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Ukraine drones aren't even submersible with attention to stealth afaik. The navy is going to be, uh, already is a totally different battlefield. Even deep wat

Ukraine drones aren't even submersible with attention to stealth afaik. The navy is going to be, uh, already is a totally different battlefield. Even deep water flotillas maybe maybe vulnerable to extremely low-tech long loitering naval drones. If you want to defend against us carrier groups, do you build your own carrier group or design a long loiter submersible activatable drone that you can build insufficient numbers to basically cover your the entire strategic theater of the ocean that you need. How much is a full carrier group or a sufficient Navy to fight them, $100 billion? Drunks are simply going to make power projection a lot more difficult outside of strategic nuclear weapons. If Taiwan is on the ball, they should have thousands if not more anti-ship drones ready to be launched. The second they see invasion operations by mainland China crossing the channel. I do disagree with air power: I believe there is substantial air power superiority now and in the medium term future with advanced high altitude high-speed Jets. That still requires a huge amount of engineering investment and technological infrastructure to compete in that theater, and dominance of that provides vast tactical advantages. And, despite how much I hate musk, if the starship SpaceX rocket achieved some measure of its payload and launch goals it enables military dominance of low orbit for a couple decades.

scheme271 1y ago
Forget long range drones, the Chinese have worked on a ballistic anti-ship missile (DF-21D) that can credibly threaten or destroy a carrier from 1000 miles/1600km away. It uses a conventional warhead and would limit carrier operations. Or at the very least, would make the US Navy think very hard about the risk/reward ratio of deploying a carrier group.
- jandrewrogers 1y ago
  Color me skeptical. That missile has to be actively guided in using external systems. The US has extensive defenses in-depth designed to defeat systems that work this way. The Soviets were doing it long before the Chinese were. It is a threat but I don't think the US Navy is losing sleep over it. The US deprecated systems with similar guidance models a long time ago because of their intrinsic vulnerability to defenses. Also, it can't credibly "destroy" a carrier. The warhead is much too small. You could launch dozens, at high cost, but this is where the attackable single point of failure of these missiles start to become a problem.
  - nicr_22 1y ago
    Just aim for the thermal exhaust shaft, you womp rat.
- gerdesj 1y ago
  "and would limit carrier operations" Do you have any idea how small a carrier is when you are hypersonic at, say, 100,000 feet above sea level? And the bloody thing is moving too.
nradov 1y ago
Naval mines that launch torpedoes have already been a thing for decades so you're not suggesting anything new. But not even China can afford to build enough of those to achieve a useful level of protection. The ocean is big. Look at a map sometime.

scheme271 1y ago

Forget long range drones, the Chinese have worked on a ballistic anti-ship missile (DF-21D) that can credibly threaten or destroy a carrier from 1000 miles/1600km away. It uses a conventional warhead and would limit carrier operations. Or at the very least, would make the US Navy think very hard about the risk/reward ratio of deploying a carrier group.

jandrewrogers 1y ago
Color me skeptical. That missile has to be actively guided in using external systems. The US has extensive defenses in-depth designed to defeat systems that work this way. The Soviets were doing it long before the Chinese were. It is a threat but I don't think the US Navy is losing sleep over it. The US deprecated systems with similar guidance models a long time ago because of their intrinsic vulnerability to defenses. Also, it can't credibly "destroy" a carrier. The warhead is much too small. You could launch dozens, at high cost, but this is where the attackable single point of failure of these missiles start to become a problem.
- nicr_22 1y ago
  Just aim for the thermal exhaust shaft, you womp rat.
gerdesj 1y ago
"and would limit carrier operations" Do you have any idea how small a carrier is when you are hypersonic at, say, 100,000 feet above sea level? And the bloody thing is moving too.

nradov 1y ago

Naval mines that launch torpedoes have already been a thing for decades so you're not suggesting anything new. But not even China can afford to build enough of those to achieve a useful level of protection. The ocean is big. Look at a map sometime.