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tpmx

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> Key Point: Why are we still building aircraft carriers when even Sweden can sink them?

Oi.

Still a fair question, though.

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Because nothing else can do what they do.

Yes they’re expensive. Yes they’re more vulnerable than in the past. But they can do things nothing else can. Is there another cheaper way to set up a complete airbase wherever you want 10000 miles from home?

A naive totaling of the Capex per CSG is roughly 24.3 Billion dollars. This does not include the cost of munitions.

An interesting question is whether you actually need a mobile airbase which necessitates large quantities of costly defensive weapons ( The new Ford carrier sails with 6 1.8 Billion dollar Arleigh-Burke class Destroyers ).

Considering a tomahawk costs roughly 1 million dollars, it may be more efficient for the Navy's power projection goals to use more portable missile platforms instead of a mobile airbase.

> Considering a tomahawk costs roughly 1 million dollars, it may be more efficient for the Navy's power projection goals to use more portable missile platforms instead of a mobile airbase.

That was the idea between both the “arsenal ship” concept that hasn’t (yet) materialized, and the SSGN conversion of a number of Ohio-class ex-SSBNs, which has.

Your numbers are off. A typical carrier strike group contains one cruiser and two destroyers for escort, not six. There aren't enough destroyers to go around.

Ahh I based this off the 2019 deployment of the Ford Carrier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_Strike_Group_12#2019_d...

It's possible that this was an atypical deployment.

Because they're the greatest peacetime weapons system ever invented. Until hot war breaks out, which seems increasingly unlikely under the umbrella of nuclear weapons and MAD, they are the premier force projection tool around--in essence, the best bluff a superpower can make, and crucially, it's worked since WW2.

That said, while incidents like Sweden "sinking" a carrier have happened and embarassed the Navy, carriers have been present in multiple wars since WW2 (Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Iraq War) and haven't been sunk. If it's really that easy, one would think it would have happened when enemies actually were motivated to inflict such a loss. This suggests that the wargame conditions aren't very reflective of actual doctrine.

I thought the assumption was the the US attack subs would clear the area before a carrier would get there.

IIRC, the embarassment of the Swedish incident was that US attack subs didn't catch the Swedish sub, which lay dormant on the seafloor until it could pop up and blast the carrier in the props.

The conflicts you mentioned were against non-peer adversaries. The belligerents had no naval or offensive air power to speak of.

People here keep citing the wargames with retired Gen. Riper, who sank the USN repeatedly from the perspective of a non-peer adversary using non-technological methods to organize, and disposable, low value swarming assets to overwhelm American defenses. Both Iraq and North Vietnam had patrol boat navies and the wherewithal to invest in attacking a carrier, but didn't.

I guess the simplest answer is they didn't launch an attack because they couldn't. Specialized torpedo boats cannot generally penetrate a destroyer or cruiser screen without assistance. There is no viable way to even get into position to threaten a carrier as such a movement will be detected on radar long before a threat materializes. Even when American ships engaged in offensive operations close to the north Vietnamese coast they came out on top in clashes involving patrol boats making a large offensive operation unappealing.

The red force in the millenium challenge had access to significant capabilities that Iraq and Vietnam did not have access to such as incredibly accurate anti-ship cruise missiles.

This was the Millenium Challenge in 2002. Another interesting war simulation that seems the U.S. did not learn their lesson.

https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-r...

One complication is that sinking a US carrier would likely trigger nuclear retaliation. Even if the enemy is in a good position to do so, that will make them think twice.

Would it, tho?

Answering a conventional strike in international waters with a nuclear one (and at different target instead of the original attacker, since you can't really nuke a sub) is crossing the Rubicon, there's no going back from that.

Yes. Sinking an aircraft carrier would likely kill several thousand personnel at once. If that doesn't lead to the use of tactical nukes, nothing will.

Bringing down the Twin Towers in NYC killed several thousand people at once. US did not use nukes against Taliban/Al-Qaeda in response.

There wasn’t a single country to really nuke. If it was a conventional military power then the U.S. would have went to war and began attacking actual things like ships or air bases. Taliban didn’t really have those. What are you going to do, nuke random places in Afghanistan for no reason?

The US openly reserved the right to do so though.

> If that doesn't lead to the use of tactical nukes, nothing will.

And that’s exactly how it should be and has been since ww2. You use nukes when someone else uses nukes. No exception. In a perfect world this keeps the balance

Sorry, but US nuclear doctrine contains no such provisions.

The new paradigm of China, the current naval rival of the US in the Pacific, is more akin to imitating ants than to imitating sharks. The Chinese are expanding their spheres of influence, power, and control (e.g. in the South China Sea) gradually by a plethora of means that each irritate, annoy and distress the Americans. There is no reason for China to want to sink an American carrier. Extrapolating ahead 20 or 30 years, China can foresee a time when the Chinese economy and Chinese technology are number 1 worldwide, and US influence in the Western Pacific is negligible compared to that of China. At that point, it makes no sense for the US to have a fleet way over there, 8,000 miles from home, outgunned, outnumbered, with few or no nearby bases. The number one reason for having a navy at all will be as an employer of last resort. Given the developments so far, with peace working so well for China, expect China to advocate disarmament, not to instigate major conflict. I believe that the majority in the US would prefer naval disarmament to having Chinese ships and planes patrolling 13 miles off US shores the way US Navy ships have operated near China.

> I believe that the majority in the US would prefer naval disarmament to having Chinese ships and planes patrolling 13 miles off US shores the way US Navy ships have operated near China.

If they are in international waters than nobody will care. But China doesn’t have the resources to build ships to routinely project power off the US coast. Ask yourself - why are they building empty skyscrapers? Couldn’t they build ships instead?

Chyna fear is very overrated.

>If they are in international waters than nobody will care

If the USSR had put nukes everywhere around the US, even in international waters, we would not be here to discuss this today so yes people do care, a lot.

As to why they "build skyscrapers instead of warships", that's already explained in the comment you reply to. In short: because China isn't going the route of massive military to become top dog. It will become top dog without raising the part of its GDP it already spends today. Why spend a lot more on ships now when everything points to you being both richer, more technologically advanced and with better industrial capacity in 30 years than the US? Unless something significant happens China will win "the war" without firing a single shot while on the other hand the US will likely need ICBMs to "win".

Nuclear weapons aren’t ships. It’s a categorical difference that matters a lot.

You can double check if you want but pretty sure U.S./E.U. adversaries like China and Russia already do flybys and have ships sail close via international waters. It’s good for a quick media hit in western countries but nobody who is serious or matters really cares about it. The U.S. does this all the time - called freedom of navigation exercises. The Chinese or Iranians will saber rattle a bit for no good reason other than strengthening their crappy, despotic regimes, but nothing comes of it.

Re China: I think you’re wrong, largely. First, China as a whole should be wealthier. It has 4x the population. It should have 2x-3x the GDP of the U.S. yet it doesn’t. Interesting.

Second, building empty skyscrapers is a hallmark of collapsing nation states of planned economies. It’s motion for the sake of motion. It’s like a broken window fallacy.

The U.S. has some very interesting advantages and certainly doesn’t need nuclear weapons to win “the war”. It’s winning it right now as China faces a population catastrophe and the U.S. continues chugging along like always.

Again, Chyna (Trumps terms) fear is overrated. Not sure what people/Trumpists are so worried about.

> Why spend a lot more on ships now when everything points to you being both richer, more technologically advanced and with better industrial capacity in 30 years than the US?

Not sure any projections are really convincing here. And the U.S. isn’t even trying as a unified country and is spending massive amounts of money wastefully (Iraq/Afghanistan, etc.).

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