Is This The End of The Carrier

[Cliff]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Latest Air and Space Journal Article on Missile Defense.

http://www.au.af.mil/au/cadre/aspj/a...t-zarchan.html

[pvebber]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Alfred_the_Great]

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]

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

[pvebber]

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]

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]

"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

[Alfred_the_Great]

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?