Exactly. An SSN or two is routinely assigned to a carrier battle group for exactly this reason. The best ASW platform that exists is another submarine.
Wouldn’t the SSN assigned to this particular battle group have been expected to pick up the Swedish sub, then?
Does anyone have a link to a more sober and thoughtful assessment of the wargame beyond ZOMG a diesel beat a carrier!!1! I see lots of blog entries on the story, but no real analysis.
For all I know, the games could have been testing surface ASW vs. the diesel, with no SSNs involved at all. Or it could have been a total failure of the whole group, I just don’t know. But as we all know, blog headlines are notorious for not telling the whole story.
I haven’t really seen any ‘official’ articles on it. From what I’ve gathered, the nuclear subs that were participating (and they were there) were equipped with sound generating systems to make them a bit easier to hear. My guess is that the reality is less spectacular (or surprising) than the anti-carrier pundits are making it out to be.
That said, I know that our own nuclear subs have been able to get ‘kills’ on our carriers for years, so it’s certainly plausible that an enemy sub, be it diesel or otherwise, could get in and hammer a carrier. They’d have to penetrate multiple layers of defense, including submarines, surface ships specifically designed to detect and neutralize enemy subs, and anti-sub helicopters, and then defeat the active defense of the carrier itself. But it certainly COULD be done.
I don’t think it’s nearly as easy as people seem to think it is, and even if someone COULD do it, I don’t think that this necessarily relegates carriers to being ‘obsolete’, no more than the fact that battleships were vulnerable to air planes automatically relegated them to being ‘obsolete’. It wasn’t airplanes that made battleships obsolete, it was carriers that did so by filling the role that battleships had occupied. Until something new comes along that can fill that role in a better/more efficient way I don’t think that pointing out that carriers aren’t (and haven’t been for quite a while) completely invulnerable to attack makes them obsolete.
-XT
The real attraction of modern diesel-electric subs (like the Gotland), is that they are cheap to build and operate-they run with small crews, and most of the ship’s operations are computer controlled.
THey can stay down for 3-4 weeks, and building 50 of them is cheaper than 10 nuclear attack subs. As far as attacking surface ships, they are a cost-effective weapon.
As far as large aircraft carriers: they are obsolete (like the battleships in 1941). Their operation is very costly, and they are very vulnerable to attack.
Well, that settles it.
QED. Argument over.
In this thread I have frequently come across the phrase, “project American power”. What does it mean to project power?
I’ve actually agreed to disagree at this point, so I’ll just state my basic points.
[ul]
[li]I believe the US Navy can provide power projection with other ships than carriers.[/li][li]I do not discount dedicated UAV tenders as their replacement when it comes to force projection[/li][li]I believe almost all future support, strike and reconaissance missions will be done via UAV[/li][li]I don’t believe we will see any type of symmetrical naval engagement take place in the near future.[/li][li]I believe that the vulnerability of a carrier group, whether from AIP submarines or saturated ASM bombardment, makes the political, economic and human risk of fielding them.[/li][/ul]
See post 102.
Looks like my info was wrong , between your research and Robby , I think we can put that one down to bed.
Declan
Look , the way it was explained to me was that a sub of any propulsion skulking around will remain quiet to a certain degree, the minute you fire torpedos at something, that becomes a datum point on someones threat board. How fast that boat survives, is determined by among other things , how fast it can clear the area.
Tagging a carrier battlegroup in the baltic, thats worth losing a submarine over, but a container ship, troop transport or any lesser ship, and you still end up as a datum point on a threat board and the ASW troops have lots of practice.
In a shooting war , I dont want to under rate the surviveability of the gotland and other conventional subs, too many variables, but I am guessing that its role was gate keeper , keeping track of how many Bear’s and Backfires were transiting the area , and relaying that information to Nato.
Declan
If the sole purpose of the military is to defend the homeland then carriers became obsolete after WWII. It was at that point that a sea born invasion of the mainland U.S. became impossible. Some of our overseas territories may have been vulnerable, but even that is, in my opinion, a stretch.
I think carriers may already be obsolete. Super-carriers are a weapon for unlimited-warfare. In unlimited warfare bombing cities indiscriminately was acceptable. Killing civilians by the 100’s of thousands was O.K. And attacking nations who provided materials to you enemies was just fine. But that type of warfare is fast going out of style. Nuclear weapons mean you cannot risk escalating a war too far.
So now we fight limited wars. Limited wars play into the hands of guerrillas and are almost impossible to win. Look at the limited wars that have been fought. Korea, Vietnam, The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. All have ended in defeat for the superpower. The main reason for this is that in a limited war the guerrillas can get materials and weapons from other countries. We couldn’t bomb Beijing or Moscow to stop them from supplying our enemies. So the guerrillas could just kept fighting until they wore us down. If the U.S. had not supplied weapons to the Afghans, Russian would now be the official language of that country. Aircraft carriers are great at taking out high value targets. In a limited war, high value targets disappear quickly or do not exist. Without high value targets to attack carriers sit in the sea and burn money.
The importance of carriers in the future depends on the threats to U.S. security.
Currently, and for the foreseeable future, the primary threats are: terrorists/extremists both foreign and home grown, cyber-wars, trade wars, drug resistant pathogens, and environmental concerns including, but not limited to, global warming. I don’t see that carriers are much help in any of those battles. I think the money spent on carriers would be better spent on: intelligence, internet-security, research, infrastructure improvements and environmental issues. An aircraft carrier is not going to stop sea levels from rising. It will not stop a global pandemic, can’t prevent an internet crash. And it can’t dissuade a terrorist.
Who said the sole purpose of the military is to defend the homeland?
What? The carpet bombing of cities, such as during World War II, didn’t involve carriers. The bombers involved were Air Force (well, Army Air Force or RAF) and took off from islands in the Pacific or Great Britain. Even now, while the Navy has fighter-bombers, the primary bombers such as B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s are land-based.
Korea wasn’t a guerrilla war. The forces involved all wore the uniforms of their respective nation-state. And the armistice was not a defeat for “the superpower” (particularly since there were two at the time). Vietnam was a mixed guerrilla and conventional war, with the guerrilla Viet-Cong and the North Vietnamese military. Ultimately, it was the North Vietnamese military that conquered South Vietnam.
Really Not All That Bright I did not say the sole purpose of the military is to defend the homeland. I said IF the sole purpose of the military is to defend the homeland. The IF is very important to the sentence, it implies that there are other views possible.
Camus Rereading my post I can see I did a horrible job of wording that. I was not trying to say that carriers were used for strategic bombing. I was trying to show what I perceive to be the difference between a limited and an unlimited war.
I was not aware that Korea was not a guerrilla type war. I am not sure where I got the mistaken I idea that it was. This site always impresses me with its ability to find and point out mistaken ideas that I have.
What about Desert Storm and Kosovo? You didn’t seem to mention those wars.
SecDef Gates envisions the future of the U.S. Navy, and is skeptical of supercarriers, given their pricetags and vulnerability: http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/defense-homeland-security/95675-gates-warns-shipbuilding-budget-unlikely-to-grow-
Oh, yeah, I should have mentioned: Gates asked me to start the thread to air out a few ideas. 
Mission accomplished! 