Thread by @SimonHoejbjerg

There have been many good threads on this article over the last 24 hours. I would recommend @EricGomezAsia, @nktpnd and @mgerrydoyle for good perspectives.
One insight I will offer, is the impact of plasma effects to ASBMs, which is not insignificant.
globaltimes.cn/content/113513…

Bottom line up front:
- Plasma effects will have an impact on ASBMs ability to detect and target ships.
- The effect increases with longer range missiles, due to the higher velocity of the reentry vehicles (RVs)

Plasma effects begin at hypersonic speeds from around Mach 6, due
to shock heating of the ambient gases and ablation of the heat shield
material. In other words, it only happens inside the earth's atmosphere.

The effects are widely known from reentry of space vehicles, such as Apollo and the Space Shuttle. Because of plasma effects, radio communication are often blocked out during the initial phase of reentry until the velocity decreases.

Many ASBMs use optical seeker heads to detect and target ships, whereas other might use RF (radar) seekers. Either way, plasma effects can have severe impact to the seeker's search and track capability, possibly rendering the seeker blind, while flying in plasma.

As plasma effects are a result of velocity and air density, the effects will increase the faster the RV is flying but as the RV is slowing down during reentry into the earth's atmosphere there comes a time, when the effects decrease and stops.

This means that the DF-26, which is an IRBM class missile, will be more affected by plasma effects, than the DF-21 which is an MRBM class missile and therefore doesn't have the same velocity as the DF-26 during reentry.

This all means that during reentry, when the ASBM is travelling down towards the area, where the target is assumed to be, there is going to be a period of time, where the plasma effects make it almost, or completely, blind, thereby decreasing its ability to find the target.

Paging @nicholadrummond
Notice the plasma layer in this picture. Size and shape (depth) of the layer is significantly dependent on shape and speed of the object. The deeper the layer, the more "effective" as a countermeasure against radar.

The radar's ability to track an object through plasma is very difficult to describe, but there are good NASA and other open source studies on this. Very shortly you can say that the relationship between plasma layer depth and radar wavelength plays a role.