4 ms·

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

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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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.
    - wredcoll 6mo ago
      > The usual constraints of hunting and finding in vast area So how are you hunting and finding the carriers in the first place? You can't have it both ways. > 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. We're talking about a hypothetical US carrier war against china. Is there something interesting to talk about with regards to iran trying to defend against carriers?
      - maxglute 6mo ago
        It's 2026, PRC has GEOsync ISR (optic+SAR) with persistent coverage of Pacific and beyond. Combined with 500+ other ISR sats, they basically have full coverage in relevant theatres, with hand offs for tracking/queuing/targeting. There's really nowhere for surface combatants to evade/hide anymore vs PRC tier adversary. US doesn't have ASAT capabilities to shootdown beyond LEO. Without ranting too much, highend C4ISR is basically massive enabler/coordination force multiplier, technically it's feasible to synergize highend C4ISR and upgraded COTs low end drones swarms to kill carrier groups, either via mathematically guaranteed saturation salvos or push A2D2 past max carrier standoff range, i.e. no viable sorties without entering no escape zone. Of course tier1 response is still hypersonics (including drones), but theoretically the techstack now exists for low end loitering swarms (well relative to PRC low end) to also do so for much less.

defrost 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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.
  - wredcoll 6mo ago
    > The usual constraints of hunting and finding in vast area So how are you hunting and finding the carriers in the first place? You can't have it both ways. > 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. We're talking about a hypothetical US carrier war against china. Is there something interesting to talk about with regards to iran trying to defend against carriers?
    - maxglute 6mo ago
      It's 2026, PRC has GEOsync ISR (optic+SAR) with persistent coverage of Pacific and beyond. Combined with 500+ other ISR sats, they basically have full coverage in relevant theatres, with hand offs for tracking/queuing/targeting. There's really nowhere for surface combatants to evade/hide anymore vs PRC tier adversary. US doesn't have ASAT capabilities to shootdown beyond LEO. Without ranting too much, highend C4ISR is basically massive enabler/coordination force multiplier, technically it's feasible to synergize highend C4ISR and upgraded COTs low end drones swarms to kill carrier groups, either via mathematically guaranteed saturation salvos or push A2D2 past max carrier standoff range, i.e. no viable sorties without entering no escape zone. Of course tier1 response is still hypersonics (including drones), but theoretically the techstack now exists for low end loitering swarms (well relative to PRC low end) to also do so for much less.