China Builds Missile Targets Shaped Like U.S. Aircraft Carrier in Remote Desert | Hacker News Reader

China Builds Missile Targets Shaped Like U.S. Aircraft Carrier in Remote Desert

news.usni.org

38 pointswillvarfar20 comments

I remember reading about this a long time ago. I don't really remember the details, but the interesting part of was that China was developing / already developed space based missiles which reenter the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds to destroy carriers. Apparently many believed that this technology would completely negate the usefulness of aircraft carriers, and severely hamper the US advantage that comes from their lead in this area.

China doesn't have any space based missiles. They have some mobile land based intermediate range ballistic missiles which could potentially be used against aircraft carriers. All ballistic missiles are hypersonic when they re-enter the atmosphere. Those missiles don't negate the usefulness of aircraft carriers because the missiles can only hit a target if they get reasonably precise and timely targeting data.

Also carrier escorts carry ABMs which might be able to intercept a limited number of ballistic missiles.

I suspect the parent is mixing up the other weeks news about the ballistic to orbital to trans continental glide path demonstration that significantly challenges traditional ballistic missile defense due to the orbital & glide path conponents.

This is a strange comment. It is an aircraft carrier. Any country with a satellite already has extremely precise and permanent targeting data on every one of the US aircraft carriers.

anyway: https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/41/1/7/12133/Future-Warf...

Aircraft carriers move around quickly. No nation, not even China, has enough reconnaissance satellites to maintain continuous coverage. And the satellites aren't survivable; they will be the first casualties in any major conflict.

Targeting data can potentially also be linked from submarines or aircraft, but those are also vulnerable. There are many ways to break the kill chain. That's not to say that carriers are invulnerable; they can probably be knocked out eventually by a peer adversary who is willing to accept heavy losses.

Carriers are very slow compared to missiles. Between the time the missile is launched and impact there will only be around ~6km in radius to the set of points where the carrier coule he.

China is making unmanned submarines and aircraft capable of targeting a carrier. It doesn't matter if your drone is shot down, for it to be shot down it's probably already close enough to detect the carrier. Same for a submarine.

Well if you use a simple convolutional neural network and can get within visual range, hitting the target should be trivial.

Huh? I don't know why you think a convolutional neural network would help but that's not how this stuff works. Due to heating effects and clouds there is no "visual range" for a ballistic missile. Any terminal course corrections will be done with radar.

That's incorrect. There is a visual range. You can either image in the UV spectrum, or simply choose your optics so you can image the carrier from before re-entry.

Once you've got a position there's nothing the carrier can do in those 30 seconds before impact so you won't hit it, so there is not even a necessity for terminal course correction.

Total science fiction. You're not going to see enough from orbit with the type of optical sensor that can fit on the re-entry vehicle.

Actually yes, you can. You can run the numbers if you wish. To see a target that is 300m large from 300km away you need an angular resolution of 1 miliradian which requires a 0.5mm aperture in the visible spectrum. To be able to image it well and tell it apart from something else consistently and obviously you'd have more than you need with a hundred times the resolution which would require a 50mm aperture.

In other words, absolutely and completely feasible. You could hold a camera with an 1200mm f/20 Cassegrain lens that could take a picture of a carrier from 300km with a fair amount of detail in your hands, let alone fit it into a 3 ton reentry vehicle.

That's idealized theoretical optics. Not something that works through a real world atmosphere. A total joke.

I assure you this is actually how it works. Im not talking theoretical either, you can go out and take a picture of the International Space Station throught the atmosphere using equipment that can be held with a single hand.

You'll be able to see the solar panels and various other little details.

Now that's a 100 meter target 400-600 km away. An aircraft carrier is even easier.

See for example https://www.amateurastrophotography.com/how-to-photography-t...

It turns out the atmosphere is not that big of an issue for such a large target. The ISS is much worse because the atmosphere is at the beginning of the light path so diffraction is minimised, in reality a picture of an aircraft carrier from orbit with the same lens would be much sharper.

Also, in real life these kinds of optics are really close to the theoretical limit, just fyi. The theoretical limits become more difficult to reach for larger apertures and higher focal ranges, but that's a few orders of magnitude away from what's needed here.

The Chinese are going to be putting sensors on these missiles. Aircraft carriers are huge targets that can be detected perhaps even before re-entry by the missile itself. Timely and precise targeting data is unlikely to be necessary.

Not a big fan of China on a lot of things, but why would this be an issue? Realistically if they declare war on anyone it will be the US or someone armed with US military tech so I makes sense to train their army accordingly.

There are people who think China is not a threat and consequently that continuing our unbalanced economic exchange is a good thing. I suspect part of this that many older people still somehow associate China with poor developing nations despite it being the second largest economy in the world, and one that is becoming increasingly comfortable with flexing it's power overseas.

Stuff like this can be a potential wake up call for those people.

True...but I suspect those "older people [who] still somehow associate China with poor developing nations..." are not reading articles in the U.S. Naval Institute News.

From my quick read of the article - it's not so much an "issue" (to get indignant about, or try to fix) as it is a "well-informed people concerned with issues related to the USN might want to be aware of..." thing.

Yes, but they are reading or listening to the media that will give them the 10 second summary of this story without nuance.

It will be the largest economy in the next decade. But with growth comes slow downs and eventually dissatisfaction. People will always crave more eventually.

Not that I disagree with your main point, but in the interest of useless internet quibbling, India isn't armed with (very much) US tech and they have had a couple violent border clashes with China in recent years.

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