3 ms·

> 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,

by 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.
  - wredcoll 7mo 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 7mo 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.
      - dgroshev 7mo ago
        This is just nonsense. An unmanned platform that can stay on station for a significant time and strike at hundreds of miles and have enough payload to deal significant damage and be fast enough to arrive in meaningful time and somehow survive approaching a carrier group (those planes have guns, remember? it's not just SM-6 spam) cannot be cheap because of hard physical constraints like the energy required to stay in the air. There are no such "COTS" platforms, DJI quads don't cut it across multiple dimensions.

by defrost 7mo ago

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.
- wredcoll 7mo 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 7mo 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.
    - dgroshev 7mo ago
      This is just nonsense. An unmanned platform that can stay on station for a significant time and strike at hundreds of miles and have enough payload to deal significant damage and be fast enough to arrive in meaningful time and somehow survive approaching a carrier group (those planes have guns, remember? it's not just SM-6 spam) cannot be cheap because of hard physical constraints like the energy required to stay in the air. There are no such "COTS" platforms, DJI quads don't cut it across multiple dimensions.