Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Something the non technical fan bois need to consider with all this talk of Mach 7 warheads from ballistic missiles are seeker domes and the acquisition ranges of different wavelengths of seeker. With IR you are limited to 16 km max and there isn't a seeker dome material made that will stand up to more than Mach 5. The material used depends on the wavelength of the seeker, and this includes radar seekers. Materials transmissive to one wavelength may reflect another, but the material needed for the optimum seeker configuration (meaning the seeker with the best performance for that mission) might be too weak to withstand high mach airspeeds and the heat of re-entry. Another seeker material might be needed to withstand the anticipated aerodynamic loads, but that material will cut into seeker performance. No one has made a workable seeker that can take speeds above Mach 5. That is the current limit of material science.
This means the seeker will be covered for the great majority of the flight, until the late terminal phase, but the warhead will also have to be slowed down to a speed the seeker dome can withstand.
Meanwhile, that missile will be detected almost immediately upon launch and it's trajectory calculated within seconds. By the time the warhead is in it's terminal phase and slowed to a point it's seeker can conduct a search, the cone that represents it's available maneuvering space will be restricted. That maneuvering for the terminal phase won't go unnoticed either, and these things are far from stealthy. Finding a good target inside that cone is not guaranteed.
Missile flight times will be measured in minutes as they have to fly a ballistic profile and a solid rocket will burn until it is burned out, meaning shorter ranged targets will get a steeper trajectory to allow the burn out of the rocket stages. Solid fuel rockets cannot be throttled.
All of this assumes the carrier can be located and targeted in the first place, which I know is far from guaranteed.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

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

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

sampan,
let me make you clear first that china do not have any military satellite in the orbit. but have public satellite.
it think it is clear to you now

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

I think current aircraft carrier are redundant if planes can fly ultra long distance and no need to refuel and replenish ammo. As shown in history why U-boats was less successful compare to the beginning of the war was that the Germans did not have air cover. The allies had the advantage of air support plus other thing to destroy the U-boats. The carrier will always act as a launch platform for aircraft until they can secure a local airfield. Aircraft carrier may not be as feared as in the old days, but it still have a huge vital role.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

hkbc said:

Surely this is missing the point so what when and if a system designed to sweep hypersonic missiles from the sky is deployed its going to make mincemeat of strike aircraft size targets. As the usefulness of a carrier is it's ability to deploy a strike wing to attack the enemy and a fighter wing to defend itself would it not be rendered some what impotent, in the face of such a system?

Unless the contention is that only the US will master the technology and no one else so it alone can continue to have a use for carriers, I can't see the logic. The power of a carrier is the ability of it's air wings to strike and to keep an aggressor, at arms length, remove that advantage and it becomes a big target. If MW lasers are going to sweep all before it then what would be the use of a carrier?

Click to expand...

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

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

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Ambivalent said:

Something the non technical fan bois need to consider with all this talk of Mach 7 warheads from ballistic missiles are seeker domes and the acquisition ranges of different wavelengths of seeker. With IR you are limited to 16 km max and there isn't a seeker dome material made that will stand up to more than Mach 5. The material used depends on the wavelength of the seeker, and this includes radar seekers. Materials transmissive to one wavelength may reflect another, but the material needed for the optimum seeker configuration (meaning the seeker with the best performance for that mission) might be too weak to withstand high mach airspeeds and the heat of re-entry. Another seeker material might be needed to withstand the anticipated aerodynamic loads, but that material will cut into seeker performance. No one has made a workable seeker that can take speeds above Mach 5. That is the current limit of material science.
This means the seeker will be covered for the great majority of the flight, until the late terminal phase, but the warhead will also have to be slowed down to a speed the seeker dome can withstand.
Meanwhile, that missile will be detected almost immediately upon launch and it's trajectory calculated within seconds. By the time the warhead is in it's terminal phase and slowed to a point it's seeker can conduct a search, the cone that represents it's available maneuvering space will be restricted. That maneuvering for the terminal phase won't go unnoticed either, and these things are far from stealthy. Finding a good target inside that cone is not guaranteed.
Missile flight times will be measured in minutes as they have to fly a ballistic profile and a solid rocket will burn until it is burned out, meaning shorter ranged targets will get a steeper trajectory to allow the burn out of the rocket stages. Solid fuel rockets cannot be throttled.
All of this assumes the carrier can be located and targeted in the first place, which I know is far from guaranteed.

Click to expand...

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

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

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Spartan95 said:

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

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

Click to expand...

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

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

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

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

This is not a trivial engineering problem.

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

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Ambivalent said:

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

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

Click to expand...

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

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

Ambivalent said:

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

Click to expand...

What do you think satellites are for?

Ambivalent said:

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

This is not a trivial engineering problem.

Click to expand...

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

Ambivalent said:

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

Click to expand...

Lol!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Spartan95 said:

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

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

Click to expand...

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

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

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

[video=youtube;mq7ieXNoyVw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq7ieXNoyVw[/video]

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

jantxv said:

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

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

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

[video=youtube;mq7ieXNoyVw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq7ieXNoyVw[/video]

Click to expand...

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

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