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An aircraft carrier can operate 400-1000km from a target, while moving at 40 kph. Much more time to mount an adequate defense compared to the Moskva 50km dista

by lumost 4y ago

An aircraft carrier can operate 400-1000km from a target, while moving at 40 kph. Much more time to mount an adequate defense compared to the Moskva 50km distance from the coast while sitting idle.

caycep 4y ago
the issue is - what is the D21 (and brethren) capability? I think the war gaming w/ the late USSR and now China as the opposing force worried re theater-capable ICBMs. It's not like the carrier can hide these days...
- ckozlowski 4y ago
  Can it not? I'd reverse the question: Can China find it? That's the part that I find missing from these discussions. Missiles like the D21 sound really deadly, but the information and communications needed to successfully target a carrier hundreds or thousands of miles away and deliver the weapon successfully is the much more difficult part of the equation. As the U.S. Navy (paraphrasing) said themselves, "The D21 has a long kill chain, and plenty of places to disrupt that kill-chain." Likewise, the carrier goes around with much more than it's planes and escorts. It has the information being fed to it from ISR elsewhere, from satellites overhead to pre-mission information, communications eavesdropping, etc to know what they're up against and when and where they might encounter it. That, in my opinion is far more important than the specifics and specs of such and such weapon. The success or defeat of a carrier battle group I think is going to depend far more on who knows what and when, and therefor, what's going on in the electromagnetic spectrum, than any singular missile.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    'Can it not? I'd reverse the question: Can China find it?' You can find it yourself on free satellite imagery collected by the european sentinel satellites, provided globally free of charge. All ships are really easy to see from space, especially giant carriers. Ofcourse sentinel takes images once every few days, and how that compares to spy satellites and how you target a missile from there i dunno
    - nradov 4y ago
      Ships move around. Those satellites don't provide the real-time target tracks needed by ballistic missiles. Reconnaissance satellites are themselves no longer survivable.
      - ckozlowski 4y ago
        Spot on. To add to this, the Navy knows those satellite tracks. It's one thing to spot a carrier in port from a days old image. It's another to find it actively evading you in wartime. And regarding the satellites themselves, also agreed. I really believe that success at sea is going to depend a large part on success in space, and many countries know it.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        What possible action can a carrier take to evade satellite that can take daily photographs? Its not a plane, it cant travel a thousand kilometers in a day. It can only be withing a limited radius of it's initial position I would expect that every major nation keeps track of every carrier on a daily basis
        lumost 4y ago
        Precision targeting of hypersonic ballistic projectiles is very difficult. While landing ballistic missile within 100 miles of a carrier is trivial, direct hits with conventional weapons require high precision measurements of carrier velocity, and position. The inbound weapon has very little time to correct its trajectory, and few sensors which will be effective at hypersonic velocity at the ranges required.
        dariusj18 4y ago
        A carrier can travel ~700 nautical miles in a day, which would be around the width of Texas. That is not a small area to search, ~1,539,380 SNM. Obviously you could narrow it down based on where you think the group is travelling to, etc, but if they are trying to not be found, day old data puts you in a tough position.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    You can destroy carriers even without sattelites and firing rockets from far away. Small fast vessels can be used to search for the carrier and they can fire missiles. Also, carriers have to be at a certain distance from the shore to mount an attack from them. Once they are close to the shore I'd say they are easy to spot. A carrier in the middle of the ocean is harder to find and destroy, but it can't be used for attacking, and that's what a defending nation needs: enough deterring power to keep the carrier far from its shore.
baq 4y ago
khinzals are supposed to be carrier killers.
- trasz 4y ago
  Same way Russia is supposed to have a 2nd army in the world. AFAIK at this point Kinzhal was successfully used only once, against a barn.
  - cpursley 4y ago
    Kinzhal has been used multiple times according to western sources. Once against an underground weapons store where it's kinetic energy acted as a bunker buster. And a few other times against high level targets like foreign weapon stores and mercenaries.
    - trasz 4y ago
      This "underground weapons store" sounds exactly like how Russian sources described what later turned out to be a barn.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]

by lumost 4y ago

An aircraft carrier can operate 400-1000km from a target, while moving at 40 kph. Much more time to mount an adequate defense compared to the Moskva 50km distance from the coast while sitting idle.

caycep 4y ago

the issue is - what is the D21 (and brethren) capability? I think the war gaming w/ the late USSR and now China as the opposing force worried re theater-capable ICBMs. It's not like the carrier can hide these days...

ckozlowski 4y ago
Can it not? I'd reverse the question: Can China find it? That's the part that I find missing from these discussions. Missiles like the D21 sound really deadly, but the information and communications needed to successfully target a carrier hundreds or thousands of miles away and deliver the weapon successfully is the much more difficult part of the equation. As the U.S. Navy (paraphrasing) said themselves, "The D21 has a long kill chain, and plenty of places to disrupt that kill-chain." Likewise, the carrier goes around with much more than it's planes and escorts. It has the information being fed to it from ISR elsewhere, from satellites overhead to pre-mission information, communications eavesdropping, etc to know what they're up against and when and where they might encounter it. That, in my opinion is far more important than the specifics and specs of such and such weapon. The success or defeat of a carrier battle group I think is going to depend far more on who knows what and when, and therefor, what's going on in the electromagnetic spectrum, than any singular missile.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  'Can it not? I'd reverse the question: Can China find it?' You can find it yourself on free satellite imagery collected by the european sentinel satellites, provided globally free of charge. All ships are really easy to see from space, especially giant carriers. Ofcourse sentinel takes images once every few days, and how that compares to spy satellites and how you target a missile from there i dunno
  - nradov 4y ago
    Ships move around. Those satellites don't provide the real-time target tracks needed by ballistic missiles. Reconnaissance satellites are themselves no longer survivable.
    - ckozlowski 4y ago
      Spot on. To add to this, the Navy knows those satellite tracks. It's one thing to spot a carrier in port from a days old image. It's another to find it actively evading you in wartime. And regarding the satellites themselves, also agreed. I really believe that success at sea is going to depend a large part on success in space, and many countries know it.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        What possible action can a carrier take to evade satellite that can take daily photographs? Its not a plane, it cant travel a thousand kilometers in a day. It can only be withing a limited radius of it's initial position I would expect that every major nation keeps track of every carrier on a daily basis
        lumost 4y ago
        Precision targeting of hypersonic ballistic projectiles is very difficult. While landing ballistic missile within 100 miles of a carrier is trivial, direct hits with conventional weapons require high precision measurements of carrier velocity, and position. The inbound weapon has very little time to correct its trajectory, and few sensors which will be effective at hypersonic velocity at the ranges required.
        dariusj18 4y ago
        A carrier can travel ~700 nautical miles in a day, which would be around the width of Texas. That is not a small area to search, ~1,539,380 SNM. Obviously you could narrow it down based on where you think the group is travelling to, etc, but if they are trying to not be found, day old data puts you in a tough position.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  You can destroy carriers even without sattelites and firing rockets from far away. Small fast vessels can be used to search for the carrier and they can fire missiles. Also, carriers have to be at a certain distance from the shore to mount an attack from them. Once they are close to the shore I'd say they are easy to spot. A carrier in the middle of the ocean is harder to find and destroy, but it can't be used for attacking, and that's what a defending nation needs: enough deterring power to keep the carrier far from its shore.

baq 4y ago

khinzals are supposed to be carrier killers.

trasz 4y ago
Same way Russia is supposed to have a 2nd army in the world. AFAIK at this point Kinzhal was successfully used only once, against a barn.
- cpursley 4y ago
  Kinzhal has been used multiple times according to western sources. Once against an underground weapons store where it's kinetic energy acted as a bunker buster. And a few other times against high level targets like foreign weapon stores and mercenaries.
  - trasz 4y ago
    This "underground weapons store" sounds exactly like how Russian sources described what later turned out to be a barn.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]