5 ms·

Easily? Nothing involved would be easy.

by greedo 7y ago

eloff 7y ago
Nonetheless, it seems the US Navy is still fighting the last war. Carriers are extremely vulnerable to missiles. I think fast missile boats and land based launchers probably make large warships obsolete. Tough to say for sure since that hasn't happened, but it seems likely to me.
- adventured 7y ago
  That's a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of carriers today and going forward. They're not primarily for fighting a war with China or Russia. The reason China is building them and looking to add more in the coming years, is for the same reason the US has them. China knows the US could sink a carrier and yet they're building them anyway. Why? It's about global force projection. The point isn't to set them up in front of China or Russia as convenient targets and let them get sunk. You mostly want to use carriers directly against weaker adversaries. A war with China or Russia that involves sinking a US carrier, would be the start of WW3, and millions of people would probably die. Carriers getting sunk is not a primary concern at all in that scenario (it's down the list, with nuclear war jumping to the top).
  - zipwitch 7y ago
    You're touching on something unspoken but very present in the modern US military machine. It's great for wrecking anyone who isn't on the short list of China, Russia, the EU, Japan and maybe India. Every other nation could see their infrastructure and military devastated within a month, with little they could do to stop it. (See Libya for one example.) But the American people aren't being sold a military that can act as the international equivalent of mafia leg-breakers. We're told, again and again, that we are paying for a military that is "the best" and that can, if needed, stand up to our global peers and near-peers and win. There's a disconnect between rhetoric and expenditures on the one hand, and demonstrated performance, capabilities, and operational plans on the other hand. That seems like a huge problem to me. At the least, it's a massive fraud being perpetrated on the American public. And at worst, it might lead to a terrible conflict as decision-makers operate with very inaccurate assessments of what our military is really capable of.
    - reissbaker 7y ago
      I think a few other posters have touched on this, but: IMO there is no such thing as preparing for an extended physical war with China, Russia, or (worst case) current allies such as the EU. Any war of serious consequence between large nuclear powers is game over for both. Even if one "wins," they'll be left in such a state of devastation that every other country left on the planet will handily surpass them, if there's even a habitable planet afterwards. I'd be surprised if our lawmakers, who mostly grew up in the era of MAD (mutually assured destruction) with the USSR, aren't aware of this. That's in part why there's such a focus on preventing unfriendly countries such as Iran from developing nuclear weapons... And it's why Iran wants them so badly: a large enough nuclear arsenal is a free pass from the "leg-breakers" you describe, because — one hopes — no one would be mad enough to start a war of MAD. Currently, the military is still extremely useful in projecting force and securing access to important trade routes and resources. Threat of nuclear weapons isn't a good fit there, because you'd immediately destroy whatever you were trying to retain access to. Most of the global superpowers are thus locked in a giant Mexican standoff, where their militaries need to remain powerful enough to at least project the ability to fight and win small battles (and are stuck in an arms race against each other on that front), but can't reasonably expect to be able to topple each other — only gain relative advantage in the global economy via a long, slow game of securing access to better resources, trade agreements, or capital, and subtly undermining or attempting to destabilize each other via psychological warfare (election interference), economic warfare (tariffs, IP theft, etc), or hacking.
- nradov 7y ago
  And where are your fast missile boats and land-based launchers going to get the real-time targeting data they need to hit anything? The ocean is a big place, missile seekers have narrow views, and reconnaissance satellites are increasingly vulnerable.
  - adinb 7y ago
    ::ahem:: Please reference the E-2C & E-3.
- greedo 7y ago
  Killing a carrier isn't like a video game where you see a carrier on screen and issue a launch command. Killing a carrier involves a chain of events; break anyone of the links and the carrier is safe. First you have to locate the carrier. Easy to do in peacetime, in war time much more difficult. If you want to kill it with a ballistic missile, you need to locate it within a few square kilometers. This means either a radar location, or a satellite overhead. Radar is problematic because it has to deal with the curvature of the earth. This is typically solved by using airborne radar. Well, carriers and their airgroups are very well versed in both detecting this surveillance and killing it. Either with aircraft, with SAMs, or with cruise missiles that target that airfields of the surveillance (ISR) aircraft. So say that you somehow manage to get a location fix on a carrier battle group. Now you have to prep your missiles for launch which takes time. Let's say 30-60 min. The carrier can steam at over 30 knots, so now your targeting data is out of date. Again, not like push button warfare. Your ballistic missile now has to find the carrier in a roughly 1000 sq mile area. Fine, missiles are relatively cheap. So you just target each square mile with a missile and hope its internal radar can pick out the CVN. So you launch 1000 missiles, and just like in Battleship, one of your missiles manages to be in the right spot. Now it has to deal with the SAMs protecting the CVN. Aegis is pretty good these days, so you've got to make it past them. That'll be tough. Then you have to make it past the ESSM missiles, as well as the ECM jamming suite of every ship in the carrier group. Fine, you have robust electronics. BOOM! You've hit. But it turns out that your radar on the warhead was small, with insufficient processing power to discriminate between a carrier (especially with all the jamming going on) and an escort ship. You've sunk an LCS, or a refueler (they're big and have a big radar image), or maybe even an Arleigh Burke DDG or Tico cruiser. Sucks for those crewmates, but that's their job. Protect the carrier. And what has this failed attack cost you? Well, ballistic missiles are cheap compared to a CVN, but not that cheap. Say $5M a piece since it makes the math easier (though the DF-21 and DF-26 will cost much much more). 1000 missiles is $5B, plus the cost of all the ISR assets used to locate the CVN. Now if hypersonic missiles start to take off (pun intended) and become deployable weapon systems, it will make things more difficult. But that's still in the future.
  - CapricornNoble 7y ago
    >>First you have to locate the carrier. ...This means either a radar location, or a satellite overhead. These aren't just "weather satellites". It's highly suspected they are capable of tracking carrier groups via infrared: https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/06/05/chinese-weather-satellite-successfully-boosted-into-orbit/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/06/05/chinese-weather-satell... >> Now you have to prep your missiles for launch which takes time. Let's say 30-60 min. China's DF-21D and DF-26 are solid-fueled and fired from mobile launchers. In a deliberate carrier-hunting attack the sensor-shooter killchain is also likely to be streamlined, even taking into the account that the Chinese still suck at Command & Control. Overall preptime and killchain delay should be negligible (<30 minutes for the Chinese). >>> So you just target each square mile with a missile and hope its internal radar can pick out the CVN. No. These long-range anti-carrier missiles have an almost vertical terminal trajectory and are looking down from high altitude. AN AESA's fast scanning should be able to find and fix a target with a signature as gigantic as a carrier's over a 30km-radius circle without too much difficulty. I haven't crunched the numbers on this personally, but I'll add it to my list of "radar scenarios to do the math on"... >>>But it turns out that your radar on the warhead was small, with insufficient processing power The DF-21 and DF-26 are both about 1.4m meters in diameter. You can stuff an AESA as good as any on a fighter into a nosecone that large. >>>Aegis is pretty good these days.......Then you have to make it past the ESSM missiles. Even in controlled tests we don't have that great of a pK (probability of kill aka "intercept") against high-speed ballistic missiles. The ships need to use SM-2s and SM-3s. 1x Tico + 2x Arleigh Burke are packing about 300VLS total, and that has to include Harpoons and Tomahawks. Let's assume ~250 SM-2/3s for air and missile defense. It's customary to launch 2 missiles per incoming threat (again, due to that low pK we've demonstrated) but that is still enough to stop 100 incoming (probably bigger than any realistic incoming salvo anyway). Assuming you can LAUNCH the SM-2s fast enough. Each ship would need to fire off 80+ missiles in probably 30 seconds, and I think there is a practical limit for how quickly you can fire from VLS (due to the exhausts and whatnot). It's probably something like 1-2 missiles per second, from non-adjacent cells. >>>> Say $5M a piece since it makes the math easier (though the DF-21 and DF-26 will cost much much more). 1000 missiles is $5B, plus the cost of all the ISR assets used to locate the CVN. I've seen estimates of $10-20M for DF-21/26. -200(don't need 1000) x $20M = $400M -3 x $100M(??) surveillance sats = $300M -Sinking the centerpiece of your opponent's Navy, exploiting their Critical Vulnerability to defeat their Center of Gravity, AND achieve major Information Operation success (PR victory)? Priceless.
mturmon 7y ago
The above commenter has exaggerated, but large aircraft carriers are indeed regarded as increasingly vulnerable to high-speed missiles. E.g., from [1]: "More controversially, the navy remains wedded to new aircraft carriers, but at $13 billion each they are arguably more an outdated symbol of twentieth-century power than an effective weapon system for a future in which they will be increasingly vulnerable to attack by high-speed, maneuverable missiles that can be bought for a minuscule fraction of what a carrier costs." [1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/americas-indefensible-defense-budget/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/americas-indefen...
- ckozlowski 7y ago
  "they will be increasingly vulnerable to attack by high-speed, maneuverable missiles that can be bought for a minuscule fraction of what a carrier costs." Except that assertion is far from proven. Missiles of that type have been around since the 70s and 80s, and the Navy was planning for it then. They are a threat, yes. But they're not assuredly effective. Finding the carrier and then delivering a missile that has the range, sensor coverage, lethality, is not a trivial problem to solve, and there's trade-offs in every area. Discussing all of this in context is not easy, which is why this article is a nice one. Places like the NYtimes and others, while great in many areas, consistently seem to oversimplify defense issues. That's not to say that the threat from missiles to carries is one to be disregarded. But it needs to be understood that the defense against a carrier is not an easy one either. And while anti-ship missiles is a logical direction as far as cost vs. effectiveness, success is far from guaranteed.
- imtringued 7y ago
  That completely ignores their logistical utility. There are cheaper alternatives to aircraft carriers if you want to attack something but if you need a cargo plane to land near enemy territory for resupply then you either need an ally who provides you access to their airbase or you need an aircraft carrier.

Easily? Nothing involved would be easy.

by greedo 7y ago

Easily? Nothing involved would be easy.

Nonetheless, it seems the US Navy is still fighting the last war. Carriers are extremely vulnerable to missiles. I think fast missile boats and land based launchers probably make large warships obsolete. Tough to say for sure since that hasn't happened, but it seems likely to me.

adventured 7y ago
That's a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of carriers today and going forward. They're not primarily for fighting a war with China or Russia. The reason China is building them and looking to add more in the coming years, is for the same reason the US has them. China knows the US could sink a carrier and yet they're building them anyway. Why? It's about global force projection. The point isn't to set them up in front of China or Russia as convenient targets and let them get sunk. You mostly want to use carriers directly against weaker adversaries. A war with China or Russia that involves sinking a US carrier, would be the start of WW3, and millions of people would probably die. Carriers getting sunk is not a primary concern at all in that scenario (it's down the list, with nuclear war jumping to the top).
- zipwitch 7y ago
  You're touching on something unspoken but very present in the modern US military machine. It's great for wrecking anyone who isn't on the short list of China, Russia, the EU, Japan and maybe India. Every other nation could see their infrastructure and military devastated within a month, with little they could do to stop it. (See Libya for one example.) But the American people aren't being sold a military that can act as the international equivalent of mafia leg-breakers. We're told, again and again, that we are paying for a military that is "the best" and that can, if needed, stand up to our global peers and near-peers and win. There's a disconnect between rhetoric and expenditures on the one hand, and demonstrated performance, capabilities, and operational plans on the other hand. That seems like a huge problem to me. At the least, it's a massive fraud being perpetrated on the American public. And at worst, it might lead to a terrible conflict as decision-makers operate with very inaccurate assessments of what our military is really capable of.
  - reissbaker 7y ago
    I think a few other posters have touched on this, but: IMO there is no such thing as preparing for an extended physical war with China, Russia, or (worst case) current allies such as the EU. Any war of serious consequence between large nuclear powers is game over for both. Even if one "wins," they'll be left in such a state of devastation that every other country left on the planet will handily surpass them, if there's even a habitable planet afterwards. I'd be surprised if our lawmakers, who mostly grew up in the era of MAD (mutually assured destruction) with the USSR, aren't aware of this. That's in part why there's such a focus on preventing unfriendly countries such as Iran from developing nuclear weapons... And it's why Iran wants them so badly: a large enough nuclear arsenal is a free pass from the "leg-breakers" you describe, because — one hopes — no one would be mad enough to start a war of MAD. Currently, the military is still extremely useful in projecting force and securing access to important trade routes and resources. Threat of nuclear weapons isn't a good fit there, because you'd immediately destroy whatever you were trying to retain access to. Most of the global superpowers are thus locked in a giant Mexican standoff, where their militaries need to remain powerful enough to at least project the ability to fight and win small battles (and are stuck in an arms race against each other on that front), but can't reasonably expect to be able to topple each other — only gain relative advantage in the global economy via a long, slow game of securing access to better resources, trade agreements, or capital, and subtly undermining or attempting to destabilize each other via psychological warfare (election interference), economic warfare (tariffs, IP theft, etc), or hacking.
nradov 7y ago
And where are your fast missile boats and land-based launchers going to get the real-time targeting data they need to hit anything? The ocean is a big place, missile seekers have narrow views, and reconnaissance satellites are increasingly vulnerable.
- adinb 7y ago
  ::ahem:: Please reference the E-2C & E-3.
greedo 7y ago
Killing a carrier isn't like a video game where you see a carrier on screen and issue a launch command. Killing a carrier involves a chain of events; break anyone of the links and the carrier is safe. First you have to locate the carrier. Easy to do in peacetime, in war time much more difficult. If you want to kill it with a ballistic missile, you need to locate it within a few square kilometers. This means either a radar location, or a satellite overhead. Radar is problematic because it has to deal with the curvature of the earth. This is typically solved by using airborne radar. Well, carriers and their airgroups are very well versed in both detecting this surveillance and killing it. Either with aircraft, with SAMs, or with cruise missiles that target that airfields of the surveillance (ISR) aircraft. So say that you somehow manage to get a location fix on a carrier battle group. Now you have to prep your missiles for launch which takes time. Let's say 30-60 min. The carrier can steam at over 30 knots, so now your targeting data is out of date. Again, not like push button warfare. Your ballistic missile now has to find the carrier in a roughly 1000 sq mile area. Fine, missiles are relatively cheap. So you just target each square mile with a missile and hope its internal radar can pick out the CVN. So you launch 1000 missiles, and just like in Battleship, one of your missiles manages to be in the right spot. Now it has to deal with the SAMs protecting the CVN. Aegis is pretty good these days, so you've got to make it past them. That'll be tough. Then you have to make it past the ESSM missiles, as well as the ECM jamming suite of every ship in the carrier group. Fine, you have robust electronics. BOOM! You've hit. But it turns out that your radar on the warhead was small, with insufficient processing power to discriminate between a carrier (especially with all the jamming going on) and an escort ship. You've sunk an LCS, or a refueler (they're big and have a big radar image), or maybe even an Arleigh Burke DDG or Tico cruiser. Sucks for those crewmates, but that's their job. Protect the carrier. And what has this failed attack cost you? Well, ballistic missiles are cheap compared to a CVN, but not that cheap. Say $5M a piece since it makes the math easier (though the DF-21 and DF-26 will cost much much more). 1000 missiles is $5B, plus the cost of all the ISR assets used to locate the CVN. Now if hypersonic missiles start to take off (pun intended) and become deployable weapon systems, it will make things more difficult. But that's still in the future.
- CapricornNoble 7y ago
  >>First you have to locate the carrier. ...This means either a radar location, or a satellite overhead. These aren't just "weather satellites". It's highly suspected they are capable of tracking carrier groups via infrared: https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/06/05/chinese-weather-satellite-successfully-boosted-into-orbit/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/06/05/chinese-weather-satell... >> Now you have to prep your missiles for launch which takes time. Let's say 30-60 min. China's DF-21D and DF-26 are solid-fueled and fired from mobile launchers. In a deliberate carrier-hunting attack the sensor-shooter killchain is also likely to be streamlined, even taking into the account that the Chinese still suck at Command & Control. Overall preptime and killchain delay should be negligible (<30 minutes for the Chinese). >>> So you just target each square mile with a missile and hope its internal radar can pick out the CVN. No. These long-range anti-carrier missiles have an almost vertical terminal trajectory and are looking down from high altitude. AN AESA's fast scanning should be able to find and fix a target with a signature as gigantic as a carrier's over a 30km-radius circle without too much difficulty. I haven't crunched the numbers on this personally, but I'll add it to my list of "radar scenarios to do the math on"... >>>But it turns out that your radar on the warhead was small, with insufficient processing power The DF-21 and DF-26 are both about 1.4m meters in diameter. You can stuff an AESA as good as any on a fighter into a nosecone that large. >>>Aegis is pretty good these days.......Then you have to make it past the ESSM missiles. Even in controlled tests we don't have that great of a pK (probability of kill aka "intercept") against high-speed ballistic missiles. The ships need to use SM-2s and SM-3s. 1x Tico + 2x Arleigh Burke are packing about 300VLS total, and that has to include Harpoons and Tomahawks. Let's assume ~250 SM-2/3s for air and missile defense. It's customary to launch 2 missiles per incoming threat (again, due to that low pK we've demonstrated) but that is still enough to stop 100 incoming (probably bigger than any realistic incoming salvo anyway). Assuming you can LAUNCH the SM-2s fast enough. Each ship would need to fire off 80+ missiles in probably 30 seconds, and I think there is a practical limit for how quickly you can fire from VLS (due to the exhausts and whatnot). It's probably something like 1-2 missiles per second, from non-adjacent cells. >>>> Say $5M a piece since it makes the math easier (though the DF-21 and DF-26 will cost much much more). 1000 missiles is $5B, plus the cost of all the ISR assets used to locate the CVN. I've seen estimates of $10-20M for DF-21/26. -200(don't need 1000) x $20M = $400M -3 x $100M(??) surveillance sats = $300M -Sinking the centerpiece of your opponent's Navy, exploiting their Critical Vulnerability to defeat their Center of Gravity, AND achieve major Information Operation success (PR victory)? Priceless.

mturmon 7y ago

The above commenter has exaggerated, but large aircraft carriers are indeed regarded as increasingly vulnerable to high-speed missiles. E.g., from [1]: "More controversially, the navy remains wedded to new aircraft carriers, but at $13 billion each they are arguably more an outdated symbol of twentieth-century power than an effective weapon system for a future in which they will be increasingly vulnerable to attack by high-speed, maneuverable missiles that can be bought for a minuscule fraction of what a carrier costs." [1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/americas-indefensible-defense-budget/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/americas-indefen...

ckozlowski 7y ago
"they will be increasingly vulnerable to attack by high-speed, maneuverable missiles that can be bought for a minuscule fraction of what a carrier costs." Except that assertion is far from proven. Missiles of that type have been around since the 70s and 80s, and the Navy was planning for it then. They are a threat, yes. But they're not assuredly effective. Finding the carrier and then delivering a missile that has the range, sensor coverage, lethality, is not a trivial problem to solve, and there's trade-offs in every area. Discussing all of this in context is not easy, which is why this article is a nice one. Places like the NYtimes and others, while great in many areas, consistently seem to oversimplify defense issues. That's not to say that the threat from missiles to carries is one to be disregarded. But it needs to be understood that the defense against a carrier is not an easy one either. And while anti-ship missiles is a logical direction as far as cost vs. effectiveness, success is far from guaranteed.
imtringued 7y ago
That completely ignores their logistical utility. There are cheaper alternatives to aircraft carriers if you want to attack something but if you need a cargo plane to land near enemy territory for resupply then you either need an ally who provides you access to their airbase or you need an aircraft carrier.