They better think about the Ohio class subs before they mess with our flattops, especially if Trump has the code.
Good morning, Tehran!!!
Posted on 02/22/2016 8:38:44 AM PST by C19fan
The United States’ aircraft carriers have always been an almost untouchable deterrent, steel behemoths capable of projecting the full weight of the U.S. military wherever they deploy. Yet while many militaries could never hope to match the U.S. carrier fleet in size and strength, countries such as China, Iran and Russia have spent recent years adjusting their forces and fielding equipment designed to counter one of the United States’ greatest military strengths.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
All the Chinese have to do is intimidate their close neighbors with their carriers. Their policy of developing long range anti-ship missiles and building islands in the South China Sea as unsinkable aircraft carriers puts our carriers using F35s with shorter ranges at risk.
1. Aircraft carriers have never had unchallenged primacy. Never. That is why the Navy has SSNs, DDGs, and CGs, and why we still have overlapping capabilities with the USAF.
2. Most people on Earth live withing striking distance of a CVNs airgroup. Aircraft are still important in winning wars and the USAF cannot adequately support our interests from the land bases we have access to.
3. If we didn’t think that losing a CVN was a real possibility in a big war, we wouldn’t have so many of them.
4. In the hey day of carrier warfare, CVs could not just sail straight to Japan, even at the beginning of 1945. War against an able aggressor requires a series of strokes to before you can place your forces at the threshold of the final targets.
5. The best force mix is always moving target. Going forward, we may need a larger number of smaller CVs.
We continue to give or allow others to steal our technology everyday in the name of diversity and coexist, not to mention we subsidize most of the rest of the works military spending via our trade policy and globalization.
“When will a fighting ship of the line be named the U.S.S. Barack Hussein Obama?”
Sadly, I’d say around 2018.
They better think about the Ohio class subs before they mess with our flattops, especially if Trump has the code.
Good morning, Tehran!!!
5,000 x $2.0 million = $10 billion, so having that capability isn't necessarily cheaper than the target, and you still aren't guaranteed that the target will come within range. However, I'd love to see how a country would field 5,000 ASCMs. Obviously ships are out, unless you can field 600+ DDGs. Land basing would tie up between 50,000 and 100,000 troops and present some fantastic targets.
As for firing them in a swarm, that would be truly dazzling. Presuming they didn't all crash into each other, they would definitely provide a lot shade.
If Iran had 5,000 ASCMs, I'd provide them some barges with framed canvas superstructures to shoot at, while I bombed them from outside their maximum range.
SSBNs have it covered right now.
In any case the newest American aircraft carrier "would cost $14 billion including research and development". So the missiles are still a bargain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-class_aircraft_carrier#cite_note-55
Exactly. So few seem to have any concept of how carriers are used. Land plans ALWAYS had longer range. And any carrier in range of land bases was ALWAYS at risk. Even as far back as Pear Harbor carriers would sneak into the danger zone. Strike with overwhelming force, and then get out of dodge.
In a total war situation we can expect to lose 1 or more carriers. So? That is why we have so many. We lost a bunch of them in WW2. It happens. The war goes on.
Designing and building a space based attack system is easily within todays technology.
However defending it once in orbit is nearly impossible.
Any satellite can be easily destroyed by a projectile the size of a BB traveling at several thousands of miles per hour which is easily achievable in space. I have thought that a 12 gage shotgun would be a good a weapon in space as a 16 inch naval gun. The physics in space are just that different in practice. There is no practical limit on the speed of a projectile so its size becomes irrelevant.
China has successfully tested a satellite attack satellite.
This means that a space based surface attack satellite would need to be land based and launched only moments be for the time it is intended to be used because its survival time once in orbit would be severely limited.
If we are working on stealth satellites I have not heard of the project, but then we wouldn't would we.
Right before an anti-ship missile test I hope.
For one attack? That's a bargain? That's one hell of a salvo. Keep in mind, to fire them simultaneously, you also have to have 5,000 launch structures/vehicles. I don't know if that's included in the $2M price tag that is being supposed.
It's also important to remember, the Carrier is not the primary defense of the carrier itself. The battle group support ships are the primary defense and there are more than one of them.
I think we should simply make carriers submersible. Yea. That's the ticket.
I always appreciate a rational well-thoughtout post, particularly one that is supported by fact rather than feeling. Thank you.
Missiles are still cheaper than aircraft carriers and jets on them for nations that don’t have them. It is that old line - are tanks obsolete with modern anti-tank missiles around?
Why not purchase 20,000 coastal cannon at an even cheaper cost?
The answer to that question is also the answer to why 5,000 ASCMs would be a huge waste of money. All the ASCMs will do is keep a carrier strike group further out to sea for a longer amount of time. Meanwhile other defenses will be greatly depleted by the choice to spend $10 billion on ASCMs.
They did against Japan. They took a beating with the Kamikaze’s but stayed and fought them to a standstill. Granted that was with a preeminent industrialize USA. It can be done but at what cost. I think in an air/sea battle with China our submarines would do far more damage than the carriers.
So, it’s time to “reduce” the new chinese base they dredged out of the Spratly Islands. Phillipine navy harasses them regularly, and would not take much to push them off— like subsonic vibrations to collapse the support pilings— stand0ff sound ultra low freq. Could do it.
RE post 5: Overtime.
Funding would be immediate once the narcissist in chief heard his name would be on it. He would however that the crew be LBQTAXYZ123, fly a rainbow flag, and be focused solely on an anti-global warming missions...
Before 1944, the American Pacific Fleet had to engage in hit and run raids against the Japanese island outposts. Once the Essex class ships started joining the fleet in appreciable numbers in 1944, the Pacific Fleet could deploy up to a 1000 planes which was sufficient to overwhelm any island’s land-based air power. A year later, when the fleet began operations against the Japanese mainland, not only had the fleet grown numerically larger, the American planes and pilots were qualitatively superior to the Japanese. Even so, with kamikaze tactics, the fleet took a heavy beating. Halsey and Spruance would look to stay on the move and not engage the same area for any significant period of time. And this was when the United States Navy was at the peak of its power relative to its opponent.
While today’s carrier combat group is a formidable weapon, it too could only engage in a “hit and run” sortie against the land-based power of the PRC or Russia. Any attempt to conduct prolonged operations off those countries with aircraft carriers alone is a sure way to lose the carrier. Land based power, consisting of missiles, aircraft and submarines, is inherently greater than the naval air power. They have 20 airfields that can’t be sunk to operate from to attack one that can.
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