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> the carrier group tracked Naive question: If a carrier group cannot, in essentially real-time, document three dimensional trajectories at this point (four if

• chrisco255 5y ago
  Carriers are most likely partly obsoleted by hypersonic missiles that travel and maneuver at mach 20 (which Russia and China have), in addition to 100 megaton nuclear torpedoes that travel at 120mph (which Russia has). https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/03/russias-new-poseidon-super-weapon-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/03/russias-new-pos... https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/10/14/will-ground-based-hypersonic-missiles-replace-aircraft-carriers-in-the-defense-budget/ https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/10/14/will-ground-bas...
  • smachiz 5y ago
    I mean... assuming the Russians have anything that works is probably not a great assumption based on their performance in Ukraine. But I think they provide overlapping, but different, roles. But missiles and torpedoes is why aircraft carriers travel in carrier groups that have defensive capabilities against torpedoes and missiles.
    • mcast 5y ago
      It wouldn’t make much sense for Russia to show their cards and use modern war tech on Ukraine, a country with a (relatively) primitive military. They’re barely even using fighter jets.
      • water8 5y ago
        Except for the fact that they are https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/us/russia-ukraine-weapons-decoy.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/us/r...
        • deleted 5y ago
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      • RobertMiller 5y ago
        > They’re barely even using fighter jets. Maybe because they've barely been training those pilots and know the planes would likely be lost if used above Ukraine? Pilots in the Russian Air Force have supposedly been averaging less than 100 flight hours a year, which is next to nothing.
        • justsomehnguy 5y ago
          With all their operations in (and supporting) Syria I would doubt the number. It is not the amount of USAF pilots, but should be more than that.
          • RobertMiller 5y ago
            That number supposedly comes from official Russian sources. I say supposedly because I don't understand Russian and have to trust western sources about this, but these numbers have been widely disseminated for years and seem to be broadly treated as credible.
      • smachiz 5y ago
        If you think their strategy is to lull someone else into attacking them, I guess? Occam’s razor is more likely - the west vastly overestimated their capability practically the entirety of the Cold War, and you’re doing it again now.
      • greedo 5y ago
        They are using modern tech, and it's getting wiped out. Their tanks are modern, their artillery is modern, their fighters are modern. And they're all getting wiped out. Tanks being used by Russia in Ukraine: T-72A T-72B3 OBR.2016 T-80BV T-80U T-80BVM T-90A IFVs: BMP2 BMP3 BMD4M SAMs: Tor Buk Pantsir Fighters and Helos: SU-25 SU-30/35 Su-34 Mi-24/35 KA-52 Mi-28 None of this is "monkey model" stuff like the the USSR sent to client states. These are all top of the line. Same with the artillery and missiles used. All the best the Russians have in any decent numbers.
    • chrisco255 5y ago
      Yes, Russia has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world, they absolutely work and it's unwise to base your opinions on their nuclear and tactical capabilities based on their slow advance into Ukraine. The Poseidon is a 100 megaton nuclear torpedo. It doesn't need to get anywhere near a carrier group to knock out the entire group. It is twice as powerful as the largest nuke ever detonated (at 57megatons) and a Russian sub can carry four of these torpedoes: “All buildings in the village of Severny (both wooden and brick), located 55 km (34 mi) from ground zero within the Sukhoy Nos test range, were destroyed. In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero wooden houses were destroyed, stone ones lost their roofs, windows, doors, and radio communications were interrupted for almost one hour. One participant in the test saw a bright flash through dark goggles and felt the effects of a thermal pulse even at a distance of 270 kilometres (170 mi). The heat from the explosion could have caused third degree burns 100 km (62 mi) away from ground zero. A shock wave was observed in the air at Dikson settlement 700 km (430 mi) away; windowpanes were partially broken to distances of 900 kilometres (560 mi)." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
      • smachiz 5y ago
        • chrisco255 5y ago
          I'm a tenth generation American. Pointing out facts is called being a realist. And I'm not impressed with a bunch of armchair generals that think that war with Russia would be easy because their Tik Tok feed told them so.
          • smachiz 5y ago
          • rootusrootus 5y ago
            Nobody says war with Russia would be easy, but a fairly plausible prediction is that it would be short.
  • water8 5y ago
    Why is china building carriers then? Hypersonic weapons still need to know where to go. Theres a reason an ICBM which flies upwards of mach 20 is ineffective against carriers
    • chrisco255 5y ago
      They are good at projecting power against lesser foes in a sub-nuclear confrontation. I think if we went to all out war against Russia and/or China our carriers would be some of the first casualties.
      • deleted 5y ago
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      • rootusrootus 5y ago
        How long would an all-out war with Russia last? Couple hours?
        • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
          I have heard that, in case of all-out war, the life expectancy of a carrier in the middle of a battle group was 21 minutes. (This was decades ago - it may be less with hypersonic missiles.) But they could launch all the planes in 19 minutes, so it could launch its entire attack before being killed. That was considered to be good enough.
          • water8 5y ago
            https://www.quora.com/Can-an-ICBM-hit-a-moving-target-say-an-aircraft-carrier https://www.quora.com/Can-an-ICBM-hit-a-moving-target-say-an...
      • ilove196884 5y ago
        Hypersonic missiles apart from df-zf only exist in a lab. They are one of the biggest hype out there along with killer robots. When you hear about tests, it is mostly about work done at a university, which means the tech is still 5 to 10 years away.
  • s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Obsolete is a binary term, not scalar. Carrier effectiveness and utility is diminished by some weapon systems, but they are still effective for many roles and purposes.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • thereddaikon 5y ago
    Its a common assumption made by layman that the existence of a weapon that can kill a system means its now obsolete. That is incorrect. Systems do not become obsolete because they can be killed. They become obsolete when they no longer serve utility. Either something else does the job better, more efficiently or effectively or the nature of war has changed to the degree that its now irrelevant. This mistake is most often made with Tanks and Carriers for some reason. The existence of Javelin ATGMs does not mean tanks are obsolete. And the existence of hypersonic AshMs does not make carriers obsolete. Those weapons do not replace the functionality of tanks and carriers. Its like the common pop history myth that machineguns made horse cavalry obsolete in the first world war. It did not. Cavalry lasted through the war. Their tactics definitely had to change and adapt. And they were certainly used far more sparingly due to their low survivability but offensive cavalry weren't rendered obsolete until tanks came around. And horses in general weren't obsolete until armies became fully mechanized and replaced them with trucks. Some armies didn't manage that until after WW2. Likewise the Battleship was not obsoleted because carrier aircraft could kill it easily. It was obsoleted because carrier aircraft and later smart weapons meant combat now happened over the horizon and those big guns weren't contributing to fleet actions anymore Its been possible to kill a tank since literally the first battle they were employed. Ballsy German artillerymen learned that British tanks were not immune to a direct hit from a field gun fired over open sights. And Carriers have always been vulnerable to antiship weapons. Be it torpedoes from a sub, dumb bombs from an aircraft or fancy high tech missiles today.
    • marcusverus 5y ago
      I hope you'll excuse some pushback from another layperson--isn't the situation with Aircraft Carriers categorically different? In the examples you provided above (Cavalry, Tanks, and Battleships), there has never been a push-button solution to eliminating every single unit in the service of the enemy. Given the technology mentioned by GP, the small number of Carriers in service and the utter impossibility of hiding them, it would appear that such a solution does exist for Carriers. So while it seems to be true that Aircraft Carriers are not obsolete in peacetime or in a conflict with minor powers, aren't they obsolete in the context for which they were created--namely, war with another great power?
  • outworlder 5y ago
    > Carriers are most likely partly obsoleted by hypersonic missiles that travel and maneuver at mach 20 That's assuming they can actually hit and inflict sufficient damage. Also, you need to re-read your own sources. > 100 megaton nuclear torpedoes that travel at 120mph (which Russia has). The article is estimating that it's at most 2 megatons (still a lot, but 50x smaller) and that it's NOT supercavitating, so it would not travel at 120mph. The other article does not support the conclusion that carriers are obsolete, at all. It poses the question, but does not answer it.
  • jdminhbg 5y ago
    > in addition to 100 megaton nuclear torpedoes that travel at 120mph (which Russia has) If you use nuclear weapons on another nuclear power, carriers are going to be the least of your concerns.
    • chrisco255 5y ago
      And thus the old quote about sticks and stones being used to fight world war 4. I'm not sure about Russia's or China's anti ballistic technology. I know their hypersonic tech is superior to our own currently. But what if a country could deploy nuclear weapons against another nation and defend themselves against incoming missiles, due to a temporary technological advantage? It changes the game. I'm not sure if that's where we're at currently, but I know that the hypersonic and nuclear tech is why we are so hesitant to enter the Ukrainian war outright.
      • greedo 5y ago
        You know this? You have intel (that's probably classified NOFORN) or you've just read about Zircon? The Russians can hype their wunderwaffen til the cows come home, but they haven't demonstrated reliable, deployable systems. If you think hypersonic weapons are any deterrent to the US involvement in Ukraine, you're just being silly. The Russians don't even have enough Kalibr cruise missiles to take out a 3rd rate military. They don't have enough money (or perhaps just too much corruption) to install active defenses for their MBTs (no Arena/Trophy). The only reason we don't have US troops in Ukraine is because of the SS-18 Satan and Bulava SLBM. And no one has an effective defense against the number of ICBMs/SLBMs on each side. The ABM systems around Moscow are too few to counter the number of warheads assigned, and the US missile defense is too raw (and also out of position) to defend against Russian missiles.
      • RobertMiller 5y ago
        Extant American ballistic missile defenses don't seem sufficient to repel a committed ICBM/SLBM attack from Russia, or even China. THAAD and Patriot can only protect a relatively small area around each installation, not even remotely enough to protect the whole country in a war like that. GMD can intercept ballistic missiles mid course and has substantial range, but no more than a few dozen interceptors total for the entire country. Aegis is formidable and numerous, but the SM-3 interceptors used by those ships have substantially less range compared to GMD interceptors, and only some of the missiles carried by Aegis ships will be those SM-3s.
• rapjr9 5y ago
  To actually answer your question, they probably can sometimes track four dimensional trajectories, however not always, and they are not going to give you that data because that would reveal how good their tracking algorithms and sensors are. Sensor fusion is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensor_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensor_fusion Even with fusion, the fewer the sensors the less accurate the tracking will be. In these videos there may only be one or two sensors actually tracking the object. Hitting a target with a missile is a somewhat different problem, you just have to get the missile there based on whatever data you have (which might be from the carriers sensor data, the missiles own sensors, or both). For example an IR missile doesn't know the location of its target, it just knows how far off center the IR light from the target is from the missiles current flight path and it can correct course based on that simple angular offset to eventually hit the target (with some additional math since the missile has to go to where the target will be when it gets there.) Similarly stopping an evasive incoming missile does not require that you know its exact location. Also as a defensive missile gets closer to the incoming missile it may be able to get better data on where its target actually is and how it is moving. Missiles move very fast so on the final approach there is not much ability to change direction at all, it would require too many g's to turn the missile, so you can model the final approach as a straight line. When it's close your own tracking systems probably work better as well because the targets cross section takes up more of the sky.