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The Navy thinks it doesn't have enough ships. The problem is the mission: if you want the Navy to be present all around the world all the time, able to handle

The Navy thinks it doesn't have enough ships. The problem is the mission: if you want the Navy to be present all around the world all the time, able to handle serious battle, it really doesn't have enough ships. If you don't agree with that mission, then you need to elect Congresspeople who agree with you.

icehawk219 10y ago
This is my problem with carrier groups. Today the Navy doesn't really need to worry about battles because they're already so big that no one can compete but also because that's just not what they do day-to-day. As far as I can tell the primary purpose of the Navy these days is ensuring shipping lanes are well protected so they always remain open and safe. That doesn't require huge ships like carriers it requires lots of smaller ships that are big enough to be scary but numerous enough to be everywhere.
- openasocket 10y ago
  Not at all an expert, but is having lots of smaller ships really more cost effective? The thing about a carrier is you can mount aerial strikes against targets thousands of miles from the ship itself. Those smaller ships would be cheaper, but I imagine they would be armed with artillery and maybe cruise missiles, so they won't be able to project power over as large a range. I'd be curious what the relative square-mile-protected/dollar is.
  - linkregister 10y ago
    The difference between aerial strike capability and littoral presence is significant. A major tenet of controlling territory is maintaining a presence in it. In this case, the desired mission diverges from the old cold war strategy. Under the WW2 / cold war strategy, the Navy needed to strike targets and prevent troop transports and enemy carriers from reaching their destinations. The new mission is more reminiscent of the traditional Navy mission; inspecting vessels, supporting anti-insurgency efforts, and performing patrols. These are all missions of a littoral navy with smaller vessels.
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      Performing patrols is slow and inefficient with boats of any kind; planes are far faster and can cover much more ground. Of course, fighter planes are horribly inefficient too, but this would be a good case for using carrier-launched drones: they're very efficient and can stay aloft for a whole day at a time IIRC, and have limited weapons capability. Sometimes I wonder if it'd make sense to try to build a capital ship where the giant "carrier" launches not only planes, but also small littoral boats. Steaming a littoral combat ship across oceans can't be that fuel-efficient, and also makes the boat require more size to maintain a sufficient crew for so long; maybe it'd be better to have smaller, shorter-range patrol boats that are kept inside the carrier until it gets to a place where it wants to launch them. Of course, you'd need a really huge carrier for this, but you'd get efficiencies of scale here, by being able to power the whole thing with nuclear reactors, and only burn fossil fuels for the shorter ranges the patrol boats operate at. The drones, combined with the carrier-launched patrol boats, would be able to handle all those operations within a pretty large radius of wherever the mega-carrier drops anchor, with the drones doing surveillance and strikes if necessary, and the patrol boats motoring in where needed, as directed by the drone surveillance.
Retric 10y ago
When was the last serious naval battle? Right now Navy's have two roles, protect shipping and launch aircraft / missiles. When an aircraft carrier can project force out thousands of km you really don't need a lot of them. Honestly, I suspect the Navy would be better off with a fleet of solar powered drones and buoy for very high resolution surveillance to back up strikes vs. high cost patrol boats.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >When was the last serious naval battle? Probably WWII. But that's not a good metric: the purpose of the modern American Navy is to project force, and also to act as a deterrent. When the US can sit a carrier battle group a few dozen miles off the shore of your country, carrying a rather enormous amount of firepower and the ability to deliver it anywhere within 1000km of that, not many are going to want to challenge that. >When an aircraft carrier can project force out thousands of km you really don't need a lot of them. F/A-18s can't fly that far. I just looked up the Super Hornet on Wikipedia and it says the combat radius is just over 700km. (The straight-line range is 2346km, but that's not helpful if you want to get back to the ship and doesn't include actual combat maneuvers and a decent reserve.) So if you want to be able to project force in multiple areas of the world, you'll need that many carrier groups. It's not like a carrier in the Persian Gulf can fly some planes over to India if they need to. Also, Navy ships (just like military aircraft) need a LOT of maintenance, so there's always a bunch of ships in port. We don't have the technology to have solar-powered drones that can carry ordnance.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Range is a complex topic in large part due to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbRSrjIuzIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbRSrjIuzIE The Super Hornet is designed for air to air combat and needs to stick around in combat for a while which makes the range rather deceptive. Further as all modern combat jets they can do mid air refueling so it's more a question of how much the Navy wants to spend and how long and how much fuel they are willing to spend on transit. The range for just going somewhere and dropping at lot of bombs without refueling is another consideration. With and without external fuel tanks yet another. Honestly, the Navy is not going to say what they consider maximum range for strategic reasons.

icehawk219 10y ago

This is my problem with carrier groups. Today the Navy doesn't really need to worry about battles because they're already so big that no one can compete but also because that's just not what they do day-to-day. As far as I can tell the primary purpose of the Navy these days is ensuring shipping lanes are well protected so they always remain open and safe. That doesn't require huge ships like carriers it requires lots of smaller ships that are big enough to be scary but numerous enough to be everywhere.

openasocket 10y ago
Not at all an expert, but is having lots of smaller ships really more cost effective? The thing about a carrier is you can mount aerial strikes against targets thousands of miles from the ship itself. Those smaller ships would be cheaper, but I imagine they would be armed with artillery and maybe cruise missiles, so they won't be able to project power over as large a range. I'd be curious what the relative square-mile-protected/dollar is.
- linkregister 10y ago
  The difference between aerial strike capability and littoral presence is significant. A major tenet of controlling territory is maintaining a presence in it. In this case, the desired mission diverges from the old cold war strategy. Under the WW2 / cold war strategy, the Navy needed to strike targets and prevent troop transports and enemy carriers from reaching their destinations. The new mission is more reminiscent of the traditional Navy mission; inspecting vessels, supporting anti-insurgency efforts, and performing patrols. These are all missions of a littoral navy with smaller vessels.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    Performing patrols is slow and inefficient with boats of any kind; planes are far faster and can cover much more ground. Of course, fighter planes are horribly inefficient too, but this would be a good case for using carrier-launched drones: they're very efficient and can stay aloft for a whole day at a time IIRC, and have limited weapons capability. Sometimes I wonder if it'd make sense to try to build a capital ship where the giant "carrier" launches not only planes, but also small littoral boats. Steaming a littoral combat ship across oceans can't be that fuel-efficient, and also makes the boat require more size to maintain a sufficient crew for so long; maybe it'd be better to have smaller, shorter-range patrol boats that are kept inside the carrier until it gets to a place where it wants to launch them. Of course, you'd need a really huge carrier for this, but you'd get efficiencies of scale here, by being able to power the whole thing with nuclear reactors, and only burn fossil fuels for the shorter ranges the patrol boats operate at. The drones, combined with the carrier-launched patrol boats, would be able to handle all those operations within a pretty large radius of wherever the mega-carrier drops anchor, with the drones doing surveillance and strikes if necessary, and the patrol boats motoring in where needed, as directed by the drone surveillance.

Retric 10y ago

When was the last serious naval battle? Right now Navy's have two roles, protect shipping and launch aircraft / missiles. When an aircraft carrier can project force out thousands of km you really don't need a lot of them. Honestly, I suspect the Navy would be better off with a fleet of solar powered drones and buoy for very high resolution surveillance to back up strikes vs. high cost patrol boats.

Grishnakh 10y ago
>When was the last serious naval battle? Probably WWII. But that's not a good metric: the purpose of the modern American Navy is to project force, and also to act as a deterrent. When the US can sit a carrier battle group a few dozen miles off the shore of your country, carrying a rather enormous amount of firepower and the ability to deliver it anywhere within 1000km of that, not many are going to want to challenge that. >When an aircraft carrier can project force out thousands of km you really don't need a lot of them. F/A-18s can't fly that far. I just looked up the Super Hornet on Wikipedia and it says the combat radius is just over 700km. (The straight-line range is 2346km, but that's not helpful if you want to get back to the ship and doesn't include actual combat maneuvers and a decent reserve.) So if you want to be able to project force in multiple areas of the world, you'll need that many carrier groups. It's not like a carrier in the Persian Gulf can fly some planes over to India if they need to. Also, Navy ships (just like military aircraft) need a LOT of maintenance, so there's always a bunch of ships in port. We don't have the technology to have solar-powered drones that can carry ordnance.
- Retric 10y ago
  Range is a complex topic in large part due to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbRSrjIuzIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbRSrjIuzIE The Super Hornet is designed for air to air combat and needs to stick around in combat for a while which makes the range rather deceptive. Further as all modern combat jets they can do mid air refueling so it's more a question of how much the Navy wants to spend and how long and how much fuel they are willing to spend on transit. The range for just going somewhere and dropping at lot of bombs without refueling is another consideration. With and without external fuel tanks yet another. Honestly, the Navy is not going to say what they consider maximum range for strategic reasons.