Well sir i agree to ur 1st statement but do u think CEP value of less than < 50 meter backed by terminal guidance would make a succesful hit by DF 21d as comparing the dimension of aircraft carrier it's cep value is well within it's diamter.
No, and am certain the Chinese boys here will howl with indignation over the answer.
Circular Error Probability
The CEP is a term normally associated with ballistic missile systems but can be applied to any ground to ground or air to ground missile system. The Circular Error Probability is a circular area around the target within which a warhead has 50% chance of landing.
The problem here is the persistent misuse of the CEP figure when said figure is derived from an ideal mathematical environment. The highlighted is significant.
What this ideal mathematical environment mean is that from a center, not
THE center of a target, but simply 'center', the CEP figure is saying that given
x amount of munitions thrown at this theoretical center, 50% of
x will be within
y distance, say meters for now, of that center. Inside this 50% there will be an unknown amount that can (not assured) hit the center. Of the other 50% we will have a distribution, or spread, of munitions that will be 2-3 times
y-meters further from center.
Here is the problem
FROM A SENSORY PERSPECTIVE...
Currently deployed sensors, radar or infrared (IR), have a difficult time calculating
THE center of a physical target with IR the worst. The analogy here, especially for IR, is if you are looking at the light of the flashlight. Can you tell where that center is? No, you cannot. You can tell where the light begins to 'thin' out, in other words, you can tell the peripheral edges of the spread. But if you look straight at the light itself, there is an exact center but within a certain area spread your eyes are overwhelmed by the light's intensity that you simply cannot determine that exact center. Try it. Take a good Mag-lite, turn it on, and look straight into the lens.
Does a physical target have an exact physical center? You bet. But what sensors, radar and IR, do is to calculate the
PERCEIVED target based upon the decreasing intensity created by the target that ended with its peripheral edges, in other words, the sensor will take the area of the highest intensity, scan outward towards the lowest intensity, scan back in again, then determine that this is the target, not
THE physical center of the target.
This is why from radar perspective, the target is
PERCEIVED to be 10-meters/squared, but there is no mention of the exact physical center of that figure. If the target is moving, then it will vary between 10m2 to less, so how is the sensor package be able to determine the exact physical center of the target? Not at all with the current technology. That is why we have video imagery guidance of certain munitions. The human operator look at the target, determine that it is a 'tank', then guide the crosshair to what he know is the physical center of the tank. The munition then tries to maneuver itself towards the target. It is the human who decide
WHERE is the physical center of the target.
This lead us back to the CEP figure. Assume the munition has a CEP figure of 10 meters. But 10m from where? From the bow? Or stern? For an aircraft carrier, the distance between bow and stern is about 330m. If a DF-21D warhead struck the stern, that is a hit but is it sufficiently debilitating? Absolutely not. If it hit on the exact physical center of the deck, that is another story, but one that would a great deal of luck involved.
This is why the CEP figure against a physical target should be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to efficacy...
Efficacy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Efficacy is the capacity to produce an effect.
The effect is to halt air operations on an aircraft carrier. But will it halt if only an elevator is hit? No. We can say that the warhead is within that 50% circle but did it produced the desired effect? No.
Say that the target has a 10m2 radar cross section (RCS). Inside the electronics, this would be represented by a voltage spike, or difference, depends on who is speaking. All voltage spikes have a rise and a fall. The sharper or more rapid the voltage rise, the shorter the range between the beginning and the end. The more gradual that rise, the greater the range or spread. Over time, of course. The more sophisticated radar package can attempt to calculate the physical center of a target based upon this range or spread of the voltage spike and home in on this perceived center.
We know this...
What we can do is to present to the sensor a greater voltage spike with a greater range between start and end via countermeasures like chaff, which can create a radar view and RCS of thousands of square meters. The ship can be anywhere under this blanket. The behavior of chaff launched by a ship is different than when discharged by an aircraft. When an aircraft fired off chaff, there is an immediate difference in velocity and travel direction between the chaff cloud and the aircraft. A missile can pick up this difference and continue to track the aircraft. Not so when a ship launch chaff. The chaff cloud can continue to blanket the ship for several
MINUTES instead of a few seconds. The ship's movement will produce no practical usable Doppler signals because it is moving laterally across the radar's view. Doppler is best when the target is moving towards or away from the seeking radar. So even if the DF-21D warhead managed to acquire the ship before chaff is launched, once its radar view is covered by chaff, it can only continue to home in on the ship's last known position in memory, not where the ship has moved, and if the warhead missed the ship by just one meter, the ship won.
This is why the Chinese boys here do not like to discuss the DF-21D's weaknesses from technical and practical perspectives. They have no relevant experience and they know it. From a sensor specialist standpoint, the DF-21D has plenty of vulnerable areas for US to exploit, down to the terminal stage of the attack. Of course, we do not like to shave it so close. No one does. But that does not mean a US aircraft carrier is completely helpless from the start to the end of a fight.