Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

I found this article in the San Diego Union Tribune. The bluster and rhetoric is wratchting up before Pres Hu Jintao visit.

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Whenever there’s a crisis around the world, one of the first orders issued in Washington is to dispatch the closest aircraft carrier, as a show of American strength.

But the Navy may have to rethink the aircraft carrier as the centerpiece of its Pacific fleet, as China flexes its military might with a “carrier killer” missile and its first stealth jet fighter.

Chinese President Hu Jintao is scheduled to arrive Wednesday for a state visit with President Barack Obama. In advance of that meeting, the Chinese leader told American newspapers that both sides should “abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality,” while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last week “distrust lingers on both sides.”

The missile, whose existence was confirmed last month by the head of U.S. Pacific Command, reportedly would be able to hit a moving flat-top from 900 miles away. China tested its J-20 stealth jet in a very public way last week as Defense Secretary Robert Gates was making a goodwill visit.

“Will this change how the Navy operates? The Navy has to take this into account. That means new training, new doctrine maybe. It may mean rethinking what aircraft carriers look like,” said Dean Cheng, a China scholar at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

“What is the purpose of an aircraft carrier? To launch airplanes. What is the purpose of the airplanes? To do bombing and air superiority. Some of those things perhaps may be done by other means,” Cheng said.

With the San Diego-based aircraft carrier Carl Vinson parked at Busan, South Korea, last week — just around the tip of the Korean peninsula from mainland China — the issue is up close and personal for Navy families.

The carrier George Washington, based in Japan, took part in two show-of-force exercises in the Asian Pacific last year in response to North Korea reportedly sinking a South Korean ship and shelling a South Korean island.

At issue: Will the missile make the United States hesitant to send a carrier into international waters near China? And, if this so-called anti-access strategy by China works, would the United States lose some ability to defend its allies South Korea, Taiwan and Japan?

Bernard Cole, a professor of international history at the Naval War College, said it would be something the Navy would have to weigh.

“It’s not going to be a decision maker by itself, but it would be a factor to be considered,” said Cole, an expert on the Chinese navy.

“It would certainly be a factor influencing where we station our aircraft carriers, and that in turn would affect the way we operate aircraft off carriers,” he said. “Obviously, the longer the range, the more factors with respect to fuel have to be considered.”

Analysts say the Chinese stealth fighter wouldn’t be as much of a threat to the carrier itself. But it could distract a carrier’s own aircraft and take their attention away from protecting the ship.

A couple of retired Navy admirals with deep experience in the Pacific region say it’s far too soon to say the carrier’s reign is over.

“If you’re asking me, ‘Are carriers obsolete?’ the answer is no, I don’t think so at all,” said retired Vice Adm. Paul McCarthy, who commanded the Navy’s Seventh Fleet in Japan from 1985 to 1986 and now lives in Coronado.

“Until you can really prove (the Chinese have) something and it’s very evident, and you can’t come up with a counter arrangement, why, the carrier is still the carrier,” he said.

The military has eyed China's growing weapons cache with concern for several years. Then, last month, Adm. Robert Willard, the four-star Pacific Command chief, confirmed that the Chinese “Dong Feng 21D” missile has reached the operational stage, though it still probably needs several years of testing.

This capability would be unprecedented for the Chinese. The nation, whose military has been growing in tandem with its economic muscle, already has ballistic missiles. But a missile launched from land that can hit a sea target moving at 30 knots is a whole new kettle of fish.

The Navy isn’t offering any specifics on how it plans to counter the Chinese missile threat. Asked whether the Navy will reposition its ships in response, Vice Adm. David Dorsett, deputy chief of naval operations, recently told a defense writers group that the sea service is “assessing” and “planning.”

The Navy has been bulking up its ballistic missile defense program in recent years. This system, aboard some U.S. destroyers and cruisers, uses sophisticated radar to track and shoot enemy missiles out of the air. Some ships on “battleship row” at San Diego Naval Station are equipped with the upgraded equipment.

But some experts say the missile threat could be posturing on China’s part. They question whether China can pull off the technology.

“It’s very difficult to target a moving ship,” said retired Adm. James Lyons, who commanded the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 1987.

The Navy has anticipated the potential rising threat in Asia by shifting more of its fleet to the Pacific, with San Diego as its biggest hub on the West Coast.

The carrier, which earned its reputation against Japan during World War II, has been largely unchallenged on the seas in the past decade.

Measuring more than 1,000 feet, it carries more than 60 jets and helicopters in its hangar bay and on its flight deck. Sailors like to say a flat-top brings 90,000 tons of diplomacy to any situation.

The Navy currently has 11 carriers in service, including two stationed in San Diego. The 12th, the first of a new class named for former President Gerald R. Ford, will be launched in 2015 at a cost of $8 billion.

It’s a tradition the Navy holds dear. And a vessel that people have mistakenly tried to write epitaphs for in the past, said Cheng of the Heritage Foundation.

“As the saying goes, the safest place for a ship is in the harbor,” he said. “But that’s not why you build ships.”
 

solarz

Brigadier
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Sounds like the DF21 is doing its job: keeping the Americans guessing and off guard. Unless China and the US comes to open war, whether or not the DF21 can actually sink a carrier is irrelevant. The fact that it potentially *could*, would make the US much more circumspect in the future about sending in a "show of force". This is like a poker bluff that the US can't afford to call.
 

bladerunner

Banned Idiot
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

As I suggested ages ago, if it results in Taiwan thinking that the U.S. would be less inclined to come to its aid, then it would have done its job.

I haven't been able to find any such test confirmation though
 
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Red Moon

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

As I suggested ages ago, if it results in Taiwan thinking that the U.S. would be less inclined to come to its aid, then it would have done its job.

I haven't been able to find any such test confirmation though

very good, bladerunner!
 

Red Moon

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

I found this article in the San Diego Union Tribune. The bluster and rhetoric is wratchting up before Pres Hu Jintao visit.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

It's interesting that this sort-of-military reporting is actually much more "benign" than the liberal New York Times on these things. They even quote the Heritage Foundation here, but there's no twisted spin in the article.
 

Ambivalent

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Not in the littorals. Especially places like the South China Sea which is filled with thousands of fishing boats, merchant vessels, naval vessels, etc. You never know which fishing boat will make a call to say that they say a warship.

If China were the adversary there wouldn't be just one. When the F-35B IOC's the LHA's and LHD's start to become a factor.
 

Ambivalent

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

That cuts both ways. Lots of civilian traffic will make it harder to pick out the military targets.

As for the example of the Falklands War that's being discussed, I'd like to point out that both sides were using technology that was outdated even at the time. Argentinian aircraft dropping dumb bombs were going up against British ships firing at them with WWII-style AA guns. So sometimes I think people extrapolate too much from that conflict. But it is fair to say that it showed how decisive shipborne air power can be because the Harriers effectively defeated the Argentine bombing campaign against the fleet.

There was a famous simulation some years back where commercial traffic made it dangerous to use guided weapons designed for a NATO/Warsaw Pact conflict at sea. Something like Exocet or Harpoon does not discriminate well between big combat ships and big merchant ships. They fly to a waypoint on their INS and conduct a radar search, then attack whatever shows up, within some defined limits, on the missile's radar. Too often the missile locks neutral shipping and not an adversary target. This would be a problem for both sides in a highly congested sea lane.
If you look at the guidance of weapons like SLAM-ER, JDAM II, Norway's Naval Strike Missile, and others, the new paradigm is "man in the loop", where the missile data links real time imagery from the seeker so the aircrew can adjust targeting, even moving the final aim point, to avoid things like neutral shipping, or, if the primary target is already sinking from an earlier hit, re-target the missile to another target.
The carriers great strength is it's mobility. I still think finding and targeting one is not as easy as the fan bois imagine. Heck, I have on occasion found Nimitz hard to find and we were trying to land on it! Even a CVN is a small thing in a vast ocean from five miles out. From hundreds of miles out? Don't kid yourself.
 
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