Construction of the 4th Chinese aircraft carrier has reportedly started
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Is this supposed to be a new Type 004, or another Type 003 like the Fujian?
With the Fujian completed and in sea trials, it would make sense to keep the production line going and crank out a few more. The US suffers from on and off warship production. Some years ago, after winning a carrier order, the head of Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock announced, in a letter to Congress, that if the Navy would order two at once, Newport News would throw in a third one for free. The Navy declined.
Otherwise I'd say it's just as silly for China to build obsolete carriers as it is for the US to keep building them.
Missiles outrange carriers which in turn outrange battleships. The battleships became obsolete in 1941. The carriers became obsolete in the early 2000s.
Carriers are increasingly vulnerable against things like missiles and drones that are multiple orders of magnitude cheaper. Think about how a carrier group would defend itself against, say, a heterogenous attack of 100-200 combined simultaneous ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, and/or manned aircraft.
Obviously carrier groups have multiple layers of missile defense: CWIS, combat air patrols, etc. But you only need one missile to get through and that carrier is quite possibly going to be unable to launch planes for quite a while.
And even if you don't hit the carrier, the carrier is going to be undertaking evasive maneuvers during the attack. That means no planes taking off and landing. For a very early example of this, look at the Battle of Midway. The American air attacks were disorganized and sporadic. And yet, they largely kept the Japanese carriers from flying planes for much of the day, leading to a crushing American victory just as their window of opportunity closed.
None of this exactly means carriers are "obsolete." Against non-peers, that is still a whole lotta force projection.
It’s hard to find a specific ship in open seas. The Russian navy suffers from a lack of combined arms and force protection. A carrier battle group is far more capable of defense than the Russian navy in the Black Sea.
I don’t believe you are well versed in modern naval operations. I’m not either but the fact that France, UK, Brazil, India, and China have aircraft carriers suggests they aren’t obsolete. Carriers are well protected. Not invincible.
The reference to Midway is odd because without aircraft carriers the U.S. would have lost the battle. Likewise, without carriers the Japanese would not have stood a chance.
If all you want is defense against an enemy deploying an airfield (aka aircraft carrier) close to your border, I think you could build thousands of them for the price of an aircraft carrier.
A bit like a minefield with mines that can target ships passing by.
An attacker would have to use mine sweepers to destroy them, protecting them with their carrier further out, but, these things being mobile, you could keep replacing them. Not invincible, but I think it is something planners are looking at.
(No such animal as a country called Taiwan. However there is an island called Taiwan.)
China doesn't need to invade the Republic of China. They just need to blockade it, just like Britain blockaded Germany in WW1 and WW2. The island of Taiwan would be out of fuel and food within weeks.
China invading the Republic of China would be like the US invading Hawaii. Why would you blow up your own stuff? You'd only have to spend perfectly good money to replace it.
It's World War III that deters China, not a carrier group or two.
Neither the U.S. or China is going to engage in a nuclear confrontation with each other and any war over Taiwan between the two nations would be conventional (though China is waging a rather successful cyber war against the U.S.).
I believe carriers are essential to deterrence against China attacking Taiwan. I could be wrong though.
Today that position is held by China. How long do you think that the US could replace its lost materiel and men against a country that is four times larger in population and probably ten times larger in manufacturing capacity?
The WHOLE OF THE WEST (5 eyes, Europe, and Japan) is smaller than just China alone in population and in manufacturing capacity.
We in the West won't know what's hit us when WW3 comes along. It'll be a lot worse than Germany's disastrous war against the Soviets in WW2.
I'm saying that China would like to avoid WW3.
It would not be good for business, and it also might sort of end humanity via nuclear war.
The entire carriers are fast and will be where missiles will not misconception comes from people conflating carrier speed (slow), with adversary ability to plan/execute counter strike operations (typically even slower). The prior assumption is _most_ US adversaries lack ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) which would constrain mission planning to many hours which gives carriers room to move 100s of nautical miles, either outside of retaliatory missile ranges or simply adversary OODA loop, i.e. adversaries simply don't have hardware or software (as in processes) to plan a counter strike in time. It's not that carriers are fast, but adversaries are too slow in terms of operation planning to launch their fast hardware, giving carriers lots of time to slowly get to safety.
This is doesn't apply to high end adversaries with proper ISR (i.e. PRC who launched 100s of ISR satellites last few years) who pretty much knows where US carriers are at all times and have near persistent coverage of their operations, who can launch saturation strikes of mach 15+ missiles that can reach carriers within 30 minutes in indopac that can't be outrun and in salvo sizes that carrier groups does not have magazine depth to defend against.
PRC commercial sats can track individual fighters. PLA has enough ISR (look at all the Yaogan launches within just last few years) now for persistent IndoPac coverage, they don't need to pinpoint/loiter/luck etc, they essentially know where a carrier is within meter level accuracy at all times, including SAR to look through clouds. They're not spitting out spacex # of paylods but they've put up 100s of imaging satellites in last few years, with more coming, and likely have enough just commercial imaging now to track US carriers globally without losing sight of it.
This is not meant to condescend, but essentially your talking points are based on popular misunderstanding from online opinons that poorly regurgigated a series of online articles explaining why carriers are "not doomed" from Naval Gazing ~5 years ago, but even in those essays the author specifically carved out PRC nascent carrier kill chain at the time as the exception. It's 10 years later, PRC now has 100s times better ISR coverage missile capabilities, the talking points are even more out of date. The caveate of the articles was always, carriers are not doomed, except for maybe against 2015 PRC whose has XYZ (ISR, # of launchers / salvo sizes, level of informatization) that puts the fight pretty even. It's almost 10 years later, PRC has increased XYZs by magnitude, it's not level playing field anymore. i.e. PRC deliverable single salvo size went from, 2015 maybe a US CSG can successfully defend if dump missile defense into VLS and airwing to 2024 PRC who can launch enough to satutate any CSG loadout at ranges where they can't effectively operate.
E: this is not mentioning PLA system destruction warfare that will also degrade fixed targets like replenishment fleets who has to reload in port, the tldr is they can simply disable the entire carrier group (really all of USN) by limitting them to single deployment assets by denying airwing/escorts fuel. There are many ways to break USN carrier conops that are not designed against peer adversaries who can reach deep into USN logistics chain.
Thank you for this, new to me, information. Did they hit ships on a fixed course or hit ships doing evasive maneuvers?
are based on popular misunderstanding from online opinons that poorly regurgigated a series of online articles explaining why carriers are "not doomed" from Naval Gazing ~5 years ago
I've never heard of Naval Gazing. You don't know the sources of my information as I've not mentioned what they are.
Not trying to be presumptious about your sources, but basis of narrative that carriers are fast and hard to find traces back to those series of articles if you formed your opinion from readings within past 5 years - that's where it likely came from. It gots regurgitated and telephone gamed in various defense blogs and corrupted even more in online commentary. If knowledge is older than that, then it's obsolete.
Other thing to consider is US ASAT capability is limited - only like ~20 ASM135 which can reach high (~500km) LEO were produced (but we don't really know how many exists). SM3s which US has ~500, not all of which are ASAT capable and validated at ~250km. A lot of Yaogan constellation are at ~500km. Those SM3s may reach that, but they also double as ballistic interceptors for high end AShMs. TBF we don't know much about PRC ASAT inventory, we just know they have capbility with industrial base to build a lot of ordnances.
PRC also can launch satellites rapidly via road mobile TELs, and have long range, disposable, supersonic drones like WZ8 as backup/redundant kill chain. Of course US likely has ability to quickly put up space assets as well. There's also all sorts consideration like US launching an coordinated ASAT strike is basically shooting 100s of missiles without warning - if it doesn't accidentally trigger MAD it's going to trigger use-it or lose-it counter strike. Doing it gradually/piecemeal = PRC will have time to respond.
Really it comes down to attrition/numbers game, but when space assets in the multi 100s, there's a lot of build in redundancy against decapitation strikes, which inherently makes such strikes more difficult to pull off, i.e. is US going to disperse elements in theatre because just about anything in 1IC can still likely be hit with PRC missiles without GPS using INS/dsmac/tercom navigation. PRC going to know somethings up if Yokosuka gets emptied and adjust retaliation posture accordingly.
Things gets complicated vs adversaries with modern ISR in the ~100s. Caveate being that club is pretty much US+PRC. RU also has 100s but a lot of it legacy. Essentially everyone else US would consider adversary like IR or NK has single digits, and would get steam rolled. 2010s PRC borderline in this category, their ISR fleets was low/mid double digits then. Hence carriers are hard to find/kill holds true for that calibre of forces. But "neutralize enemies advantages" is apropos, and against most US adversaries, US primacy is based on US having ability in neutralizing those advantages. Difference vs PRC is PLA spent last 20 years of modernization specifically to neutralize US advantages - that's what their systems confrontation/destruction warfare doctorine is designed around - build enough redundancy to mitigate and defeat US advantages.
The less bloody route = PRC feels like it's ascending power, and they may think eventually correlation of forces in region will make it obvious US security architecture can't deal with PLA. Ask yourself how much hardware PRC can hypothetically put in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Carribeans to really deter US. The answer is probably no amount, because US size + disproprotional military potential is in aggregate much larger. PRC 300x ship building advantage is result of casual PRC 2% GDP military build up, they haven't even began the industrial scale arms race i.e. PRC mass gigafactory scale defense procurement. I think in next medium/long term years it will be increasingly clear US posture in region is not going to be survivable or enough to deter PRC. Combine with PRC building out global strike that can conventionally hit CONUS strategic targets may force US to substantially reduce (not abandon) their security posture in East Asia to level that PRC finds tolerable.
I think PRC ability to take TW is almost forgone - can always blockade or raze TW like gaza with purely mainland platforms and grind for capitulation. But after US made PRC containment goal explicit, there's really no seperating a TW scenario with broader PRC/US+co scenario anymore. TLDR is it could end very badly, but I think unspoken is it could end as badly for US as it does for PRC. I think it will end _very_ badly for US partners in region.
If navies are obsolete then Taiwan’s best course of action is reconciliation with China with the best terms they can find. Likewise for all other countries near China.
There are no missiles capable of loitering.
The reference to Midway is odd because without aircraft
carriers the U.S. would have lost the battle.
Whether we're talking about 1942 or 2024, aircraft carriers can't perform evasive maneuvers and launch/land fighters simultaneously. You pretty much can't land a non-VTOL plane on a carrier doing anything but traveling in a straight line into the wind.
During the Battle of Midway, the USN fortuitiously exploited this weakness more effectively than the IJN. It was a big factor in the US victory.
[Carriers] aren’t obsolete
But if you don't think a carrier group is extremely vulnerable to a superpower with advanced missile technology, you might literally be thinking in 1942 terms.
I don’t believe you are well versed in modern naval
operations. I’m not either
There are no loitering missiles. If you read the wikipedia link you'd see this written:
Loitering munitions fit in the niche between cruise missiles and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs or combat drones), sharing characteristics with both.
Aircraft carriers matter greatly in peer to peer naval supremacy. China is building aircraft carriers to contest the seas around Taiwan against the U.S.
You are not well versed in modern naval operations. Neither am I.
Those that are big enough to do major damage
to an aircraft carrier can be intercepted by aircraft
Hypersonic cruise missiles exist. These are as fast or faster than air to air missiles, making interception tricky to say the least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_weapon#_China
Ballistic missiles are also generally going to be traveling at hypersonic speeds. As they descend at steep angles from space. Even tricker than cruise missiles traveling somewhat horizontally.
Third, a US carrier hosts about 40 fighters. During high tempo operations a single bird might be in the air up to 10 hours a day or so, but this tempo can't be sustained for long - it's not like you can have 40 simultaneous fighters in the air 24/7. Planes need maintainence, etc. Surely even you can understand that there is a limit to the number of simultaneous missiles these fighters and the rest of the fleet's defenses can intercept. There are a lot of variables that go into that number, and we're talking about classified and rapidly-evolving hardware, but I don't know that anybody thinks it's more than a near-peer could throw at a US carrier group.
China is building aircraft carriers to contest
the seas around Taiwan against the U.S.
But: no. I'd suggest looking at a map. Taiwan is less than a hundred miles from China's mainland. They certainly don't need aircraft carriers to fight a war in the seas around Taiwan. Come on.
They are, in all likelihood, primarily planning to use those carriers for force projection elsewhere in the world. (And/or for prestige purposes)
There are some informative answers from others in this thread; you would do well to learn about this topic if it interests you.
And I feel the better comparison is does "missile on aircraft on carrier outrange hostile missile?"
But more to the point if you can't defend a mobile ocean-going fortress, what can you defend?
Underground bunkers (I believe Sweden has a decent history of converting caves into aircraft hangers). Just as we don't really have conventional fortresses on land any more, only trenches and bunkers, as munitions get better we're reaching a point where the only way to keep anything safe is to bury it.
…”weaponry studies”? Now I’m curious to what extent there exists an academic commentary on stuff like this, separate from internal researchers/stakeholders…
If you can operate a jet fighter-bomber for less than (say) $200 K an hour* I'd be very surprised. And that doesn't take into account the servicing time on modern 'hangar queens' to get them ready for their next sortie. And what's the cost per hour of operating a carrier??
Try to include ALL your costs in working out the cost-efficiency.
* Let's be really generous and say you get 10,000 hours of service life out of a fighter jet. (The designed service life is only 8,000 hours.) The F-35 costs around 130 million bucks so over 10,000 hours that cost comes out to $13,000 per hour in just amortising the purchase cost, without adding in the operating costs themselves.
I agree completely but I think the economics still favor the jets, especially if you need any precision or control, if you just want to lob explosives as cheap as possible maybe the equation is a bit different (though lobbing a lot of them over very large distances is still expensive).
On the other hand if China were to prepare for a war in the South China Sea aircraft carriers would be very useful. They have a couple airstrips there, but they are vulnerable and not as flexible as bringing a couple carriers to the coast of your enemy. It's also a good deterrent as a pure show of force.
Keeping the Malacca Straight open might also be a big part of it.
The reality seems to be that PRC is profoundly not serious about building carriers. They now have ~300x ship building capacity vs US, and outputs in one year as much tonnage as entire US WW2 5-year ship building program, yet is building up carriers at extremely slow rate (2.5 in ~15 years - with 01/liaoning rebuilt from USSR Varyag hull), when they can be spamming 2-3+ carriers PER year. For reference US was laying/building/launching/commissioning a Forrestal class and other large displacement carriers almost every year post WW2. It would be fairly easy for PRC to build 10+ carriers within a few years, but they don't, nor do they seem to be prioritizing building out requisit airwings. Relevant carrier programs are moving along, but it seems far from urgent. This is not the aquisition posture of a force that prioritizes / values carriers.
Compare to say PRC subsurface... they had shit subs until recently, but have consistently tried to close gap and built a lot of boats. Now that latest gen PLAN subs within 1ish generation of USN, they're expanding sub shipyards to build 6-8s simultaneously, i.e. 3-4x than US. Good sign they really care about subs.
TLDR is I don't know if PRC sees expansive role of carriers for future priorities, but it's still worth hedging / building up capability just in case. Real question is, why is PRC building so few carriers, why do most major carrier operators maintain minimal carrier fleet, which includes USN, whose minimum carrier #s are constrained by law (11+10 operational carriers/amphibious assault ships from 10 USC. 8062) and therefore we don't really know what USN priority would be if planners have freedom pursue any force composition. We do know USN insists it needs to build up against PRC but future navy force design is hedging on distributed lethality of more smaller hulls while maintaining the LEAST amount of carries they are legally obligated to operate, which to my knowledge they've never exceeded.
A modern carrier group has plenty of air defences and anti-drone capabilities to hold off a small- or medium-sized enemy, and it would still provide a very useful mobile platform to bomb them from.
The Houthis are using medium range Iranian drones to attack ships, but they have mostly been failures since they are easier to shoot down. Also, being controlled from land limits the numbers and makes vulnerable to jamming. They also don't have range to catch carriers out at sea.
The longer range "drones" that Iranians have developed could change things. They are basically slow cruise missiles, not drones. But they could be used in large numbers because they are cheap. There is no indication they have developed anti-ship guidance which would bump up the price. However, they haven't had much effect in Ukraine, Israel, or Red Sea.
Also, we haven't seen what counters to drones look like. The same guidance for autonomous drone could lead to accurate cannons taking them down. Cheap missiles could mean cheap defensive missiles to shoot down all the drones.
And even a direct hit wouldn't come close to sinking an aircraft carrier. You'd probably need a dozens of direct hits.
Multiple direct hits from torpedoes couldn't even sink an old, decommissioned aircraft carrier.
Cruise missiles were not effective.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_the_United_States_...
One other factor is that they mostly work for shore defense since carrier or aircraft would use more effective weapons.
Direct hit would hurt a carrier. I don't we have warhead sizes for Iranian ones but normal anti-ship missiles are 500-1000lb. Those probably wouldn't sink but could cripple it, forcing it to withdraw or knocking it out of action which makes more vulnerable.
Shahed payloads are 100lb.
This is so deep into hypothetical territory.
They can't even fly far enough to make it to an aircraft carrier in the first place.
They'd get shot down by hornets, long before they arrived, if they even could.
You'd need a swarm of 10k of these to even attempt taking on an aircraft carrier.
Iran can barely produce 1k per year.
The US is building & decommissioning multiple aircraft carriers per year.
If you think 10 shaheds even pose a threat to a lone Destroyer, you're kidding yourself.
There's a reason an aircraft carrier has never been sunk.
I thought Iran was selling Russia low-cost long-range cruise missiles but hard to find article with drones and ballistic missiles. The Houthi do have copy of Iranian copy of Kh-55. The fact that rebels can build anti-ship missile, even a few, should be concerning. It means that more capable countries could build hundreds and overwhelm carrier group.
Lots of aircraft carriers have been sunk. Are you thinking of only nuclear supercarriers? Cause of there has been no war where one could have been sunk. The Forrestal fire shows that they are vulnerable to a single rocket (Navy firefighting has gotten better as result). It doesn't matter if they are scuttled if destroyed by fire.
Not a single aircraft carrier has been sunk in combat.
There were also multiple carriers sunk by submarines. Torpedo counts as "in combat" and a few were in battles. Yorktown was crippled by bombers and then sunk by Japanese submarine. Zuikaku was quickly sunk by aircraft in Battle of Leyte Gulf. If you are talking about gunfire, HMS Glorious was sunk by Scharnhorst.
So what are you talking about? Do you mean "post-war", "with missiles", or "supercarrier"? Cause you should say that.
Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_aircraft_carrie...
Wouldn't aircraft carriers be able to shoot
down slow cruise missiles extremely easily?
1. Lots of other types of missiles, like hypersonic ballistic missiles.
2. You generally shoot down missiles with missiles. Your carrier group has a finite supply of missiles. I believe it's around a few hundred. There are close-in weapons systems but they're kind of a last resort and I don't know if they can counter ballistic missiles.
3. A carrier group can only shoot down X targets at a time. Nobody knows the exact value of X. But imagine dozens or hundreds of missiles, drones, etc. at once.
4. Even if you don't hit the carrier it can't take off and land planes while undertaking evasive maneuvers. (see the Battle of Midway for an early example)
And even a direct hit wouldn't come close to sinking
an aircraft carrier. You'd probably need a dozens of
direct hits.
Now one of these would probably do nothing against a carrier. It wouldn't reach it, and if it would it wouldn't get through the armor. But a bigger swarm can overwhelm your defenses and repeatedly hit the same spot to get through armor. They can be mass-produced, and no matter how much firepower and armor you bring your enemy can always spend less money than that on just making more drones.
They are also something new that nobody has developed defenses for. The US has working on small boat defense, so maybe improved guns will work for drones.
One variant that would be interesting are semi-submersible drones.
If our basically defunct navy can deal with Iran drones and missiles, then I’m fairly certain an aircraft carrier can.
I feel bad for the Taiwanese, similar to how I felt about Hong Kong. I was hoping we’d offer Hong Kong citizens aslyum (you’d make great US citizens!) but I realize we’d probably also get a few… dissidents caught in our net with that program. I even debated marrying a Hong Kong girl for citizenship but couldn’t find any online, also what a weird offer to make, no one took me up on it (couldn’t find where Hong Kong people posted to advertise even).
Anyhow, I do support strengthening our military. I was younger and thought our military budget was silly but after more reading and more nuance in my worldview, I realize our military is source of consistency - a necessary evil that’s helped to avoid larger wars. Still wish we had better healthcare though.
With all the evidence it seems the “threat of Chinese invasion” may also just be the US imperial coalition trying to increase defense spending again. Just like Ukraine and Israel.
I'd trust these rumors about China about as much.
Other conceivable options, falling short of a full scale invasion of the Taiwanese mainland, would be a naval blockade of mainland Taiwan or missile strikes against it.