Magiver: What’s with the comment about the short runways on an aircraft carrier? Surely you, what with your obvious and incredible amount of expertise on the subject, know that the carrier’s aircraft (other than helicopters, of course) are launched using catapults and land with the assistance of cables, don’t you?
I’m not sure what the argument is right now, either.
Is it Magiver’s assertion that carrier battlegroups make it too easy to be an international bully?
Is it that we don’t need carrier groups to beat up on third world nations anyway?
If I may, a drone is more vulnerable in a variety of different ways, primarily the nature of being remotely controlled. A piloted vehicle can only be hijacked by the pilot, but a drone can be hijacked by any entity with the right combination of technology.
Even if they are only able to disable the drone and crash it, they have still put it out of action. More importantly, they have put ALL drones in the area of a similar design out of action for at least some period of time, possibly weeks. So all your air cover and air support is grounded.
All of it. For weeks. Minimum.
You do not run into that issue with a piloted vehicle, ever.
Drones have certain excellent characteristics that make them valuable systems. They are relatively cheap, make pretty good reconnaissance platforms and are able to carry a small amount of munitions. But they will not ever replace piloted fighters and bombers, and they will not ever replace carrier based piloted aircraft.
Drones are just another platform, they are not equivalent to a major evolution of warfare (for instance the introduction of mechanized armor). The difference is, they add no new capability, they simply build on an existing capability in a new way.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
Bumped.
A new report by the Center for New American Security questions U.S. aircraft carriers’ longterm viability: http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/politics/aircraft-carriers-report-future/index.html
I don’t get this. No one, but no one has ever said that carriers are unsinkable.
They are merely ships that allows the US Navy to project airpower into areas that we don’t have land bases in. (As well as act as a supplement to those bases that do exist.)
Never in the history of aircraft carriers have they been immune to determined enemy action.
It seems like such a strawman argument to me to suggest that carriers need to be scrapped because they are potentially vulnerable.
No ship is invulnerable. Subs can be sunk, cruisers can be sunk, destroyers can be sunk, too. Why does the carrier get this special scrutiny that no other ship type does? Is it a symbol of American gunboat diplomacy and/or imperialism?
Because (as the two threads in GQ on battleships and non-subs has already argued) of their high cost. Did you even read the article, mlees? They point out that new vulnerabilities to new weapon systems (not just subs) make them especially vulnerable to an enemy who has procured same.
I know this is an old post, but even with catapults and arrestor cables the aircraft that can operate from catapults are fairly limited in terms of size and weight.
No other ship type is as expensive. The Gerald Ford carriers the USN is now inducting are 10 billion dollars each. The air wing alone costs upwards of $5 billion.
Sigh/ Yes, I read the article. Did you even read my rebuttal? No carrier has ever been invulnerable to antiship weapons.
How do you feel about battleships?
I ask because the arguments against aircraft carriers have successfully been used against battleships. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, the vast majority of people who are against battleships because of their “vulnerability” are strongly in favor of aircraft carriers.
As a matter of fact, in the current thread about battleships I posted several links along the same general lines as what Elendil’s Heir posted. Not surprisingly, my post was ignored.
The people who claim that battleships are obsolete apparently take great pride in being obtuse, intellectually dishonest, or both. They studiously pretend that carriers are just fine, even though the same arguments apply in equal measure to both carriers and battleships.
Thank you for this clarification. It’s a fair enough debate to weigh risk v. cost.
However, in rebuttal to that, I might point out that carriers have appeared to contribute greatly to the prosecution of the conventional wars our dear politicians feel are necessary.
Another metric to use to judge the value of a CVN and it’s air wing is how much use are we getting out of it.
What the article’s saying is that the Navy has made a sort of shift in emphasis, from a Cold War footing emphasizing specialized long-ranged strike aircraft and interceptors, to a post-Cold War footing that emphasizes shorter ranged, more versatile aircraft, as most of our opponents don’t really have the capabilities that the Soviet Union had.
However in recent years they’re getting those capabilities, and according to the author of the article, this puts the carriers at more risk than before.
Which makes sense, as the F/A-18 Hornet wasn’t designed in 1978 to be the primary interceptor for a carrier battle group; they were designed to take the roles of the light attack aircraft that were used at the time (A-7 Corsair & A-4 Skyhawk), and to complement the F-14 Tomcats. Which I suspect they did quite well.
I also suspect with the retirement of the Tomcats and the end of the Cold War, there was a realization that there wasn’t any need for dedicated long-range interceptors, and nor was there a need for dedicated medium strike aircraft like the A-6 Intruder. So they had the F/A-18 fill all roles, although it’s not ideal for any, except the light-attack role, and it’s short-ranged as well.
Interestingly, the F-35C will have a longer combat radius (610 nm) than the F/A-18E (390 nm), which along with the anti-ballistic missile capability of the Standard SM-6 missiles being pushed out into the fleet, indicates to me at least, that the Navy has long since identified the threats out there and planned for them, and that the media are just now catching on.
Carriers are much less vulnerable than battleships, whatever new threats are out there. A battleship does not have a combat air patrol to screen threats 300 miles out. Thus, it is vulnerable to both short- and long-range weapons. A carrier is vulnerable only to the latter.
Actually, the article seems to be talking about the Navy having the wrong mix of air craft, not that carriers in and of themselves aren’t viable long term. They seem to be advocating for more heavy long range strike air craft, not saying that carriers are ‘antiquated’.
Overall, on balance, I’m kinda neutral about battleships: I don’t think armor will stop the latest missles.
US fleet carriers (for the most part) had protection against 5inch shell fire and, from the USS Midway onward, a flight deck with three inches of steel to protect against light bombs. (As well as torpedo blisters for contact fused torps.) That seems sufficient to me, in my amateur historian opinion. Enough protection to ward off amateur (RPG) stuff, but no weight wasted on heavier armor schemes that won’t stop an antiship missile anyway.
Battleships (historically) have good vertical protection (which protects against low arc attacks), fair torpedo protection (torpedo blisters, compartmentalization), but weaker overhead protection. (Can’t slap 20 inches of armor over a 100 foot by 800 foot area. That would weigh too damn much!) So IMO, Iowa style armor schemes devote too much precious weight that could be devoted to other systems.
On the weapons: I love the old fashioned big gun. Shells are cheaper than cruise missles (or jets), and the 16inch shell had impressive hitting power. New fire control aids vastly improve the numbers of hits per salvo (the problem nowadays seems to be of target identification, and not so much about getting a shell or bomb to land where you want it). Mutli-boost munitions may extend the range of artillery to give ships (and Army artillery) a stand off (range) ability that lessens the shooter’s vulnerability to enemy counterbattery fire. I’m not sure if we would be well served by 12 to 16 inch guns, which, for most application is like swatting flies with a hammer, I was thinking more along the lines of the rapid fire 6 or 8 inch guns to smother battlefield (in the case of Gulf War '91 fights). (The USN developed the MK16 8inch semi auto gun, capable of ten rounds a minute!) Those guns will be fine for light structures and vehicles, as well. The only thing you would need a bigger gun for is knocking down large/heavy bridges, reinforced concrete structures, or cratering runways.
Rail guns? Sexy, but I’m not sure what problem the Navy is looking to solve with this approach. Getting rid of explosive ammo magazines? I’m going to wait and see.
Too long, didn’t read version: Skip the heavy armor, devote the weight to other ways to safeguard the ship: decoys, jamming, stealth, CIWS style weps, stand off capabilities. Improved munitions (for barreled weapons) may provide a cheaper alternative to jets.
Carriers have inherent stand off capability based on their aircrafts’ particulars. This is why carriers are still around, and the BB’s are not.
Also, there aren’t a lot of things a Battleship is really good at. We don’t have a mission for them. When’s the last time we engaged in major shore bombardment? If we want something blowed up real good, we just send in a fighter-bomber. Longer range, greater precision.