# Lifestyles & Discussion > Science & Technology >  The Aircraft Carrier Is Obsolete

## r3volution 3.0

CVN = carrier
 DDG = destroyer
 SSN = attack submarine
 SSGN = guided-missile submarine
 CSG = carrier strike group (1CVN, 3 DDG, 2 SSN)
 ASM = anti-ship missile
AAM =  anti-air missile

 The CSG is the core of American naval power. It is ideal for supporting ground operations overseas, which has been its primary role since 1945, but it is obsolete as an instrument of pure naval warfare – i.e. ship on ship combat. There are alternate platforms which offer greater capabilities at lower cost. In this post, I'm going to focus on one such platform – the SSGN.  

 A single CSG costs $2186M per year, while a single SSGN costs $203M per year (See Appendix). Therefore, for the price of one CSG we could instead have 10 SSGN (with change left over). The proper way to compare the capabilities of different platforms is to pit cost-equivalent forces against one another and see who wins. In other words, let us suppose that Ruritania and Carpathia both have $2186M to spend on their naval forces. Ruritania chooses to spend this money on a CSG, while Carpathia decides to acquire 10 SSGN instead. War breaks out between the two countries, and each fleet is tasked with sinking the other. Which fleet succeeds?

 Each Ohio-Class SSGN is capable of firing 154 ASM. Therefore, 10 SSGN are capable of firing 1540 ASM. These can be fired at a range of 300 miles. Let us suppose that the Carpathian SSGN's gets within 300 miles of the Ruritanian CSG undetected and volleys its 1540 ASM. Will the CSG be able to defend itself?

 The CSG's air defenses rely on AAM, which are designed to shoot down incoming ASM. We don't know the technical specs of a CSG's AAM (classified of course), but we do know the total number of AAM aboard each vessel in the CSG. The CVN has none, the 2 SSN have none, the 3 DDG have 288 combined (96 each). Note that those are maximum figures. Each DDG is capable of carrying 96 AAM, but they never do in reality – because some of those missiles tubes are always reserved for other types of missiles, such as offensive ground attack missiles or their own ASM. Nonetheless, let us assume that all tubes contain AAM. Let us further assume that each of those AAM has a 100% kill rate (each AAM will kill one incoming ASM – none will miss). This is a most generous assumption, but better to error on the side of caution since we don't know the real figure. So where does that leave us? The Carpathian fleet fired 1540 ASM, and the Ruritanian fleet fired 288 AAM in self-defense, killing 288 of the incoming ASM – leaving 1252 ASM to plow into the CVN and the 3 DDG unopposed. One need not be a naval architect to realize that such a strike would be fatal. All 4 surface vessels of the CSG would be crippled at the very least – if not sunk outright. 

 FINIS RURITANIAE

Obviously, this fleet of 10 SSGN is massive overkill. A mere 3 SSGN should be suffuicient to cripple or destroy the CSG. It would be firing 462 ASM, 288 of which would be intercpted by the CSG's AAM, leaving 174 to find their targets. The cost of 3 SSGN is $609M per year, a mere 28% of the $2186M for a CSG. Bottom line? If you want to keep fighting ground wars overseas, then keep the carriers; but if you just want to defend the US from naval attack (the only proper role of the navy IMO) then dump the carriers in favor of a more cost effective alternative, such as the SSGN. 
 .
 .
 .
 Appendix

 CVN = $1643M

(air wing) = 90 x $11M = $990M
F-22 O&M = $4.4M in 2000 dollars = $6M current dollars
http://www.gao.gov/archive/2000/ns00165.pdfF-22 Procurement = $150M / 30 years = $5M(ship) $444M     in 1997 dollars = $653M
https://www.fas.org/man/gao/nsiad98001/c3.htm 


DDG = $91M

$84M in 2010 dollars = $91M
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/fil...ionsletter.pdf 

  SSN = $135M

Procurement ($2644.3M) / Service Life (33) = $80.1M
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL32418.pdf O&M = $35.4M in 1995 dollars = $54.8M in current dollars
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/logistic...r_2012_SAR.pdf 


 SSGN = $203M

Total Annual Cost = $203M
Construction Cost ($5.36B) / 42 years = $128M
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R41129.pdfAnnual O&M = $50M in 1996 dollars = $75M current dollars
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/ssgn-726.htm

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## jmdrake

> Bottom line? If you want to keep fighting ground wars overseas, then keep the carriers; but if you just want to defend the US from naval attack (the only proper role of the navy IMO) then dump the carriers in favor of a more cost effective alternative, such as the SSGN.


And you've just explained why we will be spending money on carrier groups as long as our debt laden economy can afford it.  We're counting on the idea that the only two countries that could possibly win a full scale naval war with the U.S. (China and Russia) most likely have no desire to do so as neither country would want to risk a nuclear war.  That said, carrier groups are sitting ducks against a small country like Iran if deployed in a narrow waterway like the Strait of Hormuz.

http://www.exile.ru/print.php?ARTICL...9&IBLOCK_ID=35

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## XNavyNuke

Professor-General Norden v3.0 has spoken.

XNN

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## AngryCanadian

LOL the price tags on all those naval military ships. That money could have being used elsewhere better.

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## r3volution 3.0

> carrier groups are sitting ducks against a small country like Iran if deployed in a narrow waterway like the Strait of Hormuz.


Yep. Carriers are vulnerable to saturation missile attacks, whether launched from other naval vessels or from shore.

You can find endless debate online over the merit of the newest generation of hypersonic ASM, like the Brahmos. Can it sneak through the CSG's air defense or not? Well...it doesn't really matter. It costs $3 million. A new CVN costs $15 _billion_. You could fire 1000 Brahmos and still win the war of attrition.

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## VIDEODROME

They should really be replaced with Drone Carriers at the very least.  

Drone Carriers could patrol sections of sea or land for a long time and have Drones come together in formation easily for attacks.

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## jmdrake

> They should really be replaced with Drone Carriers at the very least.  
> 
> Drone Carriers could patrol sections of sea or land for a long time and have Drones come together in formation easily for attacks.


Drone carriers?  Sounds like you've been playing Starcraft.

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## GunnyFreedom

> Yep. Carriers are vulnerable to saturation missile attacks, whether launched from other naval vessels or from shore.
> 
> You can find endless debate online over the merit of the newest generation of hypersonic ASM, like the Brahmos. Can it sneak through the CSG's air defense or not? Well...it doesn't really matter. It costs $3 million. A new CVN costs $15 _billion_. You could fire 1000 Brahmos and still win the war of attrition.


Not.  A perimeter of P3's running MAD patrols can clear subs out to enough range to make antimissile batteries far far more effective, and I guarantee that in the last 20 years some classified tech that makes P3's running MAD obsolete.  A Navy such as ours is just not all that vulnerable to submarines anymore.  Not like we used to be in WW2 up through the end of the Cold War.  An 'ordinary' country sure, but the US is just not that vulnerable to subs anymore.

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## HOLLYWOOD

Yeah, but on FOX NEWS the other day, the teleprompter puppets stated the US Navy was in "Dilapidated State" from all the budget cuts. Yes that was the exact description by FOX NEWS.

How the hell are you dilapidated on a budget of over $150 Billion / year?

Slideshow on US Navy budget: http://www.slideshare.net/tomlindbla...get-highlights

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## Pauls' Revere

> They should really be replaced with Drone Carriers at the very least.  
> 
> Drone Carriers could patrol sections of sea or land for a long time and have Drones come together in formation easily for attacks.


Well, halfway there. They already can launch and recover drones. 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/14/us/nav...one/index.html

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## GunnyFreedom

> Yeah, but on FOX NEWS the other day, the teleprompter puppets stated the US Navy was in "Dilapidated State" from all the budget cuts. Yes that was the exact description by FOX NEWS.
> 
> How the hell are you dilapidated on a budget of over $150 Billion / year?
> 
> Slideshow on US Navy budget: http://www.slideshare.net/tomlindbla...get-highlights


Budget cuts my ass.  I am willing to agree that the US Navy is pretty ragged right now, but that's not budgeting.  Material, equipment, and personnel fatigue comes from massive over-deployment.

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## fisharmor

I bet it's even cheaper if you ignore ballistic missile restrictions, design ICBMs that can deliver a payload anywhere in the world, and skip the navy thing altogether.

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## r3volution 3.0

To elaborate on something I covered only briefly in the OP:

What  about the CSG's anti-submarine warfare capabilities? Until the SSGN  fires its missiles, it is extremely difficult to detect. Given that  submarines routinely get within torpedo range (a couple_ dozen_  miles) of CSG's in wargames, there's no reason to think an SSGN would  have any trouble getting within 300 miles of a CSG undetected. As soon  as the SSGN fires, it will announce its presence, because the launch  will make a terrible racket. But what can the CSG do in response?  ....nothing, basically. All of the CSG's surface assets are going to be  destroyed long before thy even arrive at the last known location of the  SSGN to begin the hunt. The two hunter-killer subs will survive, and to  try to hunt down the SSGN, but it has a 300 mile head start. 

Note  that this applies to all surface vessels - not only carriers. Carriers  are just the most egregious example, because of their ridiculous price  tag. In an age of long-range missile warfare, the submarine is king because it can do everything a surface vessel can do, while at the same time being itself totally invulnerable to missile attack.

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## Danke

> Not.  A perimeter of P3's running MAD patrols can clear subs out to enough range to make antimissile batteries far far more effective, and I guarantee that in the last 20 years some classified tech that makes P3's running MAD obsolete.  A Navy such as ours is just not all that vulnerable to submarines anymore.  Not like we used to be in WW2 up through the end of the Cold War.  An 'ordinary' country sure, but the US is just not that vulnerable to subs anymore.


I have not been involved in the military for a while.  But I have kept in touch.

To think the role of the navy is compromised is a bit laughable.

Their role has not change as keeping commerce flowing favorable to our interest.

Do they have vulnerabilities?   Sure, but dose any belligerent want B-2s (as an example) raining down nukes (or even conventional precision bombs) within ~15 hours of an attack on a carrier group?

I could attack peripheral ships in an F-16 successfully in the 1990s.  But take on a carrier group.  Lots of loses.  And the retribution would be swift from all kinds of resources.

So what am I saying?  They have a role.  Keeping the shipping lanes open, etc.

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## r3volution 3.0

> Not.  A perimeter of P3's running MAD patrols can clear subs out to enough range to make antimissile batteries far far more effective


No matter how effective they are, they have a limited amount of ammunition. VLS tube cannot be reloaded at sea. If those tubes are empty, and there are still more ASM incoming, you're cooked. Yes they have CIWS as a last resort, but (aside from questions about their effectiveness) they too have limited ammo and will at some point be saturated. 

As for P3s, sure they have some chance of detecting subs using MAD or sonobuoys, but do you really think they can consistently keep subs from getting within 300 miles of a CSG?

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## phill4paul

A carrier force is a forward attack projection force. Projection force is always more expensive than defense. The carrier force is as antiquated as the battleship force was. As a carrier brown shoe I'd love to believe that it's power is what it used to be. It's just not. If you can't get the M.I.C. out of the equation then you open yourself to destruction.

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## acptulsa

> I bet it's even cheaper if you ignore ballistic missile restrictions, design ICBMs that can deliver a payload anywhere in the world, and skip the navy thing altogether.


Don't bet on it.  If you want to level a port city without radiation and on the cheap, you can't do better than to roll a dreadnought up in the harbor.  And if you really want a surgical strike on one target in that port city, you also can't do better than to roll a dreadnought into the harbor.

Missiles are expensive, and the farther they have to go, the more expensive they are.

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## Ronin Truth

So that's why we have so many of them.  

Probably about a bazillion Predator drone aircraft and hellfire missles, could be bought for the price of one carrier group.

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## r3volution 3.0

> So that's why we have so many of them.


While we're talking about wasteful military spending, let's talk about the air force - which is an even more egregious case.

Did you know that there are a grand total of sixteen (16) warplanes capable of reaching the US from Eurasia (Russian TU-160 long-range bombers)?

So, how many fighters does the USAF have to defend us from this menace? 

Why, 1681, of course. 



But, as with the carriers, their purpose is not to defend the US. It's to "project power" overseas.

Then, while we're at it -- the army and marine corps. We have 21 divisions - not counting reserves.

 Who are these intended to fight? The Canadians?

No, once again, their sole function is to fight goat herders on the other side of the planet.

P.S. That 16 figure is for CONUS and Hawaii; Alaska and Guam are more vulnerable - being within range of more warplanes. But nonetheless it would require nothing remotely close to 1681 fighters to defend them.

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## alucard13mm

Why are the chinese trying to build a couple of carriers themselves if the carriers are obsolete? The chinese apparently has pretty good anti-ship missiles and they will have to assume USA has as good or better anti-ship missiles. So why would the Chinese build carriers that would get blown to pieces by our ASM?

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## TheTexan

> Professor-General Norden v3.0 has spoken.
> 
> XNN


I take it you're not a fan

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## TheTexan

> They should really be replaced with Drone Carriers at the very least.  
> 
> Drone Carriers could patrol sections of sea or land for a long time and have Drones come together in formation easily for attacks.


They could also be dual purposed for homeland-observation while they are docked domestically.  Win/win.

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## osan

> I have not been involved in the military for a while.  But I have kept in touch.
> 
> To think the role of the navy is compromised is a bit laughable.


Not so fast.  Navy has definite problems.  Whether they suffice to compromise it easily is certainly open to debate.  Just this past holiday I was made privy to some of the problems to which I refer.  I don't think they were public domain, so I will not cite them specifically.  Suffice to say that, while not immediately glaring nor portending imminent failure, these changes do suggest possible degradations of _mind_ over time.  That is far worse a problem than a torpedo strike.




> Their role has not change as keeping commerce flowing favorable *to our interest*.


The question is whether they keep things flowing in everyone's interests, meaning at least open opportunity for all comers.  This is debatable, though I suspect the true reality at the bottom of it all might be difficult to know for the average man or even the average "well connected" economist.  Much of the answer rides on the assumptions one holds regarding free markets - what they are, what they ought to be, and how that translates into practice.  For me the answers there are simple and clear, but for many they are very different, so we have a fundamental disconnect in world views.  How do those usually get resolved?  Navy. 




> Do they have vulnerabilities?   Sure, but dose any belligerent want B-2s (as an example) raining down nukes (or even conventional precision bombs) within ~15 hours of an attack on a carrier group?


This raises the disturbing suggestion that the United States would nuke someone in retaliation for the destruction of a carrier group.  If that is policy, then bats are in the belfry without question.  I, for one, am in no mood to inherit a glow-in-the-dark world because some raft of idiot lunatics decided they didn't like losing a carrier.  I can just see the pouting as they whine in a tone of bratty-disapointment: "You sank my battleship!"




> They have a role.  Keeping the shipping lanes open, etc.


This I can agree with, but do we need carrier groups for that?  We opened the sea lines for the world, which benefitted everyone, directly or otherwise.  Piracy is alive and well, so I agree there is a place for this sort of role, but entire carrier battle groups?  Launching 60 aircraft against a 100' Somali raider seems a bit of the old overkill, to me.  Spending billions per year per group for 13 groups also makes no sense.

Keeping China and Russia at bay via indirect threat... that is arguably valid, given they have long histories of bad behavior, but so do we.  Where does that leave us, especially considering the remaining nuclear stores and delivery platforms?  It leaves the entire world wasting resources on blind, screaming stupidity.  When one steps away from the world and looks at it from high orbit, the boundless stupidity of the human race is the _only_ thing that shouts at you.  If we could export stupidity to other inhabited planets, we would be the wealthiest rock in the universe, for the supply is literally without end.

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## Ronin Truth

> Why are the chinese trying to build a couple of carriers themselves if the carriers are obsolete? The chinese apparently has pretty good anti-ship missiles and they will have to assume USA has as good or better anti-ship missiles. So why would the Chinese build carriers that would get blown to pieces by our ASM?


  They gotta find somewhere/something to absorb (dump) their dwindling value TRILLIONS $ of FRNs.

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## jmdrake

> Not.  A perimeter of P3's running MAD patrols can clear subs out to enough range to make antimissile batteries far far more effective, and I guarantee that in the last 20 years some classified tech that makes P3's running MAD obsolete.  A Navy such as ours is just not all that vulnerable to submarines anymore.  Not like we used to be in WW2 up through the end of the Cold War.  An 'ordinary' country sure, but the US is just not that vulnerable to subs anymore.


Gunny, did you read the link I posted?  In war games between a U.S. carrier group operating in the Strait of Hormuz and a U.S. opfor team (pretending to be Iranians) using Cessna's and speedboats, the Cessna's and speedboats won.  Here's the problem for the U.S. Navy when it comes to asymmetrical warfare.  You can't just go around willy nilly blasting everything that *might* be a cruise missile launching platform out of the water.  Now in the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific ocean you can play that game.  But you can't play it where we are typically sending our carriers these days.  And of course those P3s are quite vulnerable to ship to anti aircraft missiles.

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## jmdrake

This belongs here: 

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6779
_When kids play war, they end up spending less time shooting than arguing: "You're dead!" "Am not! You missed!" It just gets worse the bigger the kids. I remember a D & D'er crying when his character got killed -- wouldn't talk to the rest of us for years, still grieving for his dead elf. 

The US military has been having exactly this kind of argument, played out in the world press, since last August. They're even whinier and more of a pain about it than D&Ders, if you can believe that, with leaks and counter-leaks, planted stories, and plenty of good ol' character assassination.

It all comes out of the "Millenium Challenge '02" war games we staged in the Persian Gulf this summer. The big scandal was that the Opposing Force Commander, Gen. Paul van Ripen, quit mid-game because the games were rigged for the US forces to win. The scenario was a US invasion of an unnamed Persian Gulf country (either Iraq or Iran). The US was testing a new hi-tech joint force doctrine, so naturally van Riper used every lo-tech trick he could think of to mess things up. When the Americans jammed his CCC network , he sent messages by motorbike.

But that was just playing around. They wouldn't have minded that. Might've even congratulated van Ripen, bought him a drink for his smarts, at the post-games party.

The truth is that van Ripen did something so important that I still can't believe the mainstream press hasn't made anything of it. With nothing more than a few "small boats and aircraft," van Ripen managed to sink most of the US fleet in the Persian Gulf.

What this means is as simple and plain as a skull: every US Navy battle group, every one of those big fancy aircraft carriers we love, won't last one single day in combat against a serious enemy.

The Navy brass tried to bluff it out, but they were pretty lame about it. They just declared the sunken ships "refloated" so the game could go on as planned. This is the kind of word-game that makes the military look so damn dumb. Too bad Bonaparte never thought of that after Trafalgar: "My vleete, she is now reflotte!" Too bad Phillip didn't demand a refloat after the Armada went down: "Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK?"




Everybody in this story has an agenda-starting with the retired USMC General named Paul van Riper, the hero of the story for most readers. Even the Army Times, when it broke the story, admitted that van Riper has a reputation as an "$#@!" who has a grudge against hi-tech scenarios like the one the military was testing. He also has a reputation as a guy who lives for the chance to make the brass look bad in war games.
But that's what a good opposing commander is supposed to do. This van Riper may be an $#@!, but then most good generals are. Patton wasn't somebody you'd want to be stuck in an elevator with. Rommel was worse; there's a story about how one morning in the desert Rommel announced to his staff officers, "Today is Christmas. We will now celebrate. Hans, how is your wife? Hermann, how is your wife?" and without waiting for his officers, to answer, Rommel said, "That was Christmas. Now-get out the maps."

And whatever agenda van Ripen had, do you really think the brass who "refloated" the ships he sunk are any more objective? Their careers are all riding on the success of this operation and they've got just as much reason to lie or fudge the results.

The story just got dirtier as it bounced around the web. The gullible types who believe everything the Pentagon tells them, decided to trust the brass -- van Riper was just a troublemaker. The paranoid types, the ones who think the CIA controls the weather, took it for granted that the whole war games were fixed from the start.

A lot of the arguments came down to the question of what war games like Millennium Challenge are about. Trusting war-nerds were saying on the web, "Well, the whole POINT of war games is to show up weaknesses! So naturally when van Ripen sank the ships, they made a note and restarted the games!"_

More at the link.

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## XNavyNuke

> I take it you're not a fan


I am not a fan of dilettantes, transformationalists, and/or bean counters. Twenty five year old bookseller's that grok military maxims and successfully wield them against a world power are generational flukes and extremely rare. The first order analysis compares dollars not platform capabilities and limitations. The thesis has been around since WW2.

USNI Proceedings, August 1959 - Future of the carrier?
“It would seem to me that for the attack carrier to be effective in time of nuclear unlimited war, our country would have to keep prohibitive number of carrier task forces on, or near, station. How many missile submarines could be kept on patrol for the same amount of money?”

The Attack Carrier – Mobile Might May, 1961
“Mobile, flexible and versatile – these are the words that Navy proponents apply to the modern attack aircraft carrier. Obsolete, vulnerable and exorbitantly expensive are adjectives that are applied on occasions by others. Perhaps no single weapon system or element of military strength has been the subject of as much controversy and dispute as have aircraft carriers in the nearly 40 years they have been part of our seapower.”

XNN

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## jmdrake

> I have not been involved in the military for a while.  But I have kept in touch.
> 
> To think the role of the navy is compromised is a bit laughable.
> 
> Their role has not change as keeping commerce flowing favorable to our interest.
> 
> Do they have vulnerabilities?   Sure, but dose any belligerent want B-2s (as an example) raining down nukes (or even conventional precision bombs) within ~15 hours of an attack on a carrier group?
> 
> I could attack peripheral ships in an F-16 successfully in the 1990s.  But take on a carrier group.  Lots of loses.  And the retribution would be swift from all kinds of resources.
> ...


Danke, do you realize the same "Well if we get sunk they'll get nuked" argument would apply even if the U.S. Navy was still using wooden ships?  Yes, China and Russia will not attack a carrier group because they don't want to start WW III and no other countries that don't like us could build the massive submarine fleet that r3volution 3.0 is talking about.  But, and this is a big but, if we try some crap in the Strait of Hormuz, or some other place so close to shore that even "speedboat" navies can operate, we're sunk.  Sure we can "rain down nukes" if Iran sinks a carrier group, but if that happens then things will have gotten so bad at that point that Iran won't care.

As for "keeping the shipping lanes clear", when is China going to pay us for doing that?  Because that's who's reaping the most benefit.  We have this over-inflated military budget who's main job seems to be helping U.S. manufacturing to go out of business.

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## jmdrake

> Why are the chinese trying to build a couple of carriers themselves if the carriers are obsolete? The chinese apparently has pretty good anti-ship missiles and they will have to assume USA has as good or better anti-ship missiles. So why would the Chinese build carriers that would get blown to pieces by our ASM?


Because carrier groups are good at projecting force around the world against nations that don't have navies themselves?  During the height of the Syrian crisis Russia sent 12 battleships to Syria.  (See: http://www.timesofisrael.com/russia-...hips-to-syria/)  Some people argued with me by saying "What can Russia do with only 12 battleships?"  The answer was obvious to anybody but the simple.  The could do what the actually did which is give Obama pause over his "red line" crap.  It was a highly visible "tripwire" force that sent the message "We sent these.  We can send more.  So back the hell off."  Carriers offer more versatility.  You have the visible projection of force like you have with a battleship, but not with a submarine.  You can have your aircraft do aggressive fly overs.  (Hard to do a flyover with a cruise missile.)  Aircraft carriers also carry helicopters these days which can be used to deploy troops and for rescue operations.  There are so many things you can do with an aircraft carrier that have little to do with actual war fighting against a well equipped opponent that it doesn't matter if it doesn't have good survivability against a well equipped opponent.  You just can't do this from a submarine.

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## Demigod

> So that's why we have so many of them.  
> 
> Probably about a bazillion Predator drone aircraft and hellfire missles, could be bought for the price of one carrier group.


A predator drone has a maximum speed of 217 km/h (135 mph) ,a cruise speed of 130–165 km/h and a service ceiling of 7,620 m(25,000 ft) ,a 1944 B-29 Superfortress had a maximum speed of 574 km/h(357 mph),a cruise speed of 350 km/h(220 mph) and a service ceiling of 9,710 m ( 31850 ft) .The B-29 could be taken down with 1940 AA technology.So unless your target is goat herders, drones would be useless against any country with even basic modern anti-aircraft weapons,not to even put electronic warfare into the calculation or an air force.



Aircraft carriers are useful for power projection unless you own basses across the globe and cruise/ballistic missiles are not as effective against moving targets.

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## XNavyNuke

> Now in the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific ocean you can play that game.  But you can't play it where we are typically sending our carriers these days.


BS. Been in the sea lanes much? You can't use the fire and forget approach there either. Reality sucks. If you take a Raytheon Block IV TASM near it's published max range of 900 NM you've exceeded the detection range of the Professor-General's SSGN by an order of magnitude, let alone identification. Assuming you fire and forget anyway, by the time your seeker goes active in low-cruise mode your target is OTH if it was been making way at even a modest speed. It locks on to the closest, largest target which is far more likely to be neutral shipping. Physics is a relentless bitch. Replace "relentless" for "clueless" and you have the pseudonym Gary Blecher.

XNN

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## osan

> Danke, do you realize the same "Well if we get sunk they'll get nuked" argument would apply even if the U.S. Navy was still using wooden ships?  Yes, China and Russia will not attack a carrier group because they don't want to start WW III and no other countries that don't like us could build the massive submarine fleet that r3volution 3.0 is talking about.  But, and this is a big but, if we try some crap in the Strait of Hormuz, or some other place so close to shore that even "speedboat" navies can operate, we're sunk.  Sure we can "rain down nukes" if Iran sinks a carrier group, but if that happens then things will have gotten so bad at that point that Iran won't care.
> 
> As for "keeping the shipping lanes clear", when is China going to pay us for doing that?  Because that's who's reaping the most benefit.  We have this over-inflated military budget who's main job seems to be helping U.S. manufacturing to go out of business.



This is an excellently put together, if brief, post.

We have put the world on its prosperity footing.  Nobody else has done this.  Nobody else has even tried.  And all we get is endless $#@! from the world.  I deplore current US foreign policy, but that does not negate what we have done for the world in the past.

I would also note that nuking Iran, for example, in response to them sinking a US carrier that was carelessly or arrogantly placed in a narrow strait FAILs immensely for several big reasons.  For one thing, murdering tens of millions of innocent people for the actions of a seemingly insane government holds no moral justification at all.  For another, it will not restore the lost vessel nor the lives.  Furthermore, doing so is the equivalent of Russia or China lighting one or more nukes off in Canada or Mexico.  If we nuke their backyards then what, pray tell, does anyone think the response will be?  And even if there was no WWIII retaliation in response to what we did, the entire world would stand against us shortly after they winched their jaws up off the floor and stuffed their eyeballs back into their barely-comprehending heads.  We would be hated beyond hatred.  The world would INSTANTLY sever all diplomatic ties and all trade to the USA - of that I have very little doubt.  Even allies such as the UK and Germany would turn their backs at us, if for no other reason than not to be taken down into the maelstrom into which the USA would be sucked in the wake of unbridled anger and bitter hatred for America.  All those fancy military bases, worldwide?  Gone.

We would be reduced to the status of red-haired stepchild literally from one minute to the next and nobody would talk to us, which might actually be a good thing for once.  I guess it's true that every black cloud has some silver. 1/2 

The "I'm going to nuke you if you do X" strategy is a non-strategy.  It is the ultimate diplomatic stupidity and, if ever put into play, stands to be the end of things we perhaps would rather continued.

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## jmdrake

> BS. Been in the sea lanes much? You can't use the fire and forget approach there either. Reality sucks. If you take a Raytheon Block IV TASM near it's published max range of 900 NM you've exceeded the detection range of the Professor-General's SSGN by an order of magnitude, let alone identification. Assuming you fire and forget anyway, by the time your seeker goes active in low-cruise mode your target is OTH if it was been making way at even a modest speed. It locks on to the closest, largest target which is far more likely to be neutral shipping. Physics is a relentless bitch. Replace "relentless" for "clueless" and you have the pseudonym Gary Blecher.
> 
> XNN


Ummmm....I'm not sure I know what you are arguing against.  Gary Brecher's point *which is backed up by an actual U.S. Navy War game* is that in the Strait of Hormuz a modern U.S. carrier group is a bunch of floating targets.  Now if you want to disprove his point then pull together a few million dollars and run your own wargame and post the results.  Now if your point is "Well this carrier group wouldn't do that well out in the open seas either"....ummm...okay.  Not arguing with you.  I'm not the one saying carrier groups are valuable.  But *if* they are valuable then it's out in the open sea.  As I haven't seen any war game data suggesting that carrier groups aren't good for the open sea I will not argue that point one way or the other.

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## osan

> BS. Been in the sea lanes much? You can't use the fire and forget approach there either. Reality sucks. If you take a Raytheon Block IV TASM near it's published max range of 900 NM you've exceeded the detection range of the Professor-General's SSGN by an order of magnitude, let alone identification. Assuming you fire and forget anyway, by the time your seeker goes active in low-cruise mode your target is OTH if it was been making way at even a modest speed. It locks on to the closest, largest target which is far more likely to be neutral shipping. Physics is a relentless bitch. Replace "relentless" for "clueless" and you have the pseudonym Gary Blecher.
> 
> XNN


Your argument appears to be based on an assumption that is eminently questionable: those attacking do so with a high-order intention of surviving.  If a massive attack can be waged by people fully expecting, if not even intending, to die in the process, much of what you seem to think true flies right out the window.  The most dangerous enemy possible is the one willing to die for that which he acts.  Almost any American could remove Obama from office were he willing to sacrifice himself in the process.  Secret Service is greatly reduced where such potential enemies are in the mix.

If 500 small, fast craft swarm a carrier group, each armed with but one torpedo and every man INTENDING on dying in the process of delivering their payload, I would give it a 6-sigma likelihood that the vessel will be having lunch with Davey Jones.  If such a ship takes 10 torpedo hits (2%), it is unlikely to remain afloat.

One other thing not considered here, re: the submarine threat.  One tactic that can be used is for a sub to lie in wait, dead-quiet.  If they have good intelligence, a group's heading and speed can be relayed to a sub in a position to beat them to a point of intersection and lie in wait, perhaps even with their tubes already open.  Once within optimum striking range, they loose all fish at once.  Bye bye carrier.  If they shoot from within 1,000 - 2,000 yards, there is not enough time to do much, short of launching countermeasures.  Can't likely get aircraft up in that time and sinking the sub after the carrier is hit and going down sort of defeats the whole point.

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## r3volution 3.0

> Why are the chinese trying to build a couple of carriers themselves if the carriers are obsolete?


For the same reason we are - to bully third-world states with non-existent naval capabilities. Note that the PLAN built up a large force of modern submarines and guided-missile surface vessels long before it even started to think about building carriers - and even now that they are developing carriers, the majority of their efforts are still going toward submarines and guided-missile surface vessels. This is because the primary focus on the PLAN is to fight and defeat a first-rate competitor in the Western Pacific, while projecting power into the Middle East or Africa is secondary. In other words, the carriers are a luxury item for empire building, possible only after the real business of naval warfare has been handled.

The Soviets did the same thing during the Cold War (with the Russians continuing the trend). They had much less to spend on their navy than the US, so they needed to get the most bang for their buck; and their purpose was to defeat a first-rate naval power (the US) rather than to project power in the third world, and so which platforms did they choose? Not carriers but submarines and guided-missiles surface vessels.




> A predator drone has a maximum speed of 217 km/h  (135 mph) ,a cruise speed of 130–165 km/h and a service ceiling of 7,620  m(25,000 ft) ,a 1944 B-29 Superfortress had a maximum speed of 574  km/h(357 mph),a cruise speed of 350 km/h(220 mph) and a service ceiling  of 9,710 m ( 31850 ft) .The B-29 could be taken down with 1940 AA  technology.So unless your target is goat herders, drones would be  useless against any country with even basic modern anti-aircraft  weapons,not to even put electronic warfare into the calculation or an  air force.


I agree, the military potential of drones is  greatly overrated. The cheap ones are useless unless the enemy has no  air defense at all, and the ones they're working on that are designed to  be as capable as manned aircraft are just as expensive (if not more so)  as manned aircraft - so what's the point? The only thing they're good  for is long-term surveillance missions, where a human pilot would get  exhausted. Maybe in the future, if the warplanes become capable of  pulling more Gs than a human pilot can handle, drones might have a  serious role - but until then, not so much.




> BS. Been in the sea lanes much? You can't use  the fire and forget approach there either. Reality sucks. If you take a  Raytheon Block IV TASM near it's published max range of 900 NM you've  exceeded the detection range of the Professor-General's SSGN by an order  of magnitude, let alone identification.


I was talking about 300 miles or less, but regardless: A sub's own sonar isn't  the only way of locating/identifying a target. At greater ranges, it  can be fed data through ELF from satellites, land-based recon aircraft,  etc. bottom line: If the survival of your 100,000 ton surface vessel  depends on hiding it from the enemy, you've already lost. 




> Assuming  you fire and forget anyway, by the time your seeker goes active in  low-cruise mode your target is OTH if it was been making way at even a  modest speed. It locks on to the closest, largest target which is far  more likely to be neutral shipping.


First, missiles can  be made to distinguish (visually, by radar signature, by IR signature,  etc) between different types of targets. Second, the oceans are mostly  empty once you get offshore; the shipping lanes are the equivalent of a  two-lane highway across the Sahara. Keeping the CSG to the shipping  lanes so it can hide in the commercial traffic s going to severely limit  its usefulness, and make its movements highly predictable. If I know  that you're going to be crossing the Pacific on one of the several main  shipping lanes, all I have to do is park a cheap diesel submarine on  each of them, turn everything off, and wait.




> As I haven't seen any war game data suggesting  that carrier groups aren't good for the open sea I will not argue that  point one way or the other.


There have been a number of published cases of submarines getting within torpedo range of carriers - both in wargames and in reality. 




> In 2007 HMCS _Corner Brook_, a diesel-electric submarine of the Canadian navy, sneaked up on _Illustrious_ during an exercise in the Atlantic.To prove they could have sunk the carrier, _Corner Brook_’s crew snapped a photo through the periscope—and  the Canadian navy helpfully published it. “The picture represents hard  evidence that the submarine was well within attack parameters and would  have been successful in an attack,” boasted Cmdr. Luc Cassivi, commander  of the Canadian submarine division....
> 
> In 1974 a Soviet Il-38 patrol plane spotted what was later described as the carrier USS _Nimitz_ and its escorts off the U.S. East Coast. The ship’s identity is in doubt, as in 1974 the brand-new _Nimitz_ was  in the water at a Virginia shipyard and still being worked on.  Whichever carrier it was, Soviet commanders instructed an attack  submarine to track the flattop and its escorts. “Three days we  [followed] _Nimitz_ [sic],” navigator Pavel Borodulkin told Tom  Briggs, an American who visited Russia decades later. Borodulkin implied  that the sub spent much of the time at a depth of 120 feet. As for  being detected … “We did not worry,” Borodulkin said, explaining that  American sonar was not optimized for detecting a target moving on the  same course and speed as the vessel doing the searching. “Our stealth  was high,” Borodulkin said. To prove his claims, the navigator gave Briggs the above blurry photo of a flattop, snapped through the Soviet sub’s periscope. That wasn’t the only NATO carrier the Soviets tailed. In 1984 a _Victor_-class Soviet submarine played cat and mouse with the flattop USS _Kitty Hawk_ off the Korean Peninsula. The Americans lost track of the _Victor_ and,  in the dead of night, the 80,000-ton carrier actually collided with the  5,000-ton sub. “I felt the ship shudder violently and, going to the  starboard side, I could see two periscopes and the upper part of a  submarine moving away,” _Kitty Hawk_Capt. Dave Rogers told _The Sydney Morning Herald_. A Japanese patrol plane later spotted the apparently damaged _Victor_ limping away at three knots. In November the same year _Illustrious_, then a young vessel, passed within 500 yards of a Soviet _Tango_-class submarine during a Royal Navy exercise off the Scottish coast, according to _The Robesonian_ newspaper...
> 
> Not  nearly as large, advanced or active as U.S. subs, the Chinese boats  were at a huge disadvantage. Beijing’s subs struggled to gather  intelligence and develop wartime tactics. They enjoyed at least one  dramatic success in October 2006, when a Chinese _Song-_class diesel-electric attack submarine quietly surfaced within nine miles of _Kitty Hawk_ in the waters between Japan and Taiwan. The _Song-_class vessel, displacing 2,200 tons, was close enough to hit the _Kitty Hawk_ with a torpedo. None of the carrier’s roughly dozen escorting warships detected the _Song_ until  it breached the surface. American officers were flabbergasted. “This  could well have escalated into something that was very unforeseen,” said  Adm. Bill Fallon, then commander of U.S. Pacific forces.


http://www.realcleardefense.com/arti...er_107406.html




> To put it simply, if naval exercises  in the last two decades involving foreign diesel-electric submarines  had been actual combat, most if not all, U.S. aircraft carriers would be  at the bottom of the ocean: as many as 10 U.S. aircraft carriers have  been reported “sunk” in these exercises.
> 
> 
>  The analytically conservative Congressional Budget Office was alarmed enough to officially report  that “some analysts argue that the Navy is not very good at locating  diesel-electric submarines, especially in noisy, shallower waters near  coastal areas. Exercises with allied navies that use diesel-electric  submarines confirm that problem…[For example,] Israeli diesel-electric  submarines, which until recently were relatively old, are said to always  ‘sink’ some of the large and powerful warships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet  in exercises. And most recently, an Australian _Collins_-class submarine penetrated a U.S. carrier battlegroup and was in a position to sink an aircraft carrier during exercises off Hawaii in May 2000.”
> 
> 
>  There have been many such exercise “sinkings” since then, including aircraft carriers _Reagan_ and _Lincoln_.
> 
> 
> ...


http://nation.time.com/2012/12/04/mo...ld-be-sinking/

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## Inkblots

In addition to the other objections already raised about this analysis, I'd like to toss off a few more.  First of all, you've completely neglected the role of CIWS in the fleet's anti-missile defense.  It's not a simple calculation of how many ASM vs. how many AAM can be launched; some CIWS tests have even successfully shot down hypersonics, so they're not a negligible factor.  Every surface ship in the battle group will have multiple Phalanx batteries spraying into your hypothetical missile cloud.

Secondly, you assume that every SSGN will be able to launch its full complement of missiles at the fleet.  That won't happen, either.  No SSGN can fire more than about 2 dozen missiles in a single volley, and after the first volley, even if they slipped the fleet's airscreen initially, their positions would be exactly known.  The airscreen would sink them in minutes -- I'd be astonished if your hypothetical sub fleet got off more than 50 missiles per sub on average.

Altogether, I think this would be a pretty even fight, with the most likely outcome being _both_ fleets are crippled.  So, given that the Ruritanian CSG and Carpathian sub force fight to a draw, and the CSG is more flexible and has more uses, Ruritania is actually getting better value for their money, contrary to your assertion.

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## r3volution 3.0

> In addition to the other objections already raised about this analysis, I'd like to toss off a few more.  First of all, you've completely neglected the role of CIWS in the fleet's anti-missile defense.  It's not a simple calculation of how many ASM vs. how many AAM can be launched; some CIWS tests have even successfully shot down hypersonics, so they're not a negligible factor.  Every surface ship in the battle group will have multiple Phalanx batteries spraying into your hypothetical missile cloud.


In the scenario I outlined in the OP, there were 1540 ASM incoming, with 288 taken out by AAM, for 1252 remaining. How many CIWS are there in a CSG? The CVN has 4 and each DDG has 2, for a total of 10. The actual capabilities of CIWS are classified, but do you seriously believe that 10 of these units can kill 1252 ASM, all arriving within the very narrow operational range of the CIWS at the same time? I sure don't.

Moreover, if the missile strike were directed against just one of the CSG's ships (say the CVN), only that one ship's CIWS would be in play. A CSG is typically spread out over a considerable distance. The DDG are not right next to the CVN, so their CIWS are going to be out of range if the CVN is being targeted. The Phalanx, e.g., only has a range of 2.2 miles. 

Finally, while I was using the TASM as the model ASM (because that's  what the Ohio is set up to fire), there's no reason why an SSGN couldn't  be firing supersonic missiles - they'd have to be shorter range and/or  have a smaller warhead to pack as many aboard an SSGN of the same size,  but that's no problem. When you start doing the math on a hypersonic  missile vs a CIWS, it's pretty obviously hopeless for the CIWS. A mach 3  missiles will traverse the entire operational range of a Phalanx (2.2  miles) in about 3.5 seconds - but it's actually less than that because  the CIWS can't kill the missile 50 feet in front of the ship because then the  wreckage of the missile is still going to hit the ship anyway. The Phalanx fires at 75 rounds per second. So, let's suppose we have those 1252 ASM (but now mach 3 supersonic) all targeting the CVN. If they're timed correctly, they all enter the range of the CIWS at the same time. In the 3.5 seconds it takes the missiles to hit their target, the 4 Phalanx systems will be able to fire - at best - 1050 rounds. So, even if each individual round kills one missile (which is totally insane), you'd still have 202 missiles slamming into the CVN. 




> Secondly, you assume that every SSGN will be able to launch its full complement of missiles at the fleet.  That won't happen, either.  No SSGN can fire more than about 2 dozen missiles in a single volley


I don't think that's true. Why would they be unable to fire them all at once? The missiles are all in their own tubes - it's not like they fire a missile and then refill that tube with another missile. 




> and after the first volley, even if they slipped the fleet's airscreen initially, their positions would be exactly known.  The airscreen would sink them in minutes


That all depends on how close the ASW aircraft are to the SSGN when it fires. 

For example, if the aircraft had been patrolling in a radius of 400 miles from the CSG, that would mean the aircraft are spread out over an area of just over 500,000 square miles - about twice the size of Texas. The odds that any of the handful of aircraft patrolling this area will just happen to be right next to the SSGN at the time it fires its missiles is essentially nil. If they're more than a few minutes away, as they almost certainly will be, then they're not going to be able to just drop some torpedos at the last known location of the sub. They're going to have begin a traditional ASW hunt - in which they play a role by dropping sonobuoys or doing MAD, but in which the major players are the DDGs and their ASW helos. Only problem is, if the SSGN's attack was successful, there are no more DDGs or helos, they're sitting on the seafloor. 

In a nutshell, the SSGN doesn't have to worry much about retaliation because it's first blow is going to cripple its enemies ASW capabilities.

P.S. You might retort that the patrol aircraft could extend the range of their attack on the SSGN by using anti-submarine rockets, instead of just dropping torpedoes. And that's true, it would extend their range - but not much. The typical ASROC has a range of 10-20 miles - and for good reason. Though you could shoot a torpedo as far and fast as any other warhead, it becomes useless beyond a very short range, because the sub will have changed position and - unlike with a guided missile chasing a surface target - there's no way for the ASROC to track the sub once it starts moving away from the initial target location. So this doesn't solve the problem, and I maintain that the SSGN is likely to get away unless a patrol aircraft just happens - against all odds - to be right on top of it when it fires.

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## r3volution 3.0

And now I'm off to do battle with the USS Jim Beam..

Happy New Year Everyone

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## 69360

Who needs carriers when you can just invade, subjugate and build air bases in 3rd world countries all over the world. 

/troll

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## JK/SEA

the surface fleet has been obsolete since WW2...

We have Trident, we have bases in Ally nations, we have missiles, we have satelites....etc etc...

time to retire the Carrier groups.

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## XNavyNuke

Its really great that we can have this type of discussion about military platforms and policy. It is another thing that we can thank the Founders for. Civilian preeminence over the military was yet another revolutionary concept back in 1775. As a quick aside, Ive started on a really good book that I got for Christmas  The Fishermans Cause: Atlantic Commerce and Maritime Dimensions of the American Revolution by C. P. Magra.

My summary of v3.0s original thesis is carriers 1.) encourage an aggressive foreign policy, 2.) are expensive, and 3.) obsolete as a naval warfare platform. Im assuming that there are readers of this thread that are solely interested observing this thread to see an intelligent discourse that the Founders knew we could be capable of.

1. The use or misuse of any tool is the responsibility of the wielder, not the existence of the tool. That kind of thinking is lazy and is what leads to conclusions like  if everyone only had wheelock pistols for personal defense then we couldnt have mass shootings. When it comes to personal defense I want the best suite of tools for a variety of static and mobile conditions, maintained in good condition, and the ability to train to/and maintain proficiency in each of them. Give me something with range in the toolkit. Dont make me wait until the problem is within the 5 meter effective range of my wheelock. The Navy was intended to secure freedom of the seas for our mercantile republic. Unless you are a truly old phart you dont remember that the Navy was a stand-alone department for the first 150+years of our nation. (Consolidated in 1947 to the DoD) Its interest in Congress were separated from the War Department. It was a worldwide navy long before the sailing of the Great White Fleet in 1907. 

Turning all the carriers into razor blades will do absolutely nothing to stem military adventurism. When war comes, as history shows it will, warships construction is the one thing that cannot be quickly changed. Typewriter plants can be changed to making rifles and auto production lines modified to roll off armored vehicles of various stripes in a matter of months. There is no overseas black market to purchase one or two fleets of warships like there is for small arms. It is expensive to maintain old ships in mothballs but our country does so because they are quicker to retrofit in times of emergency than to lay new keels. You fix military policy by changing the fleshware not the hardware.

To take this line of thinking to its extreme conclusion  why have a Navy at all? When you combine the capabilities and platforms numbers of the medium and high endurance cutters of the Coast Guard, you have a Navy that ranks somewhere between 20th and 22nd in the world. Only about 15% of our GDP comes from the import and export of goods and services. Who cares if the someone blocks the little red sea lanes. 


Sea Lines of Communication(SLOC) We have an obesity epidemic in this country and could lose a little fat, right?

2. Carriers are capital ships. Not only are they capital in size and capital in time to construct, they also require the commitment of a lot of capital. Again, this has always been the case going back to Themistocles and the construction of the Athenian fleet that would be critical in the permanent removal of the Persian threat to a germinating culture that would grow into what we know as Western Civilization. No Glory That Was Greece Perspective is necessary when dealing with the budget numbers around a modern carrier. Take the Connecticut-class (BB) battleships which were part of the Great White Fleet in 1907. They cost about $8 million each to construct and $1 million per year to operate and maintain. The annual budget for the Navy in 1907 was $107 million so the construction of this capital ship was ~8% of the total. In 2004, the Navys budget was ~$125 billion and the construction of a Nimitz-class (CVN) carrier was $4.5 billion, or about 3% of the total. You can buy an awful lot of Boston Whaler/Ma Deuce platforms for that kind of jack. By the same token, in 1907 the case could have been made to buy an awful lot of torpedo boats (PT) and destroyers (DD) with $8 million in 1907. BBs were susceptible to torpedoes and if you put enough fish in the water they couldnt avoid them either. The problem goes back to those pesky SLOCs and the grand strategy appropriate to a mercantile republic. The small boys and their weapons were better suited to interdicting a point at the end of a SLOC.

None of this is helped by the military megacorportations trying to sell the Congress the latest and greatest with the spiel that everything before their weapon is obsolete. Its the same thing in your personal finances. New cars have safety features and internet capabilities that the salesman will insist that you need. Of course your old car is fine. You know every squeak and how to steer it on packed snow. Of course everyone needs that new AR in .300 Blackout. So what if you and your whole extended family are already proficient with the dozen M-14s in your vault? The .300 Blackout is a transformational cartridge and you WILL die without it. Tradeoffs have consequences. In the case of the carrier battlegroup, it is my opinion that in the name of savings and the promise of transformational weapons weve made a handful of decisions that have reduced the ability of a group to protect itself. Specifically, the decision to retire rather than upgrade the F-14 Tomcat Four F-14s seized and AIM-54 Phoenix reduced the range of the protective CAP. Doing the same to the S-3 Viking means a smaller radius submarine screen around the battlegroup. The group is left reliant upon helicopters that are slower to run down a detection bearing and have shorter legs.

3. Are carriers obsolete in naval warfare? Lots of claims have been made starting with WW2 and the Long Lance torpedo with its range and massive warhead. Then there was the massive blast radius of a multimegaton thermonuclear warhead. This was followed by the threat of huge waves of Soviet Backfire bombers each launching multiple supersonic KH-22 missiles at carriers in the middle of the Atlantic. Like every warship it has strengths and weaknesses and obsolescence it only truly defined by the number of hulks on the bottom. Lexington Institute  What it takes to successfully attack an American aircraft carrier. The British didnt acknowledge the weaknesses of their battlecruisers until three of them were sunk in the Battle of Jutland.

Maintaining the integrity of SLOCs requires a continuous presence along its entire length. In WW2 this was best illustrated by the successful use of the convoy system with sufficient escorts to defend against surface and submarine threats. Carriers played a key role then with their continuous air coverage at long range. That role hasnt changed. On the other hand, given their stealth, interdicting of SLOCs is what attack submarines do best. Defining future submarine capabilities They only have to be successful at a single point to force the enemy into expending resources protecting the entire length. Submarines are not well suited at maintaining a SLOC because it requires their continuous presence escorting at a relatively high speed. Speed is noise. If youre noisy you cant detect the enemy well and their submarines have an easier time detecting and identifying you. The same holds true for the noise profile of surface ships. That is one reason why you change your noise profile to sound like commercial shipping traffic. Its far from perfect but it forces a listening submarine to close the distance to get a better signal for confident identification. The same holds true for the radio frequency emissions above the water. How to Hide a Task Force Many advanced missile seekers use unique RF emission signatures for smart target confirmation in addition to heat signature and radar homing. Good EMCON (emission control) does double duty by reducing their effectiveness as well.

Some finishing thoughts: Submarines do have an important role to play and were letting their numbers slip.  Restoring the Submarine Fleet Naval campaigns winning strategies must address two key components: logistics and damage control. Japans fate was sealed by the US submarine fleet hamstringing their transport capacity. Submarines in WW2 You cant sail a warship without fuel. You cant refill your weapon magazines or repair damage without material. The weakness is that a submarine taking damage results, not only a mission-kill, but also a sunk platform. With excellent damage control and a bit of luck, a surface ship can be mission-killed but not sunk and limp home under the protection of surviving escorts. Given the difficulty in time and resources of replacing a sunk unit, several hundred years of history gives credence to the maxim that navies that float to fight another day are almost always placed in the win column. An SSGN would be better employed by sneaking into enemy territory and launching TLAMs against softer port facilities, refineries, and fuel storage. SSNs are better used as hunting sharks sinking merchants and performing ASW (anti-submarine warfare) against the enemy.

Wargames Uber Alles: The results of various wargames can be misused to support a particular sacred cow. I wonder how many times a carrier has been sunk by those wascaly Backfire bombers? We know from the Battle of Midway that the Japanese convinced themselves of the wrong lessons from their pre-attack wargaming of their Midway operations. The Diabolus in Machina of War Gaming  page 8 Modern military wargaming is dependent on fixed parameters and the judgement of the controllers. Poor selection of parameters or mishandling by controllers can reduce the output of any wargame to worthlessness. Wargaming for Innovation A smart person willing to play the parameters rather than playing within them can radically skew the outcome. To take this as an absolute real-world strategy would be a mistake. How David beats Goliath Skill in a game is just that. No more or less. I wonder if Pericles or Gunny would rather face the World Champion of the first person shooter game of the year whatever it is or an Audey Murphy on the field of battle?

Time, Distance, and the Horizon at sea: For people who have never been to sea, let alone contemplate a sea battle, there are some important things to take account of. Run time of weapons. A missile or torpedo is not a rifle bullet or artillery shell with a flight time of milliseconds to minutes. Tens of minutes to an hour or more is more like it. While your weapon is waiting to arrive, your target and everything else around it is moving. Maybe its travelling in a straight line but definitely not during wartime. Will your target be there when your weapon arrives? When do you set your weapon to go active? Do you go active knowing it will give your attack away and increase the enemys response time for countermeasures, while at the same time giving your own bearing away? Your torpedoes may run through a patch with poor acoustic properties that make it harder to acquire their target. As they get closer theyll get detected by passive sonar. Your missiles are most likely sea skimming, flying ~5 m above the ocean to make them harder to detect on radar. The formula for the distance to the horizon is d=~3.57SQRT(h). (d=kilometers, h=meters) Doesnt matter how sophisticated you warhead seeker is, it cant see over the horizon. Without the ability to mid-course correct with updated instructions from an airborne asset, if its targets not there it is going to run its course until it runs out of fuel. The sea lanes are full of traffic. A smart commander will use that to their advantage. Theres a great $4 app called Marine Traffic that will show you all the active transponder traffic anywhere in the world.

Anyway, I hope this helps.
XNN

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## idiom

Carriers are not part of the nuclear Triad. In a real war that is the only consideration, wielding a big enough hammer to avoid a fight.

So Carriers are not here for big wars. Contemplating them in a big war is stupid. The retaliation for taking down a carrier group is getting turned to glass.

Carriers are good for all the other tasks, diplomacy and policing and small wars.

Op's article is retarded.

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## pcosmar

> Carriers are good for all the other tasks, diplomacy and policing and small wars.


Gunboat Diplomacy (terrorism),, World Policing,, small wars?? (defensive?)

Perhaps before any other analysis,, the proper role of the Navy should be strictly defined.

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## idiom

> Gunboat Diplomacy (terrorism),, World Policing,, small wars?? (defensive?)
> 
> Perhaps before any other analysis,, the proper role of the Navy should be strictly defined.


Not saying the policy is a good idea, just pointing out that arguing about a Carriers role in a Big war is retarded. They are for when you want to reach out and touch someone who can't touch you back.

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## alucard13mm

So a carrier costs 4.5 billion dollars to build. Excluding the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aircraft and expensive missiles on board the carrier.

A nuclear powered submarine costs 1.2billion. A diesel-electric sub costs 300 million to 500 million. I think I'd rather have 3-4 extra nuclear subs or 9 diesel electric subs prowling the oceans, mostly undetected.. ready to launch nukes and guided missiles at the enemy.

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## HOLLYWOOD

Why does the US government need aircraft carriers with 1500 bases located around the world with 1000s of deployed or rapid deploy forces on standby deployment. Not to mention the dozens of allies and their military forces.

It's all a huge con game for the Military Industrial Complex and funneling money to the same insiders/players.

PS: If the public knew the classified portions of the 4 branches of the DOD military, they could truly see the massive waste. Today, it's all about public manipulation and the effective use of propaganda to sell the massive expenditures.

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## jmdrake

> Carriers are not part of the nuclear Triad. In a real war that is the only consideration, wielding a big enough hammer to avoid a fight.
> 
> So Carriers are not here for big wars. Contemplating them in a big war is stupid. The retaliation for taking down a carrier group is getting turned to glass.
> 
> Carriers are good for all the other tasks, diplomacy and policing and small wars.
> 
> Op's article is retarded.


I think you don't understand the point of the OP.  If we had a non interventionist foreign policy we wouldn't need to use carrier groups for policing and small wars.

As for turning someone to glass that took down a carrier group, the retaliation for that wouldn't be pretty for us as well.

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## XNavyNuke

YouTube of carrier debate at Annapolis museum a week ago Friday.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x8sdNU0K1Hg

The audio is poor. I had to turn the speakers all the way up. Wish they had a transcript.

XNN

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## r3volution 3.0

> 3. Are carriers obsolete in naval warfare? Lots  of claims have been made starting with WW2 and the Long Lance torpedo  with its range and massive warhead. Then there was the massive blast  radius of a multimegaton thermonuclear warhead.


Interesting that you mention that.

A  single Trident II has a blast area larger than the area of the circle  whose radius is the distance that the CBG can travel at max speed during  the flight time of the Trident II (flying its maximum range of 4000nm).  In other words, if you knew the present location of a CBG, you could  fire and forget a Trident at that location, from 4000nm away, and it would be a guaranteed  kill, no matter what the CBG did between launch and detonation. The CBG  costs billions, the Trident $37 million. 




> Maintaining the integrity of SLOCs requires a continuous presence  along its entire length. In WW2 this was best illustrated by the  successful use of the convoy system with sufficient escorts to defend  against surface and submarine threats. Carriers played a key role then  with their continuous air coverage at long range. That role hasn’t  changed. On the other hand, given their stealth, interdicting of SLOCs  is what attack submarines do best.


If the primary threat  to convoys is submarines (and I think that's true), then the primary  defense should not be the CBG. The better part of ASW is done by the  destroyers and other submarines, not the CVN (the CVN is the beneficiary of ASW in a CBG, not a main contributor to it). The fixed wing aircraft  involved in ASW patrols would be land-based. The CVN is just taking up resources which could have been put into more destroyers,  submarines, or land-based patrol aircraft. 

As for air defense, the only thing the CVN really offers that can't be provided by DDGs is the Hawkeye (yes a CVN carries an wing of fighters, but for the price of 1 CVN you could have 26 Arleigh Burkes, each with 96 VLS cells - which provides better air defense?). But it seems kind of insane to have a multi-billion dollar vessel, loaded with an entire air wing of 5th generation fighters, just to be able to launch a couple Hawkeyes. If you must have locally based (as opposed to land-based) patrol aircraft of this type, surely some kind of smaller (cheaper) carrier could be designed.

As for enemy surface ships; if my thesis is correct, then of course the CVN is not best suited for that either. 




> ...there are some important things to take account of. Run time  of weapons. A missile or torpedo is not a rifle bullet or artillery  shell with a flight time of milliseconds to minutes. Tens of minutes to  an hour or more is more like it. While your weapon is waiting to arrive,  your target and everything else around it is moving. Maybe its  travelling in a straight line but definitely not during wartime. Will  your target be there when your weapon arrives? When do you set your  weapon to go active? Do you go active knowing it will give your attack  away and increase the enemy’s response time for countermeasures, while  at the same time giving your own bearing away? Your torpedoes may run  through a patch with poor acoustic properties that make it harder to  acquire their target. As they get closer they’ll get detected by passive  sonar. Your missiles are most likely sea skimming, flying ~5 m above the ocean to make them harder to detect on radar.


Not for a saturation attack, doesn't matter if they're intercepted.  You'd have them flying high for maximum sight and minimum drag.




> The formula for the distance to the horizon is d=~3.57SQRT(h).  (d=kilometers, h=meters) Doesn’t matter how sophisticated you warhead  seeker is, it can’t see over the horizon. Without the ability to  mid-course correct with updated instructions from an airborne asset, if  its target’s not there it is going to run its course until it runs out  of fuel.


If a CBG is moving at 35mph and a TLAM at  550mph, with the latter launched from 300 miles out, it will arrive at  the last known location of the CBG in 33 minutes, by which time the CBG  could be no more than 20 miles away from that point. To see the CBG 20  miles away, the TLAM would have to be flying at about 250 ft.

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## r3volution 3.0

So maybe the CBG is inferior in a naval war, in combat against other warships, but it's unmatched in its ability to park off the enemy coast and bomb land targets.

 ...*Or Is it?*

 I thought so myself when I wrote the OP, that's the conventional wisdom, but some recent number crunching suggests otherwise:  

 An SSGN travels at 840 miles per day

assume it takes 1 full day to reload VLS tubes

the TLAM has a range of 1000 miles

 Thus, take the distance from nearest resupply port to target, subtract 1000, multiply by two, divide by 840 and that is the number of days required for an SSGN to make a round-trip from launching position back to base to resupply back to launching position to fire again.  

 The number of SSGN available (11, being the cost equivalent of a CBG) divided by the round-trip time in days = the number of SSGN that would be on station on any given day. That multiplied by 154 (number of TLAMs aboard each SSGN) = the number of TLAMs that the SSGN fleet could fire at the target every day, indefinitely.  

 4 TLAM = 1 F-35 sortie in terms of weight of ordinance delivered. So, divide the previous figure by 4, and we have the number of sortie equivalents the SSGN fleet can deliver per day. This obviously depends on range (longer the range, longer the trip to resupply, the fewer SSGN on station each day).  

 The break-even point, at which the SSGN fleet could launch 120 sortie equivalents per day indefinitely (same as CBG) is ~3050 miles. That is, for a target  3050 miles from the nearest US naval base, the SSGN fleet can deliver the same number of sorties per day as a CBG. For a target farther away, it could deliver less. For a target closer, it could deliver more.

 What does this mean in reality?  

 From bases in Japan and Guam, that covers all of East and SE Asia.

 From bases in Diego Garcia and Bahrain, that covers all of South Asia and the ME.

 From bases in Europe, that covers all of Europe and North Africa.

 Only parts of S. America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Australia would be inaccessible (keeping in mind that we could still hit these areas, just not at same _continuous rate_ as a CBG parked off the coast).

 For an example of the _superiority_ of the SSGN fleet in terms of sortie rate at _closer_ ranges - from Japanese bases to the PRC coast of the Taiwan Straight (a likely combat area in a future war), the distance is only 1400 miles, 800 miles round-trip for the SSGN from base to launching site, so equivalent carrier sorties per day = 217, or 80% more than the CBG. 

Most likely combat zones are well within 3050 miles of a US naval base. 

So, unless you're planning a massive, sustained air campaign against Namibia or Argentina (), the SSGN are what you want.

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## r3volution 3.0

> YouTube of carrier debate at Annapolis museum a week ago Friday.
> 
> http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x8sdNU0K1Hg
> 
> The audio is poor. I had to turn the speakers all the way up. Wish they had a transcript.
> 
> XNN


Nice, hadn't seen that before. 

Hendrix (anti-carrier) clearly won. He was talking like a military analyst while the other fellow sounded like a politician, said little of substance in rebuttal. 

Hendrix's paper "At What Cost a Carrier?" is one of the first things I read on this subject.

P.S. They must have fixed the audio, it sounded fine to me.

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## presence

> Why does the US government need


the world may never know

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