Satellites and over-the-horizon radar. China’s recent advancements in space exploration tech are all a handy mediatic smokescreen/testbed for their increasingly more technologically advanced satellites.
How does that information get processed and sent to the KV in real time as it is performing reentry and has a white-hot plasma shield in front of it? Sure, a network of satellites providing 24/7/365 coverage of the relevant parts of the Pacific could do this but whether that capability exists is unknown and also untested.
It’s certainly a credible threat but I think a lot of this “death of the carrier” rhetoric is coming way too soon, especially when midair refueling exists.
It’s funny that this makes the naval commanders nervous about sailing carrier groups in the South China Sea, but sadly that just makes them ask for yet more weapons that our government is all too happy to provide.
I’d imagine it works like any other ballistic missile, even the ones used by the west. The difference lies in the fact that a carrier is technically a moving target, unlike a city. My theory is that the KV-satellite acquires some sort of firing solution before re-entry then just beelines towards where the target is going to be. While carriers are surprisingly nimble for their size, they have little warning of the incoming munition, typology, and intended target, and may not be able to outmaneuver the projectile. Just baseless speculation on my part, btw.
The death of the carrier to me is probably somewhat overdue, precisely because of tech like midair refueling, but also due to the commanders’ own shyness about committing a carrier into open battle against a peer opponent with their own military and navy. Even without wunderwaffen like the DF-21, basic-bitch anti-ship missiles can simply saturate their targets and overwhelm their defenses for a fraction of the production and deployment costs of a carrier.
It’s funny that this makes the naval commanders nervous about sailing carrier groups in the South China Sea, but sadly that just makes them ask for yet more weapons that our government is all too happy to provide.
This has been the case for a while; it’s all theater, a farce put on by ghouls in the MIC and their former West Point buddies in the Navy and Pentagon to keep the cycle of grift going on in perpetuity. In reality these weapons were almost never meant to be fielded in anger, because if either A) The weapons are fielded and don’t work against a real opponent -or- B) Escalation of conflict harms the economy to the point they can’t continue the grift, then they lose out.
I’d imagine it works like any other ballistic missile, even the ones used by the west. The difference lies in the fact that a carrier is technically a moving target, unlike a city.
Which therefore means it cannot work like any other ballistic missile…
they have little warning of the incoming munition, typology, and intended target,
Ballistic missile launches are easy to detect and their trajectories are predictable. If China sends a few up on a trajectory that’s consistent with the location of a carrier group, the US is going to know exactly what is coming and the carrier will take evasive actions and at this point we get to the unanswered question of how the KV does terminal guidance and how well it can hit an evading carrier, which you’re right are surprisingly nimble.
Thankfully, commanders haven’t really had an opportunity against a peer state (in that we didn’t have open war with the Soviets and haven’t yet with China) and hopefully that doesn’t change. Agree with the rest of what you said. The cited sources for this article are exactly the kind of people you described.
