Key phrase here is kill chain. Finding a moving carrier on the open ocean is hard, even with modern satellite technology. And getting a missile launched from hundreds or thousands of miles away to hit it once you do know its position (10 minutes ago) is harder.

Not to say that's impossible, just that it's currently an unsolved problem.

Doubt that it is hard. A carrier must send out an emense amount of RF. There are satellites that have large antennas (probably when deployed bigger than football fields. “Think something like a large net made of thin wires”) listening in to the things that happen here down on the ground.

Even if satellites did have exact, continuous data on the location of a target (they don't, and in wartime there would be aggressive countermeasures being used against them), the targeting data has to be relayed to the launch facility/missile itself and the human components of the chain. Then, once launched, it takes at least minutes for the missile to reach its target. You can imagine the satellites automatically sending data to the missile in flight, but hypersonics aren't particularly maneuverable. If you're ten seconds from reaching the target and it's a mile away from where you thought, it's not trivial to reroute. And your $100M missile just explodes in the open ocean, a very expensive tea kettle.

That all said, none of this is impossible, and first tier militaries are putting a whole lot of effort into this problem; in a sense, "it's just engineering." But so far no first tier military has actually seen how their system would work in the field, and the results remain to be seen.

Particularly, if China were sure that it could sink American carriers at will, it would already be invading Taiwan.

If you read the investigative story [1] about how Russia's missile team's operate it explains they have to program their missiles with USB thumbdrives, targeting data comes from a small team in Moscow, then it gets sent to remote airbases/submarines, and targeting information is often 24hrs old by the time the missile is in flight.

It's much harder than it sounds.

A ballistic hypersonic missile isn't like a TV-guided cruise missile that can track a moving target or a HARM that will seek out RF signatures. You'd basically have to wait until the carrier is parked somewhere for an expended period (multiple hours at a minimum), otherwise you'll waste a $100M hypersonic missile.

[1] https://theins.ru/en/politics/256339

The challenge is that targets look smaller the faster you go. Small errors quickly produce deltas larger than the target. Hypersonic missiles, at least the ones we know about, are not like aircraft that can miss, turn around, and try again. They’re more like bullets, and it’s pretty well understood how hard it is to hit an erratically moving target with a rifle round.

>>>A carrier must send out an emense amount of RF.

The US Navy is actually pretty good at avoiding that.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/navy/...

Bringing a carrier anywhere near a hostile shore is now iffy. There are too many truck-mounted ship killers now, as the Russian Black Sea fleet found out the hard way.[1] Sailing US carriers up the Taiwan Strait as a show of force is over. The US last did that in 2007.

Something else that's probably over - parking an amphibious assault ship offshore and using it as a base for USMC operations. The USMC and USN invested huge resources in that concept, and it's been very useful in small wars. Those ships are now vulnerable.

A LTJG writes in Naval Institute Proceeding on this.[2] If a carrier is close enough to do anything useful, it's vulnerable to shore-based attack. A Coast Guard officer worries about attacks by drone swarms launched from fishing boats.[3] China has a large fleet of small coastal vessels, the "People's Armed Maritime Militia", which are used for observation and other tasks.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61141118

[2] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/december/eye...

[3] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/december/res...

I was limiting my scope to hypersonics, which are hyped compared to more conventional threats.

I agree that in a US-China war, the US will stay very far away from Chinese land-based platforms. The fleet would mostly remain outside the first island chain and fly sorties to take advantage of US air superiority.

The Chinese land-based platforms now have more range than the US carrier based platforms. See the first article I linked from U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. If a carrier is close enough to do anything useful, it's close enough to be hit.

The issue of course, is we don’t really know.

Sinking an aircraft carrier, let alone most of them, is also such a big loss of life and material, it could easily lead to WW3/nuclear boogaloo.

There are also anti-anti-shipping missile cruisers, CIWS, AWACS, etc. around aircraft carriers all the time.

There is also a lot of stealthy underwater stuff that is indeed ongoing. A big question on that front of course, is how would you know how it’s doing, or what it’s capable of, when it’s by its nature stealthy and hidden.

I remember reading an article a while back on HN about using ML to detect water disruptions to determine the location of underwater stealth vessels. I couldn't dig it up easily. Really cool stuff going on in that sector.

I'm no expert either, so blind replying to the blind haha. Underwater stuff is at serious risk of being detected with modem satellite surveillance technologies. None I've seen, but none I'd expect to see either. So it's impossible to tell if it's just science fiction. Aircraft carriers rely on projected air power, and in the event of hypersonic missles, I guess lots of cwis in a carrier group?

I was chatting with my Uncle (ex-USGS) about this a few years ago. You're going to need ~1m data to resolve a carrier's heading. You'll need something in geosynchronous orbit. If your CCD is 100mpx, then you need 10000 acquires to cover a 1000km-x-1000km chunk of Pacific. If you had a 1gbps(!) connection, and you used 8x32b color (which ain't great), you'll need 72 hours do download the data. Assuming the carrier is underway, it could be as much as 2000km away, by then.

So, if we had 500000 geosynchronous satellites, with a 1pbs link we could find carriers in a good fraction of the Pacific — maybe 10 or 20% of it?

If you know where it is once it’s easier to keep track of it ships can’t teleport which substantially limits the search space. Then your limit is related to bandwidth but that seems to be a case for edge compute. And I assume there are a ton of sensors that could be tailor made for the purpose, wouldn’t radar be effective?, a low resolution IR?. And there is the ability to use other sources of intelligence in conjunction. And what’s to stop adversaries building a bunch of neutrino detectors which nuclear reactions cannot hide from, currently they’re slow to detect but it’s probably easier to fix that by building a ton of them. I suspect above ground neutrino detection technology is now good enough that stealth and nuclear are no longer compatible, and that includes nuclear powered submarines.

1) compression massively reduces that data requirement. 2) relatively simple processing on the satellites itself can cut down most of that data by only downlinking interesting observations. 3) If you're looking to target a carrier with a missile you also only have to look where you can actually deploy that missile to drastically cutting down the area you'd need to search.

Modern CWIS are for drones both sea and air and slower cruise missiles. They would be useless against hypersonic missiles.

They're useless against all that other stuff too. The operational history of CIWS consists exclusively of friendly fire.

>>>In a hot war with a capable near-peer, the carriers will be sunk right away (possibility every single one of them).

The USN has plans to limit the risk to the carriers, but most of those also limit the usefulness extensively. Even still, a maneuvering and properly-escorted CVN is not an easy target.

>>Seems like the focus should be on the stealthy underwater stuff that can pop up and deliver payloads like missiles and drones but what do I know.

I fully expect our submarine force to do most of the heavy lifting, especially in the critical early months of a hot war with China. But the problem is their limited ordnance. USS Ohio after her SSGN conversion only carries ~150 Tomahawks @$2 MILLION per missile for Block V versions. So that's 150 targets, max, before she has to slink away from the conflict zone and find a resupply ship or port. A Nimitz has a sustained sortie generation rate of ~80 sorties per day, and while I can't say what their typical ammo stores are, the carrier air wing should have more than enough bombs and guided munitions to strike 150 targets, and many targets can be prosecuted with fairly cheap JDAMs, SDBs, Mavericks, etc...

A big issue is there's not really been a peer on peer large air battle until very recently in Ukraine and that's shown how difficult it is against an even mildly capable air defense system to deploy and use jets to deliver those cheaper munitions. The complete dominance of the US Airforce has been against pretty soft targets with Iraq being the only real air defense challenge but that's nothing compared to what it would face in China or Russia.

I absolutely expect us to not achieve our usual Air Dominance when this fight with China inevitably goes kinetic.

While our pilots still possess the essential skills and munitions to peel back an Integrated Air-Defense System (seems the Russians lack both of those), I don't think we are prepared for the ridiculous numerical disparity we will face here in the First Island Chain, combined with the reasonable qualitative parity of Chinese assets.

Russian integrated air defense is better than what the US or west can muster at the moment (just read up a little on these systems and how they integrate, Russians math good). They might suck at practically everything else, but not air defense. This is pretty widely acknowledged by western experts.

In fact, the old S-300s and Buks in Ukranine have been pretty effective and probably what spooks the Russians from using their air force in mass. Even those old systems are probably better than the Patriot for a lot of tasks. There's even been talks of sending more S-300s from Greece because they work and Ukraine knows how to operate them.

> There's even been talks of sending more S-300s from Greece because they work and Ukraine knows how to operate them.

That would be unwise from a Greek perspective, because of Erdolfs ambitions and posture.

I re-read my post and I can see that it is unclear. I meant the Russians lack trained PILOTS, not that they lack decent IADS. I agree that Russian/Soviet SAMs are overall pretty damn good, and deserve to be respected. I think Soviet doctrine of robust air defenses at all ranges/capability levels is proving prescient. The US in particular finally realized they need to play catch-up when it comes to SHORAD.

Speaking more generally, I'm curious to hear what your speculations are in terms of a war with China.

Most people seem to think it'll be a walk in the park for either the US or China, but I think it'll end up a kind of stalemate, with China and Taiwan both facing extreme privation from sea blockades, the Strait and SCS being a charnel house, and the world experiencing a massive economic disruption; domestic politics in democratic states would determine the terms of the final resolution.

>>>I'm curious to hear what your speculations are in terms of a war with China.

Well, honestly your next sentence is pretty on the mark in broad terms: sea blockades, massive asset destruction in the main conflict zone, global economic impacts and political chaos.

I think the Chinese are using Russia's Ukraine failure to re-do their math about an amphibious assault aimed at Taipei (100x more difficult than driving across a land border into Kiev). I still expect their combination of ballistic missiles, land-based airpower (including old aircraft converted into drones/guided bombs), and a metric boatload of surface ships to wreck most US combat power in the region with sheer mass. We simply don't have enough assets or enough AMMO forward deployed here to maintain supremacy right on China's doorstep.

The big question marks are the responses from other local powers. We expect the Japanese to help if attacked, but what if they aren't targeted directly by China? The Japanese -N-a-v-y- "Maritime Self-Defense Force" is large and competent and we need them to counter the Eastern Theater Command Navy. Will the Philippines let us stage combat power in their territory? What will Vietnam do in the SCS? Will India distract China in the Himalayas?

Even if we get the upper hand in combat, maybe after 90+ days when we've gotten reinforcements from allies, from the continental US, etc....at BEST the situation becomes "Well China, we sank your entire Navy and Marine Corps, and killed most of your Air Force pilots......can we consider this 'Taiwan unification' issue settled?". The concern is that Xi Jinping and the CCP have staked their regime's reputation on this one goal. It's the same problem with Putin and Ukraine: failure is a guaranteed regime-ending scenario from domestic discontent, so they might just double down no matter how irrational it appears, and if the CCP can foster sufficient nationalism from the population, we could be looking at a LOOOOOONG bloody conflict and total economic chaos.

The USA still has no peers, only "near-peers".

Carriers are the cheapest way to deliver lots of bombs over a target, when there are no air bases in the neighborhood. Being expensive, they would not be moved in until they are safe. To do that, the assets you mentioned would be employed first. Guided missile submarines, and long range bombers (accompanied in the near future by drones). Once the threats are eliminated, the carriers move closer.

If carriers were useless, China would not invest in them. But what does China know?

If I was China I'd invest in carriers just to make the US invest even more in their own carriers as well invest more into anti-carrier capability. This sort of strategy is common in games, where a tactic is feigned in order to elicit a costly counter from the competitor.

That's a plausible strategy, but it has 2 problems. First is that China is not in a position to outspend the US in an arms race, at least not yet. Second is that the US does not show any signs of increasing its aircraft carrier procurement in response.

Occam's razor would suggest China invests in aircraft carriers because it sees an actual benefit.

China doesn't need to outspend the US to make it worthwhile, and you don't defend against aircraft carriers with other aircraft carriers. And Occam's razor is reductive here; it's politics not math.

>If carriers were useless, China would not invest in them. But what does China know?

As you mentioned, carriers are good for dunking on low/mid tier powers that can be dismantled and then bombed on budget. Questionable if it's good for peer warfare with powers that can take out carriers.

And if you look at numbers, PRC is not really heavily investing/committing in carriers. 3 hulls over 10 years and ~50 J15s is very conservative relative to PRC MIC building prowess. For comparison, USN laid down and completed 4 Forrestal within 5 years. Nimitz was being launched every 3-4 years. Compare PLAN submarine fleet with huge tech gap that never the less commissioned many new hulls in same period because there's recognition that mass subsurface capability (and thus need to build up talent pool) is integral to future force composition.

IMO right now they're prestige projects used for peacetime "diplomacy" and building up carrier infra if PLAN ever decide to go super carrier power projection route. But it could just as well as be dead end trial/experiment with future oriented towards UCAV carriers like Type 76 and long range bombers like H20.

In 20-30 years, 100 B21s could probably drop cheap ordances more efficiently than carrier groups. IMO it will get hard to rationalize super carriers. But USNavy is a seperate branch with their own budget and desire to remain relevant, so US ends up with trillion dollar "presence" / photo ops platforms when the money could be best spent elsewhere.

Excellent analysis.

> IMO it will get hard to rationalize super carriers.

It's a know-how preservation program. The US Navy could easily refit the old Nimitzes and extend their life by 3 decades. Instead, they are building new Fords at the most glacial pace that makes sense. One every 4 years means 3 billion spent per year. The Navy has a budget of $250 BN or so, so that's about 1%.

The problem the Navy has is: right now they don't need new carriers, but what if one day they'll need 3 or 4 new carriers per year. It happened before. It's much easier to scale from 2 per decade to 4 per year than from absolute zero.

On top of that, the Fords are a pretty flexible platform. They can carry now 75 manned jets. But you can easily see one day they can switch to 25 manned jets and 150 drones.

> 100 B21s could probably drop cheap ordances more efficiently than carrier groups

100 B21s will cost about $70 BN. And a lot to operate on a per hour basis. They might be cost effective for some missions, but they are not going to make carriers obsolete anytime soon.

Historically, the development of the torpedo in the late 19th century lead to the same sorts of consternation vis-à-vis the battleship (equivalents) of their day. A small boat armed with torpedoes could easily sink the most expensive ships in a navy's repertoire. But this didn't lead to the extinction of the battleship, it lead to the development of torpedo boat destroyers (now shortened to just "destroyer") that was designed to specifically target torpedo boats. After all, ships don't go it alone in a navy; they sail as part of the fleets, and if some elements of the fleet are capable of countering the threat, that doesn't mean that the big capital ship has to be capable of countering it by itself.

I'm not a naval expert either, but I would be strongly cautious of writing the carriers' obituary just yet.