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I would have thought so too but Naval Gazing has a short series [0] on why it's not as dire as one might think. An aircraft carrier's location being "secret" in

by jcalx 7mo ago

I would have thought so too but Naval Gazing has a short series [0] on why it's not as dire as one might think. An aircraft carrier's location being "secret" in this case is just one layer of the survivability onion [1] anyhow. (Caveat that as someone who takes a casual interest in this, I can't vouch for accurate this is at all.) [0] https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1 https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1 [1] https://www.goonhammer.com/star-wars-armada-naval-academy-warship-survival/ https://www.goonhammer.com/star-wars-armada-naval-academy-wa...

rtkwe 7mo ago
It is important to note the Naval Gazing article is specifically talking about the difficulties of actually targeting a ship for a successful kill rather than just tracking it. It's in response to the idea that satellites plus missiles would mean carriers could be instantly destroyed in a first round of hostilities with a sufficiently prepared opponent. Tracking is a lot easier to do than getting data fresh and precise enough to hit the ship with no other tools (eg ships already nearby that can get a live precise track vs terminal detection and guidance on the missile itself). Also the capabilities of commercial and government geospatial systems has only continued to improve in the ~decade since the article was written.
- btown 7mo ago
  It also seems worth considering that the article's view that "spending a lot of time searching for the carrier is a good way to get killed by defending fighters" is a distinctly pre-drone-ubiquity assumption. Can a carrier group's point defense weapons and fighters reliably counter a swarm of hundreds of cheap drones, flying lower than cloud cover, that are programmed to look for carriers over a wide area, confirm their shape optically, paint them for missiles, and take the disconnection/destruction of any one of them as an indication of possible activity and automated retasking? It's a scary world to be a slow-moving vehicle, these days.
  - XorNot 7mo ago
    How cheap do you think a drone which can cover a large area of ocean actually is? And not just search it - you have to get it to the sector as well.
    - lazide 7mo ago
      Fixed wing? Using Starlink perhaps? $10k or so, maybe less. Taking out a billion dollar asset with a couple million dollars worth of drones and a few (more expensive) anti ship missles? Priceless.
      - XorNot 7mo ago
        A Ukrainian high speed Shahed interceptor costs that much and has a very short range. You're off by at least an order of magnitude. The camera mount you'd have to put on such a drone would cost about that much, probably more. You're also vastly underestimating just how big the ocean actually is. And finding the aircraft carrier is not the penultimate step to destroying it (a "few" anti shipping missiles aren't getting through those defenses).
        adgjlsfhk1 7mo ago
        interceptors are much shorter range than attack/scouting drones because they need to go a lot faster and be more manuverable than the target they are intercepting. Cameras are cheap and really light compared to ordinance, and ziplime was able to make a fleet of fairly cheap drones with 200 mile range (as a private company a decade ago). Cheap drones definitely can maintain targeting of a carrier within a couple hundred miles of the coast (and if you can get to 5-600 miles you keep most carrier based aircraft out of range of your shores)
    - defrost 7mo ago
      Less than $20 million each - assuming build capacity and plans ... High-Altitude Pseudo-Satellites Are Ready for Launch (2023) Editor's note: [ ... ] Airbus contacted Proceedings to note that the 2016 pricing estimates were correct at the time but that the company will be releasing new, lower estimates soon. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/february/high-altitude-pseudo-satellites-are-ready-launch https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/february/hig... Zephyr – down but definitely not out (2022) After an astounding 64 days aloft and a travelling a total more than 30,000nm, a British-built solar-powered UAV crashed just hours before it was due to break the ultimate world endurance record. The aircraft was the British-built solar-powered Airbus Zephyr UAV – one of a new breed of HAPS (high altitude, pseudo-satellites) – a new category of UAVs that are aiming for zero-emission, ultra-long- endurance flight as a kind of terrestrial satellite – able to loiter in the stratosphere for weeks or months at a time to monitor borders, watch shipping, relay communications or conduct atmospheric science. https://www.aerosociety.com/news/zephyr-down-but-definitely-not-out/ https://www.aerosociety.com/news/zephyr-down-but-definitely-...
torginus 7mo ago
Well everything's impossible, until its not.
OscarCunningham 7mo ago
Oh I get it, the onion is made of Swiss cheese.
- Normal_gaussian 7mo ago
  The modern AI security onion
connicpu 7mo ago
Not hidden from nation states with access to real-time satellite imagery, but more rustic guerilla operations usually don't have such sophisticated access
- buildbot 7mo ago
  Just poor ones - how much could it cost to get a scan of the oceans once weekly or daily? 10 million dollars?
  - ygouzerh 7mo ago
    Actually probably even cheaper, a generic scan to spot all the ships, and when it's done, just need to get images around the last location. Probably can use something like the Planet API

by jcalx 7mo ago

rtkwe 7mo ago

It is important to note the Naval Gazing article is specifically talking about the difficulties of actually targeting a ship for a successful kill rather than just tracking it. It's in response to the idea that satellites plus missiles would mean carriers could be instantly destroyed in a first round of hostilities with a sufficiently prepared opponent. Tracking is a lot easier to do than getting data fresh and precise enough to hit the ship with no other tools (eg ships already nearby that can get a live precise track vs terminal detection and guidance on the missile itself). Also the capabilities of commercial and government geospatial systems has only continued to improve in the ~decade since the article was written.

btown 7mo ago
It also seems worth considering that the article's view that "spending a lot of time searching for the carrier is a good way to get killed by defending fighters" is a distinctly pre-drone-ubiquity assumption. Can a carrier group's point defense weapons and fighters reliably counter a swarm of hundreds of cheap drones, flying lower than cloud cover, that are programmed to look for carriers over a wide area, confirm their shape optically, paint them for missiles, and take the disconnection/destruction of any one of them as an indication of possible activity and automated retasking? It's a scary world to be a slow-moving vehicle, these days.
- XorNot 7mo ago
  How cheap do you think a drone which can cover a large area of ocean actually is? And not just search it - you have to get it to the sector as well.
  - lazide 7mo ago
    Fixed wing? Using Starlink perhaps? $10k or so, maybe less. Taking out a billion dollar asset with a couple million dollars worth of drones and a few (more expensive) anti ship missles? Priceless.
    - XorNot 7mo ago
      A Ukrainian high speed Shahed interceptor costs that much and has a very short range. You're off by at least an order of magnitude. The camera mount you'd have to put on such a drone would cost about that much, probably more. You're also vastly underestimating just how big the ocean actually is. And finding the aircraft carrier is not the penultimate step to destroying it (a "few" anti shipping missiles aren't getting through those defenses).
      - adgjlsfhk1 7mo ago
        interceptors are much shorter range than attack/scouting drones because they need to go a lot faster and be more manuverable than the target they are intercepting. Cameras are cheap and really light compared to ordinance, and ziplime was able to make a fleet of fairly cheap drones with 200 mile range (as a private company a decade ago). Cheap drones definitely can maintain targeting of a carrier within a couple hundred miles of the coast (and if you can get to 5-600 miles you keep most carrier based aircraft out of range of your shores)
  - defrost 7mo ago
    Less than $20 million each - assuming build capacity and plans ... High-Altitude Pseudo-Satellites Are Ready for Launch (2023) Editor's note: [ ... ] Airbus contacted Proceedings to note that the 2016 pricing estimates were correct at the time but that the company will be releasing new, lower estimates soon. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/february/high-altitude-pseudo-satellites-are-ready-launch https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/february/hig... Zephyr – down but definitely not out (2022) After an astounding 64 days aloft and a travelling a total more than 30,000nm, a British-built solar-powered UAV crashed just hours before it was due to break the ultimate world endurance record. The aircraft was the British-built solar-powered Airbus Zephyr UAV – one of a new breed of HAPS (high altitude, pseudo-satellites) – a new category of UAVs that are aiming for zero-emission, ultra-long- endurance flight as a kind of terrestrial satellite – able to loiter in the stratosphere for weeks or months at a time to monitor borders, watch shipping, relay communications or conduct atmospheric science. https://www.aerosociety.com/news/zephyr-down-but-definitely-not-out/ https://www.aerosociety.com/news/zephyr-down-but-definitely-...

torginus 7mo ago

Well everything's impossible, until its not.

OscarCunningham 7mo ago

Oh I get it, the onion is made of Swiss cheese.

Normal_gaussian 7mo ago
The modern AI security onion

connicpu 7mo ago

Not hidden from nation states with access to real-time satellite imagery, but more rustic guerilla operations usually don't have such sophisticated access

buildbot 7mo ago
Just poor ones - how much could it cost to get a scan of the oceans once weekly or daily? 10 million dollars?
- ygouzerh 7mo ago
  Actually probably even cheaper, a generic scan to spot all the ships, and when it's done, just need to get images around the last location. Probably can use something like the Planet API