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.
Supporting "time-limited, scope limited military actions" for 20 years.
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/4Publicati...Sea_Battle.pdf and
http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publicati...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.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful"
-George E.P. Box
Carrier Vulnerability Solutions
pvebber-Originally Posted by 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
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.
Nothing that results in human progress is achieved with unanimous consent. (Christopher Columbus)
All great truth passes through three stages: first it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
(Arthur Schopenhauer)
ONWARD
Royal Navy: a side issue
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.That is why I question the wisdom of the UK with their two new 65000t carriers.
davidbfpo
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.
Last edited by Alfred_the_Great; 08-12-2010 at 02:12 PM. Reason: bad england!
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)
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/aer...kes_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.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful"
-George E.P. Box
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.
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.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
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.
Supporting "time-limited, scope limited military actions" for 20 years.
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.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
Latest Air and Space Journal Article on Missile Defense.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/cadre/aspj/a...t-zarchan.html
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.
Last edited by pvebber; 08-12-2010 at 08:54 PM.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful"
-George E.P. Box
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.
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