It Appears I was WRONG: 2nd Chinese Indigenous Aircraft Carrier to Have EMALS Catapults

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: gariac

Which is why modern defenses are built around SeaRAM and Standards, not CIWS.

I realize Brownings would be useless, which was my point. The attack on the HSV-2 is being held up as proof that modern ships are defenseless against missiles, but Swift didn't have a single useful defense it could have used against an inbound missile. It wasn't originally commissioned to be in a war zone, it was commissioned as a demonstrator for the US Navy.

The problem is a ship is both slow moving and only moves in two degrees of freedom. It will always be an easy target. Kinetic systems will reach a breaking point due to overload.

The Mongols pretty much proved mobility is a force multiplier. The rest is history.

a reply to: gariac

I keep hearing how (insert weapon system here) is either useless, or easily defeated because of this weakness or that. Yet all of those supposedly obsolete systems are being built in huge numbers all over the place, as fast as they can be developed.

Hell, at the rate things are obsolete or declared next to useless by people we might as well just build missiles and nothing else, because apparently those are the only decent weapons ever developed.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: gariac

I keep hearing how (insert weapon system here) is either useless, or easily defeated because of this weakness or that. Yet all of those supposedly obsolete systems are being built in huge numbers all over the place, as fast as they can be developed.

Hell, at the rate things are obsolete or declared next to useless by people we might as well just build missiles and nothing else, because apparently those are the only decent weapons ever developed.

Missiles have one really bad drawback. They leave a calling card.

All systems have finite resources. At some point, they will be overpowered. I'd hate to be off the DPRK coast when you who who says Kim Jong Un has a little rocket and Kim says "screw it" then launches an attack.

So much world peace depends on people not being hot heads. I'm trying to think of the last time the US was in a symmetric war. So much technology we have really hasn't been battle tested.

a reply to: gariac

Well hell then, just get rid of it all. It's all obviously useless and obsolete, then just get rid of it and stop building anything military related.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Anything with range and hypersonic capability seems to be rather hard to track and destroy given the velocities involved and reaction time required to counter.

Missiles of the hypersonic variety do indeed seem to be the only type of offensive weapons we will require in our modern-day theatre of war, taken to there logical conclusion.

Imagine through not to far into the future when we may be able to equip say our B-2 bombers, or whatever superseded those, with such hypersonic missile systems? That will indeed be a real game changer, once stealth and range are part of the equation.

a reply to: andy06shake

The key is engagement time, not tracking time. Hence, the SM-6, and ER counter missiles. If they can push the engagement range out, they can put more missiles in the air at it.

china-defense.blogspot.com...

Shandong (2nd Carrier) to start sea trials soon.

a reply to: anzha

www.defencetalk.com...

Putting this here because the previous link was about the Sino EMALS on the second carrier. Now it sounds like its on the third. The sea trials of the 2nd carrier will tell us definitively if the Shandong has the cats.