The U.S. Navy is greatly endangered by the global proliferation of anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles. Some analysts, like Dennis Gormley, Andrew Erickson, and Jingdong Yuan at the National Defense University, say U.S. aircraft carriers in the western Pacific are sitting ducks for communist China’s missiles, especially their CM-400AKG Mach 5.5 Wrecker cruise missile and their DF-21 ballistic missile, dubbed “the carrier killer.” They are wrong.
Simply put, the ongoing improvement of missile defense systems on U.S. Navy warships is keeping pace with the development of new Chinese missiles and with others that are appearing in North Korea, Iran, and Russia. Innovative U.S. shipborne defenses with the capability to detect, track, destroy or deflect such advanced missiles are now being deployed, as they must be, if our warships and the world’s commercial vessels are to have access to the Persian Gulf, South China Sea, Sea of Japan, and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The capabilities of China’s Wrecker and DF-21 missiles, for example, are far from being ignored. On June 21st the navy carried out sea trials of a new countermeasure to anti-ship missiles called Pandarra Fog. Slated to be deployed as part of a warship’s defensive armament, the Pandarra Fog system creates radar-absorbing carbon-fiber clouds that prevent a missile’s seeker from finding its target. It is a simple but effective means of blinding the radar target acquisition system of anti-ship supersonic cruise missiles and ballistic missiles like the Wrecker and the DF-21.
“This isn’t just smoke or chaff, this is a high tech obscurant, which can be effective against an array of missile homing systems,” said Antonio Siordia, U.S. Seventh Fleet’s science adviser.
Then there are the laser cannons that are joining the fleet this year. Just one sailor can operate that weapon, which can burn through missiles and fry electronics with laser beams that can also shoot down drones and disable swarming speedboats. Able to fire continuously, the laser beam projector is also less expensive than launching defensive missiles.
These weapons, and other systems like the Aegis Combat System, give our aircraft carrier strike groups layered defenses that depend on long range naval radar to detect and track threats, including aircraft and anti-ship missiles. As a result, the navy has studied and continuously improved its radar requirements, beginning with analyses like the 1964 Withington Study that defined the next generation Advanced Surface Missile System -- the rock on which Aegis was built. Because of that rigorous study’s assessment of future threats, technologies, and the art of the scientifically possible, the navy now has the Aegis SPY-1 radar. Aegis was then expanded from navy standard building-block architecture to one that uses off the shelf components for rapid technology changes. This adaptability has vastly extended radar detection and tracking ranges of Aegis cruisers, both over the horizon and into space.
The navy is now building on the strengths of Aegis to address the new threats posed to our aircraft carrier battle groups by developing the Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) for Arleigh Burke destroyers and Aegis cruisers. This new technology is also aligned with principles of the Withington Study, and promises to provide even greater radar capabilities to our navy’s surface fleet.
Among its other attributes, AMDR will deliver increased accuracy and longer range detection of enemy forces and missile threats, even when operating in hard jamming environments. As a bonus, its reduced space, weight, power, and cooling requirements will help maximize the service life of ships deployed with that new radar. Of prime importance, AMDR augments our maritime integrated air and missile defenses that will protect the navy’s dwindling fleet of aircraft carriers from future advances in anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles.
America’s national interests greatly depend upon our aircraft carriers as premier instruments to project power and to support our foreign policy. Protecting those carriers and their escorts is also of paramount importance to the safety of American warfighters and assets abroad, as well as our ability to keep sea lanes open to peaceful commerce. Accomplishing those tasks requires a commitment to fund continuous development of radar like AMDR and of other anti-missile technology that will overcome tomorrow’s threats to our warships.
But even today, when our sailors go down to the sea in carriers, they are not sitting ducks for anti-ship missiles -- including those of communist China.
Rear Admiral Edward Masso is a retired Surface Warfare Officer, who served in surface combatants and aircraft carriers. A Senior Fellow in Cyber Security at Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, his consulting firm, Flagship Connection, is based in Arlington, Virginia.
