So we now have 2 contentions here. Elcid's claim via the captain and Displacedjim's claim via flight data as recorded by the ship. Personally I just want to see both so we can verify exactly what happened.

Sadly, that's not possible, unless you have access to classified message traffic. I can look it up again next month and post a message serial number or date time group or something to search on if you can. Otherwise, you're forced to reach your own conclusions regarding my veracity. :-) Displacedjim

While every missile since the Germans invented them has used inertial guidance, in whole or in part, China now is using GPS, as we do for bombs and many missiles as well. Do not forget GPS, which is NOT inertial.

Do you care to say when they did deploy it?

I am a technicial guy. Where is this data? I know something about USNI and Proceedings Policy - they don't normally publish lies and they don't normally just believe what an author asserts. I frankly don't think you can be correct - but go ahead - tell me where the data is. I can read. And IF it does not justify what he said, I will ask him why he said it?

As a child (well, in high school) I objected to the then official story of NASA and USAF that color photography was impossible in outer space. [I suppose they really knew better and just hoped no one would try. They said "radiation" makes the film unusable.] So we built a rocket and put up a camera and blew the theory out of the water. [And Congress promptly passed a law forbidding any rocket over 16 ounces, with over 6 ounces of fuel, or going over 1000 feet, as a "hazzard to air navigation." This was about 1962.] When I grew up I did missiles and high speed aircrft at a Boeing lab - more than one in fact. Let me say this: your assertion is categorically false. IF it were true we could not hit missiles in flight. But we can and the present technology we are deploying this year in Alaska is "hit to kill." We can certainly hit a warship sized target physically, and have done many times. Photographic evidence indicates that errors less than one meter are common.

post it

"Do not forget GPS, which is NOT inertial" Yeah, I got that, that's why I said "inertial/navagational types of guidance." I went on in the next paragraph to address systems like JDAM, which uses an INS supplemented by GPS inputs to achieve a CEP on the order of a couple meters--because it does continuously correcting its trajectory all the way to the preprogrammed aimpoint. No, I do not care to say if or when China has developed/tested/deployed any terminally guided RVs. I often skate uncomfortably close to the edge of what I can say as it is. I don't plan on going in for a weekend until the end of July, so I've asked a co-worker to look up the message I'm referring to (hey, that's what lieutenants are for) and send me some identifying information. Hopefully he'll do that in the next couple days. Both catseyes and you are correct. It's a matter of the guidance and control used. The large majority of ballistic missile RVs are velocity controlled by the booster or a post boost vehicle up through some point in their trajectory. After that (usually when the RV separates, if it's designed to) the RV follows a purely ballistic path (except for some slight preturbations in some cases where the RV itself might do a pitch, yaw, or slight speed increase/decrease manuever, and/or be "spun up"). At that point it's as accurate as it is going to get, and where it ultimately hits is subject to change only due to atmospheric effects. However, air-toair or even ABM missiles are terminally guided and lock on and home in on their target using aerodynamics or some sort of reaction (motor burn, etc.) to change their velocity to rendezvous with their target. It sounds like getting an SRBM warhead to guide to an aimpoint is fundamentally the same problem as getting a JDAM to guide to an aimpoint, but it would appear achieving CEPs of a couple meters using a hypersonic RV rather than a supersonic bomb is no minor difference, and not easily accomplished. Of course, for that matter, the Chinese haven't accomplished it just with bombs, either. Displacedjim

For stragetic long range nuclear missles, they basically use inertial guidance system, with astronomic correction. No GPS will be used since that system will be destroyed or malfunction in the first wave strike anyway.

Well, I got a response with some info on the message in question. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a message serial, but the DTG is 081234Z MAR 96 and it's from USS BUNKER HILL. There is a record ID, but I think that's a serial number used only within the NASIC message data base so it likely won't help anyone else track it down: MSG1996249587. Also unfortunately, the goofus who wrote it didn't even give it an unclassified subject line, so that's about all I can give you to identify the message. I hope you can get someone else to look it up and confirm to you what I said it contains. The above information plus a few intelligent search terms should find it easily enough. I forgot to ask about the overall message classification, but I think it was just Secret collateral, not SCI. Displacedjim