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At this point, I think the burden of proof is on anybody who thinks a serious saturation attack on a carrier group (hundreds of missiles and/or decoys per wave,

At this point, I think the burden of proof is on anybody who thinks a serious saturation attack on a carrier group (hundreds of missiles and/or decoys per wave, multiplied by multiple waves) from a peer adversary wouldn't work. If a conflict with Russia or China breaks out, I think the first thing that happens is aircraft carriers are going to immediately become obsoleted by antiship missiles as quickly as battleships were obsoleted by air attacks in WWII. Probably even more quickly. I sure hope I'm wrong. And even more than that I hope we never find out.

actionfromafar 3y ago
I agree with the general threat, but an aircraft carrier can still project force at a distance, so a foe must strike from a great distance. It's doable but expensive. So not sure about how quickly carriers will be obsolete or ever really. Only a really advanced and large foe can threaten them.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Or a single sub. Happened more than once suring NATO maneuvers,a single sub getting into a firing position completey undetected, armed with torpedoes able to sink the carrier. No weapon is beyond reach in war, or indestructible. And still, they have their use cases.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  but an aircraft carrier can still project force at a distance In terms of the levels of force being exchanged in a full-scale war, it's not that much force and it's not that much distance, relative to what a peer adversary like China can bring to a fight in their own backyard. It's ~130 ship-launched guided missiles and ~75 fighter jets. They will not be operating at a stand-off distance relative to the reach of cruise and ballistic missiles launched from Chinese homeland. And the planes are not going to be able to take off and land if the carrier is executing evasive maneuvers because of missile attack. If you were China, how would you tackle that? Is there any reason you wouldn't just send several waves of several hundred missiles their way? Carrier strike groups are still useful. 130 missiles and 75 jets is plenty to dissaude most countries on earth. Just not the biggest ones, if they have committed to waging a full-scale war against you. China would definitely not emerge unscathed. The CSG would be augmented with a lot of longer range stuff such as US fighters/bombers/missiles/subs launched from elsewhere. But I mean, I think the CSG gets effectively deleted in the first few hours of war. Hope I'm wrong.
  - Tostino 3y ago
    Even in Taiwan defense simulations, from what I remember reading, the US always loses at least 1 CSG.
maxglute 3y ago
Pretty much. On paper US anti missile intercepts has been performing well in UKR and Red Sea, but consider the actual numbers. In UKR, 6 Kinzhals, alleged moving at shit tier mach ~3 speed end up damaging a patriot. In Red Sea, shit tier Houthi/Iranian cruise (subsonic) / ballistics, launched in even less coordinated salvos, realistically singles since description of multi missile attacks report these events unfold over matter of hours. Majority intercepted, but few still slip through to hit ships protected by flight IIA/III upgraded DDGs. IMO questionable how well a stacked CSG performs against high end AShMs (Teixeira leak allege US clocked PRC DF27 tests at mach 8+). That's before considering replenishment fleet, of which US has only 11 fast supply class that can keep up with carrier groups, would also be targetted, leaving non nuclear CSG escorts single deployment assets with days of endurance in high tempo operations. And then what does the carrier do? Operate undefended? Said supply ships would almost be hard not to sink since they have to spend hours restocking in port, in theatre. I think there's a good reason Navy isn't being recapitalized properly, and it's more than redtape. IMO people behind the scenes also sees the writing on the wall for large surface ships.
- sbierwagen 3y ago
  >IMO people behind the scenes also sees the writing on the wall for large surface ships. Considering this and Taiwan, it's funny that Congress isn't pushing for more SSGNs and accelerating the SSN(X) program.
  - maxglute 3y ago
    IMO when seriously consider the math, the firepower:acquisition cost ratio doesn't make much sense, especially against PRC. SSGN with ~150 tomahawks, subsonic, easier to intercept, will likely never be reloadable at sea, and may not be able to operate permissively around PRC in due time. PRC ASW is improving rapidly, and they're deploying subsea ASW infra within 1st island chain. Not much info on projected upgrade of hypersonics to subsurface flee, but if extrapolate from zumwalt hypersonic projections current 80 cells for TLAM (tomahawks) whittles down to 12 CGHBs (common hypersonic glide bodies), that's ~20 more lethal CGHBs on subs and combined with multi week roundtrip to reload and get back into theatre, it's essentially nothing. For reference it's estimated taking out PRC SCS island bases will require 400-500 tomahawks, and that may only temporarily disable runways. Even if US can take out entire PLANavy, PRC can sustain massive war effort from mainland aviation/rocketry, the latter could feasibly hit CONUS. I think that's whats ultimately driving procurement decisions, trying to deliver the most survivable firepower which a lot of these larger projects are subpar at (again relative to PRC) if war ever escalates to homeland strikes. Hence Navy Force Design focusing on expanding with smaller unmanned ships / distributed lethality model (which will include lots of unmanned subsurface). In the meantime, large, expensive, eggs in a basket platforms that are difficult to crew, impossible to replace during war, that's been in pipeline for a long time and are being pursued to institutional inertia, because brass doesn't want to kill their baby. VS 100+ B21s with less labour and per unit cost that can deliver around the clock, probably difficult to shoot down unless they're parked in hardened hanger or their midair tanking (if needed) gets degraded, but losing one is a couple pilots and 1/10th the cost.
denton-scratch 3y ago
Russia's Black Sea Fleet has been largely confined to port in Novorossiysk by Ukrainian "naval drones", having previously been used to bombard Ukrainian cities with cruise missiles. So what are these naval drones? I assumed they were fancy, expensive sea-skimming cruise missiles; nope. Apparently they're modified jet-skis with cheap FPV navigation equipment. So I don't think you're wrong, and I think we've already found out. A submarine with a nuclear torpedo could take out an entire carrier group. Nuclear submarines are apparently still hard to detect underwater; but once someone figures out how to detect them, they'll be obsolete. I think the Senior Service may be doomed.
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  Anti submarine warfare is already a huge discipline. Submarines are still not obsolete, nor is it trivial for them to sink an entire carrier group. IIRC in exercises a submarine usually gets one shot before it has to run from the ASW attacks. For any technological advance, the counter technology adapts, so it's not very common for something to actually become obsolete.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  Apparently they're modified jet-skis with cheap FPV navigation equipment. Yeah. I read about that recent sinking, momentarily cheered for Ukraine, and then thought about the larger implications and was like... man the USN is screwed, huh?
  - justin66 3y ago
    Eh. The USN is prepared to deal with speedboats piloted by suicide bombers. Does the jetski drone test ship security in a way that those do not?
    - JohnBooty 3y ago
      Yeah, I'd sure think so. - A peer/neer-peer adversary can presumably throw a very large number of simultaneous drones at a USN vessel. I don't know how feasible it is rustle up 10 or 100 reliable simultaneous human suicide bombers. - The jet ski drones can surely be physically smaller than a speedboat that needs to hold a human - The jet skis can trade some of that size back and armor themselves against CIWS etc in ways that would be less practical for a suicide boat
foofie 3y ago
> (...) aircraft carriers are going to immediately become obsoleted by antiship missiles (...) I think aircraft carriers are already obsolete, not due to antiship missiles but due to small, quiet diesel subs. Pretty much any NATO navy operating these has stories from NATO exercises where their small, unimpressive sub managed to score hits on a carrier. This isn't new. Around two decades ago, the US felt the need to ask Sweden to loan them their HSMS Gotland to learn how to do something about them. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/think-us-navy-aircraft-carrier-unsinkable-meet-gotland-class-submarine-208153 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/think-us-navy-aircraf...

actionfromafar 3y ago

I agree with the general threat, but an aircraft carrier can still project force at a distance, so a foe must strike from a great distance. It's doable but expensive. So not sure about how quickly carriers will be obsolete or ever really. Only a really advanced and large foe can threaten them.

hef19898 3y ago
Or a single sub. Happened more than once suring NATO maneuvers,a single sub getting into a firing position completey undetected, armed with torpedoes able to sink the carrier. No weapon is beyond reach in war, or indestructible. And still, they have their use cases.
JohnBooty 3y ago
but an aircraft carrier can still project force at a distance In terms of the levels of force being exchanged in a full-scale war, it's not that much force and it's not that much distance, relative to what a peer adversary like China can bring to a fight in their own backyard. It's ~130 ship-launched guided missiles and ~75 fighter jets. They will not be operating at a stand-off distance relative to the reach of cruise and ballistic missiles launched from Chinese homeland. And the planes are not going to be able to take off and land if the carrier is executing evasive maneuvers because of missile attack. If you were China, how would you tackle that? Is there any reason you wouldn't just send several waves of several hundred missiles their way? Carrier strike groups are still useful. 130 missiles and 75 jets is plenty to dissaude most countries on earth. Just not the biggest ones, if they have committed to waging a full-scale war against you. China would definitely not emerge unscathed. The CSG would be augmented with a lot of longer range stuff such as US fighters/bombers/missiles/subs launched from elsewhere. But I mean, I think the CSG gets effectively deleted in the first few hours of war. Hope I'm wrong.
- Tostino 3y ago
  Even in Taiwan defense simulations, from what I remember reading, the US always loses at least 1 CSG.

maxglute 3y ago

Pretty much. On paper US anti missile intercepts has been performing well in UKR and Red Sea, but consider the actual numbers. In UKR, 6 Kinzhals, alleged moving at shit tier mach ~3 speed end up damaging a patriot. In Red Sea, shit tier Houthi/Iranian cruise (subsonic) / ballistics, launched in even less coordinated salvos, realistically singles since description of multi missile attacks report these events unfold over matter of hours. Majority intercepted, but few still slip through to hit ships protected by flight IIA/III upgraded DDGs. IMO questionable how well a stacked CSG performs against high end AShMs (Teixeira leak allege US clocked PRC DF27 tests at mach 8+). That's before considering replenishment fleet, of which US has only 11 fast supply class that can keep up with carrier groups, would also be targetted, leaving non nuclear CSG escorts single deployment assets with days of endurance in high tempo operations. And then what does the carrier do? Operate undefended? Said supply ships would almost be hard not to sink since they have to spend hours restocking in port, in theatre. I think there's a good reason Navy isn't being recapitalized properly, and it's more than redtape. IMO people behind the scenes also sees the writing on the wall for large surface ships.

sbierwagen 3y ago
>IMO people behind the scenes also sees the writing on the wall for large surface ships. Considering this and Taiwan, it's funny that Congress isn't pushing for more SSGNs and accelerating the SSN(X) program.
- maxglute 3y ago
  IMO when seriously consider the math, the firepower:acquisition cost ratio doesn't make much sense, especially against PRC. SSGN with ~150 tomahawks, subsonic, easier to intercept, will likely never be reloadable at sea, and may not be able to operate permissively around PRC in due time. PRC ASW is improving rapidly, and they're deploying subsea ASW infra within 1st island chain. Not much info on projected upgrade of hypersonics to subsurface flee, but if extrapolate from zumwalt hypersonic projections current 80 cells for TLAM (tomahawks) whittles down to 12 CGHBs (common hypersonic glide bodies), that's ~20 more lethal CGHBs on subs and combined with multi week roundtrip to reload and get back into theatre, it's essentially nothing. For reference it's estimated taking out PRC SCS island bases will require 400-500 tomahawks, and that may only temporarily disable runways. Even if US can take out entire PLANavy, PRC can sustain massive war effort from mainland aviation/rocketry, the latter could feasibly hit CONUS. I think that's whats ultimately driving procurement decisions, trying to deliver the most survivable firepower which a lot of these larger projects are subpar at (again relative to PRC) if war ever escalates to homeland strikes. Hence Navy Force Design focusing on expanding with smaller unmanned ships / distributed lethality model (which will include lots of unmanned subsurface). In the meantime, large, expensive, eggs in a basket platforms that are difficult to crew, impossible to replace during war, that's been in pipeline for a long time and are being pursued to institutional inertia, because brass doesn't want to kill their baby. VS 100+ B21s with less labour and per unit cost that can deliver around the clock, probably difficult to shoot down unless they're parked in hardened hanger or their midair tanking (if needed) gets degraded, but losing one is a couple pilots and 1/10th the cost.

denton-scratch 3y ago

Russia's Black Sea Fleet has been largely confined to port in Novorossiysk by Ukrainian "naval drones", having previously been used to bombard Ukrainian cities with cruise missiles. So what are these naval drones? I assumed they were fancy, expensive sea-skimming cruise missiles; nope. Apparently they're modified jet-skis with cheap FPV navigation equipment. So I don't think you're wrong, and I think we've already found out. A submarine with a nuclear torpedo could take out an entire carrier group. Nuclear submarines are apparently still hard to detect underwater; but once someone figures out how to detect them, they'll be obsolete. I think the Senior Service may be doomed.

andrewflnr 3y ago
Anti submarine warfare is already a huge discipline. Submarines are still not obsolete, nor is it trivial for them to sink an entire carrier group. IIRC in exercises a submarine usually gets one shot before it has to run from the ASW attacks. For any technological advance, the counter technology adapts, so it's not very common for something to actually become obsolete.
JohnBooty 3y ago
Apparently they're modified jet-skis with cheap FPV navigation equipment. Yeah. I read about that recent sinking, momentarily cheered for Ukraine, and then thought about the larger implications and was like... man the USN is screwed, huh?
- justin66 3y ago
  Eh. The USN is prepared to deal with speedboats piloted by suicide bombers. Does the jetski drone test ship security in a way that those do not?
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    Yeah, I'd sure think so. - A peer/neer-peer adversary can presumably throw a very large number of simultaneous drones at a USN vessel. I don't know how feasible it is rustle up 10 or 100 reliable simultaneous human suicide bombers. - The jet ski drones can surely be physically smaller than a speedboat that needs to hold a human - The jet skis can trade some of that size back and armor themselves against CIWS etc in ways that would be less practical for a suicide boat

foofie 3y ago

> (...) aircraft carriers are going to immediately become obsoleted by antiship missiles (...) I think aircraft carriers are already obsolete, not due to antiship missiles but due to small, quiet diesel subs. Pretty much any NATO navy operating these has stories from NATO exercises where their small, unimpressive sub managed to score hits on a carrier. This isn't new. Around two decades ago, the US felt the need to ask Sweden to loan them their HSMS Gotland to learn how to do something about them. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/think-us-navy-aircraft-carrier-unsinkable-meet-gotland-class-submarine-208153 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/think-us-navy-aircraf...