Question on US Cruise missile defense

[armedupdate]

How capable is the US from preventing enemy cruise missiles from crossing Arctic/Pacific/Atlatic from crossing into CONUS, Alaska and Canada? Does the US do constant air patrols hourly. Because the problem with cruise missiles is they glide so low it may be to late to spot with ground and sea radars. Can US radars from ships and MDA sites spot cruise missiles passing the ocean and into the land? I believe US is also making a blimp JLENs for NORAD to find ballistic missiles.

When spotted, are US fighters typicall fast enough to quickly get there and kill the incoming cruise missile?

[sferrin]

Less effective than a submarine with a screen door.

[tincansailor]

It's a major weakness. The blimps you mentioned are part of our first major effort to cover at least the Boston to DC area. The blimp that broke loose and had to be shot down by police in Lancaster PA wasn't an incident to inspirer confidence. However it seems their radar is pretty amazing, it's just that the platform seems to be a weak link in the system. Keeping a radar that can see everything from the Great Lakes, out to hundreds of miles into the Atlantic airborne for weeks at a time isn't an easy task. Then you have the problem of actually shooting the missile down. Do you do that with fighters or SAMs?

Aegis ships patrolling off shore may be part of a defense system, but we only have a limited number of ships, and they have many other tasks to preform. We might deploy Aegis Systems on large floating platforms to cover our coasts But even that would have limited coverage vs. low flying targets. Satellites can only give intermittent coverage. That brings us back to ether permanent AWACS patrols, which would mean a lot of AWACS planes, or we're back to blimps.

It's a tough job defending a continental land mass. Both sides bombers could have gotten through the other sides air defenses during the cold war. Forget about missiles. No wonder MAD was the best ether side could think off. Now in a multi polar world, and much better defense tech some level of defense is possible, and more essential then ever.

[vilters]

Cruise missiles:

If you fail to detect the launch, and can not start defence at that very moment?

All you can do is prepare for impact, because you will be too late.

You can only defend when you know they are coming, have the tools ready and in the proper place to destroy them..

[sferrin]

It's a major weakness. The blimps you mentioned are part of our first major effort to cover at least the Boston to DC area. The blimp that broke loose and had to be shot down by police in Lancaster PA wasn't an incident to inspirer confidence. However it seems their radar is pretty amazing, it's just that the platform seems to be a weak link in the system. Keeping a radar that can see everything from the Great Lakes, out to hundreds of miles into the Atlantic airborne for weeks at a time isn't an easy task. Then you have the problem of actually shooting the missile down. Do you do that with fighters or SAMs?

Aegis ships patrolling off shore may be part of a defense system, but we only have a limited number of ships, and they have many other tasks to preform. We might deploy Aegis Systems on large floating platforms to cover our coasts But even that would have limited coverage vs. low flying targets. Satellites can only give intermittent coverage. That brings us back to ether permanent AWACS patrols, which would mean a lot of AWACS planes, or we're back to blimps.

It's a tough job defending a continental land mass. Both sides bombers could have gotten through the other sides air defenses during the cold war. Forget about missiles. No wonder MAD was the best ether side could think off. Now in a multi polar world, and much better defense tech some level of defense is possible, and more essential then ever.

Go back and look at what they had in the 60s. Hundreds of Bomarcs and thousand of Nike Hercules (134 batteries). That was in addition to hundreds of dedicated interceptors (F-101s, -102s, -106s).

[sferrin]

Cruise missiles:

If you fail to detect the launch, and can not start defence at that very moment?

All you can do is prepare for impact, because you will be too late.

You can only defend when you know they are coming, have the tools ready and in the proper place to destroy them..

Meh. If you have SAMs you can shoot at the cruise missile as soon as it clears the radar horizon. No need to watch the launch.

[armedupdate]

How capable are the Russians in a non-nuclear cruise missile non line of sight? Are there sattelites capable of spotting a tank lets say and guiding it on target?

[geforcerfx]

How capable are the Russians in a non-nuclear cruise missile non line of sight? Are there sattelites capable of spotting a tank lets say and guiding it on target?

You could spot tank formations with satellites, would you waste a cruise missiles on them? prob not. You usually save Cruise missiles for very valuable targets, air bases, radar sites, SAM sites, tanks can be dealt with later, by cheaper more effective means.

As far as countering it would be a combination of things, most probable launch platform would be bomber or ship/ sub. If they use bombers we can track them almost the second they leave Russian air space, and monitor from there, we have fast interceptors up north (F-22 F-15) and will prob have F-35's(hopefully US and Can) to support them. THe Russians have been showing off what the Kalibr missiles can do in Syria, seems to be on par with the tomhawk range wise. Have defense equipment at important targets, track the launch platforms with Subs/ surface fleet (when available) and satellites, have aircraft that can engage the launch platforms and the missiles themselves (they spend most of there cruise at mach .8 ). Once launched it's gonna take them some time to get where they are going (900 miles at mach .8 down low is over an hour flight time) so as long as you know they were launched you have a good deal of time to react.

[tincansailor]

It's a major weakness. The blimps you mentioned are part of our first major effort to cover at least the Boston to DC area. The blimp that broke loose and had to be shot down by police in Lancaster PA wasn't an incident to inspirer confidence. However it seems their radar is pretty amazing, it's just that the platform seems to be a weak link in the system. Keeping a radar that can see everything from the Great Lakes, out to hundreds of miles into the Atlantic airborne for weeks at a time isn't an easy task. Then you have the problem of actually shooting the missile down. Do you do that with fighters or SAMs?

Aegis ships patrolling off shore may be part of a defense system, but we only have a limited number of ships, and they have many other tasks to preform. We might deploy Aegis Systems on large floating platforms to cover our coasts But even that would have limited coverage vs. low flying targets. Satellites can only give intermittent coverage. That brings us back to ether permanent AWACS patrols, which would mean a lot of AWACS planes, or we're back to blimps.

It's a tough job defending a continental land mass. Both sides bombers could have gotten through the other sides air defenses during the cold war. Forget about missiles. No wonder MAD was the best ether side could think off. Now in a multi polar world, and much better defense tech some level of defense is possible, and more essential then ever.

Go back and look at what they had in the 60s. Hundreds of Bomarcs and thousand of Nike Hercules (134 batteries). That was in addition to hundreds of dedicated interceptors (F-101s, -102s, -106s).

Yes it's true that in the 50s and 60s we had strong defensive forces. The question is how effective they would have been. In 1960, 1961, and 1962 the USAF conducted operation "Skyshield I, II, and III. In each operation all civilian air traffic was shut down. We flushed all our bombers out of U.S. airspace, and then along with some RAF Vulcan Sqs they came back in to attack U.S. targets. Almost all of the attacks succeeded in getting past the defenses, and destroying their targets in simulated attacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Skyshield

Now granted American, and British Electronics were better then Soviet Electronics, and our tactics may have been superior, but I'm sure our Soviet friends weren't total incompetents. I also understand most of the Soviet Bombers would have been turboprop TU-95s, much slower then Vulcan's or B-52's, but still the results of our own exercises weren't encouraging. The TU-95 had to be at least as effective as our B-36 Peacemaker, and we were confident it could defeat the Soviet Defenses of the 1950s.

With the introduction of Soviet land and sea based missiles we started to decommission all those Nike missiles. I think the last of those nuclear tipped SAMs were gone by 1970. All the fast interceptors, such as the F-102, F106 were phased out in the 70s. Besides the idea of defending the United States by detonating nuclear warheads over our own country wasn't a very good idea. The Russians still plan to defend themselves by nuking their own atmosphere.

The basic problem is the United States are a continent sized target. The British could win the "Battle of Britain" because they only had to defend a compact land mass. They also had the advantage of only having to defend the UK from the East, and the South. Germany had a much more difficult problem, but even the area they had to defend was tiny compared to the job of defending U.S. Airspace.

Russia being even bigger is even less defensible, despite pouring in much greater resources. The U.S. is still protected by geography, Russia is not. Russia has potential enemies with both bombers, and missiles very close to their territory, the U.S. does not. Still the U.S. will have to commit major resources to defend it's self against the cruise missile threat.

[armedupdate]

As far as countering it would be a combination of things, most probable launch platform would be bomber or ship/ sub. If they use bombers we can track them almost the second they leave Russian air space, and monitor from there, we have fast interceptors up north (F-22 F-15)

our sattelites are that capable? What type? I though the biggest problem with sattelites is they have such narrow FoV. Radar satteltie maybe?