SinoDefence Forum

SampanViking

Sometimes you just read something, somewhere and you know that you are being told something important, but that its nots immediately obvious what it is and that it takes a few days or message to strike home.

I think its fair to say that the following from Peter J Brown, published in ATOL falls into this category.

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.

Its not so much the discourse of the article itself, which; to be honest, is hardly the most riveting compelling or convincing of reads, but it does leave the nagging feeling of significance and one which bugged me for a while after reading.

But what was it?

The Premise is simple enough, build some long range missiles and use them to deliver a massive and crushing deep strike against any other nation on earth in less than an hour. On the face of it, not that remarkable if you wanted to punish another Iraq or Libya perhaps, but the author was specifically speaking about China. Well China is a huge country full of strategic targets, if you wanted to perform an effective C-PGS strike against China, you would need a huge number of missiles and the cost of this on top of the current platforms for long range power projection - The Carrier Strike Group, would be prohibitive....

.......which of course is when the penny started to drop.

C_PGS is not about running alongside the Carriers, its all about replacing them.

The next sensation can only be described as a Clapham Junction moment, where a whole shedload of thoughts start running through your mind pretty much all at once.

Trying desperately to restore order and make a a bewildering series of circular thoughts in to a logical and serial progression, I finally managed to nail the premise down.

What this whole thing is about is recognising and realising the moment at which the effective expressions of National Power and Power Projection change fundamentally. Its not a new process.

In the last one hundred and fifty years, the Battleship has been the Prime Symbol of a Nations Power, during that time, Sail has given way to Steam, Wood to Iron, The Iron Clad to the Super Dreadnought and the Dreadnought in turn given way to the Aircraft Carrier.

Now not only is the Aircraft Carrier and its Aircraft about to surrender its position, but the Navy itself is losing its Pride of Place to an entirely new set of Aerial/Orbital Weapon Systems. It is the biggest shift in Military affairs since the introduction of Firearms Five hundred Years ago.

The Strike Carrier has had a good run since the 1950's but the world has changed beyond all recognition since those days, with the development of powerful computers, Global positioning Satellites and High Resolution Imaging for tracking and targeting. All of these things combined with various disciplines of rocket science have resulted in extremely mobile, flexible and fast launching missiles that can land with pin point accuracy at the furthest distances of the Planet or intercept orbital Satellites or even other missiles as they prepare for re-entry. The Strike Carrier, for so long the hunter, has now become the prey.

This has undoubtedly been accepted in many quarters for a while, but for a country like the US, dispensing of its Carriers has become an almost impossible political act. Too much investment in time, money resources, men and prestige has made the image of the Carrier synonymous with the image of the US itself. This is exactly the same problem as Britain had in the 1930's with the Dreadnoughts, even though it was clear that airpower was now the key and that the Big Battleships were vulnerable to it. The admission was to painful to contemplate and it cost the humiliation of the Prince of Wales and Repulse at the hands of the Japanese to put the matter beyond doubt.

My personal belief has been for some time that the Strike Carrier is obsolete and that the only role for the Carrier is the more modest one of Organic Fleet Air Protection. It has also been my belief that the CCP shared this view, which is why work on its Carrier project has been undertaken at a modest pace, while much more effort has gone into Strategic Missiles.
China has been lucky that it has joined the party late, without baggage and with a free hand to build modern forces that really reflect the strategic realities of the modern level of technology.

For China the prioritise have been precision missiles, ASBM, ASAT systems and now Missile Defence, all along side a growing network of positioning and spy satellites.

America has suddenly realised that it has invested huge sums of money to finance systems which may very well be evolutionary dead ends in military development. Systems like the F22 may be superb examples of the craft, but they are overly expensive and their advantage quickly lost by the widespread introduction of cheaper but only slightly less capable systems. Indeed, what has to date been described in almost condescending tones as China's asymmetrical capability may well soon emerge as fully acknowledged, truly modern tactics.

I had always supposed that it would have required the US to suffer a Military Disaster involving its Carriers before the point was hit home. I do therefore give the US credit if they have indeed decided to bit the bullet in advance. If so it could be fair to say the current economic condition of the US may well have provided the final level of rationale.

If this is so, then the US has one tremendous advantage to be able to rapidly build this new capability and to be able to do so on the cheap: its vast stockpile of ICBMs and other nuclear delivery missile systems. The drive for nuclear weapons reductions can indeed release significant resources no longer needed to safely contain fissionable weaponised material.

In addition, a stockpile of conventional missiles only requires a fraction of the cost and manpower to operate than it needs to operate a dozen Carrier Strike Groups.

So, has America suddenly decided to play the game the Chinese way?

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solarz

Does China actually have any satellites in orbit?

victtodd

For one I don´t believe the end of the Carrier Age is closing in.
Just because it´s easier to defeat or even destroy a carrier group, you can´t jump to conclude that the bell is tolling for carrier age. One can always argue tanks are still widely deployed as a major army assault weapon despite the invention and progress of anti-armor technologies.

However, it would be reasonable to say the time is long gone when major powers would slug it out on the high seas with their carrier groups, as the major powers have weaponized themselve to the teeth with nuclear weapons.

It is not because carrier groups are no longer decisive instruments, but because no rational power would risk a carrier dual which could escalate into a nuclear war. It´s one thing to restrain itself in the face of losing a dozen, even several dozens footsoldiers, even an aircraft, but it would be much more humiliating to lose a aircraft carrier group. As a result, retaliation would be sought even with nuclear weapons, possibly followed by the cascade of further escalation. So, why not try to reconcile and co-rule the world instead of destroying each other?

Aircraft carrier groups will continue to serve the navy powers well: they can be deployed to intimidate or even invade the small nations; when it comes to powers´ navies, they are more likely used as muscle-flexing gesture which is choregraphed by hippos to mark their own turfs; well occasionally they can be used for disaster relief efforts.

vesicles

I understand what you are saying. And I believe that this might happen IF the US fights an open war with China. But the thing is an open war between China and the US would unlikely to happen. Look at the former soviet Union. During the Cold War, people's fear for an all out war between the Soviets and the US was very real. Yet, it never happened because the leaders of both nations knew too well that an open war between the two nations would benefit no one. So instead, they play their tug-of-war on a much limited scale and only fought using third parties.

I imagine the same thing will happen between the US and China. So investing so much on strategic missiles in anticipation of an all out war between the two nations will be wasteful in the least. Also, one cannot use these ICBMs in a limited regional conflict. For one thing, it's using "airdefence artillery to hit a misquito". Without Carrier, these missiles would be the only option for long distance attacks. Just imagine the US or China letting loose a couple of these ICBMs to hit a small village somewhere. The collateral damage is too huge to justify such use of ICBMs in most cases and may escalate the conflict to an all out war. So leader may have their hands tied when making a decision on whether to use these missiles. Carriers, however, can deliver measured amount of attack that is suitable to the situation. One can send out a couple fighter-bombers to drop a few missiles and bombs on some small target. And the two nations can play one of these "war games" without any concerns of any potential escalation of the situation. This also might suit China's goal to "fight a limited and high tech war".

So all in all, I feel that the missiles may be a good option for big nations to use in an all out war, like WWIII. But it is too much and too costly to be used in a day-to-day situation. And without Carriers, a naiton would be left without a long distance option in one of these limited and regional conflicts.

solarz

Let's look at this from a practical point of view: what is the biggest likelihood of US and China coming into open conflict, and where Carriers would be a factor?

The answer, of course, is Taiwan.

So let's try to answer this question: at what point would China's missile technology become enough of a threat to the US 7th fleet that it would become unable to stop a mainland invasion of Taiwan? Is this development likely in the next 10 years? 20 years? 50 years?

On the flip side, what would the US gain by replacing its Carriers with missiles? Can missiles stop the PLA from invading Taiwan? Very doubtful.

Jeff Head

The planning and spending by virtually every large nation (including China) with any aspirations for a blue water navy answer this question for us.

And since they ALL are aspiring to, or already actually acquiring aircraft carriers...the answe to the question is, No. The age of carriers is definitely not over, in fact, it is escalating.

WORLD-WIDE AIRCRAFT CARRIERS.COM

pla101prc

sampan, China does not have any military satellites, all of its satellites are for civilian use. i cant believe you ppl dont know this stuff, its common sense.

bladerunner

But if the US get their C.P.G.S. up and running, in the next decade or so,will a continued large carrier force be necessary?. As I read it with such a force established, only a few carriers would be required to launch the weapons.

US's strike threat catches China off guard
By Peter J Brown

The United States plans to unveil later this decade a new conventional "Prompt Global Strike" (C-PGS) system. It will enable the US to instantly carry out a massive conventional attack anywhere in the world in an hour or less. ......... Cont reading article at Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.

SampanViking

What a lovely feeling, ..... to settle down after a busy day, a Glass of Aberlour 60% proof single malt in my hand, some Tangerine Dream on the headphones and best of all Mrs Sampan tied up with a chick flick on the couch and unlikely to disturb me once

So to business

Good Site Jeff, but two things:

1) Most of those Carriers are not Strike Carriers just Force Protection which I never said would go.

2) All the Carriers under construction were rolled out before Autumn 08. Whether they are all ever completed or have their specs/roles/completion dates considerably revised remains very much to be seen. SO too will how many new Carriers of any description are now in the planning stage for future construction.

From pla101prc
Well lets leave aside matters of Duel use, Plain Deception or the fact that it is well within the PRC's technical capabilities to build anything they need when they think they need it, I would remind you this is not a Country A vs Country B thread but about the global transition from one major weapon platform to another.

from Bladerunner
Not often I you and I find ourselves on the same side of an argument, but yes this is a question at the heart of the proposition. Also many types of ship can launch missiles and of many facilities that they require, a runway is not among them.

victtodd, you touch on some very salient areas. Principally the fact that nobody wants to risk their Capital ships and that beyond a certain level of risk that they will not be used. This is a problem then is it not? as you do not project much power from your home port, but the whole rational of the Carrier Strike Group is to project power abroad. If they cannot fulfil that function, then what is the point of maintaining them?

Add to this that I can foresee a general trend in the near future in which an ever greater number of countries acquire the "anti hegemony" stand off weapons that make this risk unacceptable, then you are left with these incredibly expensive platforms that can only be used in a rapidly dwindling number of instances. Just not worth it. Nobody wants to spend Billions just a single use weapon after all!

People (and the Brown Article) also allude to the Nuclear War risk and sensibly so. Here again, I strongly suspect that the world is going to try and stabilise itself through accepting strategic reality and acting accordingly.

The first point to accept is that virtually all nuclear arsenals now must be assumed to be Second Strike Capable in some form or other through being either solid fuelled, submarine based etc etc. This means that a decisive first strike is just too risky and MAD remains not an option.
The upshot of this will be massive Nuclear stockpile reductions and a tacit no first use policy between all major powers. In short a country's nuclear arsenal will simply become the final line of defence to protect territorial integrity.
I can see various reasons for doing this (beyond morality) principally the huge cost of maintaining and securing nuclear weapons but also the fact that we have had MAD deterrence for over 50 years now and we are able to analyse the results. While nobody would argue that preventing war was anything other than a good thing, we can also see the flip side which is that MAD is also unable to resolve conflicts. What I mean by this is that the Cold War was not so much "Cold" but a conflict Frozen in stasis at the point just before shooting would otherwise have started. Indeed any movement of relative positions between 1945 and 1990 would have been purely due to Plate Tectonics. For many the Cold War may have seemed OK as it prevented war from reaching them, but now we can see that it has had a far more corrosive effect on other areas, which are now causing problems for all of us. If war ifs brutal it is at least usually brief, at least as it is experienced in any one location as fronts sweep across the map. Survivors pick themselves up, dust themselves down and start rebuilding. In the cold war however the fronts did not move and I am sure that local destabilisation that this caused is responsible for many of today's failed states, where conflict (often proxy) has been locked in place and become the normal state of existence for generations of their citizens.

Perversely then, an ability to influence powers great and small but without threatening their territorial integrity, may indeed be the solution to conflict resolution in the future.

Finally (for this evening) another stark reality.
The lead times for the production of modern ships, planes and the training of personnel etc is just to slow for the demands and consumption rates of a major war. Missiles are relatively cheap and can be produced in numbers very quickly. Remember that in WW2, long after German production of planes and armour had ground to a halt, the V rockets were still being manufactured in numbers and being deployed right up until the final days of fighting.

So I will close by paraphrasing Admiral Jackie Fisher, who warned against falling in love with the Aesthetics of primarily utilitarian war machines just for their own sake. He labelled those that did the Bow and Arrow Faction.

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Finn McCool

It's hard to argue with the statement that carriers will one day become obsolete. Carriers as we know them will be obsolete one day. All weapons become obsolete. However I differ with Sampan over the pace at which carriers are becoming obsolete. I have yet to see one shred of evidence that China or any other country is close to deploying a ballistic missile that can reliably hit a moving ship under combat conditions. I have however seen that ships can field missiles that are at least close to being able to take out a ballistic missile under combat conditions. So don't count your chickens until they've hatched yet. Large surface combatants of all kinds have their days numbered, but that number is bigger than people give them credit for.

An aside to Sampan's vision of a missile-based future:

Today, carriers are rarely used, and are never used in grand fleet battles spanning thousands of miles, the way that they were intended to be used. Similarly, I doubt that "next-gen ballistic" technologies will often be used, in much the same way. Conflicts between great powers won't be any more likely for the decline of carriers, and whatever comes in the future, the "ultimate weapon system" of the next decade will spend most of its time quashing poorly equipped and barely literate insurgents, just like the "ultimate weapon systems" of today.

Also I find it interesting that the article Sampan posted a link to mentioned various X-planes as part of the C-PGS family. Perhaps DARPA is hard at work on a hypersonic ultra long range strike UCAV?

__________________
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
-Winston Churchill

victtodd

First, on the contrary to your prediction of widespread "anti hegemony" stand off weapons that make the deployment of carrier group untenable,
in the foreseeable future, it remains a very daunting task for a nation other than the few known powers to defeat carrier groups. China, to its credit, is alleged to have develped ASBM, other than that, can you elaborate on other effective anti-carrier weapon systems in the pipeline?

Second, your take that a country's nuclear arsenal will simply become the final line of defence to protect territorial integrity is wildly inaccurate. Either USA or Russia has ever given up the option to use nuclear weapons as an offensive means, and no sign indicates they would do that anytime soon.

Finally, to argue your point, you should mention that in WW2, long before German production of planes and armour had ground to a halt, they already ran out of qualified pilots, crews and oil.

Jeff Head

Actually, on the carrier page, the majority of them are strike carriers. All of the US Carriers are, both of the French will be, both of the new English carriers will be, China's Varyag seems like it will be, Brazil's is, India's two newer carriers will be. And, after what the British accomplished in the Falklands, it can easily be argued that the smaller carriers can also be considered strike weapons.

I believe all of those listed will be completed. And they are from the countries who are interested in blue-water, power projection in order to defend their interests and the sea lanes.

We shall see how many more come about. It is clear the US will build more to replace the Nimitz. French and UK will build one more each. Russians are talking about more. China is talking about it. The Indians are talking about two of their new indegenous class. Japan has talked about a follow on, much larger class to the Hyuga.

Time alone will tell whether these nation actually build them. But what is being built right now represents the largest expansion of carrier in terms of the number of countries operating them than anything we have seen since World War II.

My point is simply this. The current planning of all the major powers does not indicate that carriers are at the end of their usefulness or that they are obsolete. It reflects...at the current time anyway, quite the opposite IMHO.

Scratch

An ICBM / SLBM carries very little payload for it's cost. Plus as SSBNs are the only mobile platform, only a few could be deployed at a time, since at the same time these subs have to carry out their primary mission of nuclear deterrance.

Then there may be a few land based ICBMs in the CONUS.

That would allow for a very fast and precise strike of a few well chosen high value targets, but nothing more.
For a more conventional attack / projection of power an aircraft carrier with planes that can carry several thousand pounds of ordnance each, produce close to a hundred sorties a day, that can maintain presence / persistance in the area, for that still valid mission, and aircraft carrier is probably the prime choise for many years still to come.

latenlazy

The problem is a reliance on missile barrage means you're trading physical presence for offensive power. It's the same doctrinal mistake made about the superiority of air power. Once you've crushed enemy forces you need to occupy the territory to make any substantive gains. Asymmetry works for countries like China because they're playing defense. They already hold their own territories and need some offensive deterrence to prevent physical occupation, which is precisely what a carrier group is for. In that sense, the carrier group is not obsolete in any way.

Finn McCool

I think that the ultimate hypothetical 21st century solution to the long range strike role is a a large satellite capable of firing kinetic impactors at Earth, and with some sort of weapons for self defense. I'm sort of shooting the breeze here, but I think that spaced based weapons are inevitable in humanity's future, so it would stand to reason that space-based weapons will be used for striking the Earth one day. That's one possible form they could take.

Just my 2 cents.

__________________
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
-Winston Churchill