J.M. Cole reports here. Aside from the radar kit, it's strategically almost worthless - even the F-16 C/Ds were a bare minimum (of course F-35Bs would have been closer to adequate due to their VTOL capability), and yet the Obama administration has not even allowed Lockheed to sell those to Taiwan's Airforce. Instead there is an upgrade package for the existing A/B fleet to be carried out over the next decade. Had the C/Ds been approved, not only would they have increased the size of Taiwan's Airforce fleet, but they could have been delivered immediately rather than over a decade.
To hell with the U.S. and the quisling Left - Taiwanese people must develop their own domestic deterrants, and the days when air superiority was the dominant strategic element of military conflict may be coming to an end anyway.
According to this Wired article from June this year (when the Senate effectively cancelled the Navy's railgun and laser programs), the U.S. Navy spent U.S.$211 million on their railgun program from 2005 onwards. That's NT$6.4 billion. The arms package the Obama administration has just agreed to allow Taiwan to purchase was valued at U.S.$5.8 billion (NT$176 billion). Given sufficient determination, a working railgun with a respectable rate of fire could surely be developed at a fraction of this cost - perhaps a few tens of billion NT dollars. Manufacturing and deploying such guns on land at coastal positions with some concealment would naturally cost a bit more, but their tactical and strategic value as point-defense weapons would be incalculable.
Of course, the current KMT administration is never going to go for that, and a prospective DPP administration could well end up being bullied out of it or otherwise making a mess of it. We have to get away from having our military defences slaved to a centralized political system easily manipulated and bullied by people who would see Taiwan annexed to the PRC.
Saturday, 24 September 2011
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What happens when China develops their own, longer-ranged railguns?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think?
ReplyDeleteActually...
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese won't be developing long-range railguns anytime soon, simply because, as I noted at J.M. Cole's place, the technical difficulty of equipping the tungsten projectiles with electronic terminal guidance systems that can withstand the requisite G forces is... formidable. The Chinese probably don't have sufficient technical expertise to do it by themselves. It might be more likely that they invite Russian engineers to work on it, or, say in a decade or so (assuming the PRC is still around), they attempt to buy long-range railguns off the Russians.
In the meantime, relatively short-range railguns are probably just about feasible, and the impact velocity of their projectiles at such ranges means their CEP value will be much lower than contemporary artillery.
If Taiwan could get them developed in a year or two (especially with data and tech help from the guys at GA), then their gradual deployment could occur perhaps even before a Tsai administration would face re-election in 2016. We'd be a step ahead of everyone else, but that step would be an order of magnitude in strategic military significance.
Remember: we don't want to have to use them, they're just a deterrent. They would do nothing directly to solve the long-term problem of transforming China into a liberal society - that's the over-arching defence value for Taiwan.
I think it's safe to say that, as far as weapons development is concerned, if Taiwan can do it, then so can China. It'd be hilariously tragic if the PRC ended up with railguns similar in nature to Taiwan's but with slightly better range. One could imagine them being positioned just a little bit further inland than those cruise missiles ...
ReplyDeleteNo I don't think so - to use the guns offensively, they'd have to be long-range (not short range +) which means terminal guidance systems which means Taiwan is a 10 year step ahead of them simply because our needs are defensive rather than offensive. Now I don't know what the range limit would be for these guns without terminal guidance (it would obviously depend on power), but certainly, the longer the range the less accurate (and slower) they will be.
ReplyDeleteThe distance across the Strait is 112km to 240km.
I'm envisaging them being designed to hit targets a few tens of km out in the Strait - perhaps as far as 50km. To fire them at a range of approximately 200km without terminal guidance would mean that they'd probably miss their targets, though they would cause some form of collateral damage, for sure.
The other thing to bear in mind is that at some point the U.S. Navy is going to get its railgun and laser programs back on track - and they may be more likely to get long-range guns than anyone else. Whether that will occur too late to save Taiwan is another matter.
I wasn't being too serious, it's just that the mental image of two railguns shooting at each other across the Strait is has a certain charm to it.
ReplyDeleteIf the P.R.C. does decide to build railguns, I think it'll be to compete with the U.S. not to attack Taiwan.
I'm envisaging them being designed to hit targets a few tens of km out in the Strait - perhaps as far as 50km.
Seems like you would need a decent rate of fire for that to be reliable. To be honest, I think the issues of wear-and-tear and heat-dissipation will prevent us from ever seeing a railgun with a nice continuous rate of fire.*
*If they are surmountable, then the P.R.C. could (though it probably wouldn't be cost-effective or strategically successful) just randomly fire their unguided slugs into the heart of Taipei, and it'd be the large scale version of firing a machine gun into someone's house. Unless you take out the shooter, there's really nothing you can do to save your house.
"If the P.R.C. does decide to build railguns, I think it'll be to compete with the U.S. not to attack Taiwan."
ReplyDeleteTo compete with the U.S. - in order to attack Taiwan.
"Seems like you would need a decent rate of fire for that to be reliable. To be honest, I think the issues of wear-and-tear and heat-dissipation will prevent us from ever seeing a railgun with a nice continuous rate of fire."
It depends. My impression is that it can be done... If the guns are relatively short range, then they'll need less power than those which GA was designing for the U.S. Navy. That means the stresses the guns will be subject to aren't going to be anywhere near as high as those which the U.S. Navy requires for it's long range guns. In any case, they'll probably have to have some form of cryogenic cooling, which is expensive, and I expect that GA will have made technical inroads on both this, and the rate-of-fire issue already since ammunition volume and storage safety was one of their main selling points to the Navy.
"...then the P.R.C. could (though it probably wouldn't be cost-effective or strategically successful) just randomly fire their unguided slugs into the heart of Taipei."
Yes, that would be possible, but they already have that capability now to some extent with ballistic missiles.
In the event of any military conflict, there would certainly be an unspoken political necessity for the PLA to refrain from any mass, gratuitous and spectacular acts of destruction like lobbing ballistic missiles into the middle of Taipei. They'd be aiming to disable Taiwan's defences and/or effect a military coup - and then carry out low intensity warfare to subdue the population if necessary.
The point of a railgun isn't so much to stop them firing slugs randomly into Taipei proper, but to shoot down cruise missiles aimed at militarily strategic targets like airfields and power stations.
Although if the DPP get into power, we might not have any power stations left anyway...
ReplyDelete