"Is America stuck in the past?" Topic

A thought provoking opinion piece:
link

A thought provoking opinion piece:
link

Also, the author is an "opinion writer" and not a specialist on military technology. And yes, he does have an established political agenda.

I am seeing articles coming out of the woodwork lately on how we have to buy new, buy old and buy, buy, buy. It seems like the defense companies all smell money in the water and want a piece of it.

2 things – countries are indeed arming themsleves for the future, and we have different vision on how the conflict will be conducted.
Aircraft carrier is a juicy target and you can get rid of it or disable it with cheaper stuff.
may be in a couple of decades they will die off as battleships before them.
On the other hand, global tension is always good for military industry, and they will be lobbying their own agenda and "help" creating their own doctrines to justify usage of space-deployed weaponry, stealth fighters or hypersonic ICBM.
All in all, the world is getting more dangerous. Again.

Maybe we will see a shift to drone carriers,smaller than the big carriers currently in favour, mobile launch and recovery platforms rather than relying on ground bases scattered around the globe……
The other side is to let the Chinese and others build big carriers because they too will be 'tied' to their need for substantial protection in carrier groups negating their strike potential as potential enemies will be monitoring such forces.
Reading between the lines of AI development, the Chinese might be the ones to develop the 'one' that decides humans are a pest!!

AI and Quantum Computing are the fields where the next technological arms race will be waged in the great power rivalry between the Joneses and the Wongs.

Here's another "agenda-driven" piece on the topic: link

"Aircraft carrier is a juicy target and you can get rid of it or disable it with cheaper stuff."

Good luck with that. First, you have to find the carrier, which during a war is going to be difficult. Second, you need to get through the outer and inner defenses, which again, is extremely difficult. Finally, you need to hit it multiple times to put it out of commission, which is difficult as without sacrificing most of your air force or expendable munitions it probably isn't happening. All of the talk about advanced SSMs, ballistic missile carrier killers, etc., all forget one thing; you need to have exact targeting info. If you fire everything on a bearing only launch then there is a small chance it actually locks onto the target and the USN has all kinds of decoys, jammers, etc., plus they still need to get through the outer screen.

The most dangerous threat to carriers is maintenance cost and staffing, which have a higher chance of reducing the number of carriers on the planet in comparison to enemy action.

Ok, with all orbital satellite groups of both China and Russia you think that it will require luck? Aircraft group emits enormous amount of EM noise, so it is another option.
If real war starts, you don't need to hit a carrier with precision missile, you need to land a tactical nuke, nuke drone or smth similar close enough. You don't need a lock for this. And even 5 nukes cost much less than an aircraft carrier group.

I really would feel sorry for the country that decided it was a good tactic to start lobbing nukes at our naval carrier groups. It would end badly for them.

It's easy – if it is Iran, or North Korea, you're right. It will end badly for them, and they don't have the means to strike back.
If it is Russia or China, it would end badly for the world.

People always overestimate the amount of damage it would take to render a carrier incapable of flight operations. One Zuni rocket cooked off, that was all it took to put the USS Forrestal out of business. Never forget that a carrier is a busy airport, fuel farm, ammo dump, collection of electrical systems and steam lines, a pair of nuclear reactors, and oh yeah… Home to 5000 sailors. Can you imagine in today's political and media climate that a carrier that had survived a missile hit would remain on station after putting 100+ crewmen in body bags?

+1 to Barin

Tossing nukes around is a bad idea and thinking you can lob one at a tactical target and think the other side won't respond in kind is a worse one.

I am seeing articles coming out of the woodwork lately on how we have to buy new, buy old and buy, buy, buy. It seems like the defense companies all smell money in the water and want a piece of it.

But yet the Army soldiers on with the ancient Ma Deuce and the M113. As does the Corps with AAVs. And we have a Navy with no real frigates. Lots of money tossed around, but the bread and butter gear gets older and older.

Rather sad really.

"Weapons change, but man, who uses them, changes not at all. To win battles you do not beat weapons – you beat the soul of enemy man…"
-Patton

StoneMtnMinis, you are rather predictable. I did state up front that it was an opinion piece.

There has been much discussion on this very forum and in the defense world at large about the viability of aircraft carriers in the next generation of warfare. While, I do not agree with everything the opinion writer says, some of his points, I beleive, are worth some thought.

It doesn't take a nuke to sink a carrier. An emerging new generation of cruise, ballistic and hypersonic glide missiles with conventional warheads being developed by the "Big Three" (China, Russia and the US) will do.

Granted, that's not stopping two of the Big Three from adding new carriers to their navies.

I guess investing in AI and Quantum Computing research just doesn't sound as "sexy" or exciting as buying more aircraft carriers and fighter planes.

The problem with the idea of smaller carriers for drones is that you lose aircraft capacity really dang quickly with size.

Example:
- The USS Ford is 1100 feet long and 250ft across the flight deck. She carries "more than 75 aircraft"

- HMS Queen Elizabeth is 930 feet long and 240ft across the flight deck. She carries 36 F35s and 14 helicopters (50 total aircraft)

Lose ~1/5 of length and lose 1/3 of your aircraft capacity.

Now, for ships that don't have a wide flight deck:

- The USS America is 850 feet long and 100ft across the flight deck. She carries a maximum of 20 F35s (plus helicopters).

- HMS Illustrious was 750ft long and 120ft across the flight deck. She could carry a maximum of 22 Harriers or helicopters.

Note that the Harrier is 5 feet shorter, 10 feet narrower, less than half the gross weight, has 80% the combat radius, and carries less than half the bombload of the F35.

Even ignoring stealth capabilities, the Harrier is maybe half as capable as the F35. So HMS Illustrious carried about half the aircraft-equivalents that USS America does.

Don't forget that you need a certain minimum size to operate fixed-wing aircraft at all, and that this is still over 500 feet long!

Re: nukes at sea, the saying in the 80s was "nukes don't leave holes in water."

In other words, launching nukes at naval targets is not going to escalate things like a ground target. If we lose the Roosevelt, we aren't going to risk trading cities in retaliation.