The one trillion dollar question (actually possibly even more than that) is the cost of sinking an aircraft carrier in a symmetrical conflict.

Aircraft carriers are great if you need to project force into a territory occupied by groups over which you have superiority. Against an enemy with state of the art anti-ship missiles deployed along the coast, modern radar and satellite capabilities, all bets are foo.

Some people think in such a conflict, aircraft carriers are overpriced targets that can be disabled or even sunk in the first hours of a conflict for the cost of a few missiles and a few light ships to launch them. IIRC a red team managed to disable most of the US Navy in that fashion in an exercise a few years ago.

There are countermeasures deployed, several layers of them, and missiles have counter-counter measures. Only very few are actually deployed and really tested on the field.

We know in good conditions, they work, on some missiles. In a real conflict, how many will they stop? 100%? 99%? 50%? 20%? How well can missile decoys fool countermeasures? What hidden tricks have different sides kept in their sleeves in preparation?

We will learn it on a very fateful day that could either see the record on tonnage sunk on a single day or a very fast conflict deescalation from the attacking side (assuming US would be the defending one, credible in the case of China)

We already saw the US navy get dominated by unconventional warfare in the Millennium Challenge

"After the war game was restarted, its participants were forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory. Among other rules imposed by this script, Red Force was ordered to turn on their anti-aircraft radar in order for them to be destroyed, and was not allowed to shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue Force troops ashore." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

So yeah lots of the big ships might not be that useful in a present-day conflict if they can get destroyed by suicide-attack boats. Of course that puts the whole need for the amount of military funding/pork into question and that makes the military-industrial-congressional complex very nervous.

I honestly wouldn't put too much stock in that wikipedia article. Military training exercises are more like sparring matches, not a free-for-all with no rules. The constraints section also says that the ships were closer to shore than they would normally have been in order to not interfere with civilian ships that weren't part of the exercise.

Interesting, all of the training exercises I took part in were scripted and essentially just "training" without any real counters.

Prior Air Force here (not Navy). A couple of things to remember when thinking about the 2k2 challenge:

- It was 18 years ago. Deployments, new technologies, RCA's and congressional studies have impacted the current military force in substantial ways. A lot has happened since then.

- US FoF exercises are largely augmented during runtime to simulate "unforseen" battlefield conditions. The purpose of these rules/scripts/interjections is to artificially insert some degree of randomness into the scenario that demonstrates the individual/leadership's ability to react.

- A large component of US FoF exercises, plans, and results and analysis are classified. Though admirable, the Wikipedia article pulls its sources from secondary sources at best.

I think USN confidence of current abilities is reflected by the fact the Pompeo, as much of aChina hawk he is, no longer sends US carriers through the Taiwan strait. Clinton sent two during the third strait crisis. My understanding is USN is 5+ years out from having credible counters to Chinese AShM right now.

There only so much you can do against ballistic threats.

Apparently it can even change course mid-flight. So it's even less likely the type of thing this countermeasure's meant to respond to.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25904/china-wants-u-s-...

With the advent of hypersonic missiles, it's time for the return of flak. A few grams of aluminum do a lot of damage at mach 6.

You'd have to hit the incoming pretty far out, or you're just gonna get hit by hypersonic buckshot.

They do not need a ballistic threat.

Very regular modern antiship missiles have very good chance overwhelming the carrier formation defences.

Doesn't help that they seem to collide into one another

I don't think Pompeo's reasoning for not doing that is because he thinks China is going to start a hot war with the US by taking down two of its many aircraft carriers. A true war hawk would be salivating at the thought of China stupidly killing a few thousand Americans.

I have no military background, but from an armchair general (admiral?)'s perspective, it really sounds like the US investing too much further into aircraft carriers is a dumb plan for a peer conflict. The Russian strategy of arming every little corvette with a shitload of powerful missiles seems like a smarter idea for the 21st century.

Like you said - maybe anti-missile countermeasures can deter a missile. Or two. Or a dozen. But what if you have flotilla of cheap corvettes and frigates slinging swarms of hypersonic missiles at your valuable CBG?

Not necessarily - carriers are a peace-time fleet.. their value is in force projection and unparalleled logistics.

When it comes to a shooting war though, the US Navy has an entirely separate war-time sub fleet. The carrier fleets would back off to a safe distance and provide logistic support until the subs and bombers decapitated enemy weapon and radar systems, and air superiority could be established. Then the carriers could move in to provide close air support missions and targeted air strikes.

The follow up question is - assuming supercarrier battle groups are still relevant in warfare beyond bullying third world countries that can't fight back...

The US Navy has...10? nuclear supercarriers in service (IIRC there is a Ford becoming active soon and another in construction, but a Nimitz or two scheduled for retirement).

Plus the gator navy has more non-nuclear amphibious assault ships that are arguably carriers in all but name (and also arguably at close to if not equal to other nations' dedicated carriers)

Are so many carriers needed?

That's not a good mission profile at all when a stealth bomber, range 10 000km, takes off with a hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile with a range of 2000km, and sinks your carrier before it can even be of any logistic use.

The US Military is ultimately reliant on naval domination for its logistics, and it's naval domination requires carriers and large surface vessels as submarines can't do area denial. If the US military loses that ability, it can't secure its supply chain, and it will be crippled.

The unopposed aircraft carrier caused an anomaly where the US was able to have supply chains of infinite sizes without any issues. If the current threat materializes, then the US Military Doctrine for force projection crumbles.

> That's not a good mission profile at all when a stealth bomber, range 10 000km, takes off with a hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile with a range of 2000km, and sinks your carrier before it can even be of any logistic use.

So far it's maybe remotely plausible in the second American Civil War, because no foreign enemy yet posses this capacity. No stealth bombers, and no hypersonic cruise missiles.

Otherwise yes a lot of hypothetical tech that can disable carrier fleet. Photon torpedoes, Yuri's mind control, genetically modified Krakens..

China and Russia have hypersonic missiles which can evade US targeting, and India is catching up fast. Russia and China are also developing stealth bombers.

Bottom line is that carrier groups are already sitting targets and unlikely to last long in a superpower conflict.

First the elegant Battleships and now the might Aircraft Carriers are on the way out...

Is a goon-swarm free-for-all really the future ruler of the seas?

This argument already played out between the carrier and sub fleets during the Cold War. The carrier is not the next battleship, that’s just lazy analysis.

The tactics in the Cold War were based essentially on preventing the enemy from knowing to a good level of certainty the position of the Cold War, for long enough to send submarinesm.

This is not a viable technique in 2020.

Both China and Russia have stealth bomber prototypes due to be online in the next few years.

Also, the Russian 3M22 Hypersonic Cruise missile is in testing as of today, so they definitely do have one. China is also working on it.

It seems to me that you're seriously overestimating the technological lead of the US.

You’re ignoring the part where the carrier fleets withdraw out of range of any potential threats during the A2AD phase of an emergent combat theatre until the environment is safe for them to resume closer area support.

This is likely what is going to happen. The issue is that without those aircraft carriers it will be exceedingly difficult if not impossible to gain a foothold and maintain forward positions.

10 000km is a very long distance.

And of course, air bases closer to the theater will be bombarded using missiles, and thus the US would be deprived of air support.

Hopefully the idea is that any serious military clash with China or Russia will inevitably lead to a massive nuclear exchange ("hopefully" because it significantly reduces probability of such clash). In such war carriers will be effectively useless and the biggest role will be played by strategic nuclear weapons. Meanwhile carriers are useful for projecting force, protecting trade routes and fighting with weaker enemies, i.e. for all other scenarios except a full-blown nuclear war.

No. That logic only holds if one or more of the parties are willing to escalate a conventional conflict to a nuclear one. Russia for example, would be willing to escalate a conventional war to a nuclear one in the event of an imminent ground invasion of Moscow.

But the most likely wars are not ones of nuclear powers marching onto another's capital, but instead wars over bordering countries. Neither Russia nor the US would escalate an invasion of the Baltic's, Neither China nor the US would escalate an invasion of Taiwan.

Both of these hypothetical wars are potential conflicts because a victory for Russia and China in those conflicts would be extremely advantageous and desirable to the point that even a very low risk of nuclear esculation would be worth it to them.

>Neither Russia nor the US would escalate an invasion of the Baltic's, Neither China nor the US would escalate an invasion of Taiwan.

I highly doubt it. Baltic states are part of NATO, assuming Russia blitzkriegs them (it's a really HUGE assumption since they have relatively little geopolitical or economical value for Russia, the Suwalki corridor would be nice to have, but not considering the associated risks), leaving occupation unanswered will mean that US leadership position in the world (together with NATO) will be effectively dead. So further escalation will be practically imminent.

I think China's invasion of Taiwan will not be left unanswered as well, in addition to the huge reputation hit similar to the scenario with Baltic states, Taiwan has a big geopolitical (cornerstone of the first island chain) and economical value (not only TSMC) for the US. Further escalation is highly probable as well. A contained clash could've happened in the South China sea, but since China got entrenched there, the US Navy got quite careful to not overstep itself in this region. And this balance will continue to tilt only further to China's favor.

A limited conflict could in theory happen with a limited invasion of Russia, since its current nuclear doctrine is quite defensive (esp. compared to the US'), but the "threatens the existence of the state" condition is a bit vague, so assuming that Russia will use all its available military to defend itself, it will either drive invading forces out using conventional means (which would include counter-attacks on "decision centers"), or in the end will use nuclear weapons.

I highly doubt that Putin is that dump attack the most heavily fortified border of NATO.

He will seek a different opening. Passing birdies keep telling me that's Balkans.

I wouldn't call the Baltic states "the most heavily fortified border of NATO", even according to the NATO analysis they will not be able to resist a full-scale Russian invasion for more than several days. The goal of the forces deployed there is just to buy time for consolidation of forces deployed in the rest of Europe for counter-attack before the states get fully occupied.

Balkans also have a little of value for Russia in the current state. A more interesting target would be to take control over Georgia or Azerbaijan (not necessary using military means), to establish a better control over oil and gas routes from the Middle Asia.

But a more realistic, much more valuable and easier target is the south-east Ukraine. If degradation of the Ukrainian state institutions continues with the current speed and the ongoing cold civil war will not be cooled down by a more sensible cultural and language policies, I will not be surprised to see in 5-15 years a full collapse of the state, significant social and economic instability, with breakaway regions following the Yugoslavia scenario, some of which will fall under the Russian "protectorate" for gradual later integration. We already can see early signs of it in the results of municipal polls, weak central government, and totally unprofessional behavior of the "elites" (who in the *#!? right mind spends most of money from the COVID fund on road construction and other non-medical goals?! who launches a full-blown constitutional crisis using clearly unconstitutional means instead of slightly tweaking the law in question or trying to engineer a constitutional reform to restart the corrupted constitutional court? who pays a ton of money to "anti-corruption" departments which after working several years haven't return a dime to the budget? who effectively strangles small businesses when they are already hit by the pandemic? etc. and etc.).

A second Trump term would have seen the US leaving NATO. This would leave the EU relatively defenceless because only France has a truly independent nuclear deterrent - the UK's deterrent is effectively part of the US arsenal - and the EU has very few conventional forces of its own.

But Putin's plan appears to be to destabilise the EU from within by promoting extremist far-right governments with more or less obvious Russian influence and anti-EU sentiments.

See also Brexit, Poland, Hungary, and the Ukraine, and the - so far - less effective far right movements being promoted in France, Italy, Portugal, and so on.

This is much cheaper and more effective than sending in the tanks. You can promote regime change with a few social media troll factories and by buying or otherwise persuading local politicians.

It's not a coincidence that the threat of a hypothetical EU army was one of the main pro-Brexit talking points sold to British racists, or that significant funding for Brexit came from Russia.

As for goals - for Russia it's partly about revenge, and partly about the destruction of Western liberal values. Putin has said as much in public on a number of occasions.

My opinion is that the main driver behind the rise of far-right movement is the refugee crisis, caused by the US-led destructive interventions to Syria and Libya, which got amplified by questionable refugee policy, effectively promoting human-trafficking business.

The almighty Russian meddling can only tip public opinion a bit in the desired direction, but can not create it from nothing.

To not repeat myself, I will simply link my old comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23743786

The "US-led destructive interventions" were requested by European countries who've been meddling with Syria and the surrounding countries since WW2. Stop trying to blame European issues on the USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Syr...

It doesn't necessarily have to be with a peer state like China or Russia though. It's not hard to imagine an otherwise weaker state (say, Iran, or North Korea) also being able to utilize a similar strategy at some point in the future.

The Kalibr and Oniks missiles are already available for sale if I'm not mistaken, and there is intention to sell the hypersonic Zirkon too.

Carriers don't act in vacuum. In both cases the US has enough ground bases and allies around those countries to suppress anti-ship capabilities first and then move carriers in. Of course in a surprise attack a carrier could be sunk using those weapons (esp. in the Gulf), but it's a one time opportunity only.

And yet the PLAN have been building carriers of their very own as they build up a navy which would be capable of challenging the USN.

Even South Korea is building their own aircraft carrier even though they have no foreseeable overseas conflicts. That's because despite all the talk about anti carrier missiles, a carrier's combat effectiveness still harder to degrade than land based airstrips because they can dodge. An airstrip covered in bomblets and mines is useless even if its aircraft hangers are intact. South Korea is investing in carriers because in a combat scenario with North Korea once the air force has sortied they still need a place to land and resupply. Even if all the airstrips in South Korea are cratered at least there's a carrier out at sea you can resupply at instead of ditching them after one sortie.

All this revolves around the fact that launching and relaunching aircraft takes a lot of real estate, whether on land or on a floating metal island. Until there's a replacement everything that combat aircraft can do, maybe autonomous missile swarms that you can fire at a region and forget because they're intelligent enough to pick targets without someone in a plane handing them targeting info, then carriers will continue to be necessary.

Also, radar and wireless equipment powerful and sophisticated enough to detect and flag targets while bombarded with ECM is much more expensive than the missiles and we currently can't make enough of them to send on one way missions.

Almost every aircraft used in countries' air forces are not carrier compatible.

And while the US Navy is effectively like...the third? largest "air force" in the world, the very few other countries that even have fixed wing carrier naval aviation assets to begin with would be lucky to have a few dozen fighters at most.

I see most carrier projects as a prestige item at this point. They aren't completely useless (yet), but I don't think their return on value during an active shooting war against a peer state is worth it.

If South Korea was serious about using their proposed carriers in the manner you mention, they'd be replacing their remaining F-35A order with F-35Bs.

China is also in a position where it can use carriers like how the US uses them - as a big stick to punish third world countries that can't fight back. Most other countries aren't in that position.

SK is ordering 40 F35As and 20 F35Bs. 20 will fill the one carrier they're building. You're right that only carrier compatible planes can use this strategy, but having some planes usable after the initial sortie is better than none. Carriers and STOVL planes are more expensive after all, there's a cost benefit trade-off to be made here. But carrier survivability compared to airstrips does give them uses beyond just bullying countries overseas, at least until we get rid of the need for recoverable air assets entirely.

One could argue it's really the Type55 and their ever evolving submarines that are the bigger threat to taking on the US. Navy heads on.

An attack on a carrier group is one of the conditions for the use of nuclear missiles. If you hit a carrier group (and especially if you hit a carrier group and win), you're gambling with mutually assured destruction.

I've always thought that too, people like to point out some adversary has a state of the art anti-ship missile. Let's say a US carrier is sunk, then what? It's as if that would be the end of the ordeal and there would be no response.

But can't you then also say, an attack with a carrier group is gambling with mutually assured destruction?

Also not a military expert, but thought I'd chime in. It's complicated, and depends a lot on your objectives. If you just want to defend the waters in your region, using a bunch of smaller surface combatants backed up by land-based aircraft can seem like a more attractive option. Especially when you consider the extreme difficulty and expense in developing advanced aircraft carriers. But here's some things to keep in mind. The biggest is that this is a game of reconnaissance. Ever since the advent of large fleet carriers in WW2 navies have had access to extreme firepower capable of striking at extremely long ranges. So it becomes a race to find the enemy before they can find you. Aircraft have the clear advantage here. They are faster, cheaper, can cover more ground, and with a powerful surface search radar can detect a ship from outside the range of SAM batteries. So you need aircraft to search for enemy ships, and you need to destroy your opponents reconnaissance aircraft before they can find your ships. Again, this is a job that aircraft can do very well. Carrier-based fighters can intercept aircraft at ranges exceeding that of even the most advanced surface combatants, and that means you don't have to expose your destroyers or frigates by turning on their radar.

Don't get me wrong, carriers absolutely have their downsides. They are very expensive, and if they are hit it will take them out of action (but not necessarily sink them, carriers can take a lot more punishment than you would think). A proper airbase on the other hand is cheaper, and can be repaired fairly easily and quickly if struck. It's also a much easier target since its location is known in advance and it isn't mobile. A good balance would be a series of small ad-hoc bases distributed around, like the Swedish Bas90 system or the USMC expeditionary advanced base concept, though both have their drawbacks.

In short, I don't think there's a decent replacement for the carrier if you need to carry out offensive operations. And I'd note that China, while developing some very advanced long-range anti-ship missiles, is also working very hard to develop their own carrier fleet, so the PLAN doesn't seem to think the idea is outdated yet.

Some interesting reads on the ideas of the future of carrier warfare: https://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/CVW_Report_Web_1.pd... and https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/...

Ukraine showed the need for having serous conventional arms.

Nukes are so taboo, that so long as you don’t push too hard, you can get away with a lot.

I do think that drone carriers will be the future. A single command fighter alongside dozens of drones that do most of the fighting.

I would assume that the actual state of the art in missile defense would be kept under wraps in terms of capability testing, but the US military is such a leaky boat that who knows.

This seems a losing battle in a real war with a capable enemy. The attacker has to be right only once and can try multiple times whereas the defender has to be right every time.

After the first try the attacker has to defend from multiple attacks too.

I should have been more specific that my comment was about defending a super expensive asset like an aircraft carrier. I am pretty sure it’s cheaper to destroy an aircraft carrier vs building it. It also takes very long time to replace one. In world war 2 it showed that cheaper mass produced weapons usually were superior to expensive super high tech weapons in the long run.

The complication is that the defender nukes you when he loses.

The future of warfare is launching drone swarms from subs and missile destroyers. Carriers are only useful after you have incapacitated the enemy.

Was the paper you're referring to called "Too big to sink"?

https://web.archive.org/web/20200303183928/https://www.usni....

Since then, it seems like his warning fell on deaf ears. His most recent article indicates they're still proceeding with building even more aircraft carriers.

I would offer a different the opposite view:

Any fixed base has little to no chance surviving modern war. As demonstrated by Iran in the Saudi oil field attack, even a country which has been economically isolated for decades can develop accurate cruise missiles which can devastate a known coordinate.

At least a carrier can move 50 km/h, meaning that you need a sophisticated kill chain in order to hit it. Where as a fixed coordinate could have been pre-targeted years ago, and just waiting to be destroyed.

It's entirely probable that the aircraft carrier will fill the role of the battleship in WW2; after all armies are famous for fighting the prior war. Unfortunately nobody knows what will eventually relegate the aircraft carrier to second tier status.

Hard to imagine Top Gun without the carriers...

How often would a carrier get shot on the deck? Would the carriers be farther back than other ships?

The blunt truth is no one knows. The only real naval combat since WW2 was during the Falkland islands conflict. There anti-ship missiles proved to be highly effective. Technology has advanced considerably since then as well. Presumably the major militaries have gamed it out as accurately as possible, but the blunt truth is it's untested thinking.

The anti ship missiles deployed there were also used against much smaller ships.

If modern carriers have the same quality of damage control as previous ones, they should be able to survive some hits; we can see from WWII how carriers were able to survive hits by kamikaze aircraft carrying a lot more explosives than one of the Exocet missiles used in the Falklands war

How often was a ship shot from under the waterline before torpedos or in the middle of the deck before dive bombers? If I were taking lessons from history, advances in naval technology have nullified or neutered entire fleets over less.

To your actual question, if you look at the Battle of Midway at least the Akagi was fatally struck on the deck — carriers today are significantly more advanced in both technology as well as doctrine than those, though.

> at least the Akagi was fatally struck on the deck

Along with the Soryu, Hiryu and Kaga!

Afaik the “carrier debate” is the argument among navy nerds. I certainly don’t know enough to comment one way or the other. But my take is that if we’re in a real war with someone who can credibly sink a carrier group, a much more important concern is going to be how to restore civilization from the ashes.

Really? Don't you just have to poke some holes in the deck? I mean, getting there is tricky, but you don't need apocalyptic weapons, just ability to dodge missile defense.

> in the middle of the deck before dive bombers

Commonly enough for people to plan for it before dive bombers became a thing. After the gunnery advancements of the early 20th century, engagement ranges could be long enough for plunging fire. Battleship shells coming down at 40° off vertical aren't that different than an AP bomb.

That's not to say that these defences were sufficient. Battleships were designed with an "immunity zone" - a range where incoming fire of the designed caliber (generally the same caliber as the main battery) would be at a high enough angle and low enough velocity to fail to penetrate your belt armor, and shallow enough angle to not defeat the relevant deck armor. 2000lb AP bombs at terminal velocity were very much not within the design specifications.

> carriers today are significantly more advanced in both technology as well as doctrine than those, though.

For that matter, even other carriers in that same battle show that damage control by a carrier against bomb hits was possible - the Yorktown survived several bomb and aerial torpedo hits before eventually being sunk by a submarine. She was able to make sufficient repairs to launch fighters again after the first set of bomb hits, too.

Modern carriers are probably better represented by the Yorktown than the Akagi, but no one will really know for sure until the shooting starts.

> Battleships were designed with an "immunity zone" - a range where incoming fire of the designed caliber (generally the same caliber as the main battery) would be at a high enough angle and low enough velocity to fail to penetrate your belt armor, and shallow enough angle to not defeat the relevant deck armor.

Did you accidentally switch belt and deck armor? Isn't deck the one protecting from high angle and low velocity, and belt armor protecting from shallow angles?

I didn't switch it, and you're right - belt armor is most likely to be hit at shallow angles, and deck armor at high angles. That being said, a point-blank shot will still treat belt armor like paper - and a max-range shot will go right through the deck. That's because both the deck armor and belt rely heavily on angling - you get a lot more effectiveness for a given thickness of armor if your opponents are courteous enough to hit it at an angle.

Which means that the belt armor is most effective at max range (though also the least likely to be hit) - shells coming in at 45° will bounce right off. And deck armor is best up close - 5° down angle is going to come up against quite a few feet of metal before managing to penetrate the handful of inches of thickness you could fit in a deck.

The trick to an immunity zone is to find the balance between the two.

None of the carriers in the Battle of Midway had armored flight decks.

The Japanese (3 of them) were caught with fuel and bombs being loaded onto planes in the hangar deck on top of already poor damage control.

The Yorktown on the other hand, had better construction and excellent damage control.

Replaced by drones being launched from cruisers and destroyers? Might as well.

A drone that doesn't need a landing pad is a missile.

Yeah what's the distinction between a loitering missile and suicide drones anyway? I don't see any difference.

You can't land cargo planes on your cruisers and destroyers. Fighting a war without support from the country you are invading requires a lot of logistics.