> Their navy and armament are rapidly approaching parity. With their economy, it'll likely surpass us.
Their navy is approaching ours in terms of tonnage. But they're lacking in carriers at the moment.
This means that their navy can work anywhere with good missile/air force support. But they lack the ability to force project outward.
> What's the game plan?
Aircraft Carriers and the F35. How can they find our ships at sea, if their drones get shot down? How can they prevent us from finding their ships, if we have superior stealth?
If they can't see our ships, how can they attack, even with a hypersonic nuclear warhead? Aircraft carrier move at 35+ mph and turn on a dime. If it takes 10 minutes for a hypersonic nuclear warhead to be delivered to a location, the aircraft carrier is already 6-miles off target.
The DF-21 anti ship ballistic missile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21), affectionately known as the "carrier killer" is capable of maneuvering on the way back down from space, at speeds of mach 5-10. The initial guidance would be through satellites and then final phase guidance through a mix of electro-optical and radar guidance. Carriers, while being fairly fast for a ship, would not have enough time to maneuver away from an incoming missile. It is thought that they might not be able to outright sink a carrier but would inflict enough damage that the carrier would need extensive repairs and be out of the fight for several months at least, and that is for the conventionally armed versions. Nuclear tipped ballistic missiles would melt the ship and anything nearby.
US anti ballistic missiles (mostly the SM-3 for naval use) have been tested against ballistic missiles but not (as far as I know) in anything other than a test environment. The launchers are mobile and stationed fairly far inland, specifically to be out of easy reach of naval force projection from a carrier group.
Source: Used to be a weapons engineer in the Dutch Navy for 14 years, have been out of it for ~5 years now though. These kind of weapons were a major driver for doctrine revisions when I left, since much of Western naval doctrines were/are based on the idea that you could have a fairly safe and unreachable "seabase" a few hundred nm from shore from which to launch assaults. These kind of very long range area denial weapons upend that thought.
I certainly agree that Taiwan / near China is going to be problematic because of missiles like that. China seems to have the advantage in a Taiwan-scenario. When those missiles are based on land with much more defenses available to them, its a problem.
In a naval scenario (lets say China is attacking Hawaii as a hypothetical), those ballistic missiles will need to be launched from a Chinese ship of their own (3000km range vs Hawaii is still ocean), which means the Carrier + F35 has the edge once more. It seems more likely that our ships will find their ships first (or really, our F35 aircraft will find them first) and neutralize the missile before they lock in on our Carrier's location.
You're pretty much the only person who brought up a solid point though :-)
And its a very good point. China's strategy is to solidify its grip on the near-China areas (Taiwan, Korea, etc. etc.).
China seems to explicitly NOT be trying to challenge the USA on the open seas. Still, given US interests in Taiwan, its a threat to be taken seriously.
Satellites will be the first casualties on both sides in any major conflict. Anti satellite weapons have been successfully tested and are undergoing rapid development.
No that's not how it works. The expectation is that satellites will be knocked out before sending carriers into really high threat environments. Antiship ballistic missiles have very limited sensors and maneuvering capability so it's hard to reliably hit a moving target without another platform data linking a continuous track at least through the midcourse phase.
Both sides have only small numbers of attack submarines and long-range maritime patrol aircraft, including large drones. The small, cheap suicide drones are mostly useless for open ocean surveillance due to lack of range and weak sensors. This is the real world, not a Hollywood movie.
Cost is relative. When you're attacking a carrier you can afford to sacrifice a lot. A surveillance drone can very well be used in a suicide role, and they have more than enough range for this task.
Antiship ballistic missiles have strong maneuvering capabilities. You have to look at absolute displacement, not the relative change in velocity. And the sensors required to find a 7000m^2 target are much smaller and limited than you'd think.
Surveillance drones with sufficient range and sensors for effective broad area maritime surveillance are too large and slow to be effective in the suicide attack role. In theory someone could hang missiles in them but that would cut into range and sensor payload.
Antiship ballistic missiles have very limited maneuverability in the terminal phase where their onboard sensors come into play. Atmospheric heating and plasma effects reduce the effectiveness of those sensors. This article is a fairly good summary of the current state.
All of this stuff is possible in theory. It's just extremely difficult coordinate all the moving pieces together in real time and make it work in an operational environment.
Again, no one is talking about suicide attack. The drones are to be used to send the coordinates for a ballistic missile strike.
Carriers are large enough that you can start scanning for them before the terminal phase.
The article you linked is overly optimistic. The idea of masking the heat signature of a literal aircraft carrier is completely insane.
I also suggest you do the math on how much you can manoeuvre at a rate of speed of 3Gs at Mach 5 with a manoeuvring distance of 80km. (Hint : 33km radius). This is also an underestimation because it doesn't take into account decrease of transverse velocity.
This stuff was possible in theory 30 years ago. Now it's likely possible in practice.
That drone is most likely to engage an AEGIS missile cruiser (one of the escort ships) providing a protective perimeter around the carrier first. Which has more than enough capabilities to shoot down any "drone" before it reaches the carrier.
The carrier itself also provides multiple AWACS to constantly be scanning for aerial approaches. That's the good thing about a carrier, its got aircraft of its own defending the group.
Can your drone penetrate the scanning area of a E2 Hawkeye?
If the drone can find the CSG it's already done it's job. Close out the perimeter and send the missile, you'll have a perimeter more than small enough for the on-board sensors to scan.
And yes, a small modern drone can penetrate the scanning area of an E2 Hawkeye. It turns out stealth is a lot easier when your platform is much smaller, and you only care about the frontal aspect. Even moreso when you don't have large-wavelength radar.
So you're just gonna lob a missile at the first cruiser you see and hope that the carrier is nearby? Like, China's production for these missiles is like, 10 per year. They can't afford to miss that often.
Repeated air assaults to repeatedly tear down defenses (ex: target the Cruiser first, removing the first shield of the Carrier. Then target the next cruiser. Then finally work your way to the carrier) is certainly a workable plan. But again, this is a repeated air-assault against a CSG.
My point is that its not going to take "one missile". Its going to take a campaign, at least if the CSG is doing its formation correctly. In the meantime, the CSG is presumably in range of its target, and also launching an all-out aerial assault.
China's production for these missiles is 10 a year because they are still refining them - they haven't stuck to a final revision they will mass produce yet. Once that is done it's absolutely feasible to pump out 1000+ a year.
And no, I'm not suggesting lobbing it around the first cruiser. I'm suggesting to approach the cruiser from a different angle, finding another ship of the CSG and build a perimeter, and then strike the center.
This is not a repeated air assault of the CSG. That's an old doctrine. The doctrine is to completely bypass the defences of the CSG using a hypersonic missile.
And no, you don't do this while the CSG is already in range, that's ridiculous. You do this when it's ~2000km away.
> And no, you don't do this while the CSG is already in range, that's ridiculous. You do this when it's ~2000km away.
The AEGIS Cruiser's tomahawk missiles have 2500km range.
You're not even outranging the escort ships, let alone the carrier at 2000km. That's why two AEGIS Cruisers escort a carrier.
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BTW: This magic drone that can escape detection yet provide enough intelligence to pinpoint ships so that missiles can strike their targets on the high-seas sounds a lot like an F35.
If you could get by with Tomahawks you wouldn't need to send a carrier.
And no, the drone we're talking about is nowhere near an F-35. Examples of such drones are the CASC CH-7, the Okhotnik S-70, the GJ-11, the RQ-170 or the XQ-58. Unlike an F-35 these are extremely cheap, unmanned, and have very long loiter times, meaning that they can cover hundreds of kilometers in radius or even more.
We have 120,000 ton carriers and F35s. Does China have an airplane that can beat our airplane? Our Aircraft Carriers can hold something like 4 or 5 squadrons and do nearly simultaneous launch + landing exercises.
How quickly can that hypothetical 30% smaller Chinese Aircraft Carrier launch and land aircraft? Are there any advanced air platforms or stealth platforms that can spy on US Navy positions?
China will have 3 aircraft carriers by 2030, all under 100,000 tons. US will have 7 of 120,000 tons all equipped with F35s, each with a veteran crew that's been training on those systems since 2015 (15 years of experience).
Can those 3-Chinese carriers even take on one of ours in a fight on the open sea?
USCGs can't stay out at sea forever. They have to dock eventually, even nuclear powered carriers. At minimal the oilers and replenishment fleet that sustains them will be vulnerable to port strikes with conventionally tipped ICBMs and shortened kill chain. USN can tactically sink every PLAN ship due to exquisit capabilities in an opening salvo, but operationally PRC can produce/harden enough land based rocketry forces to destroy/degrade enough of USN capita assets that any victory would be pyrrhic. We're in the era of 30CEP ICBMs. Fortress America isn't inpregnable anymore.
Funny, 30% is also about how much larger the Yamato was than the Iowa class. But it turned out larger battleships weren't the deciding factor that time. Who knows whether larger carriers will matter for winning the next war?
Each US Supercarrier has two runways and four catapults. That's why they weigh so much.
Tonnage isn't the only factor. But presumably, having two runways on one carrier is a key advantage in carrier based combat. If you can launch aircraft faster than the opponent, you'll get more aircraft in the air before they can.
Can China's 3x aircraft carriers launch as many airplanes as one of our supercarriers? How many Chinese aircraft need to launch to have a chance against an F35C?
I feel the biggest advantage the West - in particular the US - has over china is 40-60 years worth of pretty much continual/high state of combat-readiness experience and culture.
> Your tonnage argument is good for the short term, but they won't be behind for long.
It takes years to build a carrier. There's no 100,000+ carrier being built by the Chinese at all. Its not their strategy.
> And if they hit our aircraft carriers with the hypersonic missiles they've developed, our advantage disappears outright.
How do those missiles hit a target they can't see? That's why the US has spent so much money shoving the most expensive radar suites on F35 fighters, so that those airplanes can radio-back to their ships about the position of enemies.
Basically: to have the same sight and stealth as the USA, China has to develop an F35 analog of their own.
> You're not making a stealth carrier. You can't hide a carrier.
Yes you can.
Step 1: Run out to the ocean to an area where satellites aren't over consistently.
Step 2: Move randomly at 35 mph with your twin nuclear engines.
Step 3: Where's the carrier?
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You can't scan the whole ocean. Its physically impossible, even with satellite coverage. No stealth capabilities needed at all, you just hide in the vast emptiness that is the ocean itself.
No, but you can scan the radius of uncertainty of where a known carrier-sized object may have gone in a satellite gap of a few hours at a top speed of say 40 kts, known maneuvering capability, and a known starting position and velocity, pretty easily.
Now, if you add teleportation in so you have to scan the whole ocean, sure, but that’s a big “if”.
Is there any reason to think your satellite, drone, or spy plane will survive that 2-hour window in a wartime scenario to in fact, pick out the aircraft carrier in the 15,000 sq. mile area it could have traveled?
> Is there any reason to think your satellite, drone, or spy plane will survive that 2-hour window in a wartime scenario
The threats of concern...have quite a large inventory of drones, spy planes, and other sensor platforms, and, in any case, if your method of evading detection is destroying all available hostile sensor platforms, stealth is superfluous.
If a drone is flying at 10km high, it can only see 357km before the horizon blocks its sight.
The Carrier's AEW in service (E2-Hawkeye) is allegedly able to detect threats up to 550km or so away. (remember: the Hawkeye is also in the air, so it will be peaking out of the horizon long before the carrier is visible)
The escort cruisers allegedly have Raytheon AN/SPS-49, which apparently have 474 km range vs air enemies (other radars / sonars exist for sea). Either way, if the drone can see the Cruiser, the cruiser probably can see the drone. Furthermore, AEGIS cruisers are literally the "shields" of the carrier: deployed in front to kill targets before they detect the carrier. So likely: you're not detecting the carrier first. The first things you detect are the AEGIS escort ships. Nominally, these radar systems are for missile tracking, but they will serve as eyes/ears for the strike group if a squadron of drones is approaching.
The one-two punch of the aerial radar (Hawkeye) + sea-based radar (Ticonderoga AEGIS cruisers) means that its no small feat to "sneak up" upon the carrier strike group.
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How long does it take for your drone to travel from 550km away to ~300km, during which it is under threat from at minimum, the escort cruiser? Maybe an airwing or two who could scramble a counter-attack? Its not like your drone is flying straight at the carrier either (you still haven't found the carrier: you only found an escort cruiser. The carrier is likely over the horizon still).
> if your method of evading detection is destroying all available hostile sensor platforms, stealth is superfluous.
Yeah, that's the idea for a Carrier's defenses anyway. The CSG has not only incredible airborne radar systems (E2-Hawkeye), but also incredible ship-based radar systems scanning for this sort of stuff.
That's why stealth aircraft (like F35) are so key for future wars. That's the only way to penetrate the radar coverage. Things like autonomous drones have a control signal that can be tracked, while F35 manned aircraft could go radio silent on their stealth approach (relying upon the human brain in the aircraft to make decisions without any connection to homebase).
Unmanned + Stealth is possible, but its a difficult kind of paradox. A lot of decisions need to be made during radio-silence periods.
You want to win at the sensor war. Detect the enemy before they detect you. Then destroy the enemy's eyes and ears.
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And then the AEGIS radar systems are also deployed on each Destroyer in the strike group (4 to 9 Destroyers deployed per CSG). That's a lot of sensors your drone squadron has to fly around to successfully find a carrier.
That is a risk, but it's tough to localize and hit a moving target. In any major conflict the reconnaissance satellites are likely to be knocked out quickly on both sides, which means everyone will be relying on aircraft and submarines to develop missile targeting tracks. They can't be everywhere at once. And carrier escorts now carry ABMs which have proven at least moderately effective in tests.
> Carriers are very big, very slow moving targets that change their velocity very slowly.
Where did you get that idea from? Carriers are equipped with two nuclear engines to travel at outstanding speeds. Naval doctrine is to have Carriers simply outrun most of their threats while pew pew pewing them from the sky. (Ex: Submarines don't stand a chance against this tactic)
Carriers might be a big ship, but its a big AND fast ship. The biggest source of Navy deaths is people falling off the sides of Carriers, they're that fast.
> With a 1200mm f/8 lens you can detect an aircraft carrier from 300km away.
The horizon at 30m height is only 20km away. Anything beyond 20km is literally hidden by the curvature of the Earth.
To even see 300km away, you need to be 7000 meters in the air (aka: an aircraft). If you're 7000 meters high, you have the issue of surviving against the Aircraft Carrier's airwings (aka: F35 fighters) long enough to do anything useful. Air Superiority is a bitch.
If the lens is in space, you have the issue of predictability. US Navy likely knows that satellite is there, and will either disable it or avoid it entirely.
Speed is counterbalanced by size. Going at 35mph is very slow when you're 300m long.
You need to survive with an aircraft once to get a picture of the carrier. Then the carrier sinks. Air superiority is a numbers game. There is precisely 0% chance that you will catch it every time.
With your strategy you have to win every time. The missile only has to hit once for the entire CSG to sink.
You don't have to survive long enough to do anything except find the position of the carrier and send it. Once that's done, it's game over. Done. Finished.
> You don't have to survive long enough to do anything except find the position of the carrier and send it. Once that's done, it's game over. Done. Finished.
In 10 minutes, a carrier moving at 35 mph will have moved around 6 miles.
That's a 100+ sq. mile radius. How will your missile in fact, lock onto the carrier on the approach? How does the missile know where to go?
If your missile is traveling at Mach 5, what communication system are you using to track and talk with that missile? Is something in that communication chain still alive to constantly tell the missile where in fact, the carrier is? Or does the missile have such an advanced radar system that it can too, magically pick out a carrier in a 100-sq. mile radius?
As I said, a carrier is big. When you're making a guidance system, wether EO or Radar, you're trading off accuracy, senstivity, and range.
In the case of a carrier, you need very low accuracy - in the 10 meter range instead of the centimeter range - very low sensitivity, because the target is positively huge and sticks out like a sore thumb from its surroundings, so you can get range.
Besides, I think you really underestimate modern sensors. A fighter jet can detect a 1m^2 from 100km away almost omnidirectionally. That's around 10 000 sqkm, and that radar is built for very fast targets and requires very high accuracy.
As for communication, you can communicate from a ground station. You don't need to tell the missile where the carrier is constantly. As we've seen before, carriers are big and sensors are advanced. Carriers also can't change course very rapidly. You just need the missile to get a 50km radius of where the carrier will be when it hits it.
These missiles are very fast. From the order to launch until impact you have 12 minutes.
Ummmm... yeah they can. If we're talking about 10-minutes for a hypersonic missile to arrive, that thing's bearings / velocity can be completely different by the time the missile arrives on the horizon.
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I'm still not really convinced that you'd detect a carrier first in most open seas. Carriers would have airplanes of their own, scanning for enemies, and a number of anti-air destroyers ready to shoot down any spy plane. You call it a numbers game, but IMO, its a sensor game.
Any airplane who approaches the carrier has to themselves, survive the Carrier's defense systems (including the defensive spyplanes keeping watch over the carrier group)
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> In the case of a carrier, you need very low accuracy - in the 10 meter range instead of the centimeter range - very low sensitivity, because the target is positively huge and sticks out like a sore thumb from its surroundings, so you can get range.
I'm not sure if the carrier sticks out that much in its CSG. No carrier works alone: there are a lot of other ships floating around it providing support.
>Ummmm... yeah they can. If we're talking about 10-minutes for a hypersonic missile to arrive, that thing's bearings / velocity can be completely different by the time the missile arrives on the horizon.
Sure, at the expense of distance travelled from last detection.
> I'm still not really convinced that you'd detect a carrier first in most open seas. Carriers would have airplanes of their own, scanning for enemies, and a number of anti-air destroyers ready to shoot down any spy plane. You call it a numbers game, but IMO, its a sensor game.
> Any airplane who approaches the carrier has to themselves, survive the Carrier's defense systems (including the defensive spyplanes keeping watch over the carrier group)
Look at exemples of modern warfare. Air defences are made to whittle down and slow down repeated strikes by your oponents. No one has ever managed to completely prevent any intrusion at all, much less from a single carrier's airwing.
>I'm not sure if the carrier sticks out that much in its CSG. No carrier works alone: there are a lot of other ships floating around it providing support.
The surroundings in the context of that comment are the open ocean. Unless you mean that the sensors aren't going to be able to distinguish the carrier from other ships in the CSG.
> Look at exemples of modern warfare. Air defences are made to whittle down and slow down repeated strikes by your oponents. No one has ever managed to completely prevent any intrusion at all, much less from a single carrier's airwing.
Exactly. Now: Does China have the capability to launch these repeated aerial attacks to whittle down the defenses of a US Carrier Strike group?
And secondly: what ships in China's Navy can defend against such an assault (since our Navy is designed to do just what you described to our opponents).
Again, they don't need to whittle down the defences, the CSG is completely unable to stop a volley of Mach 5 missiles. They just need to find the CSG, once. No AD system has every managed anything near a 100% interception rate, even less against surveillance platforms.
There is no ship in the Chinese Navy that can defend against such an assault. But they don't need to, because they largely only care about their backyards. They don't need carriers.
Also the US Navy has no hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missiles. The USN was always very late compared to their oponents as far as AShM go.
What platform is carrying that hypothetical lens? How does it avoid being destroyed before detecting and tracking the target? How does it data link targeting targeting data back to offensive platforms? What is the visible horizon range at its operating altitude? How well does it see at night, or through clouds?
The lens is given as a general example you can easily apply the Rayleigh criterion to to verify. You can use many other types of sensors.
You could carry such a sensor on a satellite, a drone, or even the missile itself.
You need to get within 300km of the carrier once. It doesn't matter if it's the 15th try or if you don't survive either. You really overestimate air defences if you think an airwing can do that. And of course you can make even better sensors, we have the technology and it's been practically done.
The satellites are vulnerable and will likely be the first casualties in any major conflict. Neither side can afford to build enough long range drones with powerful sensors to blanket large areas of open ocean.
Sometimes adversaries will get lucky and have the right platform in the right place at the right time, but it's hardly a sure thing. In the end it will probably come down more to timing and luck than any other factors.
You don't need to cover large areas of the open ocean. Only where you have tracked the carrier to be. You are insane if you think that hiding a carrier is feasible in 2021. Even with cold war tech the US had tracked down most USSR submarines let alone carriers.
Not as reliable as you'd like, especially at sea. Satellites are either Geosynchronous (aka: the US Navy knows where they are and knows where to avoid them), or they are not Geosynchronous (aka: they only are over a certain area at certain times).
Again: your Satellite feed goes dead for just 10 minutes, the Carrier is now 6-miles away (113-square mile search area), with no guarantee that the new area is covered by a satellite either.
Is radar stealthiness still relevant? I would assume a combination of microphones&cameras everywhere, internet everywhere, ML everywhere, and satellites have made it obsolete.
Low observable technology is more relevant than ever. It's not magic invisibility but greatly reduces the range at which sensors can detect and track.
Microphones can't be placed at sea, and the speed of sound makes effective microphone range very short. Regular cameras are also short ranged, and don't really work at night or through clouds. IR search sensors have very narrow field of view. In any major conflict the reconnaissance satellites will be the first targets.
We don't even have geosync satellites that cover the seas today. Not enough travelers to make those areas worth it to cover the satellite launch costs.
Their navy is approaching ours in terms of tonnage. But they're lacking in carriers at the moment.
This means that their navy can work anywhere with good missile/air force support. But they lack the ability to force project outward.
> What's the game plan?
Aircraft Carriers and the F35. How can they find our ships at sea, if their drones get shot down? How can they prevent us from finding their ships, if we have superior stealth?
If they can't see our ships, how can they attack, even with a hypersonic nuclear warhead? Aircraft carrier move at 35+ mph and turn on a dime. If it takes 10 minutes for a hypersonic nuclear warhead to be delivered to a location, the aircraft carrier is already 6-miles off target.