A ballistic missile launches at great velocity, then more or less falls at it's target (over an extended distance) using a ballistic trajectory. A cruise missile is under power for a large part of it's journey, typically flying much lower, & able to navigate/direct itself.
A ballistic missile is often quite supersonic. But cruise missiles being hypersonic is definitely a big shift.
I was pretty surprised by how slow cruise missiles are when I read up on them recently - similar to big airliner speeds. I always had a mental image of missiles as these "fastest in the sky" things that you could only dodge but not outrun. It's possibly true for Sidewinders but even they top out around Mach 2.5, so the hypersonic developments are a huge step forward.
Still kinda surprised there aren't fast missiles that use rocket engines. It works for ICBMs? I don't see a reason they couldn't maneuver as well. Maybe the hypersonic regime makes things novel not just for propulsion but control too.
Most missiles do use rocket engines. Solid rockets are much easier to store and use than liquid fueled engines, whether rocket or turbojet. They can get pretty fast, too: the AMRAAM is supposed to go mach 4. The downside of any rocket engine is that the fuel and oxidizer run out quickly; the AMRAAM goes that fast in order to have a long range, as the motor burns out fairly soon. A few newer air to air missiles, like the British Meteor, have air breathing liquid fueled turbojets in order to increase range. Cruise missiles with their air breathing engines are the odd one out in missile tech.
Rocket engines require onboard oxidizer (or equivalent), so you have to carry a substantial additional amount of mass along with you.
Air-breathing engines are able to save all that mass by using atmospheric oxygen.
This matters, because it's the rocket equation in reverse: no onboard oxidizer = lighter vehicle = less fuel needed = even lighter vehicle = longer range / more payload
this is a good queue-in to start talking about mass ratio: the ratio of weight that is dedicated to payload versus the weight of the delivery platform and it's fuel (slightly simplified take).
this device is almost certainly air breathing. there's simply too big an oxygen-breathing-demand at speed to do anything else for sustained high speed flight, where you need to be generating a lot of motive force.
The Standard-Missile family from the US can all go faster than Mach 2.5. But land attack missiles have never needed to be particularly fast until recently.
All ballistic missiles are hypersonic. The V-2 was hypersonic. That's because range is directly dependent on speed and you wouldn't have basically any range if you had a mere supersonic speed.
For a powered flight, it refers to the state where combustion in the engine happens at supersonic speeds (for a "normal" supersonic planes like fighters, it's subsonic because speed of sound in a heated air is much higher).
For an unpowered flight, it is a rather meaningless term, but normally refers to maneuvering warheads on ballistic missiles
That is the difference between ramjets and scramjets, not necessarily the definition of hypersonic. And some "hypersonic" missiles don't breath air but rather conventional rocket motors to muscle their way to higher speeds.
The oldest definition of hypersonic I have heard is those speeds where compression heating of the atmosphere ahead of the craft generates plasma. A space capsule on reentry hits such speeds, causing the classic radio blackout. So hypersonic aircraft are those that must deal with plasma-related issues that are irrelevant to slower supersonic aircraft.
That vehicle is a sub-orbital vehicle with a re-entry trajectory similar to a ballistic missile . It reaches it's highest speeds only at altitudes where the atmosphere is more individual particles than a continuous gas (it's apogee of 62 miles is well above the Karmen line). The definition of Mach number only makes sense within a fluid. A vehicle that travels 20,716 miles per hour is NOT travelling Mach 27. You can say it's travelling roughly 27 times the speed of sound at sea-level like conditions to get a sense of the scale of the speed, but it is not travelling Mach 27. Once it slams into the atmosphere on re-entry, you can say it is travelling at Mach 27, but by then it's not undergoing sustained flight. This specific vehicle is merely gliding.
This distinction is important, because all of the difficulties associated with flying at hypersonic speeds are due to the problems associated with flying through the fluid. It's comparatively easy to accelerate to the high speeds of sub-orbital vehicles once outside a meaningful atmosphere.
Militarily this is an important distinction as well. An intercontinental ballistic missile needs to go significantly above the earth's atmosphere. During this phase, it's easily detectable, since the horizon is much further away. A vehicle flying much lower well within the earth's atmosphere at very high speeds gives much less early warning.
This specific vehicle strikes a sort of middle ground between these concepts. It's half sub-orbital ballistic missile (it's still required to go above a meaningful atmosphere), half hypersonic cruise missile. Although very critically it is not undergoing sustained flight at hypersonic speeds
I misspoke a bit here. For an orbital vehicle, yes absolutely. Since this vehicle has a relatively shallow suborbital trajectory, I assumed the vehicle has a 1st burn to reach an apogee of ~100km. Upon reaching apogee it orientates itself towards it's earth-bound target, and then executes a second burn. Thus accelerating under thrust towards it's target. Ergo it's maximum speed would occur somewhere between it's apogee and when it re-enters the atmosphere. At least that was my interpretation of the text in the article.
Air breathing hypersonic missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles really shouldn't be compared. They have different operational uses. Air breathing missiles are slower but can also be significantly smaller and can fly for sustained periods at lower altitudes. This missile is more comparable to the Russian Zircon missile.
Russia is finalizing field tests of hypersonics that are due to be deployed on ships in less than a year, and has actually fired them from ships at targets.
China is more secretive but there is evidence there were at this stage 5+ years ago.
Why be secretive about this stuff? Isn't its whole raison d'etre to be a deterrent in the face of American anti-missile systems? Or is this something more like a Corbomite Maneuver?
The Chinese are generally quite secretive about everything unless it's been in full-scale production for a while.
They probably think that their manoeuvrable ballistic missiles are already enough of a deterrent, being hypersonic already, and those are actually deployed and ready for combat, so much more of a deterrent.
Really not. Hypersonic missiles are a game changer because, without any risk of escalation, they are un-interceptable and can hit very important and high value assets very fast without requiring survivable targeting platforms.
If somebody takes out the GHQ of a superpower tomorrow with this, that is certainly "very escalateable," but unlike other options it still requires conventional follow up to deliver defeat, and keep the enemy occupied in immediate aftermath. And it surely lacks the intimidation factor of a massive nuclear ballistic missile attack.
No amount of surgical strikes will be enough to behead a well trained military of a superpower, unless somebody on the ground goes, and routes them after the initial strike, preventing the enemy chain of command from recovering.
Tanks, and troops on the ground will still be needed to capture enemy's capital, and surround, and immobilise major enemy concentrations.
No one is trying to invade a superpower. Certainly not China.
The point of hypersonic missiles is to paralyze the force projection abilities of an exceptionally powerful military. For that striking only 30-40 very high value targets is enough.
There's a sort of fuzzy line betwwwn high supersonic and hypersonic, but the secret sauce that definitely separates them - and the hardest part by far - is supersonic combustion in the scramjet. You basically have to figure out how to make something sit still long enough to impart a thrust impulse, while at the same time sitting in an airstream that's starting to act like a cutting laser. Very little tech data from working scramjet shots have been made public, but it's likely the most successful use some kind of incredible heat exchange system to take at least some of the energy out of the flow. Maybe pipe it into the fuel.
The Skylon / Sabre engine justa went "fuck it" and liquified the air at lower speeds, then transitioned to liquified oxidizer like a rocket when hypersonic time came around. If that sounds like some kind of miracle heat exchanger that's because it is. It's not been worked out.
Pulse Detonation is something I always wondered why we didn't see more of it, but apparently when you make a PDE big enough it hammers the plane apart like an infant with a frying pan. Who knew?
The SABRE engine won't liquefy incoming air, it just cools it down a lot (to -150 C!). But SABRE is an evolution of a 1980s design, the RB545, designed for the HOTOL spaceplane, which would indeed have liquefied incoming air. The RB545 was in turn derived from a 1950s concept, LACE:
Ha, thanks for the correction! I haven't been following the project all that closely, but I always liked it. It seems to me like a more . . durable . . solution to the hypersonic propulsion problem, almost an extension of the hybrid turbo-rams of the SR71. I mean, the alternative, relying on converging shock fronts to serve as a flame holder . . so, ok, I am not an expert, but that sounds iffy.
As far as I know, the Sabre heat exchanger doesn't liquefy the air as frost kills the tubing. It cools down to the boundary without going over. I believe they've demonstrated mach 3 conditions but not mach 5, and they're on track
These engines (ramjets, including scramjets - the 'sc' means supersonic combustion, which is the hard part) rely on forward airspeed to compress the air as it enters the engine. You can't have a ramjet without some sort of booster stage (or non-ramjet mode of operation).
In this case, there's probably a conventional rocket engine to get it up to speed, which is then sustained by the (sc)ramjet engine.
As I understand it, China has hypersonic missiles and nukes, whereas the US does not.
Should a conflict in the South China sea break out, China could nuke US carrier groups assuming their satellites aren't taken out first. That spells game over for US projection of power if successful.
China could deploy air and submersible drones to get around downed satellites, but these have the potential of being jammed with EMP, other drones, etc. It could become a game of cat and mouse, and if the carriers get close enough, China's land-based missile defenses are toast.
Is the US developing hypersonics for close combat? How does this fit into a South China sea conflict, or does this assume the battle is closer to home? (If China goes blue water, is this meant to combat their carriers?)
If, when, and where will the theater be? What will the outcome be?
Would the conflict be limited to the coastal regions, or would it spill over into nuclear MAD?
Will either side back down?
I'm super curious about all of this, and I'm interested in more sources to follow. I don't know enough to understand military/navy Twitter.
Follow Arms Control Wonk. There's a bunch of OSINT folks in the podcast slack channel including friends of mine that have been interviewed by magazines like The Economist.
I'm there more for the cyberwarfare takes, but from what I understand nobody is seriously worried about a power imbalance between China and America regarding missile speed since interceptors aren't accurate enough, but that's just me regurgitating what I see tweeted around and talked about.
Edit: And don't be intimidated by people reverse engineering sidewinders in the Slack. The community is very open to humble, curious newcomers. They'll teach you how to analyze satellite imagery for free, haha.
> Should a conflict in the South China sea break out, China could nuke US carrier groups
If China wants to start a nuclear exchange, sure. The US probably wouldn't go nuclear in response to an invasion of Taiwan, but it absolutely would in response to a nuclear attack on US forces.
And our reality would segue into the storyline of Threads. The 1984 BBC film should be mandatory viewing for all people in positions of power. The bombing is only the start of the horror. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgT4Y30DkaA
> China could nuke US carrier groups assuming their satellites aren't taken out first. That spells game over for US projection of power if successful.
Incorrect, the USA will probably just shrug, and call in the other 11 super-carriers and 9 amphibious assault ships.
At the same time they will invoke NATO article 5 and a few other Asian mutual-defence treaties. 2 UK, 1 Spanish, 1 French, and 2 Italian carriers will arrive soon afterwards.
As will 4 Japanese, 3 French, 2 Australian and 2 South Korean helicopter carriers.
The trick isn't to take out one aircraft carrier: its to to be able to take them all out.
Presumably the US would find itself in such a situation because it tried to stop the invasion of Taiwan. China will never have the interest or capabilities of going after Europe.
Interesting. Edge case: if French Guyana (off the north side of South America but considered part of France and the European Union) is the victim of an attack by some means, are NATO members obliged to act in its defense?
That’s absolutely right if course. Taking out a carrier group, or even several carrier groups is if course doable, but by itself it isn’t an objective. It’s a means to an end, so without a strategic context it doesn’t mean anything.
I've read its actually very hard to find an aircraft carrier in the open ocean, and even if you have found it, difficult to target because it will be be moving at 30 knots in a zigzag pattern?
Let us assume that at launch the missile had the location of the carrier as provided by satellite one hour ago.
How is the final phase of flight and targeting going to work? How far away can on-board sensors detect the carrier, and does the missile have the maneuverability to steer towards the target in that timeframe?
Yes, is it surprising in any way? Nobody would have raised an eyebrow at this concept back during the Cold War, just shows how comfortable in peace we are now. The concept of unilateral nuclear strike did not exist; all models were of nuclear exchanges and question was only if it could happen in any limited way or escalate into a total one.
Both game-theoretic calculus and political pressure at home would make nuclear retaliation unavoidable, and with the perspective of escalation China is firmly on the losing end.
It's not surprising, it just isn't exactly proportionate (well it is by one definition of the word I suppose). That strike would cause China to retaliate against the US homeland, wouldn't it? And the retaliation for that would aim to dismantle China's military and industrial base.
If that's the case then I can't see how isolated tactical nukes against carriers makes sense for China. They might as well throw everything they have to begin with.
I mean, sure: that's what my original point was, it's not just nuking the carrier group. China knows the dynamic, the likely escalation route from that and it knows at the end of it, it lays in radioactive ruin. Nuking is just not an option; even a conventional attack (with much less guarantee of success) is already a pathway to full scale war, just not immediately nuclear.
US/USSR were prepared for theatre level nuclear engagements, as long as not on USSR or US soil. I would not dismiss trading tactical nukes on third party soil if things get desperate. PRC SCS islands, US indo-pac bases, carrier groups are no brainers. Up to US bases in Japan and Australia. I think we dismiss low level nuke engagement at peril, any competent war planner will keep it in the repertoire.
> PRC SCS islands, US indo-pac bases, carrier groups are no brainers.
PRC SCS islands are sand piles with a couple of barracks and a landing strip, that would not be an equal trade for a carrier group.
> US/USSR were prepared for theatre level nuclear engagements, as long as not on USSR or US soil.
I dunno what America was prepared for, but I was in USSR at the time and the public message was any nuclear confrontation will end up being a total one.
It's not an equal trade, but it's as close to proportional tactical/theatre level nuclear retaliation as US can get, PRC simply doesn't have many overseas bases / vunerabilities for US to target. Vast majority of PRC forces are on the mainland which is... basically the top of the escalation ladder, and opens up CONUS + territories for proportional retaliation.
Otherwise, SCS bases are substantial forward deployment positions for PRC. Conventionally neutralizing SCS bases would require 100s of ordnance from naval platforms in a mostly secondary theatre - substantial amount of what US can concentrate in region. The bases serve missile sinks by design. So in a sense, taking them out via tactical nuke versus expending significant in theater munitions is an appropriate trade.
>public message
There's a lot of (declassified) literature on nonstrategic nuclear weapons and scenarios, war plans for theatre level use in Europe and Asia. Here's a report from this July.
Public messaging is going to play up MAD, but nonstrategic nukes has never been off the table. PRC has no first use, but one never knows. Especially since the engagements are likely maritime over empty waters, which has different escalatory potential than scenarios of nuking NATO/USSR buffer countries during cold war. It's not that I think it's likely, just the chances are less non-zero than what's publically presented, i.e. the 2021 report exists in the first place because US wonks are at least discussing tactical nukes which are not subject to arms control agreements.
Well that's really what I was getting at with my question, so if that's also what you were suggesting then we're both questioning the previous poster's idea that they can just happily "spam" nuclear missiles at all of America's carriers around the globe, let alone even a single one operating near China's waters.
> China knows the dynamic, the likely escalation route
There is no likely escalation route. To escalate to full nuclear war requires what we would today call "a crazy man" in power. The US has had exactly one of those in the past 30+ years, and he's no longer in office.
I've never even heard of Tora-Borah, so maybe I'm ignorant.
But for one thing, I wouldn't say that an authority that authorizes the destruction of three buildings would authorize a nuclear strike. For another, destroying three buildings in some village in Afghanistan does not sound like and "escalation" in response to the half dozen or so buildings destroyed in New York on the date you specify, and the damage to the Pentagon, and the loss of four aircraft and all souls on board, and I don't know how many more on the ground.
Sorry that was irony. My point was precisely that American vengeance knew no bounds. There is zero chance that a nuclear strike on an American asset will not be met in kind.
Somewhat related to a China tech angle, I submitted this article about what Chinese stealth boats look like to the newest commercial radar satellites: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28686121
Is that a big deal? Internet told me the reason why ships go only halfway YF-117 is because surface radar expects sea clutters, and an awkward black patch created by stealth features gives out its position and nature.
Generally, I'd say that anti-carrier strike group tactics involve simply (well, maybe not so simple) overwhelming the defenses. Quantity can work as well as quality.
You might look into Russian missile work. Of course, as a land power (and not as invested in trade as China), their answers are different.
As far as I know, with existing known technology and defenses, there's probably a number n, such that if you launch more than n simultaneous non-hypersonic cruise missiles, an aircraft carrier is going to be unable to deal with them all. This of course assumes you can launch that many missiles, in range of the carrier, simultaneously, without advanced warning.
Now, the navy also isn't dumb, so I'd venture to guess they avoid parking their carriers within that range when possible, and that they probably have some other defenses like C-130's and other ships mounted with directed energy weapons and other missile defense and whatnot. I imagine they also aggressively pursue and maintain intelligence on the location, number, and readiness state of those missiles. This starts to get complicated because there's a complicated interplay of strategy and tactics related to the off-ship capabilities, and defenses have counter-strategies (such as launching a bunch of Surface-to-air missiles at those C-130's immediately prior to launching the cruise missles) and those counter-strategies have counter-strategies, etc. etc.
I also have no idea what that number n is. It could be infeasibly high.
I would think a conservative estimate for n is roughly (number of surface-to-air missiles ready to fire in the battle group) + (number of hits needed to sink a carrier) / (probability of hitting). I suspect the first term will dominate.
If the battle group has one Gerald R. Ford class carrier, two Ticonderoga class cruisers, and three Arleigh Burke class destroyers, then it has up to 2 * 8 + 122 * 4 + 96 * 4 = 888 RIM-162 ESSM missiles and 2 * 21 = 42 RIM-116 RAM missiles, for 930 missiles total.
The carrier also has Phalanx. Three guns, 1550 rounds each, maybe ~100 rounds per kill, effective range just under 1.5 km - a distance which a missile doing Mach 0.7 will cross in under seven seconds. My vague impression is that these can't be relied on to make much difference to the numbers.
Maybe there are lasers and whatnot around now. Not enough to make a significant difference.
Note that these numbers assume that the escorts' VLSs are loaded entirely with ESSM, and that all the carrier's weapons can be brought to bear on the incoming missiles, neither of which are realistic assumptions. But it's also assuming the carrier's air wing doesn't get to do any air defence, which is probably also not realistic.
Anyway, given all those assumptions, 1000 missiles and you have a very strong chance of a kill. 2000 and the carrier is toast.
If cruise missiles cost 1.5 million dollars each (roughly what Harpoon and Tomahawk cost, although what things cost in defence budgeting is a bit of a metaphysical question), the toast option is 3 billion in ammunition, plus there will be costs for launchers and various other sundries. The carrier alone is 10+ billion, so that looks like decent value.
In reality the CSG will be unable to fire 930 missiles at a single salvo because of time and targeting constraints, as the incoming missiles will be detected simulataneously.
Also, you don't need to sink the carrier. Just prevent it from launching aircraft. Once that's done it's defenceless.
The Navy isn't dumb, and that's why they build submarines.
Carrier Groups still have an important role to play in lower-intensity conflicts, but in a Pacific war with China they'll be about as useful as Battleships were in WWII.
Eh, you see a headline every so often alleging this but they're pretty far off the mark.
CSGs are defended by the entire system operating in layers. During conflict conditions they'll have airborne early warning radar flying to see threats coming a long way out. There's usually at least 4 AEGIS equipped ships. The carrier air wing will be doing patrols and intercepting threats at great distance. The carrier itself will be practicing emissions control and hiding within the sizable perimeter created by all of the above. And there's a lot of sophisticated EW decoys and such, that we don't know much about from open sources other than they're taken very seriously.
There's plenty of room for debate about just how effective this all is against a nation like China that has a lot of satellite intelligence/surveillance assets, but the simplistic "carriers have no defense" articles are just empty clickbait. These articles usually assert that there's no defense whatsoever against ballistic missiles, which ignores that 2 of those 4 AEGIS ships will be specialized to do exactly that, and have demonstrated it in testing.
One interesting tidbit is a few years back the US Navy submitted a request to do an exercise where they'd demonstrate taking down an inbound salvo of several 100 missiles simultaneously. Congress declined to allocate the budget for it.
Military planners certainly aren't omniscient or infallible, but they're a lot more sophisticated than the content free contrarian takes you see thrown around on the internet a lot. It ends up being a doomsayer about military technology is a pretty easy grift as nationalists on various sides drink it up uncritically and people with authoritative knowledge on the topic are constrained from openly rebutting it. All that said you do see some pretty in depth open info from GAO reports, stuff from CSBA, etc.
Has the belief that these platforms are survivable ever been tested in a meaningful scenario (ie, a conflict between two carrier-group-capable adversaries)? I get that the Navy does a lot of stuff to mitigate this threat, but it's a hell of a threat to mitigate.
>>>Has the belief that these platforms are survivable ever been tested in a meaningful scenario (ie, a conflict between two carrier-group-capable adversaries)
Not since WW2.....but the US Navy built up a LOT of invaluable experience on damage control practices and ship design based on the pounding our carriers took fighting the Japanese. Our current Ford and Nimitz CVNs are the refined iterations of a design lineage going back to the very durable Essex class. That said, the recent destruction of the Bonhomme Richard amphibious assault ship, which sustained cost-prohibitive damage in port due to a single arsonist, is disturbing.
There are wargames where we lose carriers against China.....and there are wargames where we don't. They're not invulnerable, but they never have been against a true peer anyway. Often it boils down to the CSG Commander not being overly cocky in terms of how he maneuvers his force.
The USS Bonhomme Richard fire was a worst case scenario. Only a fraction of the crew was onboard to do firefighting. And many of the damage control systems were shut down for yard maintenance.
In terms of actual conflict no. There's been no large scale naval conflict since WW2. The closest is the Falklands war, which did show anti ship cruise missiles can be effective, but is not a good basis for generalization.
The Navy does do large scale wargaming exercises of course, though any of the interesting details aren't going to be public so that doesn't really help shed any light on it.
No. But it hasn’t been looking good for carriers in war games/modeling exercises. China’s ASBMs might work today against a CSG or they might not (they need good targeting and maybe ABM systems can handle); but I’d analogize the US carriers of today to the 68030 and China’s ASBMs to the 386, where 68030 is probably a better chip but one side has a clear route to a Pentium, the other doesn’t, and economies of scale are in play, too.
EW decoys, early warning radar, AWACS and so on is useless against passive sonobuoys, satellites, stealth camera drones, and a missile with dual-mode guidance.
Every time the navy is asked about the survivability of the carrier groups they seem to start talking about the “whole kill-chain” of the enemy weapons. It sounds like they plan to knock out the targeting satelites before they could target them instead of trying to catch the missiles. Or at least thats how I read the tea leaves.
They're not going to target one link. They're going to target the whole kill chain. Satellites, sure, and the satellite ground stations, and the missile launch sites, and the update path from the satellite ground stations to the missile launch sites, and jamming radio reception for the missiles in flight, and optical chaff or some other kind of confusion, and radar chaff, and probably some I haven't thought of.
If the satellites don't work, then submarines and sonobuoys will be used. If those don't work, attritable intelligence drones will be used. If those don't work, they will go for the CSG first with whatever works, sinking the AEGIS ships, and then work their way up to the carrier.
The absolute trump card though is that they are preparing hypersonic intelligence drones. If those work out, they're going to be impossible to stop and there's no hiding a carrier from a plane flying past with line of sight.
If they are hypersonic in the atmosphere then they have radio opaque plasma around them. How do they transmit and receive radar pulses? How do they see with optical sensors?
That is not how plasma stealth works. The temperature of the plasma determines the minimum frequency of RF that gets through.
So you have to use a higher frequency radar and make sure the temperature of the plasma is not too high in front of the radar. You don't have to put the radar on the nose.
For optical sensors you would be imaging off-axis. So you can put the sensors pointing, say, 30 degrees below forwards relatively far back and there will not be much plasma in front of the sensors as it comes from compression and not friction.
There's a NASA PDF floating around that cites ~7000 K as the temperature of a plasma in front of hypersonic aircraft and concludes that radar is feasible then.
> What will the outcome be?
Judging by what we did in Afghanistan, not good. I hope we don't send thousands to die and/or kill other people. If they invade the US, we fight, otherwise, we shouldn't be policing the world. I don't see the benefits of a war with China, or any other country at all.
No, but they have been identified as a "nuclear latent state", in that they possess the capabilities to create one. How long that latency is I'm sure no one really knows.
Perhaps you haven't noticed that China has been building islands and claiming the sea around them. In fact, they claim the entire South China Sea as territorial waters. They routinely send their fishing fleets into the legitimate territorial waters of other nations. As they are starting to struggle again with the size of their population, expansion will seem like a natural solution.
The SCS is not claimed as territorial waters. In fact the claims are purposefully vague not just in content but also in scope in order to make it easy for China to negotiate them down in exchange for various concessions.
> China has been building islands and claiming the sea around them
Of cuz, that's known everywhere. Chinese netizens are ecstatic about this ingenious move that fenced off SEA countries from meddling the water area in any way that could affect China's claim over them.
> They routinely send their fishing fleets into the legitimate territorial waters of other nations
They are just self directed business man. Just like the numerous business man who invaded almost every Asian countries in the early 1900s. These fisherman would have been invading all-over the places if they were in 1900 as well.
Of cuz, not like the 1900s, these fisherman are not going to be protected (very strongly) by their home country when they were caught.
> they are starting to struggle again with the size of their population, expansion will seem like a natural solution.
Well, almost everyone is expecting the population to be dwindling from now on. A lot have calling the recent census fake, because they all expect a population drop.
Not sure why this population driven expansnism holds itself...
Personal attacks are against site rules, and you've been here long enough that you should know that.
> China had no ambition for territorial expansion other than defending herself. That's the pattern for 2 thousands years.
China occupied Tibet. China invaded Vietnam twice. The first time, they stayed for a thousand years. "China has no ambition for territorial expansion" only if you accept China's definition of what is rightfully China. A bunch of us don't, though. For that matter, a bunch of nations don't.
Specifically with regard to Taiwan: Yes, China has a historical claim on Taiwan. (And, yes, Taiwan has a historical claim on the mainland.) Technically, as you say it is a civil war.
Practically, it's two countries. They have two militaries, issue two different passports, have two different currencies, etc. Neither one wants to admit this, but de facto they are two separate countries. (So are North and South Korea, even though that civil war legally isn't over either.)
So, legal fictions aside, for China to conquer Taiwan would be a dramatic increase of their actual territory. (That's kind of implied in the word "conquer".)
And it's clearly China that's the aggressor here. Nobody's talking about Taiwan invading and conquering the mainland. But China talks about invading if Taiwan even dares to say that they're a separate country. They act like, if we all play pretend with them, it makes their claim more legitimate or something.
Speaking of legitimacy, let's note that Taiwan is the legitimate government of China. The mainland is held by the rebels.
What authority does China have to declare that Tibet is China? Taiwan? Everything inside the 9-Dashed-Line? What reason do we have to accept China's authority to declare that foreign territory is in fact part of China?
In the same way, when the bank robber says that he was just withdrawing his own money, we do not accept that the bank robber has authority to declare "what is rightfully his money".
China has dejure claims over Tibet and Taiwan. So it's more like a person who legitimate has access to their bank account wants to make withdraws after not touching the account for a while. But some nosy folks are butthurt because they falsely think it's black money or there's some mythical expiration date on legal ownership, tries to paint it as such, goes out of the way to prevent it, even though lawfully PRC is in the clear. SCS is an inheritance dispute, which other parties decided to involve arbituation that China didn't accede to.
But the practical answer is, under Westphalian order whose principles are enshrined in UN Charter (again the organizing order post war), PRC has authority to declare whatever she wants within her domestic jurisdiction, of which Tibet and Taiwan is formally recognized to be part of. UN has no position on legal/procedural merits PCA/UNCLOS ruling for SCS. That's a messy situation that gets resolved same way all territorial problems in Westphalian order gets resolved in lieu of treaty/accord that formally assigns ownership, territorial control with lots of force. So Chinese authority is derived from the same post war order as everyone else.
Alright then. With the authority vested in my by HN comment #28691569 (2021-09-29, rini17) I hereby declare all expansion ambitions of the United States of America on the North American continent after 1776 as territorial conquest. Furthermore, I declare all United Nations military presence on soil not under US control in 1776, especially soil not on the North American continent, to be territorial conquest.
If you had stated as much in times where the status of NA was actually at stake instead of now when it doesn't matter what you think, the US authorities and US society in general would not have been happy.
It doesn't matter, you are not allowed to point out hypocrisy, as is not immoral to criticize another government while your own kills children with drone strikes. Is the way it is, I learned the good old *downvoted* way. There is, it seems, a list of things you cannot criticize over here: Rust, US, React JS, Firefox, Elon Musk, Tesla, etc...
Are they going to gobble up Japan, Australia and Vietnam tho? I'd say nope, doesn't makes sense, for them. What's up with the war fetish? Do you enjoy watching people killing each other? I really don't understand.
Okay, then give me the reasons to believe in imminent Chinese military aggression. And why I should take the word of a nation that has been basically ceaselessly at war for decades, off the heels of yet another senseless conflict in Afghanistan.
I think you are projecting the warlike tendencies of the US onto China.
> what is the proper response to a hyper aggressive China?
I believe that GP is trying to generalize that question to "what is the proper response to any hyper aggressive nation". And the fact that the answer to that question will have more profound effects on responses to the US than to China.
In fact, I think that the question is valid. Limiting the discussion to China is blatant anti-Chinese propaganda. Broadening the discussion to "hyper aggressive nations" is fair and legitimate.
Are you completely oblivious to China's provocations in the South China sea? I know how things are being spun back in China, but I assume you occasionally read non-CCP-approved news, right?
Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, coup after coup in South America - you think Tiananmen was more reprehensible than any of these?
I'll also remind you Tiananmen was internal, whereas all of our wars are just that - wars. Directed against other nations.
edit: to clarify, I don't see how Tiananmen suggests China will go to war, but I do see how a sordid history of spurring violence across the globe suggests the US will go to war again.
IMHO, the risk of nuclear war is higher than we think. Can you imagine the number of expected casualties of all-out-war with China? We've played this game before. Japan/WW2. The US _will_ nuke China and justify it under number of lives saved.
> . Can you imagine the number of expected casualties of all-out-war with China? We've played this game before. Japan/WW2. The US _will_ nuke China
Japan didn't have a nuclear second-strike capability with the range to hit the US. (Or, literally, any part of that taken independently.)
The US leadership can't even make a remotely plausible argument, after emerging from their bunkers after the exchange is done, to have “saved lives” by nuking China.
China is not going to nuke a carrier group sorry but that is insane. The second that happened say goodbye to entire world. There is reason we have boomer subs. One Ohio class sub could legitimately end the world.
> One Ohio class sub could legitimately end the world.
Not even close. It carries about 200 low yield warheads. Not even enough for 1 each for 1/3rd of the cities in China if you could spread them out that far. There have been over 500 atmospheric tests, many with vastly higher yield and fallout, the biggest tests had yields equivalent to all 200 warheads combined.
One could strike a huge blow to China's capability to carry on war by destroying many of its large ports.
The hypersonic missle won't carry nuclear war head. The impact is enough to render a CV lose combat capability. The modern weaponry are delicate machines. A 50s computer might withstand an earthquake. The modern one probably won't survive a drop less than 1 meter.
The US Navy does shock tests, where it detonates large explosives underwater close to its carriers, for exactly this reason. These ships are way more durable than you give them credit for.
Lol, no. The water stops explosions. A direct hit by a 10 ton mass going at Mach 7 will destroy any ship. the Navy won't make tests for that because it's a foregone conclusion.
>>>The modern one probably won't survive a drop less than 1 meter.
That link was more in response to the assertion "The modern one probably won't survive a drop less than 1 meter.", suggesting that warship-grade computer and electronic systems are vulnerable to mild shock damage.
The results are classified. Considering how the flight deck and upper works look pretty much intact, they probably hit it with multiple torpedoes rather than anti-ship missiles.
Carriers are not vulnerable to a meter drop, but it's objectively true that ships are not built to the same standards nowadays as they used to be.
In WW2 ships were built to remain operational after multiple direct strikes. Nowadays ships are built to not sink after a single direct strike at the most like carriers, or only mildly though against such a hit because actually dealing with it would make them orders of magnitude more expensive and so heavy they'd be useless.
While a WW2 battleship could survive multiple direct hits and still fulfill its mission, a modern carrier would be lucky not to sink, and definitely won't be launching and recovering aircraft.
If a carrier in a war against a major power can't launch any aircraft anymore it's as good as dead, once it's off the AA ships will be targeted and sunk as they won't have AWACS and fighters to defend them and the carrier itself will be destroyed by enemy air power.
But the commenter is absolutely correct, ships are not expected to remain operable after a direct strike anymore. Weapons have gotten so good that defending credibly against them is not practical, so it's not really worth it to protect them nearly as much as it used to be.
A 50s computer would have been largely glass vacuum tubes and dropping it would cause quite a lot of problems. And a modern computer would be fine in an earthquake if it didn't fall off something or have something heavy fall on it.
Yeah was just thinking that! That analogy may have worked 20 years ago but everything, including notably storage, is solid state now and way more durable.
would a MARV-tipped ICBM be able to reach a target faster than flying straight at it at Mach 5?
I was looking for MARV reentry velocities, couldn't find any numbers. A regular ballistic missile hits mach 20+ on reentry but I don't know if it maintains that speed all the way to the target.
From my understanding, the primary benefit of the Hypersonic Missile over the ICBM is not the speed of payload delivery, but the amount of warning given to the target. An ICBM needs to ascend 100s of kms, thus enabling it to be detected by very far away radar systems. Those same radar systems that would be over the horizon at the lower altitudes within the atmosphere. Launching an ICBM almost immediately announces to the world "I am launching a nuclear warhead", thus enabling countermeasures to be readied, and a retaliatory strike to be launched. The time between this warning and the strike is indeed small (measured in 10s of minutes), but that's much more time than a hypersonic missile gives.
And the maneuverability - if you just adjust the course slightly ten seconds before impact, at these speeds, that’s a big difference. Ballistic mostly just falls down, i.e. you know what it will hit when you observe the launch (somewhat simplified).
Missiles since the 80s or so don't just fall down. The discontinued Pershing MARV could perform 25G maneuvers/corrections and was radar guided and had terrain mapping.
Well yeah, hence "(somewhat simplified)". One is a lifting body that control its flight path and can decide whether to strike or to just keep flying for another 1000 miles, the other can slightly adjust its falling down path and wobble enough to hopefully confuse countermeasures.
> A regular ballistic missile hits mach 20+ on reentry but I don't know if it maintains that speed all the way to the target.
The word "ballistic" means it doesn't maintain the speed. Etymologically and practically it's about throwing a stone, i.e. finding out what happens when you give it an initial velocity with approximately zero delta-V budget for the main part of the flight.
But everything gets complicated with time, so there are now depressed trajectories (i.e. not-entirely-ballistic flight paths) for the ballistic missiles. But these still do not carry dramatic delta-V.
Interesting to ponder the US need for hypersonic capabilities. PRC + Russia needs it to asymmetrically challenge the USN. Not many time-sensitive targets for the US to hit in PRC or Russia outside of mobile TELs to take out road mobile nuclear forces. For context, US dumping ~4B into hypersonics = ~3000 JASSMs which is probably a better investment for peer naval warfare. Politically, this program feels like air force trying to stay relevant for China pivot, grabbing a slice of the pie, and obviously good for MIC.
This is an entirely different program than hypersonic defense on naval platforms. As far as I know Pentagon is focusing on lasers and advanced interceptor designs, and hopes to have something "workable" by the mid 2025s.
>The Air Force has said it plans to pursue both the ARRW and the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), as initial and future hypersonic attack capabilities, respectively.
These are offensive standoff weapons launched from air designed to hit time sensitive targets. The question is really what targets, like I said, spending the money on 3000 JASSMs is already enough to sink every major PLAN combatants with room to spare. Need to consider what these hypersonics can hit that traditional standoff weapons can't. Or just the politics behind aquisition between branches. I'm not saying this is bad/wasteful defense spending, but curious what it's exactly for.
It's for prompt global strike against high value, time-sensitive targets when there are no platforms capable of launching JASSMs (or similar weapons) within range.
Likely targets would include high-level terrorists (think the next Osama bin Laden), adversary senior leadership, capital ships, and weapons of mass destruction.
