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Sitting ducks? You have any idea how hard it is to find a carrier if you don't already know where to look? The ocean is a pretty big place, carriers move pret

Sitting ducks? You have any idea how hard it is to find a carrier if you don't already know where to look? The ocean is a pretty big place, carriers move pretty quickly, and spy satellites only have a relatively narrow cone of view with enough resolution to detect one from orbit. Even if you found one visually, guiding a missile to accurately strike a moving carrier is extremely difficult. It's one reason China's much touted "carrier killer" missiles are less of a threat than the Chinese would like. While they could theoretically sink a carrier they rely on a complex system of satellites and radar to guide a missile in, disruption of any one piece of that system (remember the US has successfully tested anti-satellite weapons) and you won't be scoring any hits. Never mind the multi-layered missile defense systems that all carrier battle groups run with, which wouldn't be a guarantee but would have a chance. The most those missiles would is force the carriers to stay further away from the Chinese coast, which given the range of modern aircraft isn't that much of a burden if we're talking sea control. As for naval combat, there's no combination of ships in any country's Navy that can hope to stand up to the US Navy in a protracted conflict. US carriers have undisputed rule of the seas for at least the next three decades, even against the likes of China/Russia.

randomopining 5y ago
Can’t they just fire like 50 missiles in the carriers general area to airblast detonate? Plus how hard is it to track the location of a huge ship like that… is it that hard?
- credit_guy 5y ago
  > Can’t they just fire like 50 missiles in the carriers general area to airblast detonate? A supercarrier would not sink from a nuclear airblast in the general vicinity. In 1946, the US performed an experiment to see how such an airblast would destroy or damage ships, in the operation Crossroads, test Able. The bomb was a 23 kT one (so a bit higher yield than Hiroshima). It detonated at a hight of 158m. The light aircraft carrier USS Independence (10k tons) was only about 500m from the point of the detonation, and although severely damaged, it did not sink. The fleet carrier USS Saratoga (37k tons) was about 2 km from point zero. It suffered even less damage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads#Able_target_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads#Able_targ...
  - beambot 5y ago
    Even if the ship survived, can the crew survive at less than 500m from ground zero?
    - slavik81 5y ago
      Quite possibly. The classic nuclear weapons did their damage mostly through heat and pressure. They were relatively ineffective against troops in armoured vehicles, which is why alternatives like the neutron bomb were developed. That said, the Hiroshima bomb was small by modern standards. A single Minuteman III missile can carry three W78 warheads, each with a yield of ~340 kT. China has similar nuclear capabilities. It would be an unmitigated global catastrophe if those sorts of missiles started flying. Nobody would be safe.
- scottLobster 5y ago
  If we're talking nukes maybe (although if we're talking nukes carriers are largely irrelevant and nuclear missile subs become the primary threat), but once again the ocean is big. However huge the ship is, your search space is far larger. Even getting a siting from orbit could potentially be disrupted by weather. In the case of the pacific ocean you're literally looking for a moving football field in ~60 million square miles of ocean. Carriers in wartime wouldn't be sailing in straight lines over long distances either. National interest had a good line about it: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-its-really-hard-sink-aircraft-carrier-99487 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-its-really-hard-s... "And because carriers are constantly moving when deployed at up to 35 miles per hour -- fast enough to outrun submarines -- finding and tracking them is difficult. Within 30 minutes after a sighting by enemies, the area within which a carrier might be operating has grown to 700 square miles; after 90 minutes, it has expanded to 6,000 square miles." Binkov on YouTube did a good analysis of the threats modern carriers face as of last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui8sBMA3VGM&t=205s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui8sBMA3VGM&t=205s TLDR there are some technologies likely to show up in a decade or so that may make carriers harder to use, but would hardly render them obsolete. As for conventional missiles, Binkov also did a good analysis on how many missiles it would theoretically take to take out a single AEGIS equipped destroyer. Carrier battle groups would have multiple such destroyers in addition to their own missile defense and those of other accompanying ships. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcwDfaY4OW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcwDfaY4OW4
- jjk166 5y ago
  China has approximately 300 nuclear warheads total. If they used 50 per carrier, they'ed still have half a dozen supercarriers to deal with, and now the American nuclear retaliation as well. And 50 warheads might not even do it - naval ships are hardened structures, a carrier could likely survive a detonation within about 3 km for even the largest weapons in chinese inventories, and perhaps within hundreds of meters for a more realistic tactical weapon. 50 missiles each with 200 kt warheads would be able to clear an area roughly 30 km in radius, which a carrier could likely escape in about half an hour. Using 300 5Mt warheads, you'd need to know the position within 85 km, which it could travel in about 90 minutes, which is coincidentally about how long it takes for a spy satellite to complete an orbit. Carriers are big, but oceans are really really big. Way too big for a brute force solution.
  - cturner 5y ago
    China has purpose-build non-nuclear anti-ship cruise missiles. There is a running game of chicken between the CCP and the US about whether they would dare use them against a US carrier group stationed in the SCS. The way the game theory works out, no they wouldn’t, but the sitting US president needs to have the stones to continue navigating the SCS. Xi Jinping bluntly promised Obama he would not occupy the SCS, and then did exactly that, and Obama blinked and did nothing. All the other countries in the region, from Japan to Australia to India, are now crapping themselves as China extends further. For example, they are now regularly pushing military ships posing as fishing vessels into Indonesian waters as a repeat of the ‘cabbage leaf’ process they executed in the SCC. Indonesia is in a precarious position because it does not want to be muscled out, but they took on a lot of debt from Belt and Road for stupid initiatives. There are other countries in a worse situation. East Timor has taken on debt from b&r equivalent to a full year of its GDP, and sits on the edge of the Australian oil shelf. Australia is in a weaker situation than it should be due to not having enough coast guard style ships, and the difficulties sourcing world-class conventional attack subs. This show may be the US signaling that it has learnt its mistake and won’t be had again.
    - jjk166 5y ago
      I don't really see how non-nuclear cruise missiles affect the math of blanketing an area with nuclear weapons.
foepys 5y ago
There have been multiple instances where submarines surfaced right inside a carrier group, some in active exercises where a threat was expected. Even the Chinese did it at least once and there is a high chance that the Chinese did not surface on their first few encounters. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492804/The-uninvited-guest-Chinese-sub-pops-middle-U-S-Navy-exercise-leaving-military-chiefs-red-faced.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492804/The-uninvite...
- scottLobster 5y ago
  That was 2007, or 14 years ago. I imagine the Navy has long corrected whatever error allowed that to happen, particularly given that China is now seen as a geopolitical adversary by a majority of Americans across the political spectrum. Even if China did get extremely lucky and took out a couple of carriers in the opening shots of any conflict, there'd be several more on their doorstep within weeks at a far higher state of readiness.
- seaorg 5y ago
  That’s inexplicable because spotting that submarine is completely trivial. They run on diesel if I’m not mistaken, even now. You could easily blanket the area below you with radar. They must have simply not been looking, probably because there wasn’t any threat at all of attack.
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    And that laissez-faire attitude towards operational security is what an adversary would count upon in a sneak-attack first strike scenario. Remember the USS Cole?
  - sofixa 5y ago
    The Swedish sub that surprised a US carrier at a training exercise was indeed diesel-electric, which is a great advantage. When stealth is required, they can use only their electric engine, or even stop it all together if the enemy is very close and listening. With a nuclear sub, the reactor and its cooling are always there.
sofixa 5y ago
> As for naval combat, there's no combination of ships in any country's Navy that can hope to stand up to the US Navy in a protracted conflict. US carriers have undisputed rule of the seas for at least the next three decades, even against the likes of China/Russia. I don't know, hypersonic and/or nuclear warhead cruise missiles and nuclear torpedoes with significant range can do serious damage from a decent distance.

randomopining 5y ago

Can’t they just fire like 50 missiles in the carriers general area to airblast detonate? Plus how hard is it to track the location of a huge ship like that… is it that hard?

credit_guy 5y ago
> Can’t they just fire like 50 missiles in the carriers general area to airblast detonate? A supercarrier would not sink from a nuclear airblast in the general vicinity. In 1946, the US performed an experiment to see how such an airblast would destroy or damage ships, in the operation Crossroads, test Able. The bomb was a 23 kT one (so a bit higher yield than Hiroshima). It detonated at a hight of 158m. The light aircraft carrier USS Independence (10k tons) was only about 500m from the point of the detonation, and although severely damaged, it did not sink. The fleet carrier USS Saratoga (37k tons) was about 2 km from point zero. It suffered even less damage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads#Able_target_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads#Able_targ...
- beambot 5y ago
  Even if the ship survived, can the crew survive at less than 500m from ground zero?
  - slavik81 5y ago
    Quite possibly. The classic nuclear weapons did their damage mostly through heat and pressure. They were relatively ineffective against troops in armoured vehicles, which is why alternatives like the neutron bomb were developed. That said, the Hiroshima bomb was small by modern standards. A single Minuteman III missile can carry three W78 warheads, each with a yield of ~340 kT. China has similar nuclear capabilities. It would be an unmitigated global catastrophe if those sorts of missiles started flying. Nobody would be safe.
scottLobster 5y ago
If we're talking nukes maybe (although if we're talking nukes carriers are largely irrelevant and nuclear missile subs become the primary threat), but once again the ocean is big. However huge the ship is, your search space is far larger. Even getting a siting from orbit could potentially be disrupted by weather. In the case of the pacific ocean you're literally looking for a moving football field in ~60 million square miles of ocean. Carriers in wartime wouldn't be sailing in straight lines over long distances either. National interest had a good line about it: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-its-really-hard-sink-aircraft-carrier-99487 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-its-really-hard-s... "And because carriers are constantly moving when deployed at up to 35 miles per hour -- fast enough to outrun submarines -- finding and tracking them is difficult. Within 30 minutes after a sighting by enemies, the area within which a carrier might be operating has grown to 700 square miles; after 90 minutes, it has expanded to 6,000 square miles." Binkov on YouTube did a good analysis of the threats modern carriers face as of last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui8sBMA3VGM&t=205s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui8sBMA3VGM&t=205s TLDR there are some technologies likely to show up in a decade or so that may make carriers harder to use, but would hardly render them obsolete. As for conventional missiles, Binkov also did a good analysis on how many missiles it would theoretically take to take out a single AEGIS equipped destroyer. Carrier battle groups would have multiple such destroyers in addition to their own missile defense and those of other accompanying ships. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcwDfaY4OW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcwDfaY4OW4
jjk166 5y ago
China has approximately 300 nuclear warheads total. If they used 50 per carrier, they'ed still have half a dozen supercarriers to deal with, and now the American nuclear retaliation as well. And 50 warheads might not even do it - naval ships are hardened structures, a carrier could likely survive a detonation within about 3 km for even the largest weapons in chinese inventories, and perhaps within hundreds of meters for a more realistic tactical weapon. 50 missiles each with 200 kt warheads would be able to clear an area roughly 30 km in radius, which a carrier could likely escape in about half an hour. Using 300 5Mt warheads, you'd need to know the position within 85 km, which it could travel in about 90 minutes, which is coincidentally about how long it takes for a spy satellite to complete an orbit. Carriers are big, but oceans are really really big. Way too big for a brute force solution.
- cturner 5y ago
  China has purpose-build non-nuclear anti-ship cruise missiles. There is a running game of chicken between the CCP and the US about whether they would dare use them against a US carrier group stationed in the SCS. The way the game theory works out, no they wouldn’t, but the sitting US president needs to have the stones to continue navigating the SCS. Xi Jinping bluntly promised Obama he would not occupy the SCS, and then did exactly that, and Obama blinked and did nothing. All the other countries in the region, from Japan to Australia to India, are now crapping themselves as China extends further. For example, they are now regularly pushing military ships posing as fishing vessels into Indonesian waters as a repeat of the ‘cabbage leaf’ process they executed in the SCC. Indonesia is in a precarious position because it does not want to be muscled out, but they took on a lot of debt from Belt and Road for stupid initiatives. There are other countries in a worse situation. East Timor has taken on debt from b&r equivalent to a full year of its GDP, and sits on the edge of the Australian oil shelf. Australia is in a weaker situation than it should be due to not having enough coast guard style ships, and the difficulties sourcing world-class conventional attack subs. This show may be the US signaling that it has learnt its mistake and won’t be had again.
  - jjk166 5y ago
    I don't really see how non-nuclear cruise missiles affect the math of blanketing an area with nuclear weapons.

foepys 5y ago

There have been multiple instances where submarines surfaced right inside a carrier group, some in active exercises where a threat was expected. Even the Chinese did it at least once and there is a high chance that the Chinese did not surface on their first few encounters. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492804/The-uninvited-guest-Chinese-sub-pops-middle-U-S-Navy-exercise-leaving-military-chiefs-red-faced.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492804/The-uninvite...

scottLobster 5y ago
That was 2007, or 14 years ago. I imagine the Navy has long corrected whatever error allowed that to happen, particularly given that China is now seen as a geopolitical adversary by a majority of Americans across the political spectrum. Even if China did get extremely lucky and took out a couple of carriers in the opening shots of any conflict, there'd be several more on their doorstep within weeks at a far higher state of readiness.
seaorg 5y ago
That’s inexplicable because spotting that submarine is completely trivial. They run on diesel if I’m not mistaken, even now. You could easily blanket the area below you with radar. They must have simply not been looking, probably because there wasn’t any threat at all of attack.
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  And that laissez-faire attitude towards operational security is what an adversary would count upon in a sneak-attack first strike scenario. Remember the USS Cole?
- sofixa 5y ago
  The Swedish sub that surprised a US carrier at a training exercise was indeed diesel-electric, which is a great advantage. When stealth is required, they can use only their electric engine, or even stop it all together if the enemy is very close and listening. With a nuclear sub, the reactor and its cooling are always there.

sofixa 5y ago

> As for naval combat, there's no combination of ships in any country's Navy that can hope to stand up to the US Navy in a protracted conflict. US carriers have undisputed rule of the seas for at least the next three decades, even against the likes of China/Russia. I don't know, hypersonic and/or nuclear warhead cruise missiles and nuclear torpedoes with significant range can do serious damage from a decent distance.