8 ms·

So that’s 1% of the US military budget. Double it and it seems affordable? What is the return on aircraft carriers 8-11, when the next most powerful nation has

So that’s 1% of the US military budget. Double it and it seems affordable? What is the return on aircraft carriers 8-11, when the next most powerful nation has 1.

robertk 5y ago
In fact, they have 2 in active service and are rapidly constructing more. https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-photos-show-chinas-new-aircraft-carrier-taking-shape-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-photos-show-chinas-ne...
- nsonha 5y ago
  As long as there is a race then it justifiable, is it bigger fool economy or not quite?
- aplummer 5y ago
  Ok I think we are still talking a pretty healthy buffer here
taneq 5y ago
Also let's be honest, aircraft carriers are super awesome and fun and good for scaring brown farmers but in a modern war against an equal power they're not especially practical. Couple o' kinetic strikes and your $13 billion new toy is slag on the ocean floor for like, what... cost to get mass to LEO is $2600 per kg so if we want 100 special order deliveries of 1-ton rods from God that's $2.6mil per rod = $260 million to sink a $13 billion aircraft carrier and destroy how many billions of dollars worth of F22s and ammunition? Like, I love aircraft carriers, they're so cool. But also physics says not so effective. :S
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kcb 5y ago
  I'd imagine in the opening phase of a war most orbital military systems aren't going to last very long.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Except for the highly manueverable and stealth (no emission) ones. However, a huge amount of mass (for dropping) invalidates the former of those.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Due to limits imposed by basic physics there's no way to build a really stealthy satellite. The power source, whether solar or nuclear, necessarily generates a large radar and/or IR signature that can't possibly be hidden from military grade ground sensors. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php#nostealth http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect....
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        Why do you need to be powered, if you're above atmospheric drag? Just sit up there with a receiver, bank of charged batteries, and just enough awake to monitor for wake transmissions.
  - xvilka 5y ago
    Thus it will be the end of space exploration for decades (or centuries) due to the Kessler syndrome.
- jeffdn 5y ago
  That’s also assuming that the satellite that drops said rods can maneuver into the orbit required to drop the rod without: 1. getting knocked out at the commencement of hostilities by an anti-satellite weapon 2. the Defense Intelligence Agency/National Reconnaissance Office noticing and telling the carrier to change course 3. getting blown up by an anti-satellite missile fired by an aircraft, or a member of the carrier’s strike group Rods from god are a much more potent weapon when used against static targets!
  - taneq 5y ago
    1. Sure once we're under way but that doesn't change how good they are from a first strike perspective. 2. As a species we can land a rocket on a barge, do you think we can't land a big crowbar on a slowly moving target? 3. Might make 2 more difficult but a 1-ton tungsten rod is pretty durable. Certainly more potent against a static target but with modern tech and one skilled, ethically ambivalent engineer, these days you could probably hit a row boat.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      Because the barge is carefully positioned to be in a place this exact rocket drops from the sky. Satellites are not 'sitting in orbit', they are falling on earth extremely fast, and not reaching it only because they fall sideways. Since they go very fast, they have immense momentum. To attack a target you have to steer that momentum elsewhere, and that takes a lot of energy and precision,and you also have a very small attack area for every satellite. So to cover all earth reliably you'll need a constellation with numbers like Musk's Starlink - i.e. thousands of satellites.
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      Do you really not understand the differences in difficulty between a cooperative, planned ahead rocket landing, and an adversarial attack on an actively evading target whose position may not be precisely known even at the start of the attack?
  - xvilka 5y ago
    There are more realistic scenarios today: hypersonic missiles and railguns. Both can't be mitigated by any known naval defense system.
- dnautics 5y ago
  Honestly the most important use of a carrier (especially for china) is going to be in supporting naval vessels interdicting against pirates harassing or stealing from oil tankers shipping from the middle east; china depends on mideast oil to feed its people. The us does not as of 2019-ish, and may in the short to mid term cease protecting international sea lanes especially in the mideast since we are rapidly disengaging out interests in the area (e.g. pulling out of Afghanistan).
- ethbr0 5y ago
  F-22s aren't carrier capable. You're confusing the Air Force and the Navy.
- mr_toad 5y ago
  Your typical impactor is going to take 10-15 minutes to hit the ground (or sea), so it’s going to be next to impossible to hit a moving target.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Cost to get mass to LEO is $2600 per kg so if we want 100 special order deliveries of 1-ton rods from God that's $2.6mil per rod Who is that demonstrated a system capable of delivering these with a CEP that would give it, say, even odds of a hit on a carrier with 100 shots? > aircraft carrier and destroy how many billions of dollars worth of F22s and ammunition? $0 billion worth in of F-22s, because Sea Raptor never happened.
- mLuby 5y ago
  Rods from God are only simple at a high level, but as always the devil is in the details. 1. You have to position the rod satellite in the right orbit, or have enough so one is generally over the target. 2. Then when the order comes in to kill the carrier, your 1-ton rod plus satellite has to de-orbit from ~8km/s. Basically it needs the rocket that launched it, but up in orbit to drop it back down. (It's not quite so bad because gravity is assisting rather than fighting as during launch, but it's still a decent de-orbit vehicle.) The de-orbit takes time, and either you're dropping from ~1000km up or re-entering at some kind of ballistic arc from ~200km up. 3. Obviously the carrier will be maneuvering the moment that massive de-orbit burn is detected. So when course corrections will be necessary throughout the re-entry and maybe even into terminal flight, when your rod is hypersonic in the thickest part of the atmosphere, sheathed in sensor-blinding, comms-blackouting plasma. (I'm assuming a CIWS—point defense gatling—throwing up a cloud of metal wouldn't do much to the rod, nor would an IR missile be able to hit the rod, but maybe those things could alter its trajectory enough to cause a miss.) 4. Then if you actually hit the target, did you over-penetrate it, smashing a 1m hole clean through the hull into the water, or did the rod explode like a bomb against the hull? (I assume the former but am very unsure here.) If it's just an unstoppable but small hole, damage repair teams would patch it and seal off those compartments to keep the ship fighting. So in the end, you have a very expensive (let's use your $260M), unmaintainable hypersonic slug that everyone can see launch (and who launched it) and it might be able to poke some holes in a carrier. Or you use normal hypersonic missiles, which should be harder to detect launching, more maneuverable, and might deliver explosive or nuclear payloads. Or you launch a swarm of hundreds of relatively cheap anti-ship missiles and just overwhelm the carrier defenses that way. So I agree the dominance of the carrier will last only as long as the next great powers war (and also that guided missile submarines might well be the future) but it's from fear of God raining down tungsten wrath.
- manigandham 5y ago
  What equal power? Even if you have the launch and weapons capability, kinetic bombardment from space is not effective against a moving vessel. Aircraft carriers are faster than you think. They're also incredibly important in air superiority, and controlling the air is what wins wars. Assuming you can successfully attack one, you still have plenty of cruisers, assault ships, support craft, secondary/light carriers, subs, and several other carrier groups now headed straight for you. It's not like countries can't make a crazy plan to take out a single carrier right now, it's what would happen after that is the deterrent.
driscoll42 5y ago
The problem is that if you want one aircraft carrier on active deployment, you really need three physical carriers. One on patrol, one about to go on/off patrol, and another in maintenance. So really 11 carriers lets you actively patrol 3, maybe 4 zones. And again, that's just one carrier in that area, if you can to concentrate resources you might get a few more there, but then you're delaying maintenance/training. If anything the US needs more carriers as recent years have taught the navy. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/254568-how-many-aircraft-carriers-does-the-us-need https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/25... https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a35928241/navy-aircraft-carriers/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a359282...
- pirate787 5y ago
  Except that aircraft carriers are obsolete-- sitting ducks that will be sunk by long range guided missiles within hours of the next Great Power conflict. Submarine carriers with fleets of drones are the obvious replacement.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    So your solution for an expensive surface vessel is an even more expensive subsurface vessel that does the same thing?
  - reissbaker 5y ago
    A true life-or-death Great Power conflict will likely end human civilization, regardless of who wins, due to nuclear weaponry. Why bother trying to win a war that everyone is bound to lose? Until then, submarine carriers are a lot more expensive.
    - ren_engineer 5y ago
      you are proving the point that aircraft carriers are useless for anything other than bullying 3rd world nations
manigandham 5y ago
The return is called Pax Americana, a global peace that has lasted a lifetime now. It’s easy to say it’s not worth it when our generations haven’t had to fight through world wars.

So that’s 1% of the US military budget. Double it and it seems affordable? What is the return on aircraft carriers 8-11, when the next most powerful nation has 1.

robertk 5y ago

In fact, they have 2 in active service and are rapidly constructing more. https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-photos-show-chinas-new-aircraft-carrier-taking-shape-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-photos-show-chinas-ne...

nsonha 5y ago
As long as there is a race then it justifiable, is it bigger fool economy or not quite?
aplummer 5y ago
Ok I think we are still talking a pretty healthy buffer here

taneq 5y ago

Also let's be honest, aircraft carriers are super awesome and fun and good for scaring brown farmers but in a modern war against an equal power they're not especially practical. Couple o' kinetic strikes and your $13 billion new toy is slag on the ocean floor for like, what... cost to get mass to LEO is $2600 per kg so if we want 100 special order deliveries of 1-ton rods from God that's $2.6mil per rod = $260 million to sink a $13 billion aircraft carrier and destroy how many billions of dollars worth of F22s and ammunition? Like, I love aircraft carriers, they're so cool. But also physics says not so effective. :S

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kcb 5y ago
I'd imagine in the opening phase of a war most orbital military systems aren't going to last very long.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Except for the highly manueverable and stealth (no emission) ones. However, a huge amount of mass (for dropping) invalidates the former of those.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Due to limits imposed by basic physics there's no way to build a really stealthy satellite. The power source, whether solar or nuclear, necessarily generates a large radar and/or IR signature that can't possibly be hidden from military grade ground sensors. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php#nostealth http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect....
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Why do you need to be powered, if you're above atmospheric drag? Just sit up there with a receiver, bank of charged batteries, and just enough awake to monitor for wake transmissions.
- xvilka 5y ago
  Thus it will be the end of space exploration for decades (or centuries) due to the Kessler syndrome.
jeffdn 5y ago
That’s also assuming that the satellite that drops said rods can maneuver into the orbit required to drop the rod without: 1. getting knocked out at the commencement of hostilities by an anti-satellite weapon 2. the Defense Intelligence Agency/National Reconnaissance Office noticing and telling the carrier to change course 3. getting blown up by an anti-satellite missile fired by an aircraft, or a member of the carrier’s strike group Rods from god are a much more potent weapon when used against static targets!
- taneq 5y ago
  1. Sure once we're under way but that doesn't change how good they are from a first strike perspective. 2. As a species we can land a rocket on a barge, do you think we can't land a big crowbar on a slowly moving target? 3. Might make 2 more difficult but a 1-ton tungsten rod is pretty durable. Certainly more potent against a static target but with modern tech and one skilled, ethically ambivalent engineer, these days you could probably hit a row boat.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    Because the barge is carefully positioned to be in a place this exact rocket drops from the sky. Satellites are not 'sitting in orbit', they are falling on earth extremely fast, and not reaching it only because they fall sideways. Since they go very fast, they have immense momentum. To attack a target you have to steer that momentum elsewhere, and that takes a lot of energy and precision,and you also have a very small attack area for every satellite. So to cover all earth reliably you'll need a constellation with numbers like Musk's Starlink - i.e. thousands of satellites.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Do you really not understand the differences in difficulty between a cooperative, planned ahead rocket landing, and an adversarial attack on an actively evading target whose position may not be precisely known even at the start of the attack?
- xvilka 5y ago
  There are more realistic scenarios today: hypersonic missiles and railguns. Both can't be mitigated by any known naval defense system.
dnautics 5y ago
Honestly the most important use of a carrier (especially for china) is going to be in supporting naval vessels interdicting against pirates harassing or stealing from oil tankers shipping from the middle east; china depends on mideast oil to feed its people. The us does not as of 2019-ish, and may in the short to mid term cease protecting international sea lanes especially in the mideast since we are rapidly disengaging out interests in the area (e.g. pulling out of Afghanistan).
ethbr0 5y ago
F-22s aren't carrier capable. You're confusing the Air Force and the Navy.
mr_toad 5y ago
Your typical impactor is going to take 10-15 minutes to hit the ground (or sea), so it’s going to be next to impossible to hit a moving target.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Cost to get mass to LEO is $2600 per kg so if we want 100 special order deliveries of 1-ton rods from God that's $2.6mil per rod Who is that demonstrated a system capable of delivering these with a CEP that would give it, say, even odds of a hit on a carrier with 100 shots? > aircraft carrier and destroy how many billions of dollars worth of F22s and ammunition? $0 billion worth in of F-22s, because Sea Raptor never happened.
mLuby 5y ago
Rods from God are only simple at a high level, but as always the devil is in the details. 1. You have to position the rod satellite in the right orbit, or have enough so one is generally over the target. 2. Then when the order comes in to kill the carrier, your 1-ton rod plus satellite has to de-orbit from ~8km/s. Basically it needs the rocket that launched it, but up in orbit to drop it back down. (It's not quite so bad because gravity is assisting rather than fighting as during launch, but it's still a decent de-orbit vehicle.) The de-orbit takes time, and either you're dropping from ~1000km up or re-entering at some kind of ballistic arc from ~200km up. 3. Obviously the carrier will be maneuvering the moment that massive de-orbit burn is detected. So when course corrections will be necessary throughout the re-entry and maybe even into terminal flight, when your rod is hypersonic in the thickest part of the atmosphere, sheathed in sensor-blinding, comms-blackouting plasma. (I'm assuming a CIWS—point defense gatling—throwing up a cloud of metal wouldn't do much to the rod, nor would an IR missile be able to hit the rod, but maybe those things could alter its trajectory enough to cause a miss.) 4. Then if you actually hit the target, did you over-penetrate it, smashing a 1m hole clean through the hull into the water, or did the rod explode like a bomb against the hull? (I assume the former but am very unsure here.) If it's just an unstoppable but small hole, damage repair teams would patch it and seal off those compartments to keep the ship fighting. So in the end, you have a very expensive (let's use your $260M), unmaintainable hypersonic slug that everyone can see launch (and who launched it) and it might be able to poke some holes in a carrier. Or you use normal hypersonic missiles, which should be harder to detect launching, more maneuverable, and might deliver explosive or nuclear payloads. Or you launch a swarm of hundreds of relatively cheap anti-ship missiles and just overwhelm the carrier defenses that way. So I agree the dominance of the carrier will last only as long as the next great powers war (and also that guided missile submarines might well be the future) but it's from fear of God raining down tungsten wrath.
manigandham 5y ago
What equal power? Even if you have the launch and weapons capability, kinetic bombardment from space is not effective against a moving vessel. Aircraft carriers are faster than you think. They're also incredibly important in air superiority, and controlling the air is what wins wars. Assuming you can successfully attack one, you still have plenty of cruisers, assault ships, support craft, secondary/light carriers, subs, and several other carrier groups now headed straight for you. It's not like countries can't make a crazy plan to take out a single carrier right now, it's what would happen after that is the deterrent.

driscoll42 5y ago

The problem is that if you want one aircraft carrier on active deployment, you really need three physical carriers. One on patrol, one about to go on/off patrol, and another in maintenance. So really 11 carriers lets you actively patrol 3, maybe 4 zones. And again, that's just one carrier in that area, if you can to concentrate resources you might get a few more there, but then you're delaying maintenance/training. If anything the US needs more carriers as recent years have taught the navy. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/254568-how-many-aircraft-carriers-does-the-us-need https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/25... https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a35928241/navy-aircraft-carriers/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a359282...

pirate787 5y ago
Except that aircraft carriers are obsolete-- sitting ducks that will be sunk by long range guided missiles within hours of the next Great Power conflict. Submarine carriers with fleets of drones are the obvious replacement.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  So your solution for an expensive surface vessel is an even more expensive subsurface vessel that does the same thing?
- reissbaker 5y ago
  A true life-or-death Great Power conflict will likely end human civilization, regardless of who wins, due to nuclear weaponry. Why bother trying to win a war that everyone is bound to lose? Until then, submarine carriers are a lot more expensive.
  - ren_engineer 5y ago
    you are proving the point that aircraft carriers are useless for anything other than bullying 3rd world nations

manigandham 5y ago

The return is called Pax Americana, a global peace that has lasted a lifetime now. It’s easy to say it’s not worth it when our generations haven’t had to fight through world wars.