Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

Originally Posted by Spartan95

This is based on the assumption that the hypersonic missile is of an active homing design, rather than a semi-active / wave-riding / inertial navigation (with mid course guidance) design. Which is in turn based on the assumption that the Chinese designers don't know their physics (if they are designing a Mach 7 missile, will they design it as an active seeker?).

As for locating the carrier, South China Sea is not a place for a CBG to hide it. It simply isn't big enough for a CBG to go in undetected. The same applies for within the 1st Island Chain (simple issue of geographic choke-points and shipping density). For a CBG to hide, the only realistic location close to PRC is East China Sea off the west coast of Japan, or east of RoC. At these ranges, the CBG's strike aircraft isn't going to be a threat to mainland PRC though.

Do you even know what semi active homing is? That means a beam of either radar or laser energy is painted on the target, and the weapon homes on the reflected energy. This is one of the easiest homing systems to defeat with electronic countermeasures. Find out what cross-eye, inverse gain jamming and range gate stealing are. Put some chaff and flares, or better yet a Nulka in the false echo and it is not hard to seduce a missile from it's intended target.
True story, the majority of missiles used in naval combat have been successfully defeated by countermeasures alone without resort to point defense weapons.

Inertial nav would be useless against a moving target. It can hit a fixed point in space within a certain CEP that is fairly large, but it cannot hit a moving target reliably. JDAM II has to use a semi-active laser to hit moving targets. INS and GPS are insufficient.

Mid course guidance implies something up in the air guiding the missile to the target. Such a vehicle will have to fight it's way inside the carriers air cover. Good luck. It's guidance signal or data link is vulnerable to jamming, just as it is with a cruise missile that requires mid course guidance.

This missile warhead will need some sort of active homing or a passive IR or IIR seeker, and that puts some limits on it's speed, and on how close the seeker must be to find the target. On re-entry through the atmosphere it will be blind and out of communication, so it will have to wait until it has re-entered and cooled before it can use any sort of data link or on board guidance to find and target ships.

This is not a trivial engineering problem.

And, somehow, Admiral Lyons managed to sneak the Eisenhower battle group right up to the Kola Peninsula without the Soviets detecting them, and we also put carriers in the Sea of Okhotsk without being detected. That last one was back in 1989 and I remember it well. You underestimate the ability to hide naval units with tactical deception.
I all to clearly remember how hard it was one hazy day to find the Nimitz at sea, and they were helping us find her so we could land. A carrier is an awfully small thing in a vast ocean. Go to sea, lad, and see what I mean. Have you sailed the South China Sea? I have and it's a darn busy place with lots of ships and weather to hide among.

Originally Posted by Ambivalent

Do you even know what semi active homing is? That means a beam of either radar or laser energy is painted on the target, and the weapon homes on the reflected energy. This is one of the easiest homing systems to defeat with electronic countermeasures. Find out what cross-eye, inverse gain jamming and range gate stealing are. Put some chaff and flares, or better yet a Nulka in the false echo and it is not hard to seduce a missile from it's intended target.
True story, the majority of missiles used in naval combat have been successfully defeated by countermeasures alone without resort to point defense weapons.

Inertial nav would be useless against a moving target. It can hit a fixed point in space within a certain CEP that is fairly large, but it cannot hit a moving target reliably. JDAM II has to use a semi-active laser to hit moving targets. INS and GPS are insufficient.

Your first bit said semi-active homing is easy to defeat. And your second bit said that JDAM II uses semi-active laser homing. If it is so easy to defeat, why does the US military still use it in 1 of the most advanced weapons?

Regarding the point about inertial nav hitting a fixed point in space, that is based on the assumption that it is a unitary warhead. Why can't it be a cluster weapon that have more submunitions than a CIWS have ammo in its magazine? ICBMs have had MIRVs for decades, so what's stopping a ASBM from have submunitions?

Originally Posted by Ambivalent

Mid course guidance implies something up in the air guiding the missile to the target. Such a vehicle will have to fight it's way inside the carriers air cover. Good luck. It's guidance signal or data link is vulnerable to jamming, just as it is with a cruise missile that requires mid course guidance.

What do you think satellites are for?

Originally Posted by Ambivalent

This missile warhead will need some sort of active homing or a passive IR or IIR seeker, and that puts some limits on it's speed, and on how close the seeker must be to find the target. On re-entry through the atmosphere it will be blind and out of communication, so it will have to wait until it has re-entered and cooled before it can use any sort of data link or on board guidance to find and target ships.

This is not a trivial engineering problem.

Is there a reason why a hypersonic missile cannot have an antenna integrated into the trailing edge of its fins for mid-course guidance? Why must it be in the warhead?

Originally Posted by Ambivalent

And, somehow, Admiral Lyons managed to sneak the Eisenhower battle group right up to the Kola Peninsula without the Soviets detecting them, and we also put carriers in the Sea of Okhotsk without being detected. That last one was back in 1989 and I remember it well. You underestimate the ability to hide naval units with tactical deception.
I all to clearly remember how hard it was one hazy day to find the Nimitz at sea, and they were helping us find her so we could land. A carrier is an awfully small thing in a vast ocean. Go to sea, lad, and see what I mean. Have you sailed the South China Sea? I have and it's a darn busy place with lots of ships and weather to hide among.

Lol!

And I dare say I have spent a lot more time in the South China Sea (SCS) than you have.

So, let's get into the discussion of how a CBG can hide in SCS. Will the CBG break up its escort screen while trying to hide? If so, it will be defenseless when surprised, particularly by submarines.

If it doesn't break up its escort screen, will it allow commercial vessels to pass within the screen? If so, do you have any idea how many vessels in SCS are owned by PRC or operated by PRC nationals? They are most definitely not the minority. In fact, PRC is the 3rd largest ship owning country on earth (check out CIA's world fact book on that). And that does not include their massive fishing fleet since fishing vessels are not tracked in that list.

A CVN is more than 300m in length with a high freeboard. It cannot hide visually, even under a rain cloud, because that's what Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR) are for. Heck, even regular pulse doppler radars will be able pick up the CVN if the platform gets close enough. Are there comparable vessels for the CVN to hide amongst that are definitely not PRC owned or crewed?

This contrasts with the small Type 022s that can easily hide amongst fishing vessels since they are of comparable size, particularly at night.

Just because CBGs were able to hide from USSR in the past does not mean that this is replicable against the PRC because of a few simple factors:
1. USSR never had anywhere near the size of commercial shipping fleet that PRC currently have.
2. PRC have modernised their military based on lessons they have drawn from modern conflicts (particularly the wars in the Middle East and the Taiwan Strait Crisis).
3. The PLAN have been studying the CBG issue for more than a decade. To assume that they have made little to no progress on this issue to dangerous to the people in a CBG.

Originally Posted by Spartan95

The problem with lasers is that they are subjected to the inverse square law. Therefore, for every doubling of the distance to the target, the power output need to be increased by 4 times to project the same amount of power to the target.

This is the key reason why lasers are very useful in cutting metals in factory, but not very useful in the real world against targets at longer ranges and subjected to atmospheric phenomenon such as water vapour, dust, clouds, etc that makes it a lot less efficient.

The inverse square law also applies to a very wide assortment of military equipment, yet the law does little to discourage the development of these systems. Laser technology is no different. We have already witnessed laser systems shooting down drones and missiles at impressive distances.

Access to raw power is not a problem for advancing laser weapons. It is only the materials field that has to catch up to handle higher and higher energy input distribution for proper effect. And the materials industry's advancement has shown a Moore's Law progression that not only matches the dynamic of the inverse square law, it surpasses it.

Make no mistake. As the first missiles were limited in sophistication and range, so will the first laser weapon systems. But, what took decades for missiles to achieve will only take years for laser weapons to match.

Originally Posted by jantxv

The inverse square law also applies to a very wide assortment of military equipment, yet the law does little to discourage the development of these systems. Laser technology is no different. We have already witnessed laser systems shooting down drones and missiles at impressive distances.

Access to raw power is not a problem for advancing laser weapons. It is only the materials field that has to catch up to handle higher and higher energy input distribution for proper effect. And the materials industry's advancement has shown a Moore's Law progression that not only matches the dynamic of the inverse square law, it surpasses it.

Make no mistake. As the first missiles were limited in sophistication and range, so will the first laser weapon systems. But, what took decades for missiles to achieve will only take years for laser weapons to match.

Yes, I agree that there are advancement in the development of laser weapons. However, miniaturisation to the extent that it can fit onboard a warship and having enough power for it to be effective at combat ranges is still some time away. Just look at the issue with the Airborne Laser (ABL). And that laser requires a jumbo jet to get it airborne.

Also, the complication for navalised laser weapons is that they need to be effective at/near the sea's surface. The increased water vapour content + sea salt in the air means that the effective range of the laser is reduced as compared to at higher altitudes. Oh, and good luck with the laser weapon if there is fog, or when it rains. It will be pretty useless with the scattering by water droplets in the air. And this is precisely why the ABL was designed to operate above clouds.

Originally Posted by maozedong

why the carrier age will be end ? the US still spend so much money to develop X47B stealth UAV for carrier, US navy officer confirmed the aircraft carrier X47B will be maiden flight soon.
the link is not for this source, it introduces US X47B project.

X-47B - First Navy Stealth UAV Ready

Here' some more good info and pics about the X47B:

X47-B UCAS

For Spartan 95:
Semi-active radar homing is not difficult to defeat. Semi-active laser doesn't work well at all at sea. The marine environment scatters and absorbs the laser return. Glint off the water disrupts laser homing too. On a foggy day it's useless. It is, however, very accurate for use in land battles. JDAM II can chase a moving land target, or so it's said, but I have never heard of it being employed against a naval target.

For semi-active radar to work, something has to illuminate the target for at least the final intercept. The methods I mention are the unclassified methods available to spoof semi-active radar. There are others. Note that the US has basically moved away from this method as SM-6 enters service, and SM-2's are converted to SM-6. Sparrow is gone from the inventory, replaced with AMRAAM. ESSM will get an active seeker too. Semi-active radar homing is rendered obsolete by modern ECM, and the illumination platform is a good target for attack as well.

The problem with mid course guidance is that something has to get within line of sight of the target and communicate. It will be engaged by the enemy at that point, even a satellite. It is not the solution, weapons have to be able to find their own targets. Man in the loop is useful in a permissive environment where the enemy has no air force, missiles or ECM and minimization of collateral damage is important, such as low intensity wars against insurgencies, but man in the loop can be disrupted by an advanced enemy. Weapons have to be autonomous. Reliance on outside guidance will lead to mission failure. This was true with Soviet weapons and remains true today. Why do you think Harpoon and TASM both had autonomous guidance? Even the US didn't want to be forced to rely on mid course guidance, it is unreliable.

What you suggest regarding guidance from behind with antenna in the fins has been around for a long time and was used on numerous missiles. RBS-70 uses this. It is called command line of sight, or CLOS, and the guidance signal can be, and usually is, jammed. RBS-70 employes an encrypted laser to get around jamming, but the guidance unit must remain line of sight with the target, making it vulnerable to attack, and again, laser guidance is degraded in a marine environment.

You haven't spent time with a CSG. Most of the time, units are not in sight of each other as they steam. The radar horizon of both AEGIS and the E-2 make this desireable. Forget "War and Sea" and ships steaming in tight formations for mutual support. Today a carriers four or five escorts seldom see each other while at sea, except to replenish. Even still, their sensor horizons overlap.
Btw, container cargo ships dwarf any carrier made, some by a factor of 50%. There are far more container cargo ships of 100K tons or more than there are aircraft carriers. There are hundreds of tankers that are larger than a CVN, some are three times the displacement of a Nimitz class. A carrier with all her electronics off except for one commercial navigation radar would not look any different to naval sensors than literally hundreds of commercial ships on that same body of water. With careful use of weather, a carrier can avoid detection, and the US Navy practices this sort of tactical deception routinely. Do you know how Admiral Lyons brought the Eisenhower strike group so close to the Kola Penninsula without being detected, or how we snuck into the Sea of Okhotsk? It isn't as if the Soviets didn't have plenty of satellites looking, or ships on the water, including hundreds of fishing vessels and small commercial craft. I'v sailed those waters and seen all the Soviet fishing boats and rusty old cargo ships. The Sovs had scads of these. It is possible to evade sensors with a carrier, or blend in and look like commercial traffic, and importantly this is practiced.

Finding and sinking a carrier is not a slam dunk, not by a long shot.

For Ambivalent:

In an environment with heavy commercial shipping traffic, you are suggesting that fully autonomous weapons will be able to distinguish which vessel is a warship and which isn't? And that the weapon will be able to find the correct target regardless of whether there are countermeasures/jamming or not? That's the old mindset, weapons systems and naval doctrine for fighting in open ocean where there are hardly any other shipping around, not in the busy littorals. Why don't you ask some of the ops officers in the principal surface combatants and SSNs who they are trying to learn littoral naval fighting from?

CLOS may be easy to jam at near ranges to the jammer, but not at long ranges. Why don't you look up the basic calculation I did earlier in this thread of Mach 7 vs 30 knots and see how far out a mid course guidance needs to be to get a Mach 7 missile within 200m of a CVN moving at 30knots?

For hiding a CVN, you are suggesting that it go close to a large merchant vessel? You do realise that merchant vessels these days have Automated Information Tracking (AIS) and that any AIS receiver will know exactly what ship is where, doing what course & speed, the last port of call, the next port of call, the country of registration, etc? Also, a sizeable portion of the commercial traffic in SCS actually belongs to PRC. Which limits the options for a CVN to hide in. Also, in the larger portion of SCS between southern PRC and East Malaysia sits the Spratly Islands. These islands are heavily monitored by several navies, including the PLAN. Good luck trying to hide a carrier in a SLOC passing anywhere near there.

Any further north of the Spratlys means being in range of land-based fighters from Hainan. Not a big issue of the CBG has its air wing up in the air, but that means a huge signature that is easily located. Not putting up the air wing at that area means the possibility of coming under massed air and missile attack. Hardly a desirable situation to be in.

Now, the area bounded by Hainan on the north, East Malaysia on the south, Vietnam on the west and the Philippines on the east is ~1000nm by ~800nm. Since you have CSG experience, it should be clear to you that it won't take too many maritime patrol aircraft to cover that entire area in a few hours. Plonk a CBG there with its air defense bubble and it will cover 1/3 of the entire area.

I feel we are concentrating in this thread on military technicalities when we should be concentrating on the circumstances that make this the Carrier Age and which politico-military changes would end this age.
To show what I mean I will refer here to the end of the Age of Galleys in the Mediterranean. A good book on this subject is by J.F.Guilmartin, at that time Lt.Col. in USAF:
Gunpowder and Galleys:
Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
He explains, that galleys warfare was in the first place amphibious warfare. With the increase in the quality and quantity of coastal fortification, with thus a need for more heavily armed ( with bronze guns ) galleys operating in larger fleets, in a time of strong inflation which led to the use of slave rowers, which could not, as you did with free rowers, be employed in the fighting, the use of galleys as the main arm in naval warfare was doomed. The invasion of Dutch and English merchant ships armed with iron guns in the Mediterranean at the end century made it abundantly clear to nearly everyone. All the same rowed war craft only disappeared three centuries later when they were replaced by steam powered vessels.
Lets look at another change. In 1873 or there about a British merchant complained to a British sailing battleship with auxiliary steam power on the west coast of Central America that that someone in Guatemala had done him wrong. The battleship sent its marines on shore and forced the local Guatemaltecan garrison to march a day long over the Guatemaltecan flag. In 1954 the US used it Marine Corps to get rid of the elected president Arbenz Guzman and install a military dictatorship, after the local military had fail to do it themselves.
Since then the relative power of the US has grown immensely until we can now speak of a Global Superpower. This is very different from the role of the UK around 1870, however mighty that empire was then. When the US looses its position of Global Superpower, tomorrow or in a hundred years time, the Super Carriers will become extinct. China will help that along by developing weapons against these carriers but much more by helping many countries in Asia, Africa and South America to be too strong to be easily defeated by the US. Even Iraq, from which the US military are being driven by political means, might be already too strong, might go to the International Court in The Hague to claim compensation for the damage done to it by the US occupation. That might well be ten times the amount being paid by Iraq to Kuwait. At that rate invading countries will be unprofitable to the US and then the function of the Super Carriers is already lost.
"When China Rules The World", the title of a recent book by Martin Jacques: It will not happing in the form of China becoming a Global Superpower. The US is the first and will be the last.
But aircraft carriers will likely still have a function in protecting shipping against interference by pirates or by countries which have a quarrel with a neighbor. Those aircraft carriers will be smaller and possibly more numerous but the will not live in the Age of the Aircraft Carrier.

Originally Posted by Spartan95

Yes, I agree that there are advancement in the development of laser weapons. However, miniaturisation to the extent that it can fit onboard a warship and having enough power for it to be effective at combat ranges is still some time away. Just look at the issue with the Airborne Laser (ABL). And that laser requires a jumbo jet to get it airborne.

Also, the complication for navalised laser weapons is that they need to be effective at/near the sea's surface. The increased water vapour content + sea salt in the air means that the effective range of the laser is reduced as compared to at higher altitudes. Oh, and good luck with the laser weapon if there is fog, or when it rains. It will be pretty useless with the scattering by water droplets in the air. And this is precisely why the ABL was designed to operate above clouds.

The Airborne Laser is simply a test bed carrying a relatively bulky gaseous Carbon-dioxide laser. Current solid state, crystal based lasers are about to match and surpass the CO2 lasers and the solid states are orders of magnitude smaller.

What law says Navalized laser weapons must operate at the surface? Ships could easily just launch small laser drones like they already launch cruise missiles. Why can't a cruise missile be fitted with a high power laser? I'm not saying lasers are a panacea for all contingencies, they are yet another arrow in the quiver.

Here is a demonstration of a laser shooting down a drone. This laser is on the surface in a sea environment, in effect a "Navalized laser weapon". I guess surface humidity wasn't much of a factor.

Originally Posted by jantxv

The Airborne Laser is simply a test bed carrying a relatively bulky gaseous Carbon-dioxide laser. Current solid state, crystal based lasers are about to match and surpass the CO2 lasers and the solid states are orders of magnitude smaller.

I'd wait until that is proven. It's just postulation at this point in time.

Originally Posted by jantxv

What law says Navalized laser weapons must operate at the surface? Ships could easily just launch small laser drones like they already launch cruise missiles. Why can't a cruise missile be fitted with a high power laser? I'm not saying lasers are a panacea for all contingencies, they are yet another arrow in the quiver.

And that laser would be powered by what energy source? Will the drone carry a 100MW nuclear reactor to power the laser?

Yes, they are another arrow in the quiver. Except that they are not an all-weather weapon. And the good old smoke screen will cause lasers a lot of grief.

Originally Posted by jantxv

Here is a demonstration of a laser shooting down a drone. This laser is on the surface in a sea environment, in effect a "Navalized laser weapon". I guess surface humidity wasn't much of a factor.

It seems you do not understand the point I'm making.

Humidity increases atmospheric scattering effect for light. This is the reason why telescopes are built high up in the mountains with low levels are humidity rather than at sea level. The same scattering effect applies for lasers. Yes, lasers will still be effective at sea level, but at reduced ranges as compared to at high altitudes or in conditions with little or no humidity.

As for the laser shooting down the drone, note that the 1st clip showed that it took more than 10 secs for the drone to come down. No one knows how long the laser has been "shooting" at the drone. So here's a few points to raise about that clip:

1. How large and powerful is the laser that brought down the drone?
2. How long did it take for the laser to bring down the drone (from initial illumination to final destruction)?
3. How fast was the drone going at (it looks to be a slow sub-sonic speed)?
4. What was the range at which the drone was shot down at?

These are the kinds of info that is often missing in public demonstrations of laser weapons (including for the ABL). Now, if it took 10 secs (a rather optimistic estimate) for the laser to bring down the drone, that translates into a Mach 2 missile travelling 6.6km (Mach 1 being 330m/s). A Mach 7 hypersonic missile (similar to the ASBM) would have traveled 23km. Is the laser going to be effective out at 23km, which puts it above cloud cover in a vertical trajectory?

Furthermore, if laser weapons are so good, why haven't they been introduced into US warships the way that SM6 is being introduced? That is the litmus test.

By the way, I spent a year experimenting with lasers in a laser lab. So yes, I do know what I'm talking about.

I have just watched the second video and seriously I have to conclude that if acronyms and general corporate speak (A&G.C.S) was banned from the US military, that the whole structure would immediately collapse (W.I.C.).

Or to put it another way:

If U.S.M. were to operate in a non A&G.C.S orientated environment, this would significantly enhance the prospect a general W.I.C. scenario outcome!

Use my lovely English language guys,but don't abuse it (it can make you blind)

Originally Posted by SampanViking

I have just watched the second video and seriously I have to conclude that if acronyms and general corporate speak (A&G.C.S) was banned from the US military, that the whole structure would immediately collapse (W.I.C.).

Or to put it another way:

If U.S.M. were to operate in a non A&G.C.S orientated environment, this would significantly enhance the prospect a general W.I.C. scenario outcome!

Use my lovely English language guys,but don't abuse it (it can make you blind)

That was a Class 1 GRAMATH (GReat Analysis of the Matter AT Hand), sailor.

Spartan, the Soviets had maritime patrol Bears in the air over the Eisenhower and her CSG and still missed finding her. All those satellites, many with side looking radars, and all those Bears with their big belly radars, shore based back scatter radars, and Eisenhower got right up to the Kola Peninsula and launched a mock alfa strike at the Soviets. It enraged them to the point of filing a formal diplomatic protest. Around the same time we did the same thing in the Sea of Okhotsk. There are ways to spoof all these sensors you are so fond of. Get your head out of your books and find out what happens at sea, in the real world. It isn't a slam dunk for either side of this, but those sensors are not all seeing and all knowing either. If you have good ELINT and know enough about your enemies radar systems, like EP-3's poking around someone's surface exercises, you can get enough knowledge to play games with what the operator sees. Admiral Crowe learned from exercises against our own B-52's that firing the CIWS in the direction of a bomber's radar fuzzed the radar screen and the CSG was invisible. He used this to fool Soviet Bears later on. That is one example. There are far more sophisticated games played in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Are you aware we can fly from the carrier EMCON? No emissions at all, we fly by light signals alone. Ships use signal lamps, flag hoist and semaphore to communicate, just like the old days. Those skills are practiced daily, daily. Air traffic control is also accomplished by signal light. It limits the weather minimums and slows down operations to an extent, but you can fly and fight EMCON to protect the carrier's location. We train this way. Ships can have their sensors on but not emitting. With enough sensors and using directional data links you can get some idea of the azimuth, but not the range of a potential threat, and from this judge whether or not you need to emit. And, you can use the AWACS, who's presence in the sky says little about the presence or absence of a carrier below. There are a lot of ways to make a CSG hard to find.
We have vans we can put on small ships that emit the full electronic spectrum of the CSG. To a satellite or to a ground station, all the expected emissions are blasting forth, including recordings of actual radio chatter from a CSG, but it is just a sea van chained to the deck of a support ship. It works very good and making an adversary waste an asset to fly out and take a look. Meanwhile the carrier and her escorts are somewhere else. These ruses don't have to work very long to succeed, just long enough to pull of a surprise.

What satellites with radars? Legenda was a test system, not much more. There were very, very few pairs of Legenda sats used during the whole of the cold war. In practice, it really almost never was used in active service for concrete missions, save for that one occasion when a planned launch of a pair of sats coincided with the second half of the falkland war and where soviets tracked some of the british fleet.