Despite how it is portrayed in the global media China’s proposed Anti Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) is not the ultimate nemesis of the US Navy but instead is a very dangerous war escalation device, that if used would be very hard to manage. The system poses just as many problems for China as it does for the US and even if the considerable technical hurdles could all be accomplished it still leaves many significant and dangerous factors wide open.
War and the Carrier Killer
Although it is entirely credible that China would unexpectedly strike a carrier without any warning or notable increase in regional tension this would actually be very out of character for the PLA
China has a predictable history of giving many warnings before striking an opponent. Of course, this doesn’t discount commanders being so blinkered to the signs, like McCarthur and blundering on regardless, but characteristically, China can usually be counted on to give clear warning signs of an attack. In the modern age, it is more than likely that tensions would have significantly risen or actual conflict taking place before the ASBM is considered as a strike option. James Kraska’s story of a single, untraceable ASBM sinking the USS George Washington out of the blue is unrealistic and the global atmosphere is more likely to resemble Harper’s piece on Chinese Missiles and the Walmart Factor. As offensive operations rarely take place in isolation, we can confidently surmise that the US and China will have already gone through a significant ratcheting up of tensions, both economically and militarily, and any decision to hit a carrier will not be made in a bubble. Therefore, on the verge of war, the PLA will be doing everything it can to find carrier battle groups while the battle groups will be doing everything they can to slip into favorable positions un-noticed.
It should be noted here that the concept of an ASBM first came about from a study where they claimed the over-the-horizon radar could differentiate between different ships by comparing, over time, the frequent air activity around the carrier. Due to this, in a heightened war-situation we can reasonably assume that the carrier will not be flying multitudes of planes if it’s moving into a potential battle position and forward air cover could easily come from fighters flying from any number of global bases and using air-refueling. The carrier will be in a high alert, probably moving at a good pace to out run subs and in complete communication silence.
There are any number of war scenarios existing on what the carrier would be doing, but let’s say, for the sake of this narrative, that the carrier is moving at 28knots with only a small escort, including some Aegis, and aiming to join up with a larger group to move forward as an overwhelming battle fleet into a hot zone off China’s coast.
To any over-the-horizon radar a silent, cruising carrier would be almost indistinguishable from other ships, so the PLA would need multiple positive IDs to launch an attack. On top of this, any number of carrier battle groups could be coming from a multitude of directions. The Pacific Ocean is purportedly 166million square kilometers. The Indian Ocean is 44million square kilometers. The South China Sea alone is over 3.5million square kilometers. So the analogy of, “looking for a needle in a haystack,” doesn’t even do it justice. Carriers maybe big, but on the scale of things they are infinitesimally small in a huge mass of monotone sea.
Let’s say for arguments sake that the PLA detection systems and more importantly the guys working them are totally on the money and manage to nail down a battle group to a certain area. The overhead satellites are then able to pick out ships moving in a specific direction. The satellites then need to keep a track on the ships movement in real time. Not as easy as it sounds. Don’t forget, GPS works by a device actively calling out to the satellites to find it. This will not happen in a war situation, it will be a completely passive search. It will be up to the controllers, probably based somewhere deep in China’s interior, to manually control the satellites guidance system to first locate, then precisely follow and plot the battle group's direction. Let’s say that the modern Chinese satellites can lock onto the carrier and follow it automatically once it is located. This still isn’t good enough to target though. The next step is to get an over-the-horizon radar signal and preferably drones on target. At this point it is just not credible to assume that the PLA would target a carrier based on just satellite co-ordinates alone, even if numerous satellites were triangulating it. They will need some other kind of terminal guidance system to help the missiles hit the target. The margin of error on a fast moving, possibly erratic target would be too great, even for a suite of missiles. Bear in mind, conventional DF-21s missiles carrying only a 1000lb warhead and traveling at Mach 10 are going to need to hit, otherwise they’ll just make a very, very fast splash into the sea. (see here for some perspective) It would certainly put the fear of God into the sailors who saw it, but it wouldn’t stop the ships. On top of this, carriers are designed to get hit, or have planes crash into them so are incredibly durable and tough. Even a direct hit by a DF-21 with it's huge wave of kinetic energy is not guaranteed to terminally incapacitate a carrier. It would probably need multiple direct hits, then followed by sustained submarine attacks to sink it.
The analogy comes to mind of getting a hand-full of glass marbles and trying to throw them into a plastic cup from a few feet away. Chances are you might get one or two in the cup if you're really good, but it's not guaranteed, and the ones that miss just don't count at all. Firing a missile from 2000km away and getting it with 20-30metres is a fantastic shot - but it just doesn't count. It has to be a bull everytime.
Let’s assume that things are going great for the PLA and it is able to get a confirmed “eyeball” sighting by a paramilitary fishing boat of the carrier. So the satellite data can now be corroborated with a first hand account that it is definitely a US carrier in the area that they're concentrating on. This of course assumes that the US Navy wouldn’t be neutralizing or jamming any boats in the vicinity, but let’s say the information gets through to the 2nd Artillery. On top of this, another lucky break happens, a PLA sub sights the carrier and also gives a confirmed sighting, but does not engage because the carrier is going too fast. The carrier could be zipping along at 30knots, with the max speed of the Jin around 20knots, if it wasn’t already cued for an attack it could only watch as it rushed by. A message is sent to other Chinese subs to rendezvous at a certain point along the carriers proposed course and lie in wait. The subs will be used in a second tier attack on the carrier after it has received a volley from the DF-21s.
With two confirmed sightings and a satellite track the PLA controllers are confident that they are zeroing in on a carrier kill and send word to the Central Military Commission, 套机构两块牌子(CMC)
The CMC is already in session in its war room and begins to seriously consider making a strike on the battle group given the positive identification and reliable satellite track. Word is now sent to the countless mobile DF-21s launchers across the country to get ready for a launch. Mathematicians and strategists in the PLA begin to try and predict the carrier’s route and decide upon the best place to try and launch a strike and cue up the subs for the definitive kill. Other attack platforms are readied to complement the attack once it is underway. UAVs are launched from Chinese ships and the mainland to directly locate the carrier. As the US ships draw closer, Chinese over-the-horizon radars begin to try and distinguish the carrier from the escorts.
Meanwhile, off the coast of China, the multiple over-the-horizon radars light up like bonfires for the numerous US subs that are lying quietly in position, cued to strike on command at Chinese ground targets and subs. The carrier is not blindly, blundering into a Chinese trap but is part of a larger, counter trap being set by the US submarine fleet.
The CMC, gets on to the Emergency Hotline to Washington and warns them that, “they can not be held responsible if any US warships enter Chinese Territorial Waters”.
For Washington, this is “game-on”. They were expecting the CCP to give a final warning and they characteristically do, right on cue. All US ships in the region are put on alert that a missile attack is imminent and aimed at the incoming carrier battle groups.
Minutes drain by like hours. The carrier group moves forward and despite the US Air Force shooting down a number of PLAAF stealth, UAVs, two of them slip through the net and lock onto the carrier. The carrier is now painted with exact, real-time coordinates streaming from two undetected UAVs, the over-the-horizon radar and satellite tracking. This is enough data to complete the ASBM terminal guidance system. The 2nd Artillery quickly informs the CMC that they have all the data they need to launch an attack on the incoming battle group. Time is of the essence now. The carrier needs to be neutralized before it can get in range of the Chinese mainland with its F-18s. An effective battle group can punch 600 attacks on target in just one day and repeat that for days if not weeks. It is essential that if the strike takes place it happens as soon a possible while the carrier is still far out to sea. The 2nd Artillery commanders urge their superiors that they have been incredibly lucky to have quickly amassed such reliable data and the time is now to strike hard, so as to knock the Americans onto their back foot. With a carrier sunk, or at least incapacitated, this will forestall any greater push by the Allied forces and could possibly weaken the 'fickle' US public’s will to fight.
This is enough for the CMC and they order the strike. After receiving the orders, the 2nd Artillery begins to transmit the target data to the 100 DF-21s that will launch. Note: this is not a static target with fixed coordinates that they’re aiming to hit. So, the data can’t be finalized. The DF-21s will be launched into the air without the final co-ordinates in their guidance system. This will have to come later, while it’s flying at Mach 10. Which is not to be underestimated as an incredibly difficult thing to do. Fortunately, Chinese scientists have already cracked this incredibly difficult task. The 2nd Artillery’s C4ISR are confident that they can transmit to the terminal guidance system on board the warhead at the critical time using the over-the-horizon radar data, UAVs and their new, advanced satellite communications streaming. The DF-21 will launch into one orbit, then change direction and zero in on the carrier. The speed at which this is done will out maneuver the Aegis and Patriot tracking systems, that traditionally rely on predictable trajectories of missiles to intercept.
The DF-21s begin to fire-up.
Meanwhile, the eyes and ears of the US military are scouring China for signs of a missile launches. Just like in Iraq they have a window of detection as the missiles are readied for firing. Only this time, the US can’t strike them as they prepare, as they’re on the Chinese Mainland in protected airspace and this would be crossing a significant ‘red-line’ at this stage in the conflict. However, as soon as the birds are airborne, all bets will be off. As the mobile launchers prepare to launch all US subs in the region, including a suite of Ohio class (SSBNs) nuclear warhead carrying subs are put on high alert for imminent launch. As the Chinese missiles begin to fire up squadrons of B-52s and B1s take off from Guam, Diego Garcia and Barksdale packing conventional and nuclear weapons. Within minutes the US has hundreds of bombers in the sky. Nuclear Silos across the US go to high alert for imminent launch. Russian listening posts pick up the Chinese actions and also all the US activity and engage in similar counter measures, readying its army for a possible nuclear exchange. The minutes now quickly drain down and all the 21s are ready to fly. Final word goes out to the 2nd Artillery commander who relays this to the CMC one last time. Convinced that sinking a carrier will put the US on the back foot they decisively give the go ahead, and 50 of the 100 missiles are sent skyward.
STOP…
Take a second to contemplate the gravity of this scenario…
At this exact moment China has launched 50, unknown sub-orbital ballistic missiles into the air. The type and destination are unknown. It could be part of an ASBM package, or it could be a preemptive nuclear strike on an unspecified country? The US, Russia, India, UK and France would all go to DEFCON One and could all release an instant nuclear counter strike on China. The world has evolved to avoid using ballistic missiles as the preferred weapon of choice in war as they could easily provoke a full blown nuclear exchange. This is why the ASBM system is so out of whack with current weapon systems. It can not be differentiated from a preemptive nuclear strike.
The US is now faced with two choices, are these airborne missiles conventional or nuclear? If they believe they are nuclear then China will be on the receiving end of an unprecedented nuclear retaliatory strike by the The Allies and possibly Russia, even India. The US may also assume that these missiles are part of an ASBM package but may still be nuclear, so again it would launch nuclear weapons to counter.
The US has almost no way of knowing what kind of missiles have just been launched from the mobile carriers.
So much for the ASBM keeping the US at arms length. Instead it has the potential to cause a nuclear exchange.
The only way China could guarantee that it wouldn’t receive a nuclear counter-strike from launching so many DF-21s into the sky is if they pre-arranged some signal to inform the US, Russia, India, France and Britain that they were only using conventional weapons. Such a system would be inherently flawed because why would anyone believe them, and if it did work it would be giving away too much intelligence.
“Oh, hi, yeah, so this is Xi Xinping, yeah, um, you know those missiles we just launched well they’re conventional, not nuclear ok, so can you make your response appropriate?”
A funny joke, but really, how else would you suggest China, a nuclear armed country, convince the other nuclear nations of the world that the launching of multiple, sub-orbital ballistic missiles is not a nuclear preemptive strike but is only aimed at ships?
This not so very small point aside, let’s assume for the sake of the story, that the US doesn’t carry out a massive retaliatory, nuclear strike but is confident that it's only a bunch of conventional DF-21s flying at Mach 10 aimed at its carrier battle groups. Only?
As soon as the birds are airborne, US subs and possibly stealth bombers off the coast will begin targeting the Chinese over-the-horizon radars, which will have two choices, keep transmitting data or risk getting hit. If they power down and relocate quickly, they may live, but the DF-21s will be left flying blind. As China has launched missiles from the mainland at the US Navy, it will no longer be considered a naval battle and the numerous subs and stealth bombers will begin attacking relevant C4ISR on the Chinese mainland. With a billion dollar carrier at stake and the lives of thousands of Americans it’s a “no brainer” now and a race against time as the US tries to take out critical Chinese infrastructure on the coast. The DF-21s, which will probably be launched from further inland will take around 12minutes to reach their target as they will first need to leave the atmosphere, and then come back down at Mach 10. Plus their target is a 1000kms out. The question will be, can the US cruise missiles take out enough critical assets to break the delicate information chain needed to bring the DF-21s down on target? Remember, only a bull counts. Near misses count for nothing, no matter how close.
In unison to this missile exchange, military assets right across the Pacific Rim will go on to a maximum war footing. In Japan, Korea, Australia, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Russia the military will go to their highest alerts. More than likely, there will be air-combat in the areas around Japan as twitchy pilots from US and the JMSDF engage the PLAAF in dog fights. Across Japan, Patriot batteries stir into life and a string of 35 Aegis Cruisers from the US, Japan, Korea, and Australia brace for missile intercepts. Japan would assume that any number of these missiles could be aimed at her and would immediately begin to mobilize a counter attack.
After being alerted that China has launched multiple missiles into the air the carrier/s will go into a defensive maneuver. One can only guess what the carrier/s might do to avoid being hit, but their options are wide. Maybe an All-stop, hard left, hard right, reverse, full power ahead, 15 degree left, 20 degrees right. The choices are infinite, but all on board the carrier will be waiting for the maneuver. For the PLA to hit the carrier it is going to need 100% real time communication streaming between the drone that is painting it, the over-the-horizon-radar and the satellite that is passing information on to the Mach 10 bird. All the while, the vital C4ISR systems needed to maintain this data link will be attacked kinetically by US cruise missiles. Just one break in the system will leave the ASBMs blind and useless in a critical time sensitive window. The US trap is sprung, the carrier has acted as big piece of cheese to light up all of China’s essential offensive C4ISR infrastructure.
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) conducts rudder turns during sea trials.
Despite having all the C4ISR systems under fire, maybe some of the missiles will get through. Maybe even some hit the carrier directly, but this is not the end of the war as the Chinese media have been predicting, this is only the start. Across the Pacific and South China Seas an intensive submarine war is now taking place. The JMSDF, with the world’s best sub hunting navy would be actively hunting down Chinese subs. Chinese ports will be mined to stop subs returning and US Navy assets will begin a choking, worldwide blockade of China’s natural resources in order to win a war of attrition. The Chinese Navy will have no choice but to punch out or be confined to a just a few miles off its coast. The ASBM has not put the US on the back-foot but has actually brought down the entire might of the military onto China in an unprecedented manner. What could have been confined to naval skirmishes or a small war has quickly escalated into a full-blown fight to the finish. The ASBM attack has acted as a Great Leap Forward, leaping right over, air-combat, naval skirmishes or blockades with the possibility of negotiated settlement at the UN and propelled China into total war. Hundreds of B-52s now standoff the Chinese coast, out of SAM range, and launch volley after volley of cruise missiles at any radar or C4ISR station that dares to light up and direct the Chinese Air Force or missile systems. Having had a carrier attacked and possibly hit by a ballistic missile the US will begin to dismantle China’s offensive capabilities. First with cruise missiles, then with stealth bombers and finally once everything is softened up, with other carriers. China will be facing very few options. The US is not going to invade China and get bogged down in a land war, but it will impose a death-grip on Chinese commerce. The CCP will have to work hard and be very lucky to break free. The end game for the US will be the collapse of the CCP and the destruction of its offensive capability.
The desired end game for the CCP ….. ?
Why did it all go so bad, so quickly?
Well, it was the launching of ballistic missiles. Since this threat has been placed clearly on the table by China, the US has no choice but to react to it as though it is a potential all-out, preemptive nuclear strike. This is why it has to mobilize all of its bomber regiments, subs and nuclear forces across the world and throw its full might into suppressing it. If China launches ballistic missiles then the US will react as though it were under a full-blown nuclear attack. So, what to China seems like a perfectly good weapon system to gain advantage in a limited naval battle is to the US the first step on the ladder to total war, or even nuclear war.
This is why the ASBM will never be used. Firstly, it is too difficult to create the real time connectivity to make it reliable. Secondly, the system is much too difficult to protect from a kinetic attack by the formidable US submarine fleet that can roam the waters off China at will and easily target China's over-the-horizon radars.
Thirdly, and most importantly, it would escalate things much too quickly. Faced with multiple, unknown, sub-orbital ballistic missiles in the sky, the US will have no choice but to go to DEFCON One with the prospect of imminent nuclear war. A fully functional and operational ASBM system is no different from preemptive nuclear attack, as it can’t be differentiated whether they are conventional or nuclear weapons being launched.
Both the US and Russia have faced this for more than 70years and this is why they have never sought to initially attack each other with conventional, sub-orbital ballistic missiles. The Soviets may even have been able to perfect such an ASBM system many years ago, but they quickly realized that if they were to start throwing conventional ballistic missiles at the US Navy it would invite a prompt nuclear response.
Oddly, China seems to think that it can side step this very real danger and use sub-orbital ballistic weapons in limited naval wars.
Author: Editor
Copyright © Chimerica War. 2011
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