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Russian doctrine appears to be to overwhelm AEGIS et al with many, many missiles. After all, only one needs to get through to sink a 5 billion dollar (NOT inclu

Russian doctrine appears to be to overwhelm AEGIS et al with many, many missiles. After all, only one needs to get through to sink a 5 billion dollar (NOT including the aircraft and thousands of sailors on it!) carrier. Carriers are a prestige weapon now, like battleships in the 20th century: good for bullying brown people, useless in a "real" war. I don't see what the Zumwalt does about that.

Godel_unicode 10y ago
Do you have citations for that?
gozur88 10y ago
Carriers are not useless for "real" war. Not sure where you got that idea. We could probably spend that money more effectively, but for what government program isn't that true? And it would take more than one hit to sink a carrier. These are 100k+ ton ships, and the important bits are armored.
- rangibaby 10y ago
  > Not sure where you got that idea. Like battleships, they are a big dumb target. The same way carriers and their aircraft made battleships obsolete modern anti-ship missiles have made carriers obsolete in a theoretical war between superpowers. Countries still covet them as a status symbol (or a way to spend taxpayer money), but I think that is about it. > And it would take more than one hit to sink a carrier. These are 100k+ ton ships, and the important bits are armored. That's why the Russian idea is to just bombard them with missiles until enough they poke enough holes in them to sink or disable them. It seems like a reasonable strategy to me.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    >Like battleships, they are a big dumb target. The same way carriers and their aircraft made battleships obsolete modern anti-ship missiles have made carriers obsolete in a theoretical war between superpowers. Yeah, except that's not actually true unless the war goes nuclear. Carriers are very well defended from air attack. The entire battle group is there to defend the carrier, which means aircraft-launched AA missiles, hundreds of SM-2s, plus point defense. Plus ECM and EM-type weapons. And that's assuming US forces aren't able to destroy any launch platforms, which is probably not a good assumption at this point. It's much harder to pull of a surprise attack than it used to be. >That's why the Russian idea is to just bombard them with missiles until enough they poke enough holes in them to sink or disable them. It seems like a reasonable strategy to me. Yeah, that's pretty much the strategy everyone's been using since they switched from boarding actions to guns in the 1500s. The Russians can't actually mount that kind of attack any more without telegraphing it in a big way, since it would take nearly every remaining conventional bomber and naval asset in the Russian military to ensure success. Nobody else is capable at all unless the scenario posits a US carrier in shallow water off the coast of Shanghai. I'm not saying carriers are invulnerable. They're not. People make mistakes, and sometimes they're fatal. There are always variables that are impossible to evaluate without knowing the absolute latest top secret stuff. But a carrier group in the open ocean is a tough nut to crack, especially from the air, and attackers make mistakes too. It's far from obsolete.
    - jabl 10y ago
      > But a carrier group in the open ocean is a tough nut to crack Well, that hints at the point, doesn't it? No, Russia or China, or whoever the US Navy Brass dreams about re-fighting the battle of Leyte gulf with again, isn't going to try to hit a US carrier group in the middle of the South Pacific. They are probably perfectly happy with preventing said carrier group from parking outside Archangelsk, the Baltic Sea, the South China sea or wherever it is that they want to flex their military muscle..
      - gozur88 10y ago
        Well, here's the thing. A carrier group can attack from blue water. You can play around with scenarios, but the US navy is not going to give adversaries an easy victory by coming too close to land.
        jabl 10y ago
        Sure. But if the carrier group is "projecting power" in the middle of the ocean, who cares? Get close enough to shore so it can project its power over some militarily interesting area, and it starts to get in range of all kinds of scary weaponry. Assuming a technologically advanced adversary, and not a bunch of goons with Ak-47's and RPG's, of course. So in the end I guess the question is whether a carrier group is a cost-effective power projection tool in the age of supersonic (or even ballistic, if we choose to believe those Chinese things are real) anti-ship missiles, submarines and whatnot. Or are they just like battleships in WWII?
        gozur88 10y ago
        >Sure. But if the carrier group is "projecting power" in the middle of the ocean, who cares? A CBG can hit hardened targets from a thousand miles away.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  Meh. You just have to keep the carrier far away. Anti-ship ballistic missiles FTW.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    Anti-ballistic missiles FTW.
    - nl 10y ago
      Sure. They'll be reliable any day now.
      - gozur88 10y ago
        Don't confuse the SM-3 with whatever the USAF is calling its thing today.
    - jonathankoren 10y ago
      Quantity has a quality all its own.
      - gozur88 10y ago
        Absolutely, which is why it's a good thing the US has many more ABMs than China has DF-21Ds.
        M_Grey 10y ago
        They don't need to have more warheads, they just need to have more decoys and countermeasures than we have warheads.
        gozur88 10y ago
        As far as I know the DF-21D doesn't have decoys. It doesn't have a MIRV bus, so they won't be easy to add, either.
- nl 10y ago
  The DF-21 "Sunburn"[1] anti-ship ballistic missile: carr[ies] a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a U.S. supercarrier in one strike. Additionally, Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 [2] http://www.usni.org/news-and-features/chinese-kill-weapon http://www.usni.org/news-and-features/chinese-kill-weapon
  - AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
    Well, that's not true. Many Aegis cruisers and destroyers are now armed with SM-3 missiles which are capable of anti-ballistic missile and anti-satellite.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    >The DF-21 "Sunburn"[1] anti-ship ballistic missile Only the "D" version. It's a complex system that involves satellites, which can be shot down, and multiple communications links that can be attacked. And it's expensive, which is why they don't have many. >Additionally, Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack. This is wrong. All US CBGs have ballistic missile defense.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

Godel_unicode 10y ago

Do you have citations for that?

gozur88 10y ago

Carriers are not useless for "real" war. Not sure where you got that idea. We could probably spend that money more effectively, but for what government program isn't that true? And it would take more than one hit to sink a carrier. These are 100k+ ton ships, and the important bits are armored.

rangibaby 10y ago
> Not sure where you got that idea. Like battleships, they are a big dumb target. The same way carriers and their aircraft made battleships obsolete modern anti-ship missiles have made carriers obsolete in a theoretical war between superpowers. Countries still covet them as a status symbol (or a way to spend taxpayer money), but I think that is about it. > And it would take more than one hit to sink a carrier. These are 100k+ ton ships, and the important bits are armored. That's why the Russian idea is to just bombard them with missiles until enough they poke enough holes in them to sink or disable them. It seems like a reasonable strategy to me.
- gozur88 10y ago
  >Like battleships, they are a big dumb target. The same way carriers and their aircraft made battleships obsolete modern anti-ship missiles have made carriers obsolete in a theoretical war between superpowers. Yeah, except that's not actually true unless the war goes nuclear. Carriers are very well defended from air attack. The entire battle group is there to defend the carrier, which means aircraft-launched AA missiles, hundreds of SM-2s, plus point defense. Plus ECM and EM-type weapons. And that's assuming US forces aren't able to destroy any launch platforms, which is probably not a good assumption at this point. It's much harder to pull of a surprise attack than it used to be. >That's why the Russian idea is to just bombard them with missiles until enough they poke enough holes in them to sink or disable them. It seems like a reasonable strategy to me. Yeah, that's pretty much the strategy everyone's been using since they switched from boarding actions to guns in the 1500s. The Russians can't actually mount that kind of attack any more without telegraphing it in a big way, since it would take nearly every remaining conventional bomber and naval asset in the Russian military to ensure success. Nobody else is capable at all unless the scenario posits a US carrier in shallow water off the coast of Shanghai. I'm not saying carriers are invulnerable. They're not. People make mistakes, and sometimes they're fatal. There are always variables that are impossible to evaluate without knowing the absolute latest top secret stuff. But a carrier group in the open ocean is a tough nut to crack, especially from the air, and attackers make mistakes too. It's far from obsolete.
  - jabl 10y ago
    > But a carrier group in the open ocean is a tough nut to crack Well, that hints at the point, doesn't it? No, Russia or China, or whoever the US Navy Brass dreams about re-fighting the battle of Leyte gulf with again, isn't going to try to hit a US carrier group in the middle of the South Pacific. They are probably perfectly happy with preventing said carrier group from parking outside Archangelsk, the Baltic Sea, the South China sea or wherever it is that they want to flex their military muscle..
    - gozur88 10y ago
      Well, here's the thing. A carrier group can attack from blue water. You can play around with scenarios, but the US navy is not going to give adversaries an easy victory by coming too close to land.
      - jabl 10y ago
        Sure. But if the carrier group is "projecting power" in the middle of the ocean, who cares? Get close enough to shore so it can project its power over some militarily interesting area, and it starts to get in range of all kinds of scary weaponry. Assuming a technologically advanced adversary, and not a bunch of goons with Ak-47's and RPG's, of course. So in the end I guess the question is whether a carrier group is a cost-effective power projection tool in the age of supersonic (or even ballistic, if we choose to believe those Chinese things are real) anti-ship missiles, submarines and whatnot. Or are they just like battleships in WWII?
        gozur88 10y ago
        >Sure. But if the carrier group is "projecting power" in the middle of the ocean, who cares? A CBG can hit hardened targets from a thousand miles away.
jonathankoren 10y ago
Meh. You just have to keep the carrier far away. Anti-ship ballistic missiles FTW.
- gozur88 10y ago
  Anti-ballistic missiles FTW.
  - nl 10y ago
    Sure. They'll be reliable any day now.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      Don't confuse the SM-3 with whatever the USAF is calling its thing today.
  - jonathankoren 10y ago
    Quantity has a quality all its own.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      Absolutely, which is why it's a good thing the US has many more ABMs than China has DF-21Ds.
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        They don't need to have more warheads, they just need to have more decoys and countermeasures than we have warheads.
        gozur88 10y ago
        As far as I know the DF-21D doesn't have decoys. It doesn't have a MIRV bus, so they won't be easy to add, either.
nl 10y ago
The DF-21 "Sunburn"[1] anti-ship ballistic missile: carr[ies] a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a U.S. supercarrier in one strike. Additionally, Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 [2] http://www.usni.org/news-and-features/chinese-kill-weapon http://www.usni.org/news-and-features/chinese-kill-weapon
- AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
  Well, that's not true. Many Aegis cruisers and destroyers are now armed with SM-3 missiles which are capable of anti-ballistic missile and anti-satellite.
- gozur88 10y ago
  >The DF-21 "Sunburn"[1] anti-ship ballistic missile Only the "D" version. It's a complex system that involves satellites, which can be shot down, and multiple communications links that can be attacked. And it's expensive, which is why they don't have many. >Additionally, Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack. This is wrong. All US CBGs have ballistic missile defense.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]