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 Frazzled wrote:

 jmurph wrote:
You also can't relocate a ground base to a more convenient location or a theater on the other side of the world.

You can't sink a ground base.

Molepeople disagree.

 jmurph wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 jmurph wrote:
You also can't relocate a ground base to a more convenient location or a theater on the other side of the world.

You can't sink a ground base.

Molepeople disagree.

NO ONE EXPECTS THE MOLEMAN INQUISITION!*


*Dude I remember that movie! Man it was bad.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To put it simply, manned aircraft are still one of the best, cheapest and most flexible ways of delivering a wide variety firepower on to targets. They have the principle disadvantage of needing a substantial fixed ground base from which to operate. The aircraft carrier removes this disadvantage.

Any enemy with satellite capable systems can happily also scan your vase, GPS all your key targets etc and in time of war bracket you with greatest ease.

A carrier is mobile. Alot harder tp track.
Cannot be taken out with a first strike as easily.

Carrier seemed pretty viable last time I was there.

Additional: Just spotted a comment: The Phalanx is used to shoot down anti-ship missiles - think of it like a huge chain gun. They're not shooting missiles down with other missiles, only a wall of bullets.

 Wulfmar wrote:
Carrier seemed pretty viable last time I was there.

Additional: Just spotted a comment: The Phalanx is used to shoot down anti-ship missiles - think of it like a huge chain gun. They're not shooting missiles down with other missiles, only a wall of bullets.

No, that's what the RIM RAM is for

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Wulfmar wrote:
Carrier seemed pretty viable last time I was there.

Additional: Just spotted a comment: The Phalanx is used to shoot down anti-ship missiles - think of it like a huge chain gun. They're not shooting missiles down with other missiles, only a wall of bullets.

No, that's what the RIM RAMis for

I saw no RIM RAM aboard her, are you talking about different carriers to the one at Rosyth?

 Wulfmar wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Wulfmar wrote:
Carrier seemed pretty viable last time I was there.

Additional: Just spotted a comment: The Phalanx is used to shoot down anti-ship missiles - think of it like a huge chain gun. They're not shooting missiles down with other missiles, only a wall of bullets.

No, that's what the RIM RAMis for

I saw no RIM RAM aboard her, are you talking about different carriers to the one at Rosyth?

Yeah, I was more referring to the Izumo, and I think the Gerald Ford and Nimitz have them as well I'm not sure). At the very least we euqip our screening ships with them

Looks like the child of a Phalanx / Goalkeeper and an Ork buggy rocket launcha! I approve muchly

The SeaRAM is a cool little system, yeah.

When we're talking about aircraft carriers, are we including helicopter carriers and amphibious assault LHD/LHA type ships as well? Or just the super carriers?

I mean the question sort of covers all carriers, if a super-carrier is still viable, so will light carriers, ect.

 jhe90 wrote:
Yes, for one you also have to be very carful on political agreements, gotta watch it incase they rescind permission and that can feth up a enitre wartime strategy, there vulnerable to regional political issues.

Far easier to have a carrier that's 100& under own control and able to do as it pleases.
UK needs one as we have intrests in places we may not have political situations to get basing agreements.

And even if you can get a basing agreement, it is still far from ideal. You might get a country in the region to base your planes, and you might be able to quickly bring that location up to the specs needed for your operation, but what do you have to give up when your regional partner knows that you absolutely need their base to have any air cover at all for your operation? And are you willing to take the risk that if your ally pulls the plug during the operation you will be left with no air cover at all?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The US military has bases on nearly every continent. I often wonder why they bother with aircraft carriers.

Because being on the same continent is okay for peacetime logistics operations, but flying round the clock wartime sorties out of a base on the other side of the continent is a nightmare. Aircraft will be spending far longer going to and from the combat zone than they spend actually in the zone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To put it simply, manned aircraft are still one of the best, cheapest and most flexible ways of delivering a wide variety firepower on to targets. They have the principle disadvantage of needing a substantial fixed ground base from which to operate. The aircraft carrier removes this disadvantage.

Yeah, I tried to say something similar to what you're saying above earlier in the thread, and I think I didn't quite get the point right. But as you say above, planes are a dominant weapon of war, and aircraft carriers are a tool that gives those planes far more flexible uses.

I guess what I've been trying to get at is the idea from the opening post that aircraft carriers might be obsolete because they can be sunk. But having a vulnerability doesn't make a platform obsolete. A platform becomes obselete when something else becomes better at performing that units battlefield role. Right now nothing else can command an area of the sea like a carrier group, and so they remain a critical weapon of war for any nation that can afford the price tag.

As a comparison, as war technology progressed battleships became vulnerable to mines and torpedoes, but they remained the primary means of dominating the seas because nothing else could do that job. Nobody thought for one second about replacing their battleships with mine layers and torpedo boats, because they might be able of sometimes killing the much pricier battleships, but they could never dominate the sea. And so battleships were only finally replaced when carriers showed they were better at commanding an area of ocean.

Sebster, I agree, but mention should be made of the sideways twist of the submarine. It can't command a large sea area in the same way as a carrier or battleship, but it can deny it to the enemy, very effectively.

I know battleship owning countries were getting very worried about submarine capabilities in the 1920's and 30's, but this was then superseded by the carrier (which is also a pretty good anti-submarine platform too). I do wonder how things would have played out if the carrier hadn't developed at the same time. Germany very nearly took us out of the war in 1943 due to sustained submarine operations, despite never having fully committed to the concept (Hitler was obsessed with matching the Royal Navy, rather than beating it). If they'd thrown more time and resources into the submarine fleet there could have been a very different result...

Russia says new UK aircraft carrier 'a convenient target'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40442058

A lot of yah boo sucks between the various high-rankers, interesting though.

 sebster wrote:

As a comparison, as war technology progressed battleships became vulnerable to mines and torpedoes, but they remained the primary means of dominating the seas because nothing else could do that job. Nobody thought for one second about replacing their battleships with mine layers and torpedo boats, because they might be able of sometimes killing the much pricier battleships, but they could never dominate the sea.

Not even remotely true. The Jeune Ecole was a very respectable field of naval theory in its day, and persisted for a solid forty odd years. What's more, it was completely realistic at several points. You just have to take into account the progression of naval munitions technology within that period.

When the torpedo boats first starting emerging in the 1870's, the main guns of an ironclad fired so slowly that a flotilla of cheaper torpedo craft had an excellent chance of getting in close even with how inaccurate Whitehead torpedoes were at that point. At that stage the British fleet was still muzzle-loading.The appearance of the torpedo boat and its effectiveness (as seen during the trials of HMS Vesuvius and HMS Lightning) resulted in the British rapidly ordering over a hundred torpedo boats themselves from Thornycroft. What's more, they had a desperate scrap with the War Office (who still controlled their ordnance) to procure some form of machine gun to combat the torpedo boat. They ended up cramming 1-inch Nordenfelt guns on every large warship that could carry them as fast as Temple & Co. & Enfield could manufacture them.

Then when the torpedo boats started being built of thicker plates (too thick for the 1-inch to penetrate), getting larger, and acquiring greater sea-going capabilities in the 1880's, the Admiralty had another crisis on their hands. They played around with new shell firing quick-firing guns (the earlier Nordenfelt fired a solid slug), torpedo gunboats, and so on, but it took them several years to develop countermeasures.

After that, you have the destroyer, which actually began life as a large torpedo boat in its own right (it was called a torpedo boat destroyer partially because it was designed to kill other torpedo boats, and partially because it functioned as a large one itself with multiple torpedo tubes).

This is without even getting into submarines and the resulting abandonment of close blockade as a strategy or German minelaying development and theory in that period. So yeah, torpedo boats/subs were often proffered as a replacement for the battleship, and it was actually carried out in a number of instances. I believe one French Minister of the Marine actually scrapped/halted all battleship construction at one point in their favour, whilst the British delayed their own construction programs at least once because they were scared they were building obsolete vessels.

tl;dr, large sea going torpedo vessels regularly posed a strategic threat to battleships, several groups thought one should replace the other, and it was a fluid ongoing battle to keep the larger vessels capable of countering the smaller ones all the way up to 1914.


For the truly nerdy, there is a book which actually theorises that Jacky Fisher of the Admiralty was planning on using torpedo craft to mount a 'flotilla defence' of the UK prior to WW1 (see 'Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution' by Nicholas Lambert). It is however, highly suspect (I've personally found the bloke twisting sources to imply they say things they don't).

 Darkjim wrote:
Russia says new UK aircraft carrier 'a convenient target'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40442058

A lot of yah boo sucks between the various high-rankers, interesting though.

Aye there's a lot of sabre-rattling coming from high-rankers who suffer from helioproctosis. Fact of the matter is both Russia and the UK have aging technology coming to the end of it's life all at the same time, that neither is capable of replacing in one go.

Old wolves barking while their teeth fall out.

 Darkjim wrote:
Russia says new UK aircraft carrier 'a convenient target'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40442058

A lot of yah boo sucks between the various high-rankers, interesting though.

Yeah, Joe Commie up to his old tricks again. Putin's losing sleep over this new carrier

Possibly the Russians could easily sink both our carriers if they put their minds to it, given the air power difference, but again, if Russia is sinking British carriers then there's probably quite a lot else going on of greater import anyway.

Of course to sink a carrier, you have to find her, sustain that position and have good enough missiles with accurate enough targeting that can fire, punch through a world class hard and soft kill set of defences and not be distracted by decoys etc, and then hit the target.

Its not as easy as pressing a 'fire' button! :-)

I mean it was made in Britain, how world-class could it be?

 Ketara wrote:
...everything said by Ketara on torpedo boats

When things get ugly around here and I wonder why do I bother, I'm reminded that this is why I keep coming back to Dakka OT.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I mean it was made in Britain, how world-class could it be?

That depends how big the world is this week.
So far, it's Russia and USA that get included, and maybe Argentina.
Who else has navies to compare against?
Who is listed as a reason for having the thing built in the first place? North Korea?

France of course, 30 Years War: Nuclear Boogaloo!

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
France of course, 30 Years War: Nuclear Boogaloo!

That'd be the 100 years' war, the 30 years' war was HRE and friends vs. HRE and friends.

Japan and France also have pretty decent navies. They are both close allies, of course.

If the UK has to fight a war against anyone who would be a serious threat, it is most likely to be the Russians or Chinese, and we would be fighting as part of a Western Alliance.

A more relevant question is whether we need more small ships like frigate for patrol and anti-piracy operations.

From my knowledge the rankings generaly go

1. USN by a landslide

2. People's Liberation Navy (china)

3. JMSDF (japan)

4. Russian Navy

5. Royal Navy

6. French Navy

And then it's something like India, Korea, Italy/Germany

That's kinda loose ranking since power fluctuates based on projection capabilities.

The Chinese operate a large fleet of diesel subs but their boats are going to perform significantly different in a naval battle in the SCS vs in Guam vs off the US West Coast vs in the Mediterranean.

The US navy is the only navy with any real push beyond their boarders, so it's generally assumed that most people are compared to their local area.

 Jadenim wrote:
Sebster, I agree, but mention should be made of the sideways twist of the submarine. It can't command a large sea area in the same way as a carrier or battleship, but it can deny it to the enemy, very effectively.

I know battleship owning countries were getting very worried about submarine capabilities in the 1920's and 30's, but this was then superseded by the carrier (which is also a pretty good anti-submarine platform too). I do wonder how things would have played out if the carrier hadn't developed at the same time. Germany very nearly took us out of the war in 1943 due to sustained submarine operations, despite never having fully committed to the concept (Hitler was obsessed with matching the Royal Navy, rather than beating it). If they'd thrown more time and resources into the submarine fleet there could have been a very different result...

Those are fair points and I agree. But I will add a couple of additional points. The first is that while subs represented a potent counter to battleships, no-one was giving up on battleships at that point and that's really the issue I was getting at. Denying an area of sea is a potent advantage in war, but its not the exact same thing as being able to command an area. To manage an amphibious landing, for instance, you need a dominating presence in surface ships.

The other point is that while the German blockade was extremely effective in 1943, by the end of 1944 being assigned to a sub crew was close to a death trap. Potentially in 1945 the advantage might have swung back to subs if new German tech had been rolled out in force, but the end of the war interfered with that. It was a tech battle where slight edges were the difference between extreme effectiveness and high vulnerability.

 Ketara wrote:
Not even remotely true. The Jeune Ecole was a very respectable field of naval theory in its day, and persisted for a solid forty odd years. What's more, it was completely realistic at several points. You just have to take into account the progression of naval munitions technology within that period.

Actually my statement was absolutely and completely true. Read it again. You bolded it, so here it is again;
"Nobody thought for one second about replacing their battleships with mine layers and torpedo boats"

Jeune Ecole did have a focus on a variety of counter measures to the battleship, but at no point did anyone suggest just making a navy out of specific anti-battleship counter measures. A large part of the theory was about envisioning new kinds of surface ships, smaller and lighter but maintaining high firepower, that would ultimately replace battleships in the role of controlling areas of sea. And I know that you know that, which means you completely misread the sentence you directly responded to, and completely misread my entire comment as well.

Any way I'll repeat my main point here once again. The existence of a counter measure in and of itself does not render a war platform obsolete. They will force counter measures and doctrinal changes, but as long as nothing else can perform that platform's role any better then it will remain an important military unit.

After all, tanks and helicopters have yet to replace infantry.