The U.S. Navy’s Big Mistake: Building Tons of Supercarriers
warisboring.com
warisboring.com
Sure, $6 billion looks like a lot of money. But it's a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the Carrier Battle Group. You need a lot of ships to properly protect a carrier.
Sure, in a conflict with a major international power, our carriers won't stick around. But first, 48 hours is a long time in the context of modern conventional warfare. Guerrilla warfare lasts as long as the people involved want it to last, conventional wars are decided in time periods measured in hours. So a carrier battle group isn't particularly vulnerable. Sure, new tech like ASBMs will force us to change tactics, but we're developing new tech too.
Also, nobody is predicting another war with a major international power. The game changer isn't carriers and hasn't been for decades. The game changer is nuclear weapons. If Russia or China decides to target our carriers, the response will have nuclear components. Nuclear weapons are the only things keeping our carriers afloat anyway, if they didn't exist, we'd have scrapped them a long time ago.
So, 48 hours. During this time, each carrier, with it's compliment of an entire fighter-bomber wing, has destroyed much more than its share of enemy military targets. Also, the battle groups don't have to actually see battle in order to be useful. A carrier is essentially a floating air base that we can put pretty much anywhere we want, giving us the global strike capabilities that make it so, if we have to threaten a petty tyrant with utter destruction, he doesn't just laugh us out of the room.
All conflicts long-term going forward will be won with economic resilience; meaning even if attacked, invaded, controlled, etc. - long-term the attacking force's culture will succumb to economic attrition.
Future of war is economic.
You might make an argument that for a brief period around modern times, wars were lethal enough that this was not the case. But even during this time period, the ability to inflict damage was largely an economic factor.
That doesn't make the carrier less expensive, it makes it more expensive.
> If Russia or China decides to target our carriers, the response will have nuclear components.
Are you suggesting that the US will initiate nuclear war?
Well, the US is the only nation that has initiated the use of nuclear weapons for warfare so far.
The supercarrier requires an exponential and compounding set of very expensive investments. The total acquisition cost of a carrier strike group exceeds $25 billion, an air wing another $10 billion and the annual operating costs of perhaps $1 billion.
...
"Yet, a cruise missile fired from a wide range of lower signature ships costs less than a third of each bomb delivered by a fighter from the deck of a carrier. Nor do these platforms require a carrier’s defensive shield — and they can launch from beyond the range of carrier-based aircraft.
...
A similar shift is occurring now and will displace the modern equivalent of the dashing cavalry officer — the fighter pilot. The knight class never passes willingly — as they take justifiable pride in their acumen and truly believe in their mission. However, the carrier and its air wing cannot be allowed to drive strategy or procurement.
As an outsider, it's hard for me to fully assess these arguments (including from the paragraphs I elided). But they sound rather convincing.
1) one thing that is often overlooked is how hard is to pinpoint the carrier and provide this information to a missile. For a sea-skimming missile horizon is at ~12 miles (20 km); given the distances involved (F-35C has a combat range of about 1k km) and carrier's speed (60 km/h) you will need to provide updates to a missile regarding current carrier's position, which you can't know if you aren't over the horizon for a carrier — in which case you will probably be shot down. This makes the danger of low-cost missile platforms somewhat lower. For a more thorough discussion of the problem see [1]. 2) Drones are unusable against sophisticated opponent. First of all, there will be no datalink: space assets will be denied (either jammed or destroyed), direct radio links will be jammed, too. Therefore the drone will need to orient, fight and decide who to kill autonomously, which is problematic both from technical (e.g. autonomous navigation and decision making) and moral (autonomous killing machine, anyone?) standpoints. Therefore, we can't switch human pilots for drones.
[1]: http://lexingtoninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/aircraft-ca...
The only successful recent use (and that was an AA picket) is Air lanched Argentinians vs the Royal navy and that required some very ballsy pilots and good luck that the target ship was uplinking and did not have its radar on when she was engaged.
And if the RN had had a full CAV in the south atlantic the Super Etendards would have not got to firing range
'The United States has refused to adopt a no-first-use policy, saying that it "reserves the right to use" nuclear weapons first in the case of conflict.'
Think about it this way. In a gang, typically the strongest and most capable warrior will be the leader. That leader has to be perfectly willing to instill fear in the others and sacrifice one for the harmony of the group if he has to. If he were to tie his own hands behind his back out of some strange sense of fairness, then he's essentially abdicating his role as leader.
The US is heavily invested in peace. We want peace more than just about every nation on the planet. By that I mean we don't just want national security, i.e. no other nations threatening us. We want every nation to be secure, happy, and open for business. We don't want random African nations fighting a war against each other. That's bad for business. France doesn't care if the Congo and Tanzania are fighting an all-out war. We do. So we invest a lot of money in institution-building at the international level.
Organizations like the African Union promote economic peace and unity but it's only possible for them to flourish if the constituent nations feel militarily secure. This is where the US's overwhelming military and nuclear dominance come into play. We have to keep our big stick, ready at hand to Hulk smash anything threatening us, so that everyone else can relax and let the cooler heads prevail.
Obama has been doing all within his power (very little due to congress in-fighting) to try and reduce our nuclear stockpile as much as feasible. With 3 seawolf class nuclear missile submarines sneaking around somewhere in the ocean, it is unlikely that anyone no matter how advanced could prevent nuclear retaliation should they pre-empt the US.
That being said, the entire premise of this article is a bit silly, and coming from war is boring, I'm a bit surprised as their stuff is generally spot on. The thing about a full Carrier Strike Group is the blue water ability to project the US air power anywhere in the world. That is what keeps carriers relevant (for now). The new hypersonic glide vehicles might change the game certainly as there isn't really much of any defense against incoming warheads going Mach 10, but those are still a bit out tech-wise.
Carriers seem to be highly effective in uncontested waters, allowing force projection anywhere in the world. The article is saying that carriers are becoming less relevant when contested by a prepared enemy.
http://breakingdefense.com/2014/04/navys-magnetic-super-gun-...
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/10/us-navy-test-...
That still leaves the vulnerability of the new class of hypersonic anti-ship weapons systems, but I suspect there is something to attempt to counter that as well. The X-51A Waverider and any future versions are a good example of that.
This is all cat and mouse, but I wouldn't be so quick to completely discredit a carrier strike group. Yes the Carrier is a HUGE liability, but the amount of firepower in 1 group is simply mind numbing and taking out the entire group before a sustained counter attack would be near impossible. For reference, the US Navy currently has 10 of these operating globally.
If you recall, during the opening war in Afghanistan, a CSG managed to launch 1 Tomahawk cruise missile every 12 seconds for 48 hours sustained during the opening salvo. That is only a single CSG.
UAVs do not yet have the autonomous intelligence to operate on their own, and even if they do, we haven't yet decided to give robots the decision to kill autonomously.
Answer 2 =) we already do, to some degree. E.g., Cruise Missiles have had the ability to navigate on inertial guidance and terrain-following technology for decades, and we use those a lot. But again, a cruise missile can only get programmed for one target, go there, and hit it.
A pilot can go to the target area, notice that the target has moved or new conditions exist (e.g., a bunch of children have been moved in as human shields), or notice that new targets of opportunity have popped up, and immediately take appropriate action.
And, we're back to the autonomous AI tech is not yet that good (and I'm not sure that we want it to get that good).
The Block IV missiles can also share targets amongst eachother and decide which target to strike (among a list of programmed targets) themselves based on factors such as proximity and other classified bits.
http://gizmodo.com/this-tomahawk-is-a-mighty-morphin-cruise-...
That said, note that even your example included live updates via comms/satellite links...
Consider the scenario where comms and orbital assets are unavailable/unreliable.
We still need human pilots. We're working to the day when we won't, but, we're not there yet.
(BTW, I'm all for unmanned, and think the F35 is already obsolete, and that humans are the limiting performance factor in esp. fighter aircraft (e.g., limiting it to 10g accelerations, but we're just not there yet for all scenarios, to answer the GP question as to "why not")
This is why we have carriers and carrier groups. So that we can arrive in your nautical back yard and say "Here we are!" and get noticed. It's all about the high visibility projection of power thousands of miles away.
This was one of the objections about the UK government building the Queen Elizabeth class carriers. You don't need carriers unless you're intending on using them to project your military might into places you're not wanted in a highly visible way.
Initiating a nuclear war after a nation state starts taking out your aircraft carriers is not entirely unexpected. Nuclear or not, the response would be amazingly serious.
Really? Should the US expect it too when it regularly does the same to third countries?
The entire official nuclear policy of every single nuclear power (as far as I'm aware) is that they will only use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or an existential threat. Officially. I believe Putin stated at some point that he would not consider the use of small tactical nukes to be nuclear escalation (if Russia does it), but I would expect the US to be better than that.
US carriers carry over 5,000 sailors, having one taken out would be almost unimaginable (a one time event with more US deaths than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined).
The US has never had such an official doctrine, nor to my knowledge has any of the other major nuclear powers.
Yes, it should be entirely expected in response to such a serious attack, especially since no country would attempt to take out a carrier group outside the context of a much larger war.
Consider that 1) the US doctrine does not forbid first use, and 2) that sinking a carrier and a significant part of its group is tantamount to destroying a small city (the population on the carrier alone is over 6000 people), and 3) that taking out a carrier is taking out effectively 10% of our key naval/air capability. In short, it is an extremely serious action, and would be seen by all as "the gloves coming off".
Anyone contemplating launching an attack to take out one of our carriers/groups should not be the slightest bit surprised to find a few nuclear warheads detonating at over some of their major bases within a few hours of taking out the carrier. Nor would any observer be surprised at such a response.
That said, if an appropriate retaliation could be done without nukes, it probably would be done that way.
But, again, the context is likely to be that of a very rapidly escalating war. . . . .
(edit, missing words)
Any country with the ability to sink the carrier that attacks them, would sink it, and it would be entirely reasonable for them to do so in the interest of defending their sovereignty. Responding to self-defense with nuclear escalation would be utterly unreasonable. And the loss of 6000 people, while tragic, does not justify the use of nuclear weapons either. If it did, we would have had nuclear war long ago.
So, yeah, if we're pummelling the snot out of some small country (Grenada, Venezuela, ???) and they get off a lucky shot with a missile or torpedo that manages to sink one carrier, then a nuclear response would be unwarranted and unlikely, and we'd just see continued conventional operations by the rest of the fleet.
But that scenario is so unlikely. But we're realistically talking about an all-out attack on a carrier group with ballistic missiles or nuclear subs, possibly with nuclear warheads. This would only be mounted by a Russia or China. Or possibly Iran trying a swarm attack with thousands of small suicide-boats. This would be in the context of a much larger war and operations.
Attacking a carrier group is an undertaking of huge magnitude - a huge escalation in itself, and anyone should expect a serious response from a successful attack. And, keeping open the question of whether that retaliation might be nuclear is also an important deterrent.
The context would certainly determine whether or not it actually goes nuclear. E.g., what other resources can be brought to bear, under what threat is the rest of the fleet? E.g., if it was the Chinese ballistic anti-carrier missiles, and we knew exactly where they were and could target them conventionally, we probably would, but if they threatened the rest of the fleet, and the only way to neutralize them was nukes, ... watch out.
So, overall, I'm not saying it would necessarily be nuclear, but it certainly wouldn't be surprising if it were. And, if it were, I'd expect that it would be seen as not un-reasonable, because if the US follows its own history, we're very reluctant to launch them.
And don't underestimate small countries. In an exercise (a long time ago), a Dutch diesel-electric sub "killed" half a dozen US ships, including a carrier. Nuclear subs aren't much of a threat to a carrier (because they're noisy), but diesel-electrics are one of the few weapons that are known to be able to get close enough, because they can be extremely quiet.
How do you know that? The only conventional war I know of that was decided in hours was the Six-day war and that was because Israel inflicted a surprise attack on Egypt. Not saying you are wrong, just curious why you think so since the US hasn't been facing an equal adversary in war since WWII.
States hold war materiel and personnel on military bases, these weapons have long supply chains and generally cannot be hidden. Once you've blown these things up, then the state cannot make war any longer.
With aircraft, missiles, satellites, AWACS, advanced intelligence capabilities, the expected speed of conflicts has gone from days to hours in the last few decades. The US enjoys complete dominance over the rest of the world's militaries. There is no state, no imaginable alliance of states that could withstand a full-scale US military attack. We'd destroy their air forces, naval forces, and any ground forces they could muster within hours.
So long as we refuse to fight an unconventional war, then our troops could just go home. It's because our leaders get cocky and idealistic that we get dragged into ongoing guerrilla conflicts.
So if a nuclear superpower effortlessly takes out a US carrier using a few Kalibr missiles, we will nuke them and be utterly destroyed, thereby proving the carrier was not vulnerable? By that definition ("I'll nuke you if you touch it") a block of cheddar cheese is invulnerable.
How is that an argument in favor of a carrier not being expensive? If anything, it implies the actual total cost of a carrier is even more than its own cost.
It seems like the ships are getting good use in the current climate. Carriers are the best choice of weapon in an asymmetrical war against terrorists. Terrorists can't target a Carrier Group, but Carrier Groups can bomb them all day, every day nearly perpetually.
Where Chinese aggression = China trying to police its own area?
Maybe some Chinese carriers should have helped tamper US aggression all those years in Banana Republics, Mexico, Panama, South America, etc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal#Claims_by_Ch...
The same Philipines the US occupied and used as a colony (and neo-colony) and the same Japan where the US nuked civilians and had the country under supervision (it's army) etc. post-war?
Not to mention this is not actually "stationing their ships in the Philippines and Japan" (which the US does all the time, literally, in their harbors), but having disputes over some sea territory.
The US has not had any ships stationed in the Philippines since the early 90s. In response to local demand the base there was closed.
Granted, parent misspoke of China as stationing ships in those places, but your argument is similarly absurd.
The issue at hand isn't China's possible hostility towards neighboring countries centuries or decades ago but rather their fairly hostile posturing with regards to territorial claims today.
With regards to your second point, from what I've read the Philippines and Japan view China's currently expanding territorial claims to be an aggressive military expansion. I'm not sure the act of US ships being present in the harbors of Japan and the Philippines is analogous to China's military activities in the South China Sea and Western Pacific, particularly as I assume both of those countries have given explicit permission to the US Navy to enter their territorial waters.
(I'll concede one thing, carriers are useful in times of non-war: as a policing force and threat to lesser nations ..)
You also need a lot of ships to protect all the countries that cry about their neighbors invading them, human rights atrocities and other "emergencies" that take our military all over the world to protect other countries that are fully capable of doing it themselves, but prefer to put our military in harm's way instead.
Also, the US doesn't just have nuclear weapons to retaliate with. We're perfectly capable of devastating these smaller countries without them.
I think [0] would show some other reality.
0: http://johnpilger.com/articles/a-world-war-has-begun-break-t...
48h hasn't proven to be a long time in any modern war. In fact the evidence is that modern wars are more protracted than 19th and mid-20th century because, owing to the realities of the modern military (it tends to be heavy on capital equipment and low on manpower) you can't really win a war any more, instead you just blow up expensive stuff and then snipe at each other.
Sure, the Taliban refuses to surrender but China, Russia, or North Korea would be easier, right?
Any plausible war will probably involve a period of escalation and a long aftermath. Which 48h do you get? A confrontation off Taiwan or the Spratleys could easily ignite with a US carrier blowing up after being hit by a torpedo or swarm of inexpensive cruise missiles. The way US politics works we'd have lost before the war even started.
And finally, what do our carrier planes blow up while the carrier remains afloat? No-one except us has much that's worthy of their attention.
The "Carrier Strike Group" is simply all of the other ships (destroyers, cruisers, etc. etc.) that follow the carrier around.
The Strike Groups will remain without a Carrier. They basically are the US Navy, aside from the subs we have hidden around the world.
Furthermore, all of the other ships are completely useless in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. You can't hit ISIS with a Destroyer. You hit them with Airplanes, carried over by Carriers.
The firepower of a single US Carrier is bigger than the vast majority of land-bases in the world. A US Carrier can also move however. Its probably one of the most potent weapons of the US.
Basically, we have ten moving naval bases, that can be stationed anywhere in the ocean. Each one can go toe-to-toe with the vast, vast majority of land-bases in a particular region and win.
Or we can build another few $500 Million to $5 Billion bases in Afghanistan that we later abandon when we change administrations (Bush had different plans than Obama).
The Carriers are a far better use of money than building actual bases. Despite their high costs.
Nimitz, Eisenhower, Vinson, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Washington, Stennis, Truman, Reagan, and Bush make 10, with Ford entering commission later this year to make 11.
In any case, the US doesn't really have that many carriers. I mean, we have more than the rest of the world. But they're so bloody useful..
If you count things in the class of what the US calls carriers, the rest of the world has, I believe, 0 (some sources refer to these as "large-deck" carriers.)
If you want to include what the rest of the world has for carriers, you need to go to "medium-deck" carriers, where the US has more (even without counting the large-deck ships) than the rest of the world combined in the form of its amphibious assault ships (LHA/LHD).
But with only Helicopters and V/STOL aircraft... the Supercarrier is actually a better system. Helicopters don't provide the straight immunity or take advantage of modern asymetric warfare: Helicopters can be shot down by enemy rockets.
V/STOL aircraft like the Harrier Jet or F35B are expensive (either in lives: due to the high number of accidents on the Harrier, or costly in specs. IIRC, the F35B doesn't have the same specs as the other fighters). The Supercarrier filled with F18s might be cheaper than an Amphibious Assault Ship filled with V/STOL aircraft.
So from an overall cost perspective, Supercarriers with standard aircraft still remain the best bang for their buck.
Except you most certainly can hit them with a destroyer. Or did you forget? https://www.rt.com/news/322881-russia-cruise-missiles-isis/
But cruise missiles do not have nearly the same precision as air support fighters.
An F18 flying over your infantry (or infantry of allied partners) will respond near instantly to a call for assistance. In contrast, that cruise missile may take several minutes before it reaches the target.
You have, however, contributed a 4th good reason to get rid of aircraft carriers:
>If Russia or China decides to target our carriers, the response will have nuclear components.
.. that their early and costly destruction in a conflict may well be the tinder for nuclear escalation.
Well, lets get rid of them.
1. The services are building what the defense contractors want to build more than what the war fighters want. Knew a lot of pilots who didn’t like the F-35 and would have preferred more, cheaper planes specialized for specific roles. This defense contractor capture is a big problem.
2. The services waste these ‘big war’ resources on our insurgency campaigns. F/A-18s were about 10k per flight hour and perform worse than platforms such as the Super Tacono[1] when supporting war fighters on the ground. We spent hundreds of billions more than we needed to on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because when the game starts everyone wants to play to justify their budgets. Programs such as the Super Tacano were shut down to protect and justify the massive expenditure on fighter jets. Funding for different types of wars needs to go through different sources to prevent this enormous waste of money.
3. I’d be for a submersible carrier that could surface to launch and retrieve drones that act as missile trucks for both air-to-air and strike missions. I wouldn’t go all in on unmanned aircraft though, since I would also assume the possibility of totally denied electronic environment where signals are jammed and space assets are unavailable.
4. To force military leaders to focus on the services and not themselves, I’d support a ban on senior level leadership (O-7 and above) from accepting board seats or contractor / full-time positions with defense contractors. Too many leaders make decisions while in service influenced by their personal outcomes when they get out. This behavior reinforces a system that supports the status quo. Senior leaders have great retirement packages and can do things other than maintain an incestuous relationship with the military-industrial complex. Although sometimes other jobs seem to result in more bad behavior such as pressure to look the other way on Theranos and its questionable product.[2, 3] Does look like their board has gotten a bit better with the only remaining military / diplomat being General Mattis. Glad to see Admiral Roughead and Secretary of State Kissinger are no longer there.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano [2] http://www.techinsider.io/emails-theranos-elizabeth-holmes-u... [3] https://www.theranos.com/leadership
That is an excellent idea, though I would extend it to cover any senior government leadership revolving into private sector positions in industries they regulated or for which they awarded contracts. There's clearly a conflict of interest, and nobody is going to starve on a senior official's retirement package.
If my job goes south, I have to switch whole professions.
Serving as a high level employee through advancement (such as the military) means that was your profession. Preventing a military official form joining the board of a defense contractor is causing them to change professions, it is preventing them from changing into a specific profession.
This is specific to government positions because those engender specific abuses of power. There isn't necessarily a parallel in the private sector (I think the closest you can get is government granted monopolies, such as utilities, where customers do not have a freedom of choice).
I'd extend to this to a lot of high ranking government positions, and a lot of other jobs (lobbying, etc).
What if we just said "In order to serve in this position you must give up the right to employment by private corporations for the rest of your life. In return you will be given a significant pension."
Is that a totally naïve idea?
EDIT: I was specifically thinking of positions where the prestige and a very good salary/pension (plus book deals / speaking engagements) would be more than enough to attract many qualified people.
But yes, preventing private employment entirely is probably too aggressive, and it seems difficult to scope restrictions on types of jobs.
thought about working for the government again, but if I knew I had no choice of private employment again in my career, that would be a no go (you're then essentially giving bueracrats higher up the food chain control of your entire life).
You must have some very impressive credentials...
The "thinking about it" generally lasts about 30 minutes.
The highest-likelihood logical conclusion is that all high-ranking government officials are being richly remunerated through channels that do not pass through the US Treasury or GAO oversight, such that the total value of their office is comparable with a similar position in the private sector. Those that do not can instantly find higher-paying jobs that can effectively monetize their former connections for their new employers.
This is the primary reason why the bureaucracy cannot keep up with technology. By law, they cannot make a competitive employment offer. They are forced to hire through contractors. And contractors, through mutual self-interest, exploit that weakness without mercy.
I was once asked by an Army captain to consider working directly for the government, and it took quite a lot of restraint to bottle up my guffaw and laugh it out later, outside her hearing range. The Feds simply cannot hire me to its own payroll with that hulking slab of a padlock on its wallet. So instead, it pays 4 times the rate I would ordinarily accept instantly to a contractor employer, who offers 0.10 to 0.35 of that to hire people ranging in quality from chairwarming jobsworths to eccentric geniuses.
Do you really think a number like that is significantly influencing the size of the "govt employee herd"? And do you really think the cost of keeping these people employed outweighs the benefits of keeping them away from private positions using their connections for lobbying the government?
> I'd extend to this to a lot of high ranking government positions, and a lot of other jobs (lobbying, etc).
The Tacono example is interesting. You can read about the A29 procured by USSF in 2006 looking for an alternative A10 , cheap and fit for purpose. [0]
[0] "The WWII-Era Plane Giving the F-35 a Run for Its Money" ~ http://motherboard.vice.com/read/low-and-slow
All decisions on U.S. military force structure, including the number of aircraft carriers in the fleet, flow down from what is required to fight those two conflicts.
The Korean war was a conflict primarily between North Korea and China versus South Korea and the United States. However, a relative was in the CIA at the time and I have the distinct impression from them that the US was also shooting down Russian airplanes, as they were shooting down ours, in the conflict. Should conflict restart, there's no telling who would get involved again.
Taiwan has a complicated history where Japan had gotten China to cede the island in the 19th Century, then tried to leverage it to take over China during WWII, then when WWII was over and the Chinese Civil War went into full swing the losing Republic of China (which had replaced the Qing dynasty) fled millions of people to the island. The ROC government remains there governing Taiwan defacto, but the PRC considers it part of its borders in a dejure fashion. Since recognizing Taiwan as an independent nation would 100% surely anger China, the US has not done so [3]. The disparity between reality and theory has yet to be rectified and resolving it would definitely take armed conflict. This would destabilize the region and threaten a significant amount of the world's shipping [4].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Armistice_Agreement
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_border_incidents_invol...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axe_murder_incident
[3] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35855.htm
[4] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Shipping...
I'm not sure anything is definite. Neither side has made any real moves to resolve the conflict, just feints. The rest of the world seems to support easing tensions when they arise rather than exacerbating them.
But I disagree with the "just feints" notion in present day. The nine-dash-line strategy means China is no longer acting paralyzed in the region. I'm not qualified to guess whether it is part of a long Taiwan game or something different, but I would assert it certainly is not a feint and not easing tensions.
Maybe saying "feeling each other out" would be better than "feints". At any rate, that's just my perception. I'm also not qualified to say what's what.
Countries continue to trade with each other, and there are diplomatic ties between the US, China and Russia. They continue to have some common goals, in spite of some differences. I think overall that's a positive thing. I trust our leaders to decide how to deal with various strategies put forth by other countries.
History was pretty interesting and tense at times. So is the present. I believe the ties are better these days among nations than they were 40-70 years ago. Monarchies used to send family members to each other to keep the peace. We try to do the same with diplomacy where possible.
In contrast, in Europe there is no similar explicit and imminent territorial threat to US allies. Yes Russia makes no bones about their attitude to Ukraine, but Ukraine isn't a NATO member and the US doesn't have as clear a treaty obligation to protect it. The Russian governent are dangerous assholes, but their threat is piecemeal and opportunistic while the claims of China and the DPRK are existential.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit... http://www.dw.com/en/ukraines-forgotten-security-guarantee-t...
France wasn't a signatory.
Read Tom Clancy's 1980s novel Red Storm Rising, which seemed pretty realistic to me. (Former U.S. Navy carrier officer here.)
Boomers were also the force of last resort in MAD.
Consider Articles 5 and 6: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm#
"At the drafting of Article 5 in the late 1940s, there was consensus on the principle of mutual assistance, but fundamental disagreement on the modalities of implementing this commitment.
The European participants wanted to ensure that the United States would automatically come to their assistance should one of the signatories come under attack; the United States did not want to make such a pledge and obtained that this be reflected in the wording of Article 5."
But it definitely wasn't intended as a loophole to allow the U.S. and Canada to weasel out from participating in a major land war with the Soviet Union. This would have been hard to do in any case, what with having two Army corps permanently deployed in Europe during the Cold War...
[0]In italics: The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
The thinking is in turn that those troops therefore deter aggression because they act as their nation's guarantee of involvement. A similar principle was seen during the age of gunboat diplomacy, especially with the Pax Britannica.
The only reason the US keeps 30 000 troops so close to the DMZ in South Korea, is so that they won't be able to weasel out. Make no mistake, those boys and gals' are there as hostages.
If the DPRK decides to launch an attack, under pretty much any scenario those troops will be engaged in battle within 24h and I doubt that the US public would be okay with leaving them there to fend for themselves.
And you may be right about the gamble, hopefully you are -- but this is only true as long as we ourselves stand ready to escalate as well, and the opponents know that. It seems that part of the establishment is beginning to forget this.
US is not committed to defend Taiwan.
US-Taiwan relations act is carefully grafted to avoid commitment. It's not solid defense pact like US has with South Korea or Japan. US position is called strategic ambiguity. US has the freedom to determine how much it want's to assist Taiwan to defend itself.
ps. US don't even have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. China is more important to US interests than Taiwan.
Taiwan has lost spy war with China. Their military can't be trusted with secrets. Highest ranking spies include army general (electronic communications and information bureau chief), defense attaché to the United States, vice admiral and presidential aide.
I don't know how effective Taiwanese counterintelligence is, but if we assume that they capture just small percentage of spies, Taiwan is open book for China.
Would that we were also so lucky, rather than lighting trillions on fire for an aircraft that's going to turn out inferior to the 1980s era craft we're already flying.
Letting China occupy Taiwan is better for everyone (including the Taiwanese people) than the 3rd World War.
Sure, they'd do everything else possible, like they did with Russia, but Taiwan would not be worth a war.
That is unlike South Korea and Japan, and in the case of South Korea, it would be China that would not go to full war on North Korea's side. If anything, they'd use that opportunity to get Taiwan back.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Doctrine_of_Unstabl...
It's good to poke holes in the need for military hardware that costs a unicorn's specious valuation, but it's not the actual problem here.
That reminds me of the high-school math teacher who brings condoms to the class when he teaches, because he's statistically less likely to contract an STD than if he left his condoms at home. While technically he's making an optimal decision, he should really re-examine his assumptions.
Now that is a very flawed, simplistic comparison. But it makes me wonder if aircraft carriers are obsolete and we just don't know it yet because there hasn't been a naval war since then. And it makes me wonder about other technologies, such as tanks and fighter planes. Many of the technologies used seem to be modernizations of what was used in the last large war, which ended in 1945. Did innovation stop then?
Remember how quickly things changed in around 25 years between WWI and WWII: Tanks, planes, and aircraft carriers, to name a few, either didn't exist or were insignificant in WWI, and WWII ended with bombers dropping nuclear weapons (another platform and strategy still in use today).
Also, rifled bullets/artillery shells, breech loading rifles, cartriges and semi automatic (repeating) rifles first came in mass use during the American Civil War. Trench/defensive warfare was also adopted towards the end of the war for some of the major seiges (Petersburg for example).
There's other examples I could list, but I would say it's an understatement to say that the only direct use of 18th to 19th Century weaponary we still use to day is subs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(submersible)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9bastien_Le_Prestre_de_V...
I agree in general with the article (the tl;dr being that carriers are extremely vulnerable to asymmetrically small threats). It omits the reason the U.S. Navy employs them in the first place: force projection.
Without a carrier group, an overseas nation has no credible opportunity to bombard a far away theater, engage in air sorties, land troops, or any other expeditionary action.
Defense of carriers is a problem that must be solved, or the U.S. would have to accept a military stalemate for naval warfare. This has serious strategic, diplomatic, and economic consequences. Many countries' posturing depends on the U.S. Navy's implied or explicit protection.
This is probably incredibly naïve but wouldn't it help us get a "friendly" airfield if we could say something like "you can allow us to use your airfield or we will move in our ships in N hours anyway". Am I missing something here?
When things get serious, thoughts like "I would never do such a thing!" are quickly cast aside.
I definitely feel that played a part in allowing Germany in WW2
One announced U.S. strategy in the Pacific is to spread forces widely rather than concentrate them, and to utilize bases of friendly nations (who don't need U.S. coercion these days with the Chinese government coercing them right into America's arms). The U.S. recently made such agreements with Australia, The Philippines, Vietnam, and Singapore, and of course has long-standing bases in Japan and South Korea. Indonesia is almost the only major nation left in the region who isn't on board.
Yes, that friendly airfield assumption is one main point of the aircraft carrier.
An carrier on the other hand is a thousand foot runway that can move at 56 km/hr.
however, airfields are also vastly cheaper to build and maintain, and if they do get "destroyed" they can be rebuilt or replaced (possibly elsewhere) pretty quickly. in comparison to hitting a multi-billion dollar carrier so hard it's destroyed or taken out of service. In a hot war between China and the US, I'd bet China could rebuild/replace airfields faster than the US can rebuild/replace their carriers.
On a related note, I submit that this very issue is why the US and its allies are so against the Chinese trying to build up those little artificial islands, harbors and airfields, in those disputed waters. Not only does it allow China to project force out to greater ranges, with more overlap, and gives them more options in a shooting war, it also gives them more experience in building them up, and learning how to do it better and faster.
And it sends a signal to all the nations in the region, at least as an implied threat. It tells all the nearby nations, and the US, to think very very carefully about whether they want to get in a shooting war with China, whether over Taiwan or Korea, etc. Because while the US might have some very powerful toys in the theater, very modern and sophisticated, they are also very very expensive, and far from home, unlike the Chinese forces, and can easily be outnumbered. They can be attacked from increasingly shorter ranges, and whatever losses the Chinese do take, their losses will be cheaper and faster to replace than the American losses in theater.
So sure, if the enemy can't easily sink all your aircraft carriers then they are a great option. Sadly, I don't think that's anywhere close to proven.
Based on practitioners and experts I've read, finding ships is very difficult. The ocean is a huge place; remember there's far more ocean than land area. Imagine if you were told that somewhere in North America there's an object the size of an aircraft carrier, and it's moving around. How hard would it be to find it? The Pacific is much larger (though if there's a war over a contested location, the search area becomes much smaller).
Also, there are not nearly enough resources to watch the whole ocean at once. The U.S. military can't even monitor all of Afghanistan, or even all of contested regions in Afghanistan.
There is also having a sore butt, sore back, and no place to poo.
Other than that, a "drone mode" would mostly work. Sleep would be pretty uncomfortable, but might work OK enough.
That said, the capability ought to exist. Even if never used in war, the mere threat of the capability is beneficial. It's also usable to move aircraft around, for aircraft sales and to move aircraft closer to an expected future battle.
That might be lacking in vision. The aircraft carrier is the current means, but nations have engaged in overseas expeditionary actions before and without aircraft carriers. Just because the current solution might no longer be available doesn't mean there is no solution.
Arial bombardment is tougher without carriers, of course, but the U.S. bombed Iraq and Afghan targets using planes that took off and landed in the U.S. And the most likely solution there is missiles, which have become exceptionally accurate and which many think will dominate future battlefields.
Finally, whether or not we feel the carriers are essential, if they are ineffective on the battlefield then another solution will need to be found. Necessity is the mother of invention.
[citation needed]
Of course, doing it this way requires airborne refueling. Lots of airborne refueling. And if you thought the military paid a lot for jet fuel on the ground, wait until you see the markup for providing it in the air.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368337/Libya-crisis...
At least one of the times, it visted an airshow along the way WHILE LOADED WITH BOMBS. This was the Air and Sea show, viewed from the beach in Fort Lauderdale, FL. I was there. For such a huge plane, it really is stunningly quiet. Most spectators didn't even notice until the plane was almost in front of the beach.
http://usoonpatrol.org/archives/2014/11/13/b-2-pilot-flew-lo...
http://www.history.com/topics/gatling-gun https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS
^ last time war games were exercised in asymmetrical warfare they got beaten so badly they transformed everything in a scriped farce
It is not quite the same as being obsolete but I suspect that they are far more vulnerable than we realize. Every day missiles get both technically better (faster, longer range, harder to detect) but also cheaper making it more affordable for someone to acquire ever larger stockpiles of them for deployment en masse.
Meanwhile developing countermeasures that can deal with barrages of incoming missiles that are getting progressively more numerous and faster seems like a very difficult, expensive proposition.
That's what the article is about. Well, that they're obsolete, and also that they're incredibly expensive.
Thankfully many engineers don't want to work with innovation in this space. We don't have the global notion in society of competing for resources required for survival against other nations anymore, which would have been a strong motivator in the past.
The theory of international relations still maintain that diplomacy between nations is essentially anarchy. The reason why the seven seas are so peaceful today is that the top dog (U.S.) has been favorable to free trade.
The reason why regular citizen doesn't have that "global notion of society competing for resources" is twofold: A free trade works. B pax Americana related propaganda has been broadcasted for what, 7 decades now.
Fighter planes are that old too. And machine guns, and grenades, and even night vision goggles. But the aircraft carrier of today is very different from the aircraft carriers of WW2, and so is the rest of that equipment. Except the grenade.
The US civil war was not a particularly maritime war, so indeed not much in the navy.
But that war pioneered two interesting logistical elements: first, it was the first war to permit rapid movement of material via rail (a surprising amount of rail was constructed during the war). Second is that it was the first economy vs economy war.
By and large the Europeans ignored the lesson, because they figured the details of what was going on in the US just weren't that interesting (big mistake). WWI was an economy-vs-economy and rail war (one problem is that both sides built rail heads to their fronts, so if they could move forward they couldn't supply their new front while the enemy could). The only European power that paid attention was Russia who therefore chose another rail gauge.
WWII was economy-vs-economy on a global scale: the US poured huge sums (mostly in kind) into the UK & the Soviet Union so Germany had to battle a large economy on both sides. In the Pacific the trigger for Pearl Harbor was the US cutting off Japanese access to raw materials (what are bizarrely called "sanctions" today) in the hope of ending prior Japanese aggression in Korea and Manchuria: again, economic struggle.
Big Napoleonic set piece field battles and ship-of-the-line battles appear to have faded into history, but most of the military spending in the US, Russia and China seems to continue to focus on that obsolete model. These carriers and attack subs aren't that useful in the asymmetric fronts we have today.
By the way another good lesson was the American Revolution, which was mostly won via lobbying/payments in Whitehall. Both sides have conveniently ignored that for their own political reasons :-)
Building on your point about WWII being economy Vs economy and the economic underpinnings of the war in the Pacific, I have a memory of reading a similarly economics-centric analysis of the start of the war in Europe. I do not have a link but from memory Germany had insufficient farmland relative to its population and little access to important resources, especially oil. This set them up to be dependent on their neighbors indefinitely, neighbors who could turn off the food/oil tap at any time. That was not an appealing idea to the Nazis.
Not sure how well accepted that theory is or isn't but it certainly seems to hold a lot more credence than "the war in Europe started because Hitler."
The former goal failed thanks to the Soviets putting up a good fight, the huge size of Russia, and bad weather. The latter because Hitler really wanted to defeat the Soviets at a city named after Stalin instead of just driving past it. He wasted his entire invasion force (~800,000 casualties) when the Soviets encircled and destroyed it.
The Soviet commander in charge of the defense of Stalingrad, Zhukov, escaped Stalin's purges because he was stationed in the middle of nowhere, and soundly defeated the Japanese in Mongolia when they tried to invade in 1939. Japan gave up it's plans to invade the USSR for resources (permanently, as communicated by the spy Sorge, which allowed USSR to transfer all of their soldiers to the European front), and instead invade European colonies instead, which directly led to Pearl Harbor.
I've read a lot of WWII history. Especially focused on the ETO and Germany. In my mind, it seems beyond clear that Hitler was the reason that war broke out, the single prime key motivating force, his desires, his influence, his decisions, his cult of personality, his charisma, his quirks, his obsessions, etc. He existed and acted within a framework of other facts, within a certain context, and there were plenty of others who failed to act against him, enough, early enough, when it would have been more effective. But I've been confident of the "because Hitler" idea for a long time.
If you can point me at a history book or analysis which you think contradicts that, definitely share it with me, I always love to learn different angles. If I were to give you just one that aligns with "because Hitler" I'd recommend Shirer's Rise & Fall.
I'd therefore assumed that Hitler was just a product of the era and there was a certain inevitability to WWII.
I've never been a fan of the "great man" view of history -- easy to teach but barely illustrative -- but there is no question our actions have consequences. The importance of taking the large view is that you can see the larger forces that someone can harness (or that can thwart them). But the claim "if not Julius/Napoleon/Hitler than someone else" is at best hard to prove -- what someone else did would have been quite different. Most likely it would instead have been the usual muddle -- the default state is muddle, with from time to time some demagogue able to weave some strands together and cause general excitement.
This is no different from, say, science. What would Newton have done had he been born 100 years later, or earlier, or 1000 miles east? On the other hand it's easy to see that if he'd not been born we'd have much of the same physics as today.
WRT Japan, this was called an embargo in response to the Rape of Nanking.
>>But that war pioneered two interesting logistical elements: first, it was the first war to permit rapid movement of material via rail (a surprising amount of rail was constructed during the war). Second is that it was the first economy vs economy war. By and large the Europeans ignored the lesson, because they figured the details of what was going on in the US just weren't that interesting (big mistake).
Is basically all wrong. The Crimean war was fought before the American civil war and contained all these modern elements and was in many ways the first WW1 style war.
Before WW1 two majors wars were fought in Europe, the Austro-Prussian war and the Franco-Prussian war which pretty much set the stage for WW1.
But to paraphrase Stalin, magnitude has a quality all its own. Which is why I don't consider the brief Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars, while of incredible political significance, to be of great significance in the discussion I raised. Neither mobilized an entire economy much less both sides'.
(Big exception to what I just wrote: they did prove the value of the Prussian General Staff model).
Disclaimer: I do have a degree in European military history, but my scholarship, for what little it might be worth, is over 30 years out of date.
How could you possibly compare the total, unprecedented industrialized warfare of WW1 with the American civil war?
It bears no resemblance whatsoever.
Another good counter argument is that there were lots of wars between the US Civil War and World War II between first-class opponents of relatively similar capabilities, including both of those conflicts, World War I, the Franco-Prussian and Russo-Japanese wars. Since World War II, only arguably has the Korean War pitted two relatively equal foes against each other, and even then China had a huge advantage in manpower while the UN forces had a huge technological advantage.
If the NBA was dissolved and Golden State periodically faced college teams, 75 years from now they would probably still have a small-ball 3-point-shooting lineup. That's the state of military doctrine today. Outright defeating a nearly-equal opponent is impossible in the nuclear age, so the only remaining problem is how to curb-stomp much weaker opponents as humanely as possible.
>Outright defeating a nearly-equal opponent is impossible in the nuclear age, so the only remaining problem is how to curb-stomp much weaker opponents as humanely as possible.
I think this is true as of today, but I don't know if this will remain true in the future because people will still seek out the ability to apply asymmetric means on another all else being equal, in ways that would probably be hard to combat.
However, such would depend on how one defines what such outright defeat would look like and I posit that the closer that one defines that with something that doesn't look like what usually is conjured up in minds when war is brought up, the more successful one is probably going to be (assuming one would want wage war to achieve some ends and is open to the option of winning such without leaving any trail of bodies in the wake).
Not a question for you, but for everyone who's interested, but what would outright defeat look like in the cyber-warfare today and tomorrow as the domain considered to be cyberspace continually expands to compose how we relate with one another and the world, where there will be economic incentive to place nanomachines in living organisms (things that "we" are doing now in research labs) that can communicate/execute complex logic manifested in the behavior of said organisms orders of magnitude faster than humans can even perceive (and have a really hard time even finding/observing now with the most expensive of equipment)?
> And it makes me wonder about other technologies, such as tanks
In the current, more urban, modern war, tanks were actually demonstrated to be pretty useless. I once spoke to a veteran of the Iraq war who mentioned the thousands of tanks in country sitting useless because they couldn't really be used in a city. Turrets too long, too slow, too easy to disable, big slow moving metal boxes.
The military tried to use Bradleys instead, but they were also far too slow and prone to ambush. Thousands also sat mostly unused.
The workhorse for years was the so called "uparmored" Humvee (HMMWV), a beast totally unsuited to its task, but just about fast enough, and just about able to be A-Team MacGuyvered into a suitable urban assault rig.
The "big armor" was the Stryker, which was designed to be armored, armed and fast. But by the end of the war was surrounded in anti-RPG cages so wide they could barely fit down a major road. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Stryker_...
However, all of these were fairly useless against IEDs and nobody quite knows what the next workhorse armored vehicle is going to be, but I believe they're probably going to be something out of the MRAP program.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP
The Humvee is being replaced by 2 or 3 purpose built vehicles.
Important to this is that all of the vehicles are built using lessons learned during a very long, mostly urban war. The next time a war starts out in vast open plains, the tanks will probably come into their own again, but to be honest, lots of their mission has been taken over by a variety of flying platforms that can deliver payload more reliably and at less risk.
Aircraft carriers probably made the difference in the Falklands war.
> Tanks, planes, and aircraft carriers, to name a few, either didn't exist or were insignificant in WWI
Tanks played a critical role in the closing years of WWI. Planes were significant (though for reconnaissance rather than attack).
> WWII ended with bombers dropping nuclear weapons (another platform and strategy still in use today).
Bombers dropping nuclear weapons is barely a strategy that exists today. Some countries retain the capability because if you already have a heavy bomber and a nuclear warhead it doesn't cost a whole lot to make them compatible with each other, but the only serious delivery mechanisms for nuclear weapons are missiles.
And merchant ships docked in your enemy's ports. And trucks.
And terrorists.
WWIII will start as a cyberwar. Western systems of all kinds are insanely vulnerable to cyberattack.
You may not be able to force a Western country to surrender by bringing down its banking and civilian comms systems, but you can certainly make it much less able to fight any other kind of war.
How much money is being spent on cyberdefences?
British carriers are much smaller and cheaper than American supercarriers, though.
(Most immediately the sinking of HMS Sheffield might have gone quite differently if the British had been capable of operating fixed-wing AWACS)
And no having planes flying in form half a content away is not the same as having local assets.
We now have Aster 30, which has a range of 120 miles, and can hit supersonic sea-skimmers, ballistic missiles, anything you like.
Those ranges are still much shorter than the ~500 mile combat radius of a Sea Harrier or an F-35B, admittedly. But since destroyers are a third the price of a carrier, you can have several and spread them out.
From a historic perspective, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/1177358... makes similar arguments. But looking at the time from around 1200 to 1914, and comparing Europe with India and China.
Carrier's are efficient at that. Unlike fixed bases, they're far more difficult to track and hit. They can launch a large number of aircraft which can hit a larger number of targets with stand off munitions. Drones can be used to delivery, although it is worth noting that most modern cruise missiles effectively are drones themselves with a several hundred pound warhead.
The author completely ignores China's increasingly sophisticated anti-submarine underwater listening network. Just how stealthy are our submarines in comparison to the detection capability of a potential adversary? Furthermore how long with a submarine stay hidden after launching a cruise missile attack? If we're to assume that the range places it within the sphere of A2/AD then it would be just as vulnerable as a surface ship after attacking.
Which then begs the question of how do you deliver payloads? You could opt to instead rely on munitions which can be launched for farther away, but such munitions certainly would be more costly. I would think that the optimal solution in respect to limited resources would be some mix of long range munitions to counter area denial capability followed by the deployment of shorter ranged assets.
But that's just my 5cent as an enthusiast who doesn't actually have any professional experience in the matter. Although from what I read about the author, it appears we're on similar footing in that regard.
Our nuclear submarines would probably be easily tracked with their "listening network" (I don't know anything about it) but diesel-electric submarines, which seem to be making a resurgence although not with the pro-nuclear forces in the navy, are far quieter and harder to detect. Combine that with the sound matting being develop for next gen subs and/or titanium hulls like Russia used to make, and you've got a very formidable submarine capable of high speed travel which will be very hard to detect with passive or active sonar.
Even better are fuel-cell powered subs. Less range than nuclear subs, but still formidable
Nuclear subs generate noise and vibration from the steam turbines, pipes etc. that can't be completely eliminated.
True, but diesel boats normally run on the surface, and on diesel, because battery life is limited; they generally submerge only to run an attack or to escape an attacker (or briefly at dawn, in case there's an unpleasant surprise out there that wasn't picked up). That's why nuclear submarines were once referred to as the first true submarines, as opposed to mere submersibles.
For example the Russian Alfas class were so loud when they were going top speed that US listening posts across the atlantic could hear them.
Unless I'm Googling the wrong David W. Wise, the author has never been in uniform and has no actual expertise in naval affairs. Most of the points in the article are regurgitations of dubious headlines ("CBG Never Detects Chinese Sub!"), and x vs y comparisons that don't make sense in isolation.
There is, though, a valid question buried in all the war nerd theorizing - what is it, exactly, Americans want their navy to do? Do we still expect to be able to fight a two front war against well armed adversaries? Now that the cold war is over, does it make sense to have alliances in Asia that require large force projection?
Yes, even more now that China is likely to become a 'peer' threat. It's really the U.S.'s only use for a high-end Navy.
Also, I agree that War is Boring is sensationalized and ignorant in general. It's heartening to see others have noticed.
Eh... why? In 1950, with the Soviets bankrolling rebel groups and invasions all over the world you could make the argument countries needed alliances to counterbalance the threat. But today... is it really unreasonable to expect wealthy countries like Japan and Korea to see to their own defense?
While I agree at some point China is likely to be just as strong, militarily, as the US, I don't see a compelling US interest in using warships to defend, say, Japan's claim to groups of uninhabited islands in the middle of the South China Sea.
To paraphrase Pournelle, I'm happy to be a friend of freedom everywhere, but a guarantor only of my own.
In terms of access to the Western Pacific, all the sorts of threats faced by a US fleet would be faced by a Chinese fleet attempting to operate outside the range of Chinese land-based aircraft. The least useful role for carriers is anti-surface warfare, and if the goal is just to keep the sea lanes open we don't need them. A dozen modern submarines could play hell with any country's ability to maintain trading routes.
If Japan and Taiwan allowed China to base its navy or air force on their territory, the US navy would effectively be pushed back to Hawaii. If China chose to threaten Vietnam, South Korea, Australia.. there would not be much we could do about it.
You forgot about Guam, a US Naval/Air base 6000 km west of Hawaii:
Yes, and...? If they're happy with China guaranteeing their security, then I don't see the big problem. As to the other countries... how is this my problem? Did we help Vietnam the last time China invaded in 1979? Is first-world island nation Australia incapable of defending itself?
China does not guarantee their security or offer to, and they wouldn't be happy with it. In contrast, the U.S. has treaties to defend them, on which they heavily rely and which have maintained peace in the region for over 50 years.
I think we both know that we are re-enacting the classic debate between isolationists and those who want to be more engaged. I think your questions are important - the U.S. shouldn't follow these policies out of inertia - but I think there are very good answers:
* Japan and S. Korea can't protect themselves against China. They can today, but not in 10-20 years, and geopolitics moves very slowly: What happens now determines the outcomes in 10 years and 100 years. As one example, what happened way back in the 1940s and 50s determines those future outcomes: That's why the U.S. now has bases in S. Korea, Japan, and all the Pacific islands. 19th century events may figure even larger: The U.S. became a Pacific power, and China's encounters with the West resulted in a semi-independent city in China's south (Hong Kong), in much of China's current distrust of the West, in the rise of Communism in China, allowed Japan and Korea to become major independent powers (instead of weak tributary states to China), resulted in Russia having more southern Pacific ports, etc. etc.
* It's widely believed that if the U.S. doesn't guarantee security in the western Pacific, chaos and war will break out. The nations there don't trust each other at all, but they (sufficiently) trust the U.S. and they trust U.S. power to maintain order. If they become concerned they are trapped in an anarchic environment with enemies, with their existence at stake and no means of restoring order, they will arm up and attack before they are attacked, etc. Not only would that cost millions upon millions of lives and trillions of dollars, but in the heart of the world's biggest and fastest-growing economic region it would create a world-wide economic calamity.
* Finally, it costs much less to influence events abroad than to live in a Chinese-dominated world. If China belligerence isn't stopped there, it could easily spread further, and then rolling it back would be almost impossible. In addition, Americans and the West are accustomed to living in a world where they write the rules and establish the norms - so accustomed, many Americans don't even realize it. Living in a world led or dominated by a Communist dictatorship would be a very unhappy experience.
> To paraphrase Pournelle, I'm happy to be a friend of freedom everywhere, but a guarantor only of my own.
Personally, I don't like this statement at all. Everyone believes in freedom for themselves; IMHO, the word hardly means anything in that context. Freedom, to be meaningful, almost necessarily means freedom for others.
(And I'd add that if everyone else had that attitude then nobody would have freedom. The U.S. wouldn't be able to make it on its own; if it doesn't help others, then nobody will help it.)
Chinese nationalism is based on its historical heritage more than anything else, and certainly is not likely to invade Iraq over rumours of WMD any of these days, nor trash Panama city after breaking up with a Noriega equivalent.
An international court is about to rule on a dispute between the Philippines and China. China has said ahead of time that it will ignore the court's ruling and furthermore, AFAIK, will accept no outside authority. They insist it's only between them and the Philippines - a 'negotiation' that the Chinese can dominate through sheer power and coercion.
> there is no obvious reason why they should switch to a US style expeditionary military with world wide ambitions.
There are many obvious reasons: China has global interests and therefore needs global power, and desires to be the world's dominant power. Regardless of the reasoning, it's already happening:
* China has become highly aggressive and is threatening many of its neighbors and their territories, including Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, and South Korea (indirectly via their ally in North Korea). They also threaten the United States and other nations from Europe to Africa to Australia with retaliation if China's wishes aren't complied with.
* China already is building military infrastructure from Djibouti in the Horn of Africa to the Indian Ocean (the 'String of Pearls' bases) to the South China Sea.
* China is building economic infrastructure (which can have as much influence as military) throughout Eurasia (Silk Road), Africa, and even the Americas.
Historically China has been too weak to do anything but fight over its borders. There's nothing special about the Chinese character that would lead one to be comfortable assuming China won't become expansionist when it has the capability.
Everyone wants to be safe at home. People want friendly neighbors. If neighbors declare themselves as enemies, you prepare for a fight. Diplomacy is useful. Nations can become friends by seeking common objectives.
America wasn't born as 50 states, the EU was recently formed, Russia has grown and shrunk and grown, and the same goes for China. The same metaphor works for your home or your body. Be good to various parts of it and the whole will be more capable. You can remove a gangrenous foot, or do your best to care for your body. Everyone dies. Life is a journey.
The carriers are for suppressing the parts of the world who are incapable of threatening them. Most of the military is completely irrelevant if there's ever another world scale conflict.
Probably to prevent core territorial incursion to the extent it would dissolve you as a viable entity. But to protect / secure the South China Sea? To win a proxy war in the Middle East? Where's the line?
Because it's certainly not "as soon as hostilities break out."
I can see that being an evolutionarily stable strategy.
Hence the Cuban missile crisis being such a big deal.
There was exactly this type of thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery
China may have catamaran missile boats and Sovremmry destroyers, but guess what? Those ships won't be operating far from Chinese coastal waters. Those "obsolete" carrier battle groups can operate virtually anywhere on the coast of any ocean. And they'll be able to deploy whatever mix of manned and unmanned aircraft they need to.
“Building aircraft carriers is a symbol of an important nation. It is very necessary,” the China Daily paper quoted Admiral Hu Yanlin as saying earlier this month. “China has the capability to build aircraft carriers and should do so,” he said.
If you’re used to reading through DoD propaganda, no matter what country it’s coming from, you see what the admiral is saying here. Here’s my loose translation of what Admiral Hu is getting at: “We don’t actually need a carrier, but it’s part of being one of the big boys so we have to do it, like paying for your kid’s wedding. So we’ll turn out a few of them, but we’re only going to do it when it’s cheap and doesn’t interfere with production of real weapons like the DF-21.”
http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-china-joins-the-yacht-club/
So long as air power will play a significant part in warfare platforms to bring airpower where ever needed too will play a part.
If we are talking about a potential South China Sea conflict, then it's all in range of Chinese planes flying off Hainan.
If we are talking more broadly, then I think you'll find that the Chinese idea of world power does not involve force projection the way the US understands it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_carrier#China
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaon...
One would note that India spent $2.3 Billion on INS Vikramaditya[1], which was also an ex-Soviet aircraft carrier, of roughly similar vintage. It was fitted out though, so the comparison isn't entirely fair.
Nevertheless.. $20M vs $2.3B
China/Iran/Isreal/Russia (i could name a more few) all have the ability to do this, maybe even undetected.
Analysis of the detonation device used will be hard for a ship sunk to 3000 feet, not sayin this is impossible.
A carrier group can only do so much in the end.
Analysts pointed out the same issues in 1985. The Backfire bomber was the crisis then.
Putting so many eggs in one basket is scary at the best of times, but the US carrier fleet is the worst of all worlds — hugely symbolic and stupendous sunk cost (no pun intended). Not only are they ridiculously expensive in and of themselves, virtually everything else in the Navy (and thanks to the F35, the air Force) is constrained by its role being defined in terms of how it functions as part of a carrier task force.
This isn't just a navy problem, it's a defense and foreign policy problem, and a fiscal disaster.
The three new Ford class carriers will cost around $30 billion total. Compared to the estimated 1 trillion spent on the F-35 that's peanuts. Virginia class attack subs are 2.6 billion each, and the US navy wants 50 of them.
The ship reduces the distance that the planes fly, thereby increasing aircraft life. If we get 50% more airframe life, it's a win for that alone.
Good value? You're comparing the cost of Tennis rackets to tennis balls, which is irrelevant. We either buy both, or neither.
As for your arithmetic regarding carriers and subs, that flies in the face of the article. The Ford is now (2015 at time of writing) at $14.5B, and is late. To expect that the Navy delivers 3 of those, for just $15B more.... not realistic.
The value of the subs is that they are not vulnerable. According to the article.
Good value compared to the F-35 perhaps, but not submarines. With China prioritizing carrier killer hypersonic and ballistic anti-ship missiles, if there's ever another war in the Pacific it will be a submarine war and "skimmers" (surface fleets) will go the way of the battleship in WWII.
CVN 78 (USS Gerald R. Ford) is on track to be about $40 billion. The SAR is optimistic in saying that cost savings will be seen on CVN 79 and CVN 80 due to knowledge gained during the construction of CVN 78.
Also it is not correct to say that there has been 1 trillion spent on the F-35 program because spent is past tense. There has not been 1 trillion spent. Rather, according to the latest Selected Acquisition Report, the costs to date (including funding allocations for some production lots still to be made) is about $81 billion (See page 29, 'PB 2017 Total - Prior' figures. Another ~$18 billion has been spent on the development and procurement of the F-135 engine. Another $6 billion or so was spent on the now-cancelled F-136 engine.
What will be in the neighborhood of $1 trillion is the estimated total lifetime cost of the F-35 at program completion (when the F-35 is retired and all aircraft have been decommissioned and disposed of in some way).
[0]: CVN 78 Selected Acquisition Report: http://www.dod.gov/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Selected_Acquisitio...
[1]: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Selected Acquisition Report: https://fas.org/man/eprint/F35-sar-2016.pdf
This reads like something out of Yossarian's diary..
It seems the only reason there isn't a war on between the superpowers is that it's economically more beneficial to not have one at the moment. Hundreds of billions of dollars are pumped into outmoded solutions, but at least we don't have to sink the ships so that the contractors can sell more of them -- the government happily keeps buying more. The bankers' loans, the unions' workers and the lobbyists' friends are all humming along finely.
Even bigger carrier. Significantly bigger.
China can bomb shit out of Guam airstrips. Or from submarines any airstrip that stays stationary. U.S. can in near future do everything a 100 gigagram Ford carrier can do with 45Gg America class carrier. With the exception that Ford will have triple the planes, triple the cost, triple the price and about double the range of planes aboard. In near future you can do almost everything with three Americas than with single Ford, with almost exactly the same $/kg of ordnance delivered. This happens because V-22 osprey and F35B have short takeoff and landing while having incredible capability. Ford will rely on F35C, V-22 and super hornet. The hornet being mostly stopgap measure.
But Ford is still limited to planes less than 30 tons and less than 1700km range. Something that could launch C130 super hercules (70 ton weight, 3800km range) safely, would make super-duper-giga-hyper-carrier look like worthwhile investment. The weight of Ford is not the main problem, but it's not long enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar-poc38C84
Now you could replace significant portion of Guam with floating airstrips. You could dominate entire northern pacific with single carrier with it's organic refueling.
The alternative for hypersupercarriers would be America class + some flying boats acting as refuelers, gunships and transports. That would be more robust way to do things, as you are putting your eggs to more baskets. But it's also something that China and India and Brazil can somewhat easily replicate to lesser degree. (They don't get V-22, but anyhow.) So for reasons of military industrial complex and to appear unachievable military power(Trump?), U.S. will make something huge before Ford program runs its course.
103300 long tons => 1.049576e+11 grams according to Google.
At a cost of $4.5bn (Wikipedia) that gives you about 4.3¢/g if I'm not mistaken.
Same article says the range is "unlimited; 20-25 years" but doesn't qualify that with speeds. Although if it could sustain 35mph for 20 years, I make that approximately 987bn cm range.
100 000 tons = 100 000 thousand kilograms = 100 000 thousand thousand grams. You have three different ways to say "thousand" there, one nested. Which seems bit overcomplicated compared to Gg.
The 100Gg is huge, 45Gg is WWII huge, 10Gg is interwar "treaty maximum". 4Gg is what USN currently regards "seaworthy", 2Gg is biggest things that sailed with sails and anything less than 1Gg is no longer ship but a "boat" in modern standards. Convenient?
No one is going to launch a ballistic missile at a carrier group as it is indistinguishable from a nuclear weapon launch.
So the only situation a ballistic missile attack against a carrier group will occur is in WW3 and we are all dead anyways.
Conventional missile artillery is today's reality. The idea that detecting launch of multiple MRBM's or IRBM would be automatically assumed to be nuclear strike is absurd. US knows that China's second artillery has wast range of conventionally armed ballistic missiles and they are part of their conventional military strategy. Russia has batteries of Iskander-M missiles directed towards Europe. Large air-defense missiles like Patriot, S-300, SM-3 can also be mistaken as ballistic missiles during the launch.
Terminology: Ballistic missile is general term referring to a missile that follows a ballistic trajectory. There are several different classes of BM's (Ballistic Missiles) and they can be easily distinguished from each other by following their trajectory little bit (there are battlefield-range, short-range, medium-range, intermediate-range and intercontinental BMs).
DF-21 is medium-range ballistic missile.
The new DF-26 is even bigger (intermediate-range ballistic missile) and can reach Guam with conventional warhead.
The article sort of ignores the difficulty of hitting a moving ship with a ballistic missile when you don't have direct sight.
No way would the carriers be able to operate in the Taiwan straight during a war, but they further off shore and launch air raids.
The first steps in any major war would be to blind the other sides offensive radar and satellite capabilities.
This is the last stage.. it gets launched by a missile like the DF-26 or DF-31: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-31
The DF-31 can hit California from China. So if this works, they could keep a supercarrier out of the pacific ocean with enough of these (assuming they can get an approximate location).
You should read up on events in the South China Sea.
Also pay attention to China's ever growing military and political ambitions. And the increasingly belligerent Russians.
A good chunk of that money that sloshed around over the past X years of boomtime ended up in the military, and alot more is going in yet.
Resources are getting more scarce and countries are willing to act to secure what they want/need.
Except for upkeeping Bretton Woods, which you know is the accord that made US guarantee safe naval trade routes for everyone in the world.
But yeh, beyond that and perhaps upkeeping Pax Americana it is not really used or useful for anythings else.
Eventually when Pax Americana runs its course people are going to see what the US military was good for.
I was also under the impression that once full spec rail guns are mounted on US carriers it vastly increases the carrier's durability in combat and expands its combat role. The 32MJ version has a range of 220 miles and uses non-explosive ordinance, meaning less chance of secondary explosions due to on-board fires during combat. Also very hard to detect or deploy countermeasures against a hunk of metal flying really fast (5600mph muzzle velocity apparently), containing no explosives or electronics.
So carriers are currently giant, slow-moving targets that need to be protected by a flotilla of other ships in order to achieve force-projection. With rail guns, they become highly durable and versatile ships capable of ship-to-ship combat, air defence, point defence, long-range land bombardment, being a mobile air strip etc.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro-Magnetic_Laboratory_Ra...
I'm not sure the rail gun has a sufficient rate of fire for use as a missile defense weapon. It'll more likely be used for short bombardment and anti-ship fire. I doubt that rail gun projectiles have sufficient penetration into water to be useful for torpedo defense, but it's probably something they've modeled.
It seems like you'd face the same problems as you would with in-air ordinance, just to a greater degree (e.g. friction). The objective might be slightly simpler though: rather than delivering maximum kinetic energy to the target you instead just want to punch a hole through it. That change in objective might simplify the design of the 'underwater rail gun' ordinance: just use some nice heavy ferromagnetic metal, shape it to reduce drag and pierce armour (i.e. make it pointy) and maybe coat it in teflon?
I dunno, not really a physics or weapons nerd here. I just like magnets :)
EDIT: just to clarify, I'm thinking of torpedo defence in the context of 'destroy the sub before it gets within range'.
EDIT: Interesting, from wikiepedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun#U.S._Navy_tests)
"Currently the only US Navy ships that can produce enough electrical power to get desired performance are the Zumwalt-class destroyers; they can generate 78 megawatts of power, more than is necessary to power a railgun. Engineers are working to derive technologies developed for the DDG-1000 series ships into a battery system so other warships can operate a railgun.[54] Most current destroyers can spare only nine megawatts of additional electricity, while it would require 25 megawatts to propel a projectile to the desired maximum range [55] (i.e. to launch 32MJ projectiles at a rate of 10 shots per minute). Even if current ships, such as the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, can be upgraded with enough electrical power to operate a railgun, the space taken up on the ships by the integration of an additional weapon system may force the removal of existing weapon systems to make room available."
They don't have a place in a war with another super power but the greater point here is missed. No one and nothing has a place should another war break out among the super powers. that is a no win game.
So where do they fit it. In projecting power when lower tier countries act up, when threats to shipping lanes are caused.
Do they need 11? Certainly not but this is all a dick wagging contest among the branches of the US military which compete more than they cooperate exaggerating the true cost of the military. My view, totally off the cuff, six is all they need.
Air-to-air: Fighters based half a world away don't do much good if you need someone to shoot enemy planes down right now. Carriers are still useful for this in many situations.
Air-to-sea: I think this is where the article makes its best point as missiles and smaller craft make it much harder to keep these safe.
Air-to-ground (strategic): Land based bombers and drones work as well or better if you have your targets planned out 12-hours in advance. Putting a carrier there in this case may be a waste of resources.
Air-to-ground (tactical): Having this awesome air force half a world away is kind of useless when you're getting beat up on the ground right now. Drones may be able to take up the slack on this, depending on what the enemy has to counter it, but carriers are still good for this role.
So basically, if you are unchallenged at sea, but have to fight against an enemy with aircraft nearby, like Iraq, or you need air support because you're fighting someone who is able to do alot of hit and run tactics, like Afghanistan, then carriers are useful. If you're fighting against another country with a huge navy, or you have some place with a friendly airbase nearby that's relatively safe, you might not need them.
Considering the types of wars we've been fighting lately in the U.S., we can probably do with fewer carriers, but still need a fair number.
There will never be major conflict between nuclear powers where decisive victory is possible. There can only be limited regional conflicts that are won or lost. If the stakes become higher than that, it will be tie or everybody loses.
The idea that US, Russia or China could surrender is not reality.
If you keep strategy simple and easy-to-understand, you can stay on mission.
Unfortunately, that's not where we're at. The military is used for all sorts of things -- famine relief, nation-building, geo-political force projection, and so on. This is the problem with aircraft carriers. They might be lead weights in the event of an actual shooting war with a major superpower, but right now we're using them for mobile airports. And mobile airports are useful for all kinds of things.
If you get rid of the mobile airport, then what's going to take their place? Who's going to show the flag in the Taiwan Strait or the Persian Gulf? Who's going to support some U.N. humanitarian mission that's urgent, remote, and requires CAPs?
The more capability you develop, the more you can't imagine doing without that capability. So our floating airports are here to stay -- until somebody sinks them.
Which means we have to support both those and figure out how to do our actual job, which is making people we fight want to stop fighting.
We see this same pattern of behavior in platform after platform. When you get to a certain rank at the Pentagon, you feel it's "your time" to bring a big change to the services. And that means big bucks, big capabilities, and so forth. Nobody wants to be -- or gets rewarded for being -- a wise and crafty caretaker of an ever-shrinking pile of money. (Yes, I'm sure there's lip service paid to all of this. I'm simply making an observation as an outsider watching DoD for several decades.)
Quick tempo lethal aerial force projection is going to have to be submersible. Otherwise hypersonic missiles make mincemeat out of your task force. No matter what kind of radar-controlled gun you have, you ain't stopping something coming in from directly overhead at Mach 10. The kinetic energy alone is sufficient here. Got a lot of other thoughts on this, but on some topics on the net I've learned to keep my mouth shut :)
ADD: No matter what, Congress needs to re-sort out DoD. We need one service for police force work, nation-building, and humanitarian aid. Another force for space. One for cyber. Then leave the other ones alone. I might would peel off strategic missiles from the Air Force because strategic missiles have nothing directly to do with flying around.
Re-split the money. Then reduce senior staff by 20-40%.
> Unfortunately, that's not where we're at. The military is used for all sorts of things -- famine relief, nation-building, geo-political force projection, and so on.
I'll give you famine relief, but geo-political force projection is the same thing you said was the entire goal of the military. A military that can make people who fight you regret it is the same military that sends the message "if you fight us, you'll regret it".
It's not logically necessary that we use the military for nation-building the way it is for force projection, but if we're going to do nation-building the military is the appropriate group to do it.
I do not agree with this, and it's important to understand why I do not think it's the case.
"You're going to regret it" does not the end of a war make. We have already reached the point where, for cases of conflict involving all but a few nations, we can make them regret it. Fairly easily. Yet we see the use of actual force happen more and more. Why? Because my proposed definition of the military was not to hurt people or make them regret picking a fight It was to make them stop fighting.
I used to think the military was for blowing up things and killing people. As it turns out, you can do a helluva lot of blowing stuff up and killing people and you've got just as much of a conflict as when you started. War is not an equation to be solved by some new McNamara. It is also not a spectacle meant for some foreign national command authority. Yes, it might work that way in a very few large cases, but we know that in every case the goal is to get them to stop fighting.
We are buying very expensive hardware for edge cases. These edge cases might occur. But even then, we should look at other ways of winning instead of out-spending and out-producing the other guy. We're trying to build too many expensive systems that do too many things. I don't even want to think of what force readiness looks like in some areas. As one general put it many years ago in a similar situation, we're destroying the artillery in order to have troops able to do civilian police work. What if we need the artillery? The USMC D2D ratio is heading south. F-35 is a Charlie Foxtrot. I could go on. If you stand back and look at it objectively? It ain't good.
False premise; this is the opposite of what we see. https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/...
You can only make people stop fighting by (a) killing them; or (b) convincing them that fighting you is a mistake. There are no other ways.
Here's my last comment. You linked to a book. (thanks). Here's one for you. https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Armies-History-Guerrilla-Wa...
And if these other countries are spending their money on more effective weapons, where does that leave the US?
To me, US defense doctrine relies on 1) massive logistical power projection capability to counter any terrorism threat (real or perceived) anywhere on the globe, and 2) large conventional forces to counterbalance other large geopolitical rivals (Russia, China).
You're right on the higher-level strategy, but operationally it relies heavily on immediately killing off all C&C, air defense, air force, etc. in the first few hours so you can then bomb with impunity.
[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lions-Donkeys-Dinosaurs-Blundering-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_horizon
But I have no idea if that is smart thing to try anymore.
Compare with horizontal scaling, which in this case translates to large numbers of individually-capable units acting in coordination.
It's just too damn hard and expensive trying to protect a single valuable target against an ever-increasing number of threats.
And now shut up and ask no further questions!
You can just drop a metal rod from space and cause significant damage (see "rod of god").
Isn't that what war is all about? Boys and testosterone? It's that simple. Boys and toys. Someday we will advance as a society beyond that, but who knows when that will be.
Guess one can say, "hey we need this to advance our science, war is the big experimental space."
Don't really seeing Elon Musk doing much war planning. He does seem to be getting us to Mars just fine.
The amount of $$$s spend building one ship could probably build a heck of a lot of hosptials and universities, all around the world, but guess that would be just kind of boring.
There are still many people in my Brooklyn 'hood that can't read and write. Think that would be a far better mission, AKA Education. But just my opinion. Maybe we can do both?
That's impressively sexist. Why are you referring to men as boys, if not for derogatory purposes based solely on their sex? I see that in public forums extremely frequently now, and it's only ever done as a belligerent insult.
Here's a historical reality check for you:
"European Queens Waged More Wars Than Kings"
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/01/european-queens-waged-m...
I have to assume that you aren't even half seriously suggesting this. What about all the war that happened during the majority of man's existence, when the "toy" was a sharp stick? Sure you had the odd technological mismatch at the onset of ${metal} age, but the majority of the time both sides had the same rocks and sticks.
True. But these carriers are just large jobs programs which also let us bomb poor countries here and there. And of course they look cool as hell.
If anyone attacks our carriers in large numbers they'll also be the target of our nuclear missiles. So in a way our conventional weapons have to just look cool on paper and be usable against 3rd world countries (that is why A-10 is still in use even though Russian tanks have long stopped being vulnerable to them. But groups of farmers with AK-47s are still blown to bits easily).
If Chinese or Russians launch their ballistic anti-ship missiles at these carriers, soon they'll be seen ballistic missiles flying at their mainland, coming from some place in Nebraska probably.
I mean, sure, but if they're going to be destroyed quickly anyway (as you admit), then why are spending so much money on them?
Not that we don't already have enough bases around the world, but it is nice to have a floating base.
Jobs programs is not a joke. If you know anyone from a town with a military contractor facilities or a large base, those bring money into local economy. Congresspeople will go to great legths to ensure military buys more of whatever brings in jobs and cash back where they are from.
Here is an example: http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/02/11/ohio-wins-agai... nobody needs more tanks, they are just hadning that over to Lima, Ohio so people there have jobs. Yeah we want to be able to maintain the tanks and all but that is just the official spin and justification. If they can do it for tanks, you be they do it for other, bigger toys.
I get that, but why does the jobs program need to be specifically aircraft carriers? Why can't the jobs programs be drones or cruise missiles or stealth submarines or missile ships? Those are all pretty sweet, and won't makes us look as bad if they're quickly sunk in an engagement.
Different colors of money, for starters[1]: DoD cannot procure drones or cruise missiles with funds congressionally appropriated for Navy shipbuilding and conversion. Doing so would be a violation of the federal Misappropriation Act[2]. Furthermore, shipbuilding has a 5-year obligation window vs. 3 years for every other procurement activity[3].
> ...or stealth submarines or missile ships?
From a defense strategic perspective, levels of consideration are far more complicated than you might imagine[4]. The concept of a defense ACAT <any_level> program explicitly publicized as a "jobs program" is mindblowingly corrupt. I didn't interpret the article referenced by the parent as being about building more tanks without an inherent need for them. I read it as acknowledging that the cost associated with sustaining a niche industrial infrastructure with a steep learning curve to ensure military readiness--as seemingly high as it may be--is still far less than the alternative of closing the doors of "the only tank manufacturer in the U.S." to save for the now at the risk of not being able to ramp up domestic production if the strategic need ever arose in the future--the consequences of the latter being irrepairable. On a related note, it may surprise some to learn that there are literally hundreds of reserve cargo ships loaded with things like HMMWVs and spit-shine-new M1 tanks strategically scattered across the world, sitting idle and ready...and yes, they're regularly serviced.
[1] https://dap.dau.mil/acquipedia/Pages/ArticleDetails.aspx?aid... [2] https://dap.dau.mil/acquipedia/Pages/ArticleDetails.aspx?aid... [3] https://dap.dau.mil/acquipedia/Pages/ArticleDetails.aspx?aid... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Capabilities_Integration... [5] http://www.marad.dot.gov/ships-and-shipping/strategic-sealif...
The Russians don't have ballistic anti-ship missiles. There's only one model in the world so far, and it's Chinese.
It's large, expensive, and incredibly complicated, so they don't have many. It relies on a trio of satellites that can be compromised in various ways, and can be destroyed on the ground. It can also be shot down by the SM-3, which is pretty widely deployed by now.
I do not believe the US would respond to conventional missiles with nuclear missiles. For one thing, there wouldn't be any need - we could do a whole lot of damage to China with aircraft and cruise missiles, so there wouldn't be any need, and why invite a Chinese nuclear response? That would be suicidal.
Russian tanks are still vulnerable to the A-10. If we just want to attack "groups of farmers with AK-47s" there are much more efficient solutions, like Embraer's Super Tucano II, for example.
From the article: "Navy Capt. Henry Hendrix estimated China could produce 1,227 DF-21D ballistic anti-ship missiles for the cost of a single U.S. carrier."
> It relies on a trio of satellites that can be compromised in various ways...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 indicates China is actively improving and expanding this satellite capacity.
> ... and can be destroyed on the ground.
You can say that about every weapon system in the world. If China built thousands of these, there's no way you're taking out all of them in a preemptive strike.
> It can also be shot down by the SM-3, which is pretty widely deployed by now.
Again, China can build thousands. An entire carrier battlegroup is going to have at most a few hundred SM-3s.
Yes, and so what? They have not done it.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 indicates China is actively improving and expanding this satellite capacity.
Not as quickly as the US is improving its ability to knock them out. We have literally thousands of missiles that can take out satellites in LEO, and more every day. And that doesn't take into account things like jamming and lasers which could disable a satellite without blowing it up.
>You can say that about every weapon system in the world. If China built thousands of these, there's no way you're taking out all of them in a preemptive strike.
That's not how it works in real life - you don't have to take them all out. You only have to take out enough that between manufacturing defects, design failures, ECM, control systems degradation, antimissile systems, smoke, chaff, and more exotic stuff like lasers and rail guns, the remaining missiles don't hit a carrier. And remember, these are conventional missiles - they have to actually hit the carrier, which is not an easy thing to do. It's not like lobbing a nuke and calling it a hit if it lands within fifty miles of the target.
>Again, China can build thousands. An entire carrier battlegroup is going to have at most a few hundred SM-3s.
Again, so what? You're comparing a deployed carrier group today with a Chinese arsenal at some future date following a huge production spree they don't seem particularly interested in undertaking.
Saying you can build x missiles for every carrier is a meaningless statistic - it assumes a reasonable response from the US would be to build more carriers instead of upgrading the defenses of the carriers (or, more accurately, the carrier battle groups) we already have.
> The Russians don't have ballistic anti-ship missiles. There's only one model in the world so far, and it's Chinese.
So not true. There are ballistic anti-ship missiles, surprise the article specifically mentions it. A
Russians have sea skimming missiles. Let's not get hung up on the word "ballistic", it doesn't matter what missile is used, the point is it will easy to take out a large ship. Some of the sea skimming missiles can be launched by aircraft, so that extends their range.
> I do not believe the US would respond to conventional missiles with nuclear missiles.
Once whole carriers are starting to be taken down, it will be pretty close to that.
> we could do a whole lot of damage to China with aircraft and cruise missiles
If we do a lot of damage to China, what do you think they are doing to do, sit there and look beweldwered. At that point they'll be launching everything.
> Russian tanks are still vulnerable to the A-10
If they are sitting there doing nothing I am sure they are. But they probably have AA systems around.
Heh. Normally when I write something that's shaping up to be incoherent, I delete it before posting.
>Russians have sea skimming missiles. Let's not get hung up on the word "ballistic", it doesn't matter what missile is used, the point is it will easy to take out a large ship. Some of the sea skimming missiles can be launched by aircraft, so that extends their range.
I only got "hung up" on the word "ballistic" because that's the type of missile you mentioned. That made the most sense of your post, since conventional anti-ship ballistic missiles are a new threat and relatively difficult to deal with. Yes, many countries have cruise missiles, from Russia to China to France to India to others. And yes, we know how to shoot down cruise missiles. Could we successfully defend a CBG in real life against a massed cruise missile attack? Yes and no. Depends entirely on the scenario.
>Once whole carriers are starting to be taken down, it will be pretty close to that.
"Pretty close"? What does that mean?
>If we do a lot of damage to China, what do you think they are doing to do, sit there and look beweldwered. At that point they'll be launching everything.
Again, what does that mean? Certainly we will respond with nukes if the Chinese nuke the US or US naval assets. Other than that there are plenty of things in China they'd rather not have us destroy that we'd probably go about destroying if they attacked our navy.
What do you imagine would happen if the Three Gorges Dam were (relatively easily) destroyed? Is there anything China could hope to accomplish in a war that would be worth a catastrophe of that magnitude?
>If they are sitting there doing nothing I am sure they are. But they probably have AA systems around.
Which is true of any aircraft, and it's why destroying AA is the first phase of any air war. But that's not the point. There are reasons to think the A-10 should be retired, but the inability to destroy tanks (any tanks, not just Russian tanks) isn't one of them.