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For what it's worth, the US would field F35s from CVNs, not air strips. And repairing a bombed out airstrip for mil use takes about 48-72 hours.

Have you compared the range of the naval F35s to the stand off range needed to keep the CVNs floating? (it's not even close, & there aren't enough tankers to keep the F35s in the air as CAP. Single deep strike, maybe. But to hold off an invasion, you need to provide sustained air cover.)

The new aim-260 had a range of 120 miles. The combination of long range Air to Air missiles and stealth is very hard to defeat.

https://youtu.be/DRt2I39qU5U

Has an interesting simulation of a carrier battle between a Chinese naval group and an American naval group with expected 2025 equipment.

This is argument goes back at least 50 years. The F-14 and before that the F-111 didn’t need to be good dogfighters because the AIM 54 phoenix was a 100 mile missile and would kill anyhting before it got remotely close. That turned out to be false as we learned against Libyan fighters and as the Israelis could have told us (or anyone who served in Vietnam).

Fair, however modern sensor and control mechanics are much better than they were 50 years ago. If the media is to be believed, we're reaching the end of a fighters ability to defeat a missile through anything other than kinematics/stealth.

That's not really true. Have you considered stealth vs stealth engagements and BVR kinematics?

As an aside missiles have always been evaded through kinematics. The F-35 doesn't have great kinematics. Those include the ability to maneuver, to do so while maintaining kinetic energy, and the ability to accelerate as well as maintain high altitudes and high velocities. None of which the F-35 is especially great at.

Chaff and flares were the main defeat mechanism into the 90s. In a BVR fight range is the main goal, there is no reason for a stealth jet to close within 15 miles as they would lose stealth.

Even in a seemingly missmatched dogfight between an f-16 and f-22… it’s still plausible for the f-16 to win (sometimes). If we need a dogfighter, then we should build a drone for the task.

There's a lot of investment in directed energy weapons again and talk about deployment on 6th generation fighter platforms (which are planned to be optionally manned). Promising but also defeated by cloud cover.

Against Taiwan? Why? Wouldn't they operate out of Okinawa? Maybe you'd bring some carriers into the area, but the air base already exists. Also it seems like the Chinese would stand an excellent chance of sinking carriers. I think they're one of the more fanciful and unlikely assets in a war of peers. They only really work against non-technological enemies like the Libyans.

Carriers as weapons really are technology for the previous century's war.

Carriers as mobile military bases are still very useful for projecting power.

That does not seem at all obvious to me. It's a big, slow, easy target. Yes you can use them to project power into, say, Sierra Leone, but not against China. None of the expensive and fragile missile defense systems have a demonstrated history of doing anything useful.

You can project power hundreds to thousands of miles forward of a land mass or established base by using a carrier. Even operating it in a very cautious manner affords a great deal of tactical advantage you would not otherwise have available.

The top speed of a US nuclear-powered carrier is secret, but it is known to be able to do 40 knots easily, which is not slow for a ship.

It's not a boat race. State-of-the-art anti-ship missiles may hit mach 5 in their terminal phase. Also a carrier that outruns its escort is an even softer target, and no other craft in a carrier group can keep up with the carrier's max speed.

Projecting power is about bringing weapons to places where you want to blow stuff up, not about necessarily having a frontline fortress. That's why US military bases are everywhere (and nearly unfortified).

An actual war with China will be a global affair. The aircraft carriers don't need to get in range of the missiles to bring airplanes, food, and hospitals to somewhere there is fighting. Practically, the bases in Japan are going to be the main hubs for forces fighting near China, not aircraft carriers.

Air bases don't move at all. From a tactical standpoint they're much less useful than a carrier that can stay out of the range of all but the most expensive missiles.

> Also it seems like the Chinese would stand an excellent chance of sinking carriers.

Only if they can't hide.

If the US disables Chinese satellites, then China will have to rely on air- and marine-based sensors.

Satellites will be the first thing to go. The wars of the future will have a heavy space component.

The Chinese have multiple geostationary orbit satellites with enough resolution to target a carrier. Meaning that by the time the missile reaches the orbit of the satellite (around 5 hours), the Chinese would have had the time to track and sink a carrier about 14 times over.

On top of that they also have a fleet of unmanned submarines and an unmanned supersonic observation drone program as well as a sonarphone network.

Beyond this the carriers are so slow and the missiles so fast that assuming they fire the missiles within a few minutes of their satellites being shot down, the carrier is still unlikely to avoid the missiles target acquisition zone.

Even the idea that the U.S. could promptly launch a kinetic weapon into geostationary orbit is a bit fanciful.

the kinetic weapons are almost certainly already in geo

It's often less efficient and slower to hit a target in GEO from GEO than from the ground

There are presumably countermeasures already within striking distance from adversarial satellites. Kinetic, laser, radio jamming, clandestinely placed surface mines...

The DoD has been thinking of space warfare since the 60's. The space shuttle program was built for defense purposes. Now they have X planes to carry out these missions, and they're continually launching classified payloads.

Space warfare is hard. You can't easily hide anything, so keeping a weapon very close is not feasible. Lasers don't work very well either because if the heat is enough to overheat the other satellite it's probably enough to overheat yourself. Jamming doesn't work very well in the age of super directional communications (see: SpaceX in Ukraine, which is not even designed to withstand jamming).

Deemed not survivable. Hence US trying to get JP to do distributed basing across islands (ACE /agile combat employment), but for obvious reasons, JP is reluctant.

My understanding is that the US is getting kicked out of Okinawa because of sex crimes over a long period of time. Guam would be the next closest airfield the US is guaranteed to fly out of.

And what's to keep the other side from lobbing another dozen missiles every 47 hours?

finite inventory of missiles?

Each 300+ mile range missile runs around 1-3 million dollars. Stealthier variants will be more expensive.

Those loitering ammo things from Iran that Russia uses reportedly cost around 35k each, and they have that range. Very easy to shoot down, but an air defense missile costs a lot more than the drone does.

And it's China, they are the world's manufacturing capacity, so just send hundreds at a time.

That is with power tools available. Destruction of nearby medic tents, storehouse, petrol can prevent the repair to Japanese WW2 manual level. That cant fix within 72 hrs. China has huge productivity vs Russia and USA combined. They are the one written Sun Tzu that is used in Westpoint. Taiwan is so near, once carriers are taken out, Guam will be massive bomb with napalm. SK and Japan will seat out because China can nuke them without repercussions. They know USA dont dare to nuke back because of the Kabul flee incident showing how weak American is when their citizen is unhappy. Plus Russia and Iran is on their back. India and Asean will be neutral. USA is pretty much isolated when the war begin. Of yeah, dedollarisation will be in full swing so USA cant touch much China economy without Walmart store running empty. Oil? Russia unlimited. Taiwan? Checkmate. As Chinese there...historically they will surrendar exactly like Ming Taiwan to Qing China. The chess set pieces had USA setup for failure before the opening gambit by Chinese-Putin-Iranian. Think about it, American cant beat Talebans for 20 years with sheer air supremacy, the chances against superpower China+Russia with unlimited oil gas and rare mineral resources plus world gold reserve, USA as according to Ray Dahlio, is declining just like no so great... Great Britain.

Decommissioning hardened airfields is a hard task. The fighters sit in bunkers along with everything else if note. The bunkers are cheap to replace and are simple concrete structures.

The runway is ultimately a piece of flattened ground. It’s only a question of bulldozer size for how long it takes to fill craters and patch the runway.

There are also semi-public examples of extremely hardened runways such as the Swiss underground airbases.

Many of those airbases are located nearby motorways and most Swiss fighters can use them as emergency runway.

If the bunkers are destroyed in a sneak attack with the fighters still in them, it won’t matter if the bunkers can be replaced, the fighters are toast.

It's really hard to launch a sneak attack from 300+ miles away through heavily defended air space. Satellites would detect any troop buildup long before the war starts.

Depends on capability of attackers. Even medium range hypersonics strikes = minutes of warning. Coordinating a bunch of TEL launchers to pop out of their cave for quick launch = maybe an hour to determine whether movement is training exercise or real deal, likely not enough time to conduct analysis communicated up/down command chain to get units to disperse/bunker in time.

Possible, but the bigger question would be what’s the follow-up? If you don’t have hundreds of thousands of troops ready to invade - why do a massive and expensive conventional first strike? A thousand hypersonics won’t win the war.

Depends on goal of war, whether war of aggression or conquest. If conquest, yes there's need to follow up with invasion, of which mobilization can be done after preemption. If aggression, i.e. goal is to merely want to cripple a place without occupation, a thousand hypersonics can easily bring a society to it's knees. If RU wanted a broken buffer state, they could have gone 100% on destroying critical UKR infra at the outset. Islands with high import dependency even worse off, destroy a few energy terminals and powerplants and carrying capacity reverts to baseline agrarian society levels of subsistence and sustainablity. In peer warfare, 1000 hypersonics especially global precision strike can dismantal adversaries major power projection platforms that can't easily be replaced. It's not going to end a war with a tenancious adversary but it can dramatically shape outcomes. An often cited reason for why US/PRC rivary is particularly dangerous to preemption is that much of the fighting will be maritime, where each side is incentivized to fire first to improve ratio of irreplaceable assets, and such advantage tend to compound. The more side A outnumbers B, the less remenants of B is able to defend against numberically superior A.

Making airstrips ineffective is much harder than it seems. Recall the US attack on the Syrian airbase a few years ago that did little lasting damage

Air superiority fighters are currently not at risk of being shot down by drone systems. Strategic airfields and carriers have surface to air countermeasures.

All known systems are at risk of saturation attacks but they are wasteful methods of attack (especially if your opponent is on high alert).

I think you're underestimating how scary the E2 and E2D AWACS are in conjunction with the defensive countermeasures a carrier has at their disposal.

Everyone lies about how amazing their weapons are, but the CIWS and the E2D are old, well known, and very scary defensive systems.

Truly what's most scary about China's military right now is their advanced linked radar networks. They, presumably, can render stealth technology useless in some core areas - thus denying the core features of the F35 and F22 craft.

(Also remember the US has a base in Guam and a shitload of in-air tankers - over 500)

There's a 4 part series on navalgazing on Why the Carriers Are Not Doomed (https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1)

Not bad series at the time and still relevant to non peer "enemistan" powers, but 4 years is long time with respect to PRC military modernization - and there's a reason the series correctly distinguishes between generic Enemistan mid/low tier powers and PRC even back then. In the last 4 years PRC has (according to each part of the series):

1) launched ~200 Yaogan/Gaofen/Jilin remote sensing satellites to have established near persistent coverage of PRC's backyard and beyond.

2) increased ability to generate fires and saturate CSG defenses, which even in 2018 author admits was sufficient to overwhelm single CSG. Also apart from relying on lol CMO "simulation", Part2 extrapolates interception rate of garbage tier Yemen ordnances (basic subsonic "cruise" missiles) without mentioning of much more performant PRC AShM hardware like YJ12 that travels at mach 2+ and evades on approach.

3) PRC successfully demonstrated coordinated DF21 & DF26 tests that hit moving target on water. Interestingly, this part of article seems to be updated with the 2020 tests but failed to mention it succeeded (initially confirmed, then retracted, then confirmed again by US last year). Meanwhile recent SM6 test (FTM33) shot down 1 of 2 short range ballistic missiles with 4 interceptors in what's described as "most complex" test so far, but "most complex" hasn't hinted at dealing with anything like counter measures. Reality is, missile defense also haven't been seriously stress tested. They could work as advertised or be another Patriot/Scud debacle. Also IMO poorly misread indicators that PRC is favoring carrier projection, development last few years (and really before) suggested coastal aviation/rocketforce doing most of anti-carrier activity. With better capabilities like YJ21 being revealed in Zhuhai this year. The part on programmed evasion is questionable too, like missiles dodge to the point of missing target when hitting targets with hypersonic shrapnel is part of the charm.

4) This part holds up alright only in that it doesn't make strong predictions, and PRC subs has been historically terrible until recent hints at mass producing new model due to shipyard expansions that suggest something mature is in the pipeline.

Are CSGs doomed? Still impossible to say without shooting war, but most factors that author thought PRC had a chance of overcoming has been seemingly overcame (at scale) in the last few years. Also no one is seriously discussing PRC systems confrontation/destruction doctrine that will focus on taking out weak links like resupply and sustainment ships which can render carrier groups useless, or increasing possiblity of global strikes that will take out carriers/support ships when they eventually dock in port. IMO that's the "low"ish hanging fruit that dooms not just carriers, but US willingness to project power at all since it makes CONUS vunerable and can be proliferated (likely via PRC exports) to and be made operational by enemistan powers who can't manage airforce but can a rocketforce.

Not an expert here either, but shouldn’t a weapon be considered in the context of a broader weapon system? And isn’t that entire system the result of the intended strategy and tactical reality?

Like, my understanding is that this thing is intended for asymmetrical, clandestine cold-war type of use. Not for WW2 scale confrontation with territorial gain objectives.

I'm the most ignorant man alive when it comes to war - but this is what I want to know.

Isn't sensor + tracking abilities far more advanced at shooting down planes than planes are at creating damage? And if that's the case, aren't hyper/sonic/long/range stuff better at evading defenses?

Seems like the next "war" will be LoL style to me.

Wars are won by convincing the opposing government and its citizens that they have been defeated and must surrender.

When there are a dozen F-35s flying patterns over your capital city, everyone has to admit defeat. Drones or missiles wouldn't have the same effect. For the desired effect, fighter jets must be big, loud, and expensive.

How many times has shock-and-awe actually compelled surrender? Especially when you exclude the instances where shock-and-awe wasn't preceded by a thorough evisceration of the defending military, which tends to understandably play a role in motivating people to surrender.

I realize that I might be illiterate on this topic, but I always thought the "shock" in "shock and awe" was the thorough evisceration of the defending army.

If I am incorrect in this thinking, I hope someone will give me a better understanding.

Serbia in 1999 comes to mind.

That may be true, but I wouldn’t underestimate the terror caused by 100000 armed drones hovering over houses and streets and bridges.

Jet airplanes are last millenium's weapon. You're more likely to make them laugh than surrender.

Considering equal capabilities, airborne missiles are, I believe, cheaper than their land based counterparts (the can be smaller as much of their energy comes from the aircraft), more mobile (easier to fly a plane a few hundred km that drive a massive truck) and harder to destroy ahead of time. Many "smart weapons" are basic "dumb bombs" plus a relatively cheap conversion kit that makes them glide to the right spot.

In Ukraine, I understand, much of the defence against Russian missiles pounding civilians is done from aircraft in the sky, not with rockets from the ground.

>In Ukraine, I understand, much of the defence against Russian missiles pounding civilians is done from aircraft in the sky, not with rockets from the ground.

Ground based systems still do majority of the work, although this might be for the acute lack of air force.

>more advanced at shooting down planes

One thing to consider is kill envelope / no escape is also function of manned fighters being restricted to manned limitations. An autonmous fighter that has bigger fuel tank than missiles (more flight envelope), better sensors to inform AI (due to larger airframe + power) that can can pull substantially more Gs than a human, can conceivable be much better at dodging missiles. To the point where it no longer becomes viable to shoot them down, both economically and tactically, i.e. cost more than UAV worth of missile to engage, and require so many missiles that it's easy to saturate defenses with handful of UAVs. A CSG can only dedicate so much space for air (VLS slots), if that DDG with ~100 cells with 30 reserved for anti air suddenly needs to move to 90, then it becomes useless for other missions. And if all ~100 cells isn't then UAVs in relatively small numbers can essentially operate uncontested. Implications being, such shift (which IMO tier1 US/PRC are pursuing) will massively benefit land based aviation that can mass deployment.

Unmanned aircraft aren't built for maneuver ability. Stop trying to turn everything into top gun.

Currently aren't, otherwise go tell the navy and airforce that. There's a reason programs exist to train AI to out gun topgun, because the current roadmap leads to large UAVs more performant than current manned fighters specifically because pushing beyond human flight envelops has capability merits.

All these weapon systems are available to Russia and they were unable to disable Ukrainian air power this way.

Drones are slow. You can pick them up easily with a fighter jet, and in some cases even with attack helicopters.

The ones we use to spy on people and shoot small missiles are slow, but they are designed to stay in the air for a very long time. I assume they make drones today that are much faster (hypersonic missiles are very drone-like in some ways), we just don't know about them yet.

In which case they won't be cheap so you can't deploy myriads of them.

Parent's point is "how many of them can you pick up?" as they can overwhelm in number.

But they have a very small footprint, which makes them hard for radars and automated targeting systems.

And I doubt jets and helis can effectively eliminate hundreds of drones in a timely manner.

Drones can be very, very fast. it just depends on the design.

A drone is just an unmanned aircraft at its core. A drone could do maneuvers that would kill a pilot, kamikaze itself, or fly with only enough fuel for a one-way trip. It could have a jet engine, a rocket, or maybe both.

Designing for human pilots is really a huge limitation. Drones can be smaller, lighter, cheaper, and can have any engine the designer decides to put on them.

They’re the future of aerial combat for sure.

Fast, cheap, heavy ordnance. Pick two.

You can pick all three in three different drones

All three of those goals are served by removing the cockpit and everything that goes along with it.

Even if you remove the pilot you’d still need a big drone to load air to surface missiles capable of destroying an airfield. In which case, you’d also have to add a jet engine to make the thing capable of lifting the weight and be fast enough. And now you have a fuel issue, so you add even more size to be able to carry a few tones of jet fuel. Eventually you’ll end up with something as big as a fighter jet, in which case you can’t just develop thousands of them because the cost will already be too high.

High is relative. Remove multiple pilots that cost 10M+ over course of life of air frame. Adopt hi-lo mix of master UAVs with full sensor suits mesh with simplified bomb truck units. Cutting out manned training will also dramatically reduce operation/maintenance costs, you don't need to waste 1000s of hours per air frame on training, just store the drones in a warehouse and "spin their tires" every once in a while. Hardware costs also goes down when most of fleet aren't optimized for service life. It's not 100:1 ratio, something like 3:1 can dramatically enhance capabilities.

Okay but now they can't do anything nrclark said.

Loyal Wingman specifically intends to do all that, remove pilot and associated operation overheads with lower cost MQ28s as force multiplier to support/augment expensive manned overseer. Next potential step is to make overseer unmanned as well.

Weight of human and controls is way overstated.