3M22 Zircon Hypersonic Cruise Missile

Isos wrote:A US carrier in the middle of the pacific near Australian shores doesn't need to be found... it is not dangerous.

Get closer to Russian or Chinese borders and it is easy.

An awacs has a detection range of 600km against fighter so at least the same range against carriers. A flight of 3 hours over the sea and they will spot the carrier formation.

The carrier group will also emmits lot of EM noise (radar, comms...). A radar with active range of 400km means its signal go 800km (2 way trip) and bounce on the detected object. That's a lot of power. ELINT plateforms can detect it from 800km easily.

Carriers prodyce also huge noise and can be tracked by submarine from very far away. Afterburner engine produce 150 decibels. Thry can easily be tracked by sonars or sosus like sonars.

And since their fighter have around 1000km max range it can't really hide if it is attacking.

Russia is qyite safe against them.

It's really to know that there's a carrier out there, about 600 km or 1000 kms east or west of this coastline. It's quite another to know that well enough to fire a missile at it.

Suppose you're sitting there with your finger on the trigger in China, and a U.S Navy carrier is spotted and fixed by satellite, with known position and heading. Suppose your missile can accurately target it based on that data. You push the button the within 1 minute of the satellite picture being taken.

Your mach 5 missile is launched from the shoreline and flies to where the carrier is supposed to be. It arrives to 9 minute old data, during which time carrier moved 7 km away.

Note how many unrealistically good assumptions there are in this post. Note how you're still off-target by 7km.

I'm talking about detecting a carrier not tracking it.

Once you have detected it you just send more stuff to track it.

Its max speed would be 50km/h  but more like 30km/h so that it stays in formation with slower ships.

It will move 12×30 =360km per day from the momement and location you detected it. So you have time to relocate more plabes or satelittes and refind it in the area quickly to start tracking and engaging.


Moving 7km away is useless. I don't remember well if it was kh-35 or oniks, but one of them has a radar with 50km range against big ships. Not to say that during 5 mintues an AWACS can still keep and lock on it and even if f-35 are in the air they would have trouble intercepting it in 5 minutes. If they fly at 1000km/h, in 5 minutes they would move only 80km and if the awacs is going away from them at 800km/h the closing speed is only 200km which makes it way longer to intercept the awacs.

And since the awacs would be at 500-600km away, the carrier can't have fighters that far patrolling 24/7. Most likely they would be 200km away from the carrier or only attached to the catapult for QRA.

RTN wrote:

Isos wrote:A US carrier in the middle of the pacific near Australian shores doesn't need to be found... it is not dangerous.

Get closer to Russian or Chinese borders and it is easy.

An awacs has a detection range of 600km against fighter so at least the same range against carriers. A flight of 3 hours over the sea and they will spot the carrier formation.

The carrier group will also emmits lot of EM noise (radar, comms...). A radar with active range of 400km means its signal go 800km (2 way trip) and bounce on the detected object. That's a lot of power. ELINT plateforms can detect it from 800km easily.

Carriers prodyce also huge noise and can be tracked by submarine from very far away. Afterburner engine produce 150 decibels. Thry can easily be tracked by sonars or sosus like sonars.

And since their fighter have around 1000km max range it can't really hide if it is attacking.

Russia is qyite safe against them.

It's really to know that there's a carrier out there, about 600 km or 1000 kms east or west of this coastline. It's quite another to know that well enough to fire a missile at it.

Suppose you're sitting there with your finger on the trigger in China, and a U.S Navy carrier is spotted and fixed by satellite, with known position and heading. Suppose your missile can accurately target it based on that data. You push the button the within 1 minute of the satellite picture being taken.

Your mach 5 missile is launched from the shoreline and flies to where the carrier is supposed to be. It arrives to 9 minute old data, during which time carrier moved 7 km away.

Note how many unrealistically good assumptions there are in this post. Note how you're still off-target by 7km.

You know that those missiles got their own radars, right?

Hole wrote:You know that those missiles got their own radars, right?

For your consideration

How to Hide a Task Force

By Andy Pico
1999

An earlier discussion raised the question of how a carrier task force could hide in the open ocean and questioned whether such an operation could be successful near land.

The following discussion will be split into several parts and will remain at a somewhat top level. The reasons should be obvious. Specific references will be made to a particular operation, NORPAC 82, but details on tactics and modern systems will not be disclosed. These tactics are essentially the same as during WWII. The historical accounts of the German surface raiders, USN submarine actions, IJN surface and CV operations, and of course the USN surface and CV operations during that conflict include many examples of the following basic tactics.

The main question is: How do you hide a task force at sea? The answer in very general terms is; by not telling the other guy where you are.

This is not as dumb as it sounds.

To illustrate take the following generic situation and think of the naval environment. One actually could extend this to other environments as well.

Put two football teams in a stadium at night each on their defended goal line. Each team will provide the backfield players with rifles and the linemen all have a pistol. Each weapon is equipped with a flashlight fastened to the barrel. The quarterback is equipped with a flashing signal light.

Now turn out all the lights so it is absolutely dark.

Who wants to turn on their light first?

Now to more accurately replicate the naval environment we put half the fans in the stands more or less evenly distributed on the field. We also put two blimps overhead, one for each team, equipped with flashing light and binoculars.

Obviously the light will replicate both communications and radar systems. Everybody's eyes replicate ESM, ELINT, COMINT, and radar receivers.

Obviously if you want to hide the best way is run silent and blend into the general traffic.

There are several conditions of hiding a task force. First is undetected. In this condition the presence of the force is not known. For this to really work it should be coupled with a deception plan so that the opposition not only does not know the force is present, but does not know they don't know and for some reason believes the force to be elsewhere. I will say no more about deception. The second condition is that you have been detected, but not located. This can include the presence of the force is known, but no system has detected the force, or the force has been detected but not identified. And finally, the force has been detected and located which implies identification of the targets.

One's tactics will change based on the above.

If the force has not been detected one can run in to a launch point and hit the target with the first wave while operating completely silent until initial weapon impact. Once the survivors pick themselves out of the rubble they will deduce the presence of the carrier force from the initial wave.

With a force underway the opposition for some reason believes it knows that the ships are elsewhere and has no information to the contrary. Such operations are most effective when coupled with a deception plan that keys the opposition to know for a certainty that you are somewhere else and is therefore not looking. This goes far beyond local efforts of the group.

Every man in the entire task force is kept informed of the tactical situation and what is going on. Full awareness, training, and discipline by all hands is essential.

The force transits to its objective area in complete electronic silence. Deceptive formations are used dispersed over a broad area to ensure any detection system does not see the classic "bullseye" formation made famous in countless Public Affairs shots and never used in operations. Broad surveillance systems are known so any detection method is countered either by denying sensor information, misleading, or providing expected results consistent with something else. For example, ESM systems rely on active emissions from radars or communication systems. So nothing is radiated. Overhead systems are in known orbits, are predictable, and their sensing capabilities known. So the track is varied, weather is sought out to hide in when vulnerable, blending into sea lanes (while staying out of visual detection range of ships) and such techniques. Deceptive lighting is used at night so that the obvious "blacked out warship" is instead thought to be a merchant or cruise liner. Surface search radar identical to commercial ones are used. Turn count masking is used by the ships. Aircraft maintenance on the CV and other helo equipped ships is limited to prevent transmissions.

In NORPAC 82 using these and other tactics the CV force operated close enough to support each other, but far enough and randomly dispersed to avoid identification by anyone. One night in bad weather a man went overboard when the ship was within 200nm of a Soviet airfield in the Kuril Island chain. Despite launch of helicopters and active search methods by several ships in the successful SAR, including clear voice UHF transmissions, the force is not detected because no Soviet asset was above the radar horizon. No overhead system was cued. The force continued on.

At the initial objective point the ships have managed to penetrate without the opposition having any clue that the force was within 2,000 miles. Limited air operations have been conducted to this point with no aircraft transmitting radio, radar, or any other detectable phenom. The aircraft launch "ziplip" and fly a mission without any transmission. Aircraft stay below the radar horizon of defense sites which are less than 200nm away. The E2 flies a passive mission in readiness, but silent unless called to go active.

At the objective "mirror image strikes" are flown. These are full strike missions by the airwing flown on a bearing 180 degrees out from the actual objective. Again, no active transmissions. The entire launch, strike, and recovery are flown without a key being touched. In NORPAC 82 these mirror image strikes within range of Petroplavask and the SSBN bastion in the Sea of O are conducted for 4 days without being detected by the opposition. All day, every day, the E2 orbits on a passive profile. All of the ships operate in passive mode simply listening. In a real war our presence would have been deduced on the first strike as the survivors picked themselves out the rubble of their airfields. But for this operation we continued to train in silence.

One should not miss the implications of this feat. A strategic strike capable force operated with complete impunity for 4 days within range of strategic assets without being detected.

Today, the capability to operate in a passive mode while receiving the complete tactical picture from off-ship has been expanded and refined to an extraordinary degree. All of the vulnerabilities to detection of the force are also its strengths in tracking everyone else. The complete range of overhead and other sensors are downlinked to every ship and many aircraft. If one system in the USN or Space detects a contact, everyone receives it. One could, with training and discipline, sail a complete 6 month deployment and merely listen to all of the other sensors, and strike without warning if need be.


But enough is enough. After dodging Soviet Naval Aviation strike regiments going out to "raid" the Enterprise group the time came to tip our hand and enter the next phase. So out of the blue a Badger group going out against Enterprise and expecting F14s was intercepted some 500nm from Enterprise by F4s with "Midway" painted on the side. And all hell then broke lose!!

Every Soviet asset that could fly, sail, submerge, or orbit was focused on the area in an attempt to locate the group.

The force has now successfully transited to the operation area and conducted the first flight operations which reveal its presence. In wartime this would result in the survivors picking themselves out of the (possibly radioactive) rubble of their airfields and other key military facilities.

So the game is up. But is it? The key as before is to deny targeting information to the opposition, leave them confused about your precise location, and continue to operate.

The task force has as its advantage the element of long-range striking power which allows it to operate at considerable range, thus giving the opposition a very large area to visually search. Check a chart and draw a 600nm circle, cut it in half to represent the sea/land interface, and see how many square miles have to be searched. If operating F18s cut the range in half (Side note. A recent USN article on F18E testing quoted a strike range of only 600nm which equates to a strike radius of 300nm. This loss in capability will cost future striking Admirals key sea space which will bear on this problem).

As before, much of the process of targeting is determining which of the many contacts detected is the one you are looking for. Most techniques rely on exploiting the Achilles Heal of Radar and Communication. To work, you have to transmit, and by transmitting you tell the opposition who and where you are. Don't transmit, and he has to find you the hard way, by visual identification searching the vast ocean area 10sqnm at a time.

Recall the original parallel. The Football field with both teams equipped with flashlights and handguns, with half the fans also on the field and the lights turned out. Who wants to turn their flashlight on first?

The USN has the additional advantage of a networked surveillance system where if anyone in the USN (including shore based facilities such as Naval Space Command) has the contact, everyone has it. So one can stay silent, and receive all the data from the other participants. This allows tactical deception, missile traps, decoys, etc.

Also, if the opposition is going to search with active sensors such as Radar, he is also telling you where he is and who he is. So our fighters can run out the ESM line of bearing and bag the recon Bear or strike pathfinder.

A word about the opposition. The SNA strike regiments were (are) structured and armed very well to go kill naval formations. The AS4/6 on a Badger or Backfire in regimental strength backed with Bears in the recon role were and are formidable. They roughly had a Regiment per carrier. In a straight-forward engagement, the issue would have been "in doubt" at best. If a strike regiment caught a CV by surprise it would have been curtains. An alerted CV would have a better than even chance of surviving, but probable losses would have been severe. But the Regiment running through fighter opposition to their launch points and then getting back out would have taken crippling losses. They would have not been able to mount a second strike and would have been effectively destroyed if not annihilated. If a missile trap is set so that the regiment is climbing to launch altitude over a missile ship it doesn't know about until the radar comes up and missiles start impacting, the fight will be over before it barely starts. So it was critical for the target to be identified and located prior to the regiment being committed. This takes time and allows the CV time to maneuver, set decoy groups, missile traps, fighter ambushes, etc.

With two hours warning for example, a CV could dispatch a surface CG missile trap 60nm down the threat axis, station the CAP Outer Air Battle Grid, put a CG decoy group stationary, and run another 60nm down range and off axis in a silent mode. Then the regiment locates a likely target at the expected point, runs into a missile trap, fighter grid, and a target that can defend itself without ever threatening the CV.

So the trick is to prevent identification and localization of the force. Decoys run out and radiate. Aircraft launch on missions running silent, fly out to a deception point at low altitude, then climb and radiate as normal. The searchers locate the pop-up point but don't find the CV. This is particularly effective if the first launch of the day locates a large, neutral merchant or cruise liner and everybody uses that as the reference deception point. Then the searchers actually see a target at the point that the flight patterns indicate. In wartime they commit, they lose their regiment, and the CV then has a free ride.

We would also deliberately provide a false contact reference. If a searching aircraft is intercepted they can draw an operational radius of previously observed intercepts and conclude the CV is in that area. That allows a concentrated search. Now if we had deliberately intercepted him at an extended range and then moved the carrier at high speed in the other direction the search effort is concentrated at the wrong point. I did that one day by tanking an A7, running him out a long range and bringing him into an intercept of two Bears that were visually searching and identifying fishing boats and merchants trying to find us. I brought him in off-axis and took him back out off-axis (in other words not directly to or from the CV). We then cranked up the 32.5 knots the Midway could then do and went in the other direction. A few hours later we observed a "large number" of search aircraft vainly saturating that area of the ocean and giving all the fishing boats a great air show.

They could identify the E2's radar. They could then draw the normal circle around the E2's location and search that area. Trouble with that was that I was particularly adept at running out long range while silent, and then running a distant patrol point and acting as if the CV was close by. I used to routinely obtain contact at extended ranges. So by drawing their datum points based on my patrols they also looked in the wrong places, and at the same time I data-linked the complete tactical picture to all the silent participants.

We would also recover the returning aircraft by marshalling as normal but in the wrong place. Then, under E2 control, the returning aircraft would fly a recovery pattern to a deception point, and then run in at low altitude and silent to the CV.

A sub vectored out to find us has to have some idea of where to look. If the CV has freedom to operate it can avoid contact by "random and dynamic" movement. Only if the CV locks itself to a set operational area and pattern (as in most structured exercises which lends itself to the prevailing myth of submarine superiority) does it become predictable and hence, vulnerable. If the CV moves it forces the sub to move to catch it, thereby making the sub more detectable. Of course, one could run over the sub by accident in which case it falls to CV group number two to take up the fight! Such is war.

We continued to operate in that manner during NORPAC much as a boxer might in the ring, dodging and weaving for four days with everything in Siberia that could fly, sail or submerge looking for us. Our success can be measured by the fact that not once did any unit ever come close enough to identify us, and at no time was any strike group committed against us in a mock attack. During this time several regimental mock raids per day were flown against the Enterprise which operated openly. And we continued to fly mirror-image strikes within strike range of key Soviet facilities several times per day with complete impunity.

At the conclusion of four such very interesting days it was determined that not only had we obtained all the needed training and experience we were looking for, but that we had also probably trained the Soviets more than we probably wanted to. So we then rendezvoused with the Enterprise group during the night. The next morning, as scattered light filtered into the Northern Pacific, the initial Soviet strikes and shadows saw two carriers where there had been but one the day before. And then all Hell really broke lose!! But that is another story and a very conventional one.


Abbreviation Glossary

A7 Daylight Light Attack aircraft.

AS4/6 Soviet Air-Launched Anti-Ship Missiles.

CAP Combat Air Patrol

COMINT Communications Intelligence

CV USA designation for an Aircraft Carrier.

E2 Electronic Surveillance and Radar aircraft, also used for Command and Control functions. An apt description that I wish I could claim credit for is that it looks like "an aircraft being terrorized by a flying saucer."

ELINT Electronic Intelligence

ESM Electronic Support Measures

F18E A Fighter/Attack aircraft intended to replace the A-6 attack bomber. As noted in this essay, it is debatable if this aircraft can truly replace one of the most successful Naval Attack Aircraft ever built.

IJN Imperial Japanese Navy

nm Nautical Mile (1.151 statute miles or 1.852 km)

NORPAC 82 North Pacific 1982 Exercise.

SAR Search And Rescue

SNA Soviet Naval Aviation. Includes all of the commands, regiments and squadrons.

sqnm Square Nautical Mile

USN United States Navy

More of the same debunked arguments.  You're trying hard to convince yourself (and others) but I doubt anyone will buy it.

Hard to find carriers?

Well actually to be fair he is not picking one side or the other and is giving two very different views on the subject... as shown with this comment:

1. The ocean is really big, and how hard it is to actually find a carrier seems to depend on who’s talking.

He then goes on to say:  

I recall someone talking about a war game where a US carrier hid from the US for several weeks, but have I have been unable to find more information or what restrictions were placed on the US for the war game.

Which suggests it is hard to find them but he also says:

I’ve also heard that any CSG is basically tracked by every nation with the desire to do so.

Which suggests they are not.

I would say it really depends on the country, but countries like the US and the HATO countries it shares its military info with as well as Russia probably already have a world wide network of sensors and humans to provide them with all sorts of information that would lead them to have a really good idea of where most aircraft carriers are at any given time, and because they are large and there is an enormous amount of sea traffic in most parts of the world having to track them down to a very small area of water would not be that hard most of the time... a satellite going around the planet will see an object as large as an aircraft carrier... made much easier to see by its heat signature... made pretty distinctive in Americas case because a steam catapult puts out a lot of heat... as do the enormous nuclear reactors that drive it.

The carrier group will also emmits lot of EM noise (radar, comms...). A radar with active range of 400km means its signal go 800km (2 way trip) and bounce on the detected object. That's a lot of power. ELINT plateforms can detect it from 800km easily.

As a rule of thumb you normally triple the range of a decent radar because for that radar the signal has to go out and come back to be used a radar sensor of equal performance should be able to detect it half as far again because it doesn't need to do a lot of signal processing or calculations... a test of the signal strength and triangulation of the direction it is coming from is usually all you need.

Obviously if you get a signal from the radar on a US carrier and you can determine it is coming from 1,500km away and you are in a MiG-31K with a 2,000km range missile you could simply launch that missile on that bearing... it will take the missile about 10 minutes to fly that distance during which even at full speed a carrier wont have time to disappear...

A spread out flight of several MiG-31Ks or recon aircraft with dedicated equipment could do a much better job of locating targets and the ships operating with them based on datalink traffic and so more sophisticated traps could be set where high speed weapons arrive and just after slower missiles get there to hit and sink already damaged targets and to add to the chaos.

Information from OTH radar as well as satellites will be collected and used to create a picture of the enemies forces and its disposition.

Russia also has the advantage of having hypersonic manouvering missiles it can test and train its air defence forces to engage, so I rather suspect the S-500 will be optimised to engage hypersonic manouvering targets as well as ballistic targets and targets in low earth orbit, while the S-550 will be anti ICBM and anti satellite specialist missile... they might even develop and air launched version for MiG-31s and MiG-41s in the future.

Your mach 5 missile is launched from the shoreline and flies to where the carrier is supposed to be. It arrives to 9 minute old data, during which time carrier moved 7 km away.

Note how many unrealistically good assumptions there are in this post. Note how you're still off-target by 7km.

AMRAAM is an ARH missile... like most anti ship missiles... and its range for its ARH seeker is about 20km so the purpose of its autopilot is to get the missile to a position where the target is directly in front of it.... about 10km ahead is ideal because it gives it space to manouver so the target is in its centre of view so if it does detect the radar scanning it and turns the AMRAAM is flying neutral so can perform a maximum rate turn in any direction.

In comparison if the AMRAAM starts looking for the target and the target is hard hard left and only 2km away the missile will pull a maximum turn to the left but if the target detects that missile and turns in the correct direction it might be that the AMRAAM can't physically turn hard enough to reach the target before it blows past at mach 4.

In comparison a mach 5 missile or a mach 9 missile will be flying at enormous altitudes... 30km plus so even if it starts scanning for the target that is 7km away it will essentially be falling and could easily hit that target, but the radar inside an anti ship missile is much bigger than the radar inside an AMRAAM.... and that is compounded by the fact that an Aircraft carrier is huge compared with an aircraft... the Mach 9 missile could be flying along at 50km altitude and then it detects lots of radars lighting up and scanning it up ahead of it... AEGIS class cruisers have detected the missile and are trying to track it so they can launch a defensive screen of missiles... their missiles are designed to hit ballistic targets and not manouvering ones at that altitude so even if they launch dozens of missiles the anti ship missile should be quite safe so it knows the game is up but it was never expecting not to be seen... now it knows it can start scanning for the targets and from 50km altitude and 200-300km away it will have no problem detecting all the ships in the carrier group and picking out the aircraft carrier, so the chance of it not being able to find the carrier based on sketchy first information is not valid... and odds are it will use a satellite link to send a fresh radar image of that carrier group back to HQ and the launch platform so the launch vessel can watch in real time the attack... it will likely then start evasive manouvers and home in on the carrier... diving near vertically on the deck at enormous speeds.

Put two football teams in a stadium at night each on their defended goal line. Each team will provide the backfield players with rifles and the linemen all have a pistol. Each weapon is equipped with a flashlight fastened to the barrel. The quarterback is equipped with a flashing signal light.

Now turn out all the lights so it is absolutely dark.

Who wants to turn on their light first?

Except now play that game in a shopping mall with loads of civilians bustling around... some friendly and sympathetic, but most interested in not getting shot.

In this case during WWII Russia didn't have ground based OTH radars that can detect F-35s 5,000kms away on the border between Iran and Iraq, and they also didn't have satellites either.

Obviously if you want to hide the best way is run silent and blend into the general traffic.

That traffic that might include a container ship carrying anti ship missiles loaded into shipping crates ready for launch...

If the force has not been detected one can run in to a launch point and hit the target with the first wave while operating completely silent until initial weapon impact. Once the survivors pick themselves out of the rubble they will deduce the presence of the carrier force from the initial wave.

Another core problem... odds are a US naval carrier based strike force are not going to penetrate the land based air defences of Russia so they don't need to sink their carriers if they just shoot down all their attack aircraft and support aircraft.

We are talking about WWIII... I very much doubt they will lose any sleep if some of the anti ship missiles sink a few cargo ships as well.... but military ships are quite distinctive and unlikely to be able to hide amongst civilian shipping.

A nice history lesson but it totally ignores that the Russian Navy is as netcentric as the US Navy is but also has the advantage of better IADS, and its jamming and EW seems to be top notch...

@RTN

Deception will play a huge part in any type of conflict and it is perhaps even more so for combat ships at sea. There is however one flaw in running the E-2 out wide anywhere near enemy territory. It will be very difficult to protect the E-2 with any sustainable CAP as the fighters loiter time would be severely compromised. You can obviously use the somewhat limited air refueling capability on the carrier itself but that in itself can make the support aircraft extremely vulnerable.

Perhaps it would be better to create deception by ECM means?

thegopnik wrote:

RTN wrote:Your mach 5 missile is launched from the shoreline and flies to where the carrier is supposed to be. It arrives to 9 minute old data, during which time carrier moved 7 km away.

Note how many unrealistically good assumptions there are in this post. Note how you're still off-target by 7km

.

1. Satellites can update missiles with information of where the aircraft carrier is now to missile

2. 7km difference wont do much for a big target and its homing radar that has a for example a 50km search beam.

Are you trolling or being serious?

He does this a lot. I placed him on ignore. He is much like Arrow, Ultimate Warrior and the likes of autism.

Clearly trolling but his questions aren't dumb so I take the time to answer. I guess more serious people will see it.

First of all, we should take a look at the jobs of Kinzhal and Tsirkon.

Kinzhal is supposed to defeat land and sea-based ABM systems + important fixed targets (stuff like the Pentagon).

Tsirkon targets important locations at land and ships (from carrier down).

The fixed sites are toast. Coordinates are well known and it´s pretty hard to move something like the Pentagon or the ABM site in Romania (exception: using a medium size nuclear warhead. This things are really good in moving stuff around ).

Now to the movable targets (= ships). Right know Russia has a small but steadiliy growing network of OTH radars in all shapes and sizes, most of them are able to locate and track ships. Then there are recon jets (Su-24MR, Su-34 with appropriate pods) and drones (Forpost, Orion + Altius is coming soon) but also ships, subs, underwater drones (Harpsichord) and fixed sonar installations. With that assets the russian armes forces can locate any ship close to the russian borders (which means 1.000 - 2.000km).

Example: Let´s pretend Russia sends a Bastion system with Tsirkon missiles to Tartus. Then shit hits the van. Some NATO carrier moves in. A Orion drone finds the ships south of Crete. The Tsirkon missiles are fired at the coordinates of the ships. It travels the 1.000km in 5 minutes. In that timeframe the ships can travel a mere 5 - 10km. The radar of the Tsirkon can find them easily and guide the missile in.

The radar of the current Onyx has a range of 50km but mostly flies very low.
The radar of the Kh-32 can track a carrier hundreds of kilometres away from it´s flight height of 44km. Tsirkon will propably fly at the same height or even higher.

Now to the satellite network. Even if there are only 5 "ocean recon satellites" they´re enough to keep an eye an the North Atlantic, North Pacific and the Med. They are circling good old planet Earth 12+ times a day which means evers spot underneath their orbits is visited every 2 hours or even less. In this time a carrier can move maybe 100km at full steam. Which is nothing even for a supersonic missile.

Another example: a satellite finds an evil carrier in the eastern Atlantic. The coordinates are send to the military leadership. A MiG-31 with a Kinzhal missile is send to the launch position of the missile. Until the plane reaches that spot the satellite is back over the carrier group, sends updated data to the jet and then the missile is launched. Kinzahl will travel 1.500km in 6 to 7 minutes. Again, in that time the target can´t move more then a few kilometres. BUMM. Toast.

The current satellite network isn´t much smaller then in the past. The old RORSAT´s had a lifespan of a few month. Between 1967 and 1988 there were 33 launches. There launches were mostly timed with western exercises. At best there were 4 or 5 active satellites.

Not to mention Russia also has a navy which can operate more than 2,000km away from Russian territory... we are talking everything from very big ships to very small ships, armed ships to unarmed support ships... they will all have EW positions with aerials and equipment.

This talk about one US aircraft spotting a target and all the ships and subs and aircraft in the US carrier group knowing that target detail.... that information does not spread by osmosis... it is a datalink... an electronic communication... which only happens when enemy ships are near, so that would be warning number one.

Flying the AWACS aircraft miles away from your carrier group to avoid giving away the position of the carrier group sounds smart except when you realise the AWACS and the fighter aircraft it manages are supposed to be defending the carrier group... it would be like the UK is an aircraft carrier but operating its AWACS and fighters over Belgium so the enemy wont know where the UK is.

Once the enemy works out where the UK is that tactic is actually the opposite of what you should be doing because it makes defending your ships much harder... for instance a naval group on the other side of Japan threatening Vladivostok... out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean their might be a Yasen class SSGN on it way back to port when the US carrier group starts shooting things down and starts attacking stuff... for which the Yasen can react by launching Zircon at the rear of the carrier group, or it could sneak in close and launch some torpedoes, or just sit and listen and monitor the US group and provide target information to a range of other platforms... hell if they wanted to they could build some land based silos and make some old SS-N-7 ballistic IRBMs specifically to fire at intermediate range targets so they don't come under the START treaty, except with modern technology they could have 20 or 30 very small nuclear warheads it might release as it goes over Japan and then scatter in the water around the location of the US carrier groups... half of the warheads airburst outside the atmosphere and their EMP busts blind every electronic sensor beneath and then the other half hit the water and dive down 400m before detonating...

A US carrier group attack on Russia is a strategic threat that warrants nuclear response and because of the nature of naval warfare nuking a patch of water is much easier than leveling an enemy city despite tens of thousands of people being on that carrier and support vessels likely being killed.... not to mention nearby civilian traffic.

Of course in this day and age some of that civilian traffic might drop some cargo containers into the water that sink and open up and release mines or torpedoes or missiles in the path of the US ships... it might take an hour before the weapon is released and activated so identifying the ship that launched the attack could be problematic... it will likely be done in a way and with a delay to implicate another ship so it can continue its attack longer.

Hole wrote:The Tsirkon missiles are fired at the coordinates of the ships. It travels the 1.000km in 5 minutes. In that timeframe the ships can travel a mere 5 - 10km. The radar of the Tsirkon can find them easily and guide the missile in.

And you expect a Supersonic, Hypersonic missile to maintain enough fuel to strike a CSG every time the CSG changes its position? Tsirkon will receive co ordinates of the CSG alright, but the CSG is also tracking it.

By the time Tsirkon makes that 10 km adjustment it would have burnt all its fuel.

RTN wrote:
And you expect a Supersonic, Hypersonic missile to maintain enough fuel to strike a CSG every time the CSG changes its position? Tsirkon will receive co ordinates of the CSG alright, but the CSG is also tracking it.

By the time Tsirkon makes that 10 km adjustment it would have burnt all its fuel.

A Zircon entering its terminal phase is at the apex of its KE - it would have boat loads of energy to make such corrections let alone evasive maneuvers.

RTN wrote:And you expect a Supersonic, Hypersonic missile to maintain enough fuel to strike a CSG every time the CSG changes its position? Tsirkon will receive co ordinates of the CSG alright, but the CSG is also tracking it.

By the time Tsirkon makes that 10 km adjustment it would have burnt all its fuel.

Still at it, and actually gathering some attention, congratulations! By the level of the arguments you make, that is all an achievement.
Compared to the mobility of the Tsirkon, a CSG to all effects is a quasi-static target. It is like saying you driving a F1 would need additional fuel to compensate the dodging manouvers of a snail. Make some numbers and tell me how many orders of magnitude the speed of those two are apart, please.

And you expect a Supersonic, Hypersonic missile to maintain enough fuel to strike a CSG every time the CSG changes its position? Tsirkon will receive co ordinates of the CSG alright, but the CSG is also tracking it.

The difference in speed between a carrier group and a hypersonic missile is actually several orders more than the difference between someone walking and a high speed rifle bullet...

It is like saying 500m away is a sniper with a rifle bullet and he is shooting at me... I can see him and he can see me and I can only walk upright at a walking pace.

His bullets move at 850 metres per second so in the half a second after he fires his bullet hits but his bullets have small fins on them so they can turn a few degrees while in flight which would allow them to turn and change trajectory by several metres after travelling 500m.

At a walking speed I cannot move several metres in the half a second it takes for his bullet to reach me even if I see the shot fired, I have no chance to dodge.

These hypersonic missiles have their engines running all the way to impact so having to turn a few degrees 500km short of the target because the radar lock you now have indicates that the ships started accelerating to 30 knots and have moved almost 2km since you were launched 4 minutes ago and now have the underway speed to perhaps move another couple of kms, or they could turn or go full reverse... in the 2 and a half minutes it is going to take for the missile to actually hit the target how far do you think the ship can move and from 500km away it can see exactly what you are doing as you do it.... speed up or slow down or turn or stop.... it doesn't matter... it can easily see what you are doing and compensate for that by slightly turning a few fractions of a degree one way or the other... or perhaps doing nothing till it is 100km away and then going for a zoom climb to 120km altitude and then diving at 3km/s through the atmosphere vertically down on the target... which would consume more fuel than any small turn but would render the weapon un-interceptable.

Something they did with the Brahmos with India... a small climb and then vertical dive on the target...

Climbing for a sea skimming missile just makes you an easier target because you climb into the effective envelop of most of the weapons on board the ship, but when you approach at 3km/s at an altitude of 40-50km and then climb up much higher to then dive down on the target... well it makes a difficult target almost impossible.

By the time Tsirkon makes that 10 km adjustment it would have burnt all its fuel.

Zircon will be flying at 40-50km altitude... 10km adjustment in target position will be meaningless... the last 10kms of flight will be screaming down at mach 9 in a steep dive...

December 14, 2021

The Ministry of Defense has already started to build facilities for the Northern Fleet for storing and handling of the navy’s new advanced Tsirkon missile, Izvestia reports on Tuesday.

It is the Northern Fleet’s importance that is the reason for giving priority over the three other fleets; the Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific.

“The choice of the Northern Fleet is not accidental,” says military expert Dmitry Boltenkov to Izvestia. “It plays an important role in the Russian defense doctrine,” he says and points to the Northern Fleet’s tasks of retaliating against a potential aggressor, conducting air-, sea- and submarine operations in the Atlantic, Arctic and other oceans.

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2021/12/northern-fleet-first-get-storage-and-maintenance-facility-tsirkon-missile

ASB News / MILITARYPart alternation mark
@ASBMilitary
·
3h
Russia to launch container version of its hypersonic Zircon missile, making it extremely versatile & impossible to trace - identical to commercial containers. The missile retains its power against surface targets such as aircraft carriers & ground targets

Promo video at https://twitter.com/ASBMilitary

Arrow wrote:Aother Cirkon test.

Getting boring.

Putin lauds successful test-launch of Tsirkon hypersonic missile

"This is a big event in the country’s life and a considerable step towards enhancing Russia’s security and its defense capability," the Russian leader said

MOSCOW, December 24. /TASS/. Russia’s Tsirkon hypersonic missile system was successfully test-launched on December 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Friday.

"Last night or, to be more exact, this morning, the Tsirkon hypersonic system was salvo-launched. This is our latest missile that can strike both naval and ground targets. The tests were successful and impeccable. This is a big event in the country’s life and a considerable step towards enhancing Russia’s security and its defense capability," the Russian leader said at a joint meeting of the State Council and the Council on Science and Education.

The Russian leader addressed Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov, asking him "to convey the best regards and congratulations to the staffs that worked on this system and thank all for the result and express the sincerest words of gratitude to all the developers, designers, engineers and workers - all those who have relation to this work."

In turn, Manturov thanked the president for this appraisal, adding that the hypersonic missile had been test-launched at 05:30 Moscow time. "I will convey your words to all," the minister assured Putin.

https://tass.com/defense/1380629

The West got a salvo launch of Tsirkon for Christmas

Ishchenko normally does not write about weapons but this one about the implications of Tsirkon deserves being reproduced here (sorry for the machine translation):

Christmas "Putin's aggression" and "Zircons"
Rostislav Ishchenko

Some particularly talented Ukrainian "experts" were waiting for Putin to attack Ukraine on Catholic Christmas (December 25). Why switch to Catholic, if the majority of Ukrainian Christians are Orthodox? Obviously, because the most" patriotic " Ukrainian experts, if not Catholics, then Uniates, are sure that Putin wants to spoil Christmas personally for them

The" foresight " of these experts was not exactly fulfilled, but even re-fulfilled. On the night of December 25 (closer to the morning, as reported by the President of Russia) The Northern Fleet of the Russian Federation has conducted another test of the Zircon missile.

Despite the fact that the published footage showed the launch of a single rocket, Putin said that multiple rocket launchers were fired. The naval terminology may have changed recently, but so far the salvo has assumed the launch of more than one missile, so there is every reason to believe that at the final stage of testing the Zircon, Russian sailors demonstrated the ability of one ship to launch several missiles within a short period of time (from a few seconds to a minute) (it is possible that all at once, loaded into launch containers).

Considering that the launch containers can be from four (on a small rocket ship) to several dozen (on a heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser), the Christmas gift for the United States turned out to be grandiose. It is for the USA. After all, if we say that we have nothing to negotiate with Ukraine about, because the local authorities do not decide anything, and we need to talk directly with the Americans, then the development of this idea is also true: it is pointless to fight with Ukraine, because victory over it does not solve anything, the United States must immediately win-the source of evil on the planet.

Each event must be considered in conjunction with those that precede it and those that should follow it.

Shortly before the last test of the Zircon (in 2022, the missile will be put into service), the Russian Foreign Ministry, acting in close coordination with the Ministry of Defense, issued an ultimatum to the United States. Putin, however, said that this was not an ultimatum, but the president could not say otherwise, and the tone of the document is quite ultimatum.

After the United States began to "play roly" with either a willingness to immediately and irrevocably reject the Russian proposal, or begin to partially discuss it, or put forward its own, Washington was most transparently hinted at, first at the level of the Russian Foreign Ministry, and then personally by the president, that Russia does not plan to get involved in small conflicts convenient for Americans with their vassals, but is ready to apply non-diplomatic methods of

It was against this background that the Zircon test took place.

Americans are familiar with this missile, it has been successfully tested more than once. The overseas military has already managed to assess its potential.

According to them, putting the Zircon into service will finally bury any possibility of the United States transferring troops, equipment and supplies across the Atlantic in the event of a conflict with Russia. The reason is that the hypersonic Zircon has a range of up to a thousand kilometers to hit surface targets (previously they claimed a range of up to 500, but it turned out that you can shoot twice as far). According to the Americans, now any small Russian ship (or submarine) armed with Zircons, from a range at which it cannot be detected, is easily capable of destroying an aircraft carrier under the protection of its AUG. Radars do not detect the missile, air defense systems do not shoot it down, and it can be launched from a range exceeding the range of American missiles, not only based on ships, but also delivered by carrier aircraft.

Having a line of missiles in the form of subsonic "Caliber", supersonic " Onyx "(operating at medium ranges) and long-range hypersonic "Zircon", the Russian fleet even in its current composition (experiencing an acute shortage of surface ships in the ocean zone) it is able to prevent the Americans from approaching not only the Russian coast (by the way, coastal complexes can also be equipped with all these missiles), but also, in principle, to points of the Eurasian continent that are important for us.

In this situation, any ground forces stationed in Europe are doomed to destruction within a short time.

Russia has deprived the Americans of their favorite toy-the ability to conduct a non-nuclear war with a nuclear state with strategic goals. The United States is so far behind in conventional weapons that it can expect to avoid defeat only by immediately starting a nuclear war, and with a massive launch of everything it has. At the same time, given the rapid development of Russian air defense and missile defense systems, it is not a fact that even such a suicidal move will help them.

For a long time after the collapse of the USSR, Russia was in this situation. American conventional superiority dictated the need for a massive nuclear response. Since it was clear that no one would start a nuclear war because of the bombing of Yugoslavia or because of the free behavior of the United States in the post-Soviet space (a massive nuclear strike can only be carried out once, and only when there is a non-trivial threat of destroying your own state), the Americans for decades had complete freedom of

Now the United States finds itself in this helpless role. Russia's hands are free for active politics. American generals and admirals expect to be able to maintain the balance of power in the ocean and maintain the ability of their fleet to conduct active operations by increasing monitoring of the deployment of Russian ships and submarines. This should make it possible to conduct an early deployment of US naval forces in the ocean, so that Russian ships are within the range of their weapons.

On bezrybye and cancer fish. Perhaps, for a while, such a strategy will really allow the Americans, due to the significant quantitative advantage of their fleet, to keep Russian ships on combat duty at gunpoint. This does not cancel the
However, given the technical condition of the American fleet, the repair capabilities and the speed of commissioning new ships (already obsolete at the time of laying compared to the Russian ones), this strategy can be effective for a year or two. All this time, the US Navy will experience a serious overstrain, as it will have to significantly increase the presence of its ships in the ocean, which means reducing the time for their repair, maintenance and rest of the crews. After a couple of years of such a race, ships will start to fail in batches, and it's not a fact that American sailors will survive. They've become a little too tender in recent years. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that all this time the Russian fleet will increase its power, and Washington should also take into account the growing Chinese fleet.

Given that the Americans have not yet abandoned negotiations on a new system of international security, declaring their readiness to meet at the expert level as early as late January or early February, the entire range of measures taken by Russia, from issuing an ultimatum to testing the Zircon, is designed to ensure the most constructive position of the United States during these negotiations.

If earlier Moscow only promised the United States that in the event of a conflict it would hit the decision-making points, now it is demonstrating its ability to do this and the inability of the United States to defend itself. Americans are invited to negotiate before things get worse, but the choice, of course, is up to them.

https://ukraina.ru/opinion/20211227/1032972308.html

TASS reports:

МОСКВА, 13 января. /ТАСС/. Госкомиссия по итогам государственных испытаний рекомендовала принять гиперзвуковую крылатую ракету "Циркон" на вооружение надводных кораблей Военно-морского флота (ВМФ) России. Об этом ТАСС сообщил источник, близкий к военному ведомству."Госкомиссия по итогам государственных испытаний гиперзвуковой ракеты "Циркон" с надводного носителя рекомендовала принять ее на вооружение надводных кораблей ВМФ России", - сказал он.По данным собеседника агентства, испытания "Циркона" с подводного носителя после двух выполненных осенью 2021 года успешных пусков должны продолжиться в 2024 году.

Translation: MOSCOW, January 13. / TASS /. Based on the results of state tests, the State Commission recommended that the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile be deployed on surface ships of the Russian Navy. This was reported to TASS by a source close to the military department. "Based on the results of state tests of the Zircon hypersonic missile from a surface carrier, the State Commission recommended that it be adopted by surface ships of the Russian Navy," he said. According to the interlocutor of the agency, tests of Zircon from an underwater carrier after two successful launches performed in the fall of 2021 should continue in 2024.