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You need to control the airspace to be successful in war and in order to do that you need to be able to project your power across seas so that the fight is on t

You need to control the airspace to be successful in war and in order to do that you need to be able to project your power across seas so that the fight is on their doorstep not ours. The carriers are there to make sure that if someone wants to cross the ocean with ill intent, they can deny them the airspace far out at sea making them struggle to even get to the country they seek to attack. The US always prefers to play an away game. Also, don't forget carriers are never alone and surrounded by multiple aegis guided missile cruisers which are the most accurate missile defense systems in existence.

bhouston 7y ago
I think against China or Russia the carriers will be destroyed quite quickly. Against an inferior army like Iran, they will be okay. The purpose of aircraft carriers are more often to launch attacks against inferior nations or highly inferior subnational entities so they are useful there.
- vinceguidry 7y ago
  They would have to find them first. That's still non-trivial, even with satellites.
  - blackflame7000 7y ago
    Yea, a lot of people underestimate the speed at which a carrier can move. So much so that it would be outside the blast radius of any ICMB targeted at the carriers last known position when the missile is launched. Most ICBMs cant change trajectory mid-flight.
    - shdh 7y ago
      Not a MIRV blanket though.
      - chipsa 7y ago
        /me points to SM-3
        blackflame7000 7y ago
        Probably need THAAD or GMD for MIRV because of the altitude and speeds
      - blackflame7000 7y ago
        Actually yea it can because the more re-entry vehicles you use the smaller the blast radius of each will be. the fireball radius of the largest current US-made warhead is only .71km at 455kt on the Trident missile (W-88). It carries 12 re-entry vehicles which could blanket approximately a 3sq km zone. An aircraft carrier can move at approximately 1km per minute. so you have approximately 90 seconds to launch and hit the target with one of the US's best weapons.
  - gruez 7y ago
    Why? They are massive objects that has zero camouflage against the ocean. How hard could it be?
    - vinceguidry 7y ago
      You can't use regular photons to detect one because that requires getting in a plane and going out to find them. You're an even bigger sitting duck in a plane in the air than the carrier is sitting on the water. Radar will find you and interceptors will destroy you before you get close enough to see their exact position. You using a plane and radar runs into the same issue. If you sit on the shore and use active radar tracking then you're leaving yourself open to decoy ops and EM countermeasures. Satellites don't loiter over the area long enough to get a tracking lock. Ships can take evasive maneuvers and US Navy ships move very fast.
    - yourapostasy 7y ago
      It is still pretty difficult [1]. The sheer scale of the oceans is not appreciated by many. We can accept that space is vast beyond normal comprehension, but finding ships or even carrier strike fleets in the oceans is still a non-trivial challenge. Even at hypersonic speeds, traversing the range of a missile is measured in above ten minutes ranges. Tracking all commercial traffic shows how vast the oceans are [2], as each of those dots on a map cover a territory far vaster than the ship itself. It is a sufficiently non-trivial problem that commercial tracking relies upon AIS transponders instead of imaging, even in dense commercial traffic areas like the Straits of Malacca or the Bosphorus. Whoever solves the problem will first become very rich from defense contracts. [1] http://theconversation.com/hundreds-of-ships-go-missing-each-year-but-we-have-the-technology-to-find-them-37186 http://theconversation.com/hundreds-of-ships-go-missing-each... [2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/this-map-shows-every-ship-at-sea-in-real-time https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/this-map-shows-every-...
- wbl 7y ago
  Russia has no blue water Navy. How do they destroy the carriers?
  - sonnyblarney 7y ago
    Long range hypersonic/cruise missiles with micronucleaer warheads. They have them demoing right now, they'll eventually work out the bugs. That said, it's all armchair because a) We don't know what they really have b) we don't know what kind of amazing gear the US has hidden away or c) how any of it will really hold up in a war. None of it has been tested. So maybe the Russians launch a bunch of newfangled missiles and they basically don't find their target. Maybe they all do. Maybe the Russian s300's totally wipe out F22s, or maybe it's a mirage and they are irrelevant. So many factors: training, conditions, countermeasures, sabotage, overwhelming force etc. etc.. Maybe the vast number of crappy Chinese subs overwhelm the US navy over there. Maybe the US has a combination of tech+procedure that makes all of those little diesel subs pointless. Or maybe they only need 1 or 2 to 'get through'. My bet is that the Carriers are vulnerable, that Russia and China don't really have the ability to project much outside their nations (though Taiwan and HK are close), that the Americans will move around the world with impunity in a hot situation, except right in the vicinity of Russia/China where it would be a mess because they are both smart nations with 'good enough' gear, and China has a zillion bodies to throw at any problem.

bhouston 7y ago

I think against China or Russia the carriers will be destroyed quite quickly. Against an inferior army like Iran, they will be okay. The purpose of aircraft carriers are more often to launch attacks against inferior nations or highly inferior subnational entities so they are useful there.

vinceguidry 7y ago
They would have to find them first. That's still non-trivial, even with satellites.
- blackflame7000 7y ago
  Yea, a lot of people underestimate the speed at which a carrier can move. So much so that it would be outside the blast radius of any ICMB targeted at the carriers last known position when the missile is launched. Most ICBMs cant change trajectory mid-flight.
  - shdh 7y ago
    Not a MIRV blanket though.
    - chipsa 7y ago
      /me points to SM-3
      - blackflame7000 7y ago
        Probably need THAAD or GMD for MIRV because of the altitude and speeds
    - blackflame7000 7y ago
      Actually yea it can because the more re-entry vehicles you use the smaller the blast radius of each will be. the fireball radius of the largest current US-made warhead is only .71km at 455kt on the Trident missile (W-88). It carries 12 re-entry vehicles which could blanket approximately a 3sq km zone. An aircraft carrier can move at approximately 1km per minute. so you have approximately 90 seconds to launch and hit the target with one of the US's best weapons.
- gruez 7y ago
  Why? They are massive objects that has zero camouflage against the ocean. How hard could it be?
  - vinceguidry 7y ago
    You can't use regular photons to detect one because that requires getting in a plane and going out to find them. You're an even bigger sitting duck in a plane in the air than the carrier is sitting on the water. Radar will find you and interceptors will destroy you before you get close enough to see their exact position. You using a plane and radar runs into the same issue. If you sit on the shore and use active radar tracking then you're leaving yourself open to decoy ops and EM countermeasures. Satellites don't loiter over the area long enough to get a tracking lock. Ships can take evasive maneuvers and US Navy ships move very fast.
  - yourapostasy 7y ago
    It is still pretty difficult [1]. The sheer scale of the oceans is not appreciated by many. We can accept that space is vast beyond normal comprehension, but finding ships or even carrier strike fleets in the oceans is still a non-trivial challenge. Even at hypersonic speeds, traversing the range of a missile is measured in above ten minutes ranges. Tracking all commercial traffic shows how vast the oceans are [2], as each of those dots on a map cover a territory far vaster than the ship itself. It is a sufficiently non-trivial problem that commercial tracking relies upon AIS transponders instead of imaging, even in dense commercial traffic areas like the Straits of Malacca or the Bosphorus. Whoever solves the problem will first become very rich from defense contracts. [1] http://theconversation.com/hundreds-of-ships-go-missing-each-year-but-we-have-the-technology-to-find-them-37186 http://theconversation.com/hundreds-of-ships-go-missing-each... [2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/this-map-shows-every-ship-at-sea-in-real-time https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/this-map-shows-every-...
wbl 7y ago
Russia has no blue water Navy. How do they destroy the carriers?
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  Long range hypersonic/cruise missiles with micronucleaer warheads. They have them demoing right now, they'll eventually work out the bugs. That said, it's all armchair because a) We don't know what they really have b) we don't know what kind of amazing gear the US has hidden away or c) how any of it will really hold up in a war. None of it has been tested. So maybe the Russians launch a bunch of newfangled missiles and they basically don't find their target. Maybe they all do. Maybe the Russian s300's totally wipe out F22s, or maybe it's a mirage and they are irrelevant. So many factors: training, conditions, countermeasures, sabotage, overwhelming force etc. etc.. Maybe the vast number of crappy Chinese subs overwhelm the US navy over there. Maybe the US has a combination of tech+procedure that makes all of those little diesel subs pointless. Or maybe they only need 1 or 2 to 'get through'. My bet is that the Carriers are vulnerable, that Russia and China don't really have the ability to project much outside their nations (though Taiwan and HK are close), that the Americans will move around the world with impunity in a hot situation, except right in the vicinity of Russia/China where it would be a mess because they are both smart nations with 'good enough' gear, and China has a zillion bodies to throw at any problem.