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A speedboat full of explosives couldn't even sink a destroyer. How is it going to do that to a carrier?

 djones520 wrote:
A speedboat full of explosives couldn't even sink a destroyer. How is it going to do that to a carrier?

not sink... but you can force someone into dry dock for a few weeks or months to repair the damage.
its good as out of action.

It's almost as if things like guns, radar, and the common Mk I eyeball don't exist for some people.

 Ketara wrote:
It's almost as if things like guns, radar, and the common Mk I eyeball don't exist for some people.

Aye. The defences are dense.
However, you do not need to sink a ship, just damage the ship enough it needs to dock, knock out a key weapon system or such like radar, ernough damage to make it mission killed but not sunk and need to withdraw.

Even if its short term, that combat ship is not on patrol. Its in harbour under repairs.

I'm going to put this bluntly, do you think this hasn't occurred to the people who man warships? They have people on watch 24/7 in appropriate routines with appropriate defences for this sort of thing whilst in port, and whilst sailing.

 Ketara wrote:
I'm going to put this bluntly, do you think this hasn't occurred to the people who man warships? They have people on watch 24/7 in appropriate routines with appropriate defences for this sort of thing whilst in port, and whilst sailing.

USS Cole shows what can happen. Rare but risk enough to not dismiss it so off hand.
It only takes one single opportunity, one single gap in the net for the enemy to maybe penetrate.

Compliancy I what hurts you far more than many things.

 Frazzled wrote:
In his defense, if major powers are going at it, such that carrier groups are being attacked, nukes are definitely, if not likely, going to eventually be used. Major powers haven't fought a duirect war in decades with a fear that would occur being a major driver to it not happening. Nuclear deterrance indeed worked.

If nuclear deterrance hasn't worked in the scenario, then odds are death from above is only a matter of time, and major sea battles would be one reason for it.

on the positive, in a short period of time I'd proffer fleet groups would have the capacity to actually defend themselves from old style missiles. THAAD's been deployed and hell I worked on THAAD so thats er...decades technology.

Two things - first is that 'in a battle between major powers the carrier groups will get nuked' doesn't mean, as BaconCatBug claimed, that carriers are therefore useless. Because there's lots of engagements that aren't fought against other major powers.
Since WWII the US has deployed aircraft carriers in wars in lots of wars to support US military objectives and never had them nuked. Clearly there's plenty of scope for carriers to support national objectives in conflicts short of nuclear war.

The second issue is that even in a conflict against a major nuclear power there is no certainty of nukes being used to take out carriers. Losing control of a sea lane due to the superiority of an enemy carrier group doesn't automatically mean nuclear retaliation and risking escalation towards total nuclear annihilation. That's a big risk, of course, but there's nothing certain about it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
As I've said before to everybody, nobody, and I mean nobody will nuke a city in a time of war. That's an end of the world scenario that no nations wants to enact.

But if a US carrier fleet is in the middle of the Pacific? Dropping one nuke on them could be a tempting move. America would obviously be mad as hell, but that could be chalked up as a military loss, and not a civilian catastrophe.

It might be chalked up as a military loss. It also might not be. The side launching the nuke wouldn't be certain, the US probably wouldn't know right up until it happens to the carrier group how it will really respond. The US might decide it is better to accept the loss than give a nuclear retaliation of their own, but they might also feel backed in to a corner where nuclear retaliation is needed. That's the issue with use of nukes. Each step might escalate to the next, depending on whether countries feel they can back down or not.

So it's wrong to say that it will never happen, just as it's wrong to say it is certain to happen in some circumstances. We just don't know.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jhe90 wrote:
USS Cole shows what can happen. Rare but risk enough to not dismiss it so off hand.
It only takes one single opportunity, one single gap in the net for the enemy to maybe penetrate.

Compliancy I what hurts you far more than many things.

Isolated terror attacks in times of relative peace are not effective wartime strategies. You can get lucky once and take a destroyer out of the fight for a while. Doing something similar to a carrier requires luck and planning a whole order of magnitude greater. And then to neutralise the US fleet you need to do that to seven carrier groups. And of course in wartime security is going to be much higher.

I'm not saying sabotage isn't a good weapon of war, it is. But it's more a useful side element, than a direct counter.

Let me put it this way, if you're about to go to war with a carrier equipped enemy, and your glorious leader says not to worry about the air dominance their carrier groups will give them because he has some sabotage operations planned, then start planning how you're gonna get you and your family the feth out of the country.

 sebster wrote:

Let me put it this way, if you're about to go to war with a carrier equipped enemy, and your glorious leader says not to worry about the air dominance their carrier groups will give them because he has some sabotage operations planned, then start planning how you're gonna get you and your family the feth out of the country.

Well, unless said plan is along the lines of the St. Nazaire raid. You don't need to target the ship directly with the sabotage in order for the sabotage to take a ship out of the war, after all. If you can damage the ports near the combat zone it requires to refuel, rearm and make repairs then you can turn what would be a minor repair job completed in a matter of days into a days long sail to the next closest port which can handle a ship your size plus repair time and then days sail back.

Has this been mentioned?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel.

Everything can be destroyed.


Still, the carrier's use as a mobile airbase gives it a degree of force projection never before seen. I don't see them losing much viability in a conventional war.

 Ketara wrote:
It's almost as if things like guns, radar, and the common Mk I eyeball don't exist for some people.

Now I'll admit that a speedboat isn't much of a threat in the realm of layered defences.

More likely a missile would get through and cause some damage. At this point Politicians see an exponentially greater threat to their position. I don't think many of our MP's would understand combat operations in the light of the Daily Fail or Guardian claiming lack of defence expenditure is harming our troops and demanding action.

The BBC just ran an article asking if we can ever really minimize civilian casualties through use of drone strikes and military operations. Our Carriers will be great for force projection and acting as force multipliers, but in what situation? Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Yemen, Sudan (Humanitarian flag waving aside).

I fully support our efforts to create a carrier force, but you cant help feeling that HMS Queen Liz will have many many successful drug interdiction mission under her belt, by the time she is out of service.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Well, unless said plan is along the lines of the St. Nazaire raid. You don't need to target the ship directly with the sabotage in order for the sabotage to take a ship out of the war, after all. If you can damage the ports near the combat zone it requires to refuel, rearm and make repairs then you can turn what would be a minor repair job completed in a matter of days into a days long sail to the next closest port which can handle a ship your size plus repair time and then days sail back.

St Nazaire was an effective means of sabotaging a port, and denying it to the enemy had strategic consequences. Actions like that are an effective tool of war, then as well as now. But to return to my point, that kind of operation is situational and inherently supportive of traditional war, it can't be used to make any conventional weapon of war entirely obselete. That doesn't change whether you're sabotaging the ship or it's supporting infrastructure.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Well, unless said plan is along the lines of the St. Nazaire raid. You don't need to target the ship directly with the sabotage in order for the sabotage to take a ship out of the war, after all. If you can damage the ports near the combat zone it requires to refuel, rearm and make repairs then you can turn what would be a minor repair job completed in a matter of days into a days long sail to the next closest port which can handle a ship your size plus repair time and then days sail back.

Now you're talking about a ridiculously complicated plan where you have to hit the carriers AND simultaneously knock out all nearby repair options, where any one of these attacks is an act of war that will immediately put all other targets on alert. That's the kind of insanity that only works in fiction. If you really want to mission kill a carrier for cheap you throw a swarm of anti-ship missiles at it and saturate its defenses, and hope that the missiles that get through can put it out of the fight long enough to accomplish your strategic objectives.

 Peregrine wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Well, unless said plan is along the lines of the St. Nazaire raid. You don't need to target the ship directly with the sabotage in order for the sabotage to take a ship out of the war, after all. If you can damage the ports near the combat zone it requires to refuel, rearm and make repairs then you can turn what would be a minor repair job completed in a matter of days into a days long sail to the next closest port which can handle a ship your size plus repair time and then days sail back.

Now you're talking about a ridiculously complicated plan where you have to hit the carriers AND simultaneously knock out all nearby repair options, where any one of these attacks is an act of war that will immediately put all other targets on alert. That's the kind of insanity that only works in fiction. If you really want to mission kill a carrier for cheap you throw a swarm of anti-ship missiles at it and saturate its defenses, and hope that the missiles that get through can put it out of the fight long enough to accomplish your strategic objectives.

You don't actually need to hit the ship to prevent it from being able to operate in the area of operations you want to deny it. The Tirpitz never got into the Atlantic, not because it was damaged alongside the Nazaire raid, but because the Nazaire raid made reaching a dock to carry out repairs from the Atlantic extremely risky, requiring either going through the English Channel or the GIUK gap, both of which were heavily defended by the Royal Navy.

Denying an enemy the possibility of safe repair can be just as effective at removing a ship from a warzone as actually damaging that ship.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
They have been obsolete since the first ICBMs existed. All they exist for now is so the US and China can have dick-waving contests.

I mean that completely ignores reality. And also that there are more than two countries in the world.

Indeed there are six.

Texas.
Greater Texas (aka the US)
Norte Texas (Canada)
Mexico (central and south America)
Australia
Not Texas (everywhere else).

OMG, that literally made me LOL at work!!! I, too, am a Texan, so appreciate this in all its glorious Texas pride!!

 MDSW wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
They have been obsolete since the first ICBMs existed. All they exist for now is so the US and China can have dick-waving contests.

I mean that completely ignores reality. And also that there are more than two countries in the world.

Indeed there are six.

Texas.
Greater Texas (aka the US)
Norte Texas (Canada)
Mexico (central and south America)
Australia
Not Texas (everywhere else).

OMG, that literally made me LOL at work!!! I, too, am a Texan, so appreciate this in all its glorious Texas pride!!

\

Australia.. i believe your spell check should say Catchan...

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
But it would be a proportionate response in my opinion.

No nation on Earth could stand back and do nothing if one of its cities got turned to ash, but losing military assets is different to civilian assets, because people know the risks if you join the military. It's a different mindset. During the Cold War, if the KGB killed a CIA agent, then the normal response was to kill a KGB agent in return. Both sides understood the 'rules.'

So, in this hypothetical situation, America loses a carrier fleet in the middle of nowhere, and the proportional response would be to nuke a Chinese military asset/base/airfield in retaliation, but NEVER a civilian target.

We would have to Nuke Taiwan to prove we were serious.

 Easy E wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
But it would be a proportionate response in my opinion.

No nation on Earth could stand back and do nothing if one of its cities got turned to ash, but losing military assets is different to civilian assets, because people know the risks if you join the military. It's a different mindset. During the Cold War, if the KGB killed a CIA agent, then the normal response was to kill a KGB agent in return. Both sides understood the 'rules.'

So, in this hypothetical situation, America loses a carrier fleet in the middle of nowhere, and the proportional response would be to nuke a Chinese military asset/base/airfield in retaliation, but NEVER a civilian target.

We would have to Nuke Taiwan to prove we were serious.

Taiwan's on our side. Then again, given some of the gak electronic stuff I've bought over the years that was made in Taiwan, I sometimes wonder

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
You don't actually need to hit the ship to prevent it from being able to operate in the area of operations you want to deny it. The Tirpitz never got into the Atlantic, not because it was damaged alongside the Nazaire raid, but because the Nazaire raid made reaching a dock to carry out repairs from the Atlantic extremely risky, requiring either going through the English Channel or the GIUK gap, both of which were heavily defended by the Royal Navy.

Denying an enemy the possibility of safe repair can be just as effective at removing a ship from a warzone as actually damaging that ship.

Yes, but as I already said it doesn't matter that you switched the target from the carrier to its supporting infrastructure, you still have the issue of sabotage being isolated, attacks of opportunity with little ability to scale up to an overall war effort. I mean, even with the example St Nazaire the value of the operation was dependent on Royal Navy control of the Channel, showing the raid by itself wasn't sufficient.

So yes, sabotage can be valuable, and yes, that sabotage can be delivered against supporting infrastructure as well as the carriers themselves. But no, the threat of that sabotage by itself does not render any weapon of war obselete, particularly not carriers.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
But it would be a proportionate response in my opinion.

No nation on Earth could stand back and do nothing if one of its cities got turned to ash, but losing military assets is different to civilian assets, because people know the risks if you join the military. It's a different mindset. During the Cold War, if the KGB killed a CIA agent, then the normal response was to kill a KGB agent in return. Both sides understood the 'rules.'

So, in this hypothetical situation, America loses a carrier fleet in the middle of nowhere, and the proportional response would be to nuke a Chinese military asset/base/airfield in retaliation, but NEVER a civilian target.

We would have to Nuke Taiwan to prove we were serious.

Taiwan's on our side. Then again, given some of the gak electronic stuff I've bought over the years that was made in Taiwan, I sometimes wonder

That's the beauty of it....Taiwan is on our side , but it is one of China's main objectives to recalim. Go ahead and reclaim this radioactive island of death now!

Clearly, I am in no mental state to control policy.

 Easy E wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
But it would be a proportionate response in my opinion.

No nation on Earth could stand back and do nothing if one of its cities got turned to ash, but losing military assets is different to civilian assets, because people know the risks if you join the military. It's a different mindset. During the Cold War, if the KGB killed a CIA agent, then the normal response was to kill a KGB agent in return. Both sides understood the 'rules.'

So, in this hypothetical situation, America loses a carrier fleet in the middle of nowhere, and the proportional response would be to nuke a Chinese military asset/base/airfield in retaliation, but NEVER a civilian target.

We would have to Nuke Taiwan to prove we were serious.

Taiwan's on our side. Then again, given some of the gak electronic stuff I've bought over the years that was made in Taiwan, I sometimes wonder

That's the beauty of it....Taiwan is on our side , but it is one of China's main objectives to recalim. Go ahead and reclaim this radioactive island of death now!

Clearly, I am in no mental state to control policy.

"Such Iron! We never knew the Federation was capable."
-Some Ferengi.

 Easy E wrote:


That's the beauty of it....Taiwan is on our side , but it is one of China's main objectives to recalim. Go ahead and reclaim this radioactive island of death now!

Clearly, I am in no mental state to control policy.

Now, now... don't sell yourself short. Scorched Earth tactics can be quite useful in some circumstances.

Non-CATOBAR carriers have been obsolete for some time.

CATOBAR carriers are not going to be obsolete anytime soon.

The Navy is aware of the existence of anti-ship missiles.

Seaward wrote:
Non-CATOBAR carriers have been obsolete for some time.

CATOBAR carriers are not going to be obsolete anytime soon.

The Navy is aware of the existence of anti-ship missiles.

What? Are you serious? The utmost experts in the world in Naval Warfare have an opinion that differs from some arm chair Admiral whose never been on a ship before?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
what defence is there against those super-fast anti-ship missiles of death?

None. That's the point.

If you have spent huge amounts of blood and money into a carrier, you should keep a very wide berth of Americans, Chinese and Russian forces and bases. Just stay out of their de facto territorial waters, simple as that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ketara wrote:
It's almost as if things like guns, radar, and the common Mk I eyeball don't exist for some people.

Tell that to the crew of the USS Fitzgerald...

Huge crew on that "nimble" destroyer, and they couldn't even avoid a floating skyscraper with fixed speed and heading.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
what defence is there against those super-fast anti-ship missiles of death?

None. That's the point.

Dude, we've just 7 pages of people describing in reasonable detail the capabilities and limitations of the anti-missile defences on warships. Popping in after all that to say 'none' is just not useful.

Tell that to the crew of the USS Fitzgerald...

Huge crew on that "nimble" destroyer, and they couldn't even avoid a floating skyscraper with fixed speed and heading.

The presence of peace time accidents involving ship on ship collisions mean absolutely nothing in terms of war time vessels being able to identify and destroy an explosive packed ship attempting to ram them.

That's like referencing the Goldsboro incident to claim nukes are inherently uncontrollable, and therefore can't be used for any tactical or strategic purpose at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Seaward wrote:
Non-CATOBAR carriers have been obsolete for some time.

CATOBAR carriers are not going to be obsolete anytime soon.

The Navy is aware of the existence of anti-ship missiles.

Is the advantage of CATOBAR that it can launch fighters that don't have to be explicitly designed to have the high thrust for short take off? Which I guess hurts the aircraft design in other ways? Payload, range etc?

What planes are the Royal Navy going to launch of this new carrier?

 sebster wrote:

Is the advantage of CATOBAR that it can launch fighters that don't have to be explicitly designed to have the high thrust for short take off? Which I guess hurts the aircraft design in other ways? Payload, range etc?

Yeah, that's one of the many advantages. If you're not using a CATOBAR carrier, whatever you're flying off of it is going to be, at best, a far more grave compromise than if you were. The F-35B's combat radius, for example, is a little north of 400 nmi, while the F-35C's is somewhere around 700. The C can also carry a heavier payload.

Another big advantage is sortie generation rate. The Nimitz class can launch three aircraft simultaneously, with a fourth immediately after, and then reload all the catapults with more birds and do it again in a relatively short amount of time. Since they don't use the entire flight deck for launching, the way a non-CATOBAR carrier does, it's also a lot easier to have aircraft staged and ready to launch. If we ever found ourselves in a World War II-style carrier duel again, we would have a massive advantage in being able to launch our entire air wings long before the Russians or Chinese or other ramp users could.

What planes are the Royal Navy going to launch of this new carrier?

F-35Bs, the STOVL/non-CATOBAR variant that our Marines will be using on amphib carriers.

OP: John Michael Greer's book "Twilight's Last Gleaming" deals with the topic of cruise missile attacks on carriers specifically.

Edit: Also deals w/ the topic of nukes, China, Russia, aaaand Texas.

Seaward wrote:
Yeah, that's one of the many advantages. If you're not using a CATOBAR carrier, whatever you're flying off of it is going to be, at best, a far more grave compromise than if you were. The F-35B's combat radius, for example, is a little north of 400 nmi, while the F-35C's is somewhere around 700. The C can also carry a heavier payload.

Another big advantage is sortie generation rate. The Nimitz class can launch three aircraft simultaneously, with a fourth immediately after, and then reload all the catapults with more birds and do it again in a relatively short amount of time. Since they don't use the entire flight deck for launching, the way a non-CATOBAR carrier does, it's also a lot easier to have aircraft staged and ready to launch. If we ever found ourselves in a World War II-style carrier duel again, we would have a massive advantage in being able to launch our entire air wings long before the Russians or Chinese or other ramp users could.

Ah, that makes sense. You've mentioned a few times about ramp launches being much worse and I wondered why, and now I know. Thanks.

F-35Bs, the STOVL/non-CATOBAR variant that our Marines will be using on amphib carriers.

Interesting. This prompted me to look up if the F-35B can launch off the Canberra class amphibious carriers. Apparently it can, but we're still dicking around deciding if we actually want to put them on our amphibious carriers. Like all countries that aren't the US, we only get new toys every couple of years or there abouts. So if we get the amphibious carriers one year, we have wait a while before we get the fifth gen planes to fly from it.

The 35B however can be operated off out carrier, our assult ships and even a solid land base..

We do not have luxury totally dedicated systems and designs.
Plus our carriers are some 30k tons lighter than US. Which could be a reason why also.

The QE carriers are certainly big enough to operate as CATOBAR, if suitably fitted out, it was part of the original design considerations; they have a planned service life of 50-years and there is no guarantee that STOVL aircraft will be available beyond the F-35B (and even that wasn't guaranteed to be around when they started the project).

I'm sure I'd read that STOVL can have equal, if not greater, sortie generation, as you don't have to reset catapults, etc. You can pretty much taxi off the lift and straight into a take-off roll. However the combination of shorter range and lower payload certainly reduces the punch that a number of aircraft can deliver; an equal number of conventional carrier sorties could hit a single target with more ordnance or control a larger area.