Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

Spartan95

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Not true. In real world naval warfare, the great majority of anti-ship missiles fired in anger have been defeated with ECM alone. The Israeli's thwarted around 40 Syrian and Egyptian anti-ship missiles with ECM during the 1973 war. Every missile the Egyptians and Syrians fired was defeated this way as the Israeli's had no other means of protection against them.

That is true. Unfortunately, there is no modern example. If only INS Hanit had its ECM on against the Hezbollah's missile.

The US Navy defeated multiple Iranian anti-ship missiles fired at our ships during Operation Praying Mantis. Some of these were anti-surface versions of Standard we sold them, and the engagements were inside 25 nm using supersonic missiles, in other words it was a close in brawl with multiple supersonic missile tracks on the display screens. ECM alone defeated them.

Well, defeating US missiles with US countermeasures isn't exactly a good example because the capabilities of the missiles are very well-known and counter-measures can be developed against the known weaknesses.

If US countermeasures are unable to defeat US missiles, well that would be a totally different case all together.

In the Falklands, three of seven Argentine Exocet fired at RN forces hit targets, and of these, one was successfully seduced away from an RN carrier, but reacquired the Atlantic Conveyor afterwards. The other four missiles were defeated with ECM and fell harmlessly into the ocean. It was bad luck that it wasn't five of seven successfully defeated by ECM, but such is warfare.
ECM alone has a pretty good track record against anti-ship missiles in real world combat, as opposed to fan boi fantasies.

That's actually a rather loop-sided example because the Argentinians just received the exocets at that time and have practically no experience operating them. Their 1st firing of the exocet was against the British in a war setting and they didn't do too badly. If the Argentinians had a few more exocets, most of the British Task Force would be sitting on the bottom around Falklands today.

Furthermore, the French gave the British information on the code and homing radar of the Exocet:

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Relevant bits below:
.......

Mitterrand added: “I express myself freely in telling you this. I won’t say it in public, of course.”

In full flow, he told Magoudi that he had ordered the Exocet’s secrets to be handed over to the British at Thatcher’s insistence.

“She is furious,” he said. “She blames me personally for this new Trafalgar . . . I have been forced to yield. She has them now, the codes. If our customers find out that the French wreck the weapons they sell, it’s not going to reflect well on our exports.

........

This is probably why countermeasures were effective later on when 1 of the exocets was seduced away on 25 May 1982 that ended up hitting the Atlantic Conveyor. Contrast this to the hit on HMS Sheffield on 4 May 1982.

Nonetheless, the countermeasures didn't save HMS Glamorgan from being hit by a surface-to-surface exocet (as opposed to the earlier air-to-surface exocets) on 12 June 1982.

Rather mixed record for countermeasures despite knowing the secrets of the exocets.....
 

Ambivalent

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

That is true. Unfortunately, there is no modern example. If only INS Hanit had its ECM on against the Hezbollah's missile.



Well, defeating US missiles with US countermeasures isn't exactly a good example because the capabilities of the missiles are very well-known and counter-measures can be developed against the known weaknesses.

If US countermeasures are unable to defeat US missiles, well that would be a totally different case all together.



That's actually a rather loop-sided example because the Argentinians just received the exocets at that time and have practically no experience operating them. Their 1st firing of the exocet was against the British in a war setting and they didn't do too badly. If the Argentinians had a few more exocets, most of the British Task Force would be sitting on the bottom around Falklands today.

Furthermore, the French gave the British information on the code and homing radar of the Exocet:

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Relevant bits below:


This is probably why countermeasures were effective later on when 1 of the exocets was seduced away on 25 May 1982 that ended up hitting the Atlantic Conveyor. Contrast this to the hit on HMS Sheffield on 4 May 1982.

Nonetheless, the countermeasures didn't save HMS Glamorgan from being hit by a surface-to-surface exocet (as opposed to the earlier air-to-surface exocets) on 12 June 1982.

Rather mixed record for countermeasures despite knowing the secrets of the exocets.....

You are aware that in the case of the Sheffield, they were using their satcom at the time the Argentines launched on them? The ship had an older satcom and radar warning reciever and the RWR had to be shut off when the satcom was in use. The RN already had better units in operation that didn't have this limitation but they were kept in the NATO theater of operations to meet their committments to NATO.
If the Sheffield had her RWR on, the outcome of that engagement would have been different as there would have been time to generate a false echo and fire chaff and flares into the location of the false echo.

Glamorgan was surprised by an Exocet being shot from land. That was unexpected, but you only get to do something like that once. Next time your enemy is looking, just like the Israeli Navy will be looking for C802's or similar next time they engage Hezbollah.

If you look at Exocets combat record, nine have been shot in anger, seven by the Argentines at the Brits and two by the Iraqis at the US Navy and of these seven Exocet, they can claim only two ships sunk, and if you ever read the Royal Board of Inquiry on Sheffield, it is clear that ship should never have sunk. Their damage control was sadly lacking. The RN compounded that by not fashioning any kind of temporary patch over the hole in the hull, and the ship sank in heavy weather while being towed back to the UK.
Of the five Exocets to actually strike a ship, only two warheads detonated, one of the two the Iraqis fired at USS Stark and the one that struck the Atlantic Conveyor. The remaining three, the missiles that struck Sheffield and Glamorgan and the other Exocet to strike Stark, all failed to explode.
Compare the American damage control effort to Sheffield's. Both were 4200 ton ships, though Stark was built to be cheap and easy to assemble in wartime. Sheffield was all steel, I have personally stuck a magnet to the superstructure of her sister Southampton, while Stark had aluminum upperworks. The missile that struck Sheffield failed to detonate while one of the two to strike Stark did indeed detonate, yet Stark sailed home under her own power while Sheffield was abandoned and later sank.
The take away is, number one for the fanbois, a missile fired does not imply a missile hits it's target and number two, even if a missile hits this does not guarantee the target sinks.

Btw, the US pretty well knows the details of all the anti ship missiles out there and builds high fidelity surrogates of these to train against. The emissions and radar cross sections of threat missiles are replicated in these surrogates to make the training as realistic as possible.
Back in the cold war the US Navy had, and may still have for all I know today, an electronics warfare range out in the desert with dead accurate reproductions of Soviet naval radars. Head Net C, Top Steer, Bass Tilt, Headlights and a Peel Group all sitting on this ridge in a secure test range surrounded by mountains. The radars worked just like the real thing, allowing pilots to train against high fidelity replicas of threat systems. These weren't stolen radars, it was the 1980's. The one that impressed me most was the Top Steer. That thing was barely in service with the Soviets before the replica went up! These reproductions were built by our technicians working with our intel people and engineers. We had and I assume still have reproductions of all the major ground based systems, and often we have the real thing, begged, bought or horse traded from whomever and where ever they can get them.
 

Spartan95

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

You are aware that in the case of the Sheffield, they were using their satcom at the time the Argentines launched on them? The ship had an older satcom and radar warning reciever and the RWR had to be shut off when the satcom was in use. The RN already had better units in operation that didn't have this limitation but they were kept in the NATO theater of operations to meet their committments to NATO.
If the Sheffield had her RWR on, the outcome of that engagement would have been different as there would have been time to generate a false echo and fire chaff and flares into the location of the false echo.

Glamorgan was surprised by an Exocet being shot from land. That was unexpected, but you only get to do something like that once. Next time your enemy is looking, just like the Israeli Navy will be looking for C802's or similar next time they engage Hezbollah.

You don't seem to want to take into account the Argentinian's lack of experience in using the Exocet in the Falklands eh? They don't even have a proper doctrine for it, much less trained properly for it.

The situation is probably similar for the Iraqis using the Exocet.

This contrasts with the USN & RN who exercises regularly and have much better trained crews. Still didn't prevent the some of the missiles from reaching the target (particularly for USS Stark when the Exocet threat was known since it took place 5 years after Falklands).

Will the USN always be fighting a military that has such a huge disparity with it in terms of training? I won't bet on it in the coming decades.

If you look at Exocets combat record, nine have been shot in anger, seven by the Argentines at the Brits and two by the Iraqis at the US Navy and of these seven Exocet, they can claim only two ships sunk, and if you ever read the Royal Board of Inquiry on Sheffield, it is clear that ship should never have sunk. Their damage control was sadly lacking. The RN compounded that by not fashioning any kind of temporary patch over the hole in the hull, and the ship sank in heavy weather while being towed back to the UK.
Of the five Exocets to actually strike a ship, only two warheads detonated, one of the two the Iraqis fired at USS Stark and the one that struck the Atlantic Conveyor. The remaining three, the missiles that struck Sheffield and Glamorgan and the other Exocet to strike Stark, all failed to explode.

The exocets' record is not the best. But than again, this is in spite of the fact that most of its targets (if not all) actually know its secrets. Didn't seem to have prevented the ships from being hit all the time now does it?

Compare the American damage control effort to Sheffield's. Both were 4200 ton ships, though Stark was built to be cheap and easy to assemble in wartime. Sheffield was all steel, I have personally stuck a magnet to the superstructure of her sister Southampton, while Stark had aluminum upperworks. The missile that struck Sheffield failed to detonate while one of the two to strike Stark did indeed detonate, yet Stark sailed home under her own power while Sheffield was abandoned and later sank.
The take away is, number one for the fanbois, a missile fired does not imply a missile hits it's target and number two, even if a missile hits this does not guarantee the target sinks.

Yes, the target ship doesn't always sink due to 1 exocet hit. But it is mission-kill isn't it? And in most instances, that's good enough. 1 Exocet for a mission-kill frigate and 37 fatalities (may they rest in peace) isn't a bad exchange by any measure, particularly when the launching platform was unharmed.

Btw, the US pretty well knows the details of all the anti ship missiles out there and builds high fidelity surrogates of these to train against. The emissions and radar cross sections of threat missiles are replicated in these surrogates to make the training as realistic as possible.
Back in the cold war the US Navy had, and may still have for all I know today, an electronics warfare range out in the desert with dead accurate reproductions of Soviet naval radars. Head Net C, Top Steer, Bass Tilt, Headlights and a Peel Group all sitting on this ridge in a secure test range surrounded by mountains. The radars worked just like the real thing, allowing pilots to train against high fidelity replicas of threat systems. These weren't stolen radars, it was the 1980's. The one that impressed me most was the Top Steer. That thing was barely in service with the Soviets before the replica went up! These reproductions were built by our technicians working with our intel people and engineers. We had and I assume still have reproductions of all the major ground based systems, and often we have the real thing, begged, bought or horse traded from whomever and where ever they can get them.

US espionage has its share of successes. No doubt about it. And it was helped in no small part by defectors from USSR during the Cold War. But espionage is not a 1-way street.

The question is, post Cold War, are other countries' espoionage as successful as the US during the Cold War? PRC is regularly labeled by FBI as the biggest espionage threat and they have been accused of stealing everything from space technology to stealth technology.

Thus, is it possible that the reverse is now happening in PRC? That the PLA is actually using accurate reproductions of American military hardware for training?
 

delft

Brigadier
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

The cooling gas for an IR missile is never pressurized carbon dioxide. You don't have storage space for this for one thing. IR weapons use argon, nitrogen or more recently they can be cooled by pressurized and highly filtered atmospheric air, which is mostly nitrogen. All of these have problems with either storage or generation of the gas in the field.
If the missile comes as a sealed unit with the gas bottle inside it is almost alway argon and there is never more than a few minutes, maybe ten max, of cooling time on the missile seeker. If the missile uses an outboard source for cooling such as a nitrogen bottle or HiPAG mounted in the launch rail of an aircraft, it can have hours of cooling time on the launch rail, but once launched, the total cooling time remaining is measured in seconds. Keep in mind we are talking a pinhole cooling orifice in the seeker and not trying to cool the exterior of a missile.
One other method is a cryoengine, a little pump that uses vibration to cool gas (the vibration can compress gas on one side of the process and cool it on the other) but these things are closed loop.
Water is 8 lbs per gallon. Where is the excess payload capacity in any missile for a quantity of water to be carried along with it? And then you have to build a means to distribute this water when a laser impinges on it, assuming such a system could work fast enough to defeat the laser. These ideas are not informed by any experience with such systems.
A laser of sufficient power will blow through "cooling gas" or steam. It would not have to impinge on the engine either. Put enough energy on any part of the missile and you will destroy it. The challenge is to build a laser with "enough" energy.
The point about using carbon dioxide and water is that they are stored as liquids. The energy needed for evaporation is part of the energy absorbed, and is especially large for water. Of course if you take your missile high into the atmosphere these fluids will freeze unless you heat them. But we were talking about sea skimming anti-ship missiles.
 

jantxv

New Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Some current news on the US Navy laser weapon front was published today. Here is a small excerpt:

Navy Breaks World Record With Futuristic Free-Electron Laser

By Kelley Vlahos

Published February 20, 2011

WASHINGTON – The Navy just set a new world record, a test blast from a new type of laser that can shoot cruise missiles from the sky in seconds with a deadly accuracy that simply doesn't exist in the military’s vast arsenal today.

And that new record moved them one step closer to proving the "holy grail" of laser guns is real.

To create incredible power requires incredible energy. After all, the more power one puts into a laser accelerator, the more powerful and precise the light beam that comes out on the other end. During a private tour of the Jefferson Lab in Newport News, VA., on Friday, FoxNews.com saw scientists blast unprecedented levels of power into a prototype accelerator, producing a supercharged electron beam that can burn through 20 feet of steel per second.

Scientists there, in coordination with the Office of Naval Research (ONR), injected a sustained 500 kilovolts (KV) of juice into a prototype accelerator where the existing limit had been 320 kV -- a world’s record, the scientists explained.

“This is brand new -- it has not been done before, in the world,” said Carlos Hernandez-Garcia, director of the injector and electron gun systems for the FEL (Free Electron Laser) program, who added that Friday’s breakthrough was the culmination of six years of development.

But what does this mean to the Navy, and to war fighting in particular? Quentin Salter, program manager for ONR, said the test steps up the transition to newer, more powerful laser technologies.

“It’s huge in regards to upgrading the laser power beam quality,” he said. According to ONR officials, that laser beam will eventually perform at a staggering “megawatt class,” a measure of the laser's strength. Right now, the accelerator at Jefferson Lab is performing at just 14 Kilowatts.

Next up for the tech: additional weaponization. The Navy just awarded Boeing a contract worth up to $163 million to take that technology and package it as a 100 kW weapons system, one that the Navy hopes to use not only to destroy things but for on-ship communications, tracking and detection, too -- using a fraction of the energy such applications use now, plus with more accuracy. Saulter said they hope to meet that goal by 2015.

“We’re fast approaching the limits of our ability to hit maneuvering pieces of metal in the sky with other piece of flying metal,” explained Rear Admiral Nevin P. Carr Jr., Chief of Naval Research, in an interview with FoxNews.com. That’s why he calls free election laser technology or “directed energy” tech “our marquee program.”

“With every single milestone, [the naysayers] have been proven wrong,” said Dr. George R. Neil, associate director of the FEL program at Jefferson Lab. Neil pointed to a bottle of champagne in the control room -- that one was for when they met the 10 kW threshold four years ago, nearly a decade after the Navy began funding the development of the FEL accelerator at the Newport News facility.

Today, Neil and others have shown that they have the ability to harness super-conducting electron power.

The military already uses lasers across the spectrum. What make this technology different (and its potential so extraordinary) is its power source.

The military now uses solid-state lasers that use crystals and glass, as well as chemical lasers that use often dangerous liquid materials. The FEL is different. It requires only electrons, which can be created from matter inside the injector with energy that is constantly recycled. In other words, it uses less shipboard power than current weapons systems. “It won’t slow down the ship,” Saulter said.

In addition, according to Navy officials, the FEL laser can perform at different wavelengths, meaning it can operate at lower and more powerful levels so that it can be used for different applications, which other laser technology cannot. It is also not vulnerable to atmospheric conditions, as solid-state lasers are, making them wane in power depending on the weather.

“The fact that you can tune the wavelength, that’s what makes it different. You can optimize the beam for the conditions of the day -- that’s really powerful,” said Adm. Carr. “So in a warfighting sense, the FEL’s ability to do that on a ship makes it much more attractive” than other laser technology.

Just to touch on some of Spartan's points, directed energy weapons are only now just, and barely so, being introduced in a very restrained way. But since this thread touches on the viability of carriers given technological trends, it seems fair to include a very real program and commitment the US military is dedicating to the directed energy program.

Any electro-optical technology that can burn through 20 feet of steel per second is stunning.
 

Ambivalent

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

The point about using carbon dioxide and water is that they are stored as liquids. The energy needed for evaporation is part of the energy absorbed, and is especially large for water. Of course if you take your missile high into the atmosphere these fluids will freeze unless you heat them. But we were talking about sea skimming anti-ship missiles.

You are still missing the point. Missiles with the requisite speed and warhead size to disable ships do not have excess payload capacity to carry heavy, uncompressable, water along. An argon bottle is the size of a tennis ball, but because the gas is so highly compressed, thousands of psi, there is the requisite five to ten minutes of cooling time through an orifice about the size of the eye of a needle. Now you propose to carry enough water to coat the skin of a missile for a minutes long flight duration? Laughable. You have never seen the insides of missiles or sat with engineers trying to loose even ten Kg off a missile so it does not overstress something on the launch platform.
 

Ambivalent

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

You don't seem to want to take into account the Argentinian's lack of experience in using the Exocet in the Falklands eh? They don't even have a proper doctrine for it, much less trained properly for it.

The situation is probably similar for the Iraqis using the Exocet.

This contrasts with the USN & RN who exercises regularly and have much better trained crews. Still didn't prevent the some of the missiles from reaching the target (particularly for USS Stark when the Exocet threat was known since it took place 5 years after Falklands).

Will the USN always be fighting a military that has such a huge disparity with it in terms of training? I won't bet on it in the coming decades.



The exocets' record is not the best. But than again, this is in spite of the fact that most of its targets (if not all) actually know its secrets. Didn't seem to have prevented the ships from being hit all the time now does it?



Yes, the target ship doesn't always sink due to 1 exocet hit. But it is mission-kill isn't it? And in most instances, that's good enough. 1 Exocet for a mission-kill frigate and 37 fatalities (may they rest in peace) isn't a bad exchange by any measure, particularly when the launching platform was unharmed.



US espionage has its share of successes. No doubt about it. And it was helped in no small part by defectors from USSR during the Cold War. But espionage is not a 1-way street.

The question is, post Cold War, are other countries' espoionage as successful as the US during the Cold War? PRC is regularly labeled by FBI as the biggest espionage threat and they have been accused of stealing everything from space technology to stealth technology.

Thus, is it possible that the reverse is now happening in PRC? That the PLA is actually using accurate reproductions of American military hardware for training?

Stark's captain was relieved because they didn't use the SLQ-32 to jam the Exocets, and the Phalanx was not operational to shoot them down. You can't count on commanders to make those sorts of mistakes routinely in combat. And keep in mind we were not at war with anyone, so the crew isn't actively looking for hostile targets to engage. The ROE are different.
A CVN is not a frigate, and it would take a lot more than one Exocet or similar to stop a carrier. Read up how much damage Enterprise took early in the Guadalcanal campaign, how external hull damage was field repaired and how yard workers completed repairs over a six month period as the ship sailed in combat. You can fight a damaged ship and we have in the past.
When USS Tripoli struck a mine leading a minesweeping task force during OIF (ironic isn't it that the flagship of a minesweeping task force hits an enemy mine) the ship suffered a 20 ft X 30 ft hole in the hull. The boiler fires were blown out by the shock of the explosion leaving the ship dead in the water and flooding. The crew isolated the flooding, re-lit the boilers (half hour job), shored up the bulkheads containing the flooding and continued on the mission. The ship was drydocked after the mission was complete. That is how the USN fights. Hitting one of our ships does not guarantee it is out of action.

Here is some information I found on threat simulation by the US Navy.

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I wish this photo was larger, but this is the site I mentioned with the line of replica Soviet naval radars.

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In this one you can clearly see Peel Group, Bass Tilt, Headnet-C and Top Steer replicas.

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And here is a photo of the Headlights replica

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Here's an SA-2 site replica complete with operating radars (Vietnam vintage stuff)

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This is why we have EP-3's and why we like to fly them into the naval exercises of potential adversaries. The above photos are all in the public domain, the systems replicated are all obsolete, so you have to wonder what is out there now.
 

Ambivalent

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

I have to laugh at this whole thread. For such a supposedly obsolete weapon, China is certainly in a big hurry to build one! It's not as if they are cheap to build and operate. Want to bet the fanbois and other know-nothings in the press who like to prophesy the end of the carrier (which I'v heard my entire adult life) never spent a day in any navy? I'm sure the PLAN leaders who are so anxious to have an operation carrier know their value, understand the risks to them from weapons such as their own and feel a carrier is survivable and worth the money. If carriers were suddenly obsoleted by a DF-21 (which borrows more than a little from declassified information on Pershing II, meaning we could do it ourselves ) then why bother? Maybe the fanbois don't know as much as they think. Just sayin' .............
 

delft

Brigadier
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

You are still missing the point. Missiles with the requisite speed and warhead size to disable ships do not have excess payload capacity to carry heavy, uncompressable, water along. An argon bottle is the size of a tennis ball, but because the gas is so highly compressed, thousands of psi, there is the requisite five to ten minutes of cooling time through an orifice about the size of the eye of a needle. Now you propose to carry enough water to coat the skin of a missile for a minutes long flight duration? Laughable. You have never seen the insides of missiles or sat with engineers trying to loose even ten Kg off a missile so it does not overstress something on the launch platform.
There are several serious objections to these statements.
First if you compress carbon dioxide it becomes a liquid. For equal weight of cooling gas the carbon dioxide pressure vessel is much lighter. In use the carbon dioxide absorbs heat when turned into a gas, which then is expanded similar to the argon gas. As the carbon dioxide molecule is as heavy as an argon atom the effect will be similar. I can imaging the argon to be preferred for missiles carried by aircraft to great heights.
Lets protect an sea skimming anti-ship missile against a powerful laser. We construct the skin of the same material we use for gas turbine blades. Where the skin is getting too hot we bleed water through pipes behind the skin where it evaporates and it is then dumped overboard to cool the outside of the skin. The temperature of the skin can be higher than is acceptable for turbine blades because the mechanical loading is less. I can't do the math, but I imaging, you laser must be very powerful to make an impression on such a missile.
Some ten years ago people at the Technical University in Delft were developing a steel heat shield for re-entry vehicles that was to be water cooled. I don't know how successful this project has been.

P.S. I, too, don't see the end of the carrier, but we can still be near the end of the carrier age. The galley age ended in the Mediterranean around 1600 ( Lepanto, 1571 is a bit early, but it was the last large galley battle ), but galleys were used into the 19th century.
 
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Ambivalent

Junior Member
Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

There are several serious objections to these statements.
First if you compress carbon dioxide it becomes a liquid. For equal weight of cooling gas the carbon dioxide pressure vessel is much lighter. In use the carbon dioxide absorbs heat when turned into a gas, which then is expanded similar to the argon gas. As the carbon dioxide molecule is as heavy as an argon atom the effect will be similar. I can imaging the argon to be preferred for missiles carried by aircraft to great heights.
Lets protect an sea skimming anti-ship missile against a powerful laser. We construct the skin of the same material we use for gas turbine blades. Where the skin is getting too hot we bleed water through pipes behind the skin where it evaporates and it is then dumped overboard to cool the outside of the skin. The temperature of the skin can be higher than is acceptable for turbine blades because the mechanical loading is less. I can't do the math, but I imaging, you laser must be very powerful to make an impression on such a missile.
Some ten years ago people at the Technical University in Delft were developing a steel heat shield for re-entry vehicles that was to be water cooled. I don't know how successful this project has been.

P.S. I, too, don't see the end of the carrier, but we can still be near the end of the carrier age. The galley age ended in the Mediterranean around 1600 ( Lepanto, 1571 is a bit early, but it was the last large galley battle ), but galleys were used into the 19th century.

Number one, where do you propose to locate all this extra equipment, and how much equipment has to be left out to open up space and weight for this cooling system. Forget cooling the rocket casing because the propellant grain is cast directly into the casing.
Number two, carbon dioxide isn't going to cling to the surface of a missile, it will disperse into the atmosphere. The whole idea is almost laughable. The missile is not stationary, it is moving, maybe at three times the speed of sound.
Have you ever seen an actual missile, a real live war shot, apart on the bench? Do you know how packed they are? Do you know the trade offs that are made to allow new missiles to fit existing launchers? You can obtain all kinds of wild performance out of a missile if there are no constraints on size and weight. But, in the real world, your missile has to fit in a ship VLS tube, or under the wing of an aircraft, and it has to be able to be lifted by support equipment, fit into magazine spaces or onto ordinance elevators, all of which impose limits on size and weight that engineers have to consider. Sure the people writing the "requirements" document might want a long range, but the necessity to fit a missile onto existing or planned platforms limits size. Now what? Trade offs are made, capabilities sacrificed for practical aspects of taking a missile to sea. Your cooling system will take all the space and weight needed for a seeker, or cut into the warhead size in a very big way. Engineers would love to make IR missiles that could have day long cooling time but there just isn't space for that, so a pilot gets minutes and must use that precious argon carefully. It really sucks to encounter that enemy aircraft at close range and when you try to lock your IR missile get no track, no tone because the argon was used up earlier in your patrol.
I enjoy the fanbois because they have no hands on with the hardware they fap about.
By the way, argon is used on missiles that carry a gas bottle because it cools more quickly than nitrogen. That is the only reason. You get more useful seeker time out of a given volume of gas than you would with the same size nitrogen gas bottle. Nitrogen, however, is colder than argon, so nitrogen gives superior seeker performance but takes a great deal longer to cool the seeker with nitrogen than it does with argon. You don't have enough gas in a tennis ball sized missile gas bottle to cool the missile and still have some useful tracking time during an engagement. The way around this is to put a big nitrogen bottle in the launch rail, and trickle nitrogen gas through an orifice in the connection between the missile and the launch rail. You can cool a seeker for hours this way so the pilot doesn't have to make a judgement call on when to initiate precious cooling on his (or her) limited number of IR missiles.
The drawback of this is you have to generate nitrogen in the field to recharge the nitrogen bottle in the rail, and this nitrogen must be absolutely dry and pure which not easy to do in a combat environment. A couple of parts per billion of water and you freeze the seeker and nothing works. Any impurity and the seeker is ruined. Gas purity is a very big deal.
If you want a sealed round and no field support, you use argon and accept it's inherent limits. If you want the best cooling, you go with nitrogen and accept the necessity of a gas generating system in the field. Or, you get something like HiPAG that purifies and compresses air, which is mostly nitrogen anyway, but HiPAG and it's equivalents require maintenance too. As with anything in engineering, compromises are required.
 
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