4 ms·

Even if we were to face China in a war, we'd own the seas. Once their one (maybe two by now) carrier is sunk, even assuming they sink one of ours, we just brin

by Zimahl 13y ago

Even if we were to face China in a war, we'd own the seas. Once their one (maybe two by now) carrier is sunk, even assuming they sink one of ours, we just bring in one of the other 12. I know people fear China but they are no cold-war Russia. Anything conventional and the US is in the lead by a lot. There's no reason to discuss anything nuclear because everyone loses in that case.

dctoedt 13y ago
> Even if we were to face China in a war, we'd own the seas. Once their one (maybe two by now) carrier is sunk, even assuming they sink one of ours, we just bring in one of the other 12. There have been reports that the Chinese have developed and brought to initial operational status the DF-21D, a medium-range, hypersonic, anti-ship ballistic missile specifically designed to be a carrier-killer [1]. The concern is that our carriers might be chased from the Western Pacific. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_.28CSS-5_Mod-4.29_Anti-ship_ballistic_missile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_.28CSS-5_Mod-4.29_... -- also http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/06/12/why-china-may-limit-carrier-killers-range/ http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/06/12/why-china...
- mpyne 13y ago
  Maybe there's something I'm missing about the DF-21D, but even assuming it doesn't miss the carrier while traveling at a hypersonic speed, Big Explody Things dropping on top of American carriers during wartime is not exactly a new thing in the annals of warfare. It's one of the reason that warships in general (including carriers) are designed to be compartmentalized, to have redundant backups (and backups to the backups), etc., is because it is expected they might have to survive battle damage. Obviously an ASBM may change the calculus of whether you send carriers in early in the conflict (preferring instead to use submarines with cruise missiles to take out Dong Feng launch sites or whatever you'd have been trying to bomb in the first place). But I don't see how ASBM is a guaranteed single-shot carrier kill by any stretch either.
  - dctoedt 13y ago
    > It's one of the reason that warships in general (including carriers) are designed to be compartmentalized, to have redundant backups (and backups to the backups), etc., is because it is expected they might have to survive battle damage. For a carrier, not-sinking != operational. The flight deck, catapults, and arresting gear are necessarily exposed to anything that explodes above them. Take them out and the carrier is basically useless. A carrier can be severely damaged or even sunk by just a few comparatively-small bombs if they're well-placed, intentionally or fortuitously. This was vividly demonstrated at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 [1], where four Japanese carriers and one American carrier were sunk. (It only took one U.S. bomb to sink the unfortunate Akagi.) In January 1969 my former ship, the USS Enterprise, was taken out of action for several weeks by an accidental fire on the flight deck that cooked off ordinance, spread, and killed 27 sailors [2]. (It was before my time there.) I would imagine that a ground-launched ballistic missile could carry a much bigger payload than I've been talking about. But yes, it'd be no small navigational challenge to make sure an ASBM actually got to the (moving) target and past the last-ditch defenses. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway#Attacks_on_the_Japanese_fleet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway#Attacks_on_the... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)#Vietnam_deployments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)#Vietnam...
    - mpyne 13y ago
      You're certainly right WRT OOC vs. sunk. However USS Yorktown was "taken out of the action" a couple of times in WWII and still put back into the fight and playing very important roles in that fight, before eventually being sunk by a Japanese submarine. So it's definitely fair to say that simply damaging a carrier is not nearly as catastrophic as sinking one.
      - bdunbar 13y ago
        > So it's definitely fair to say that simply damaging a carrier is not nearly as catastrophic as sinking one. It is fair to say that the situations are not equal. If the carrier can't fight, it's out of the battle until it's fixed. Fixable don't count if the war is over in weeks, or months. Fixing a modern carrier might can take a while. Yorktown was not a complex warship. She takes a hit on the deck. Patch up the holes in her deck (I'm simplifying) and she's back in business. Hit Ford in the same location and you damage catapults, arresting gear. Ford is out of the war until she is fixed and this will not happen soon. How long to replace a catapult: I'd guess months at best. Where do they even keep the spares?
greedo 13y ago
10. That's all we have, not twelve, and definitely not the 15 we had at the height of the Cold War. The problem is that we don't have twelve carriers that can function all at once. Some are being refueled, some are returning from a deployment, some are doing training workups prior to deployment, and there's a lot of ocean out there. That's why talk of cutting the # of CVNs to under the current totals is extremely dangerous. The way to look at it is for each carrier you have deployed, you need two more. So we currently have four carriers deployed, for ready to surge if needed, and three unavailable for maintenance reasons. And it's not as if a carrier can transit from its homeport to the far side of the ocean quickly...
- takluyver 13y ago
  The rest of the world put together has 9 active carriers, all smaller than any of the US carriers. That's including the Chinese one, which they're still practising flying from, and the UK one, which doesn't have any aircraft until our JSFs turn up in a few years. Besides the US, only the French have an active nuclear powered carrier. So I don't really agree that discussion of reducing the number of US carriers is "extremely dangerous".
  - greedo 13y ago
    And the rest of the world hasn't taken on the obligations that the US has.
myko 13y ago
There are two types of ships in the Navy: submarines, and targets. How is a carrier going to protect itself from coordinated submarine attacks?
- tlear 13y ago
  You need to find the carrier first, ocean is a huge place. If you found and got close you do not need to coordinate single sub will do the job. But getting that sub there is non-trivial. You could ambush the carrier as it transits a straight but that will only work as open strike at the start of the war

by Zimahl 13y ago

dctoedt 13y ago

> Even if we were to face China in a war, we'd own the seas. Once their one (maybe two by now) carrier is sunk, even assuming they sink one of ours, we just bring in one of the other 12. There have been reports that the Chinese have developed and brought to initial operational status the DF-21D, a medium-range, hypersonic, anti-ship ballistic missile specifically designed to be a carrier-killer [1]. The concern is that our carriers might be chased from the Western Pacific. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_.28CSS-5_Mod-4.29_Anti-ship_ballistic_missile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_.28CSS-5_Mod-4.29_... -- also http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/06/12/why-china-may-limit-carrier-killers-range/ http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/06/12/why-china...

mpyne 13y ago
Maybe there's something I'm missing about the DF-21D, but even assuming it doesn't miss the carrier while traveling at a hypersonic speed, Big Explody Things dropping on top of American carriers during wartime is not exactly a new thing in the annals of warfare. It's one of the reason that warships in general (including carriers) are designed to be compartmentalized, to have redundant backups (and backups to the backups), etc., is because it is expected they might have to survive battle damage. Obviously an ASBM may change the calculus of whether you send carriers in early in the conflict (preferring instead to use submarines with cruise missiles to take out Dong Feng launch sites or whatever you'd have been trying to bomb in the first place). But I don't see how ASBM is a guaranteed single-shot carrier kill by any stretch either.
- dctoedt 13y ago
  > It's one of the reason that warships in general (including carriers) are designed to be compartmentalized, to have redundant backups (and backups to the backups), etc., is because it is expected they might have to survive battle damage. For a carrier, not-sinking != operational. The flight deck, catapults, and arresting gear are necessarily exposed to anything that explodes above them. Take them out and the carrier is basically useless. A carrier can be severely damaged or even sunk by just a few comparatively-small bombs if they're well-placed, intentionally or fortuitously. This was vividly demonstrated at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 [1], where four Japanese carriers and one American carrier were sunk. (It only took one U.S. bomb to sink the unfortunate Akagi.) In January 1969 my former ship, the USS Enterprise, was taken out of action for several weeks by an accidental fire on the flight deck that cooked off ordinance, spread, and killed 27 sailors [2]. (It was before my time there.) I would imagine that a ground-launched ballistic missile could carry a much bigger payload than I've been talking about. But yes, it'd be no small navigational challenge to make sure an ASBM actually got to the (moving) target and past the last-ditch defenses. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway#Attacks_on_the_Japanese_fleet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway#Attacks_on_the... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)#Vietnam_deployments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)#Vietnam...
  - mpyne 13y ago
    You're certainly right WRT OOC vs. sunk. However USS Yorktown was "taken out of the action" a couple of times in WWII and still put back into the fight and playing very important roles in that fight, before eventually being sunk by a Japanese submarine. So it's definitely fair to say that simply damaging a carrier is not nearly as catastrophic as sinking one.
    - bdunbar 13y ago
      > So it's definitely fair to say that simply damaging a carrier is not nearly as catastrophic as sinking one. It is fair to say that the situations are not equal. If the carrier can't fight, it's out of the battle until it's fixed. Fixable don't count if the war is over in weeks, or months. Fixing a modern carrier might can take a while. Yorktown was not a complex warship. She takes a hit on the deck. Patch up the holes in her deck (I'm simplifying) and she's back in business. Hit Ford in the same location and you damage catapults, arresting gear. Ford is out of the war until she is fixed and this will not happen soon. How long to replace a catapult: I'd guess months at best. Where do they even keep the spares?

greedo 13y ago

10. That's all we have, not twelve, and definitely not the 15 we had at the height of the Cold War. The problem is that we don't have twelve carriers that can function all at once. Some are being refueled, some are returning from a deployment, some are doing training workups prior to deployment, and there's a lot of ocean out there. That's why talk of cutting the # of CVNs to under the current totals is extremely dangerous. The way to look at it is for each carrier you have deployed, you need two more. So we currently have four carriers deployed, for ready to surge if needed, and three unavailable for maintenance reasons. And it's not as if a carrier can transit from its homeport to the far side of the ocean quickly...

takluyver 13y ago
The rest of the world put together has 9 active carriers, all smaller than any of the US carriers. That's including the Chinese one, which they're still practising flying from, and the UK one, which doesn't have any aircraft until our JSFs turn up in a few years. Besides the US, only the French have an active nuclear powered carrier. So I don't really agree that discussion of reducing the number of US carriers is "extremely dangerous".
- greedo 13y ago
  And the rest of the world hasn't taken on the obligations that the US has.

myko 13y ago

There are two types of ships in the Navy: submarines, and targets. How is a carrier going to protect itself from coordinated submarine attacks?

tlear 13y ago
You need to find the carrier first, ocean is a huge place. If you found and got close you do not need to coordinate single sub will do the job. But getting that sub there is non-trivial. You could ambush the carrier as it transits a straight but that will only work as open strike at the start of the war