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How would you defend a carrier from missiles? For example, this one carrier took years to build. Could it not be sunk simply by swarming it with ICBMs? How m

by palish 15y ago

How would you defend a carrier from missiles? For example, this one carrier took years to build. Could it not be sunk simply by swarming it with ICBMs? How many of those missiles do we have? How quickly could we produce them? How would you defend a carrier from missiles? Any new ideas? (I realize the carrier is likely a political statement, not a practical asset. I'm just wondering about the answers to my silly questions. Bored and daydreaming.)

Jd 15y ago
I'm pretty sure you are basically right. An aircraft carrier is more a floating base that allows you to project power in a part of the globe that you would not otherwise have access to. Presumably you are projecting power against a power that does not have the military capability to sink your aircraft carrier at a distance (e.g. Libya, Iraq, Iran). China could, for instance, use the aircraft carrier to help its interests in Africa, just as the US has been doing (in the eyes of some skeptics) in the Middle East. Another related fact is that military build-ups are very fuzzy these days given the amorphous nature of modern warfare. Sponsorship of private corporate armies in contested countries (a la cold war) is more likely than open conflict, because no one wants to risk destablizing everything (and if one were to go that way, nuclear weapons would suddenly be on the table). If a country and associated military can provide some logistical support without overt action, they can maintain plausible deniability (the sort of thing we are doing in Libya, for example, or our highly successful Bay of Pigs operation).
- palish 15y ago
  Ah, yes, you're correct. Also, "(and if one were to go that way, nuclear weapons would suddenly be on the table)." --- Do we have any practical defense against nukes? I guess the answer is no. I was just reading The War Nerd (link posted further down by Bokonist). In the article, the US Naval Institute says "Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack." Since ships are essentially floating cities, that implies that cities have no defense against a ballistic missile attack. Therefore, neither side would use nuclear weapons.
  - RainFlutter 15y ago
    You're basically paraphrasing the doctrine of mutual assured destruction.
  - icarus_drowning 15y ago
    Ballistic missiles v. Aircraft Carriers seems like overkill, especially when it is fairly trivial to outfit submarines with nuclear torpedos (I can't find any that are listed as active in the U.S. arsenal, but we've had them before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_45_torpedo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_45_torpedo ). EDIT: What was I thinking? A nuclear-tipped cruise missile is even better.
    - Jd 15y ago
      I believe there are two basic parameters here: (1) range (2) expense. The basic principles (as est. in Taiwan related war games, as in other places) is that if you send enough missiles (e.g. spamming) no matter how good your missile defense system is, some will get through. Which is to say, when it comes to missiles defense has not kept up with offense and "mutually assured destruction" remains a policy even with relatively incapable nuclear powers. There are a variety of missiles which could potentially sink an aircraft carrier. ICBM has the longest range with the largest expense. Torpedoes (not really a missile) have a much shorter range so presumably the old principle applies -- if you can keep subs at a distance your carrier will be safe. In other words, what you want to hit a carrier is the cheapest missiles where the launching platform (which could be a sub) are outside the range of the enemy, to present the largest quantity of missiles in order to overwhelm the defenses of the carrier. ICBMs are most likely not the best way to do this, given their expense, but are worth bringing up since the basic principle is the same as in the cold war (shoot lots of ICBMS at a city/country to assure that some will get through). Also, I believe whether or not any of the armaments are nuclear is fairly irrelevant since a non-nuclear missile (or two or three) can sink a carrier easily enough. That said, sooner or later someone (e.g. N. Korea) will use a nuke, and then all bets are off.
    - brudgers 15y ago
      >"I can't find any that are listed as active in the U.S. arsenal" Nuclear torpedoes usually sink two ships - one of them is the target.
bokonist 15y ago
I think the War Nerd makes a pretty convincing case that air carriers are basically obsolete. In the next major war, they will be WWII equivalent of the battleship. http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carriers-will-die/ http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carrier...
- protomyth 15y ago
  It is the same case made by the Air Force during the 1950's. It relies on using ICBM to target carrier groups. I would direct your attention to the nuclear tests done after WWII on the use of nuclear weapons against fleet battle groups and the amount of missile defense a modern battle group has. Also, those spy satellites that you need to target those ICBMs are not exactly totally immune to attack. I think the original article the report was in support of more funding for advances to the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.
KaeseEs 15y ago
A conventionally tipped ICBM is indistinguishable from a nuclear tipped ICBM in all stages of flight except perhaps the last, and thus the launch thereof at a CVG could provoke nuclear retaliation. There are many, many better ways to sink a capital ship; swarms of regular antiship missiles, of which the Russians have many fine models, are probably the most popular. This is very difficult to defend against; between the SM-2s/SM-3s fired at the swarm at long range and the rolling airframe missiles fired at medium/short range by the CRUDES screen, you'll likely take out most of the inbound missiles, but not nearly all of them, and the CVN's own CIWS is unlikely to do anything productive if it works at all and is turned on, leaving a bunch of holes in your carrier and about 5000 men drowned along with about a hundred aircraft in the drink.
- Retric 15y ago
  Hitting an aircraft carrier with an non nuclear ICBM would be vary difficult. The primary advantage of an ICBM is speed, but they easy to direct so the aircraft carrier has plenty of time to move around. As to missiles a single impact above the water line on a modern US carrier is unlikely to do all that much damage unless it's a ridiculously over-sized thus making swarms an expensive proposition. Torpedo's are a much better option, but they trade range for utility. PS: For reference: USS SARATOGA (CV-3) - The "Sara" was struck by 2 bombs and 5 Kamikazi's while supporting the Iwo Jima invasion on February 21, 1945. She lost 123 dead with approximately 300 injured. But this attack did not sink her. She survived the war but did not survive the atomic bomb tests off of Bikini Atoll. She went under after undergoing her second nuclear explosion on July 25, 1946. She was a tough old girl. http://ffhiker.tripod.com/index-7.html http://ffhiker.tripod.com/index-7.html Edit: The US is also using much larger aircraft carriers now they they did in WWII. Picture a 100,000 ton boat with 2 × nuclear reactors AND 4 × steam turbines, vs the 36,000 ton Saratoga (CV-3). There are many reasons the US has not lost a carrier since 1945, suggesting they are an easy target is ignoring a lot of navel history.
  - quanticle 15y ago
    The carriers are bigger, true, but the missiles are more powerful as well. A single cruise missile carries the effective payload of 3 or 4 kamikaze aircraft. There's also the fact that you don't have to kill the carrier to render it ineffective. A single missile hit to something like landing deck or the aircraft hangar can result in damage that takes months or years to repair, effectively removing the carrier from the battlefield.
michaelpinto 15y ago
I think you really hit in your last statement: It's a soft projection of power. And that's not theoretical if you think about China in relation to Russia, Japan, India and of course the US. It's also important to keep in mind that China has a very active interest in brining back Taiwan and in oil interests near Vietnam or even Indonesia.
huetsch 15y ago
Until recently, carriers were apparently able to avoid missile hits simply by moving at full speed - I guess it's still not trivial for a ballistic missile to hit fast, mobile targets (the US missile defense program probably faces similar engineering issues). The Chinese recently shifted the balance of power in the Pacific theater by developing a missile theoretically capable of taking down US carriers from afar. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e69c85a-1264-11e0-b4c8-00144feabdc0.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e69c85a-1264-11e0-b4c8-00144feabd... Regarding whether or not this is a practical asset, so much of military power is "soft" (you might say political, but I think that's an oversimplification), I don't think you could fairly call this an impractical asset. China has traditionally focused on maintaining power in there sphere of the world. As others have noted, the power of an aircraft carrier is that it allows you to project power globally. They could send the aircraft carrier to a lot of places that would make other countries unhappy, but not unhappy enough to actually start a military attack over it - thus the carrier would have been an effective tool. From a more political perspective, there's been a regional arms buildup. India already has a carrier and is building more, and India and some other Asian countries have been buying up submarines.
bradleyland 15y ago
Questions like this are always posed in a vacuum, which makes no sense, because modern warships do not operate in a vacuum: 1 carrier vs any conceivable technology. Military defense strategy isn't all that much different than IT defense strategy. It means using layers of security. If your only defense against missiles is a single missile-defence system, you're probably going down. This ideology is at the core of how how a US Naval Carrier Battle Group works. A carrier battle group (CVBG) is a complex interplay of various types of ships and aircraft with many layers of defense. The idea is to never let your enemy get in a position to execute a fatal attack. If you want to take it further, think of it in Starcraft terms. No one asks, "Is a Terran Battlecruiser a political statement, not a practical asset?" Any reasonably talented Starcraft player knows that you don't send a Battlecruiser in to battle alone [1]. 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox82uAVdUKM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox82uAVdUKM

by palish 15y ago

Jd 15y ago

I'm pretty sure you are basically right. An aircraft carrier is more a floating base that allows you to project power in a part of the globe that you would not otherwise have access to. Presumably you are projecting power against a power that does not have the military capability to sink your aircraft carrier at a distance (e.g. Libya, Iraq, Iran). China could, for instance, use the aircraft carrier to help its interests in Africa, just as the US has been doing (in the eyes of some skeptics) in the Middle East. Another related fact is that military build-ups are very fuzzy these days given the amorphous nature of modern warfare. Sponsorship of private corporate armies in contested countries (a la cold war) is more likely than open conflict, because no one wants to risk destablizing everything (and if one were to go that way, nuclear weapons would suddenly be on the table). If a country and associated military can provide some logistical support without overt action, they can maintain plausible deniability (the sort of thing we are doing in Libya, for example, or our highly successful Bay of Pigs operation).

palish 15y ago
Ah, yes, you're correct. Also, "(and if one were to go that way, nuclear weapons would suddenly be on the table)." --- Do we have any practical defense against nukes? I guess the answer is no. I was just reading The War Nerd (link posted further down by Bokonist). In the article, the US Naval Institute says "Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack." Since ships are essentially floating cities, that implies that cities have no defense against a ballistic missile attack. Therefore, neither side would use nuclear weapons.
- RainFlutter 15y ago
  You're basically paraphrasing the doctrine of mutual assured destruction.
- icarus_drowning 15y ago
  Ballistic missiles v. Aircraft Carriers seems like overkill, especially when it is fairly trivial to outfit submarines with nuclear torpedos (I can't find any that are listed as active in the U.S. arsenal, but we've had them before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_45_torpedo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_45_torpedo ). EDIT: What was I thinking? A nuclear-tipped cruise missile is even better.
  - Jd 15y ago
    I believe there are two basic parameters here: (1) range (2) expense. The basic principles (as est. in Taiwan related war games, as in other places) is that if you send enough missiles (e.g. spamming) no matter how good your missile defense system is, some will get through. Which is to say, when it comes to missiles defense has not kept up with offense and "mutually assured destruction" remains a policy even with relatively incapable nuclear powers. There are a variety of missiles which could potentially sink an aircraft carrier. ICBM has the longest range with the largest expense. Torpedoes (not really a missile) have a much shorter range so presumably the old principle applies -- if you can keep subs at a distance your carrier will be safe. In other words, what you want to hit a carrier is the cheapest missiles where the launching platform (which could be a sub) are outside the range of the enemy, to present the largest quantity of missiles in order to overwhelm the defenses of the carrier. ICBMs are most likely not the best way to do this, given their expense, but are worth bringing up since the basic principle is the same as in the cold war (shoot lots of ICBMS at a city/country to assure that some will get through). Also, I believe whether or not any of the armaments are nuclear is fairly irrelevant since a non-nuclear missile (or two or three) can sink a carrier easily enough. That said, sooner or later someone (e.g. N. Korea) will use a nuke, and then all bets are off.
  - brudgers 15y ago
    >"I can't find any that are listed as active in the U.S. arsenal" Nuclear torpedoes usually sink two ships - one of them is the target.

bokonist 15y ago

I think the War Nerd makes a pretty convincing case that air carriers are basically obsolete. In the next major war, they will be WWII equivalent of the battleship. http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carriers-will-die/ http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carrier...

protomyth 15y ago
It is the same case made by the Air Force during the 1950's. It relies on using ICBM to target carrier groups. I would direct your attention to the nuclear tests done after WWII on the use of nuclear weapons against fleet battle groups and the amount of missile defense a modern battle group has. Also, those spy satellites that you need to target those ICBMs are not exactly totally immune to attack. I think the original article the report was in support of more funding for advances to the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.

KaeseEs 15y ago

A conventionally tipped ICBM is indistinguishable from a nuclear tipped ICBM in all stages of flight except perhaps the last, and thus the launch thereof at a CVG could provoke nuclear retaliation. There are many, many better ways to sink a capital ship; swarms of regular antiship missiles, of which the Russians have many fine models, are probably the most popular. This is very difficult to defend against; between the SM-2s/SM-3s fired at the swarm at long range and the rolling airframe missiles fired at medium/short range by the CRUDES screen, you'll likely take out most of the inbound missiles, but not nearly all of them, and the CVN's own CIWS is unlikely to do anything productive if it works at all and is turned on, leaving a bunch of holes in your carrier and about 5000 men drowned along with about a hundred aircraft in the drink.

Retric 15y ago
Hitting an aircraft carrier with an non nuclear ICBM would be vary difficult. The primary advantage of an ICBM is speed, but they easy to direct so the aircraft carrier has plenty of time to move around. As to missiles a single impact above the water line on a modern US carrier is unlikely to do all that much damage unless it's a ridiculously over-sized thus making swarms an expensive proposition. Torpedo's are a much better option, but they trade range for utility. PS: For reference: USS SARATOGA (CV-3) - The "Sara" was struck by 2 bombs and 5 Kamikazi's while supporting the Iwo Jima invasion on February 21, 1945. She lost 123 dead with approximately 300 injured. But this attack did not sink her. She survived the war but did not survive the atomic bomb tests off of Bikini Atoll. She went under after undergoing her second nuclear explosion on July 25, 1946. She was a tough old girl. http://ffhiker.tripod.com/index-7.html http://ffhiker.tripod.com/index-7.html Edit: The US is also using much larger aircraft carriers now they they did in WWII. Picture a 100,000 ton boat with 2 × nuclear reactors AND 4 × steam turbines, vs the 36,000 ton Saratoga (CV-3). There are many reasons the US has not lost a carrier since 1945, suggesting they are an easy target is ignoring a lot of navel history.
- quanticle 15y ago
  The carriers are bigger, true, but the missiles are more powerful as well. A single cruise missile carries the effective payload of 3 or 4 kamikaze aircraft. There's also the fact that you don't have to kill the carrier to render it ineffective. A single missile hit to something like landing deck or the aircraft hangar can result in damage that takes months or years to repair, effectively removing the carrier from the battlefield.

michaelpinto 15y ago

I think you really hit in your last statement: It's a soft projection of power. And that's not theoretical if you think about China in relation to Russia, Japan, India and of course the US. It's also important to keep in mind that China has a very active interest in brining back Taiwan and in oil interests near Vietnam or even Indonesia.

huetsch 15y ago

Until recently, carriers were apparently able to avoid missile hits simply by moving at full speed - I guess it's still not trivial for a ballistic missile to hit fast, mobile targets (the US missile defense program probably faces similar engineering issues). The Chinese recently shifted the balance of power in the Pacific theater by developing a missile theoretically capable of taking down US carriers from afar. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e69c85a-1264-11e0-b4c8-00144feabdc0.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e69c85a-1264-11e0-b4c8-00144feabd... Regarding whether or not this is a practical asset, so much of military power is "soft" (you might say political, but I think that's an oversimplification), I don't think you could fairly call this an impractical asset. China has traditionally focused on maintaining power in there sphere of the world. As others have noted, the power of an aircraft carrier is that it allows you to project power globally. They could send the aircraft carrier to a lot of places that would make other countries unhappy, but not unhappy enough to actually start a military attack over it - thus the carrier would have been an effective tool. From a more political perspective, there's been a regional arms buildup. India already has a carrier and is building more, and India and some other Asian countries have been buying up submarines.

bradleyland 15y ago

Questions like this are always posed in a vacuum, which makes no sense, because modern warships do not operate in a vacuum: 1 carrier vs any conceivable technology. Military defense strategy isn't all that much different than IT defense strategy. It means using layers of security. If your only defense against missiles is a single missile-defence system, you're probably going down. This ideology is at the core of how how a US Naval Carrier Battle Group works. A carrier battle group (CVBG) is a complex interplay of various types of ships and aircraft with many layers of defense. The idea is to never let your enemy get in a position to execute a fatal attack. If you want to take it further, think of it in Starcraft terms. No one asks, "Is a Terran Battlecruiser a political statement, not a practical asset?" Any reasonably talented Starcraft player knows that you don't send a Battlecruiser in to battle alone [1]. 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox82uAVdUKM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox82uAVdUKM