Inspiring thread. I actually posted a short query in that thread, but nobody picked up the bait. There, of course, people are talking about how battleships are obsolete and have been for awhile now. That got me to wondering if ALL surface vessels are obsolete.
The first rule of war is to find a way to not be seen, right? A sub has that angle covered very well, natch-the newest ones are typically very very quiet (I’ve even heard it said that modern sonar can actually detect the “hole” in the water occupied by the sub, where the sounds are even quieter than the background noise-dunno if that is true or not).
Meanwhile, surface combatants are noisy as heck, give off radar signatures that be detected from miles away, are hugely vulnerable to torps and other weapons… Seems like a naval revolution in the making a la the one which made BB’s obsolete-except we’ve had no shooting war that would make that crystal clear (or not).
The thing is, the same arguments that people are making against BB’s in that other thread can also be applied to those hugely expensive and resource-hogging things called aircraft carriers, can’t they?
So what do you think-all subs within a few months, all other ships left in port (or on the seabed). And what would this do to merchant shipping and trade/supply lines?
If it’s between equals, it’ll probably turn nuclear, but.
Battleships actually did quite well against aircraft. USS North Carolina once shot down 26 Japanese aircraft in a single attack, saving the Taskforce, and indeed the carriers would be escorted by battleships.
The issue was that you could throw swarms of aircraft at a battleship and it would eventually be sunk, like Yamato. In the same way, AShMs versus surface ships is a problem, not because surface ships cannot shoot down AShM’s, they can, but cost. A modern destroyer with state of the art air defences costs over billion USD. You can throw dozens of of AShM’s at a ship for a fraction of a costs and even if that ship shoots down 90% of them, you still end up with a dead ship.
I think they’ll be fine a fleet that has aircraft carriers. The fleet may not be hidden at all, but with sufficient air and sub protection it becomes unapproachable.
Depends on the matchup. Modern day Russia with their rusting hulks vs the U.S. Navy? Obviously the U.S. Navy would win with slight U.S. losses.
The U.S. Navy versus a mirror of the U.S. Navy? I’m picturing a couple carrier groups worth of aircraft, all loaded with missiles, approaching each other, and guided missile cruisers emptying their magazines at each other from maximum range.
I think you’re right, I think the outcome would be both fleets lying in smoldering ruins, most of the aircraft shot down, and the only survivors being the submarines from both fleets because they can’t find each other…
Fundamentally you have a problem of offense being vastly better than defense. A guided missile cruiser has a whole bunch of Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles (dozens, I can’t find exact numbers because it depends on the mission loadout) yet will die to a single shot from a single guided missile. (even if it doesn’t sink, the fragments will kill it’s radar, set fires, and kill a bunch of crew. The next missile and the one after that and the one after that now get to hit for free) Same story with an aircraft carrier - it can launch hundreds of planes, yet only 1 plane has to successfully attack it, and modern weapons rarely miss,
There are defensive measures - SAMs, chaff, flare, CWIS - but in a modern battle you would concentrate fire on just a few victim warships at a time to kill them, then send the missile swarm to attack the next ship and so forth. Measures like chaff and jamming and the storm of fragments from CWIS fire and exploding missiles would also make it very hard to detect all of the incoming missiles, which are all skimming the ocean surface as low as practical.
regarding the US Navy: the CNO gets a real time report of the positions of all enemy (and friendly) warships. The coordinates of these are instantly available to submarines and surface ships. Except for some small areas not covered by daily satellite surveillance, we know where all potential surface enemy ships are. If the order to attack is given, most of them would be on the bottom within a hour or so.
We’d need to have a better idea of how easily 1) submarines can be detected 2) they can detect surface ships 3)munitions from submarines can be detected and countered 4) submarines can detect and counter munitions aimed at them.
It’s quite doubtful that it’s as simple as “subs can’t be detected”. Passive sonar may not be all that effective but wake detection, magnetic anomaly detection and active sonar can be used to locate a submarine with increasing precision.
Surface ships need to be spotted before they can be engaged. They can use ECM against both detection and weapons. Planes can use ECM and maneuver.
Anybody remember the Falklands? Some British ships got hit and sunk but by no means all.
Lastly, submarines have little payload aside from nukes and they’re always going to be at a height disadvantage when against anything other than another submarine.
None of this should be taken to mean that submarines are useless.
If they haven’t figured out counter measures for something first introduced in 2007 then they probably deserve to be sunk. We’ve been hearing about these sooper dooper missiles (and torpedoes) for years now…I’m guessing that the not just the US but other navies have at least thought about the problem and worked on counter measures for them.
As for the OP:
Carries, however, give the navy more utility than BB’s do. Certainly they are vulnerable, but in addition they are also well protected. They don’t travel by themselves, but with an entire task group, most of which is there to protect the carrier. This includes, in many cases, attack subs (certainly it would if there was an actual war on) as well as a lot of anti-sub counter measures. So, no…I don’t think that in a modern full-scale war (as long as we aren’t talking about nukes) that all surface ships would be toast in a matter of months.
The main purpose of an aircraft carrier is to act as a base for land forces or to intimidate the local opposition with it’s immense firepower.
If the opposition has some version of a cruise missile then the carrier is highly vulnerable. When the British were up against the Argentinians, all they had were French exocets. They did pretty well with them but they did not have an ‘eye in the sky’ to spot our carriers. Their main battleship was lost early in the game to a nuclear sub.
Well, I’m sure they’ve thought about, and even worked on, counter measures, but that doesn’t mean good counter measures exist, or are even possible.
I mean, there’s been half a millennium to work on it, but there are still no countermeasures for bullets good enough to allow swordsmen to operate on a battlefield. It could be that in a modern war, large surface ships are as obsolete as swordsmen.
We’ve been hearing about these sooper dooper missiles (and torpedoes) for years now…I’m guessing that the not just the US but other navies have at least thought about the problem and worked on counter measures for them.