The only thing the US Navy is under-equipped for is something along the scale of the aliens from Battleship.
And just as likely to actually occur.
And just as likely to actually occur.
The existing, decades-old, minesweeping force is in the process of being decommissioned. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/america-getting-rid-their-...
The replacements - involving the problematic LCS-class ships - are in even worse shape than the Ford and are currently scheduled to be operational in 2022. https://news.usni.org/2019/01/25/lcs-mission-package-office-...
In a modern world of sophisticated international commerce, disrupting commerce seems much more "war" than clash of military forces. Consider what I think of as a military flashpoint - the Strait of Hormuz. Some 25% of the world's oil flows through there, serving the hungry maw of Asian manufacturing superpowers. It's only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, and much of that isn't navigable. Really, there's a six mile wide path, filled with slow, lumbering, basically defenseless oil tankers. Any and all of them are vulnerable to the thousands of anti-ship missiles that line the shores on both sides, and a single burning oil tanker could close the strait completely. A supersonic anti-ship missile would take just seconds from launch to destroying a tanker.
A shiny new aircraft carrier is supposed to prevent that how, exactly?
Moreover, the ease with which Iran or another power (or non-state entity) could close it makes too much saber-rattling vulnerable to mutual assured destruction. Just how long would our Asian allies and not-really-allies tolerate having their oil cut off so the US could pick a fight with Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or whomever?
Prevent? More like deter. The question would be do the Iranians think it would be worth the likely counter attack from a carrier battle group or two in order to shutdown the straits.
Better than buying carriers at these prices would be energy independence from the middle east. That's pretty difficult since the east coast of the US is very reliant on middle eastern crude. The refineries there only refine that crude, and there is no way to get the needed fuel there from elsewhere in the US.
Additionally, if the economies of the Far East were to crater due to idiocy on the part of Iran, the US and Europe would likely follow.
The missile needs time to maneuver onto a vector to the target, and to accelerate. Once accelerated, it's not going to be drastically changing it's trajectory on anything resembling a "short" timescale, seeing as hypersonic turning radii are measured in miles. Rocket accelerated gliders this goes for doubly to avoid overshot.
It just isn't a practical utilization of the delivery vehicle.
Furthermore, the point of carrier's is air superiority, and force projection. That carrier is a mobile slab of sovereign soil from which all sorts of logistics can be dispatched from.
It's the difference between "I could get bombed today," and pointing at the spec floating on the horizon, and saying "There's where the bomb that would get dropped on me today is," if that makes any sense.
Will I? No, but I totally could.
And it's not like we don't have plenty of friendly airbases in easy striking distance, either - in Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, etc. Putting American military response into Iran within minutes of an incident is trivial. What's hard is doing it in a way that completely prevents Iran from closing the Strait. When they have hundreds, maybe thousands of weapons capable of sinking a tanker, hidden all over that coast? They could shut down the Strait for months, even if we applied maximum force.
Again, this is a hostage situation, with 25% of the world's oil (40% of the oil that is shipped internationally) as the hostage.
The US has a few dozen military bases outside US territory but somehow China making moves to expand its influence over its economic sphere is a matter of grave concern. So much of the anti-China rhetoric is the same as the anti-Japan rhetoric from 30 years ago. It's mostly veiled racism and a search for an enemy to hate to solidify the domestic group identity.
Far less in fact. The US hasn't done most of those things.
Which artificial islands did the US build in eg the Gulf of Mexico to steal all of Mexico's gulf territorial waters? It didn't. Instead, the US has maintained a fair split of the gulf with Mexico, despite being a superpower that could take it all anytime it wants to. The US could take most of the water territory in the Caribbean if it wanted to, any time it wanted to.
Where are the vast number of examples of the US getting its military tech directly - via hacking - from cloning it from the USSR, Russia, Britain, Germany and France. Is that where the US got the F22, by stealing it from Russia? Is that where the US got the B2, by stealing it from France? Is that where the US got its 20 year lead in drone tech (eg Global Hawk 25 years ago), by stealing it all from Germany? Or how about the innovations in carrier technology over decades, that was stolen from which country, Spain? Italy? Japan? None of that happened.
When did the US send a large army of labor into Africa to extract resources there? It didn't. What the US has done for Africa, is push hundreds of billions of dollars in aid into the continent and save millions of lives with programs like PEPFAR. And its cure (thanks Pharmasset) for Hepatitis C will save millions more over time (see: Egypt).
Hacking? Not sure, there was certainly significant US commercial spying in the early post-war years. They licensed many military techs and broke the terms of licensing, often providing nothing whatsoever in return. Just one example: The Miles M54 and Power Jet's engines, which after very little time and development became the Bell X-1. None at all of the promised data and tech was provided in return. There are others, sometimes by even more dubious means.
The US involvement in Africa during the Cold War was a complex approach to align the unaligned. CIA in the Congo, for example.
The US stole plenty from England during the Industrial revolution. That much is well known. In fact it was taught to me as an example of patriotism that some engineer immigrated from England after memorizing the schematics of some machine. The name of the engineer I've since forgotten.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-na...
What has happened for Africa with all that Western aid? The West wants to "help" the "poor" starving Africans but it seems doubtful that they would actually be happy if Africa became self-determining.
There's a lot that can't be undone in history. Complaining about shit that happened 200, 300, or 400 years ago is probably futile.
This is the case only because Mexico and the rest of Latin America are relatively poor and subservient nations of no threat to the U.S. The Monroe doctrine and its 1904 corollary [1], both precursors to U.S hegemonic domination of the Western Hemisphere, ensured that the cards would fall this way. These policies have have directly resulted in multiple humanitarian disasters the effects of which are still being felt in Latin America to this day [2].
As far as the question of building islands, neither the Russians nor the Chinese are conducting war-games 10,000km from home, inviting Mexico, Cuba and Canada to come sail their warships around the Gulf of Mexico in the name of freedom of navigation. Neither the Russians nor the Chinese are installing advanced radar and missile systems in Canada and Mexico. Neither the Russians nor the Chinese have declared a “pivot to the West”, selling billions of dollars in military hardware to Cuba, Canada, Mexico and the rest of Latin America, proselytizing their political ideologies while doing so. Neither the Russians nor the Chinese have any military bases in America’s backyard that have previously been used as launching grounds for conducting illegal wars. Neither the Russians nor Chinese have ever exerted a policy of containment - an act of political and economic strangulation. America doesn’t have to worry about any of these things, and thus the question of why it has not built artificial islands becomes largely non-applicable.
> Where are the vast number of examples of the US getting its military tech directly - via hacking - from cloning it from the USSR, Russia, Britain, Germany and France. Is that where the US got the F22, by stealing it from Russia? Is that where the US got the B2, by stealing it from France? Is that where the US got its 20 year lead in drone tech (eg Global Hawk 25 years ago), by stealing it all from Germany? Or how about the innovations in carrier technology over decades, that was stolen from which country, Spain? Italy? Japan? None of that happened.
Is it common for a technologically superior nation to steal technology from technologically inferior nations? What could they hope to steal? Nonetheless, there are still a few examples of it happening, as mentioned in the other comments.
> When did the US send a large army of labor into Africa to extract resources there? It didn't. What the US has done for Africa, is push hundreds of billions of dollars in aid into the continent and save millions of lives with programs like PEPFAR. And its cure (thanks Pharmasset) for Hepatitis C will save millions more over time (see: Egypt).
I’m not going to denigrate the contributions of programs such as PEPFAR, as they have undoubtedly improved the lives of millions. This is objectively a good thing in terms of reparations for the destruction the U.S government and corporations have wrought upon the continent for the past few decades [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. We have everything from facilitating coups and assassinations to the backing and arming of genocidal warlords (responsible for the death and suffering of countless millions during endless civil wars). We’ve seen American corporations doing everything from conducting illegal human experimentation [11] to bog-standard corruption [12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and other types of exploitation [19]. We don’t really need to talk about the long-term, multi-generational effects the slave trade had on Africa [20].
If your first line (flooding Africa with labor to extract resources) is referring to China, then you’re wrong: the overwhelming majority of labor employed in Africa by Chinese corporations is local [21][22].
The West has provided hand-me-downs to Africa for decades now, crushing local industries like textiles [23] and suffocating food producers [24]. It has pumped billions of dollars of aid into Africa which has objectively not achieved much more than feed corruption and erode government-taxpayer accountability [25]. No western nation has been willing to lend to “junk” rated African nations anywhere near the amount of capital or provide infrastructure development on the terms the Chinese have.
For the first time in history, a country is willing to come to Africa as an equal partner, signing deals that provide the people with real, tangible benefits like world class airports, highways and high-speed rail systems [26]. No hand-me-downs, no pitiful TV ads begging for a dollar a day on behalf of starving, fly-laden black kids. Just mutually respectful and beneficial business deals. Economic corridors are now opening up between African nations that have never been connected before and brand-new high-capacity ports are doing the same thing for international trade. And before you mention the tired old debt-trap diplomacy trope, it has so far been nothing more than a groundless accusation based on paranoia and sour grapes [27][28][29].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_Corollary#Use
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/19/central-amer...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiss%C3%A8ne_Habr%C3%A9#Suppor...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_engagement
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Savimbi#United_States_su...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberation_Council#Ac...
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_Democrat...
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_Democrat...
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Nkrumah#Overthrow
[10] https://www.npr.org/2016/05/16/478272695/retired-cia-agent-c...
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trovafloxacin#Nigerian_clinica...
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Jefferson_corruptio...
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InVision_Technologies
[14] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/business/worldbusiness/27...
[15] https://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/big_oils_sleazy_africa_secr...
[16] https://www.wsj.com/articles/ex-och-ziff-deal-maker-faces-ch...
[17] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kbr-bribery/ex-kbr-ceo-ge...
[18] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/business/goodyear-agrees-...
[19] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershe...
[20] https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3710252/Nunn_Lon...
[21] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/middle-east-and-a...
[22] https://www.reporting-focac.com/myth-1-chinese-workers.html
[23] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/world/africa/east-africa-...
[24] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14iht-food...
[25] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/13/why-t...
[26] https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/industry/public-sec...
[27] https://rhg.com/research/new-data-on-the-debt-trap-question/
[28] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/04/...
[29] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/opinion/china-belt-road-i...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/02/venezuela-is-armed-to-t...
The CIA orchestrated the coup in 1954 in Guatemala, under the orders of the United Fruit Company.
The USA aided the 1964 Coup in Brazil to overthrow a left-wing leader who was getting a little too cozy with the communists.
In 1970, the USA engaged in economic warfare against Chile, and assisted in the subsequent coup in 1973, then stood by watching as they started throwing dissidents out of helicopters.
The 1976 Argentine coup was supported and encouraged by the USA, who knew of the plan months before they overthrew the democratically elected government. 20,000 people went missing, raped, tortured, thrown out of planes, having their children stolen from them. The USA was completely complacent in these atrocities.
That's just a few examples of American interference in Latin America. They've meddles in the affairs of practically every single Latin American country.
If a particular fickle leader were to block the Strait of Malacca, what do you think would happen to China's economy?
See this is the problem with adventurism and brinksmanship. It forces people to do whatever it takes, just as due diligence.
Actually, now that I think of it, it would probably act by loudly contemplating the possibility of regime change in its neighbors.
I would probably try and cosy up to my immediate neighbours, not antagonise them.
As it becomes a great power it clearly has an agenda of extracting raw materials in Africa, selling manufactured goods across Eurasia and the rest of the world, and linking the supply chain from Africa <-> China <-> Europe more closely. It will likely guard those interests with force once it's able to.
Same as the US. Hard to complain when we've been doing it for 50+ yrs.
Exactly the opposite. If I don't like America doing it, I like even less China doing it.
IIRC Clinton made the change allowing U.S. contractors to get military parts from foreign nations which means they've had 20+ years to infiltrate our equipment. If all they need to do is flip a switch to disable significant portions of the fleet, that puts the U.S. at a severe (understated) disadvantage. Their sabotage doesn't even have to be something major to cause real problems either.
Parties like the CCP that have no concern for human rights tend to get the countries they control into trajectories that unavoidably lead to conflict. Even countries that, logically speaking, would be much better as allies, or at least cooperating.
The goal of war today is never to "win" in some sense that we should be happy of. It's just to have less massive destruction than the other guy.
[1]https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a25684396...
The reason China is building them and looking to add more in the coming years, is for the same reason the US has them. China knows the US could sink a carrier and yet they're building them anyway. Why?
It's about global force projection. The point isn't to set them up in front of China or Russia as convenient targets and let them get sunk. You mostly want to use carriers directly against weaker adversaries. A war with China or Russia that involves sinking a US carrier, would be the start of WW3, and millions of people would probably die. Carriers getting sunk is not a primary concern at all in that scenario (it's down the list, with nuclear war jumping to the top).
But the American people aren't being sold a military that can act as the international equivalent of mafia leg-breakers. We're told, again and again, that we are paying for a military that is "the best" and that can, if needed, stand up to our global peers and near-peers and win. There's a disconnect between rhetoric and expenditures on the one hand, and demonstrated performance, capabilities, and operational plans on the other hand.
That seems like a huge problem to me. At the least, it's a massive fraud being perpetrated on the American public. And at worst, it might lead to a terrible conflict as decision-makers operate with very inaccurate assessments of what our military is really capable of.
I'd be surprised if our lawmakers, who mostly grew up in the era of MAD (mutually assured destruction) with the USSR, aren't aware of this. That's in part why there's such a focus on preventing unfriendly countries such as Iran from developing nuclear weapons... And it's why Iran wants them so badly: a large enough nuclear arsenal is a free pass from the "leg-breakers" you describe, because — one hopes — no one would be mad enough to start a war of MAD.
Currently, the military is still extremely useful in projecting force and securing access to important trade routes and resources. Threat of nuclear weapons isn't a good fit there, because you'd immediately destroy whatever you were trying to retain access to. Most of the global superpowers are thus locked in a giant Mexican standoff, where their militaries need to remain powerful enough to at least project the ability to fight and win small battles (and are stuck in an arms race against each other on that front), but can't reasonably expect to be able to topple each other — only gain relative advantage in the global economy via a long, slow game of securing access to better resources, trade agreements, or capital, and subtly undermining or attempting to destabilize each other via psychological warfare (election interference), economic warfare (tariffs, IP theft, etc), or hacking.
First you have to locate the carrier. Easy to do in peacetime, in war time much more difficult. If you want to kill it with a ballistic missile, you need to locate it within a few square kilometers. This means either a radar location, or a satellite overhead.
Radar is problematic because it has to deal with the curvature of the earth. This is typically solved by using airborne radar. Well, carriers and their airgroups are very well versed in both detecting this surveillance and killing it. Either with aircraft, with SAMs, or with cruise missiles that target that airfields of the surveillance (ISR) aircraft.
So say that you somehow manage to get a location fix on a carrier battle group. Now you have to prep your missiles for launch which takes time. Let's say 30-60 min. The carrier can steam at over 30 knots, so now your targeting data is out of date. Again, not like push button warfare. Your ballistic missile now has to find the carrier in a roughly 1000 sq mile area. Fine, missiles are relatively cheap. So you just target each square mile with a missile and hope its internal radar can pick out the CVN.
So you launch 1000 missiles, and just like in Battleship, one of your missiles manages to be in the right spot. Now it has to deal with the SAMs protecting the CVN. Aegis is pretty good these days, so you've got to make it past them. That'll be tough. Then you have to make it past the ESSM missiles, as well as the ECM jamming suite of every ship in the carrier group. Fine, you have robust electronics.
BOOM! You've hit. But it turns out that your radar on the warhead was small, with insufficient processing power to discriminate between a carrier (especially with all the jamming going on) and an escort ship. You've sunk an LCS, or a refueler (they're big and have a big radar image), or maybe even an Arleigh Burke DDG or Tico cruiser. Sucks for those crewmates, but that's their job. Protect the carrier.
And what has this failed attack cost you? Well, ballistic missiles are cheap compared to a CVN, but not that cheap. Say $5M a piece since it makes the math easier (though the DF-21 and DF-26 will cost much much more). 1000 missiles is $5B, plus the cost of all the ISR assets used to locate the CVN.
Now if hypersonic missiles start to take off (pun intended) and become deployable weapon systems, it will make things more difficult. But that's still in the future.
These aren't just "weather satellites". It's highly suspected they are capable of tracking carrier groups via infrared: https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/06/05/chinese-weather-satell...
>> Now you have to prep your missiles for launch which takes time. Let's say 30-60 min.
China's DF-21D and DF-26 are solid-fueled and fired from mobile launchers. In a deliberate carrier-hunting attack the sensor-shooter killchain is also likely to be streamlined, even taking into the account that the Chinese still suck at Command & Control. Overall preptime and killchain delay should be negligible (<30 minutes for the Chinese).
>>> So you just target each square mile with a missile and hope its internal radar can pick out the CVN.
No. These long-range anti-carrier missiles have an almost vertical terminal trajectory and are looking down from high altitude. AN AESA's fast scanning should be able to find and fix a target with a signature as gigantic as a carrier's over a 30km-radius circle without too much difficulty. I haven't crunched the numbers on this personally, but I'll add it to my list of "radar scenarios to do the math on"...
>>>But it turns out that your radar on the warhead was small, with insufficient processing power
The DF-21 and DF-26 are both about 1.4m meters in diameter. You can stuff an AESA as good as any on a fighter into a nosecone that large.
>>>Aegis is pretty good these days.......Then you have to make it past the ESSM missiles.
Even in controlled tests we don't have that great of a pK (probability of kill aka "intercept") against high-speed ballistic missiles. The ships need to use SM-2s and SM-3s. 1x Tico + 2x Arleigh Burke are packing about 300VLS total, and that has to include Harpoons and Tomahawks. Let's assume ~250 SM-2/3s for air and missile defense. It's customary to launch 2 missiles per incoming threat (again, due to that low pK we've demonstrated) but that is still enough to stop 100 incoming (probably bigger than any realistic incoming salvo anyway). Assuming you can LAUNCH the SM-2s fast enough. Each ship would need to fire off 80+ missiles in probably 30 seconds, and I think there is a practical limit for how quickly you can fire from VLS (due to the exhausts and whatnot). It's probably something like 1-2 missiles per second, from non-adjacent cells.
>>>> Say $5M a piece since it makes the math easier (though the DF-21 and DF-26 will cost much much more). 1000 missiles is $5B, plus the cost of all the ISR assets used to locate the CVN.
I've seen estimates of $10-20M for DF-21/26. -200(don't need 1000) x $20M = $400M -3 x $100M(??) surveillance sats = $300M -Sinking the centerpiece of your opponent's Navy, exploiting their Critical Vulnerability to defeat their Center of Gravity, AND achieve major Information Operation success (PR victory)? Priceless.
Plus you're forgetting about SM6. This will eat these for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Assuming that the DF21 can even burn through the ECM that will be blasting it.
And it'll take more than one direct hit to kill a CVN. An 1100lb warhead will be similar in effect to a Harpoon. You might get lucky and have a mission kill, but if you fire 200+ missiles at a CVN you better kill it.
And if we go to war with the PRC, we won't be using one CVN. We'll be surging 2-3 CVBGs, and they'll run out of missiles. I also think that it's more likely that the PRC will be using nuclear warheads on the DF-26 in a purely defensive posture. The idea of them using as conventional weapons is too risky.
For some reason finding physical radar dimensions is not easy. Even if the warhead is ~1m to the DF-21/26's 1.4m, that's still enough to stuff in one of these: [1] one of the most powerful A2A radars ever. [2]&[3] are <60cm diameter. [3] is known Chinese tech, and is therefore most within the realm of feasibility for employment.
>>>And the missiles won't have that much maneuverability
They shouldn't need much, just enough to turn a near-miss into a full miss (assuming a frag detonation and not a more difficult kinetic kill anyway). Topol-Ms are rumored to have evasive maneuver capabilities, to establish precedent.
>>>>Plus you're forgetting about SM6. This will eat these for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Nah I just lumped them in with the SM2/3. Regardless of the actual SAM used you're going to shoot 2 of them per incoming contact. The SM6 tests listed on the Wiki all used 2 missiles per MRBM target.[6]
>>>Assuming that the DF21 can even burn through the ECM that will be blasting it.
Ummmmm, pointing insanely powerful radio emissions into the upper atmosphere in an attempt to blind a ballistic missile is a great way to broadcast your position. If anything, might be a good idea to configure several DF-21s for passive direction finding. Not sure if the DF-21s have any kind of datalink, the speeds and atmospheric conditions will make that difficult, but P-700 Granit missiles have a networked cooperative capability and those things are decades old.
>>>>An 1100lb warhead will be similar in effect to a Harpoon.
A Harpoon has a <500lb warhead [4]. 1100lbs is closer to a Tomahawk. For reference, the P-700's warhead (and it's definitely considered "carrier killer" ordnance) is ~1600lbs.
>>>You might get lucky and have a mission kill
A 500kg warhead with a vertical attack profile, if it hits, is practically a guaranteed mission kill. The CVN will lose catapults or an elevator at the least, and suffer a gigantic detonation inside its hangar at worst. Either way it's a PR victory and its entire air wing is no longer contributing to the fight.
>>>>>And if we go to war with the PRC, we won't be using one CVN. We'll be surging 2-3 CVBGs, and they'll run out of missiles.
If they run out of anti-carrier ballistic missiles they'll send drone-converted 3rd-generation aircraft, which is a great way to burn up our anti-air ordnance.[5] If anything they'll use those FIRST to exhaust our defenses, then fire the DF-21/26s, then follow up with a land-based strike package to finish the task force off. China's land-based strike aircraft all outrange the combat radius of carrier aircraft + ordnance by a significant margin. We'll run out of ordnance within the Nine Dash Line / First Island Chain before China does.
Oh, not that I ever expect a 100-missile DF-21 salvo anyway. I don't think they have anywhere near that many launchers, and our best bet would be Tomahawk strikes from submarines against the launchers early in the war.
FYI: I've spent ~5 years in the west Pacific Theater, 3 of those at a Corps-level combined arms headquarters that regularly wargames ahem a "peer fight" against a fictional country with a ballooning blue water navy and an authoritarian government, if you catch my meaning. I've spent a LOT of time reading exercise AARs, intel updates, and threat briefs from the past ten years on this problem set, courtesy of the ///SECRET Intelink portal. But I'm arguing entirely from open-source info here.
Oh, and check out RAND's site here:[7] It's 2 years out of date but if anything the US's relative situation has deteriorated. But it's a good quick summary of the balance of power. [1]https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_44d3OT-xI3U/SOke7iN2vaI/AAAAAAAAA... [2]https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_44d3OT-xI3U/SOkeIyMnjDI/AAAAAAAAA... [3]https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/jf-17-block-iiis-proposed-aes... [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpoon_(missile) [5]http://aviationintel.com/as-highlighted-on-this-site-as-a-th... [6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-174_Standard_ERAM [7]https://www.rand.org/paf/projects/us-china-scorecard.html
I think that the bigger issue with protecting the CVBGs isn't DF-21/26 but that lack of missile magazine depth and reloading. We can't even fill most of the VLS we have now, and as you mentioned, it'd be pretty simple to degrade our AD with threats that require a response but aren't as dangerous. And since replenishment at sea for VLS is not currently practiced, ships would have to cycle through Yokosuka (assuming it's still a functioning base after whatever the PLAN does) for reloads.
And since we have relatively shortlegged "interceptors" for the CVNs, with shortlegged AAMs (as currently deployed), I wouldn't be surprised if the PLAN decides that ALCMs still have tremendous value. Hell, we don't even deploy with full airwings these days.
At least the PLAN is pretty far behind in subs. For now.
"More controversially, the navy remains wedded to new aircraft carriers, but at $13 billion each they are arguably more an outdated symbol of twentieth-century power than an effective weapon system for a future in which they will be increasingly vulnerable to attack by high-speed, maneuverable missiles that can be bought for a minuscule fraction of what a carrier costs."
[1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/americas-indefen...
Except that assertion is far from proven. Missiles of that type have been around since the 70s and 80s, and the Navy was planning for it then. They are a threat, yes. But they're not assuredly effective. Finding the carrier and then delivering a missile that has the range, sensor coverage, lethality, is not a trivial problem to solve, and there's trade-offs in every area.
Discussing all of this in context is not easy, which is why this article is a nice one. Places like the NYtimes and others, while great in many areas, consistently seem to oversimplify defense issues. That's not to say that the threat from missiles to carries is one to be disregarded. But it needs to be understood that the defense against a carrier is not an easy one either. And while anti-ship missiles is a logical direction as far as cost vs. effectiveness, success is far from guaranteed.
There is a tradeoff between speed and maneuverability. Ballistic missiles are hypersonic, for example, and have almost zero post-launch maneuverability. Cruise missiles are subsonic, but have a tremendous amount of maneuverability.
Low-speed projectiles are vulnerable to jamming and shipboard defenses. High-speed projectiles are vulnerable to targets leaving the strike zone.
Anyone claiming a carrier strike group can "easily" be sunk misunderstands not only anti-ship missile technology but also the strategic role of carrier systems. (The ships hold back at a safe distance from which they monitor for incoming projectiles. Planes and missiles do the close-range work.)
https://navalgazing.obormot.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1
https://navalgazing.obormot.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-2
Torpedoes are not that much faster than
their targets. The Yu-6 is capable of
65 kts in attack mode, but the range figure
is for cruise mode, which doesn’t have an
associated speed. Even a 65 kt torpedo is
only about twice as fast as a carrier, and
the sound of the torpedo being fired is
enough to alert any ship with a live sonar
operator. This means that the target ship
is likely to be running away...
My guess is that sinking a US carrier would be treated as justification for opening a bottle of tactical nuclear whoopass. If so, that probably constitutes more meaningful deterrence than sonar arrays, Aegis defenses, ASROCs, and so on.
A problem appears when you don't know who sank the CV. I think the possibility for such a scenario exists with submarines and torpedoes. The US can't exactly nuke someone based on circumstantial evidence.
Combine that with disinformation campaigns by less-friendly nations and it's difficult to tell what the populace would think.
The author is certainly correct in saying that as soon as a missile or a torpedo gets fired, the stealth game is over. There won't be any question about who did the deed.
We went into several countries (Iraq) not just on circumstantial evidence, but in the face of active knowledge to the contrary. Why so sure?
> Torpedoes are not that much faster than their targets. The Yu-6 is capable of 65 kts in attack mode, but the range figure is for cruise mode, which doesn’t have an associated speed. Even a 65 kt torpedo is only about twice as fast as a carrier, and the sound of the torpedo being fired is enough to alert any ship with a live sonar operator.7 This means that the target ship is likely to be running away, and the submarine has to close to within half of the effective range before launch. Furthermore, the target and its escorts are likely to counterattack, forcing the submarine to evade and cut the torpedo’s wires. A torpedo has limited space for sonar, and without guidance updates from the launching submarine, it can be evaded. All of this is likely to limit submarines to launch ranges of 8 nm or less.
he's saying that the effective range for the torpedo is much shorter for a moving target, forcing the sub to get dangerously close. then after being detected, the sub would have to disengage and stop guiding the torpedo, at which point it could possibly be evaded.
Because that's where it got seriously dumb.
the basic claim that effective range is halved or more against a target moving half as fast as you seems to make sense. I have no idea to what extent torpedoes need guidance from the launcher.
Intuitively, evasive maneuvers don't seem to be a useful tool in a carrier's defensive arsenal, but I'd be interested in hearing otherwise.
At the moment I can't find how long it takes them to step on the gas, maybe that's classified or something, but it's pretty clear they can at least turn around quickly once they're going fast. Of course, deck operations,etc might delay such maneuvers.
My guess? If modern warships can't maneuver effectively against traditional torpedoes, Russia would not have spent the money developing supercavitating torpedoes.
As to acceleration they are something like 2.5 HP to the long ton. So picture a 5 HP car on ice.
All forms of acceleration (be it speeding up, slowing down, or turning) will modify the effective range of enemy torpedoes as a function of launch position relative to the ship.
Consider even a ship moving at a constant speed and heading. If you draw a line around the ship to represent the maximum range of a constant speed torpedo aimed at the ship, that line won't be circular. If you abstract away water drag and assume submarines can move as fast as carriers, then the line would be circular. But in reality drag on the torpedo means that sub can't simply match speeds with the carrier and expect the speeds of the torpedo and the sub to add up. The torpedoe's top speed is relative to the stationary water, not to its launching submarine.
The other problem is that the submarines would have no way to communicate without giving away their position. It would be very difficult to execute any sort of coordinated operation.
(Not sure why the downvotes, it was an honest question.)
Further, to be useful aircraft carriers need to stay near their targets and a few subs acting in concert can lie in it’s probable path. Think one sub every ~30 miles in a line sweeping slowly and they can close the trap.
On top of that subs can also launch missiles not just torpedo’s.
From the blog post:
"Or can they avoid this by using missiles? Unfortunately, this is not likely to be a healthy choice. At best, an SSN might be able to fire 18 missiles in a single salvo. Even with the benefit of popping up close to the target (which requires going through a lot of those same defenses they’re trying to avoid), this is unlikely to be enough. Launching missiles is extremely noisy, and Aegis is set up to take cues from sonar. The missiles will likely be shot down, and the patch of sea the submarine launched from is not going to be a safe place."
Subs are extremely dangerous places or be in a war and should expect heavy casualties. However, from a military standpoint if the sub is destroyed after taking out an aircraft carrier that’s a major win.
Aircraft carriers are huge targets and it's the weapon systems you don't know about that are the largest risks.
200knots speed, 6-9 miles range:
If the carrier is constrained to operate in a restricted area then the submarine has a much better chance of sneaking up undetected. Carriers are frequently "sunk" in exercises like that.
Rather than actually shooting at each other, America and Russia seem to compete to sell weapon systems to other countries, or to prevent the other from doing so. Two competing but symbiotic MICs whose mere existence serves to justify the existence of the other, creating an opportunity for profit across the board.
It's better than a war though.