Posted on 12/13/2013 11:57:25 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Or we could make them smaller and faster (stealthier?) with the same payload.
This is the salient point every time one of these articles comes out. Q: When was the last time a CVN was sunk in combat? A: Never. With their escorts and CAP getting through the defenses could take most of an adversary's military, if you can find the CVBG in the first place. Even then, you'll need a lot of hits to take one out. My money is on carriers until at least 2030 with a mix of F-35s and large UCAVs as the air wing.
You don’t “disguise” a carrier per se.
You disguise a smaller and less valuable ship to look like a carrier on the enemies radar. Preferably LOTS of ships.
Perhaps the LCS has a good use afterall...
I think we will get a mix of big carriers and eventually smaller one’s.
If a supersonic ship killer or a carrier killing MRBM can kill a big carrier, they can kill a smaller carrier too.
This will not be a simple solution, nor is the Carrier even close to being obsolete. They rule the seas. This is nothing but a Budget perspective. And that is not a good thing.
We will win the avionics and electronics war with the dumb arsed Chinese. They would have their hands full with the Japanese navy of hi tech ships, let alone the US.
“...carriers have enormous radar cross-sections. They don’t have that sleek, angular, unearthly appearance...”
If you are the enemy and can see one of these - then you’ve just been defeated!
Yup and of course a guy sitting at a computer console in the carrier flight command center has no problem whatsoever heading his plane into the thick shit and will even Kamikaze his plane into a target if the situation calls for it and get high fives from all his buddies when they playback the video.
Drone technology is creating a new paradigm. Terrorists have been the live fire targets and proof of concept.
Thanks for the mention. I think I understand your direction here, but I find it hard to believe we achieve nearly as much with these sorts of methods.
What ever the problems with a carrier’s vulnerability, it is better than the vulnerability of a land runway.
There is little uncertainty as to the location of a land runway. Land runways also are hard to move to a location where they can be used against today’s enemy.
“Drone technology is creating a new paradigm. Terrorists have been the live fire targets and proof of concept.”
It’s an outstanding point.
Consider other types of drones as well - jamming drones, NBC drones, and even rescue drones.
As a former USCG officer, I can see the pros/cons. Pro - you could fit more drowning fishermen in a drone helo. Con - the rescue swimmer and corpsman are going to be a little nervous knowing the pilots may choose to write checks they don’t personally want to cash.
So the CVN is dead but other countries are rushing full tilt to copy them as best they can. Got it.
The closest we’ve come to losing a supercarrier from damage was the Forrestal during her 67 fire and Enterprise during her 69 one.
Both ships too damage equivilant to multiple large missile hits. And could have, in a real world combat situation, been back and operational with temporary repairs in a short amount of shipyard time.
The only thing out there that has a shot of taking out a carrier is a nuke. Pretty much a direct hit with a nuke, as bikini showed (even extrapolating up for bombs with much larger yields)
Popping off a nuke at a carrier, whether it sinks the carrier or not, Issa whole different ballgame. Chances are someone will quickly lose a major population center ...
I wonder if we’re not going about this all wrong.
There may be some very low tech solutions to this.
I figure artillery shells showed the way.
Hap Arnold investigated with Kettering of General Motors, the development of drone aircraft. Using the Sperry gyros, they were not very accurate in those days, being likely to miss even a moderate sized city from 60 miles away, so they want to large manned aircraft with many bombs, pathfinders, and bomber formations. That was how we fought WWII.
The US investigated remote controlled bombers, and there was a program that used a remote control bomber stuffed to the gills with bombs, controlled by an aircraft behind it. It needed a pilot to perform takeoff and landing, then parachute out. Jack Kennedy’s older brother died while in that program.
the Germans had V-1 and V-2, which were inaccurate, and served mainly to kill noncombatants. Every launch was a war crime.
One aircraft carrier at Bikini was the Saratoga. The ship survived the blast, but it was radioactively contaminated, with no hope of decontamination. Faced with that, She was scuttled.
Saratoga was our 4th US carrier (virtual) at Midway. She was coming from refit in California, and the knowledge that she was on the way with a complement of aircraft let Spruance be a bit braver than he would have been otherwise.
We have one. It is called the sea.
Some ships are submarines. All other ships are targets.
Spoken like a TRUE Bubble - Head.
Drone technology is creating a new paradigm.
***And the antiship missiles aimed at the nuke carriers would fall under such drone technology designation.
of course a guy sitting at a computer console in the carrier flight command center has no problem whatsoever heading his plane into the thick shit and will even Kamikaze his plane into a target if the situation calls for it and get high fives from all his buddies when they playback the video.
***When we go up against the drone navy of the Chinese, it will be accompanied & surrounded by a sampan migration flotilla onto Taiwan. So those kamikazi drones will blow up civilians, and CNN will be there to put the whole thing on cable.
Yeah but the only way for boat jockeys to remain stealthie is to continue to ride boats because the tend to glow in the dark after a couple of cruises...
If the enemy are getting close enough to paint your CVN with radar, you are doing it wrong.
Anything coming over the horizon should be identified and, if hostile, killed. Any missiles launched at a CVN should have do its own searching because nothing should survived to tell the launching aircraft where the carrier actually is.
Submarines, esp. the super-silent AIP subs, are the real threat and a scary one they are!
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