Is This The End of The Carrier [Archive]

jmm99

08-06-2010, 04:41 PM

Today, SWJ Blog is featuring The Future of the U.S. Armed Forces (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/08/the-future-of-the-us-armed-for/). Two days ago it had Pentagon Starts Study of Post-Afghan Marine Corps (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/08/pentagon-starts-study-of-posta/); and yesterday an update UPDATED: Marine Corps says, ‘Damn the G-RAMM, full speed ahead!’ (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/08/marine-corps-says-damn-the-gra/)

In the last piece, I read:

Work made it clear that he and the Navy Department are planning to return the Marine Corps to its naval roots. Most important, Work defended the amphibious assault mission and asserted that the Navy Department will ensure that the Marine Corps will be prepared to execute a two-brigade amphibious assault even as adversaries acquire more sophisticated precision weapons.

While 2 augmented Marine regiments are not trifles, the 2 MEB construct brought me up a bit short - memories of the PTO with 2 Marine corps (6 divisions) possible. So, why only two MEBs ?

The answer was in one of today's articles, Caught on a Lee Shore (http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=859):

Currently, the U.S. Navy has 31 amphibious ships, with plans to expand the total to 33 by 2016.[7] The Corps would prefer a number in the mid- to upper 40s, but the Navy’s shipbuilding budget, at least as it is currently structured, simply cannot support more. These 31 ships will just barely support the embarkation of a reduced-assault echelon of two Marine Expeditionary Brigades (MEBs). A MEB is composed of three reinforced infantry battalions, a mixed group of attack aircraft, helicopters and the new MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor, and enough logistics support for thirty days of operations. In a standard MEB configuration, two battalions would be equipped with EFVs while the third would be transported by air, meaning it is essentially foot-mobile once ashore. The light-armored vehicles, tanks, trucks and artillery reinforcing the MEB’s infantry battalions would be carried to shore by landing craft. Consequently, in a situation serious enough to warrant deploying every amphibious ship in the Navy, the Corps would be able to project ashore just six battalions of ground combat power, two of which have limited mobility.

[7] See Eric Labs, An Analysis of the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2011 Shipbuilding Plan, Congressional Budget Office (May 2010).

Lack of funding, as the reason, is scarcely surprising in today's economic environment - and that situation is not likely to change as domestic programs challenge military and international spending.

Given a posited lack of funding, we (US) face some difficult questions as to what military programs should be funded and why. Part of a logical solution (and verily I say unto you, I don't have much hope for logic being applied :() is to focus on what primary geopolitical focus the US will have in the upcoming decades.

For example, will it keep in place forces at bases spread all over the World ? Will it see force projection in Eurasian land wars as a primary mission ? Or, will it see a more limited role, such as force projection to the Atlantic and Pacific littorals, as its primary focus ?

May we live in interesting times - and cursed are we - we do.

Mike

PS: The Army guy was strumming along pretty well until he got down to solutions. Just think of it: our own I-400s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400_class_submarine) (nuclear, of course) and Aichi M6As (Aichi M6A) - the latter being the future of Naval and Marine Aviation.

slapout9

08-06-2010, 05:57 PM

Light fast and cheap PT Boats with guided missiles, fill the sky over the objective with armed drones and don't concentrate your forces until the area has been cleared of the G-RAMM's.

Fuchs

08-06-2010, 06:01 PM

Concur, Ken. I've seen the demise of the carrier forecast so many times it's not even funny. Even John Keegan "predicted" that submarines would rule the seas. Hasn't happened yet, of course.

First it was the AS-6 that was going to sweep the carriers from the seas, then it was the Tu22M, then it was... You get the idea.

Well, we don't know for sure. There was no real test.
Even the Japanese were not a 100% test, for Germany had much better aviation fuel, combat aircraft and (guided) ship attack munitions.

Entropy

08-06-2010, 07:01 PM

in latest JFQ:

http://www.ndu.edu/press/end-of-surface-warships.html

Wow. There is so much wrong with that article I don't know where to begin.

Rex Brynen

08-06-2010, 07:16 PM

Oh go on, begin. Start with the size, cost, operating costs, and detectability of massive cargo-carrying subs and move on from there. :D

By the way, Entropy.. did you ever get my PM? Email me, and I'll email you the report from my summer work.

Fuchs

08-06-2010, 11:50 PM

A few thoughts:

To hide in the big ocean has become much more difficult since the end of the Cold War because long-range SAR technology has been developed. An aircraft can generate a 3D image of a ship from more than 150 miles away. SAR technology has been introduced for maritime patrol aircraft decades ago and its extremely long range (and this includes the identification of ships from satellites) has changed the identification topic.

A carrier (strike group) will have the best chance of hiding on the ocean (or keeping its exact vectors unknown) early on in a conflict when the sea is still full of civilian ships.

The second joker would be staying far away from the coast. This could cause problems, though. The F-35 and F/A-18 series aren't exactly long-legged aircraft. A huge share of naval aviation could be busy as buddy tankers. Add in SEAD and CAP efforts and the problems of long-range SAR at sea. I understand that this long-range approach causes a huge collection of problems that ultimately diminish the naval aviation's strike capability to a small fraction of its nominal strength.
In other words; carrier strike groups could almost be neutralised by forcing them to spend so much effort and time on their survivabilty that they'd lack the punch to decisively influence events.
A medium range ballistic anti-ship missile is certainly a promising approach for achieving exactly this effect.

carl

08-07-2010, 12:43 AM

Well, we don't know for sure. There was no real test.
Even the Japanese were not a 100% test, for Germany had much better aviation fuel, combat aircraft and (guided) ship attack munitions.

Maybe they were the best test. Japanese aviators at the beginning of the war were extremely lethal. Ronald Spector made the point that if the British were confronted with Japanese rather than German dive bombers off Crete in 1941, none of them would have survived.

At the end of the war the Japanese threw thousands of kamikazes at the American fleet, and the observation has often been made that a kamikaze was essentially a guided missile.

gute

08-07-2010, 12:55 AM

Wow. There is so much wrong with that article I don't know where to begin.

Please do because the article make a lot of sense to me.

Entropy

08-07-2010, 02:55 AM

Please do because the article make a lot of sense to me.

Sure,

Beginning at the end, submarines? Assuming a submarine could be engineered to not only carry a naval air wing, but launch and recover aircraft in combat conditions, it would be just as vulnerable because it would have to operate on the surface - unless, of course, we plan on trying to make aircraft that can be launched and recovered underwater.

The solution is outlandish, but the threat isn't well argued either. The author spends many paragraphs in the "ships: expensive and manned" and "missiles: cheap and unmanned" sections telling us the obvious but not explaining how any of it constitutes a threat. Just because something is expensive - a "capital" asset and just because there is potentially a lot of relatively cheap ordnance that might be thrown at it does not mean that expensive capital asset is a dinosaur on the battlefield. After all, AAA and ground fire are historically the greatest threat to aircraft, but all that cheap ammo doesn't render aircraft useless.

The basic problem with the essay is that it assumes the weapon system will operate perfectly and the target is unable to do anything about it. Think of the tank example again. There are a million ways to kill a tank today yet tanks still have a lot of battlefield utility. Why is that? The same answers apply to ships.

Getting back to the essay, things get a little bit better with "satellites change everything" but the author makes a fundamental mistake when he says: "We can sit at our desks, type in an address, and have Google Earth show us the current view. It will be a simple matter to find the exact grid coordinates of any ship anywhere in the world, punch the data into a missile silo, and launch a barrage of missiles to the precise location of the ship or fleet." Well, no. If any of that were true, we'd have had that Somalia piracy problem wrapped up long ago. You can do that for immobile targets, but that's not possible with moving targets even assuming Google Earth can show us real-time simultaneous satellite imagery of the globe, which isn't currently possible.

Then there is what is sometimes called the "sensor-to-shooter" problem. There is always a time-lag between acquiring adequate targeting data and weapon launch, not to mention weapon time-of-flight. These time lags can be significant and reducing them is a goal the DoD has thrown a lot of money at. Each second that passes reduces the quality of that data for moving targets. If too much time passes then the weapon will miss. While we work to reduce that time for us in order to more effectively employ our weapons, we also work to increase it for our enemies through a variety of means.

The section on countermeasures is completely wrong. First of all, our response is not limited to what the author lists - a ship's last line of defense. Again the assumption is that we can do nothing but sit there and shoot at incoming missiles until those defenses run out of ammunition. In reality, we have many more opportunities to prevent those last-ditch defenses from even being necessary. What actions we could take depend on the particular threat, but we'd be doing several things simultaneously to mitigate the threat. Here are a handful possibilities listed in no particular order:

- attack the launch platforms
- attack the command-and-control system
- attack whatever sensor network collects and processes targeting information.
- Be tactically proficient (ie., use range, weather, deception, EMCON, etc. to our advantage)

Obviously every threat is different, but the point is that we wouldn't simply sit there and put ourselves into a simplistic situation where whoever has the most missiles wins.

Now, a lot of this is coming about because the Chinese are turning some of their older road-mobile medium-range ballistic missiles into conventional anti-ship ballistic missiles. These are called the DF-21D if you want to do some research. Here's a primer (http://forden.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/2819/df-21-delta-some-early-thoughts) on some of the challenges of employing ballistic missiles against a ship. Suffice it to say the technical challenges of simply guiding the warhead after the missile is launched are significant even without the problem of collecting timely, precise and accurate targeting information. Let's assume the Chinese make the system work. That does not make a surface Navy obsolete because, again, like any weapon system, we can adapt our tactics and attack the system's vulnerabilities through a variety of measures.

Anyway, I hope that's clear. I have a tendency to ramble. The long and short of it is that any contest between a ship, tank or whatever and a threat is NOT determined by a simplistic rock-paper-scissors calculus.

Fuchs

08-07-2010, 09:26 AM

I wouldn't count on attacks against C4 or launchers. That's going to be hopeless.

gute

08-07-2010, 03:30 PM

Sure,

Beginning at the end, submarines? Assuming a submarine could be engineered to not only carry a naval air wing, but launch and recover aircraft in combat conditions, it would be just as vulnerable because it would have to operate on the surface - unless, of course, we plan on trying to make aircraft that can be launched and recovered underwater.

The solution is outlandish, but the threat isn't well argued either. The author spends many paragraphs in the "ships: expensive and manned" and "missiles: cheap and unmanned" sections telling us the obvious but not explaining how any of it constitutes a threat. Just because something is expensive - a "capital" asset and just because there is potentially a lot of relatively cheap ordnance that might be thrown at it does not mean that expensive capital asset is a dinosaur on the battlefield. After all, AAA and ground fire are historically the greatest threat to aircraft, but all that cheap ammo doesn't render aircraft useless.

The basic problem with the essay is that it assumes the weapon system will operate perfectly and the target is unable to do anything about it. Think of the tank example again. There are a million ways to kill a tank today yet tanks still have a lot of battlefield utility. Why is that? The same answers apply to ships.

Getting back to the essay, things get a little bit better with "satellites change everything" but the author makes a fundamental mistake when he says: "We can sit at our desks, type in an address, and have Google Earth show us the current view. It will be a simple matter to find the exact grid coordinates of any ship anywhere in the world, punch the data into a missile silo, and launch a barrage of missiles to the precise location of the ship or fleet." Well, no. If any of that were true, we'd have had that Somalia piracy problem wrapped up long ago. You can do that for immobile targets, but that's not possible with moving targets even assuming Google Earth can show us real-time simultaneous satellite imagery of the globe, which isn't currently possible.

Then there is what is sometimes called the "sensor-to-shooter" problem. There is always a time-lag between acquiring adequate targeting data and weapon launch, not to mention weapon time-of-flight. These time lags can be significant and reducing them is a goal the DoD has thrown a lot of money at. Each second that passes reduces the quality of that data for moving targets. If too much time passes then the weapon will miss. While we work to reduce that time for us in order to more effectively employ our weapons, we also work to increase it for our enemies through a variety of means.

The section on countermeasures is completely wrong. First of all, our response is not limited to what the author lists - a ship's last line of defense. Again the assumption is that we can do nothing but sit there and shoot at incoming missiles until those defenses run out of ammunition. In reality, we have many more opportunities to prevent those last-ditch defenses from even being necessary. What actions we could take depend on the particular threat, but we'd be doing several things simultaneously to mitigate the threat. Here are a handful possibilities listed in no particular order:

- attack the launch platforms
- attack the command-and-control system
- attack whatever sensor network collects and processes targeting information.
- Be tactically proficient (ie., use range, weather, deception, EMCON, etc. to our advantage)

Obviously every threat is different, but the point is that we wouldn't simply sit there and put ourselves into a simplistic situation where whoever has the most missiles wins.

Now, a lot of this is coming about because the Chinese are turning some of their older road-mobile medium-range ballistic missiles into conventional anti-ship ballistic missiles. These are called the DF-21D if you want to do some research. Here's a primer (http://forden.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/2819/df-21-delta-some-early-thoughts) on some of the challenges of employing ballistic missiles against a ship. Suffice it to say the technical challenges of simply guiding the warhead after the missile is launched are significant even without the problem of collecting timely, precise and accurate targeting information. Let's assume the Chinese make the system work. That does not make a surface Navy obsolete because, again, like any weapon system, we can adapt our tactics and attack the system's vulnerabilities through a variety of measures.

Anyway, I hope that's clear. I have a tendency to ramble. The long and short of it is that any contest between a ship, tank or whatever and a threat is NOT determined by a simplistic rock-paper-scissors calculus.

Well put. Thanks.

Entropy

08-07-2010, 03:33 PM

I wouldn't count on attacks against C4 or launchers. That's going to be hopeless.

Launchers would definitely be difficult since the DF-21 is a road-mobile missile.

Well put. Thanks.

No problem!

slapout9

08-07-2010, 05:09 PM

IMO aircraft carriers are not just vulnerable but they are super vulnerable, the bigger they are the more vulnerable. Our present and future enemies understand EBO in a way we seem to struggle with. They understand targeting a system only requires you to destroy the systems ability to accomplish it's purpose. If you can do that it doesn't matter if you destroy the whole system. If you can damage an aircraft carrier in such a way that it cannot launch or recover aircraft you essentially have a billion dollar floating hotel for sailors. What good is an aircraft carrier if it has two great big holes in the flight deck? Guided missiles are ideal for that and as has been pointed out they are cheap.

Counter missile strategies are a lot like good economic strategies.... DON"T do big concentrated systems, you need many smaller and dispersed systems to insure your survival. The answer,about like everything else, in the modern world was figured out in the late 50's and early 60's, but we have forgotten that. The Interstate highway system was part of the countermeasure to this guided missile strategy and most folks don't even know that, in fact it was actually called the Strategic Interstate Highway system when it first conceived. It was not just meant to allow people to drive from one coast to the other but to also disperse ALL our major industries all across america.....and also to connect the atomic power plants to provide a total electric economy that could in theory survive an atomic attack.....but I digress:D

Entropy

08-07-2010, 07:03 PM

How vulnerable are carriers compared to the alternative - fixed land-based airfields? Carriers can stay outside of the range of most missiles and even sensor coverage and still conduct offensive operations. Mobility and the open sea count for a lot IMO. The greatest threat to carriers, therefore, are submarines.

pvebber

08-11-2010, 07:38 PM

The arguments that the targeting problem is "too hard" to be effectively solved ring hollow when viewed through the lens of the full anti-acess area denial suite that a country can buy these days (see
http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/R.20100219.Why_AirSea_Battle/R.20100219.Why_AirSea_Battle.pdf and
http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/R.20100518.Air_Sea_Battle__A_/R.20100518.Air_Sea_Battle__A_.pdf for the best open source discussion out there).

One has to keep in mind that it is hardley flawless, however!

The crux of the problem is in assesing the "magazine war" - how many cruise and ballistic missiles can a near peer accumulate compared to the relatively static number of VLS cells in a CSG. The "ship's a fool who fights a fort" adage gets played out by sheer numbers, even if large numbers of missiles are lobbed no where near the CSG. The Shooter can be wrong many times. The target dies if its wrong once.

Tiered ISR systems from space on down, coupled with misiles with hundreds (or thousands) of miles of range dramatically limits the complexity and time required to execute the "sensor to shooter" loop - one which typically is dominated by politcal decision-making, not technology. The ability to pick a random time and say "I want to sink the CSG now!" is not realistic, but if one says "inform me of the next opportunity to attack, and be ready to executue it" the wait will likely be hours to days, not days to weeks.

Historically, (oversimplifying at bit but I think the following cycles are fairly illustrative) we have seen several periods of ascendency of the offense. followed by defense at sea. Defense was acesndent in the WWI era leading to inconclusive clashes, the poster child being Jutland. WWII saw the airplane put the BB at severe risk, leading to the abandonment of armored defenses and a rise in the efficc of the SAM at sea. The early "T" SAM era (Tartar, Terrier and Talos) made aircraft attacks highly risky,leading to the rise of high speed diving cruise missiles, from Backfire regiments and the likes of Oscar SSGN and Slave CGs. The Aegis system was developed to counter this threat and its success is eveident by a shift from high-speed diving cruise missiles to sea skimming varieties to reduce the number of opportunites to attack. Cooperative Engagement Capability addressed this issue and now the rise of high-speed sea skimmers and anti-ship ballisitc missiles is turning the tables yet again.

The current CSG (Carrier Strike Group) is, in the parlance of Capt Wayne Highes (Fleet Tactics author) "tactically unstable" meaning that too much combat power is tied up in too few platforms to fight effectively. When you couple that with entering a period of "offensive ascendency" you have a very unstable and risky "Fleet design". I recommed reading Bradley Fiskes The Navy as a Fighting Machine. to get some insight. The problem is that the "machine" is coming up against the stops of response time and command and control, with the sheer volume of attacking missiles and paltry few seconds to deal with them ushering in a new era of offensive superiority.

Our soultion to the tactical instability of the CSG is to invest in High Energy weapons with the hopes that they offer a solution to the magazine and speed of engagement issues that are rapidly backing defenses in o a "one shot-one kill" requirement. historically speaking, the tables WILL get turned again, the question is when, by what means?

When the Machine gun and high volume artillery broke the paradigm of concentrated waves of men in the attack on land, the vulnerability to overwhelming firepoer was to disperse, and fight a scouting/anti-scounting battle before general offensives. For the navy, the current entery into a period of firepower being able to overwhelm defenses will not lead to the death of the surface ship, just as machine guns and artillery did not obsolete infantry. It did cause it disperse - and that is one way the navy can address the problem. It is the tactically undstable CSG that is in danger of being rendered obsolete. Even high energy lasers still have an engagement time that limits the number of engagements they can undertake. It only takes N+1 to ruin a ships day.

Surface ships, like infantry may be requred to enter a period of becoming smaller, more numerous, and more tactically agile - exploiting littorals and sea lanes. IT may also mean that submarines will need to dramatically increase their "tooth to tail" ratio. A 2B$ Virginia class SSN that only carries 12 tomahawks and is otherwise totally oriented to ASW may require rethinking along the lines of the 150+ weapon capacity of the Ohio SSGN.

Currently the Navy is crusing along happily, certain of its plan to move to high energy laser defensive weapons to at least return defense to parity. The prpoblem is that this ignores the tactical instability problem that has crept in as frigates have left CSGs and LCS's are eyed for lots of non-CSG type tasking.

The scenario of the lost naval war in the excellent link above will not occur because of lack of technology, but by cultural attachment to a "Fighting Machine" that is already overly long in the tooth.

Cliff

08-12-2010, 02:35 AM

Our soultion to the tactical instability of the CSG is to invest in High Energy weapons with the hopes that they offer a solution to the magazine and speed of engagement issues that are rapidly backing defenses in o a "one shot-one kill" requirement. historically speaking, the tables WILL get turned again, the question is when, by what means?

Currently the Navy is crusing along happily, certain of its plan to move to high energy laser defensive weapons to at least return defense to parity. The prpoblem is that this ignores the tactical instability problem that has crept in as frigates have left CSGs and LCS's are eyed for lots of non-CSG type tasking.

pvebber-

I agree, lasers are probably the best answer to this problem. While there are issues with their ability to operate continuously, they will still far exceed the current VLS' magazine capacity. I think the real issue will be how many lasers can you get in the CSG.

Another option is to make the ships "stealthier", though I doubt you can really get there with a CVN size ship.

Another option for dispersed ops as you say is to take a page from the UK in the Falklands War, and put a VSTOL F-35 on small deck ships that can get closer to the action before launching without getting hit. You possibly could make these ships stealthy, or just cheap enough to have a lot. You could retain the CVN as the landing platform, just further to the rear.

I imagine that even with a lot of missiles any adversary will run out of them after a day or two- then it's back to standard ops.

V/R,

Cliff

Kiwigrunt

08-12-2010, 06:14 AM

The current CSG (Carrier Strike Group) is, in the parlance of Capt Wayne Highes (Fleet Tactics author) "tactically unstable" meaning that too much combat power is tied up in too few platforms to fight effectively. When you couple that with entering a period of "offensive ascendency" you have a very unstable and risky "Fleet design". I recommed reading Bradley Fiskes The Navy as a Fighting Machine. to get some insight. The problem is that the "machine" is coming up against the stops of response time and command and control, with the sheer volume of attacking missiles and paltry few seconds to deal with them ushering in a new era of offensive superiority.

That is why I question the wisdom of the UK with their two new 65000t carriers. I would have thought that 3 or 4 smaller ones would make more sense. Also with regards to round the clock availability. This last point is seen as a weakness here in NZ where we only have 2 frigates. One has been in Auckland for a while now for a bit of a facial. That leaves just one in the game.

Some interesting points from this article: http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/cvf/

A number of protective measures such as side armour and armoured bulkheads proposed by industrial bid teams have been deleted from the design in order to comply with cost limitations.

The carrier might be built for but not with the installation of a close in weapons system. Another systems which could be fitted if budget were made available would be two 16-cell vertical launchers for the Aster missiles.

Also, the complement of aircraft seems a bit disappointing at 40, for a ship that is two thirds the size of a US carrier. I assume the reduction in aircraft relative to the reduction in displacement is not a linear equation. And that may well be the answer to my above mentioned concern.

davidbfpo

08-12-2010, 06:50 AM

A side issue this and in response to Kiwi Grunt's comment:
That is why I question the wisdom of the UK with their two new 65000t carriers.

You are not the only person. My understanding is that if the carriers are finished they will have no aircraft in service to carry, so they may end up as helicopter carriers. I do not follow the RN closely, but I have seen no comments on a "fix". Whether they survive the cuts is a moot point, although the ships are being built by our premier "arms baron" (a plc) and in places with a political impact.

Alfred_the_Great

08-12-2010, 02:11 PM

Because air is free and steel is cheap.

Below a critical size, Carrier Operations cease to truly useful when considering multi-role packages. The current CVS are below that size, with limited hangar space and an inability to use all of it's spots whilst conducting fixed wing operations.

The QE class is massively too big for the current outfit of a/c (F35?!), however it costs peanuts to build a big ship now instead of building a slightly too small ship and trying to expand it later on (cf the French Aircraft Carrier Charles de Gaulle's extension!). Generations of Naval Architecture will attest to this, the Type 42 Destroyer or ANZAC frigate have limited space to take on new missions; the Type 45 or Absalon Class have enough space to cope with upgrades we can't predict yet.

Whilst the CV BG may be asset rich, anyone who takes on a near-peer competitor solely using them deserves to get their arse kicked. That's what B2 a/c, cruise missiles and SOF are for - to attrit the enemy before you get within his range.

Entropy

08-12-2010, 02:29 PM

The arguments that the targeting problem is "too hard" to be effectively solved ring hollow when viewed through the lens of the full anti-acess area denial suite that a country can buy these days

My whole point in this is that comparing what a country could potentially buy and how that stuff potentially compares going toe-to-toe with our stuff is completely insufficient. For one, it completely removes the human factor. Secondly, if we find ourselves fighting a "magazine war" against anyone except maybe the Chinese in 20 years, then we've done something horribly wrong or were caught with our pants down. That's the biggest problem I see with analysis like Krepinevich's.

This isn't to suggest the Navy doesn't need to change. The Navy's over-reliance on missiles is a problem that should be addressed. I also think the SSGN's are a good start and the CSG probably needs to be reconfigured. More than that, though, the Navy needs to get out of its current "dominance" mindset. It needs to relearn some ASW, EMCON, deception and other skills that I believe atrophied during this brief period of complete naval dominance which I believe has made us lazy.

We also have to be cognizant of our limitations. The notion that we have the money to recreate and sustain a force to allow us to maintain that dominance over the Chinese in their littoral is a fantasy IMO.

Steve Blair

08-12-2010, 02:48 PM

I'm sorry, but in terms of flexible deployment of airpower I really don't see a substitute for a carrier. Land-based aircraft are too short-legged, and a competent adversary would have an easier time knocking down a tanker (no refueling, no long legs) or AWACS (no eyes, no targets) than it would hitting a CVBG. Carriers also don't face as many overflight restrictions as land-based forces do, and Entropy is spot-on when it comes to airfields. Does the Navy need to refocus as Entropy suggests? I'd say so. But suggesting that a B-2 is somehow a substitute for a carrier is missing the point. I seem to recall an AF bid in the late 1980s or early 1990s to equate an E-3A to a carrier air wing in terms of deterrent capabilities. One would assume that the failure of the comparison was obvious, but such things continue to surface.

Lasers and such may be cute in the future, but do you scrap an entire system based on a possible future threat? And cruise missiles are reputed to be nowhere near as accurate as their PR claims...and even if they are, there's a lag between target identification, approval, setting target coordinates, and launch that a mobile enemy can easily exploit.

Carriers are just too useful for too many things.

slapout9

08-12-2010, 02:58 PM

Latest Air and Space Journal Article on Missile Defense.

http://www.au.af.mil/au/cadre/aspj/airchronicles/apj/apj10/sum10/09corbett-zarchan.html

pvebber

08-12-2010, 08:46 PM

The article is an excellent one, and the ability to employ an anti-ballistic missile weapon from an aircraft (manned or unmanned) provides some degree of additional protection. For a CSG, it still only adds marginally to the number of weapons that can be brought to bear in a given TBM/ASCM (anti-ship cruise missile) attack, because of the limited number of aircraft that can be kept on CAP 24/7. Getting out a very dull pencil and back of an envelope one can figure:

A typical US carrier has 4-5 squadrons of fighters, depending on the number requiring maintainence this is between say, 42 and 56 aircraft. If you assume 80-90 min deck cycle times and double-cycling of CAP in "peacetime steaming" you get 8-9 double cycles a day. On cycle to off cycle ratios are typically between 2 and 4 to one so this gives you between 8 and 18 CAP aircraft airborne at any given time (at best 56/3, at worst 42/5).

This is not a lot of aircraft to provide stand off protection against both air and surface threats. If we take 16 CAP say, you, might see 2 tankers, 2 armed for anti-surface, 6 armed for anti air, and 6 with a flex-load. Adding an ABM load out makes for some difficult choices. The above 16 planes would have a hard time carying more than 60 long range AAMs. How many of these do you give up for ABMs? Half? That is a big bet on not facing an inbound air-brether threat.

With a time of flight typically less than 20 minutes you will be hard pressed to get than 4 "ready" aircraft (with say 24 more ABMs) up and in position to take a shot. So its difficult to see much more than ~50-60 air launched ABMs in position to contribute to CSG defense, unless the enemy does you the unlikely favor of ONLY attacking with TBMs, and letting you know that ahead of time. That easily could represent 2 ABM escorts ships worth, so it is a SIGNIFICANT increase in flexibility, could be as much as doubling (more?) your ready ABM inventory, but not a real game-changer.

An adversary looking to the old "dual-threat" of dive-bombers and torpedo bombers, and the tough decisions allocating high and low CAP defenders in WW2, sees the current CSG has a similar tough time against a coordinated raid of TBMS and ASCMS, its robbing Peter to pay Paul. The additin of more ABM capable misssiles provides greater CAPABILITY flexibility, but not a significant overall increase in CAPACITY.

Four escorts (typically a CG and 3 DDGs) have a bit over 400 VLS cells. Vertical launch ASW rockets, Tomahawks, and "quadpac" self-defence SAMs will take up about 35-55%. That leaves you 180-260 for SAMs of various flavors. Adding ~50-60 additional ABMs DEFINATELY helps hedging your bets, but does not solve the fundamental problem of magazine limited defense. At best its a 33% increase in capacity. Given the typical "shoot, shoot, look, shoot" weapon allocation doctrine, some fraction just over 2 SAMs will be expended for each defending misiles and the leaker rate becomes HIGHLY dependant on Pk.

A 0.95 Pk ABM with 2 missiles expended per target gives you saturation (when the probability of a leaker goes over 50%) at a raid size of over 275 (VERY VERY difficult to pull off for all the difficulties of commad and control discussed by other contributors), but given the typical load out, the CSG would run out of ammo with a LOT of missiles left. If you lower Pk to 0.9 it drops to 70 (A VASTLY easier raid to coordinate than 275, but still no mean feat). This will likely expend all the ABMs you are likey to have at 2 for 1, leaving you unable to defend against a second such attack. For 0.85 it drops to 31. That one is hard to say "no - can't do it" to... The laws of probability catch up to you exponentially.

I will leave to your individual judgement the ability of such systems to reach the Pk requirements implied by those saturation rates.

slapout9

08-12-2010, 09:05 PM

A 0.95 Pk ABM with 2 missiles expended per target gives you saturation (when the probability of a leaker goes over 50%) at a raid size of over 275 (VERY VERY difficult to pull off for all the difficulties of commad and control discussed by other contributors), but given the typical load out, the CSG would run out of ammo with a LOT of missiles left. If you lower Pk to 0.9 it drops to 70 (A VASTLY easier raid to coordinate than 275, but still no mean feat). This will likely expend all the ABMs you are likey to have at 2 for 1, leaving you unable to defend against a second such attack. For 0.85 it drops to 31. That one is hard to say "no - can't do it" to... The laws of probability catch up to you exponentially.

I would say your pencil is pretty sharp, this goes all the way back to SAC theory, Five B-52 bombers(can't remember for sure) were assigned to one target or target area, that insured at least one would get through, or so the theory goes, now substitute missiles for bombers and the problem is pretty formidable. Which in my humble non-expert opinion the solution involves not just shooting them down but multiple cheap platforms to protect the CSG and land Marines to knock them off their firing postion and blow up any extra missiles.

Alfred_the_Great

08-12-2010, 10:13 PM

Forgive me for being, well, dumb, but if someone was targetting my shiny CVN, and they had the ability to track me, and send that information to the BM to enable terminal phase correction, I would a) destroy whatever is sensing me, and then, b) move my CVN. I understand that this problem is against a non-nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile - that has a relatively small CEP, and me moving 3 miles is likely to spoof it (and with a 1000 sec time of flight, I'd be moving more than 3 miles!). Add in zig-zag plans and the like, and well, I'm not sure that a ballistic missile would be able to do much.

A sea-skimming ACSM is a different kettle of fish (but does suffer from some of the same targetting problems), but my biggest worry would be mass swarm attacks from a determined adversary, willing to take massive casualties, using short range, EO guided weapons.

Steve Blair

08-12-2010, 10:19 PM

Interesting discussion, but I have yet to see anyone propose realistic ways to allow land-based aircraft to stand in for the carrier. What happens when (not if) an "ally" denies overflight rights? Or refuses to sanction US operations from their airfields? Or shuts down/declines to renew a base lease? And what happens when the same determined adversary is perfectly willing to devote massive effort to shooting down tankers and/or AWACs? Or someone hits a CONUS base that supports said HVAs? Land-based airpower is if anything more vulnerable than sea-based options because it is by nature static when it's not in use (you could also say that about a carrier in port, which is when I would contend that it's most vulnerable). F-22s might be stealthy, but the KC-10s and E-3s that support them certainly are not.

Entropy

08-12-2010, 11:08 PM

Pvebber,

Your calculus also assumes that all aircraft have the required modifications, there are enough pilots with the required training, a C2 system, etc. not to mention the existence of an actual weapon.

At this point, however, saturation rates are purely hypothetical. According to Janes, the Chinese only have about 100 operational DF-21's and, of those, only a handful are the C and D conventional mods and it appears they use a different, incompatible TEL. We don't know how many the Chinese intend to build (and for a salvo-launch scenario, the number of TEL's is the critical figure), but to get to 275 (or even 70) will require substantially more investment than we've seen to date. Whether the Chinese will make that kind of massive investment into what is essentially a one-trick pony is debatable, but at present I find it highly unlikely for a number of reasons.

Foremost is that it's not possible to distinguish between a conventional and strategic ballistic missile at launch. Some in the US have advocated for a similar capability (called "prompt global strike") but the problem with such weapons is their potential to trigger a nuclear war. Are the Chinese willing to launch a couple of hundred ballistic missiles to sink a single carrier and roll the dice that India or Russia (or even the US) won't misperceive that action as a nuclear attack? Given what I know of Chinese strategic theory and doctrine (which is admittedly quite limited) , I think the answer is "no." Regardless, the best defense against this weapon is probably to make it clear to the Chinese that mass ballistic missile launches risks just such a "misperception" resulting in nuclear retaliation.

Tukhachevskii

08-13-2010, 12:45 PM

A side issue this and in response to Kiwi Grunt's comment:

You are not the only person. My understanding is that if the carriers are finished they will have no aircraft in service to carry, so they may end up as helicopter carriers. I do not follow the RN closely, but I have seen no comments on a "fix". Whether they survive the cuts is a moot point, although the ships are being built by our premier "arms baron" (a plc) and in places with a political impact.

Plans are afoot to redisgned the deck to accomodate a CTOL or STOBAR version of the Typhoon if the Yanks keep preventing the technology transfer/sharing of the F35 (god forbid the silly idea, back in 2006?, of us buying French Rafales should ever get back on the table! Although its a nice plane to be sure)

pvebber

08-13-2010, 07:15 PM

Intersting comments.

As to a) destroy whatever is sensing me and b) move my CVN. Are you being sensed by over-the-horizon radar, spacecraft, a Merchant ship? There are number of ways to detect a Carrier that do not result in a causal arrow pointing at the perpetrator. You can't just "run away" because these missiles have guided warheads. The same reason you can't run away from a cruise missile.

The comment " I have yet to see anyone propose realistic ways to allow land-based aircraft to stand in for the carrier" points out a much broader problem. If your land bases are inside the footprint of the missiles, how do you operate short legged aircraft (at least shorter than the threatening missiles) from either one? The primary choices are to invest heavily in a new generation of affordable missile defense (High Energy, to get away from the magazine battle) or dispersal so the enemy has to divide his TBM arsenal into packets you can defend against to make a dent in your combat power.

The notion that a carrier is too useful to be declared obsolete is a testiment to the flexibility of the large deck CSG, but unfortunately usefulness does not beget survivability, and when the useful thing is not survivable in certain environments, all the usefullness in the world is to no avail.

The nature exactly how much vulnerability is "too much" is something that I simply wanted to demonstrate in broad brush strokes, that whether it requires 275 or 10 missiles, the vulnerability exists, and its simply a matter of investment calculus to exploit - not a technological hurdle. It may indeed be expensive, but China has the money to spend. For a well-documented analysis of Chinese moernization see:

http://project2049.net/documents/aerospace_trends_asia_pacific_region_stokes_easton .pdf

On the point of not being able to tell a conventional missile from a Nuke, that is a primary reason we have not developed conventional TBMs. The role we would employ such a missile in would be to attack the bases of an adversary's missiles inside thier boarders, where differentiating a nuclear from a conventional attack has dire implications. Shooting a missile out to sea is very different story. Yes, it might be a nuke, but given the capability of conventional ordnance there is little reason to escalate to that extent.

Also the same argument was made regarding cruise missiles (which can be nuclear armed just as easily as ballistic missiles) but we expect our adversaries to "just take our word for it" that we will not use nuclear cruise missiles without telling them first. For us to tell China that any use of TBMs would be assumed to be nuclear, would likely be met with a response to declare any use of cruise misles on our part to be met with a nuclear response. This is tantamount to going back to the old days when we assumed that we could deter any conventional military action with the threat to respond with nukes. That policy never worked because, as a Chinese diplomat recently quipped "you are unwilling to trade Los Angeles for Taipei". I would add "or a CSG".

So what do we do? Given that the current CSG will have freedom of action inside the Chinese missile envelope given the Chinese choose not to hold it at risk, what is it that the CSG provides that we cannot achieve through other menas? Carriers provide a sortie generation rate of about 100 sorties a day (with occasional surges to maybe twice that) out to say 500 miles from a location unencumbered by politics.

It is as big as it is becasue it carries everything it needs to be essentially self sufficient airbase for manned aircraft for about 6 months. The new Ford class CVN is the most efficient and effective platform to do that ever designed. But it is still limited to having to close within about 500 miles to achieve its effect. That means it is vulnerable. This can be addressed by decreasing its vulnerability (through dispersal or defenses) of by looking at ways to have it stand off at greater than 500nm. IF you integrate unmanned aircraft into the air wing, you can greatly extend the reach, you can extend it even more by utilizing "lillypad" rearm and refuelling platforms.

This is crux of my argument that it is the currently configured CSG that is "obsolete" but necessarily the CVN. It just needs a much different supporting cast to enable it to mitigate new vulnerabilities.

Alfred_the_Great

08-13-2010, 10:56 PM

In fact it's incredibly easy to run away from a cruise missile. You just need to get inside the sensor to shooter loop, and move enough, and bob is your uncle.

As for a "non-traditional" sensor; unless the En is willing to dis-regard attacking possible third parties, then there needs to be some kind of final confirmation that the blip on the radar is actually your CVN. A 150nm SAR radar picture is all well and good, except when the Carrier has defensive CAP up.

I'm not denying that there is a need to ensure that the CSG (and it's composition etc etc) is the right answer to what ever question we are asking, but I don't feel there is a paradigm shift being brought about by the DF21.

Fuchs

08-14-2010, 12:30 AM

All things seem simple in war, yet it's the simple things that go wrong all the time in war.

pvebber

08-14-2010, 03:35 AM

In reply to Alfred the Great's post
In fact it's incredibly easy to run away from a cruise missile.

So why has the Navy spent 10s of Billions on Aegis and SM-2s to shoot them down?

You just need to get inside the sensor to shooter loop, and move enough

How exactly do you do that for say, an over the horizon radar hard wired into teh missile aunch sites C2?

The sensor to shooter loop of an airstrike is a similar problem. Why isn't it 'incredibly easy' to avoid an air strike by "getting inside its sennsor to shooter loop"?

then there needs to be some kind of final confirmation that the blip on the radar is actually your CVN.

We are very cooperative in the way we operate our CSGs so it is well nigh impossible to confuse a strike group conducting flight ops with anything else on the ocean.

Just like tanks did not result in the blitzkrieg transformation, the DF21 is not itself responsible for transforming war at sea. But the combination of space-based, over the horizon, and non-military platform sensing, resiliant command networks, and supersonic cruise missiles and TBMs enable Carriers to be threatened at ranges well beyond their aircraft's ability to fight back.

Operating as they do now.

That does not mean that the addition of UCAVs and the integration off CV based aircraft with long endurance aircraft from distant shore bases don't have the ability to counter these new threats. The question is are we agile enough in our procurement to work out a response strategy quickly enough?

Bob's World

08-14-2010, 11:59 AM

Just as "amateurs argue tactics while professionals argue logistics" I would suggest considering the following twist on that logic:

"Amateurs argue programs and platforms while professionals argue policies."

A hard scrub of platforms and programs is at the heart of the QDR process, and is a massive game of inter-service head butting. But a hard scrub of just two or three outdated policies could sweep the table of dozens of programs and platforms across service lines in one stroke; and similarly create a new focus for those same services at the same time.

I was personally and professionally floored when I was politely told by the very smart, very nice DASD running a QDR group that I worked in that "we would work the programs first, and then get to policies later."

So, months of effort to debate and rack and stack programs and platforms based on old policies; then once that is done, create new policies, that will have to fit the military we have just built? I didn't get it then. I still don't get it. But I see the effects of it in both the QDR programmatic decisions and the post QDR policy positions that have been coming out.

slapout9

08-14-2010, 12:58 PM

"we would work the programs first, and then get to policies later."

Bob, I keep telling you we use the Invisible Hand Theory in everything we do not just economics. It's the American way:D

Alfred_the_Great

08-14-2010, 02:28 PM

In reply to Alfred the Great's post

So why has the Navy spent 10s of Billions on Aegis and SM-2s to shoot them down?

How exactly do you do that for say, an over the horizon radar hard wired into teh missile aunch sites C2?

The sensor to shooter loop of an airstrike is a similar problem. Why isn't it 'incredibly easy' to avoid an air strike by "getting inside its sennsor to shooter loop"?

We are very cooperative in the way we operate our CSGs so it is well nigh impossible to confuse a strike group conducting flight ops with anything else on the ocean.

Just like tanks did not result in the blitzkrieg transformation, the DF21 is not itself responsible for transforming war at sea. But the combination of space-based, over the horizon, and non-military platform sensing, resiliant command networks, and supersonic cruise missiles and TBMs enable Carriers to be threatened at ranges well beyond their aircraft's ability to fight back.

Operating as they do now.

That does not mean that the addition of UCAVs and the integration off CV based aircraft with long endurance aircraft from distant shore bases don't have the ability to counter these new threats. The question is are we agile enough in our procurement to work out a response strategy quickly enough?

AEGIS isn't against cruise missiles, it's against anti-ship missiles. A subtle difference, but an important one: cruise missiles tend to use inertial guidance and terrain following to locate their target, which may include GPS positions; anti-ship missiles will typically use an active radar seeker (at some point) in order to determine a contact that corresponds to the target type.

Given that a CVN will be doing in the order of 30kt during flight deck operations, then it will be upto 5 miles away from the original position at missile launch, making inertially guided weapons (without an ability to carry to terminal guidance within an area of say 10nm radius) useless.

Defence against ASM is nothing new, and lots of effort has gone into it (but I don't promise we'll shoot down everything that flies towards us). Defence against long range targetting is equally practiced (and has at least 2 NATO doctrine manuals associated with it). I can't comment on the USN's ability to maintain their readiness in accordance with doctrine, but the RN is consistently training (how well is a question for another day).

I also have my doubts that CVN ops in an area that may, or may not, be permissive will be exactly the same as peacetime ops. I suspect that hiding amongst merchant traffic, deceptive AIS etc etc may well be used.

As for the rest of it, it's all Naval Warfare; nothing can be guaranteed, but I don't think anyone, least of all the Chinese, are in the position to take advantage of it within the next 10 - 15 years. Your own sources are incredibly circumspect, with no positive statements and lots of hedging.

The argument of policy vs platform is instructive, would you care to outline which policies should/could/ought be scrapped? I know what I would propose for the UK, but don't really have a handle on the US internal politics. Moreover, isn't policy a Civilian function, into which sticking a Service Oar is loaded with problems?

slapout9

08-14-2010, 03:42 PM

The argument of policy vs platform is instructive, would you care to outline which policies should/could/ought be scrapped? I know what I would propose for the UK, but don't really have a handle on the US internal politics. Moreover, isn't policy a Civilian function, into which sticking a Service Oar is loaded with problems?

That is really the problem and I would say it doesn't matter. As Ken White would say we don't do Grand Strategy or Policy by design it is whatever administration in power says it is. It is almost impossible to have a rational policy discussion with a 2 party system because each party wants to and has to claim credit for better policies so they can win elections.

This creates a constant state of confusion for war planners. Which is why they usually stay out of policy recommendations and focus on platforms, which in their defense is about the best they can do. And if they focus on flexible platforms that could be of value to any administration regardless of whether they are liberal or conservative that is about the best that they can do.

Aircraft Carriers despite their vulnerabilities are flexible platforms which is why I doubt they will go away, nor will the Marine Amphibious assault capability for the same reason. So how do you survive a high threat envronment.....build a lot of them and disperse them to ensure that they can survive the initial and sustained missile attack until they can counter-attack and destroy the opposing sides platforms.

One of the early 60's jump jet carrier platforms was literally a single aircraft carrier....one jet per carrier and disperse over a wide area until it they able to concentrate at the landing site. The problem is solvable because it has already been solved.

Cole

08-14-2010, 10:52 PM

in terms of flexible deployment of airpower I really don't see a substitute for a carrier. Land-based aircraft are too short-legged, and a competent adversary would have an easier time knocking down a tanker (no refueling, no long legs) or AWACS (no eyes, no targets) than it would hitting a CVBG.With the risk of Chinese missiles landing on Guam, Japan, and Korea, agree it seems unlikely you would want to park multiple fighters and tankers there. But with a strong Pacific aerial refueling capability out of Alaska, Australia, Hawaii, and Diego Garcia couldn't you simply employ greater carrier and fighter stand-off farther from Taiwan making the search for and attack of carriers and parked fighters more difficult?

Given AirSea Battle and the tyranny of Pacific distances, you would think an aerial tanker with greater long distance legs while retaining substantial fuel off-loading capability should have a major advantage. Yet that isn't a weighted priority in the requirements and no advantage is offered for additional capacity unless an unlikely price threshold is reached. That would seem to support COL Jones observation that programs were considered prior to policies.

Also in support of COL Jones observation, wonder why the QDR did not support a new long range bomber given Pacific distances? Were budgetary and F-35 considerations superseding the missile threat? Or was there an unspoken reluctance to fund another manned bomber when unmanned or optionally-manned might do? Yet a recent GAO report indicates little current service willingness to substitute unmanned aircraft to fill the "fighter gap."

Carriers also don't face as many overflight restrictions as land-based forces do, and Entropy is spot-on when it comes to airfields.Pet theory time. Wouldn't a series of built-up island bases near the Tropic of Cancer (Midway, Wake, Northern Mariannas) effectively augment carriers in the Pacific? Wake Island for instance is already U.S. owned and 2/3rd of the way to Guam and would support aircraft heading toward Guam, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea while outside the range of more common Chinese missiles.

Agree that a threat exists to tankers so why not launch Navy/Marine F/A-18s and F-35 from these island bases to link up with and protect tankers and help them via buddy refueling of other aircraft. Couldn't these or other F/A-18E/F also carry anti-ballistic missiles to protect the island? Their AESA radars and AMRAAM would already support against cruise missiles and fighter-bomber attacks.

A pair of KC-X would fly from farther bases to refueling track/anchor locations near the islands where they would top off a pair of locally launching F/A-18E/F escorts to enable near-simultaneous refueling of 3-4 en route fighters. Navy F/A-18E/F already support hose and drogue buddy refueling and a small boom could be added to some F/A-18E/F to refuel USAF F-22, F-35A, and F-15E/F-16/A-10 as well.

Island-based catapults could be covered with concrete shelters to assure protected take-off. Use of underground shelters and elevators could protect aicraft parking. EW would jam Chinese GPS satellites. Land and nearby sea-based air defense systems would target inbound cruise missiles and ASBMs. Multi-spectral smoke generation could further obscure the island airfields during missile attacks to prevent IR and radar-targeting. Inertial nav would have a less accurate CEP given greater distances from launch location.

Stationing of Army and Marine forces and their equipment on such island bases could also be in position to protect the island from commandos and board JHSVs to transfer to forward theaters escorted by LCS. Troops could rotate to these islands from Hawaii, Alaska, Washington state and San Diego to preclude island fever.

Navy and Marine F/A-18E/F and F-35s could also rotate their from their east and west coast bases to further disperse squadrons not aboard docked carriers. That would place more Navy/Marine F/A-18E/F and F-35s closer to station even when carriers are not or are en route.

So with the couple of Navy experts on hand, couldn't the same sorts of systems protecting carriers also protect land bases located farther than Guam? You can't sink an island with torpedos or missiles/bombs, and ASBM "flechettes" or submunitions designed to damage a carrier deck would have more difficulty with hefty concrete shelters and runways that could be rapidly repaired. You can't protect a 10,000' runway but possibly could safeguard a concrete land-based catapult and hook line. And if/when those systems were being repaired, Harriers and F-35B could still function.

I'll add that loaded C-17s, airborne troops, and special ops C-130s also could launch from these island's regular runways...moved their when warnings and indications indicated a threat. If I was really bold, would suggest that CV-22 and MV-22 could centrally locate from these bases to link up with Special Ops and Marine amphibious ships that normally could carry only helicopters. Use the extra MV-22 range to reach the ships from afar to pick up other troops remaining not initially lifted by on board helicopters.

slapout9

08-15-2010, 03:21 PM

Pet theory time. Wouldn't a series of built-up island bases near the Tropic of Cancer (Midway, Wake, Northern Mariannas) effectively augment carriers in the Pacific? Wake Island for instance is already U.S. owned and 2/3rd of the way to Guam and would support aircraft heading toward Guam, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea while outside the range of more common Chinese missiles.

Stationing of Army and Marine forces and their equipment on such island bases could also be in position to protect the island from commandos and board JHSVs to transfer to forward theaters escorted by LCS. Troops could rotate to these islands from Hawaii, Alaska, Washington state and San Diego to preclude island fever.

I'll add that loaded C-17s, airborne troops, and special ops C-130s also could launch from these island's regular runways...moved their when warnings and indications indicated a threat. If I was really bold, would suggest that CV-22 and MV-22 could centrally locate from these bases to link up with Special Ops and Marine amphibious ships that normally could carry only helicopters. Use the extra MV-22 range to reach the ships from afar to pick up other troops remaining not initially lifted by on board helicopters.

Old theory but a good one, what you are talking about was the basis of the by Warden "The Air Campaign" and he talks a great deal about how Marine and Navy forces were used in WW2 to seize the Air Fields in order to be able to strike Japan, the flip side is it can also be used to defend against attacks to.

This is why most people don't understand what he (Warden) means when he talks about Air Power Strategies, there will be a lot of other forces involved in a good Air Power Startegy. But if you loose Air Superiorty(includes missiles)....you will likely loose the War.

pvebber

08-15-2010, 11:00 PM

"AEGIS isn't against cruise missiles, it's against anti-ship missiles."

Technically, most antiship missiles are ALSO cruise missiles, a cruise missile being one that has a jet engine rather than a rocket motor. I thought I was clear discussing 'ASCM's (anti-ship cruise missiles) when talking about defending aircraft carriers and brought up cruise missiles only in the context of the idea that firing a ballistic missile could be detered by thereat of a nuclear response, since you did not know if iit was nuclear or not. Such an argument would mean you could not use a tomahawk (or other nuclear-capable, cruise missile) near a nuclear power becasue it *might* have a nuke and *might* change course to attack them and there they would have to treat it like a nuclear attack.

"Given that a CVN will be doing in the order of 30kt during flight deck operations, then it will be upto 5 miles away from the original position at missile launch, making inertially guided weapons (without an ability to carry to terminal guidance within an area of say 10nm radius) useless. "

Previously Granted. We are not talking about purely ballistic missiles when talking about the DF-21 anti-ship varient. It is a ballistic missile that has the payload to carry 1 (or more) guided warheads. It is those warheads that cause all the problem for the Carrier, since the CV can't get out of their footprint, assuming they used a seeker with similar capability to ASCM seekers (which ships can't run out of the footprint of, when properly targeted).

"Defence against ASM is nothing new, and lots of effort has gone into it."

Yes, as I previuously argued, Aegis can be granted to have "solved" the high speed diving cruise missile problem of the 70s and 80s as evidenced by the fact nobody is producing them anymore. The ASM manufactuers realize that the way to combat AEGIS (and like systems) is by minimizing thee time it has to respond. By going as low as you can as fast as can, from as close as you can, you minimize the nimber and Pk of Aegis shots at your missiles. That is simple geometry. A Mach 2 missile takes ~30 seconds to get in from the horizon. That is an awfully short time to make a decision, designate a trget, deconflict with other ships and take the shot. That assumes verybody running around in "robocruiser" mode near a carrier conducting flight ops - a tough sell to the Air Boss. You better have Cooperative Engagement Capability annd a brandy new Hawkeye AEW bird up to attack beyond the horizon have a decent chance. If there are 20 or 30 incoming missiles, this puts even CEC in a royal hurt locker.

Defense against ASM's in general is nothing new. Defense against large salvoes of supersonic sea skimming missiles is. Combine that threat with ASBMs and you have a shift on the order of the one fromm attacking with guns, to attacking with planes. Without the right defenses, you are toast. And you better hope there is not a submarine around to lob a few torpedoes into the mix...

"Defence against long range targetting is equally practiced"

There is "long range targeting" practiced by opposing ships, and then there is national level targeting via "national technical means". We indeed do have good doctrine (and practice it) against an ennemy Surface Action Group trying to target you from over the horizon. That is a totally different problem from the one posed by the integration of over the horizon rader, space, and other stuff and you have a totally different problem that there is not much you can do to stop short of attacking either the adversaries territroy, or getting into a space fight that is highly escalatory as different countries have different interpretations of what consititutes "Strategic warning" capabilities.

"As for the rest of it, it's all Naval Warfare; nothing can be guaranteed, but I don't think anyone, least of all the Chinese, are in the position to take advantage of it within the next 10 - 15 years. Your own sources are incredibly circumspect, with no positive statements and lots of hedging."

Agreed in general. If you look back at the recent Chinnese rate of technical development, 5 years ago the notion of an anti-ship ballistic missile was roundly poo-pooed as barely even possible. Now its acknowledged they have demonstrated one. Add targeting that doees not rely on the survivability of naval platforms, and highly resilient communications networks, and you have a significant new threat.

My argument has not been that surface ships are today obsolete. Its that there is technology currently available that threatens the current U.S. CSG in ways that it currently has a very difficult time defending against. I'm not saying that any given country has fully exploited that capability, but at this point it is purely a matter of expense and effort to do so. The only response we have with our current CSG (and land bases as well) is a magazine arms race that we are on the more inefficient side of (baring a major breakthrough in high energy weapons).

When the enemy has the capability to place your capability to project airpower (from Carriers or landbases) becasue he has a weposn that outranges your aircraft, and requires several defensive weapons per target, you are on the inefficeint side of an arms race that we do not have the money to win.

On the policy side, why is it that we feel the only way to "keep China in its box" is to be able "dominate" China's back yard. IF the CHinese whhere selling SU-30s in large numbers to Cuba and sailing CSGs off our ports arguing that they consider it destabilizing for us to have the ability to deny access to say, the Carribean and the western Atkantic, would we just say "Sure China, we understand, we will just trust you to defend shipping in the Carribean." I don't think so.

If what we really want is to prevent China from a land grab, then all we need is the capability to similarly deny access - NOT to establish our own "dominance". Our policy is that we expect China to trust us to be the policeman on the beat in here backyard, becasue we don't trust them. They now have much of the capability they need, and simply demonstrate the will to build up the capacity.

We do not have teh money to maintain the Navy we have, let alone to buy the ships we say we want ((e.g. LCS is now 3 times more expensive than planned, yet there is no more money in the pot that is supposed to buy 55. Which means we can only afford to build 15 (a third minus some economy of scale loss), Even if we get 18 that is a drop in the bucket of what we need to execute a dispersal strategy (not to mention that LCS is not the right ship to do that anyway...).

The US 30 year shipbuilding plan is a travesty: http://www.militarytimes.com/static/projects/pages/2011shipbuilding.pdf
It assumes cost savings in programs that are TREMENDOUSLY over budget.

My warning is that even if you build all the ships we say we want, the eriting is already on the wall that they are nott the ships we are going to need in 5 or 10 years, let alone 25-30.

slapout9

08-15-2010, 11:10 PM

Link to 2008 presentation by Col. Warden on Long Range Strategy and why we have problems with it and what we might be able to do.

http://www.ndu.edu/inss/symposia/joint2008/papers/Panel%203_June%204_Warden-PPT.pdf

Cole

08-16-2010, 02:04 AM

If you look back at the recent Chinnese rate of technical development, 5 years ago the notion of an anti-ship ballistic missile was roundly poo-pooed as barely even possible. Now its acknowledged they have demonstrated one. Add targeting that doees not rely on the survivability of naval platforms, and highly resilient communications networks, and you have a significant new threat.

Guess when I see the Chinese having trouble backward engineering old tech Russian and Israeli fighters and not building any modern cars, etc., it is difficult to believe they have worked out all the bugs in the over-the-horizon radar, satellite sensors, sensors for the ASBM and C2 to orchestrate a massive salvo attack...any one of which when degraded would make for an ineffective attack.

And given that attacking one of our carriers with 5,000+ on board would be comparable to 9/11...certainly there would be expectation that attack of their mainland was about to follow...sans nukes of course.

Thought we had these 4 old nuke subs we now use for Tomahawks, lots of B-52 and B-2, JASSM-ER, and Vertical launch cells on all sorts of surface vessels that could carry our own future attack missiles.

Then there is the whole cut-off-their-oil, bomb their nodes (no commuter rails/no manufacturing), lost sales to Walmart, and lost bond value conundrum that makes both attack of Taiwan and our carriers hardly worth their resultant "gains."

So for every other threat out there, seems like a carrier battle group and our surface fleet is fully up to task. At least having island land bases would simulate having other carrier battle groups in an area when the CVN are sitting in port during a surprise attack of South Korea...and hopefully our ports are not targeted with 3 carriers parked there!

And if the Chinese did attack...they would run out of missiles and oil long before we ran out of resolve and 5th gen attack aircraft.

Heh Slapout, your supposed to help me push the EADS product that would be made partially in Alabama...;)

slapout9

08-16-2010, 03:21 AM

Heh Slapout, your supposed to help me push the EADS product that would be made partially in Alabama...;)

I know, we already won 2 competitions fair and square and they still want give us the contract.:mad:

Alfred_the_Great

08-16-2010, 12:27 PM

PV - I suspect we're approaching violent agreement re the ASM vs surface ship discussion. I hadn't hoisted in that the DF21 had MIRVs (for use of a better word!).

As for the rest of the China stuff, I'm going to pull the parochial card - frankly the RN would be next to useless in a half decent conflict in the South China Sea! I would worry about the $801 Bn of your national debt held by the Chinese before we start chucking missiles around!

pvebber

08-16-2010, 02:30 PM

"Link to 2008 presentation by Col. Warden on Long Range Strategy and why we have problems with it and what we might be able to do."

We have had "naval dominance" for so long that we have had the luxury of thinking that we did not have to pay attention to operational art.

The other implication of the "ascendency of offense" in naval operations is that the loss of dominance means that we are far more vulnerable to, and require to pay far more attention to our own operational art at sea.

"I would worry about the $801 Bn of your national debt held by the Chinese before we start chucking missiles around!"

Another reason why I find the CSBA solution of threatening the Chinese with massive conventional strikes if they decided to employ their area denial capability, while neglecting to consider anything the Chinese migh do outside the Western Pacific theater as naieve at best. AS COle points out, the escalation to a major war with China would be devastating to both sides (and the world economy) so using escalation as a means of intimidation is pretty much a dead -end against what would likley be a VERY measured creeping incrementalism of Chinese influence.

This will be interesting to watch play out ofver the next several years. It is the first test to the "Mare Nostrum" writ large the US Navy has enjoyed and whether we will bite at an arms race we are on the wrong side of, or recalibrate our policy to recognize that we need only have effective sea-denial capability of or own to inhibit a potential "Greater East-Asian Co-prosperity Sphere Redux". The elephant in the room is what our arms sales and previous CSG use imply about what CSGs do in the Western Pacific - provide a deterrent to Chinese military moves against Taiwan - something about as likely as a Chinese surprise attack against Pearl Harbor.

Remove the need for CSGs to defend Taiwan, and need for "dominance" can be greatly relaxed.

That still leaves a 30-year shipbuilding plan aimed at maintining a fleet desogned to fight the 80s Maritime Strategy of taking the maritime fight to the North Cape while maintaining dominance of North atlantic and GIUK gap. That is the fight the Aegis based CSG is desinged for.

That is not what the new Maritime Strategy calls for - though it can be pressed into service in sokme places to provide the "Credible combat power" part. We have yet to come to grips with the "mission-tailored, globally distributed" part.

Tukhachevskii

08-17-2010, 10:40 AM

Chinese ASBM development: Knowns and Unknowns (http://www.jamestown.org/uploads/media/cb_009_17.pdf), Jamestown Foundation, China Brief, Vol. 9, No. 13, 24th June, 2009

Yet how do Chinese experts envision the “kill chain”— the sequence of events that must occur for a missile to successfully engage and destroy or disable its target (e.g. an aircraft carrier)—beyond the five steps that they commonly list: 1) detection, 2) tracking, 3) penetration of target defences, 4) hitting a moving target, and 5) causing sufficient damage? A single broken link would render an attack incomplete, and hence ineffective. [...]

While locating an aircraft carrier has been likened to finding a needle in a haystack, this particular needle has a large radar cross section, emits radio waves, and is surrounded by airplanes. Active radar is the most likely ASBM sensor, since its signals can penetrate through clouds. Simply looking for the biggest reflection will tend to locate the largest ship as a target, and the largest ship will usually be an aircraft carrier (if the pre-launch targeting was good).[...]

How are sensors prioritized and coordinated? Which organization(s) control which sensors (e.g. OTH radar), and how are they used? Is there a risk of seams between services (e.g. Second Artillery, Navy, etc.)? What about problems with bureaucratic “stovepipes,” particularly during general wartime crisis management? How to overlap areas of “uncertainty” from different sensors, and thereby accomplish data/sensor fusion? How to accomplish bureaucratic “data fusion”—a task beyond even the most competent engineers? Finally, which authorities would need to be in the decision-making loop, and what are the time-to-launch implications?[...]

According to its handbook, the Second Artillery is thinking seriously about at least five ways to use ASBMs against U.S. CSGs, at least at the conceptual level:

• “Firepower harassment [strikes]” (huoli xirao) involve hitting carrier strike groups.

• “Frontal firepower deterrence” (qianfang huoli shezu) involves firing intimidation salvos in front of a carrier strike group “to serve as a warning.”

• “Flank firepower expulsion” (yice huoli qugan) combines interception of a carrier strike group by Chinese naval forces with intimidation salvos designed to direct it away from the areas where China feels most threatened.

• “Concentrated fire assault” (jihuo tuji) involves striking the enemy’s core carrier as with a ‘heavy hammer.’

• “Information assault” (xinxi gongji) entails attacking the carrier strike group’s command and control system electromagnetically to disable it.[...]

Still, this leaves critical questions unanswered concerning how the PLA might envision the basing location, number, employment, and strategic effects of any ASBMs:

• Base of operations. Where would the ASBMs themselves be based? What would be the expected range from the target?

• Nature of arsenal. What would be the relative size of the ASBM inventory? Size might have implications for operational possibilities and willingness to expend ASBMs in conflict.

• Concept of operations. It is one thing to call for ASBM capabilities, but how would they be realized in practice? What would an ASBM firing doctrine look like, and what would be the objective? Target destruction or mission kill (the equivalent of ‘slashing the tires’ on carrier aircraft)? What to shoot at, and when? Would the PLA fire on a carrier if it knew the planes were off of it? Would it rely on a first strike? Would the PLA plan to fire one ASBM, several, or a large salvo? If a salvo, then some combination of saturation (many shots in the same space, to overload missile defence), precision (firing many shots in a pattern to compensate for locating error on the target and to get the CSG in the seeker window of at least one of the missiles), or both? What type of warhead: unitary, EMP, or sub-munitions? How might salvo attacks, or multi-axis attack coordination, be envisioned? Do Chinese planners think that the Second Artillery could handle the mission by itself, or would it be part of a high-low, time-on-target attack with both ASBMs and cruise missiles?

• Concept of deterrence. Deterrence would seem to be a clear purpose of any ASBM development, but what does one have to show to deter? PLA doctrinal publications mention firing ‘warning shots’ in front of carriers—how does the Second Artillery think the United States would respond? How would the United States know it was a warning shot and not just a miss? What if the United States did know and called China’s bluff? Finally, from a technical perspective, how to actually fire a warning shot and miss by an intentional margin (versus having the seeker home in on the actual target)? [...]

From Chinese sources, it can be inferred that Chinese leaders seek not to attack the United States, but to deter it. They want to defend what they perceive to be their state’s core territorial interests and to ensure a stable environment for domestic economic development. If they develop an ASBM, they would likely hope that it could prevent U.S. projection of military power in ways that are inimical to China’s security interests, which appear to be expanding beyond the First Island Chain. Yet the strength of Chinese equities, combined with vital U.S. interests in East Asia, make ASBM development for this purpose a complex and risky proposition.

An interesting anecdote; I did my undergraduate studies with a Chinese chap whose father was an officer with the 2nd Artillery. He had a flag hanging in his room...it was that of Imperial Germany (WWI), he was also a member of the university shooting club, he didn’t take the course on nuclear strategy (run, at that time, by Prof. Lawrence Freedman), but he did, IIRC, take the course on technology and war.

Rex Brynen

08-17-2010, 03:48 PM

ArmsControlWonk has an excellent discussion by Geoff Forden on the technical challenges of hitting a CV with an ASBM (http://forden.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/2819/df-21-delta-some-early-thoughts).

Dayuhan

08-17-2010, 10:42 PM

A scenario involving full-scale war with China might have to be prepared for, on the grounds that preparation for everything imaginable is necessary. It should be recalled, though, that this is an exceedingly unlikely event. China is a trade-dependent status quo power with enormous domestic economic vulnerabilities and has little if any motive to rock the boat. China's economy is inextricably linked to the dollar and the US economy. Those paying attention will know that CIC is in the process of buying up very large interests in US Real Estate funds... hardly an incentive to war.

I'd guess that the most likely deployment of this missile is not against an aircraft carrier, but at a negotiating table: you sell thist to Taiwan, we sell that to Iran. In that sense, a powerful deterrent.

Tukhachevskii

08-18-2010, 10:57 AM

A scenario involving full-scale war with China might have to be prepared for, on the grounds that preparation for everything imaginable is necessary. It should be recalled, though, that this is an exceedingly unlikely event. China is a trade-dependent status quo power with enormous domestic economic vulnerabilities and has little if any motive to rock the boat. China's economy is inextricably linked to the dollar and the US economy. Those paying attention will know that CIC is in the process of buying up very large interests in US Real Estate funds... hardly an incentive to war.

Respectfully,

exactly the same arguments were made before the Great War/World War I, didn't stop them though, and it that time, the economic dependency of the European powers was greater than that of China (actually, the US is more dependat upon China than the other way around).

pvebber

08-18-2010, 02:09 PM

Some really great food for thought on this thread. Here are a couple more links I think might be illuminating:

Andrew Erickson, over at the Naval War College is one of the leading open source chinese language experts on the topic, his Blog:

http://www.andrewerickson.com/2010/08/china-testing-anti-ship-ballistic-missile-asbm/

And recent USNI Proceedings article:

http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2009-05/verge-game-changer

Countered by Capt Tangredi in:

http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2010-02/no-game-changer-china

this one is subscriber only, but echoes many of hte comments here critical of "sky is falling" diatribe (A shot I accept across my own bow, and think hard about...) about the end of naval warfare as we know it...

A broader exploration of carrier vulnerabilities beyond ASBMs:

http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2010-01/fortress-sea-carrier-invulnerability-myth

And from one of my favorite naval critics Prof. Milan Vego in:

http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2010-01/finding-our-balance-sea

And talking to getting beyond the CSG concept:

http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2010-07/answer-carrier-strike-group-now-what-was-question

Thanks againt to he contributors to this thread!

Dayuhan

08-19-2010, 01:20 AM

exactly the same arguments were made before the Great War/World War I, didn't stop them though

Actually the mercantilist/imperialist system prevailing at that time might almost have been specifically designed to produce a world war. In that environment a rising power such as China is today was effectively shut out of both markets and resource supplies, both of which were wrapped up in mercantile/colonial networks... they would have had to conquer to break into the big game. That's simply not the case now. Look at China's trade balance, why try to change the rules when you're winning the game?

actually, the US is more dependent upon China than the other way around

Popular myth, but still a myth.

Entropy

08-19-2010, 03:18 AM

Well, I've been gone for a week and there's too much to reply to at this point, but it's interesting this thread is really more about China than the viability of the aircraft carrier. To me, that says something. It's one thing to suggest that carriers are vulnerable in some hypothetical future war with China (however likely that may be), but it's quite another to assert the "end of the carrier" is nigh.

Dayuhan

08-19-2010, 03:37 AM

I suspect that in a full scale war between technologically advanced major powers just about everything proximate enough to be relevant will be to some extent vulnerable. The challenges are to avoid that sort of war and, in the event that this is not possible, to manage the vulnerabilities effectively. Vulnerable doesn't necessarily mean useless or irrelevant.

The possibility of such missiles being sold to potential antagonists elsewhere (Iran, basically) is as much a concern as an all-out war scenario, and as I said above I would expect the equipment to be deployed primarily as a bargaining chip in various negotiations.

It would be legitimate to say that this development means a carrier might have increased vulnerability in certain scenarios, but to jump from there to "the carrier is finished" is over the top. The vulnerability is not absolute and there are still many scenarios where this threat is not a factor.

Cliff

08-19-2010, 03:44 AM

A little late responding due to issues getting to the site... but I feel like I need to make a point or two.

Interesting discussion, but I have yet to see anyone propose realistic ways to allow land-based aircraft to stand in for the carrier. What happens when (not if) an "ally" denies overflight rights? Or refuses to sanction US operations from their airfields? Or shuts down/declines to renew a base lease?

I won't advocate that land-based air replace the carrier... more on that later.

As for your questions, you do the same thing we did when France denied overflight for El Dorado Canyon, or what we did in OEF early on... you fly your aircraft from wherever you can - in this case Midway/Guam/Diego Garcia. Then use AAR.

And what happens when the same determined adversary is perfectly willing to devote massive effort to shooting down tankers and/or AWACs?

How is this any different than using those same forces to hit a carrier? If the enemy is willing to be completely suicidal, you are going to take some losses. just ask the USN at the end of World War II against Japan...

One of the biggest threats to the carrier is still ASCMs fired by long range aviation. OBTW, if the E-2 is taken out, the ability to defend the CVBG is severely reduced.

Or someone hits a CONUS base that supports said HVAs? Land-based airpower is if anything more vulnerable than sea-based options because it is by nature static when it's not in use (you could also say that about a carrier in port, which is when I would contend that it's most vulnerable).

True, but it's not like this is a new problem... hence the hardened aircraft shelters, camoflauging, and extensive work at rapid air base repair. Also, land bases are also defended by both aircraft and Patriots. We worked this problem back in the 80s during the Cold War, and the USAF continues to exercise operating the airfield under severe attack.

F-22s might be stealthy, but the KC-10s and E-3s that support them certainly are not.

True, but again they are easier to defend... since they can run away at about 20 times the speed the carrier can. A portion of your air forces are always going to be dedicated to HVAA defense.

Allright, now to my real comments. You need land based air AND carrier aviation because they are reinforcing capabilities - with only one, you limit your options and make the enemy's job easier. With both, you complicate his problems severely.

Additionally, if we are talking about preventing the Chinese from taking over their immediate neighbors, large portions of the air wing's aircraft are going to be looking for ships and landing craft, not fighting the air war or taking the fight to the mainland.

Land based air is a huge help in air superiority, because as mentioned above, the Navy has to spend a lot of aircraft on other missions. Additionally, land based air is the only dedicated air superiority force left in the US military.

Finally, land based air is currently the only force that can penetrate the Chinese IADs and attack the mainland.

In the end, it is a team effort. Having the carrier means less tanker requirements (assuming it can get close enough to allow unrefueled missions) and high sortie rates. It doesn't allow you to penetrate an IADS as well, and it has some limitations based on the number of aircraft and the many missions they must accomplish. Land based air is more vulnerable, and requires more tankers, but also gives longer ranges and the ability to specialize to a greater degree. Both working together are the best solution. Neither, IMHO, is made obsolete by what is (thus far) a limited number of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.

That said, we need to start working this problem now. Not because anyone expects China to attack, but because our ability to deter Chinese action is what keeps every country in the Pacific (especially the ROK, Japan, Singapore) from getting in a full up arms race, or worse yet nuclear arms race, with China.

V/R,

Cliff

Fuchs

08-19-2010, 01:18 PM

Popular myth, but still a myth.

Both would crash badly in wartime, but during peacetime the U.S. IS more dependent on the PR China than the other way around although not as drastically as some people portray it (China finances only a small fraction of the U.S. federal deficit directly).

The rare earths problem is serious and the U.S.'s material standard of living would drop by several per cent if trade with China was cut.
China could redirect its industrial output more into its own consumption - as it did to some degree since the beginning of the economic crisis - and it would miss investment goods imports the most.

pvebber

08-19-2010, 03:30 PM

"You need land based air AND carrier aviation because they are reinforcing capabilities - with only one, you limit your options and make the enemy's job easier. With both, you complicate his problems severely."

This is a key part of the problem with the Carrier Strike Group as currently operated by the Navy - i.e. its a "force package" that can be sent anytime, anywhere to take the fight to the enmey (an outgrowth of the old Maritime Strategy to send them into the teeth of the Soviets's Northern Flank).

I think the crux of this thread so far is that, properly supported and with an integral role in a well thought out maritime campaign, CVs will be part of the U.S Fleet for the foreseeable future.

However, the current Carrier Strike Group (doctrinally a CVN, 5 escorts, a Sub and a Supply ship) and even a Carier Strike Force (three CSGs operatating together) is currently at severe risk operating "alone and unafraid" inside the area denial envelope of a country like China.

The combination of ultra-quiet submarines, long range SAMs on modern destroyers, the Klub missile family (now available in handy ISO container launch systems suitable for making Q-ships out of merchants), new long range torpedoes, and a decent inventory of 4th+ gen aircraft coordinated with satellite sensors and over the horizon radar, linked by a resilient C2 network, provide a substantial threat today.

The addition of ASBMs in the near future has the potential to increase that risk to the point of unacceptability, requiring CSGs, at the least to be well integrated with land-based air (see the em[pahsis on Air-Sea Battle concepts) or potentially reconceoved as a more distributed collection of more, smaller ships.

The involvemnt of discussing China leads from the fact that they are currently the only power with the capacity to threaten the CSG today (unless we are really dumb and do something like sail one into the Persian Gulf). The technical threat indeed needs to have a "likleyhood of use" piece attached to it, and those that argue that having a capability to destroy a CSG doesn't matter becasue doing so would cause an escalation dashing any beneifit such a strike miight have in the short term.

This is a valid line of argument, but addresses the question of "even if there is technology that might kill a carrier, who would have the balls to use it, in what circumstances, and at what cost". That is a much harder question to answer!

Entropy

08-19-2010, 08:26 PM

slapout9

08-19-2010, 11:12 PM

pvebber,

What do smaller ships buy you? The advantage of the US aircraft carrier is that it can carry a large number of aircraft and size influences stability in rough seas. Are you thinking something more along the lines of a modern equivalent to the WWII escort carrier?

I also don't see how retooling to more, smaller ships, mitigates the threat, especially in light of the downsides to a more numerous, small-ship fleet.

And again it's important to point out that the "book" technical specifications and capabilities for threat systems only provide part of the story.

Since I brought that up I'll take a shot at it until pvebber gets here. More and cheaper platforms presents a kind of reverse target overload to the attacker. Thats the whole idea behind missiles and why they are such a threat, they can be launched from very cheap platforms. That's why the Army wanted to base ICBM's on Semi-Trailers to be used on the Interstate Highway system (thats why it was called the Strategic Highway System to start)or construct a large Rail Road system out in the West over multiple States. The Air Force couldn't live with that so it never happened. But the same philosophy can be applied to Air,Sea or Land. Make a lot of Platforms that can Shoot,Move,and Communicate together and you increase your chance of deterrence and if that fails you increase your chance of survival. It was all figured out in the 1950's under IKE.

Dayuhan

08-20-2010, 12:11 AM

Both would crash badly in wartime, but during peacetime the U.S. IS more dependent on the PR China than the other way around although not as drastically as some people portray it (China finances only a small fraction of the U.S. federal deficit directly).

China's financing of the deficit is not the bogeyman it's made out to be, for a variety of reasons.

I do not at all agree that the US is more dependent on China than the other way around, especially in wartime. The Chinese are sitting on a social volcano of enormous proportions: the income disparities among regions and social classes are staggering and the information flow has irreversibly opened. The aspirations are there and rising and they have to be met. It's as if they have the capitalist genie half out of the bottle. It won't go in and it remains to be seen whether they can get it all the way out.

The Chinese can keep this situation stable as long as they keep generating massive growth, allowing the industrial coast to absorb money-hungry migrants and maintaining at least the belief that material aspiration can be satisfied. The US can survive a major recession, as we've seen. There is a great deal of doubt as to whether the current Chinese government could. It's likely that a significant economic crisis would generate social upheaval on a scale that would make Tiananmen look like a mosquito bite. The threat to China's rulers is internal, not external, and they know it.

The Chinese economy is trade-dependent; the domestic economy can't absorb more than a fraction of the output. China suffered less than some expected in the recession because they sell highly cost-competitive goods that hold up well in times of reduced consumption, but trade sanctions in the event of conflict could hurt them enormously.

In the event of war there would be no need to move US vessels close to China: outbound goods and inbound resources could be apprehended at a distance. Modern version of the old fashioned siege; the Chinese are a long way from being able to project power far enough over the horizon to prevent it.

In any event the Chinese have no incentive whatsoever to fight the Americans or anyone else: the current order is quite conducive to their interests. The danger, of course, is that the recession that China will someday experience will generate major political instability and produce a reactionary and aggressive government. Not imminent, but not unimaginable.

pvebber

08-20-2010, 06:07 PM

"What do smaller ships buy you? The advantage of the US aircraft carrier is that it can carry a large number of aircraft and size influences stability in rough seas. Are you thinking something more along the lines of a modern equivalent to the WWII escort carrier?

I also don't see how retooling to more, smaller ships, mitigates the threat, especially in light of the downsides to a more numerous, small-ship fleet."

You are thinking about hte problem from the point of view of WWII carrier operations.

There is still a role for CVNs, just not 11 of them. If i were King i would have 4 on the west coast (1 forward deployed and 3 in Pearl/San Diego, and 2 on the east coast (with the UK CV in the mix to have a forward presence of 1).
Maybe a 7th in reserve in case you lose 1. A CSG still has the aircraft and defenses to take on 80+% of the worlds air forces. That is an important capability. I submit that the CSG is not hte thing you want to send in at the pointy end of the spear anymore to poke around a hornets nest. ASBMs aside, just the ASCM and deisel sub threat can be daunting.

SO how do you address the problem of overwhelming firepoewer against a concentrated defense. Spread out and make the enemy attack everywhere. I made a couple diagrams to show this. If you get away from having to take your full up air base (CVN) inot harms way, why not steal a page from the old Air Land Battle, where tstretches of Autobahn were going to used as improvised air strips. Create a CVA 9not in the WWII sense, but in the sense of "mobile austere air field ofr rearm and refeuling" surge aircraft to the CVN from land bases, keeping hte CVN well back, and send the aircraft forward to cheap things like the "containership airstrip" or High speeed vessel alternatives like:

http://www.hydrolance.net/naval.htm

(OK, a bit "out there" admittedly..)

but Sea archer has a pretty strong design argument:

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA422411&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

Integrate with the Air Force to leverage more than just land-base tanking, and look at the ability of long-range land-based aircrat to provide stand-off weapons, as well as fuel. Develop a version of LCS into a modlar Frigate that can provide long range SAM magazine, decoy and deception. use a mix of manned and unmanned aircraft (<than 3-1 umanned to manned) and use unamnned in particular as your forward ISR screen in conjunction with modular payload subs that can carry strike , SAM, and anti-ship weapons.

An architecture like this case, in the top diagram you have 10 platforms inside the acees denial envelop, spread out (its just a cartoon so the scale is a bit skewed...) The threat now has an access denial problem sorting this picture out, and if he just attacks all ten, well that dilutes the defenseive problem by a factor of 10. 80 missiles is likely to give a full up CSG fits, 10 attacks by 8 missles is a much more tractable problem.

The CVN alone and unafraid in the lower diagram, is a sore thumb standing out looking to get whacked, and is limited in its ability to distriubute its sorties to its own defense and to project more than about 500 miles out.

The distributed system of CVAs can spread out, concetrate, feint, etc. THe CSG basically sits there drilling holes in the water until the bad hgguy cries "uncle" or until it has to go off task for major aircraft maintence. The distribued concept and keep "juggling balls" sending aircraft back to land bases and allowing new aircraft to be added into the cycle.

So its not a question of "building a different carrier" its about looking at a whole different way to think about "airfields at sea" and what those mobile airfields really do for you. Leveraging those things with what land-based air gives you and working out a comporehensive power projection system rather that is agile, responsive, and which does not lose a high precentage of its capability when you lose a platform. Lose one of thoe CSG escorts and your house of cards starts to fall quickly. Lose a CVa or a couple frigates, and you still have 3/4 of your combat power. That is where we need to move, not just because of ASBMs, but because it is stupid not to and keep beat our selves up doing 1940s ops until 2040.

Cliff

08-20-2010, 08:26 PM

China's financing of the deficit is not the bogeyman it's made out to be, for a variety of reasons.

I do not at all agree that the US is more dependent on China than the other way around, especially in wartime. The Chinese are sitting on a social volcano of enormous proportions: the income disparities among regions and social classes are staggering and the information flow has irreversibly opened. The aspirations are there and rising and they have to be met. It's as if they have the capitalist genie half out of the bottle. It won't go in and it remains to be seen whether they can get it all the way out.
....
In any event the Chinese have no incentive whatsoever to fight the Americans or anyone else: the current order is quite conducive to their interests. The danger, of course, is that the recession that China will someday experience will generate major political instability and produce a reactionary and aggressive government. Not imminent, but not unimaginable.

Dayuhan-

I agree - it is unlikely that China will attack. BUt the very social instability you refer to could end up being the cause. If the economy goes downhill, and social unrest rises, the PLA could end up blaming it on capitalism/the West and use that as rationale to attack. It's a classic tactic of repressive governments to focus on external enemies to distract the public from internal problems.

V/R,

Cliff