China And The Indian Ocean Carrier Fleet

Strategy Page ^ | January 7, 2010

[myknowledge]

I'd hope the PLAN pro-carrier admirals prevail, just like the WWII-era IJN pro-battleship admirals who invested heavily in the Yamato and Musashi.

What's the point of having a supercarrier? Today's bloated Nimitz-class supercarriers are succulent targets of supersonic Russian-designed ASCMs like the SS-N-19 Shipwreck, SS-N-22 Sunburn, SS-N-26 Yakhont, SS-N-27 Sizzler and PJ-10 Brahmos.

Warship Vulnerability

Soviet/Russian Cruise Missiles

PLA Cruise Missiles PLA Air - Surface Missiles

Guess what some of the PLAN admirals are forgetting:

Here's this quick fact: Submarines comprised ~2% of the whole of the U.S. Navy, yet sank over 60% of Japanese ships during WWII.

Don't believe the self-serving hype Marc Mitscher and his successors want you to believe, if you're in the U.S. Navy, of course, that carrier supremacy defeated Japan.

Although I have no bias against aircraft carriers, for they are a useful ship for projection of naval air power at sea and protecting fleets from enemy air strikes, what you never knew about is that land-based aircraft of the USAAF shouldered a fair bit more of the combat burden than the carrier-based USN.

Although I have obviously studied significant carrier vs. carrier duels like the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway (U.S. victories), there are two web links whose author has an alternative opinion to the bloated aircraft carriers, along with warfare in general.

Understanding High Explosives: our Survival Depends on It

Retro-Look: What if the U.S. Navy had continued Operating Fast SeaPlanes from Destroyers, Cruisers and Battleships after WW2?

Legendary DoD Air Chief Chuck Myers writes:

"If you think four BB's are expensive, how about a fleet of multi-billion dollar ships which can not defend against 'sea skimmers' and cannot survive a good strafing much less a guided missile.

Keep in mind, I was a part of the Navy group that had to perform the 'vulnerability analysis' to CM and other ordnance when we had to answer the Congress in 1979 re: proposed reactivation. The only ordnance which might really damage an Iowa is a 16" armor piercing round which we own, exclusively. Here is a fact: no U.S. battleship at sea, engaging in combat operations has ever been sunk; even when the USS North Carolina took a couple of massive Jap torpedos, which created a hole 40' x 18' in the forward/starboard hull, increased speed and continued to fight; later retired to a Pacific island base and accepted a weld job, returning to combat ops within six weeks. That's a WARship."

[4rcane]

i never been a fan of bigger is better. I prefer smaller and many. Something this big might as well have “hit me” on it. Hostiles may try to hit it a hundred times and only score one hit and its a victory with huge loses for carrier fleet

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Smaller submarine carriers with supersonic VTOL aircraft...

[myknowledge]

Is this what you mean? Sen Toku I-400 class?

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Something along those lines... more modern...

[myknowledge]

Who would want to build aircraft carriers this big and send 10000+ lives to drown in the ocean after being hit with a swathe of supersonic ASCMs?

[myknowledge]

How about this modern submarine aircraft carrier?

[SampleMan]

Troops on the ground defeated Germany and were on the way to defeating Japan. You can't get boots on the ground with submarines.

U.S. submarines sank a load of Japanese merchant shipping, but the lion share of warships were sunk by aircraft or shellfire.

The Japanese empire was uniquely vulnerable to submarine warfare, yet they would have never surrendered to a blockade. And those USAAC bombers would have never been able to to take off if their bases hadn't been taken by boots on the ground, delivered by surface strike groups. And WWII surface strike groups were nothing but targets without aircraft carriers.

War at sea requires command above and below the surface. Although the Japanese focused their submarines against our strikegroups, they failed to achieve much.

Of course CVs are vulnerable, forward operating bases always are, but its hard to imagine anything significant that submarines could do conventionally in any of the conflicts we've been in for the last 50 years.

[SampleMan]

Troops on the ground defeated Germany and were on the way to defeating Japan. You can't get boots on the ground with submarines.

U.S. submarines sank a load of Japanese merchant shipping, but the lion share of warships were sunk by aircraft or shellfire.

The Japanese empire was uniquely vulnerable to submarine warfare, yet they would have never surrendered to a blockade. And those USAAC bombers would have never been able to to take off if their bases hadn't been taken by boots on the ground, delivered by surface strike groups. And WWII surface strike groups were nothing but targets without aircraft carriers.

War at sea requires command above and below the surface. Although the Japanese focused their submarines against our strikegroups, they failed to achieve much.

Of course CVs are vulnerable, forward operating bases always are, but its hard to imagine anything significant that submarines could do conventionally in any of the conflicts we've been in for the last 50 years.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Although I have no bias against aircraft carriers, for they are a useful ship for projection of naval air power at sea and protecting fleets from enemy air strikes, what you never knew about is that land-based aircraft of the USAAF shouldered a fair bit more of the combat burden than the carrier-based USN."

I'd say you are more than a bit biassed. Carriers have proven their worth repeatedly. The significant advantage of the carrier is that they can deploy air power to remote LAND areas and support their ops there. Land-based aircraft simply cannot do that. And I would certainly HOPE that "the USAAF shouldered a fair bit more of the combat burden", because they have more planes and more pilots.

[castlegreyskull]

The current aircraft carrier under construction is the first of the FORD class. It really isn’t that revolutionary. It is still nuclear, two reactors just like the NIMITZ class. However, they are trying to implement the electromagnetic catapault onto the flight deck, so that they can store the energy required to launch planes in capacitors, instead of using steam which causes power spikes on the reactor itself. Also this would allow reduce manning. The size and the aircraft capacity is virtually unchanged. However, instead of building a new carrier every 5 years, it will be every 7 years. The first one will be commissioned in 2015. What is funny is that the last commanding officer of this ship will be old enough to be my great grandson.

[castlegreyskull]

I am a submarine officer, and the value and the power projection that carriers bring cannot be understated. Submarines can control the seas almost entirely alone, but a carrier battle group as we have seen can take the war deep into enemy territory like we have in Afghanistan, when the ENTERPRISE launched the aircraft responsible for punishing the AQ and the Taliban.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Makes perfect sense to me...

The biggest difficulty is making sense of government putting it into operation...

[familyop]

Heh. Yeah, right. The following is very old news, BTW.

NAVAL WAR COLLEGE NEWPORT PAPERS
China's Nuclear Force Modernization (PDF)
Lyle J. Goldstein, Editor, with Andrew S. Erickson
http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/npapers/np22/NP22.pdf

"According to the 2003–2004 issue of the IISS Military Balance, one brigade (eight missiles) of the long-anticipated DF-31 inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) is now deployed, with more presumably to follow in relatively short order . . . While this is not the first road-mobile, solid-fuel missile deployed by China, it is the first one capable of striking the continental United States."

[joe fonebone]

I have had a wild thought about this....a fleet of cruiser size ships, with hi speed elevators fore and aft, and a hanger deck below, that could hold 4 of the thrust vectoring F-35. With a high speed elevator, these could be started on the elevators below, brought up to the deck, and launched in a few minutes. Elevator drops down, the next one is loaded up and broght up to deck for launch. You could have 4 birds in the air within about 8 minutes...a squadron of 6 of these bad boys could put a flight of 24 birds in the air in minutes...small, relatively inexpensive, and they would pack a hell of a punch!!!

[myknowledge]

But there's a fundamental problem with the Ford class CVN.

It's still bloated!

Why not have smaller jeep carriers that can be built in more quantity than bloated supercarriers acting as live deathtraps for 5000 servicemen and -women?

FDR authorized mass construction of escort carriers during WWII, and they worked effectively.

Here's another problem: Seaplanes are hardly to be found in sight of today's U.S. Navy, as compared to WWII through to the '60s. Where have they gone?

[Ronin]

Carriers are the ultimate big stick, but the very fact that they are so big and impressive means that we can only make so many of them and they have their own limitations. The biggest of which is that they can only be in one place at a time.

I really wish we would spend more time looking at smaller and less expensive alternatives to the Nimitz and follow on carriers.

The Russian STOBAR concept is a great idea, IMO. Naturally they didn’t do as good as a job with it as we could, but that’s the Russians.

I expect we could build three of those things for the price of one supercarrier and give ourselves a lot more flexibility — but the carrier mafia running the Navy would never buy it.

[castlegreyskull]

Another consideration for the smaller carriers is that you will have to build more support fleets to go with them.

[castlegreyskull]

Submarines launch Tomahawk Cruise Missiles and they can deliver SEAL Teams. They can also conduct espionage.

[Wonder Warthog]

"I am a submarine officer, and the value and the power projection that carriers bring cannot be understated. Submarines can control the seas almost entirely alone, but a carrier battle group as we have seen can take the war deep into enemy territory like we have in Afghanistan, when the ENTERPRISE launched the aircraft responsible for punishing the AQ and the Taliban."

Precisely my point. I don't see small carriers being able to fit the mission above.