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Carriers didn’t make battleships obsolete, missiles did. Missiles are the only reason big guns aren’t a thing any more. Your assessment of the impact of hyper

Carriers didn’t make battleships obsolete, missiles did. Missiles are the only reason big guns aren’t a thing any more. Your assessment of the impact of hypersonic missiles is also extremely simplistic they would not make surface vessels obsolete anymore than submarines have. Or even a better example how SAMs haven’t made combat aircraft obsolete… Hypersonic missiles are extremely expensive and have poor terminal guidance, they are effective against carriers not because they can easily hit them but because they can easily hit them when they are performing air operations. They are a deterrence and capability denial weapon. And you can develop CONOPS around them just like we have developed CONOPS for denied airspace’s. Anti ship missiles hypersonic or not were always already a huge threat to surface vessels only recently has anti missile technology actually progressed sufficiently to marginalize the threat from conventional anti ship missiles and even that is purely theoretical. The idea that somehow faster or better missiles would devolve surface or air warfare back to what essentially is castles and trench warfare without any force projection is ludicrous. You will always need and be able to project force even against peer and near peer enemies the cost of that force projection would increase. The idea that China somehow can take out the entire US navy is simply silly, you assume that the tactics will not change and you buy into propaganda and misinformation way too much.

SkyMarshal 5y ago
> Carriers didn’t make battleships obsolete, missiles did. > Missiles are the only reason big guns aren’t a thing any more. Missiles were the final nail in the coffin for battleships, sure, but missiles reliable enough to hit another ship or land target from over-the-horizon didn't come about till over a decade after carriers obsoleted battleships. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Dec 1941 took out the entire US surface fleet except its carriers. Then half a year later in June 1942, those 3 carriers destroyed the 4 lead carriers of the Japanese combined task force heading for Midway. The remaining Japanese fleet was faced with a decision to continue the attack on Midway and the US carriers with only battleships/cruisers/frigates/destroyers and no carriers of their own, or to cut their losses and retreat. They retreated, because there was a real risk they could lose all the rest of their fleet even against three weakened US carriers and Midway base's decimated air wing. That was the moment when carriers proved they were just next level compared to other surface combatants, obsoleted battleships forever, and Naval doctrine began re-orienting around battlegroups with a carrier at the center and surrounding ships providing anti-sub and later anti-missile defense.
sofixa 5y ago
> Carriers didn’t make battleships obsolete, missiles did. > Missiles are the only reason big guns aren’t a thing any more. Battleships were already obsolete on the naval battlefield in WW2. Their main usefulness was shore and carrier support. Missiles make battleships even more obsolete, and for the Soviets, even made carriers obsolete ( all Soviet aircraft carriers completed were a hybrid missile cruiser / aircraft carrier design, but their latest design didn't include any missile capability, so they realised they were incorrect). Anti-ship ballistic missiles, and hypersonic cruise missiles have decent chances against a US task force. That was the Soviet plan in case of war, use "aircraft carrier-killer cruise missiles" from submarines.
- nradov 5y ago
  The Soviet aircraft carriers were built the way they were because the country was poor and couldn't afford anything better. They actually tried to build a real nuclear powered super carrier once but ran out of money and then the country collapsed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_aircraft_carrier_Ulyanovsk?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_aircraft_carrier_Ulyano...
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Nope. When designing their early carriers ( like the Kiev class), it was a conscious design decision. The size of the vessel was limited by Soviet shipbuilding and designing capabilities, but having missiles onboard was only taking the limited space. They wanted hybrid missile cruiser/aircraft carriers. And it was certainly not a matter of money because at the same time the Soviets were building the Kievs they were also building a titanium hulled submarine class with fast reactors (Alfa), something the US was completely incapable of doing, and the Typhoon class behemoths. They had the money, they just chose to spend it otherwise. The Ulyanovsk class was too late
    - dogma1138 5y ago
      The soviets were building street lamps and making cookery and razor blades out of titanium… the USSR was the biggest producer of titanium in the world and on the other hand Russian steel metallurgy was quite poor. The US had far better steel and they didn’t had a lot of experience with a Titanium, when the US learned that the Russians were building submarines out of titanium they weren’t surprised because they thought they couldn’t afford it they knew that the USSR had more titanium than what they knew what to do with it but because the US couldn’t figure out how to weld large titanium structures in atmospheric air. Welding titanium is a PITA and the Russians simply had far more experience with it after having the luxury of working with it at scale for decades. As for carriers yes it was a conscious decision because they couldn’t build large enough carriers to have a sufficiently large air wing to cover them at all time and because they knew they can’t compete with the size of a US carrier group. A Russian carrier was designed to operate as a much smaller task force than a US carrier group and so it had to pull its own weight when it came to surface combat. The US on the other hand could afford to build a lot of super carriers and field more than enough ships to support them in battle. If the Soviets could build carriers the size of a US carrier and wield a fleet large enough to support a similarly sized carrier group they would’ve have.

SkyMarshal 5y ago

> Carriers didn’t make battleships obsolete, missiles did. > Missiles are the only reason big guns aren’t a thing any more. Missiles were the final nail in the coffin for battleships, sure, but missiles reliable enough to hit another ship or land target from over-the-horizon didn't come about till over a decade after carriers obsoleted battleships. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Dec 1941 took out the entire US surface fleet except its carriers. Then half a year later in June 1942, those 3 carriers destroyed the 4 lead carriers of the Japanese combined task force heading for Midway. The remaining Japanese fleet was faced with a decision to continue the attack on Midway and the US carriers with only battleships/cruisers/frigates/destroyers and no carriers of their own, or to cut their losses and retreat. They retreated, because there was a real risk they could lose all the rest of their fleet even against three weakened US carriers and Midway base's decimated air wing. That was the moment when carriers proved they were just next level compared to other surface combatants, obsoleted battleships forever, and Naval doctrine began re-orienting around battlegroups with a carrier at the center and surrounding ships providing anti-sub and later anti-missile defense.

sofixa 5y ago

> Carriers didn’t make battleships obsolete, missiles did. > Missiles are the only reason big guns aren’t a thing any more. Battleships were already obsolete on the naval battlefield in WW2. Their main usefulness was shore and carrier support. Missiles make battleships even more obsolete, and for the Soviets, even made carriers obsolete ( all Soviet aircraft carriers completed were a hybrid missile cruiser / aircraft carrier design, but their latest design didn't include any missile capability, so they realised they were incorrect). Anti-ship ballistic missiles, and hypersonic cruise missiles have decent chances against a US task force. That was the Soviet plan in case of war, use "aircraft carrier-killer cruise missiles" from submarines.

nradov 5y ago
The Soviet aircraft carriers were built the way they were because the country was poor and couldn't afford anything better. They actually tried to build a real nuclear powered super carrier once but ran out of money and then the country collapsed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_aircraft_carrier_Ulyanovsk?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_aircraft_carrier_Ulyano...
- sofixa 5y ago
  Nope. When designing their early carriers ( like the Kiev class), it was a conscious design decision. The size of the vessel was limited by Soviet shipbuilding and designing capabilities, but having missiles onboard was only taking the limited space. They wanted hybrid missile cruiser/aircraft carriers. And it was certainly not a matter of money because at the same time the Soviets were building the Kievs they were also building a titanium hulled submarine class with fast reactors (Alfa), something the US was completely incapable of doing, and the Typhoon class behemoths. They had the money, they just chose to spend it otherwise. The Ulyanovsk class was too late
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    The soviets were building street lamps and making cookery and razor blades out of titanium… the USSR was the biggest producer of titanium in the world and on the other hand Russian steel metallurgy was quite poor. The US had far better steel and they didn’t had a lot of experience with a Titanium, when the US learned that the Russians were building submarines out of titanium they weren’t surprised because they thought they couldn’t afford it they knew that the USSR had more titanium than what they knew what to do with it but because the US couldn’t figure out how to weld large titanium structures in atmospheric air. Welding titanium is a PITA and the Russians simply had far more experience with it after having the luxury of working with it at scale for decades. As for carriers yes it was a conscious decision because they couldn’t build large enough carriers to have a sufficiently large air wing to cover them at all time and because they knew they can’t compete with the size of a US carrier group. A Russian carrier was designed to operate as a much smaller task force than a US carrier group and so it had to pull its own weight when it came to surface combat. The US on the other hand could afford to build a lot of super carriers and field more than enough ships to support them in battle. If the Soviets could build carriers the size of a US carrier and wield a fleet large enough to support a similarly sized carrier group they would’ve have.