I have some questions about naval strategy, particularly concerning the defensive capabilities and survivability to attack of the modern aircraft carrier strike group by specific advanced weapons systems.
Do you think that aircraft carrier battle groups are in the present, potentially fatally vulnerable to a sudden and massive surprise attack from cruise missiles? I’m guessing that there’s a system that detects incoming cruise missiles, but is there a system that can detect the missile in time enough for a counter-missile (in the mode of the Strategic Defense Initiative for cruise missiles, rather than ICBMs) to successfully intercept it? (Edit: there is - the Patriot PAC-3 missile manufactured by Lockheed Martin fits the bill). I’m thinking that if there’s a cruise missile that has the capacity to veer off course when it detects an oncoming Patriot missile, and still maintain its original target, that the defensive missile could be “fooled”…
Also, do you think that if an aircraft carrier is sunk while the majority of its aircraft are still flying, that there’s a possibility that the planes will run out of fuel and crash? In other words, can the aircraft on the carrier operate independently of the carrier of which they are assigned?
Also, if a nuclear submarine is attacked by a completely nonnuclear weapons system, do current naval doctrine of major naval powers consider such an attack as grounds for a nuclear response? I think most questions of nuclear retaliation for attacks on ICBM silos and nuclear-armed submarines imply that the attack was nuclear in nature; this makes sense for ICBM silos because they can only be effectively neutralized due to either an enormous conventional weapon of extremely long range or another ICBM/another ballistic missile of shorter range (this is of course a generalization/opinion on my part).
Thanks.
Feel free to change the direction of this new thread; the questions are probably a little too specific for much of a real discussion.
The Patriot missile is capable/designed to track moving/maneuvering targets. So no, it would kill the incoming cruise missile (much slower than an aircraft or incoming Scud). The carrier group has similar missiles.
As for orphan aircraft; depends on availability of tanker aircraft. If the majority were launched, such as for a strike, there would be Air Force tankers around.
Though I’m not a solider, sailor, or airman, I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can, hopefully with relevant links.
Case 1: The CVBG vs cruise missiles. The first questions I have are: Where are the missiles coming from? (What’s shooting them? Airplanes? Subs? The back of a truck in Baluchistan?) And how do the bad guys (BGs) know where the carrier is? The carrier is usually flying an AWACS which can see objects with the RCS of a cruise missile from a ways away (the exact figure is not known to me, and I couldn’t reveal it if I were in a position to know). I wouldn’t be surprised if it could detect and track such missiles all the way out to its radar horizon, which will be ~250 nm from the aircraft, for a sea-skimming target. Knowing where the AWACS is shouldn’t give the BGs a good enough target solution so that they can launch their missiles. But let’s say they do.
The carrier carries fighter aircraft (F/A-18Ds) so that it can kill missile carrying aircraft before they launch. If a missile launching ship is threatening the CVBG, then said aircraft are capable of carrying missiles (AGM 84 Harpoons, and others) sufficient to sink said ships. It’s more effective to sink a missile carrier before it launches, than to have to shoot down each fired cruise missile individually. “Shoot the archer, not the arrow.” If necessary though, the aircraft can shoot down incoming cruise missiles as well. The old F-14/AWG-9 combo was renowned for being able to do it in the early 1970s and things can only have improved since then.
I do not know, but would not be surprised, if the aircraft can cross link their own radar pictures to the battle management system aboard the ships responsible for missile defense. That way, the CGs can launch their own SAMs and coordinate their attacks with the carrier’s aircraft so as to be as efficient as possible and avoid unnecessary duplication. (How are your hypothetical cruise missiles going to dodge an incoming SAM, BTW? How will they even know where to dodge?) I also don’t know if those SAMs are able to be guided or home in on reflections from the radar on either the AWACS or the F/A-18Ds. This would make sense to me, as it would enable OTH targeting of sea-skimming missiles: the missiles wouldn’t have to rely on the AEGIS cruiser’s own fire control radars.
Assuming there are still missiles inbound, then the carrier and its escorts can spoof the missiles with either their own ECM suites or use dedicated carrier aircraft to fool the targeting sensors on those missiles. Finally, if all else fails and there are still SSMs running at your carrier with constant bearing and decreasing range, then the already-mentioned Phalanx systems step in. Anything after that is the job of the damage control parties…something at which the USN is very good.
Can a CVN be killed by a massive cruise missile attack? Sure. (Ask LTG Van Riper, LOL.) A compressed battle space, with plenty of dead spots from radar observation (Persian Gulf, Formosa Straits, anywhere in Indonesia) will shrink the radar horizon, and thereby the decision making time that the CVBG has to coordinate an anti-missile defense. IMHO, it’s still wouldn’t be as easy for the Chinese, or whoever, as the AP makes it sound. (Of course, you have to turn the whizbang defenses on for them to work…) My guess is that you’d have better luck with an SSK (and a suicidal crew) than a massed cruise missile assault, but it’s just a guess. Or mines during a transit of a crowded seaway. I guess you could kamikaze a commandeered large aircraft, a la 9/11, but packed with explosives, into the CVN during a port visit, which would just be another, esoteric, kind of cruise missile.
For question 2, as smithsb pointed out, it’s going to depend on where your tankers and other airfields are. Lots of both if the carrier gets thumped in the Persian Gulf. Not so many if it takes 4 torpedoes in the middle of the Western Pacific.
For question 3, I am not familiar with the intimate details of nuclear deployment theory, but it would greatly surprise me if the US responded with nuclear weapons to a conventional attack on even a strategic nuclear asset like a SSBN. I have wondered if something like the old SUBROC could have been used to both eliminate vessels threatening the sub, as well as inbound torpedoes to the sub. I think there’s plenty of room for anti-torpedo torpedoes in future ASW. It always struck me as silly that the only response to an incoming, 55 knot plus torpedo was to try and run and hide from it. Could a, e.g., ADCAP be sensitive enough to track and detonate near an incoming torpedo and thereby kill it?
Re, the attack on an ICBM silo, I would not bet on the silo versus attack by a dedicated hardened precision bomb like the GBU-28 or whatever we’ve come up with to replace it. Particularly if the ICBM is a comparatively fragile type like many storable liquid ICBM or IRBMs.
The HMS Sheffield was a Type 42 destroyer, not a cruiser. Not a terribly good starting point for an article on the topic. At the time of the Falklands War the Royal Navy was terribly deficient in the area of defense against low flying aircraft and missiles; it had been neglected in specializing in thier role in ASW against the Soviet threat. The Harrier did very well in the role it was forced into, but it was not a dedicated fighter, had very short legs due to the need for vertical/short take off and landing and there was no AWACS at all to provide long distance airborne radar warning; the British were limited by the radar horizon. There was not a single CIWS in the fleet, and the Sea Dart SAM carried by the Type 42 destroyers wasn’t effective at low altitude. Aside from I believe three vessels equipped with the newly introduced Sea Wolf SAM, the entirety of the short range/low altitude air defense on all the British frigates consisted of one or two quad launchers of the horribly obsolescent, subsonic, Command Line of Sight guided Sea Cat SAM and a pair of optically sighted 20mm Oerlikon cannons. From wiki on the Sea Cat:
For a great fictional description of this see Tom Clancy’s *Red Storm Rising *(written back in 1986 when he was still worth reading). This has a scene during the early stages of a Soviet invasion of western Europe when a carrier group led by the Nimitz, protecting the north Atlantic sea lanes, is attacked by many Soviet bombers armed with cruise missiles.
Without going ito details the fighters are spoofed into chasing shadows while the bombers launch their cruise missiles from an unexpected direction. In one of his better bits of writing Clancy describes the action from the point of view of an observer in the carrier’s Combat Information Center. The inbound missiles being detected and the various defensive weapons systems activating and starting to take their toll, the numbers going down and down but not finally taking them all out and two major ships being sunk and the Nimitz severely damaged.
I don’t know how accurate it was then and how it applies now but I would have thought any defensive system can be overwhelmed by weight of numbers. These days I doubt any potential enemy has the firepower to do this on the open ocean. In confined waters it might be a different story.
One of the least-anticipated problems the British experienced in the Falklands War was the land-launched Exocet cruise missiles. There had been considerable talk about the air-launched Exocets as the conflict heated up; the Argentines had a few aircraft capable of delivering them (Super Étendards if I recall); but it turned out that the air-launched missiles could be detected much farther out, giving the defenses time to orient on them. They still got hits (sinking the Sheffield and wrecking the Atlantic Conveyor), but the British found the land-launched Exocets were harder to detect amid the background clutter of the hills, and gave much less time to respond – as little as 30 seconds.
So, if the carrier group has to be in close proximity to land – especially hilly or rugged terrain – it will have more trouble defending itself. Carrier admirals are keenly aware of this, however, and you can expect them to avoid such traps if at all possible.
For incoming missile detection/elimination, look up the Aegis Combat System. It’s basically a class of ships whose entire purpose is to detect, track, and shoot down incoming missiles using anti-ballistic missiles - it’s used in the scene in the Tom Clancy novel mentioned above. Though low altitude cruise missiles are a lot harder to detect and kill than ballistic missiles.
True enough. Sandy Woodward, the Admiral in charge of the British carrier forces during the Falklands War was heavily criticised after the war for how far out he kept Hermes and Invincible (it was suggested he should have received the South Africa medal rather than the Falklands medal :dubious: ) as it severely limited the time the Harriers could remain on station protecting the landing force. In his defense, as he points out in his account of the battle, he was at all times concious of how vunerable his ships were and that the loss of a deck would almost certainly lose the war.
Thanks for the compliment. AWACS, or any Airborne Early Warning, is essential for solving problems like the one supery00n stated. The British didn’t really have any AEW during the Falklands War, if this wiki on the Sea King AEW helicopter is to be believed, and even if they did, as already noted by Dissonance, they only had a few platforms capable of firing the Sea Dart area-defense SAM. So, if the two carriers were essential to winning the conflict—they were—and Woodward wanted to keep his carriers around in a multiple-SSM environment, then Woodward had to keep the Argentines constantly guessing about where the carriers were. Which meant keeping them as far away from Argentine-held territory as possible. This also made his defensive zone a lot deeper, making it possible to put more escorts between the HVT and the main threat axis. Much easier to have a dedicated AEW platform integral with the carrier wing, but the British retired their Fairey Gannet AEW four years earlier, along with HMS Ark Royal, the only remaining RN carrier that could operate it. Oops. In any event, neither Hermes nor Invincible could operate the Gannet.
It would have been rough if the Argentines had been able to buy any more Exocets than the (5?) they started the war with. Evidently, the book, The Secret War for The Falklands, by Nigel West, goes into more detail as to why the Argentines weren’t able to buy anymore. They got a few of them from somewhere though, and were enough of a threat that the SAS was contemplating a ‘suicidal’ raid on Argentine soil to kill the Etendard pilots and destroy all of the remaining Exocets.
It’s a matter of space, time, and the fact that we fight on a globe. Using a horizon calculator, and inputting a ~20m sea skimming missile height and a grossly generous 50 m radar antenna height, the horizon is still only ~25 nm (48 km) away. FWIW, the 20 m height seems really high—IIRC, missiles like Exocet and Harpoon fly ~2m or less above the water—but that’s what the wiki for the Sunburn says. Of course, they don’t go Mach 3 like the P-270 Moskit / SS-N-22 Sunburn SSM that’s got everyone so hot and bothered. Zipping along at 2800 km/hr, the missile will cover 48 km in ~30 seconds. When the salvo rate of the SAM system and radar you’re facing is ~2 seconds per launch, that’s not a lot of time to deal with a bunch of missiles.
Contrast that with an AWACS flying at 25,000 feet (the listed operating height for the E-2 at its wiki, but I’ve no doubt the platform flies much higher.) Now, the radar horizon is 200 nm, 380 km away, and you’ve got 8 minutes to deal with your Sunburn swarm. Much better. Given how essential AWACS are to a lot of the things we expect the modern USN and USAF to accomplish, I’m surprised no one to my knowledge has developed a very-long range, high speed anti-radiation missile to counter them. Like the old AIM-54 Phoenix, but slap a radar seeker head on it and a much longer sustainer motor.
Per Sailboat’s observation, occasionally the Navy has to go into littoral waters, where plenty of hills and other terrain features may exist to provide radar dead spots or defilade, even to an AWACS. Like the Persian Gulf. (Still amazes me that the USN operates carrier battle groups there, and has done so successfully for the last 40+ years or so.)
The Aegis ships of the carrier group have RIM-66 (SM-2) and RIM-161 (SM-3) anti-ballistic missile systems. These are designed to intercept ballistic missiles; that is, missiles that are launched in a ballistic (unpowered quasi-parabolic) arc upon reentry. They are not designed to intercept cruise missiles, which fly on powered trajectories at level altitude, usually nap of the earth (NOE) trajectories to minimize radar return. It should be pointed out that the statistics on alleged Scud intercepts during the first Gulf War by the Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC) system are widely considered to be fallacious, or at least highly suspect. The US Army is currently deploying the PAC-3 system, which is a completely different system from the original Patriot that is specifically designed to intercept ballistic missiles. (The Patriot missile system was originally designed as an anti-aircraft system.)
Although current Air Force KC-135 and KC-10 tankers are capable of aerial refueling of US Navy and Marine aircraft if configured to do so; the Navy/Marines use a completely different and incompatible refueling system ("hose and drogue) than Air Force aircraft. In general the Air Force does not normally support aerial refueling of Naval aircraft except in specially coordinated operations. The future tanker system (KC-46) has deferred implementation of the WARP system (one of the many deficiencies of that contract) so the Navy is planning to be fully self-sufficient for refueling operations for the foreseeable future.
“Relatively slow” means subsonic cruise missiles. Unfortunately, future threats from Russian and Chinese sources include demonstrates sea skimming supersonic cruise missiles, against which performance of the Aegis system and CIWS is completely unproven. There is also the family of supercavitating torpedoes including a rumored pop-up version that can deploy a small supercruise missile. Several nations (India, Iran) are rumored to be developing indigenous versions of these, which are very likely to obviate conventional task force/theater defensive systems.
The Falkands conflict demonstrated just how vulnerable then-modern surface ships were to attacks by even obsolescent offensive systems used in unexpected or unconventional ways, and the development of supercruise missiles and stealthy UAVs further exacerbates the threat. In a real shooting war against a modern power carrier groups are highly vulnerable assets that have to be protected and kept as far away from the combat theater as practicable while still providing air combat support. And of course, against nuclear attack, carriers and their aircraft are sitting ducks; even a near miss would be sufficient to “clear the deck” and make it incapable of supporting flight operations, which makes it an extremely expensive bauble.
That being said, an aircraft carrier is still capable of providing timely air combat support that just cannot be provided by any other assets, even long duration loitering UAVs. If you want to project power, as opposed to executing individual focused strikes, and don’t have the access to install a land air base, a carrier is invaluable.
To some degree (and exactly what degree is probably both a carefully guarded secret and constantly changing as systems evolve) carrier battle groups can use powerful radar jamming to degrade the effective range of shore-based radars. This would allow the ships to “hide in the vastness of the ocean” if they stayed far enough from the radars, making it impossible to select targets for the land-based cruise missiles in the first place.
Then satellites, aircraft, or surface patrol craft would have to find and target the carrier group. Aircraft and surface ships would in theory play to the strengths of the US Navy and could be detected and defeated before the carrier is sucessfully targeted. Satellites are another matter…the presumption is that non-First World opponents would not have satellites usable for real-time targeting.
Is that a perfect system? Well, it leaves out the submarine threat, which will have to be dealt with the old fashioned way (ASW warfare and convoy techniques), probably with less success against modern superquiet electric subs.
Within those admittedly somewhat qualified parameters, the carrier groups still operate. They remain difficult targets, even if they are less invulnerable than they once were. Particularly a Third-World country can expect to find its radars jammed, degraded, and attacked early in an open conflict, and probably will not be able to “find, fix, and fire upon” properly-handled carriers unless some other circumstance intervenes.
How actual conflict would play out remains to be seen.
For cruise missile protection, the carriers themselves incorporate the RIM-116 missile and associated launchers. More launchers and missiles are being added to other ships.
A fair number of US Air Force tankers are now configured for hose and drogue operation ~20% is the latest figure. Addition of the pods is routine based on support needed for an operation. This change to more hose and drogue was in response to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan where support to Navy and Marine Corps aircraft was inadequate. 100% of NATO air-to-air tankers are hose and drogue compatible with Navy/Marine needs. These assets were used extensively in the above operations. The Marine Corps also flies KC-130 tankers that support Navy/Marine aircraft.
Per this, the RIM-66/67’s various later Blocks have the capability of intercepting cruise missile targets. How “low altitude” is a good question, however. And how fast the low altitude target is going too, given the notorious difficulties the USN had trying to kill various Vandal drones. FWIW, the author Charles Smith agrees with you about the ineffectiveness of AEGIS vs supersonic threats such as the Sunburn. No idea from when those tests date from though, and I don’t know if AEGIS was relying on its own radars, or was able to get help from an AWACS. The Yakhont’s higher speed, greater range, and smaller RCS makes things even tougher.
It appears that you are correct that Phalanx is less than desired vs a supersonic sea-skimming threat, and the “new” SeaRAM modification to Phalanx is designed to address that deficiency. The press releases about its deployment date from around 2000, but at that time, it was effective against multiple Mach 2.5 Vandal MQM-8 target drones (converted old Talos SAMs). And then not much else happened. AFAIK, SeaRAM has only been installed on a few USN ships, and it hasn’t wholly replaced Phalanx, or even come close to. That tells me it’s not quite as effective as Raytheon would have us believe. Well, that, or Raytheon lost its champion in the Pentagon/Congressional procurement bureaucracy.
As for the supercavitating torps, weren’t those intended as an unguided, v. fast, un-killable means of moving a nuclear warhead within the carrier group “bubble”? I’m still trying to figure out how you could possibly guide the thing while it’s zipping through the water at 200 kts +. Can it receive a reflected sonar pulse from within its gas bubble? Does it instead home on the very loud, low frequency active sonar emitted by the carrier’s escorts? It isn’t wire guided, and thus able to rely on the launcher’s sensors, is it? Carrying a pop-up missile is a nifty touch though, and one I hadn’t heard of before.
Nevertheless, despite the above, I still would be hesitant to join in the very trendy claim that the modern USN CVBG is highly vulnerable to a modern power, especially if the carrier group had plenty of sea room in which to evaluate threats and obscure its own position. Drive the carrier up to the shores of China and then try to withstand a wave attack from 100s of GLCMs, (and precision-guided conventional ballistic missiles, if they were crazy enough to ever launch such), and that’s a different story.
Just to further emphasize this point and the idea of shooting the archer rather than the arrow, 20m is a good height for what the Super Étendards were flying at to stay below the radar and get close enough to launch Exocets; the Exocet AM39 only has a range of 50-70km depending on the launch altitude. Being able to detect the Super Étendards at a horizon of 380km versus 48km means the difference between being able to intercept and engage the plane long before it can launch and being forced to try to engage the Exocet after it has already been or is just about to be launched.
This is being overly generous to the powers that be that allowed the Royal Navy to find itself in the position it was in during the Falklands. There was nothing unexpected or unconventional about low altitude air attacks or the Exocet - indeed almost every frigate and destroyer in the RN at the time were themselves armed with the Exocet, yet the RN was extremely vulnerable to such attacks due to the retirement of their flat deck carriers and a wholly inadequate armament to deal with such threats. For the role of low altitude air defense the RN would have been better served by frigates and destroyers from the end of WW2 than what they had to use in 1982. The Sea Cat only made one confirmed kill of an Argentinean aircraft, and the 20mm Oerlikon was the same weapon that had been used in WW2, only in much larger numbers in WW2 era ships. Had the Argentineans changed the fusing of their bombs to suit the manner in which they were being used the war could easily have gone the other way. As it was 13 bombs that hit British ships in Bomb Alley failed to detonate as a result of being dropped from too low of an altitude to allow the fuse to arm. In that regard the RN was lucky to only lose the HMS Ardent, HMS Antelope and HMS Coventry and have the HMS Argonaut and HMS Brilliant disabled.
I don’t know if there is an “automated” system that can evaluate threats and actually control the weapon/defence systems located across mutliple launching platforms (ships/aircraft), or if this is done by a human(s), but the information, at least, is shared.