"Will Carriers Be Unable to Strike Inland?" Topic

Writing in Proceedings magazine, Dave Majumdar opines:

The service's aircraft carriers no longer have a safe haven in coastal waters 200 nautical miles off shore. With rising threats to the carrier in the form of antiship cruise and ballistic missiles, those ships may be forced to stand off a significant distance – more than 1,000 nautical miles – from the enemy shoreline.

Do you agree that in the near future, carriers and their aircraft will find it prohibitive to attempt to strike inland targets?

In some, well defended areas, I suspect so, especially since we probably don't have enough aerial refueling tankers on the carriers to change the dynamic.

Plus, we now don't have some of the really long-range jets, like we once did, e.g. the F-14 and A-6.

Stopping production of Tomahawk cruise missiles only exacerbates the problem.

The problem is it depends on the circumstances. If you're talking a serious major war, the things that threaten carriers and keep them away would be hammered quickly. Yet the fact that the enemy is forced to build against carriers shows the danger they present.

The long range issue was already passed to the Air Force with the long term planning. So if they can't get close enough, it's just wait for the boys in blue to pick it up.

The Navy can air refuel aircraft…..so.

Yep! The Brits did it in the Falklands with the Black Buck missions.

Just kit up 11 buddy tankers for each strike aircraft and--Thunderbirds are go!

Due to developments in Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) capabilities in potential near-peer adversaries like China and Russia, the survivability of the flat top has been increasingly put into question lately. For carriers to survive in such hostile environments (i.e. the regional waters of such countries), other long-range stand-off weapons will have to be used to pre-empt the A2AD defenses so they can't threaten the carriers when they sail into the contested waters.

However, the carrier has always been a political symbol as much as a military platform. Nations who dare to sink one of our carriers will provoke "massive retaliation" on our part and so will not take such decisions lightly.

Carriers still serve the role of reassuring countries that the US is there to "keep the peace" and has interests in the area. They are also useful in peacekeeping/humanitarian missions and "milk run" missions like contributing to No Fly Zones in Third World countries whose defenses are unable to harm them.

Overkill? Perhaps, but it's always good to have more capability than you need and the carrier will remain a much sought after prestige weapon that powerful countries want(see China, Russia, India, etc.) like rich folks seek sports cars or jewelry.

Where is a battleship when you need one?

The threat just makes operations harder and longer, not impossible. In conjunction with AF assets, the Navy would have to attrit the area denial forces before closing into range on inland targets. If we are taking on someone with a significant stand-off capability, we should not be going after them with a single carrier group. Now if only we still had enough carriers to put more than 1 in any ocean.

The other important question is that against an enemy with major stand off assets, would the carriers actually be tasked with the inland strike role, or would they themselves be chiefly used to help contest the coastal waters until attrition had reduced enemy stand-off capability? It's not like the carrier is going to be fighting the war by itself.

Amusingly, this is basically a replay of the whole 'can a carrier group survive against enemy land-based air power for any length of time?' debate from before WWII. The Flattop commanders figured it out then, and I suspect they will do so again.

-Will

Clearly, this demonstrates the need for submersible drone carriers, which can launch long range cruise missiles, and drone recon, fighter, and attack aircraft, while remaining undetected themselves.

I actually don't disagree with that; long-term I think a carrier-sub that is armed with with drones of varying sorts of complexity will be the most survivable platform in the future.

-Will

That ignores the ever increasing reach of carriers via new weapon systems. We have carrier capable drones currently. Heck, the X 47B is night capable. Most navies don't do that.

These absolutes are kinda silly.

Where is a battleship when you need one?

Mostly sunk by carrier-based aircraft, launched from well outside the battleship's gun range.

But given that the X47B is arguably combat-capable now (it has a 5000lb bombload), and the UCLASS successor/follow-on will have a 10klb bombload, I suspect that the decision will be to send in the drones to swat the A2AD systems before the carrier gets closer.

The mobile missile sites will be hunted down by drones and will be the first targets.

Why couldn't they strike inland? Some people are seriously lacking imagination!

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starfrontiers.us/node/8263

Dan
TMP link

Within another year to eighteen months the Red Sea and Persian Gulf are most likely to become "No Go" zones for U. S. Battlegroups, as Iran gains further control over those choke points! They're just waiting for the moment to hit when we don't expect them to! So wait for it, it IS coming!!

First, articles in Proceedings and other defense industry type publications, web sites, blogs, etc., have to be looked at as the author pushing one type of opinion for some particular reason. That could be defense contracts, lobbyists, to become more popular on the cocktail circuit, etc. The best thing to do is to research what they're saying by reading differing opinions, which can only help to educate you on the reasons for the article and what the real situation actually is.

The one thing that these types of articles always leave out is how will defenses locate the carriers for targeting their anti-ship weapons? If you're China or Iran and have a large number of coastal weapons, that's great, but if you don't have targeting info you would be launching blind. China has ocean recon satellites, but carrier groups practice avoiding those all the time. That leaves getting a drone or aircraft close enough to the CVBG to send data back or a ship to close the range for its surface search radars to provide that information. The CAP isn't going to allow an aircraft to get within 300 miles of the CVBG in wartime and any ship that comes into that zone is going to the bottom of the sea pretty fast. Basically, carriers can approach an enemy coastline from pretty much anywhere, launch an inland strike, then retreat back to the sea with little real chance of getting caught.

Cut to the future:

Country X has invaded or attacked allied Country S.

Advanced technology assets of country X had detected advance elements of Surface/Carrier strike force Charlie approaching range to the South East coast of Country X.

Mobile units are moved to with in striking distance, fixed installations are brought to full alert, deployed HUMINT Sources are activated to gather data with OSINT units doubling down on collection and analysis, while satellite assets are tasked to observing (and gathering targeting, SIGINT/COMINT/MASINT, ELINT/FISINT, and IMINT/GEOINT data.

The in the early hours of the night before the the strike/carrier force is in range multiple submarine forces attack with a combination of "New Technology" submarine launched armed and reconnaissance drones and attack missiles. Before dawn advanced assets of the Strike/Carrier force launches a combination of SLCMs and follow-on surface launched LAMs. Night capable strike aircraft attack air and land defenses with ALCMs, Long/Medium/Short Range ASMs and, (where appropriate,) smart and dumb bombs/weapons. These attacks are coordinated with long range USAF and in-theater (American and Allied) air strikes to overwhelm the defenses of Country X in a specific way to defang the forces of Country X to prevent USAF/USN forces from a series of follow-up strikes.

I can see this being in a 'history' text from post conflict, "During this time what has been described as the greatest submarine versus submarine battle occurred between screening forces of the USN/Allied forces and Country X but most details are still classified by all parties beyond a possibly accurate count of ships/crews lost."

(I see the UN incapable of functioning, as currently designed, to be actually a means of preventing word wide conflict lie WW1/WW2 so here drop into Fiction I admit.)

More 'history': "In accordance with the desire to not precipitate WW3, limit the conflict a short regional conflict, and using selected international accords an offer in the international forum that replaced the UN for binding arbitration on all involved parties by country S. The resulting arbitration left none of the parties totally satisfied but the conflict was limited in time/geography."

Sadly I personally see the last paragraph as actually reading in history books, "Upon rejection of binding arbitration by Country X, thus began what has been called the Third World War," but we are speculating here…

Unable no. More cautious about it, yes.

Missile gadgets are never as reliable as we expect but the threat of them, particularly if they are relatively concealable, will force naval forces to be more cautious in where to position themselves.

in the early hours of the night before the the strike/carrier force is in range multiple submarine forces attack with a combination of "New Technology" submarine launched armed and reconnaissance drones and attack missiles.

The US can do that today, with the exception of the drones. Unless LockMart continued privately funding the Cormorant or a similar design, or it got sucked into a black program, that is.

Of course, the US only has 4 subs capable of that right this second.

Man, you all should have seen the ideas bouncing around while people were trying to figure out what to do with 4 Trident SSGNs. Best idea I saw was a LockMart concept video for the Cormorant drone, with the sub carrying 4 Cormorants ( link ) and a mix of Tomahawks ( link ) and navalized MGM-140 ATACMS ( link ). 7 or maybe 14 Tomahawks per tube, 3 ATACMs per tube, probably one Cormorant per tube. The ATACMS are shorter ranged than Tomahawks, but are much faster.

The Cormorants were stealthy, and packed a good load of sensors in addition to a light load of bombs (just a couple Small-Diameter Bombs, IIRC). So the Cormorants could provide targeting information back to the sub, as well as attacking targets themselves.

I really wish I could find the full version of the Cormorant video, which had the Cormorants searching for targets (a Scud-type launcher in the video), the sub launching a navalized ATACMS to hit the area, and then the Cormorants attacking to clean up the area and give a bomb damage assessment report.

Personally, I'd also add the HDW "Muraena gun" idea to the mix, which features a RMK-30 30mm recoilless cannon installed in a water-tight mast with 3 micro-drones (~10 minute flight time). That 30mm gun would be usable even if the sub is underwater, just raise the mast. But that's a really short-ranged weapon, mostly for dealing with small boats.

I also really like the idea one junior officer wrote up in an issue of Submarine Warfare, where he advocated putting a couple of the 155mm Vertical Gun for Arsenal Ships (VGAS) into the missile tubes. It's the same weapon as installed on the Zumwalt-class DDs ( link ), just installed vertically instead of in a turret.

The VGAS would NOT be operable while submerged, but it could probably put 15-20 rounds into the air while the sub is broached on the surface for ~3 minutes. Broach the ship (which puts the missile deck clear of the water), flop a missile hatch open, volley lots of guided projectiles, purge the gun bore with nitrogen to prevent any unburned powder from causing problems, flop the hatch closed, get back under water.

The VGAS would be limited to guided shells, but the largest downside of the vertical mounting would be eliminated: The vertical gun had a huge "myopic range" where it could not effectively hit a target, 20 nm or something equally obscene, but a sub has torpedoes to hit ships within 20nm. The 155mm Long-Range Land Attack Projectile has a design range of 100nm, and has been tested to 60nm. So a sub could lurk a good distance off-shore, well outside territorial waters, and still give fire support to a SEAL team, without having to launch a multi-million-dollar Tactical Tomahawk.

And with ~3 minutes of exposure, no anti-ship missile is fast enough to get out and hit the sub.

So maybe the question is 'will the carriers actually NEED to strike inland'? :)

-Will

So maybe the question is 'will the carriers actually NEED to strike inland'?

I cannot imagine a time where carriers would not need to do so.

Supporting Marines ashore is the most obvious time.