Other then a humanitarian mission or fighting piss ant countries the Modern Aircraft Carrier is a waste of money. If the US or any country fighting a modern Navy can expect to lose a carrier (and the poor soles on board) within the first 30minutes of war. Its a huge target. Sure there is anti missile and torpedo technology but if a enemy fires enough Cruise Missiles, torpedo's (Supercavitation or not) the Carrier is doomed. Am on wrong on this? I hope the US doesn't waste the money on another one of these. I love the carrier and all its capabilities but its one big floating liability with no role against a Modern Navy.

They say its time to return now and to make sure you're taking your medication.

Without its carrier force, the British could never have retaken the Falklands, pure and simple.

The Falklands War was a wake up call to the British Government (who intended to sell its carrier force) just how important carriers are. So important that two new carriers are being built, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.

Keep taking the tablets.

And learn to spell.
Stay in school.

Jason:

It would seem that way if a carrier had to fight the whole engagement by itself. But it doesn’t. It’s a very integral part of a larger whole.

Wrapped around that carrier is a whole task force that sometimes is devoted to the defense of that carrier. These support ships can be missile launching cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and yes fast attack submarines. Each of these elements lends support for each other: the aircraft from the carrier can protect the surface vessels. The missile carrying cruisers provide a layered defense to prevent, or try to prevent aircraft and missile from getting to the carrier. The destroyers and submarines protect it from threats below.

It is very doubtful that Aircraft carriers will never be obsolete. It’s like the feud that existed during the 1950s between the navy and the air force concerning the practical necessity for a navy now that we had bombers and missiles. What everyone forgets is presence or projection of force starts with being there with force. Ships of any type will never go obsolete for that reason.

Hope this helps.

Those beasts are extremely hard to take out, even with sh*tloads of missiles directed at them, their anti-missile screens can take out a lot.

We once in a wargame simulation took out one (there is a ENN video of the attack at http://enn.electronicnewsnetwork.com...r/ENN-GT-9.php , to read the story click on the carrier, to see the vid click to the right of it), but it took the whole Northern Fleet of the Russians bound into a combined arms effort and many other factors had to be favorable (e.g. we attacked in a heavy storm where the carrier could only muster limited fighter support, etc). I recall that we needed enormous amounts of misslie waves to just get through...

I still have the sitrep of that event somewhere (but cannot find it currently, though it is also on the first of those pages, just read through all the sitreps of JAN 2, scroll down to sitreps section) where you can read the details and numbers to see how difficult such an endeavor is:

http://www.tacopshq.com/MBX/Globalth...TheaterHQ.html

Here the according maps (partially)

http://www.tacopshq.com/MBX/Globalth...redtheater.htm

http://www.tacopshq.com/MBX/Globalth...plot-red-8.GIF

Rattler

Originally Posted by jason_420

Other then a humanitrian misson or fighting piss ant courtries the Modern Aircraft Carrier is a waste of money. If the US or any country fighting a modern Navy can expect to lose a carrier (and the poor soles on board) within the first 30minutes of war. Its a huge target. Sure there is anti missle and torpedo technology but if a emeny fires enough Crusie Missles, torpedos (Supercavitation or not) the Carrier is doomed. Am on wrong on this? I hope the US dosen't waste the money on another one of these. I love the carrier and all its capabilites but its one big floating liablity with no role against a Modern Navy.

See that's why we have twelve, lose one, you've got 11 more.

I'm no Navy man, and other than having a basic knowledge of what Navy craft do, I say you are wrong. It's like saying that the tank is a waste of money and is a huge target, but then comes the question is it really worth getting rid of all that awesome fire power that can be called in. I am sure an Army or Marine unit would disagree with you. If you don't have arty that's in range, and there are no combat aircraft on the ground, then the carrier is your best friend. Besides, the world is in uncertain times, the next large scale war could be around the corner, and it may not be against terrorists or insurgents, it might be against a competent, well armed, well taught enemy who himself has carriers. The Navy keeps things in inventory for a reason. Just like the Army an all those old M60's, you just never know.


But that's just my opinion. I'm also an ardent believer that the battleship still has a place on the battlefield. Sure, bombs and missiles are great, but being able to call in the sheer might and power of 18in. gun salvo, that is an epic and terrifying thing and is a nice deterrent to keep your enemy at bay with.

I am not going to go as far as calling them obsolete, but the A/C's time maybe closing. And before you get all outraged remember that all weapons eventually become obsolete, why do you think we don't issue swords anymore or have horse cavalry? Both of those are far older than the aircraft carrier.

Consider the following:

1. A Carrier a basically a floating ammo and fuel dump. It doesn't take much to destroy one. The Taiho was sunk by a single WWII Torpedo which did very minimal damage. It was one simple mistake by the crew (ventilating the ship) and she blew up like a 4th of July Firework.

2. An enemy doesn't need to be close in order to sink her. Most Modern nations have cruise missiles than can be fired from land sea or air a hundred miles away. Nor do these missiles need a sophisticated launcher, a semi-trailer is sufficient.

3. Anti-ship weapons are becoming incredibly sophisticated. The Russian SunBurn (Moskit) is supersonic, there is no AAD capable of tracking it its simply too fast. And remember these missiles are fired on mass its simply a mathamatical certainty that one will penetrate the Air defense. This is true with conventional missiles as well. A AS missile is cheap expendable weapon an enemy can fire them all day into a hit is achieved.

If you look back at the Falklands war, the British lost 5 ships in 2 months. Two of them were to Exocets the others were from simple Iron bombs. All the Argentinians did was fly low, release their rather crude weapon and escape. The RN had no chance to react.

Thats how quicky it can be over.

Originally Posted by FO Seaman

See that's why we have twelve, lose one, you've got 11 more. -snip-

AFAIK you have only 11, and with the new budget they will be reduced to 10 CARGRUs.

I might be wrong, this is off memory.

Rattler

Originally Posted by mmarsh

-snip-
Consider the following:

1. -snip- It doesn't take much to destroy one. The Taiho was sunk by a single WWII Torpedo which did very minimal damage. It was one simple mistake by the crew (ventilating the ship) and she blew up like a 4th of July Firework.

While you are right that two torpedos (one would probably cripple but not sink) would be enough, I bet there is only *very* minimal chance (under 0.1%) that one could even be fired (I am not a Navy guy, but here is what I understand, feel free to correct me):

- actively approaching a CARGRU from distance either over water or under water is out of the question, no way you would not be detected and interecepted before you get to torpedo distance

- nuclear subs are out of the question, as they cannot go stealthy enough

- one way would be to lay waiting in a diesel sub and somehow bait the carrier (he has to turn into wind to launch a/c) to pass by close enough, but then there is still the risk of magnetic detection

Originally Posted by mmarsh

2. An enemy doesn't need to be close in order to sink her. Most Modern nations have cruise missiles than can be fired from land sea or air a hundred miles away. Nor do these missiles need a sophisticated launcher, a semi-trailer is sufficient.

Indeed, but in their way there are some really sophisticated detection and intercept systems that would make the chance of one even getting close fairly small.

You only have two sensible attack profiles: Either top down or sea skimmer. Only the top down go supersonic (with the exception of the Moskit as already mentioned), and they should be no prob for the Ticonderogas 122 anti missile missiles, the others wont even get close or taken out by the last ditch defenses like the Phalanx (and I am talking the security cordon phalanx, not the carriers) or the more smodern and sophisticated rolling airframe missile (RAM) that would have the last word (specifically developed to take on Moskit type of threats: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/ram.htm).

Originally Posted by mmarsh

3. Anti-ship weapons are becoming incredibly sophisticated. The Russian SunBurn (Moskit) is supersonic, there is no AAD capable of tracking it its simply too fast. And remember these missiles are fired on mass its simply a mathamatical certainty that one will penetrate the Air defense. This is true with conventional missiles as well. A AS missile is cheap expendable weapon an enemy can fire them all day into a hit is achieved.

This is not fully correct.

While during the attack in the Falklands or the Stark the AEGIS (in the latter case) did not detect the inbound Exocets, this was 1987. We now have far more sophisticated detection and tracking capabilities, the close defense installed additionally being one of the LLs from those incidents.

(If you talking nuclear warhead for the Moskit, then you are in 3rd WW anyway, I dont think in a punctual scenario anybody would dare to fire a nuclear missile against the US if he is not ready to take out the whole nation, only few states would be capable of even trying.)

The conventional 750kg Moskit is deployed 8 each on the "Sovremennyy" class destroyers and 4 each on the "Tarantul III" patrol boats, they would have to close in to 100 miles to launch, an impossibility in a war scenario where 350 miles is the radius a CARGRU (or at least its CVBG) is defended and any threat entering this circle engaged (E2-Hawkeyes in combo with the Hornets/AAMRAAMs would take care of a single threat).

Not saying you cannot do it, at sea almost everything is possible if you use "mashkirova" and can make the enemy feel safe where he isnt, but it will need a very refined and deeply planned combined arms mission to get even one of those loose against a carrier.

Lets say you get it airborne (there is a SU27 variant also), the reaction time is around 25-30 seconds, enough for today sophisticated RAMs.

Last: You do not believe they would let you fire missile after missile, once you are detected (and the missile taken out) you will find your bases under fire much faster than you would imagine.

Again, see the links in my post above where we (the Russian Northern Fleet) tried and succeeded in a simulation sinking a carrier, if you read the sitrep carefully you will see that we managed something about impossible at a 1995 tech level (a total of 1000+ missiles employed in a various angle saturation attack from all kind of platforms, 2 made it in the end).

Now, that states like China are trying to find other ways to get rid of the carriers (http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/0...y-carrier.html), this is on another sheet and would require different *strategical* answers (as launching an ICBM might mean you get a swarm coming your way from the US as they have not much time to find out that you are just aiming conventionally at a CARGRU and will probably react to an assumed nuclear first strike against US main land)

As I said, I am not a Navy guy, so pls feel free to correct me if I am following a misconception here.

Rattler

EDIT: P.S.: Interesting discussion also over here in 2004: (http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/arc...p?t-34005.html)