If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#18
|
|||
|
|||
In article ,
Johnny Bravo writes: On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 13:30:53 -0000, "John" wrote: Time of Flight of IRBM, 30 minutes. Speed of CVBG, 25 kts. Detection of launch, instantaneous. DSP Sats, y'know. Radius of circle that could contain the target - 12.5 Nautical Miles. 35 knots (let's be generous) and half an hour means a ship or convoy could get 32410m away from the target point. This gives an area of 3,299,954,370m2. UK trident-II missiles can 8 475kT warheads which will start fires at 9km, meaning they'll make the fuel onboard a carrier explode within an area of 254,469,005m2. That's start fires of flamable material left exposed in the open, not inside a steel hull. You're going to need to be a lot closer than that to ignite the fuel stored in a carrier. UK Trident missiles are based on the W76 warhead, not the W88 warhead, and have a 100kt yield, not 475kt. US ships constructed after 1969 were specially designed to resist the shockwave generated by a nuclear weapon. You could cause severe damage to the ship out to 1.8 nm or so. To sink it you would need to be close enough destroy the ship through overpressure by being within .8 nm or so. If you are close enough for the thermal pulse to burn through the hull to ignite the fuel the shockwave would rip the ship apart. If you wanted to guarantee a kill by being within .8 nm or so it would take about 400 warheads to cover all the ocean a 32 knot carrier could reach in 30 minutes. Catching it within 1.8 nm by two different warheads and could sink the ship from flooding and only take you 160 warheads or so; but this wouldn't be 100% certain. Sure, it's possible that you can take out a CVBG with a shotgun nuke approach, but it would take the UK 35% of it's missiles and 80% of it's warheads to be reasonably sure of success. It's worse than that, form the U.K. Nukes a CVBG standpoint. The Brits have 58 Trident D5s, (Which are stored and maintained in the U.S., but that's beside the point) and less than 200 warheads. That means that each missile's going to have 3 warheads, and you can't get all of your boats to sea. Now, just going from the declassified stuff from Crossroads Able, and applying the known scaling laws, you'd have to place a 100 KT warhead within 8,000-9,000' of a ship in order to have a reasonable chance of putting it out of action. Not sinking it, mind you, but giving it ither things to worry about rather than pulverizing you. That's an area of effect of 7 sq. NM. A 25 kt CVBG, which startes dispersing and evading on a launch warning, (You don't have to wait for the trajectory analysis, after all) could be anywhere in a 490 sq. NM area. So, in order to cover that 490 sq NM with the density required, to ensure major damage, and not outright sinking, you'd need 70 warheads. That's 23 UK Trident's worth. And we don't have 1 CVBG, we've got what, 12? With roughly 8 at sea at any givin time. So if a U.K./French sized power were to try something like that, what they'd accomplish is the complete expenditure of their strategic forces in order to completely **** off somebody with the ways & means to pull a Carthage on them. (Not that we'd do that) -- Pete Stickney A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures. -- Daniel Webster |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Australia F111 to be scrapped!! | John Cook | Military Aviation | 35 | November 10th 03 11:46 PM |