Inside China: Admiral says China can destroy destroyers? true or not?

[solarz]

I'm pretty awestruck that you would presume to know what the man would think or say. Talk about arrogance. And regarding the missiles. Straw-man. Of course it's highly questionable whether a single missile can take out a carrier. But how about 10? How about 50? How about 100? You're pretending that this is a different argument by pretending that because 1 missile can't take down a carrier, then no number of missiles can.

I think I will let more knowledgeable forumites field that question, if they wish it. You really should check out the "End of Carrier Age" thread, you'll learn a lot. From what I understand, the key isn't the number of cruise missiles that you can send at a CVBG, it's knowing where the CVBG is in the first place.

The sea is a big place, and comparatively, even massive US Supercarriers are tiny. Being off by even a minute fraction of a degree will cause the missile to fall harmlessly into the water. Don't forget that during this time, the CVBG will be in constant motion. Even if a scout boat can relay the location of a CVBG back to base without getting destroyed, by the time the cruise missiles reach that coordinate, the CVBG will be long gone.

 

[solarz]

One way or another, the general pulled it off. So there IS a way to track the ship locations, even as they're in motion, and relay that back for the cruise missiles.

I get the sense that you're still trying to argue that because it's difficult, it's also probably impossible, even while Van Riper succeeded in pulling it off. How many more times do I have to say it before you understand? The missiles hit their targets. 16 ships (including 1 carrier) were sunk.

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Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States armed forces in mid-2002, likely the largest such exercise in history. The exercise, which ran from July 24 to August 15 and cost $250 million, involved both live exercises and computer simulations.

You seem to forget that you're talking about a *WAR GAME*, not a real battle. There are plenty of technical limitations that simulations gloss over.

Furthermore, the US is never going to take on the Iranian military head on like this. The US will pile sanctions on Iran, causing their economy to suffer, which in turn leads to deterioration of their military. What good is a stockpile of cruise missiles if they're all falling apart?

 

[Kurt]

I think the point is that if you ignore the swarms of fishing boats and speedboats, they'll sink you with explosives. If you use up most of your munitions sinking those boats before they sink you, then you won't have enough left over to defend yourself against the real military threats. In a sense, the value of your munitions is significantly greater than the value of your targets. They're like decoys, except they can sink you.

As I have already said, this is a tactic that an officer of the U.S. navy had successfully used against his competitor in a war game. It was a humiliating defeat for his competitor.

The lesson we all should have learned is that asymmetric warfare can be overwhelmingly successful when used simultaneously with conventional military assets.

It's a pen and paper tactic that highlights a critical shortage of defensive measures of this specific surface fleet that focused too much on high value targets. It's really cheap and fast to cure if deemed necessary and actually no big issue. The destroyer was invented for that purpose and equipped with guns and autocannons that had been converted for dual use during WWII
The most bang for the buck with such things was and is mine warfare. There it can develop great asymmetric potential with increased multi-sensoric self-propelled deployment with considerable AI on board.

 

[Kurt]

Asymmetric warfare, hell yes.

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Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper (born July 5, 1938) is a retired officer of the United States Marine Corps. Since retirement Van Riper has served on several advisory boards and panels. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.
At the time of his retirement, Van Riper was serving as the Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Virginia.

Van Riper is critical of the current transformation efforts in the military, especially changes originating from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He gained notoriety after the Millennium Challenge 2002 wargame. He played the opposing force commander, and easily sunk a whole carrier battle group in the simulation with an inferior Middle-Eastern "red" team in the first two days. After the simulation was restarted with different parameters, he claimed that the wargame had been "fixed" to falsely validate current doctrine of the US Navy.[2] He is also critical of post-war Iraq plans and implementation. On April 24, 2006, he joined several other retired generals in calling for Rumsfeld's resignation.[3]

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Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lt. General Paul K. Van Riper, used old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World War II light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications.
Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected.[1]
At this point, the exercise was suspended, Blue's ships were "re-floated", and the rules of engagement were changed; this was later justified by General Peter Pace as follows: "You kill me in the first day and I sit there for the next 13 days doing nothing, or you put me back to life and you get 13 more days' worth of experiment out of me. Which is a better way to do it?"[2] After the reset, both sides were ordered to follow predetermined plans of action. After the wargame was restarted, the war game was forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory. Among the rules imposed by this script, Red Force was ordered to turn on all his anti-aircraft radar in order for them to be destroyed, and Red Force was not allowed to shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue Force troops ashore.[3] Van Riper also claimed that exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue Force, and that they also ordered Red Force not to use certain weapons systems against Blue Force and even ordered that the location of Red Force units to be revealed.[4] This led to accusations that the war game had turned from an honest, open free play test of America's war-fighting capabilities into a rigidly controlled and scripted exercise intended to end in an overwhelming American victory.,[3] which meant that "$250 million was wasted".[5]

Due to his criticism regarding the scripted nature of the new exercise, Van Riper resigned his position in the midst of the war game. Van Riper later expressed concern that the war game's purpose had shifted to reinforce existing doctrine and notions of infallibility within the U.S. military rather than serve as a learning experience.
Van Riper also stated that the war game was rigged so that it appeared to validate the modern, joint-service war-fighting concepts it was supposed to be testing.[4] He was quoted in the ZDF–New York Times documentary The Perfect War[6] as saying that what he saw in MC02 echoed the same view promoted by the Department of Defense under Robert McNamara before and during the Vietnam War, namely that the U.S. military could not and would not be defeated.
Responding to Van Riper's criticism, Vice Adm. Marty Mayer, who ran the war game and who was charged with developing the military’s joint concepts and requirements, stated the following:[4]
“
Gen. Van Riper apparently feels he was too constrained. I can only say there were certain parts where he was not constrained, and then there were parts where he was in order to facilitate the conduct of the experiment and certain exercise pieces that were being done.
”
—Vice Adm. Marty Mayer
Navy Capt. John Carman, Joint Forces Command spokesman, said the war game had properly validated all the major concepts which were tested by Blue Force, ignoring the artificially imposed restrictions placed on Van Riper's Red Force which led them to succeed. Based on these findings, John Carman stated that recommendations based on the war game's result on areas such as doctrine, training and procurement would be forwarded to Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[4]

Thanks that you made all the work to provide the details for everyone. First of all, it would be misleading if we said a zerg swarm of boats destroyed the fleet. Before the swarming, the Red force had used up all available missile for a "softkill" attack that opened a window of opportunity for a more devastating strike with vessels that would otherwise have been unable to deliver their heavy payload of explosives.
It's a brilliant use of means to an end, but the wargame didn't take into account that some of these means make the timely coordination required for these acts nearly impossible to achieve. So in the end it's a game that highlights some problems of Rumsfeld's push of the armed forces down a very narrow road with increasing vulnerability to asymmetry. That doesn't mean that speedboats can sink carriers nor that such a saturation attack is possible. Itwould be difficult to coordinate because much real time communication with enough bandwith would fall pray to countermeasures and bicyclists would fight a hopeless war if they were to transmit target coordinates and timing (heliography would offer some escape, but the bandwith is too small).

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I don't know how far naval mine technology has advanced today. And isn't it sort of impractical since it'll pose hazards for post-war oceangoing commerce?

Mines have always been an problem for the after-war trade. This deployment of mines is being discussed by US and Chinese sources. Old torpedoes could for example with slow motion even creep into harbours and block them, they are the main source of integrating AI, multi-sensoric detection and movement.



The problem of real time location and data transmission on the fleet could possibly be solved by automated gliders with a camera, a laser data link, a good algorithm and lots of luck. Iran does have the level of technology to build a glider UAV with a camera and non-radio transmission. For the missile complex, I'd use optic fibres like the Serbs during the Kosovo War. In my opinion the information on this wargame is not complete in order to give the enemy no idea about all weaknesses. I highly suspect that a lot of short term softkill options were used to create a timed devastating strike and a navy officer is just the right man for solving such a communication and coordination problem.

Carrier Strike Groups can contain 1 to 100 carriers.

 

[airsuperiority]

Denial => Anger => Bargaining => Depression => Acceptance

What phase is the forum on now? I know we already got through denial. It seems like anger got skipped and we went straight to bargaining, with solarz trying to imply that it was all just the work of cruise missiles alone. This totally understates the role that strategy and tactics played. Lt. General Paul K. Van Riper is a hero, and the rest of them are bastards for resetting and rigging the game to undo his victory.

Hmm those 5 words in teh beginning looks awfully similar to something written in my psyc text...

 

[bd popeye]

Gentlemen!

bd popeye super moderator

 

[solarz]

lol That's no coincidence. solarz is grieving over the MC02 results I shared.

LOL wow. Here's a tip, lay off the personal attacks if you want to stay long in this forum.

First of all, the results of that war game is just that: a war game result. You are making a huge leap by trying to project that result into real world situations, which doesn't work for a plethora of reasons that I have listed in my previous posts.

Second, the war game you presented was back in 2002. The original topic deals with comments made by a Chinese general in 2012. As I have pointed out in my previous post, the war game did *NOT* vindicate such comments. The key factor in that war game was not a swarming attack by fire boats, it was a swarming attack by cruise missiles. The fire boats simply picked off the survivors of the missile barrage. Therefore, you original premise that a swarm of speed boats can take down a CVBG, or even a Destroyer, is wholly unsubstantiated.

Then we come to the actual issue of a "swarming missile attack". Just because an american general pulled off such an attack in a war game does not mean it's going to happen in real life. Saddam Hussein also had a lot of missiles. The US tricked Saddam into destroying his own missiles before bulldozing right into Baghdad. And that's not even getting into the technical difficulties of tracking a CVBG in the open sea. Like I said, it's unproductive to believe that US military commanders are dimwits.

Finally, you keep accusing me of believing that US CVBGs are invulnerable, even though I have never stated any such belief. If you continue to do so, I will be reporting you for trolling.

 

[advill]

There are theories of what the small boats can do to warships. This probably stems from the terrorist attack on the USS Cole & Iran's threats to use such strategies in the Gulf of Hormuz. I am sure the USN would have by now thought of & be prepared with counter-measures. One must remember that experience in actual sea battles is vital and important, and the USN has that experience from way back, including WW II (Coral Sea, Midway etc. etc). China has the experience in land battles i.e. guerilla warfare etc. However, with all its show of many new warships, submarines etc., the PLA-N has "zero" major sea encounters/battles. It's the well trained & experienced Officers, Men & Women, not only the "flashy ships" that make a REAL Navy. I think the Chinese Admiral's comment is just part of psychological warfare. Not wise to "try" the USN or underestimate the capabilities of a few other Navies of the Asia Pacific countries especially Japan.

 

[montyp165]

Keep in mind also how a navy can grow from zero experience to being a formidable force with good organization and training, of which the Germans, Japanese and Soviets managed to do in the 20th century. The important thing is making certain the logistical and administrative foundation is strong enough to handle growth and change. This is also why the battles of the past isn't necessarily instructive for battles of the future, and why the PLAN has plenty of opportunity to be as formidable as the USN.

 

[kwaigonegin]

I'm pretty awestruck that you would presume to know what the man would think or say. Talk about arrogance. And regarding the missiles. Straw-man. Of course it's highly questionable whether a single missile can take out a carrier. But how about 10? How about 50? How about 100? You're pretending that this is a different argument by pretending that because 1 missile can't take down a carrier, then no number of missiles can.

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I give up. If you really want to go on pretending that a CSG is nigh-invulnerable, I won't stop you.

Quantity becomes a quality in itself after a certain threshold. To your point yes if you throw 10000 half way decent cruise missiles at a CVBG of course you're probably going to sink the whole darn thing!!!
I don't think anyone is arguing that quantity is unimportant.
However when you bring in quantities of a particular component other supporting components increase in size and complexities as well least of all detection!
Launching 1 cruise missile is NOT the same as simultaneously launching 10000 missile assuming you have the numbers. It is exponentially harder. It is exponentially harder for communications, for targeting not to mention logistics and the 'behind the scenes' work that is required for such a coordinate attack. Lst thing you want is to have some of your missiles crashing into each other.
Because of such a large force the element of surprise will be non existent as well unlike a 1 or 2 missile attack. If a CVBG sees you first it doesn't matter if you have 10000 missiles. Because they won;t be ready to launch you will open yourself up for strike and all will be for nothing. You might be better off having prepare for and launch just one of two and hope for the best.
The trick is to find the right balance of quantity (assuming you have the quantities and infrastructure to support them) without sacrificing too much of the negatives of it.