Some observers have warned that the survival of the world’s biggest warships will be at risk in an era of long-range, precision-guided anti-ship missiles and hypersonic weapons. But you can't strike what you can't see. Here's why it's surprisingly difficult to find and track U.S. carriers.
Share to twitterCritics of U.S. aircraft carriers have been arguing for decades that the survival of the world’s biggest warships will increasingly be at risk in an era of long-range, precision-guided anti-ship missiles. In recent years, China has typically been identified as the military power most likely to drive U.S. carriers from the sea.
Chinese attackers would face numerous challenges in trying to complete the complex"kill chain" associated with engaging a U.S. aircraft carrier.So what can be so hard about targeting them, using the extensive arsenal of anti-ship missiles that China has accumulated? Well for starters, there are the huge distances within which carriers operating in the Western Pacific can hide. The South China Sea alone measures 1.
But let’s back up for a moment and consider the multiple hurdles that Chinese attackers would need to overcome to successfully target a carrier.
China has at least two huge radars that can do this, but their utility is modest. First, they must operate at long wavelengths that generate relatively little information in order to bounce off the ionosphere rather than passing through it. Second, at each bounce to and from the target, much energy is lost. Third, the resulting picture of surveilled areas is of such low resolution that the radar cannot establish a target track even if it detects a carrier.
The third find-and-fix option China has would be manned or unmanned radar planes. But U.S. carrier strike groups maintain a dense defensive perimeter in the air around their locations that includes interceptor aircraft, networked surface-to-air missiles, surveillance planes and airborne jammers. No Chinese aircraft is likely to get close enough to a carrier to establish a sustained target track.
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