Folks, we’ve had the technology to sink an aircraft carrier since before there were aircraft carriers. In fact, the day they invented aircraft carriers was the day it became easier to sink every ship, including aircraft carriers. That’s why battleships became obsolete. Before then, the best way to sink a gunship anywhere in the world, was to use another gunship. Afterward, it was an aircraft carrier.
The thing that will make the aircraft carrier obsolete will reliably allow you to sink aircraft carriers, AND it will do all the other jobs that an aircraft carrier lets you do (msmith357’s arsenal ship seems great, someone needs to design one). Not to mention, satellite guidance is silly if carriers are your target. Any war with the U.S. in the near future would likely include the removal of that nation’s satellites from the theater. In fact, if the other nation is China, I’d imagine there’d be a lot more space debris created by both sides in short order.
Am I the only one who hears, “I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops!”, when they see these threads?
New question: Does our military believe their claim? Having one source of information doesn’t put forth a great argument, especially when it is yourself. China should fear me, I have an armed and operational battle station just past Mars. Honestly.
But what makes you think that the Chinese are going to get free shots indefinitely at our carrier task groups? And as to the odds, it would depend on the probability of each individual attack hitting the carrier. If the probability of a hit is very low, than throwing dozens of them at a carrier task group just makes the probability of hitting the carrier…no as low. I’ve seen nothing to get worked up about for this weapons system…hell, even according to the articles cited in this thread there hasn’t been a full up test of the entire system yet. Anyone here think the Chinese will develop a super magic missile on the first try?
The thing is, once the Chinese actually launch the thing for a full up test the US (and everyone else) will be able to get performance characteristics off of it and, if necessary (:dubious:) begin to develop defense and doctrine against the things. We will also see the short comings and failures. Which is why it’s in China’s best interest to basically bluff…to show that they have some pieces of technical capability and are thinking about building a carrier killer missile (something that nations have been talking about for decades…not exactly anything new) and letting folks like those on this message boards imaginations run wild.
Subs are much more of a threat, no doubt. The thing is, it’s a threat that we have dealt with during the Cold War, since the Soviets also had advanced attack subs. Possibly the Chinese surprised us…which would have been foolish of them to give away a capability when we were underestimating them. Why? The best way to kill an attack sub is with another attack sub…and we have VERY good attack subs. Now we are on notice that the Chinese have good attack subs and decent doctrine as well.
What that stunt in 2007 tells me is that the Chinese were bluffing again. Maybe it was a crack crew, maybe it was one of their better boats, maybe the conditions were just right, maybe they tried a hundred times and failed all the others…doesn’t matter. If it was something the Chinese were prepared to do any time they wanted they would be idiots to let us know they could do it at all…until the unlikely event of war between the US and China. THAT’S when you want to bring out your secret super weapons and winning surprise tactics. It’s not like the US is going to tuck tail and abandon our carriers because China shows they can get a sub into range of a carrier…the Soviets used to do that all the time and we didn’t abandon our carriers. They are simply to important of a tool in our arsenal, and they give us too much flexibility and capability to just get rid of because they aren’t 100% invulnerable to attack.
Diesel subs are quieter over very short distances - the length of time they can operate on battery power only. That won’t matter in wartime, because the carrier battle group will be operating active sonar nets.
It’s certainly possible that major powers will have a naval war without resorting to a strategic nuclear exchange (which of course means without resorting to use of tactical nukes either, since those are extremely likely to provoke escalation). In fact, there’s little reason to plan for what we’d do in a global nuclear exchange – we’d all die – so planning a naval war – and building carriers – as if there won’t be nukes used makes considerable sense. Also, a naval war is probably significantly less likely to provoke nuclear retaliation than a land invasion, because there’s no immediate threat of permanent loss of territory.
Agreed. At one point, young men wearing hachimaki headbands were the weapon of choice.
I’m hearing it too. The thread is getting pretty turgid, son.
They didn’t manufacture your MacBook. They assembled it. Your MacBook isn’t a Chinese product, it’s a global product.
Of course, China can buy off-the-shelf components and stuff them into weapons systems just as easily as anyone else.
But it seems like every other year for the last 50 years we get a breathless article about some weapons system that has rendered Aircraft Carriers obsolete. There was only one war in history that featured two navies with aircraft carriers, and that was the Pacific War between the US and Japan in WWII. That war demonstrated that aircraft carriers were sitting ducks. Of course, what was the most effective weapon to use against an aircraft carrier? An aircraft. And so how do you get your aircraft into a position to blast the other guy’s carrier into scrap metal?
WWII was also the last naval war in history. And so nobody really knows how the next naval war is going to go down. The most likely scenario is that one or both navies will be destroyed as effective fighting forces very quickly. Navies have known since the dawn of the carrier age that carriers are incredibly vulnerable. There are too many ways to destroy them. Notice that there’s only one navy in the world that still has functional fleet carriers. And we haven’t used them against another navy since WWII, they’ve been used as floating airports against enemies without any offensive naval capability.
So our navy and every navy is really untested in actual combat operations. We don’t really know how well our weapons and defenses will work, and neither does anyone else.
I’ll eat my hat if any admiral in the US navy expected to be able to park a carrier off the coast of China and launch airstrikes like we were able to do against Iraq or Vietnam. This particular weapon just adds one more way of sending a carrier to the bottom, it’s not like there aren’t already a couple of dozen.
And again, as everyone has already pointed out, in a shooting war between China and the United States, there’s going to be a heck of a lot more to worry about than a dozen carrier groups.
From the point of view of the Taiwanese, it must be some comfort to note that if US carriers are vulnerable, how much more vulnerable would a Chinese invasion fleet be?
I think the day of manned aircraft is almost over. Drones launched from fast stealth warships would be a better option. Given the immense cost of fleet carriers (and their limited usfulness)-will we see the great fleet carriers retired in the next 20 years?
I wouldn’t hold my breath for stealth warships and automated (and armed) attack drones with comparable capabilities to a US carrier battle group. 20 years? I seriously doubt the US will be retiring our manned carrier force in 20 years and replacing it in that time frame…and based on the fact that afaik no one is actively developing drone carrying stealth warships, I doubt that they would be in anyone’s OOB in that time frame either. Stealthed drone carriers really don’t make much sense for a country like the US regardless, since part of the mission of a carrier battle group is to be seen. If you want stealth capabilities you use subs (from a naval perspective…you could launch stealth aircraft from a carrier, but you want the carrier to be seen usually, so your enemies know you’ve cared enough to send the very best).
I don’t know where this meme that our carriers are ‘limited usfulness’ comes from. Expensive? Yeah…way. Which is why no other navy has the capability. But limited? Hardly.
I think it comes from the perception that technology is rapidly advancing to the point where long range, self adjusting and target seeking ballistic missles will become more and more widely available to potential enemy countries.
It seems obvious given potential targets, an enemy would send it’s missles to attack the carrier holding 100 aircraft. However, if instead of 1 carrier you have 50 frigates each capable of launching 2 aircraft (drones), then where do you send the missles? Not so obvious.
A carrier group may indeed be more effective - but that has to balance out against its relative vunerability. And the fact that all of that investment of money and attack capability is rolled up into one floating bulk of steel makes an enemy quite likely to attack it with everything it can.
if that’s the case then we should be seeing the development of such systems by nations who want to leap ahead of the US by getting in on the next big thing. I’ve not seen much indication that such small, stealthy drone carriers are being looked at in anything except highly theoretical ways. Certainly, at least afaik, they are no where near the stages of even prototype development, let alone production and the building of doctrine for both tactical, strategic and diplomatic use. Granted, the US or other countries could be developing the things in the dark to unveil in the future, and I have no doubt that some exploratory development is ongoing, but a lot of things would have to come together to bring about such a combat system, and then you’d have to actually put it into a production pipeline, and develop the ways to use it effectively.
I don’t see any of that happening realistically in 20 years. Myself, I’d guess that the big carriers will be with the US for the next 50 at least, and if we do autonomous drones we’ll be launching them from our carriers (we do have small carriers as well as supercarriers). I don’t know what other nations will do…if, indeed carriers today are ‘of limited use’ then I guess they will try to leap to the next technology, but my guess is that it’s mainly arm chair admirals who think that carriers are obsolete, so (again my guess) I think that other countries will develop large carriers as well.
Guess we’ll see. I would be saddened to see the big carriers go away, since that’s what I grew up with, but if indeed they are obsolete then that’s the way it needs to be. But simply because a carrier isn’t some sort of impregnable fortress isn’t good enough to simply get rid of the things, IMHO…no unless you have something viable that can take it’s place. And just because the Chinese SAY they have such a magic missile is certainly no reason to jump at shadows. As another poster said up thread, I’ll believe the Chinese have such a beast when I see them test fire it and hit even a stationary warship with the flight and performance characteristics they are claiming…let alone a warship that’s part of a fleet, with full ECM and defenses and that is maneuvering…
The thing about carriers though is that they may be too precious to lose. That is, suppose some conflict (say China vs US) remains purely tactical- a battle between US air and naval forces against those of China. And let’s say the US loses one or more carriers. Regardless of the outcome, the lost ships would need replacing. Say then a conflict in the Strait of Hormuz arises and the US loses another expensive carrier to swarms of comparitively cheap missiles. If on average it is 1/20th as expensive to destroy a carrier as it is to build a replacement, then every time the US fleet went into battle it would at best win Pyrrhic victories.
The US has invested heavily in weapons systems that grew out of the Cold War mentality that our weapons had to be the best possible per unit, because in the event of the outbreak of nuclear war there would be no question of replacing lost units. This extended to peacetime where the best possible systems gave the best deterrence, and asymmetrical wars where the survivability of our weapons was not seriously in question. The one thing our modern military is not structured for is heavy attrition over a long period.
A similar situation once existed with battleships. After an enormous investment in armored capital ships, the major powers of the time (Britain, Germany) were faced with the dilemma that they didn’t dare risk sending their magnificent fleets into a situation where they might be destroyed; it would simply take too much time and money to replace them.
It can’t have been intended as one. It’s designed around a delta wing and canard configuration. The F-16 has a conventional swept wing and tail design.
Suppose we have the JFK in ht e Persian Gulf-and the iranians send 30-40 speedboats at her…from all directions. Most of them get blown out of the water-but one gets through-and detonates a 3000 lb bomb against the hull. now we’ve lost a $20 billion warship and 4500 men-to a suicide weapon.
Plus CAP and other air patrol stuff. It’s a scenario that has a low probability of working, especially when you consider that carriers usually don’t get into really tight, confined areas…and they don’t exactly sit around at rest. They are also faster than people seem to realize.
So, assuming the Iranians actually tried something like this and failed…what would be likely to happen to them if they did fail? Hell, what would be likely to happen to them if they succeeded in sinking or even damaging one of our big carriers? Do you think that trade off of sinking a carrier would outweigh the destruction of their military and a good portion of their civilian infrastructure? I don’t know how much the Iran’s infrastructure and military C&C costs, but I’m guessing it’s more than $20 billion, and that more than 4500 Iranians would die if we bombed the crap out of them with conventional missiles and smart bombs.
I would think a carrier battle group should have a good chance of fending off 30 incoming fighter/bomber aircraft - much less 30 speed boats.
But, a course adjusting ballitic missle incoming at 1 to 3 kilometers per second - now that is something that will require a rethink on a carriers vunerability. Probably a game changer once these missles are available (if they are not already).
Carriers will still have their place in dealing with countries like the Iraqs and Afghanistans - but in a balls out war with another major power I would think they’ll either be parked out of the combat arena, or they will be sunk.
And as far as the Iraqs and Afghanistans - perhaps the real question should be, during the next 20 years does the US need 12 carriers to effect control over 3rd world countries? Perhaps 3 or 6 are enough - enough to field a carrier or two at any given time to really help with the country’s that don’t even have real navies, but realizing that they would be pretty useless in fighting a country with modern subs and ballistic missle tech.
A summary for the busy: it doesn’t matter if our carriers are useless, immensely costly and, within a decade or two, the laughing stock of the world. If they sink we can just have a bloodbath of civilians to make us feel better! That will teach them to pretend to be impressed by our beloved symbolic aircraft carrier next time.
… yah, that’s a good summary, unfortunately not of anything that’s been written.
Our carriers aren’t useless, by any stretch of the imagination. And it was pointed out to you that any strike on them by another nation would be part of a war much, much larger than the sinking of a few ships. Your argument is a bit like pointing out that military barracks are pointless, since any enemy can nuke them. And, anyways, flesh and blood soldiers are a joke since in another few decades we’ll have robots fighting our wars for us anyways.
The thread is getting pretty turgid, son.