Are aircraft carriers too vulnerable?

apparition13 said:
They have always been vulnerable; but they are more vulnerable now than they ever have been....

I seem to have just talked myself into thinking the day of the carrier is over, at least where peer opponents are concerned.
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Carriers always have been vulnerable, and people don't notice because they thought "peer power wrongly."

Ground based air forces are always more efficient when given sufficient land area. Well designed Air fields are tough targets to neutralize, large land areas allow dispersion and concealment. Land based aircraft is cheaper and can be scaled up to longer range. An air war between a equal budget Carrier force and a well structured land air force can only result in the air force winning.

Japan at 1/10 of the war making capability of the US was not a peer power, and while Japanese carrier capability declined dramatically into irrelevance after mid war, the land bases still inflicted significant losses to US carrier forces. The air campaign over Japan is also mostly done by strategic bombers as the Carrier force can not cost effectively conduct both self defense and deliver effective striking power to a very crippled Japan under extreme fuel shortages. Most of the Carrier on land base victories is against tiny islands which denies concealment, dispersion or large air groups to the defender.

In a true peer context, the force to look at is fleet air arm. The fleet air arm simply could at not challenge the luftwaffe in a standup fight.

That said, the UK carrier force was neither useless nor replaceable with escort carriers. While most of the time carriers conducted operations far from opponent coasts, there were operations like Malta convoy battles and raids like Taranto that demanded fleet carriers. In those operations the carriers are at a disadvantage relative to land based forces it opposed, however the strategic value of the operation balances out the risks and losses. Those are highly situational however.
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If there were new technology the truly alters the strategic balance between land bases and carriers, it is the development of tankers. Tankers enable land based aircrafts to out range carrier air significantly at equal cost (due to enabling economical large airframes), while greatly increase operational mobility of air forces and reduce aircraft cost-performance sacrifices to obtain range.

A tanker force can enable an air force to mass as the speed of flight to counter the advantage of aircraft carrier's ability to have initiative. No longer could a carrier force easily conduct a raid on isolated outposts and get away before retaliation.

With tankers, instead of the old situation where long range air superiority and strike demands large and expensive, perhaps twin to quad engined aircraft that trades inefficiently against short range defensive fighters, tankers enable long range strike and air superiority to be done by combat optimized aircraft.

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Ultimately, carriers exists to bring air power to areas inaccessible to land bases. As bases increases capability to deep power projection with drone/tanker/munition/increased range aircraft, the need for carriers will reduce. The oceans may simply not be big enough anymore.

With drone technology removing human endurance as a limiting factor, aircrafts operating very far from base is now feasible. Perhaps the future ought to be ship based VTOL tanker refueling a stack of drones from land bases. This lets you get persistent air cover without a large vulnerable carrier.
 
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shin_getter said:

With drone technology removing human endurance as a limiting factor, aircrafts operating very far from base is now feasible. Perhaps the future ought to be ship based VTOL tanker refueling a stack of drones from land bases. This lets you get persistent air cover without a large vulnerable carrier.
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Make that carrier a submarine! Seriously if the sub doesnt have to accomodate the aircraft, or the crew, just an automated refuel service, then a big fat sub would really hit the spot.
 
apparition13 said:
I seem to have just talked myself into thinking the day of the carrier is over, at least where peer opponents are concerned.
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It's been this way since Operation Crossroads.

They have their uses, mainly where the Air Force's ability to project power is measured in days instead of minutes, but that's about it.
 
Fluff said:
Make that carrier a submarine! Seriously if the sub doesnt have to accomodate the aircraft, or the crew, just an automated refuel service, then a big fat sub would really hit the spot.
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They not only sneak up on carriers… but replace them too.

I have this vision of the MAN FROM ATLANTIS sub feeding hummingbirds stuck in my head now…

Carrier games
https://theaviationist.com/2015/03/05/us-aircraft-carrier-sunk-by-subs/
Tough
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/dur...e-had-to-be-scuttled-with-200-lbs-of-c-4/amp/
 
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zen said:
To my mind the ideal weapon sneaks upto the horizon as a LO platform and then explosively accelerates to zip across the gap.
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Agreed, a stealthy Kalibr would be one hell of a scary threat. Not that the non-stealthy version isn't scary enough, mind you, there's very little time from when the Kalibr clears the horizon till it impacts. If you have a Hawkeye up you have more warning of incoming missiles. Being LO and having that M2.9 sprint is terrifying.


Archibald said:
Will the aircraft carrier die because the ballistic or hypersonic missile crippled it ?
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No, because Carriers do things that missiles don't. Show the flag, do search and rescue, give positive ID on whatever that radar contact is out there and say "that's a 65ft fishing boat, what is it doing 2000km from shore?" and send a ship or helicopter out to render aid.

3/11 earthquake and tsunami: the US carrier group was in the area because they had a couple hundred nuclear-trained professionals able to send to the nuclear power stations. The first sign many Japanese had of rescue efforts was a US Hawkeye or SH60, and then getting picked up for first aid on the carrier.


Avimimus said:
I thus suspect carriers will get smaller and more specialised by the end of the century.
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No, because carriers get vastly better as their size increases. Carry more planes, can launch and recover bigger planes, carrying more loads of bombs, etc.

Look at how much trouble the RN had with their carriers right after WW2, when the average size of a plane went from 15,000lbs to 30,000lbs or even more. Not to mention all the work that had to go into the F-4K to get it to be able to operate from the Essex-sized carriers the RN had.

Compare the QE class to the Ford:
QE is 65ktons, carries an air group of 40, including helicopters. Maximum of 36x F-35s, plus Merlins and Wildcats. Crew of about 700, not counting air wing.

Ford is 100ktons, carries an air group of at least 75. That's 4 strike fighter squadrons (40-48 planes), 1 squadron of 7 Growlers, an AEW squadron of 4-5 Hawkeyes, 2 squadrons of helicopters (12 and 8), and a detachment of 2-3 cargo planes. Crew of about 2600, not counting air wing. There's physically space to add another strike fighter squadron or two, taking the total up to over 90 aircraft.

Nuclear power is the major driver of how much crew the Fords need, though the larger air wing also goes into how many support bodies the crew needs (more cooks, laundry, barbers, etc). So if you made a 100kton conventional carrier with the same flight deck area as a Ford, you wouldn't need as many crew for the ship.


Desertfox said:
I'd argue that battleships vs carriers is more like apples and oranges, simply because carriers have inherently more flexibility built in. Battleships had one job and one job only, and when that job was replaced so where they. That said offensive weapons could progress beyond the defensive capabilities of a carrier group relegating carriers to secondary roles.

With the advent of sub-launched drones and hypersonic weapons, one could argue that SSGNs could feasibly become that better system that replaces carriers.
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SSGNs will never replace carriers in general. For specific strikes, yes an SSGN is likely better than a carrier. Say, a Tomahawk strike on the A2AD systems, to allow the carriers and amphibs access.

Yes, I love my subs, but there's jobs that a sub just doesn't do well, like showing the flag. If you need to send a message that the US is paying attention to what is going on in a location, you send a carrier group and or an amphib group.
 
Scott Kenny said:
No, because carriers get vastly better as their size increases. Carry more planes, can launch and recover bigger planes, carrying more loads of bombs, etc.
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The same "efficiency" arguments work for all ships, yet warships are nowhere as big as technology allows. Lack of redundancy is dangerous if not fatal.

Big carrier's main advantage is ability to operate E-2 class AEW.

If someone develops like a heavy AEW that takes off from amphibs/helicopter carriers, the biggest advantage of large carriers is reduced. If someone figure out basing/refueling arrangements for land based AEW cover the need for carriers is also significantly reduced. Personally I think seaplane tanker aircraft and landbased unmanned AEW is a logical way to provide radar cover for low cost.

Thing is with modern very long range missiles the air group doesn't offer that much protection and the main advantage is low cost strike, and only against non-peers.
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That said, steel is cheap. Instead of smaller ships that costs no less, I think what would be more fruitful is to simplify the frontline ships massively and remove/reduce maintenance/repair/storage functions and keep only refuel/rearm ability.

Reliable automated take off and landing make aircrew sortie duration issues much less significant, the crew only need to be awake during times of engagement and not the entire sortie.
 
shin_getter said:
The same "efficiency" arguments work for all ships, yet warships are nowhere as big as technology allows. Lack of redundancy is dangerous if not fatal.

Big carrier's main advantage is ability to operate E-2 class AEW.

If someone develops like a heavy AEW that takes off from amphibs/helicopter carriers, the biggest advantage of large carriers is reduced. If someone figure out basing/refueling arrangements for land based AEW cover the need for carriers is also significantly reduced. Personally I think seaplane tanker aircraft and landbased unmanned AEW is a logical way to provide radar cover for low cost.
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Seaplanes have significant limitations on takeoff and landing, carrier aircraft can launch in much higher sea states.

But something like a Global Hawk with the Wedgetail radar would make one hell of a force multiplier for smaller carriers.


shin_getter said:
Thing is with modern very long range missiles the air group doesn't offer that much protection and the main advantage is low cost strike, and only against non-peers.
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I'm still not convinced of the actual threat level of AShBMs.

The most effective strike is likely to be a time-on-target attack of AShBMs and air-launched AShMs.


shin_getter said:
That said, steel is cheap. Instead of smaller ships that costs no less, I think what would be more fruitful is to simplify the frontline ships massively and remove/reduce maintenance/repair/storage functions and keep only refuel/rearm ability.
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Disagree, you need to retain the ability to put things back together after a large break, missile impact, fire, whatever.


shin_getter said:
Reliable automated take off and landing make aircrew sortie duration issues much less significant, the crew only need to be awake during times of engagement and not the entire sortie.
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Surface ships have this weird rule that if the sun is up you're supposed to be. Even if you work nights.
 
There are a lot of things for aircraft carriers to do that don't involve attacking heavily fortified China... We take the worst-case corner condition to attack a very useful military capability for literally everything else.
 
DrRansom said:
There are a lot of things for aircraft carriers to do that don't involve attacking heavily fortified China... We take the worst-case corner condition to attack a very useful military capability for literally everything else.
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But in that context are there other capabilities other than the US Navy’s nuclear carrier task forces that are better matched (or at least potentially equally useful when considering mixed force structure and relative bang-for-buck) for some potential short of full out war with peer power scenarios? F-35B equipped STOVL carriers, SSNs and/ or surface combatants armed with long range cruise missiles, long range land based UCAVs etc.

I’m more pro- nuclear powered super carriers than my comments above may suggest (still incredibly useful and flexible assets) but they are not sacred cows and given the vast concentration of resources each of them represents it’s very reasonable for the US Navy to (on an ongoing basis) reconsider their force structure and if some of their resources otherwise allocated to these carriers could potentially be better spent on complimentary capabilities to these carriers (such as larger numbers of ship/ sub based cruise missiles, greater numbers of shore based manned and unmanned platforms, greater number and/ or re-tasking of some of the US’s STOVL carriers, etc.).
 
Scott Kenny said:
Seaplanes have significant limitations on takeoff and landing, carrier aircraft can launch in much higher sea states.
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Weather systems have finite sizes that becomes less relevant as aircraft ranges increases, the choice of stagging point changes if you have 300km range or 1500km. Weather is also more predictable with masses of satellites and modern processing. Since it is mainly fuel, one can scatter some submersible tanks around the combat area for refueling and just switch when sea states change.

I'm still not convinced of the actual threat level of AShBMs.
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Fighter aircraft is effective at fighting bombers, however it doesn't work efficiently against land or sub launched missiles which an opponent can obviously choose to focus on. What cooperative engagement capability means that fighters are not really necessary even against bombers, just need survivable sensor platform to guide very long range SAM.

Now some kind of anti-swarm DEW aircraft might arise in the near future, but I suspect it'd benefit from being big as much as AEW and probably best supplied from land bases if at all possible.

And of course, this is only the present. A platform like starship means its affordable to have thousands of tons of throw weight at any point on this planet and it'd probably be made to work before the next carrier is built if it starts getting funded now.

Disagree, you need to retain the ability to put things back together after a large break, missile impact, fire, whatever.
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I am referring to aircraft repair and maintenance capabilities. It is expensive and volume consuming and now suitable for a front line deployed vehicle at significant risk of destruction. Instead of building impossible defenses to protect this capability, it is better to move such capability far back into harden areas even if it does cause operational inconvenience.

Also if steel is cheap and crew is expensive, it is easier to build resilience and redundancy by having bigger and more ships than complicated damage control.

Surface ships have this weird rule that if the sun is up you're supposed to be. Even if you work nights.
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The idea is that with drone tech, you can run stuff like 20+ hour sorties off a single seater since robots control most of the cruise.

DrRansom said:
There are a lot of things for aircraft carriers to do that don't involve attacking heavily fortified China... We take the worst-case corner condition to attack a very useful military capability for literally everything else.
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True, but if you are not doing land attack you wouldn't design existing carriers the way it is in terms of aircraft performance, sortie rates and so on.
 
The design of the Nimitz class still owes its origins to the Forrestal supercarriers which were originally part of the US nuclear forces able to strike at the USSR from the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean and the Pacific.
When Polaris made this role obsolete in the early 1960s the Vietnam War came to the rescue showing the value of carriers as safe moving airfields for fighter, bomber and recce missions.
The long awaited emergence of Soviet supersonic bombers and long range heavy missiles made the F14 and its Phoenix missiles essential if the USN was to control the sea.
At the same time large Soviet surface units provided high value targets. Under the Reagan administration US carriers were tasked with taking the fight to Norway and the Kola Peninsular.
After 1991 successive conflicts needed the involvement of F18s.
The current F35 airgroup is aimed mainly at this requirement.
 
shin_getter said:
Weather systems have finite sizes that becomes less relevant as aircraft ranges increases, the choice of stagging point changes if you have 300km range or 1500km. Weather is also more predictable with masses of satellites and modern processing. Since it is mainly fuel, one can scatter some submersible tanks around the combat area for refueling and just switch when sea states change.
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It's not a matter of the size of the plane, big waves screw with a seaplane attempting to take off because the aircraft itself is pitching up and down with the waves. If the seaplane attempts to NOT fly head-on into the waves, they're now attempting to take off in a crosswind.

shin_getter said:
I am referring to aircraft repair and maintenance capabilities. It is expensive and volume consuming and now suitable for a front line deployed vehicle at significant risk of destruction. Instead of building impossible defenses to protect this capability, it is better to move such capability far back into harden areas even if it does cause operational inconvenience.
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Combat aircraft require maintenance after every flight. Until you build aircraft that basically require no maintenance at all, carriers will require maintenance and repair facilities onboard.


shin_getter said:
The idea is that with drone tech, you can run stuff like 20+ hour sorties off a single seater since robots control most of the cruise.
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I'm talking about the deck crew that have to be awake when aircraft are flying, and are expected to be awake any time the sun is up.

There are something like 25 non-pilot crew for every pilot.


shin_getter said:
True, but if you are not doing land attack you wouldn't design existing carriers the way it is in terms of aircraft performance, sortie rates and so on.
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True, if you were building an ASW Escort Carrier you wouldn't care as much about total sortie rate because each plane is going to sortie about every 3 hours, including your CAP. Then you'd have a couple of fighters parked on or near the cats for Deck Launched Intercept on 5min warning.
 
i don't know if that here is mention.
but the US "lost" there Aircraft carriers during NATO fleet exercises.

by german diesel submarines getting so close to fire torpedos, without detection by US fleet
It seems on last NATO fleet exercises. the German Navy dit it again...

...and the US Navy was seriously piss off.
 
I recall a conversation with a British naval officer in the 80s about submarine attacks on US carriers. NATO exercises being prescripted the US tried to ensure these did not take place.
The normally rules compliant West Germans ignored the exercise rules and used their small quiet diesel subs to close in on carriers.
In another NATO exercise W German Starfighters bounced an RAF base in the UK which again had not been scripted.
In the 90s a retired Bundeswehr Colonel told me how during a CSCE inspection of a Soviet Division his British Army colleague had a clipboard and checklist but refused to go for a drink with the Russ.ian CO. The German well used to Korn und Bier had a pleasant session with the CO. The following morning the whole division with all its kit was ready for inspection. Strangely the Brit was not amused.
 
Michel Van said:
i don't know if that here is mention.
but the US "lost" there Aircraft carriers during NATO fleet exercises.

by german diesel submarines getting so close to fire torpedos, without detection by US fleet
It seems on last NATO fleet exercises. the German Navy dit it again...

...and the US Navy was seriously piss off.
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My Trident sub was used as training OPFOR for the USS Abraham Lincoln back in the day.

A Trident is so big that you can see it from 160ft down.

We snuck into the carrier group and got our shots, they had no clue we were there.
 
Sferrin said:
Until they can find a way to throw a 2000lb bomb as far and as cheaply as a carrier, I don't know what you'd replace it with. Even if you get it down to SDB-sized we still have a long, LONG ways to go.
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The issue isn't replacing the CVN entirely, but cutting the fleet size and specializing it for power projection against non-peers, which doesn't require high end investments like F/A-XX. While a CVN doesn't throw anything any length whatsoever against the PLA without eating a dozen AShBMs with it's hull. While the otherwise potentially useful escorts would have to expend their magazines in an attempt to protect the floating embodiment of a sunk cost fallacy.

The battleship on the other hand can at least return offensive fire while also having magazine depth of it's own to protect itself. Depending on how the next generation of large surface combatant shapes up for the USN and how CPS will evolve over time, such a BBG can, together with long range aviation and VLS equipped submarines, work towards thinning the deployed anti-ship batteries that pose an immediate threat.

And it's not only missiles, but PLAN submarines too which would tear into a carrier battle group. And while expensive in case of being sunk, when the BBG goes under, up to that point it ideally has dished out substantial amount of long range high speed missiles against high value targets, be it TELs or ships. And when it sinks, it takes significantly less people and material with it than a carrier. Sinking a nuclear powered airbase with all the associated jets and personelle is such a tremendous loss, people won't grasp the severity until the first CVN disappears beneath the waves.
 
Iran with cca 1% ! defense budget of USA keeps carriers sailing 500+ km from Iranian shores and take a long way around Africa to avoid the Huthis that are a minuscule armed faction . If Carrier can't close to targets , planes are forced to carry extra fuel or refuel instead of carrying ordonance .

Sure carriers enable projection of power ,but it seems in any even remotely peer conflict they would all end up on the bottom of the sea real fast and new ones would not be built for years to come .
 
EmoBirb said:
The battleship on the other hand can at least return offensive fire while also having magazine depth of it's own to protect itself. Depending on how the next generation of large surface combatant shapes up for the USN and how CPS will evolve over time, such a BBG can, together with long range aviation and VLS equipped submarines, work towards thinning the deployed anti-ship batteries that pose an immediate threat.
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Though you simply cannot achieve the same tempo of attacks with a modern battleship/cruiser as you can with a carrier -- consider the fact that a typical AB carries some 20-30 TLAMs (remember how the U.S. had to launch some 60 TLAMs at a Syrian AB just to temporarily knock it out of operation) and has to return to base after expending them, whereas carrier aviation can launch much denser and more frequent attacks... And those same PLA AShBMs can and will target not only those carriers, but your battleship/destroyer/cruiser as well...
 
EmoBirb said:
The issue isn't replacing the CVN entirely, but cutting the fleet size and specializing it for power projection against non-peers, which doesn't require high end investments like F/A-XX. While a CVN doesn't throw anything any length whatsoever against the PLA without eating a dozen AShBMs with it's hull. While the otherwise potentially useful escorts would have to expend their magazines in an attempt to protect the floating embodiment of a sunk cost fallacy.
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The entire purpose of those carrier escorts is to expend their magazines so that the carrier doesn't eat AShMs.



EmoBirb said:
The battleship on the other hand can at least return offensive fire while also having magazine depth of it's own to protect itself. Depending on how the next generation of large surface combatant shapes up for the USN and how CPS will evolve over time, such a BBG can, together with long range aviation and VLS equipped submarines, work towards thinning the deployed anti-ship batteries that pose an immediate threat.
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A battleship might have one day's fighting onboard.

A carrier has a full week's worth of bombs. ~1500 tons of bombs, plus another ~400tons of AAMs.



EmoBirb said:
And it's not only missiles, but PLAN submarines too which would tear into a carrier battle group.
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They'd want to.

Whether they'd succeed or not is a separate discussion.



EmoBirb said:
And while expensive in case of being sunk, when the BBG goes under, up to that point it ideally has dished out substantial amount of long range high speed missiles against high value targets, be it TELs or ships. And when it sinks, it takes significantly less people and material with it than a carrier.
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A battleship has 12-36 CPS tubes, depending on which design brief you read. That's a single strike. Plus ~64 cells of Tomahawks, plus the standing defensive missiles.
 
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Its so over, infinite ASBM spam on the horizon for everyone.

While the discourse is like people arguing over designs of horse armor so that cost efficient sabre can be applied to enemy infantry for the low low cost of calories of a sword swing.

Frankly the thing to think about is how to conduct a island campaign with boats no larger than a narcosub.
 
One simply has to remember, there are two types of ships in the navy. They are targets and submarines. Need anything more be said about the vulnerability of carriers?
 
djfawcett said:
One simply has to remember, there are two types of ships in the navy. They are targets and submarines. Need anything more be said about the vulnerability of carriers?
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Must be why everybody who can is building them. Carriers that is.
 
Sferrin said:
Must be why everybody who can is building them. Carriers that is.
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Let's see how long that view lasts if a "near peer" war breaks out. And battleships, all that can be said is as soon as a projectile hits an intended target, the girls and guys better be headed for the life boats!
 
Because everyone wants to sink an aircraft carrier. Supersonic bombers, missiles heavier and seven times faster than a P-51 Mustang, ASBMs capable of accurately hitting moving targets from over 3,000 kilometers away, nuclear submarines, heavy torpedoes... and long-range patrol aircraft, electronic reconnaissance ships, unmanned surface ships and unmanned submarines, ocean surveillance satellites... On this kill chain for sinking aircraft carriers, both strike means and reconnaissance means are exceedingly abundant. Why? Because both China and the Soviet Union invested heavily to counter their primary maritime adversary—the U.S. aircraft carrier. If those funds and technologies had been redirected to counter other types of U.S. warships, then any type of surface ship would have been just as vulnerable (except submarines).
 

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