Aircraft carriers: floating coffins?

Great Debates
61

[QUOTE=The Amazing Hanna]
A summary for the busy:
[/QUOTE]

Is ‘busy’ a code word for ‘I’m making stuff up because I don’t really know anything about the subject’?? Just curious.

Does that mean it does matter, because they aren’t? Or, to paraphrase from the great sage Inigo Montoya: ‘useless’…I dinna thin’ that word means what you thin’ it means, kimosabe.

Comparatively speaking and looking at the annual revenue for the US government, is it really ‘immense’? Can you define what ‘immensely costly’ means in terms of the wealth of a hyperpower like the US? What percentage of the overall defense budget do you suppose our carrier fleet costs?

(I do concede that here you were at least not completely off base…our military IS very costly, and certainly the carriers are part of that overall cost)

Probably why no other country on earth is building the things. Oh…wait. Other countries are building them. :smack: But you go on thinking that having carriers makes the US a laughing stock…I’m sure this belief (and I use that word deliberately) is shared by, oh, a few thousand other people in the world. Sadly, none of them know what they are talking about either.

Way to miss the point. It was that thing flying over your head earlier…

Do you understand what ‘an act of war’ is?

Oh, and btw, contrary to your hyperbole, bombing an enemies infrastructure and military doesn’t constitute a ‘bloodbath of civilians’. But thanks for playing, here are some fabulous parting gifts, including the Straight Dope board game edition and this wonderful ceramic dog…

-XT

62

I believe the point was that it wouldn’t make sense for Iran to preemptively attack one of our carriers, since their success would be far from assured and the ultimate cost to them would be far greater.

Do you have any basis for thinking our carriers are “useless”? Certainly the state of China’s anti-ship weaponry isn’t particularly relevant when discussing aircraft carriers in the middle east.

You certainly won’t get any argument from me on “costly” (nor from anyone I think).

63

Tactically speaking, it doesn’t change anything. As others have said, this isn’t new. Our aircraft carriers weren’t invulnerable before this. Any nation that has a decent military tech could sink one. The US just hasn’t gotten into a war with a nation that has a decent military tech for a long time so we’re not used to thinking that way.

However, the military is used to thinking that way. I’m positive they have plans for what to do is the 7th fleet is lost. They probably have had those plans ever since China developed the ability to drop a tactical nuke in middle of our fleet. With Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines on the east, Afghanistan on the west, and depending on circumstances there’s the possibility of aid from India, Pakistan, Taiwan, or an outside chance of Russia if China pissed them off too, a war with China would involve a lot more than just the Navy. So an aircraft killer is a good move for China, but it’s not like that’s the be all end all of facing down the US.

Besides, the US Navy has 11 aircraft carriers right now, and the capability of building many more if need be. Losing a few would be quite a blow, but China can’t possibly hope to sink them all short of using nuclear weapons.

64

dudes, Aircraft carriers for force projection is SO 20th century. Nowadays, we just pay off random shitholes, 3rd world dictatorships, and ex-soviet republics to allow us to use their airfields anywhere in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_deployments

65

The biggest threat to Aircraft carriers isn’t ASBMs (Anti-submarine ballistic missiles), it’s submarines.

In the battle between stealth and sensors, stealth is winning when it comes to submarines. For example, submarines have very good sonar systems since that’s pretty much the only way they can know what’s going on out there. Yet despite them having really good sonar systems, submarines have run into each other underwater.

In other words submarine stealth is so effective against sonar, that submarines can’t be detected at zero feet.
As for ASBMs, they’re made from IRBMs, so they can pretty much hit anything up 2000 miles away. They’ll be travelling so fast that there’s no real chance they can be intercepted. So if ASBM technology ever matures and becomes reliable, then that’s another way carriers are doomed.

66

Carrier groups as are tools of international diplomacy as much as they true military components.

The B-2 bomber can deliver the equivalent of a carrier strike (aircraft sortie) anywhere in the world while risking only two people. How effective it is at penetrating China, I wouldn’t begin to guess but it would have a better chance than a carrier strike. The B-2 sucks when it comes to waving a big stick and wanting to plan “military exercises” near a country.

R

67

[QUOTE=ramel]
In other words submarine stealth is so effective against sonar, that submarines can’t be detected at zero feet.
[/QUOTE]

It doesn’t mean that at all, unless you think that subs can turn on a time and stop on one as well. Also, sonar isn’t the only way to track a sub…in fact, it’s not even the primary way.

Subs have been a big danger for a long time. However, the thing that kills subs are other subs…and as long as our subs are both better and more numerous (which they are against any potential foe in the foreseeable future…I think the only ones with comparable subs are the Europeans atm), it sort of cuts down on the probability of a successful attack. Leaving aside the fact that many of the ships protecting the carrier are dedicated ASW platforms, our subs are out there too.

The thing is that no one is saying carriers are invulnerable. Not even the Navy is saying that. There are certainly risks, and sure, an enemy sub could get through the defenses of the task group and hit the carrier. An aircraft launched missile could get through the defenses and hit a carrier as well. A magic Chinese ballistic missile could get through too. Hell, it’s theoretically possible that a butt load of Iranian gunboats could get through and hit a carrier. All of that and more is possible. It’s not probable, but if you throw enough shit at a carrier, or if you get lucky, then it’s probably worth whatever it takes. That doesn’t make carriers ‘floating coffins’ however…and it certainly doesn’t render them obsolete or worthless as several posters have claimed in this thread.

Define ‘pretty much hit anything’. Are you talking about with a conventional warhead or nuclear?

-XT

68

This. My nephew was in subs, and we went to visit him at New London Sub Base just after he graduated sub school. He wrangled us a tour of USS Dallas. When we got up to the sail area, I saw this funny looking thing sticking out, and asked the guy giving us the tour what it was for. He said “it’s a [censored] sensor, but I can’t tell you what it’s for, because it’s classified.” He was a bit embarrassed when I pointed out that, given what a piece of non-classified equipment down below did, it was blatantly obvious that it’s purpose was to track other subs. And it would be very effective. And you don’t have to hear them with your sonar.

69

This recent thread also discussed the topic.

In it, we learned the opinions of one knowledgable party:

[QUOTE=SecDef Gates]
“We have to ask whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 [billion] to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers,”

“We simply cannot afford to perpetuate the status quo that heaps more and more expensive technologies onto fewer and fewer platforms — thereby risking a situation where some of our greatest capital expenditures go toward weapons and ships that could potentially become wasting assets,” Gates said.

Gates called for shifting investments toward long-range unmanned aircraft and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities; new sea-based missile defenses; a submarine force with expanded roles that is prepared to conduct more missions “deep inside an enemy’s battle network”; and an increase in submarine strike capabilities as well as the development of smaller and unmanned underwater technologies.

Gates decried the erosion of the U.S. edge on precision-guided weapons, in particular the long-range, anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles.

“This is of particular concern with aircraft carriers and other large, multibillion-dollar blue-water surface combatants, where, for example, a Ford-class carrier plus its full complement of the latest aircraft would represent potentially $15 [billion] to $20 billion worth of hardware at risk,” Gates told the Navy League audience.

… Instead, potential adversaries are investing in weapons designed to neutralize U.S. advantages by threatening American sea and air assets as well as their supporting networks.

For example, Hezbollah, a non-state actor, used anti-ship missiles against Israel’s navy in 2006, and Iran is combining ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, mines and swarming speedboats in order to challenge U.S. naval power in the Middle East, Gates explained.

Gates also challenged the notion that the Navy needs 11 carrier strike groups through 2040.

“Consider the massive over-match the U.S. already enjoys. Consider, too, the growing anti-ship capabilities of adversaries. Do we really need 11 carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one? Any future plans must address these realities,” Gates said. …

“the Navy will need numbers, speed and the ability to operate in shallow water, especially as the nature of war in the 21st century pushes us toward smaller, more diffuse weapons and units that increasingly rely on a series of networks to wage war.”
[/QUOTE]
http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/defense-homeland-security/95675-gates-warns-shipbuilding-budget-unlikely-to-grow-
Carriers as we think of them now will have a role for the rest of our lifetimes, but they are not the future.

70

In the earlier thread to which furt so helpfully linked, I’d posted this:

I suspect that the days of the big, Nimitz-sized supercarrier are indeed numbered. They’re so big and labor-intensive that it will increasingly not be cost-effective. In an era when many second-tier nations can put up their own satellites, or just go on the Internet and look at pictures others have made available, it will grow increasingly difficult to keep them out of harm’s way at the very time that potential enemies such as the PRC are developing very powerful weapons against them. (Don’t assume we can invariably keep enemy warships at arm’s length, either: The uninvited guest: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise, leaving military chiefs red-faced | Daily Mail Online).

We could have several LHD-sized carriers for the price of one supercarrier, and that will become a more appealing option, with time. There are very strong institutional forces in the USN that favor supercarriers, though, so I’m afraid it will take the catastrophic loss of one or more of them before we actually change policy. Future drones will be more and more flexible and capable, and for both budgetary and political reasons (i.e. not risking U.S. military personnel’s lives) I’ll bet we’ll use them more and more. There will always be a place for manned aircraft, though.

71

The issue I have with emerging ‘super’ weapon platforms like the anti-ship DF-21 (among others) is the absence of testing within combat conditions. Information regarding it’s supposed capabilities and effectiveness are sketchy and limited at best (to us armchair generals, at least). The USSR produced several platforms that really freaked people out, but performed rather poorly or with mixed-results when put in the batter’s box (Mig-25, SCUD, T-series armour, several sub units come to mind). I’m aware that training and military organization has much to do with platform impact and ‘combat conditions’ are somewhat difficult to create short of starting yourself a war. At the risk of throwing some conspiracy angles into the discussion, weapon threat tactics are commonly employed by theBlue Team when gunning up support for additional defense spending. I’m not saying it isn’t important to maintain a defense advantage (especially when considering a rather cryptic leadership like the CCP) but I suspect the alarm might be larger than the threat.
Personally, I feel superiority in a future tech-based conflict is based on a force’s ability to maintain, protect and rapidly and continuously replenish destroyed satellite units.

A previous poster awhile back mentioned the possibility of the Chinese nuking American cities. Unless they took a first-strike position, their nuclear credibility remains negligible (I believe deterrence theory calls the Chinese position ‘limited deterrent’). They have only three, rather old SSBN’s, only one of which is at sea at any given time with remaining units being an assortment of hard silos and truck-based missiles.

72

We probably can’t stop the truck-based missiles and we definitely can’t stop the sub-launched one, no matter how old they are.

73

[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]
We probably can’t stop the truck-based missiles and we definitely can’t stop the sub-launched one, no matter how old they are.
[/QUOTE]

Not if they did a preemptive strike, no. But I bet we have an attack sub or two that follow any Chinese SSBN that wanders off the reservation. We certainly tracked the Russian subs whenever they ventured out to where we could get at them. IIRC, the Chinese boomers are pretty old and feeble compared to even our attack subs of the same generation, let alone what we have out and about these days.

[QUOTE=furt]
Carriers as we think of them now will have a role for the rest of our lifetimes, but they are not the future.
[/QUOTE]

It’s hard to predict the future. The trouble with your other OP and with this one as well is that it posits that carriers are already obsolete today, without having any technology that can fill the role they play right now. It’s all about future technology that MIGHT be able to do all that wonderful stuff, but that doesn’t actually exist right now…at least that doesn’t exist in a deployed production environment. Maybe in 20, 30 or 50 years that magic tech will come into it’s own, and we’ll have the doctrine and production to build and use it as effectively (or even more effectively) as we do our carrier fleet…but today it’s pie in the sky or being developed.

-XT

74

Yup. Carriers won’t actually be withdrawn from service in any meaningful way until we lose one. Look how long it took for generals to give up the cavalry charge.

75

That was mostly in our waters, though. Sometimes US subs caught Russian subs coming out of port, but mostly they didn’t. That’s where the (UK) Royal Navy came in - its job was to keep Russian subs from passing through the GIUK gap.

Incidentally, that’s a big reason why the Royal Navy is so useless today - because for thirty years its primary mission was anti-submarine warfare, which translates even worse into modern warfare than other Cold War missions.

76

They didn’t take cavalry out of the equation until they had a viable replacement for it. Once there was a viable replacement that was widely available, it was replaced. However, the Germans and the Russians (and of course famously the Poles…heck, I think the US still had cavalry units at the beginning of WWII) were still using cavalry (or horses at least) in WWII because even though there were alternatives, they weren’t universally available, and so horses were still useful.

While it’s true that a lot of the Admirals out there are wedded to carriers, that doesn’t change the equation as far as the fact that right now, today, there isn’t a viable substitute for our carrier fleet that gives us anywhere near the same capabilities. Until there is such a beast we will continue to use and need those carriers…and probably even after the next great thing DOES come out (whatever it is), we’ll still probably use carriers for a while because we have them and it will take time to get the new thing into the pipeline, work out tactical and strategic doctrine, and decisively demonstrate that, indeed, it’s a superior system. It took time to convince the previous generation of admirals that battleships weren’t the core of the navy, and it will take time to convince the current generation that the carrier has been surpassed too (to start, you are going to need to actually have something that DOES demonstrate this…something that’s vaporware right now). But once that new something is out and can be looked at head to head with the current systems you can bet that there will be plenty of new officers ready and eager to push it. Eventually, if the system is better then no amount of institutional stubbornness by the old fogy military types is going to prevail in the long run.

Look at nearly every weapons system we have today…nearly all of them were resisted at some point or other. Yet, eventually, they prevailed if they were indeed better than what came before them. Assuming there IS a viable alternative in the wings, it will go through the same process, IMHO anyway.

-XT

77

I’m talking about the cavalry charge specifically, which began failing rather spectacularly once the machine gun and breech loaders were invented, but which remained a staple of warfare for 50+ years.

78

I might be wrong about this, but I don’t believe the military used cavalry charges (as standard doctrine) since before the Civil War. Cavalry became more a recon, scouting and (possibly) pursuit force. I know the Germans and (I assume) the Allies had large amounts of cavalry waiting in reserve for breakouts that never materialized. They didn’t send that cavalry into the teeth of the trenches, however.

Nor do I recall any large cavalry charges in the Civil War either…cavalry was used mainly to scout, mobility, and pursuit if the infantry broke (and raiding behind the lines). The last big use of cavalry in a charge type setting I can think of was during the Napoleonic Wars, but I might be missing some (I think it was used in the Mexican American war, but not sure for direct charges, just diversionary charges like Teddy’s San Juan thingy during the S/A War. Though I think the Charge of the Light Brigade was Crimean War, but I think that this wasn’t a tactic that was generally advocated).

-XT

79

My OP? The one that began “Aircraft carriers are on their way out” and continued with “Carriers will have a role for quite some time” before adding “Please note that I’m not saying that carriers are obsolete now. I’m saying the writing is on the wall, the military should start planning accordingly.” That OP? Wanna rephrase?

More and more straw.

Nobody is talking about magic weapons. That’s your hyperbole. We’re talking about technology that exists right now, already, in the real world, and is being refined and improved. Smaller carriers already exist. Drones capable of delivering payloads more cost-effectively than fighters already exist, and are improving rapidly. Anti-Ship missiles that cost 0.01% as much as a supercarrier already exist – and have for 30 years!

Anyone discussing the topic has to make some predictions about the future – Carriers take near a decade to build and are expected to be in service for 30-50 years afterward. If you say that we should keep building aircraft carriers, you’re making just as much a prediction as anyone else; you’re predicting we’ll have a use for the Ford in 2050.

You’re also implicitly, predicting that the Navy is correct in their assessments of carrier defenses (keep in mind that they’ve not been tested in combat for 65 years) and that we should expect such defenses will be properly employed (the Sheffield sinking in the Falklands was blamed in part on human error).

You’re also implicitly, predicting that the Chinese won’t develop their own version of the Tomahawk (1980s tech), and for 1% the cost of a carrier and planes, launch 2,000 of them at said carrier (or else that they’ll stop every one).

Perhaps most importantly, you’re predicting that your predictions are more sound than those of Secretary Gates, who comes as close as his pay grade will allow to saying “we should probably stop building carriers.”

Don’t bother refuting me; let me know where Gates goes wrong in the remarks quoted.

80

[QUOTE=furt]
My OP? The one that began “Aircraft carriers are on their way out” and continued with “Carriers will have a role for quite some time” before adding “Please note that I’m not saying that carriers are obsolete now. I’m saying the writing is on the wall, the military should start planning accordingly.” That OP? Wanna rephrase?

[/QUOTE]

My apologies then…I didn’t go back and re-read the previous thread and it was my remembrance of it (I participated in that one as well) that your overall theme was that carriers were obsolete now. That certainly seems to be the primary theme here.

Really? So, you have cites showing these Chinese weapons being full up tested? Well, why didn’t you say so? Just post the link where these weapons have been demonstrated fully and combat ready and I’ll be happy to withdraw the ‘straw’.

Show me the money then. There are certainly torpedos and missiles that could hit a carrier, but the OP was about Chinese ballistic missiles hitting them and rendering them ‘floating coffins’. Feel free to provide cites and links.

Why yes…they do. And I mentioned them earlier. I even remarked that smaller carriers could be used for automated drones someday…once combat capable drones have been developed fully and actually deployed. Which they haven’t, yet.

Examples? The only combat drones capable of delivering weapons systems that I know of that are actually in production and deployed are things like a Predator drone with weapons strapped on it. Again, if you have cites demonstrating that there are drones capable of competing with current manned aircraft that are not in the prototype or development and research stage, feel free to provide links, because I don’t know of any. I’d be interested to see if they are autonomous or if they have a human in the loop, as that will make a bit of a difference to how you would deploy and support then globally.

I won’t bother refuting you, merely point out that Gates isn’t saying the same things you are. He’s saying we need to develop those capabilities in the future, and he’s not saying that carriers are on the cusp of becoming obsolete ‘soon’ or ‘on their way out’ today.

-XT