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Eh, you see a headline every so often alleging this but they're pretty far off the mark. CSGs are defended by the entire system operating in layers. During con

Eh, you see a headline every so often alleging this but they're pretty far off the mark. CSGs are defended by the entire system operating in layers. During conflict conditions they'll have airborne early warning radar flying to see threats coming a long way out. There's usually at least 4 AEGIS equipped ships. The carrier air wing will be doing patrols and intercepting threats at great distance. The carrier itself will be practicing emissions control and hiding within the sizable perimeter created by all of the above. And there's a lot of sophisticated EW decoys and such, that we don't know much about from open sources other than they're taken very seriously. There's plenty of room for debate about just how effective this all is against a nation like China that has a lot of satellite intelligence/surveillance assets, but the simplistic "carriers have no defense" articles are just empty clickbait. These articles usually assert that there's no defense whatsoever against ballistic missiles, which ignores that 2 of those 4 AEGIS ships will be specialized to do exactly that, and have demonstrated it in testing. One interesting tidbit is a few years back the US Navy submitted a request to do an exercise where they'd demonstrate taking down an inbound salvo of several 100 missiles simultaneously. Congress declined to allocate the budget for it. Military planners certainly aren't omniscient or infallible, but they're a lot more sophisticated than the content free contrarian takes you see thrown around on the internet a lot. It ends up being a doomsayer about military technology is a pretty easy grift as nationalists on various sides drink it up uncritically and people with authoritative knowledge on the topic are constrained from openly rebutting it. All that said you do see some pretty in depth open info from GAO reports, stuff from CSBA, etc.

tptacek 5y ago
Has the belief that these platforms are survivable ever been tested in a meaningful scenario (ie, a conflict between two carrier-group-capable adversaries)? I get that the Navy does a lot of stuff to mitigate this threat, but it's a hell of a threat to mitigate.
- jonstewart 5y ago
  No. But it hasn’t been looking good for carriers in war games/modeling exercises. China’s ASBMs might work today against a CSG or they might not (they need good targeting and maybe ABM systems can handle); but I’d analogize the US carriers of today to the 68030 and China’s ASBMs to the 386, where 68030 is probably a better chip but one side has a clear route to a Pentium, the other doesn’t, and economies of scale are in play, too.
- post_from_work 5y ago
  >>>Has the belief that these platforms are survivable ever been tested in a meaningful scenario (ie, a conflict between two carrier-group-capable adversaries) Not since WW2.....but the US Navy built up a LOT of invaluable experience on damage control practices and ship design based on the pounding our carriers took fighting the Japanese. Our current Ford and Nimitz CVNs are the refined iterations of a design lineage going back to the very durable Essex class. That said, the recent destruction of the Bonhomme Richard amphibious assault ship, which sustained cost-prohibitive damage in port due to a single arsonist, is disturbing. There are wargames where we lose carriers against China.....and there are wargames where we don't. They're not invulnerable, but they never have been against a true peer anyway. Often it boils down to the CSG Commander not being overly cocky in terms of how he maneuvers his force.
  - nradov 5y ago
    The USS Bonhomme Richard fire was a worst case scenario. Only a fraction of the crew was onboard to do firefighting. And many of the damage control systems were shut down for yard maintenance. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34832/veteran-sailor-on-why-navy-ships-can-be-most-vulnerable-in-port-and-how-to-change-that https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34832/veteran-sailor-o...
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
  In terms of actual conflict no. There's been no large scale naval conflict since WW2. The closest is the Falklands war, which did show anti ship cruise missiles can be effective, but is not a good basis for generalization. The Navy does do large scale wargaming exercises of course, though any of the interesting details aren't going to be public so that doesn't really help shed any light on it.
  - nradov 5y ago
    There have been a few small scale anti-ship cruise missile attacks in recent years near Syria and Yemen.
sudosysgen 5y ago
EW decoys, early warning radar, AWACS and so on is useless against passive sonobuoys, satellites, stealth camera drones, and a missile with dual-mode guidance.

tptacek 5y ago

Has the belief that these platforms are survivable ever been tested in a meaningful scenario (ie, a conflict between two carrier-group-capable adversaries)? I get that the Navy does a lot of stuff to mitigate this threat, but it's a hell of a threat to mitigate.

jonstewart 5y ago
No. But it hasn’t been looking good for carriers in war games/modeling exercises. China’s ASBMs might work today against a CSG or they might not (they need good targeting and maybe ABM systems can handle); but I’d analogize the US carriers of today to the 68030 and China’s ASBMs to the 386, where 68030 is probably a better chip but one side has a clear route to a Pentium, the other doesn’t, and economies of scale are in play, too.
post_from_work 5y ago
>>>Has the belief that these platforms are survivable ever been tested in a meaningful scenario (ie, a conflict between two carrier-group-capable adversaries) Not since WW2.....but the US Navy built up a LOT of invaluable experience on damage control practices and ship design based on the pounding our carriers took fighting the Japanese. Our current Ford and Nimitz CVNs are the refined iterations of a design lineage going back to the very durable Essex class. That said, the recent destruction of the Bonhomme Richard amphibious assault ship, which sustained cost-prohibitive damage in port due to a single arsonist, is disturbing. There are wargames where we lose carriers against China.....and there are wargames where we don't. They're not invulnerable, but they never have been against a true peer anyway. Often it boils down to the CSG Commander not being overly cocky in terms of how he maneuvers his force.
- nradov 5y ago
  The USS Bonhomme Richard fire was a worst case scenario. Only a fraction of the crew was onboard to do firefighting. And many of the damage control systems were shut down for yard maintenance. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34832/veteran-sailor-on-why-navy-ships-can-be-most-vulnerable-in-port-and-how-to-change-that https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34832/veteran-sailor-o...
jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
In terms of actual conflict no. There's been no large scale naval conflict since WW2. The closest is the Falklands war, which did show anti ship cruise missiles can be effective, but is not a good basis for generalization. The Navy does do large scale wargaming exercises of course, though any of the interesting details aren't going to be public so that doesn't really help shed any light on it.
- nradov 5y ago
  There have been a few small scale anti-ship cruise missile attacks in recent years near Syria and Yemen.

sudosysgen 5y ago

EW decoys, early warning radar, AWACS and so on is useless against passive sonobuoys, satellites, stealth camera drones, and a missile with dual-mode guidance.