6 ms·

Despite which US carriers are frequently "sunk" during war games. All that protection didn't stop the Swedish diesal-electric HSMS Gotland seamlessly torp'ing

by defrost 7mo ago

Despite which US carriers are frequently "sunk" during war games. All that protection didn't stop the Swedish diesal-electric HSMS Gotland seamlessly torp'ing the Ronald Reagan in 2005. France pulled a similar score 2015, Canada "got" a UK carrier in 2007, IIRC even Australia's taken out a US ship or two in various fun ways over the years.

mcv 7mo ago
Diesel-electric subs seem to be the bane of carriers. I'm aware of Dutch, Portuguese and Swedish subs that have "sunk" carriers during exercises, and often together with a significant part of their fleet. But I do wonder what the starting conditions for those exercises were. The sub's underwater range is limited (although Swedish subs seem to be better than others) and the have to come up every once in a while, at which point they're vulnerable. There's plenty of places to hide near coasts, but I can imagine that on the open ocean, it might be a lot harder for a sub to get close enough.
wredcoll 7mo ago
Carriers are not unstoppable super fortresses, which is why the americans have like 11 of the things, and it's definitely important not to become over confident after years without serious naval challenges, but it's also reasonable to consider all of the mitigating factors involved in large scale military exercises. I haven't studied the HSMS Gotland incident in any great detail, but just in general for wargames, ships are required to be in certain locations at certain times, stay inside sea lanes, use transponders, ignore certain other ships and in general not completely mess up the existing sea commerce traffic that is trying to go past the exercise area. If your carrier group is literally 1000 miles away from any piece of land and you have full authorization to sink anything that looks even slightly suspicious, it probably becomes considerably more difficult to sneak up and torpedo a carrier. But yes, carriers will get sunk, modern warfare is in large part attritional, but if you send out, dunno, $100m worth of subs and sink a $10b carrier, that's a great return on investment, but doesn't help you in the slightest if you're now out of submarines and the enemy sails two more carriers into range.
- defrost 7mo ago
  > Carriers are not unstoppable super fortresses I'm geting fairly old now and I have no recollection of ever thinking such a thing ... > but if you send out, dunno, $100m worth of subs and sink a $10b carrier, Even better if you can send out $80m worth of torpedoes attached to cheap arse unmanned drone delivery units all embedded within a 10x magnitude swarm of cheap arse drone units that have no torpedoes. High chance of penetration, good chance there'll be some left over to confound and confuse the next carriers. Absolutely that keeps the high end gear standing well off from tight spaces.
  - wredcoll 7mo ago
    Yeah, but what's stopping the side with carriers from just attacking your torpedo launchers? That's literally the entire point of aircraft carriers, you get to attack things while the ship itself is out of range of retaliation. If we're postulating magical "ai" attack drones loitering off the coast, what's stopping the americans from sending in their own fleet of equally magical ai attack drones to blow up all the defenders and then sail the carriers up? Also, again, you'd have to know exactly where the carriers even are, right now $80m worth of torpedo drones would cover like .01% of china's coastal waters.
    - defrost 7mo ago
      > Yeah, but what's stopping the side with carriers from just attacking your torpedo launchers? Numbers game, what's the maximum number of targets that can be covered in a window, the cost of dealing with non torpedo launch capable platforms is the same as the cost of taking out an actual torpedo carrying launcher - the overwhelming threshold is something that is tested in games, of course. > If we're postulating magical "ai" attack drones loitering off the coast I'm not, I'm looking at a reasonable near term extrapolation of what China already has and tested. > what's stopping the americans from sending in their own fleet of equally magical ai attack drones to blow up all the defenders The usual constraints of hunting and finding in vast area > Also, again, you'd have to know exactly where the carriers even are Well, approximately .. and that's what China provides to Iran via sat coverage. > right now $80m worth of torpedo drones would cover like .01% of china's coastal waters. I thought the carriers were off Iran and staged well back? I can't see them being as far back as China myself, but perhaps you have some curious reason for wanting to spread them out some place far far away from the conflict. I have no knowledge of that, obviously.

by defrost 7mo ago

mcv 7mo ago

Diesel-electric subs seem to be the bane of carriers. I'm aware of Dutch, Portuguese and Swedish subs that have "sunk" carriers during exercises, and often together with a significant part of their fleet. But I do wonder what the starting conditions for those exercises were. The sub's underwater range is limited (although Swedish subs seem to be better than others) and the have to come up every once in a while, at which point they're vulnerable. There's plenty of places to hide near coasts, but I can imagine that on the open ocean, it might be a lot harder for a sub to get close enough.

wredcoll 7mo ago

Carriers are not unstoppable super fortresses, which is why the americans have like 11 of the things, and it's definitely important not to become over confident after years without serious naval challenges, but it's also reasonable to consider all of the mitigating factors involved in large scale military exercises. I haven't studied the HSMS Gotland incident in any great detail, but just in general for wargames, ships are required to be in certain locations at certain times, stay inside sea lanes, use transponders, ignore certain other ships and in general not completely mess up the existing sea commerce traffic that is trying to go past the exercise area. If your carrier group is literally 1000 miles away from any piece of land and you have full authorization to sink anything that looks even slightly suspicious, it probably becomes considerably more difficult to sneak up and torpedo a carrier. But yes, carriers will get sunk, modern warfare is in large part attritional, but if you send out, dunno, $100m worth of subs and sink a $10b carrier, that's a great return on investment, but doesn't help you in the slightest if you're now out of submarines and the enemy sails two more carriers into range.

defrost 7mo ago
> Carriers are not unstoppable super fortresses I'm geting fairly old now and I have no recollection of ever thinking such a thing ... > but if you send out, dunno, $100m worth of subs and sink a $10b carrier, Even better if you can send out $80m worth of torpedoes attached to cheap arse unmanned drone delivery units all embedded within a 10x magnitude swarm of cheap arse drone units that have no torpedoes. High chance of penetration, good chance there'll be some left over to confound and confuse the next carriers. Absolutely that keeps the high end gear standing well off from tight spaces.
- wredcoll 7mo ago
  Yeah, but what's stopping the side with carriers from just attacking your torpedo launchers? That's literally the entire point of aircraft carriers, you get to attack things while the ship itself is out of range of retaliation. If we're postulating magical "ai" attack drones loitering off the coast, what's stopping the americans from sending in their own fleet of equally magical ai attack drones to blow up all the defenders and then sail the carriers up? Also, again, you'd have to know exactly where the carriers even are, right now $80m worth of torpedo drones would cover like .01% of china's coastal waters.
  - defrost 7mo ago
    > Yeah, but what's stopping the side with carriers from just attacking your torpedo launchers? Numbers game, what's the maximum number of targets that can be covered in a window, the cost of dealing with non torpedo launch capable platforms is the same as the cost of taking out an actual torpedo carrying launcher - the overwhelming threshold is something that is tested in games, of course. > If we're postulating magical "ai" attack drones loitering off the coast I'm not, I'm looking at a reasonable near term extrapolation of what China already has and tested. > what's stopping the americans from sending in their own fleet of equally magical ai attack drones to blow up all the defenders The usual constraints of hunting and finding in vast area > Also, again, you'd have to know exactly where the carriers even are Well, approximately .. and that's what China provides to Iran via sat coverage. > right now $80m worth of torpedo drones would cover like .01% of china's coastal waters. I thought the carriers were off Iran and staged well back? I can't see them being as far back as China myself, but perhaps you have some curious reason for wanting to spread them out some place far far away from the conflict. I have no knowledge of that, obviously.