[Little Ray]

Its single fuel-air explosive warhead packs 200 to 500 kilotons.

Somehow, I don't think this person is very well informed; either that or he's very bad at math. Also, I don't think he grasps the capabilities of the Aegis class cruisers and destroyers escorting those carriers. Finally, I don't think the missile has been tested against a maneuvering target; no knows how well it will work.

[JRandomFreeper]

Yeah, I was wondering about that and was starting to do the kiloton TNT to erg conversions and then do the math to figure out how big the fuel/air explosive warhead would be, but I stopped. It's late, I've had beers, and even a zoomie cook can estimate the orders of magnitude without getting into the exact numbers.

Someone added some zeros somewhere.

/johnny

[fremont_steve]

You noticed this too? ;-)

I went and looked up the “Mother of All Bombs” on wikipedia. It is specified as an 11 ton explosive yield. So unless this puppy is nuclear - it isn’t going to be 200 to 500 Ktons!

[yank in the UK]

If it was made in china by Chinese workers then it will be a POS, it will be defective and probably malfunction like the rest of the junk that they make.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I am not certain that Aegis can defeat a DF-21. Aegis could be effective against tactical ballistic missiles, but the DF-21 is a long range device that would overfly Aegis’ radar fence. Taiwan is installing long range surveillance radar, equivalent to PAVE PAWS, to keep an eye on China, which would almost certainly detect the launch of a DF21, if not effectively jammed.

What really, truly puzzles me is how they think you can get 200 kT from a FAE with a payload much less than one ton?

I also wonder about the OTH radar part. In time of hostilites, nothing would be easier to jam or spoof than an OTH radar. If they are going to track the carriers by satellite, they better pray for clear skies.

[Tallguy]

Also, there are a lot of difficulties in gettng a fuel-air explosive to work properly. They are very sensitive to envirornmental variables. IOW’s you get a lot of fizzles.