Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
Here' some more good info and pics about the X47B:
Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics
- Thread starter Kampfwagen
- Start date
Ambivalent
Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
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 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.
Spartan95
Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
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.
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.
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
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.
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.
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Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
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.
[video=youtube;8dbp0hAKKKM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dbp0hAKKKM[/video]
[video=youtube;vqLkpcHavZE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqLkpcHavZE&feature=related[/video]
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.
[video=youtube;8dbp0hAKKKM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dbp0hAKKKM[/video]
[video=youtube;vqLkpcHavZE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqLkpcHavZE&feature=related[/video]
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Spartan95
Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
I'd wait until that is proven. It's just postulation at this point in time.
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.
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'd wait until that is proven. It's just postulation at this point in time.
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.
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.
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
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):rofl:
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):rofl:
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
That was a Class 1 GRAMATH (GReat Analysis of the Matter AT Hand), sailor.
That was a Class 1 GRAMATH (GReat Analysis of the Matter AT Hand), sailor.
Ambivalent
Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
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.
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.
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?
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.
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.