Fisher sees an advantage in taking cheap, proven missiles and giving them greater reach with HGV warheads. The testing of the WU-14, and the prospective difficulty of intercepting it with missiles, greatly raises the urgency of developing U.S. directed-energy defenses, he adds.
Yet that depends on how soon the HGV is operational. At a conference this month organized by the Center for a New America Security, former Japanese navy commander Vice Adm. Yoji Koda suggested that in the future Chinese nuclear submarines would constitute the main threat in the waters near China, with ASBMs “intercepting incoming U.S. forces further out.” However, in his estimation, it could take 10-15 years before the ASBM becomes a major threat. An anti-ship HGV would be even more distant.
Hitting a ship with either a maneuvering or HGV warhead is not simple. The target has to be detected, identified, precisely located and tracked. Data must be passed from sensors to a command system, and perhaps to the missile, for mid-course correction. The missile's guidance system must be able to find the target within a zone of uncertainty that depends on how far the target can move in the time between location and intercept. The guidance system must resist jamming and discriminate between types of ships, such as carriers and destroyers. The fuse, if there is one, must not be disrupted.
U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Johnathan Greenert referred to that critical “chain of events” in May, and said the Navy was developing, or had developed, systems, means and procedures for disrupting or countering the DF-21D. As it did with the threat of Soviet missile-carrying Tu-22M aircraft in the Cold War, the Navy seeks to break early links in the chain, such as detection and identification, with maneuver and control of emissions—but Greenert himself cast doubt on that approach at the surface navy conference. Noting that the Navy needs a new emphasis on “electromagnetic maneuver warfare,” Greenert says, “we have to learn what our signature is when we use radar, communications and Wi-Fi. We think that we turn everything off and everything is silent. But we have done tests and we are not silent.”
Space-based radar, a leading candidate for searching large oceanic areas, has become less costly and more efficient, and there are hints of Chinese-Russian collaboration in this area. NPO Mashinostroyeniya launched its first Kondor-E synthetic aperture radar satellite on June 27 last year, to fill an order for an undisclosed customer. China's development of unmanned air systems with reduced radar cross sections, such as the joined-wing Soar Dragon, could also point to maritime surveillance uses.
At a briefing shortly before the surface navy conference, Jim Sheridan, Lockheed director of Aegis programs, was asked specifically about whether the Navy had approached the company about Aegis handling the DF-21D, and replied, “There's been some discussion. I'm not going into that area.”
In the event of a hit, analysts have often looked at the potential for a hypersonic missile to cause damage with kinetic energy alone. Andrew Davies of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute is skeptical, calculating that the energy of an inert object of a 500 kg RV at an impact velocity of Mach 6 would be comparable to the kinetic and explosive energy of a subsonic Boeing AGM-84 Harpoon, and only a quarter of Russia's supersonic Tactical Missiles Corp./Raduga P-270 Moskit. Raduga's Cold War “carrier-killer,” the Kh-22, is a 12,800-lb. weapon that hits at a speed above Mach 4 with a 2,200-lb.-class, shaped-charge warhead. However, classified studies carried out by McDonnell Douglas in the 1980s also showed that much smaller warheads—for instance, dispenser weapons with long-rod penetrators—would cause enough damage to a warship to put it out of commission, pending major repairs
