How does China’s first aircraft carrier stack up? | Hacker News Reader

How does China’s first aircraft carrier stack up?

chinapower.csis.org

39 pointsfinid52 comments

Based on my reading, most experts, and maybe a consensus, think aircraft carriers are weapons for the last major war, and will be of little use in the next war between major powers (if such a thing happens). Missiles can travel 2-3 times further than planes, and modern technology makes them very accurate.

Therefore the carriers won't get close enough to the battle to fire a shot (or launch a plane), much as carriers kept their predecessors, battleships, out of range and helpless in WWII.

Also, a carrier concentrates a very large amount of value in one very juicy target: Maybe $15-20 billion in assets including planes, 5,000 lives, and around 20-33% of available naval air power. An enemy could target a carrier with 1,000 missiles costing $1 million each, and still get a large economic net benefit ($1 billion spent to destroy $15-20 billion + 5,000 casualties). Current plans for high-end war use 'distributed lethality': Spread out the offensive power and assets so one lost ship isn't so costly.

As they exist today, they're a large, vulnerable target, but then again they're fairly similar now to what they were 50 years ago: Basically a mobile airfield with missiles.

Fast forward 20 years and I'd expect them to have evolved into a mobile base of operations for swarms of autonomous (not just remotely operated) air and sea vehicles. Large arrays of independently targetable beam weapons and mid-sized cannon, huge reserves of long-range cruise missiles, a wide range of sensing, cloaking, and electronic warfare equipment, all in a mobile base smaller than current aircraft carriers but still much larger than standard gunships.

The most durable value proposition of an aircraft carrier is the ability to park 4 acres of sovereign US territory 2 miles off the coast of almost any country in the world within a few days. In close second is the fact that in it's default configuration, it comes with more combat aircraft than most national air forces. We have 12 of them.

Now, that said, current Nimitz-class carriers have a life-span of 50 years. It takes 3 years to refuel them. Changing carriers is a slow process. But 4 acres of sovereign territory anywhere in the world is extremely useful in a crisis.

How do you define a crisis? They're useful for projecting power against countries that have difficulty defending themselves. They would not be useful against Russia, for example, a country that possesses cutting edge missile technology.

Any situation in which Russia ends up firing missiles at a US aircraft carrier is the definition of crisis, regardless of whether or not you are a citizen of either of the two countries or which side started the the crisis.

A nuclear reactor and water purifiers are also useful for humanitarian response.

The Nimitz class carries come with a lot of fun facts, including this one:

Distillation plants providing 400,000 gallons of fresh water from sea water daily, enough for 2,000 homes.[1]

What's a gallon? 1,514,164 litres a day!

1. http://www.public.navy.mil/airfor/cvn71/Pages/FACTSANDFIGURE...

Indeed, some people twitted "What use is it to seen a carrier to help with the Indonesian tsunami?", and this was pointed out, plus its fleet of helicopters which can be used to deliver the water and whatever food stores were on the ship that could be spared for this.

And in terms of pure survival, depending on how hot it was and the resulting sweating, 400,000 gallons of water could save many, many people (the problem would be delivery, they've got only so many helicopters).

> It takes 3 years to refuel them

What do you mean by this?

The nuclear reactors have an endurance of ~25 years. (Not limited by amount of uranium, but by build-up of undesirable elements). After that, they need to be refueled, and that is done as a part of a complex mid-life refit that takes over 3 years.

The construction cadence of the Nimitz class was set with the idea that starting from '98, all the carriers would be refueled and refitted in turn, so that one is always at the yard. Right now, that carrier is USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), which entered the dock in March 2013, and still remains there.

That's informative. Thank you.

Refueling, which only happens every 25 years, is quite complex since they have to get still highly radioactive spent fuel out of the sealed reactor, so they combine it with a general overhaul and upgrade, which means the ship is taken out of service for years. (search term "refueling and overhaul")

Thanks

Ideally, that would be true. Practically, do you see the USN giving up its "flagship vessel" without a fight?

> do you see the USN giving up its "flagship vessel" without a fight?

No. That's a problem with every change of technological paradigm in military history. Enormous vested interests (companies building ships and components, congresspeople with jobs in their districts, etc.) and people who were born and trained, and are skilled and experienced in the old tech and aren't open to change - like IT companies who can't see the disruption coming. Much of the public will react with outrage; in fact, Congress passed a law setting a minimum number of aircraft carriers.

A general recently said, 'for once, let's make the change before there's a disaster.' We'll see if it's politically possible.

The problem is that most of your logic also 'proves' that aircraft would render tanks obsolete; yet tanks and aircraft have existed for quite a long time on the battlefield.

The argument you are making is a very common one (and the subject of many Quora posts), yet I would still bet that carriers would be very useful in small and large future conflicts.

The only actors that can actually threaten the destruction of an aircraft carrier have nukes anyway. It's hard to imagine a situation where they're willing to destroy your biggest ship but not be concerned about MAD. I mean, it's a bit hard to do an "oops, my finger slipped!" with the kind of arsenal it would take to destroy a carrier (like the OP's thousand $1M missiles).

The issue is that we look at MAD as the end of the world.

It's not (for countries).

There were battle plans in place for an invasion of NATO/Warsaw pact

Hardly. State of the art missiles have been sold to countries that don't have nukes.

Aren't you assuming that only one of these missiles hitting it would "destroy" it?

They're rather big, and we gained a lot of experience in WWII in making fleet carriers fairly survivable in the face of big hits. And those carried fuel oil for their boilers and gasoline for their planes, naval jet fuel isn't quite so volatile as the later.

> most of your logic also 'proves' that aircraft would render tanks obsolete; yet tanks and aircraft have existed for quite a long time on the battlefield.

To be clear, it's not my logic, but what I've read from experts (I'm no expert myself).

Anyway, aircraft do render tanks 'obsolete' AFAIK. Tanks that operate without their forces control of the airspace above them are highly vulnerable.

So if you have every intention of maintaining air superiority, they're not obsolete at all.

> if you have every intention of maintaining air superiority, they're not obsolete at all.

I don't understand. If the system isn't effective, it doesn't matter what it's intended to do, it's still obsolete. You can also use WWII-era equipment intended to provide air superiority, but it won't help.

Sure, knocking out tanks is possible with an airplane, but at what cost? And when a tank gets knocked out, you build a new one and deploy.

If a carrier gets knocked out, you lose force projection. Now how hard will it be to rebuild a carrier?

Its the same as the B-2, F-22, and F-35. They're amazingly powerful, but so expensive that you can't afford to lose them in battle

> at what cost

How expensive are the rounds for this thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger#/media/File:GAU-...

It may not be much good in the next World War Level slugfest, but it's pretty darn intimidating to a third world dictator when essentially an entire fortified city shows up overnight in the Bay Of Wherever.

Modern carriers are a peacetime weapon.

They project economic, diplomatic, and clandestine power far beyond the countries borders.

The main problem with taking out carriers is figuring out where they are. In a war between major powers, satellites will be shot down almost immediately (their trajectories are very predictable). ASW ships and helicopters of a carrier group can make it very difficult for a submarine to get close enough.

You can't just fire a ballistic missile, even with a thermonuclear warhead, at the last known location. By the time it gets there, the carrier group will already be outside the blast radius.

My feeling is that large aircraft carriers must be close to being outdated as the UK is close to having a couple of them.

If we had only bought military assets exclusively useful in a full-on strategic all-out conflict between superpowers for the last 60 years, we'd have been pretty poorly prepared for the actual conflicts and crises we've found ourselves in during that time.

For example, suppose the UK found itself in another conflict like the Falklands war? Or supporting medium-intensity operations in the Middle East? Or supporting humanitarian efforts in Africa or Asia? I imagine having a few carriers would be pretty useful.

Personally I think it's more likely we'll find ourselves in situations like that, than that we'll find ourselves in an all-our direct engagement with Russia or China.

I'm not saying that the carriers themselves are useless - just that the rest of the forces are being run down to a point where it's not clear that they can be manned, have aircraft to operate from them or enough escorts to defend them.

The only way I can see them being used is as part of a US fleet possibly even carrying US aircraft. So we manage to build some carriers exactly at the time the US looks like it might be less interested in precisely the kinds of wars we might get dragged into. Leaving aside the fact that the domestic appetite for getting involved in unnecessary wars seems at an all time low.

For humanitarian work, an RFA vessel seems more appropriate - e.g. the help with the Ebola outbreak last year:

http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/news/20...

So use long-range bombers to soften their deployed forces, missile installations, and ports prior to sending your $20B asset into the breach.

The war games you read about generally assume we're throwing a single battlegroup against an entire nation. That alone should tell you we may have a bit more depth of power than those scenarios suggest.

> The war games you read about ...

I'm not sure how you think you know that, but that's not what I read.

To me, aircraft carriers represent the first line of casualties that will never make it back home during a major war.

Carriers project power.

All trading in and out of China, Russia, or whatever can be dropped to 0 in a day.

That's why Chinese are building the continental Silk Road in addition to existing naval routes. When SHTF event happens, the trade within Asia+Europe will continue and the navy can manage whale traffic instead.

Will that new Silk Road be able to deliver iron ore, crude oil, and other bulk cargoes including food ones? And if yes, except maybe for an oil pipeline (which would be relatively easy to take out), sea transport is still going to be a lot cheaper. Plus not everything they import if from Asia+Europe, e.g. iron ore and soybeans from Brazil last time I checked.

There is a reason why naval routes became dominant.

This should also be discussed in the context of the first combat usage of an Admiral Kuznetsov-class carrier, which Russia began today. After passing through the English Channel, the Admiral Kuznetsov, accompanied by a Russian carrier group comprising most of the Northern Fleet including a nuclear-powered battlecruiser, established station, and began a renewed aerial bombardment on the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Over the next few months, we can expect the dominance of the United States Navy to be increasingly challenged, as the other great powers try to determine the limits of the President-Elect's isolationism.

The USN isn't really up for threat just yet. They still have more carriers than the rest of the world combined, and their half has twice the tonnage as the ROW half. Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia's one carrier, is 55kton. The ten US Nimitz-class carriers average around 105kton.

Take away the carriers from the US's allies, and you have a total of around 7 (to the US's 20-odd) - and these non-allied are generally around 25kton (China and Russia have one carrier each at around 55k).

The US is a long way from being realistically challenged at sea. Russia's "power projection" in Syria is only a short distance from its supply ports in the Black Sea. The US can put a carrier group anywhere on the planet (well, on the watery bits) and keep it there; neither Russia nor China can do that, either militarily, or politically (local supply).

If you include the USMC attack ships that have Harriers and will take the F35 and helicopters - the gap is even wider.

> we can expect the dominance of the United States Navy to be increasingly challenged

In terms of military power, the Chinese and Russian navies in no way challenge the U.S. A low-end aircraft carrier is almost meaningless; the two ships are symbolic. It's American political aims and capability that raise questions.

Russia only has 1 Carrier. It is followed by a Ocean going tug since it breaks down quite frequently. The US would have scraped a like carrier 30 years ago.

Reading the article, it took the US 40 years, 12500 aircraft and the death of 8500 pilots to get the Navy and Marines to a point where carrier landings were as safe as land based landings. Russia and China have a long way to go. A very long way to go.

It's a lot easier to catch up than to lead. Especially if your willing to "not play fair".

> Over the next few months, we can expect the dominance of the United States Navy to be increasingly challenged

Maybe over the next few decades. Months...nope.

Here is aircraft carries. No-one is even close to challenging US. And those closest by number are US aligned. Also look at what is on the carriers. US carriers are in a league of their own for their strike capability. Sort the individual carrier list by tonnage and you will get a perspective on the scale difference of US carriers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_c...

Always an interesting fact. The largest air-force in the world is naturally the US airforce. The second largest is the US Navy.

I think this is the link you want:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_s...

Something just struck me -- one day, there's probably going to be a U.S.S. Donald J. Trump.

For a comparison the Kuznetsov is carrying 3 Mig-29K and maybe twice as many Su-33 [1]. And here's what a USN CVN looks like on its way to deployment [2]. I'm too lazy to count the aircraft.

[1]: http://i.imgur.com/egMni6q.jpg

[2]: http://i.imgur.com/IRlG9ti.jpg

For a Nimitz-class, it looks like ~90 aircraft, or in terms of squadrons, 4 fixed-wing attack squadrons, an electronic attack squadron, an early warning/command squadron, and two helicopter squadrons [1].

While it looks like the Kuznetsov may be capable of carrying twice as many aircraft as pictured, that's the equivalent of one helicopter squadron and one mixed attack/air superiority squadron. Then again, there's a reasonable assumption that Russia's main force projection is due to how much of the populated world is nearly immediately accessible via Russian-controlled land bases, with much less need for force projection across oceans compared to the US.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_C._Stennis

> For a comparison the Kuznetsov is carrying 3 Mig-29K and maybe twice as many Su-33

Though they dropped one of the MiG-29s in the ocean a couple of days ago...

But that's still a magnitude more powerful than what most second / third-tier countries can summon from their entire armed forces. For example in Africa, perhaps only Algeria, Morocco, Angola and South Africa would have any hope of taking-on such a force, and that's not even considering the carrier's escorts.

Yes, there's no comparison between the Kuznetsov-class and any of the United States supercarriers, or the Charles de Gaulle. But the Russian actions are a means of power projection, saber rattling against the other great powers.

After all, whenever there's a world event, one of the first questions asked by the United States leadership is, "Where is the nearest carrier group?"

There is no longer a unipolar hegemony in Eurasia. That's the message these maneuvers, and indeed the Chinese acquisition of this carrier itself, are intended to convey.

Erm. Isolationism = not helping ISIS (which is in hold of Aleppo) ?

China's second carrier is definitely under construction, and the third carrier. a larger model, seems to be.[1] The PLAN's near-term goal seems to be dominance of the South China Sea and the strait of Taiwan, everything inside the "nine dash line". (Or the "ten dash line" version, which goes outside Taiwan.) That's consistent with their land-based anti-ship missiles, new large Coast Guard cutter type ships, and airfields being built on expanded islands in the South China Sea.

China now has some blue-water naval capability. So far, it's been used mostly to protect China's supply chain, in anti-piracy operations. That's good practice for operating far from home base. This worries some people. There are very few countries today with a military that can operate effectively on a large scale far from home. China may want to join the superpower club.

[1] http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/eastern-arsenal/model-chi...

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