The weapons are faster and more lethal now, but similar tactics would probably still work to an extent. The Navy has run some computer simulations but they've never done an all-up fleet exercise of a realistic saturation attack that requires emptying the magazines. So, no one really knows for sure how well the defenses would hold up. There would probably be some nasty surprises.
If a conflict with Russia or China breaks out, I think the first thing that happens is aircraft carriers are going to immediately become obsoleted by antiship missiles as quickly as battleships were obsoleted by air attacks in WWII. Probably even more quickly.
I sure hope I'm wrong. And even more than that I hope we never find out.
On paper US anti missile intercepts has been performing well in UKR and Red Sea, but consider the actual numbers. In UKR, 6 Kinzhals, alleged moving at shit tier mach ~3 speed end up damaging a patriot. In Red Sea, shit tier Houthi/Iranian cruise (subsonic) / ballistics, launched in even less coordinated salvos, realistically singles since description of multi missile attacks report these events unfold over matter of hours. Majority intercepted, but few still slip through to hit ships protected by flight IIA/III upgraded DDGs. IMO questionable how well a stacked CSG performs against high end AShMs (Teixeira leak allege US clocked PRC DF27 tests at mach 8+).
That's before considering replenishment fleet, of which US has only 11 fast supply class that can keep up with carrier groups, would also be targetted, leaving non nuclear CSG escorts single deployment assets with days of endurance in high tempo operations. And then what does the carrier do? Operate undefended? Said supply ships would almost be hard not to sink since they have to spend hours restocking in port, in theatre.
I think there's a good reason Navy isn't being recapitalized properly, and it's more than redtape. IMO people behind the scenes also sees the writing on the wall for large surface ships.
Considering this and Taiwan, it's funny that Congress isn't pushing for more SSGNs and accelerating the SSN(X) program.
VS 100+ B21s with less labour and per unit cost that can deliver around the clock, probably difficult to shoot down unless they're parked in hardened hanger or their midair tanking (if needed) gets degraded, but losing one is a couple pilots and 1/10th the cost.
E.g. cutting off oil...not like that has ever led to unexpected outcomes (perl harbor).
Countries generally react to mitigate your actions. What are some of the potential reactions you could see if the PRC perceived that as an existential threat?
And it's not enough, at least for the next ~decade. The ocean supply route is to large and too strung out for a navy lesser than the USN to defend.
That was fine strategy 10 years ago when he wrote Accidental Superpower / pre PLA modernization. This is the part where we circle back to developing PRC conventional hypersonics and potential to overwhelm US missile defense, and PRC increasingly able to strike CONUS at scale from mainland - PRC's version of prompt (conventional) global strike which they've been telegraphing development for years. A threat vector US planners are slowly acknowledging. Which means PRC can proportionally deny US energy by hitting critical infra like oil/LNG refineries, huge stationary targets with simple kill chain. Fortress America + shale autarky doesn't mean anything if you can't protect energy security (and by connection of fossil industrial inputs, food security), which is PRC's reverse UNO for the the entire blockading PRC oil strategy, except when applied to US, straight to extraction chain because can't blockade US from US. So next best proportional (even if escalatory thing) is just to make US as vunerable as PRC. All the resources in US sovereign soil is no good if they can't be extracted and made useful to sustain US hegemony. Saudi equipped US hardware learned that lesson when Houthis hit their refineries. Sure Us isn't incompetent like Saudi, but PRC isn't Houthis either, unless you think they actually replaced rocket fuel with water, and used said fuel for hotpot.
Zeihan of skips over the politics in geoPOLITICS when convenient, i.e. US has most waterways, but PRC actually engineered significantly more and uses more internal waterways. US has deep coasts, but PRC dredged her to make way for half of worlds top 10 ports, the other half doesn't contain US. PRC has bad demographics, except PRC has the ideal demographics for geopolitical competition in the timelines relevant to us - set to produce and coordinate more high skilled talent in next 30 years (the cohorts that actually build national power) than US is projected increase population from all sources total, AND declining population of non productive peoples (old, unskilled, unproductive) aka less import dependencies. Declining cohort also has high home ownership and savings rate because frankly they don't expect big welfare net like west. Next 30 years, PRC swapping 50 million STEM talent (already born) with tier1 city earning potential for 100m farmers, migrant workers etc (old -> uneducated die first) that earn 1/10 that. IMO PRC demographic trend (if scrutinized beyond naive pyramid reading) is more pros than cons, especially considering PRC geographic/resource constraint - they don't need 3x more people than the US where only 1x can marginally compete with US and 2x are excess mouths to feed. Better off long term with 2x US population that PRC soil can sustain, where 1.5x can out compete US.
Eitherway the point is frequently politics in geopolitics matter more.
Fortress America has always been part geographic fortress and part artificial, technologic fortress. The entire reason US built/maintains the largest high tech expeditionary military is basically to stay on the front doors of any potential adversaries so they can't get close to CONUS. Let's not forget Continental Navy couldn't hold against out British blockade during revolutionary war without French Navy entering picture. CONUS was vunerable with 1800s tech, it's the technology (politics) part that made fortress america and it's the technology (military) that ensure two oceans are moats. High end missiles circumvents that, hence US unlikely to take out PRC without PRC taking out US unless US engages PRC directly. That's without considering PRC can drag US to fight near PRC home court by hitting JP/SKR/PH to trigger security obligation. Those are island with much worse self sufficiency that'll collapse in 2 months that US is treaty bound to defend. The TLDR is entire Malacca delima / SLOC blockade strategy operates on logic from 10 years ago when US can unilaterally fuck PRC at no _existential_ cost to herself (CONUS), once that logic breaks, blockade becomes unlikely / suicide pact. Question then is what will US/PRC commit suicide over.
PRC increasingly able to strike CONUS at scale
from mainland - PRC's version of prompt (conventional)
global strike which they've been telegraphing development
for years.
How does this not trigger MAD?
The US has no way of knowing if the incoming missiles are conventional or nukes. Would the US wait for the missiles to land to figure out if they're nukes or not? Would the US not simply launch a retaliatory (presumably nuclear) counter-strike while China's initial missiles are en route?
I honestly don't understand what value striking the CONUS would have for China. Seems like it would just instantly trigger MAD.
For the actual process, I imagine it's going to be very communicated/coordinated affair to pace escalation. PRC: you stopped 40% of our energy imports, we're going to degrade 40% of your domestic energy infra if you don't stop in name of proportionality. First maybe via cyber, then via kinetic strikes, with warning ahead on list of facilities that are potential targets so they can evacuated ahead of time. Start with offshore rigs, then escalate to territorial targets. Launching X missiles at Y time at Z targets. US can either lift blockade, withdraw from PRC civil war, escalate to total war, or trigger MAD and both go back to stone age. Ideally this game theory gets played before hand, and there's no blockade or US intervention in first place - ability to hit CONUS is as much a deterrence function. But TLDR is PRC isn't going to sit back and take hits if they can dish hits as well. Meanwhile US expeditionary/military game theory has been based on fighting adversaries who can't really hit back. Which is why PRC is pouring so much resources into platforms that can.
No weapon is beyond reach in war, or indestructible. And still, they have their use cases.
but an aircraft carrier can still project force at a distance
It's ~130 ship-launched guided missiles and ~75 fighter jets. They will not be operating at a stand-off distance relative to the reach of cruise and ballistic missiles launched from Chinese homeland. And the planes are not going to be able to take off and land if the carrier is executing evasive maneuvers because of missile attack.
If you were China, how would you tackle that? Is there any reason you wouldn't just send several waves of several hundred missiles their way?
Carrier strike groups are still useful. 130 missiles and 75 jets is plenty to dissaude most countries on earth. Just not the biggest ones, if they have committed to waging a full-scale war against you.
China would definitely not emerge unscathed. The CSG would be augmented with a lot of longer range stuff such as US fighters/bombers/missiles/subs launched from elsewhere. But I mean, I think the CSG gets effectively deleted in the first few hours of war. Hope I'm wrong.
So I don't think you're wrong, and I think we've already found out.
A submarine with a nuclear torpedo could take out an entire carrier group.
Nuclear submarines are apparently still hard to detect underwater; but once someone figures out how to detect them, they'll be obsolete.
I think the Senior Service may be doomed.
For any technological advance, the counter technology adapts, so it's not very common for something to actually become obsolete.
Apparently they're modified jet-skis with cheap FPV navigation equipment.
- A peer/neer-peer adversary can presumably throw a very large number of simultaneous drones at a USN vessel. I don't know how feasible it is rustle up 10 or 100 reliable simultaneous human suicide bombers.
- The jet ski drones can surely be physically smaller than a speedboat that needs to hold a human
- The jet skis can trade some of that size back and armor themselves against CIWS etc in ways that would be less practical for a suicide boat
I don't think I'd be so worried about them surviving hits from the CIWS. On the open ocean I'd be worried about the possibility of encountering so many drones that the CIWS runs out of ammunition. In a port, I'd be worried about the practicality of using the CIWS at all, but I think the Navy can adapt.
The main thing is that the Navy were sort of deemphasizing stuff like the Phalanx on their recent ship designs, and this is the second time the past couple of weeks that I've read something suggesting they'll probably need to reverse that trend.
I still also think the front of a "jetski" drone could probably be hardened to withstand a certain amount of 20×102mm fire but, I am guessing and don't know how to determine how feasible that might be.
I think aircraft carriers are already obsolete, not due to antiship missiles but due to small, quiet diesel subs.
Pretty much any NATO navy operating these has stories from NATO exercises where their small, unimpressive sub managed to score hits on a carrier.
This isn't new. Around two decades ago, the US felt the need to ask Sweden to loan them their HSMS Gotland to learn how to do something about them.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/think-us-navy-aircraf...
And then like you said, the engagement range is also going to be quite short - meaning all of this becomes just that exponentially more difficult.
I think the idea of DEW is that you're not trying to literally melt the thing out of the sky, you're trying to penetrate it electrically and scramble something. To that end a very sharp pulse (chirped pulse) is the better approach as then you're more likely to cause damage once you exceed the capacity of (for example) the input isolators on the radar antenna to divert excess energy away from the very sensitive amplifier. Or, to put it a simpler way, you're trying to make sparks jump across gaps.
this protects from lasers, but also makes it glaringly obvious to EW and radar systems.
If your defenses are just amazing, and you take out one every three seconds, you're still going to run out of time. You're on the right track with "firm kill" DEWS though. Gotta be a little careful with those, because the engagement range for DEWS is always going to be short, due to attenuation, mist/fog/spray, dust, and good old line of sight. Also, it's quite surprising how little it takes to shield electronics from even nuke-class EMP. But the short engagement range means you have even less time.