I see a lot of people saying that aircraft carriers will always be survivable against drone swarms, cruise missile saturation bombardments and hypersonics because lasers are getting good enough to shoot them down easily, but wouldn’t that mean that aircraft themselves are becoming obsolete? What good is a carrier if a smaller, cheaper vessel can easily shoot down all of its planes?
>against drone swarms,
Those don't have the range and speed to attack a carrier.
>cruise missile saturation
You would need at least 100 to have a slight chance. And nowhere enough to sink it.
>hypersonics
Guided?
Harassment with smallboats could be better like in WWII with PT boats.
>range and speed
Top speed of a nimitz is supposedly 30 knots, drone swarms can travel a lot faster than that. Even cheap ass shaheds are about three times faster
>nowhere enough to sink it
If a single decent sized hole gets punched in the runway it’s a sitting duck though, it won’t be able to launch or land any planes after that. It would be devastated by follow-up waves
It always comes up in threads discussing the future viability of aircraft carriers against modern weapons
If lasers are a meme then how will carriers remain survivable over the long term?
Does it? For the price of a super carrier you can make literally hundreds of thousands of kamikaze drones.
it sounds like youve already made up your mind on what you 'know' and wont be persuaded
if op can't see the obvious problem with their assertion then they're either too far gone to be worth talking to, or they're purposefully ignoring it to have a strawman to argue against.
either way, shit thread. no more replies from me.
I have an opinion but it mainly comes from the fact that I’ve never seen a real answer for any of these questions. Carrier proponents never address the fact that relatively minor runway damage would cripple it as a launch platform, they always act like the ship has to be sunk to be rendered useless on the battlefield. Carrier proponents also never seem to address the fact that if lasers get good enough to destroy drone swarms and cruise missiles than why can’t the same type of laser be used to shoot down a carrier’s planes?
>useless against something armored
You don’t think a kamikaze drone could cause enough damage to the runway to make the carrier incapable of launching planes?
What obvious problem? Just state it lmao
>Carrier proponents never address the fact that relatively minor runway damage would cripple it as a launch platform, they always act like the ship has to be sunk to be rendered useless on the battlefield.
Pretty good point tbh, but i'd be more worried about the ability of aircraft to return than launch, most (good) carriers have 3 catapults. Also runways can be crippled too, y'know
>Carrier proponents also never seem to address the fact that if lasers get good enough to destroy drone swarms and cruise missiles than why can’t the same type of laser be used to shoot down a carrier’s planes?
Because a plane would be using a stand off weapon anon
No, he doesn't have a good point. You need several hundred kg of HE to put a hole in a carrier deck. This has been known for decades.
Well if you had 600kg of HE your planes and crew on top would be fucked up hard. What I think OP is referring to is the steam launch catapults
And they just push the planes off. As for the catapults that prevents launches, not recovery, and you still haven't dealt with the escort group. Taking out a CVN with shaheds or motor boats or some shit is really just cope manufactured by the Iranians. Even the Chinese have moved on to the idea of using IRBMs.
This thread is literally worthless. If OP knew anything about anything he'd know the answer to his question.
Yeah you're right, OP is retarded
>you need several hundred kg of HE to put a hole in a carrier deck
That sounds really unrealistic. They aren’t made out of some exotic material like DU or anything.
>because a plane would be using a stand-off weapon
Like a cruise missile? The same types of weapons lasers are being made to counter?
>steam catapults
That’s another point of failure but is it really that hard to punch some holes in a steel deck?
>they just push the planes off
With drastically reduced payload and range. Stand-off distance for carriers is so far now that if they’re limited to VTOL or STOL they’re pretty much useless anyways
Shaheds have a 30-110 lb warhead.
What’s stopping countries from using the cheapest possible planes and boats as launch platforms to extend the range of kamikaze drones? For the price of a carrier how many of these could he made to attack carrier with?
>Like a cruise missile? The same types of weapons lasers are being made to counter?
Well I guess war is over, time to close up shop boys
If lasers are good enough to defend against a carrier group against saturation bombardments then why wouldn’t they be good enough to destroy the planes and missiles a carrier group could launch?
Who’s stupid? The people saying lasers can defend against saturation bombardments or the people saying lasers are a meme? Either way wouldn’t that make carriers unsurvivable? They’re 8 billion dollar chunks of steel sailing around at 30 knots. How many cruise missiles and drone swarms could you throw at one for 1/10 the price of the carrier? And if lasers could solve this problem then aren’t carrier groups built around aircraft and cruise missiles useless against any ship with big lasers on it?
Ok so I misread the post does that make the point I was making less valid?
Isn't CIWS enough to protect against drone swarms ?
It's almost like a Burke killed 18 drones with its 5" gun literally last week but this is OP's thread, drones are wunderwaffen that can't be defeated
What I mean is, even if one CIWS isn't enough it's simply a matter of adding more of them.
>a Burke killed 18 drones with its 5" gun literally last week
Uhh what? It used SM-2s at about $2m a pop, and assuming each of the 4 cruise missiles had 2xSM-2 each and an additional 1xSM-2 per drone, that's at least 23 SM-2s, potentially more. At a cost of at least $48m.
>The drones and missiles were intercepted with SM-2 surface-to-air missiles launched from the USS Carney.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/20/politics/us-warship-intercept-missiles-near-yemen/index.html
I doubt it, considering that for the price of a carrier you can make hundreds of thousands of drones. A CIWS can only fire so many rounds before it runs out of ammo or overheats. Once a handful of drones penetrate the defenses the carrier will have a crippled runway and thus couldn’t really defend itself against any subsequent missile/drone waves.
>can’t be defeated
I never said that lol. The real issue is that the price point threshold for a successful combined arms saturation bombardment against a carrier group is now far less than the price of a carrier group.
Do you think there’s an accountant declaring the winner or something?
No my point is that if a country with the industrial capacity of China spent a mere fraction of what we spend on carrier groups then it can have more than enough firepower to take them all out. This can be offset somewhat by keeping the carriers further away from China but at that point they’re basically the same as battleships, too expensive to actually use. If they’re limited to stand-off range and stand-off range keeps getting pushed further and further, the less effective they are at actual force projection. At what point is the 8 billion dollar price tag unjustified?
>adding more of them
That just raises the threshold of how many units you’d need for a successful saturation bombardment, it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem. And the more CIWS and ammo you cram onto a carrier the less room it has for actual offensive armament. At what point are you better off just cutting out super carriers and replacing them with way smaller drone carriers?
You could use the drone carriers offensively and have the super carriers behind them, launching bigger aircraft that support/protect the drone carriers without putting itself at much risk
The enemy will also have limited ressources, it's also a rate of fire issue so the enemy would have to double the number of drones to deal with an extra CIWS. Economically the bullets will always be cheaper than the drone as long as the system works properly, and ammunition used for defense should always be more valuable than offensive weaponry.
You don't arm the carrier, the carrier sits surrounded by cruisers and destroyers that lob hundreds of missiles at incoming threats
You mean hundreds of drones. The carrier group will absorb maybe 150 incoming threats with missiles long before guns are involved. You will have to spam until all the ammo is gone and the jets have run out of missiles or fuel. After that the fleet is vulnerable. Feel free to lob a laser in there if you like, what range do they even have?
>drones
>laughsInFlakGun.jpeg
>If lasers are good enough to defend against a carrier group against saturation bombardments then why wouldn’t they be good enough to destroy the planes and missiles a carrier group could launch?
They're not, thats what the Phalanx, Sea Sparrow, and accompanying AEGIS equipped vessels are for
You don't even know how an F-35C or F/A-18E/F launches dude. Shut up. "Push the planes off" refers to physically pushing the burning/destroyed planes off the side of the carrier if they're destroyed in an attack.
>Personnel from all over the ship rallied to fight the fires and control further damage. They pushed aircraft, missiles, rockets, bombs, and burning fragments over the side. Sailors manually jettisoned numerous 250 and 500 lb bombs by rolling them along the deck and off the side.
>That sounds really unrealistic. They aren’t made out of some exotic material like DU or anything.
believe it or not anon its really hard to punch through several feet of steel with a gap before another several inches of steel supported by an entire ship structure made of steel. if you werent aware anon jets are actually quite heavy and land with a lot of force. kamikaze attacks would only punch through the thinnest and least supported parts of the decks of ww2 era ACC. why would anything less than a directed explosive do more than minor damage?
>i am highly opinionated but know nothing about the subject.
>prove me right please.
>same type of laser be used to shoot down a carrier’s planes?
Midwit take.
The real issue is will the planes launched by the carrier be ineffective because their missiles are easy intercepted. Carriers became the meta only because planes were able to effectively engage ships without significant resistance aside from your own planes. If the weapons on a carrier become obsolescent, the ship itself is too.
>Carrier proponents also never seem to address the fact that if lasers get good enough to destroy drone swarms and cruise missiles than why can’t the same type of laser be used to shoot down a carrier’s planes?
Different use cases. Lasers will always have a limited range due to atmospheric scattering and being limited to direct line of sight. They're perfect for something coming at you at relatively close range, but not much else.
The counter is low observable aircraft launching low observable anti-ship missiles from standoff range. The laser can't hurt you if it can't detect you or if you're out of range. The laser can only do so much if a few dozen sea-skimming missiles suddenly pop up on radar coming in from multiple angles at close range.
>Top speed of a nimitz is supposedly 30 knots,
Now your swarm drone is -30knots, at a distance of +500km, 5 hours of flight time for the shaheds. Most small drones like shitheads are useless against something armoured. Let alone that a closing speed of 120km/h (ignoring wind) is laughable.
The min bar to attack a aircraft carrier is far higher than to kill civilians.
>If lasers are a meme then how will carriers remain survivable over the long term?
They are just mobile bases with aircrafts that AD 1000-2000 km around them.
You need to be sneaky and lucky to destroy them, at least you can constrain their movements.
> For the price of a super carrier you can make literally hundreds of thousands of kamikaze drones
And all those drone operators will be unable to do anything but sit and seethe as the carrier sits offshore.
And even if they could reach it, a handful of grenades isn’t going to do much against a carrier.
>It always comes up in threads discussing the future viability of aircraft carriers against modern weapons
Those people are stupid.
>Top speed of a nimitz is supposedly 30 knots
lmao
who says this?
>implying that any adversary the US would have would have the capability to produce any of those technologies in quantities sufficient to threaten a carrier.
>implying that those said adversaries couldnt be crippled for decades by the air force or the navys air power.
> because lasers are getting good
Lasers are a meme, especially in naval warfare. Thrust me. Don't bring flashlights to a missile duel.
Lasers are good as part of a layered defense system, and are in fact getting good. They will never, at least within our lifetime, be a comprehensive defensive system in and of themselves however.
>Thrust me
Fugg
Cannon based air defense can solve the swarming problem but we're not quite there yet.
>acceleration hardening all tiny precision microparts in your mass-expended homing air defense munitions instead of tacking rocket booster on the back and having normal accelerations
why tho?
The 1980s meta of 'gun hardening costs more' is over.
Even if this kind of tech became widely used it’s reminiscent of the efforts made with battleships to keep them survivable enough to be worth building.
It's also reminiscent of the efforts to make trench lines immune to infantry swarm attacks
Good thing the ocean never had fog, clouds or rain.
>muh drone swarms
what's the next FOTM wunderwaffe gonna be?
Israelis are the only ones I've heard mention lasers for missile defense and they are not very reliable.
Otherwise anything that can physically produce enough thermal energy to burn an airframe can be sent into outer space and shoot down ICBMs, powerful lasers like that would break the balance between world powers.
The US Navy has been shooting down missiles with ship based lasers since 2017.
>Otherwise anything that can physically produce enough thermal energy to burn an airframe can be sent into outer space
wtf am I rading
>What good is a carrier
It's a floating military base, it's good for lots of things. C&C, SIGINT, transporting US drones, etc etc. Next generation doctrine will be 50-100K drones per carrier instead of manned planes. Contrarywise CWIS will be tuned to defend against drone/missile swarms as well as ballistic munitions
>50-100k drones per carrier
Sounds like it’s still at a disadvantage against many smaller vessels with drones. It’s a single expensive target and it doesn’t have to be nearly that big to launch a bunch of drones.
>doesn’t have to be nearly that big to launch a bunch of
You are aware that most munitions grade drones are the size of small airplanes, right? You can stack em up like cord wood unlike a jet, but that drone carrier is going to launch everything from Reapers to motherships to beetle sized drones and everything in between. Drone is not synonymous with teenytiny
OP is a fag,
The US is building carriers, China is building carriers, the Japs are building "not"-carriers, even the Koreans are designing them
>China is building carriers
Have you considered the possibility that they’re building carriers for what they’re still useful for? Namely beating up on any weaker US proxy that can’t actually defend against them? The US has stated that any successful attack against a carrier warrants a nuclear response, so what if this is just China’s way of offsetting that threat? They don’t seem to be very serious at building more than a couple of them in the long term.
But for the 8 billion dollar price tag you could simply build shitloads of drone carriers instead.
>limited resources
The problem is that it has to be 100% effective against thousands of targets before the carrier ends up with a crippled runway and can’t launch planes. At that point wouldn’t the more effective fleet be the one with large numbers of drone carriers, each with their own CIWS?
>The problem is that it has to be 100% effective against thousands of targets before the carrier ends up with a crippled runway and can’t launch planes. At that point wouldn’t the more effective fleet be the one with large numbers of drone carriers, each with their own CIWS?
Well, if it becomes such an issue, maybe VTOL will become more valuable ?
those drone carriers will only be able to launch small aircraft, and some things can only be done by a big aircraft.
>some things can only be done by big aircraft
I’m aware of that, but if they’re launched by a platform that’s unsurvivable in the current theater then that means they aren’t really feasible anymore?
>but if they’re launched by a platform that’s unsurvivable in the current theater
They're not though
I mean we’re in an era where 10,000 dollar kamikaze drones can land 100lb warheads on targets from hundreds of miles away. They’re just now starting to get mass-produced. How survivable will an 8 billion dollar target continue to remain over the long term? Platforms that aren’t stealthy, cheap or extremely fast are going to struggle to keep up against a country that can make these kinds of weapons on large scale. If a country put serious money into these things then it’s a real game changer. Just crunching some basic numbers makes things look really bad for carriers (8,000,000,000 dollars divided by 10,000 dollars = 800,000). If lasers and CIWS solved the problem then wouldn’t a fleet built for defense and maxed out with lasers and CIWS BTFO of a carrier group in a head-on confrontation, rendering the entire concept of force-projection-via-carrier-group unworkable?
I already mentioned that though
>not flying near it
Okay but how would you attack them? A group of laser ships backed up by drone carriers and missile cruisers could just chase after the carrier group
>now the whole fleet is nuclear
What if the fleet was centered around a number of nuclear laser ships with no aircraft, made as cheaply as possible, backed up by smaller ships with batteries? It’d still cost a lot less than a carrier group. A big part of the price tag for carriers is the planes themselves
Okay but lasers allow cheaper ships to get a lot closer to carriers without having to worry about being attacked by long range missiles
>hardly a good trade
I realize they can’t project force like a carrier can but that’s not really relevant. The important thing is wether or not the current force projection capabilities of a carrier group can remain feasible against its potential countermeasures. Just because america needs carriers to maintain its empire doesn’t mean carriers are going to stay viable.
Shaheds aren't particulary good if you already know their target. Low flying things are hard to intercept if you send a lot through unknown paths. Against a carrier shaheds can't sneak flying low.
>(8,000,000,000 dollars divided by 10,000 dollars = 800,000).
Ayy lmao.
And a bullet is ¢50.
Even if you’re right you could have 10,000 drones keeping CIWS busy as part of a combined arms assault where actual cruise missiles and IRBMs provide the real punching power
>you could have 10,000 drones
Tell me anyone who is capable of launching 10,000 drones on a single mission. And tell me where these drone are being launched from and what's going to happen to those drone operators before the drones even make it to the carrier.
Even if it’s not possible at this very instant that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible in the very near future. Say China builds 100 relatively small vessels and each can launch a few dozen shaheds, a couple of cruise missiles and an IRBM. The carrier would have to kill every ship to defend itself but only one of those ships would have to get its munitions on target to cripple the carrier
>Say China builds 100 relatively small vessels
Now you can destroy 10.000 drones with 100 missiles
Yeah but those vessels could have their own CIWS and sail under the protection of its own missile destroyers. The fundamental point I’m trying to make is that as weapons that can kill or cripple ships become more advanced and cheaper, won’t a theoretical point be reached in which the fleet with larger numbers of cheaper vessels gains the advantage over fleets that revolve around extremely expensive platforms?
After spending money into a complete fleet now you have even less shaheds.
If saturation with very low spec drones were a real issue you can simply add more CIWS turrets with lower spec ammo. A shahed can be easily destroyed with .50 BMG ammo.
Drones like shahed relies on low speed to achieve its range. If you add a rocket to increase the speed in the last moment you have a even less effective warhead. Aircraft carriers are adaptable mobile bases.
Not as long as speed (on water) and range (in air) benefit the larger platform. That means bigger and faster is more survivable, and longer range and endurance means greater reach, concentration, and organization capacity for ToT/saturation attacks.
I see your point and it’s probably valid if China was taking a carrier group head-on in the open ocean but all China needs from its fleet is local area denial to push the stand-off range of carrier groups past the limit of combat effectiveness against the mainland. Its own fleet can be supported by land-based missiles and aircraft.
Have you seen how shaheds are launched? A ship that can carry a handful of semi-trailers can launch dozens of them.
>what’s the point of it
To make carrier groups unable to project offensive force against a well-defended coastline. China doesn’t want or need a fleet to run a global maritime empire it only needs a fleet that prevents the US fleet from being able to effectively attack China.
>it’s just a pointless array of barged
Defense is always “pointless” according to your logic. The thing is that it’s not really pointless if you’re the defender and don’t need to project force very far. All you need is to make it unfeasible for the attacker to destroy you with his force projection capability.
>there’s a minimum size you need for blue-water fleets
What if modern weapons make the very idea of blue-water fleets unworkable?
And your fleet of 1 mile range weapon equipped ships that carry no aircraft is going to do what exactly? Without a load of missiles or aircraft they will get merked hundreds of miles away from the carrier group
Shaheds aren't relevant as they have no real time guidance but your basic premise of swarms of drones is at least a possible thing to do. But their main role would be forcing an enemy to shoot them down and waste ammo, you wanna get them to waste their missiles on the drones so you can attack with aircraft and missiles of your own. As long as you didn't spaff your budget on lasers you'll do okay
>What if modern weapons make the very idea of blue-water fleets unworkable?
What if monkeys fly out your nose? What a retarded question, do you ask people if tanks are obsolete too?
The existence of counter technology has never led to the obsolescence of anything. Only technology which does the original job better has caused technology to disappear. The only thing that could cause blue water navies to disappear is space based weapon systems doing what they do, better, or the world becoming too poor to field them.
But the naval wonder weapon at play has less range and forepower than a javellin missile. I guess the whole theead was bait to begin with anyway
The mongols used to run the world with land armies. What made this imperial model take a back seat to maritime empires? It wasn’t something replacing cavalry, it was new ship and weapons technology that allowed maritime naval powers to easily attack and blockade anyone trying to go the land empire route. In todays world of powerful precision weapons, blue water navy-focused powers could very well be reduced to having a less effectively workable imperial model than land powers. Is it really that unthinkable that the balance of power could tilt once again back to land empires? It just seems like a stretch that a weapons platform the size and price of a carrier can really stay viable against modern weapons systems.
Against what, lol? What is the "modern weapons system" you're handwaving about?
I can bomb your land army with planes from my carrier, or even with drones from my carrier. I can destroy your land based AA systems too.
Its not lasers. So what IS it that you're talking about?
I'm guessing he means hypersonic missiles
Drones and anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles. I get that carriers are well-defended and have a lot of firepower but they’re fucking huge unconcealed targets, in an era when lots of countries have hundreds or thousands of guided missiles and drones capable of attacking it and only need one or two lucky hits to cripple it. You guys could be right, maybe the carrier can really stop a saturation bombardment of hundreds of missiles and drones but I seriously doubt it. The US kind of shot its own self in the foot by advancing a lot of this tech in the first place, but the damage is done. If carrier groups are truly put to the test I don’t think they will make it out alive. They’re relics of a bygone era and if real conflict ever did break out they’re in for a rude awakening as to how much tech has changed since the last time they won a world war
It's not a carrier stopping the barrage, it's an entire fleet plus a lot of aircraft. Since the carrier will be a long way from the launch point, the missiles attacking it will have to be very big and expensive to reach it.
Carriers are extremely difficult to hit. Unless you whip out an ICBM the area a fleet can be from launch to landing point covers several dozen nautical miles in any direction, and the slightest deviation or spoofing or jamming makes your 30 million dollars and 15 years of missile stockpiling whiff into the ocean. Yeah if a fleet sails up adjacent to a missile base it's gonna get shrekt but the great part about a carrier fleet is it can operate 3000 miles outside of the target it wants to blow up and still have plenty of room to double back for more safety if it wants to.
Going all in with a saturation strike on a carrier first requires you to know not only where a carrier fleet is, but where it's going to be 2 hours from now. And more importantly it requires doing it 11 fucking times without the US of A turning your entire continent into molten glass.
delete that video
>Verification not required.
>11 times
Okay think about that for a second, that’s only 11 targets that need to be hit before the navy is crippled as an air power. Guided cruise missiles, kamikaze drones, and IRBMs didn’t even exist the last time the US had a direct war against a serious military rival. They’re ultimately designed for a time when manned air power was the only way for a ship to reliably hit a target from hundreds of miles away. It’s not the same world anymore
If you can hit 11 carriers you're more powerful than the US of A. So congrats I guess. But realistically China will maybe cripple one carrier fleet then get 5 shoved up their ass that will turn the entire eastern seaboard into Hell since 5 carriers have as much firepower as 30 divisions and a striking power further out than Guam.
>lots of countries have hundreds or thousands of guided missiles
lol there's like 4, maybe
>Russia no longer counts
this is the current meta of warfare. The carrier group is designed to absorb a huge volume of incoming fire, and the counter to the carrier group is to come up with a way to hit it with as much spam as possible. The carrier group survives on the back of patrolling aircraft and AWACs detecting these threats coming in and attacking them as early as possible.
However, in theory if you could spam enough you will take down the carrier. Like I said, 80s soviet doctrine was to attack with 150 Tu22M bombers carrying 3 fast missiles each. Launched as a simultaneous volley it should be enough to take down the carrier.
The counter was the F-14 armed with the AIM-54 Phoenix. Scrambled early enough and fired quickly enough, the fleet defence fighters should be able to kill enough incoming bombers to reduce the amount of incoming missiles to levels the ships can deal with.
But obviously once you're out of missiles, you're out. Thats why I think your drone swarm comments make the most sense
Lasers due to basic physics offer potential that is on par with nuclear weapons, however high power lasers are too big to be used as weapons ( I'm talking about the ones used for fusion experiments, they're the size of a building ).
A laser with a range of 50-100km would be enough to change M.A.D. Doesn't matter if it's the size of the James Webb Telescope, there would still be an incentive to build such a weapon. If something like this existed it would be all over the news honestly.
Nuclear ignition lasers are completely different and useless as weapon. They're optimized for ns and below pulses.
They don't have the average power or efficiency (in most situation worse than 1kw for high-repetition rate lasers, efficiency of 0.2% for NIF) to destroy targets -ignoring the thermal blooming and ionization-.
currentyear laster weapons have a 2 mile range
>The mongols used to run the world with land armies
For one generation what kind of historically illiterate nonsense is this? Cavalry dominated the world before the Mongols and it dominated it after, and naval power was the number one indicator of a successful empire prior as well as after. A brief and unsuccessful outlier does not change that. Historians have been talking about how powerful and game changing a navy is since the end of the Greco-Persian war at least to our knowledge, they likely were talking about it prior to that as well.
It wasn’t until the Spanish and Portuguese empire that navies became the dominant strategic military force. In the times before that it was always the largest army that ran most of Europe. Britain was really the first country that had a relatively small army but with a dominant navy were able to become the richest and most powerful country in Europe. But in today’s world can conventional carrier group fleets really withstand mass barrages of guided missiles and drones? They haven’t truly been put to the test in combat many decades now, and the capabilities that exist today are a whole different universe from where they were the last time they saw real action. Look at some of the stuff ukraine has been able to achieve against Russian ships. It’s just too easy to strike them now
>It wasn’t until the Spanish and Portuguese empire that navies became the dominant strategic military force.
Roma was built around the naval transport. They couldn't expand too far away from watercourses and seas close enough (Arabia, Mesopotamia, Germany).
Water is the most efficient way to move heavy things. Spanish and Portuguese empires rely on new developments to overcome the "old limits", aka going PLVS VLTRA
>It wasn’t until the Spanish and Portuguese empire that navies became the dominant strategic military force.
But that's fucking wrong you dipshit. Rome was a naval power, so was Carthage, so was Ancient Egypt, so were the Greeks, and the Persians, and the goddamn Chinese. You're wrong. You are wrong. You're not even quoting historical revisionism you're just wrong about basic history.
Kek were you in the navy or something? It’s basic history that Rome was primarily a land empire. Sure they had a significant navy but it played second fiddle to the army, which was by far the largest in the world. Totally unlike the British empire which had a modest army compared to its rivals but dominated primarily via its naval power. Navy in the ancient world was pretty much entirely used to control sea lanes, ram enemy ships and help out with a land armies logistics, they couldn’t attack and destroy distant targets with high-powered long range weapons.
have a nice day retard holy fuck, you're so dumb you're falling for Roman propaganda about how Rome was so bad at ship warfare but despite that they beat a naval power. You are literally quoting ROMAN PROPAGANDA FROM THE FIRST PUNIC WAR
THIS NIGGA AIN'T EVEN HEARD OF GREEK FIRE
My point is that the balance of power shifted from the whoever had the biggest army regardless of their naval power, over to whoever had the greatest naval power regardless of their army strength. This happened because ships became much more seaworthy and lethal during the early modern era. At that point whoever had the biggest navy could level any coastal city or fortress in the world without even having to leave their ships. Navies weren’t able to do that kind of stuff in the ancient world.
No your point is you're wrong and don't know anything about basic history. Or do you think WW1 was won because the British sailed into Berlin with land battleships? Hey buddy, how do you think the huge Roman army supplied itself exactly? Why do you think the Empire followed waterways?
That’s what navies were for back then, logistical support of the army. It was an important role but it’s not the role navies would later grow into. If a coastal province revolted in the Roman Empire the army would usually need to go stamp it out. They couldn’t simply level fortifications with ship-launched weapons back then. Compared to the later time of the modern era where massive force projection at long range is possible.
The navy was the best way to project air power for a long time so it was still dominant even after air power became primary. The problem for it now is that weapons have gotten a lot better at destroying ships. As long range guided weapons become more plentiful the massive and expensive platforms for launching conventional airpower become drastically less survivable. This is true for airfields too. Weapons that can deploy at long ranges from far smaller and cheaper platforms become the obvious meta
>That’s what navies were for back then, logistical support of the army. It was an important role but it’s not the role navies would later grow into
The role of a navy has been exactly the same in 3000 BC as it is today. You further show off your ignorance. Can you name a single time when solely ship based weapons caused an end to conflict that wasn't the British beating up some tribals? Every single peer conflict as required either a strong land army or a strong land army and a strong navy.
I’m not saying the British army did nothing during the British empire, I’m saying that the British were able to be the most powerful country in the world without actually having the world’s strongest army. That simply wasn’t true for Rome.
Realistically a 110 pound warhead hit in the right spot would cause enough damage to make launching a 100,000 million dollar jet off the runway very risky without performing some major repairs. There’s no reason they can’t put shaped charges in them either. It doesn’t have to be some gaping hole in the runway, just a serious enough deformation of an area of the runway along the path of a launching aircraft’s landing gear.
You've still got multiple catapults to hit in order to fully disable sortie ability. Not to mention all of this is predicated on getting through the CSGs air defenses in the first place. A CSG doesn't have unlimited magazine depth, but it's not some trivial forgone conclusion that a drone swarm could not only penatrate the air defense coverage, but ALSO score a direct hit on the carrier catapults.
Also the USN is specifically doing R&D on HELs and HPMs to counter anti-ship missiles, hypersonic missiles, and drones. Also the army HPMs designed to counter drone swarms are equally capable of being fielded by the navy integrated into the ships' combat systems.
It's not a viable strategy excepting some specific preplanned sneak attack.
The British were never the most powerful country in the world. They knew that. Which is why they spent so much time and money fostering alliances with countries stronger than them like France and the US despite all countries involved being on literally fought wars for hundreds of years against each other terms. Ironically, the only country they were on good not fighting a war terms with, Germany, is the one they ended up forming an alliance against.
I dunno mang, the bong navy was pretty rediculous at points
>During its history, the United Kingdom's forces (or forces with a British mandate) have invaded, had some control over or fought conflicts in 171 of the world's 193 countries that are currently UN member states, or nine out of ten of all countries.
>A total of 65 countries celebrate their independence from the British Empire/United Kingdom, or one third of all countries
>Weapons that can deploy at long ranges from far smaller and cheaper platforms become the obvious meta
That's called an airplane. Range is the problem. A large, expensive aircraft can have a huge fuel fraction to massively extend the range of the relatively cheap, relatively short ranged ordnance it delivers by flying slowly and efficiently, while still managing to be survivable thanks to all of its expensive sensors and communications equipment and the reactivity to threats of its pilot (compared to a drone or cruise missile).
There's a reason "carrier killer" weapons are all fuckhueg. They have to be able to reach the CSG in the first place without getting pummeled, and fast enough to have a reasonable chance of avoiding interception. This makes them expensive, and also single use. The airplane will always be more efficient on a per use basis, provided you can afford the infrastructure. The airplane is actually the real cheap option, because it is recovered and the expended ordnance is the only thing lost, not the entire platform on every attack.
you keep saying
>weapons have gotten a lot better at destroying ships
>long range guided weapons have become more plentiful
But I'm not sure how true these statements are to begin with. Anti ship missiles have gotten faster, and stealthier, but also more expensive, and less numerous. Equally, the ships have becoem better at defending agianst them. You're still in the same battle you were back in the day, which is volume of fire
>balance of power shifted from the whoever had the biggest army regardless of their naval power
air power is the deciding factor and has been for 80 years, dummkopf
Carriers are important only bc they but air power closer to the contested area
>Rome was a naval power, so was Carthage
Rome won naval engagements against Carthage by going
>Navy? That's gay af
Their naval strat was boarding enemy ships and doing their land combat META against sailors
I dont need to attack your dumb fleet, its no threat. You just bypass it and attack whatever targets you want, and if it gets within a few hundred miles you merk it with missiles like any other fleet. If it defends your missiles you wait for it to get within 1 mile to scorch the sides of your ships with its dumbass lasers and you just obliterate the fleet with guns
>A ship that can carry a handful of semi-trailers
a Ford class CVN could carry approximately 1000 semi trailers with standard shipping containers loaded on, and that's just using the hangar and the flight deck, not even counting the magazines
Fleets are already made up of large numbers of smaller, cheaper platforms. The issue with ships is there's a minimum size needed for a blue water fleet, you need a minimum size just to hold the crew and stores, as well as reach a certain speed and even realistically to operate in rough oceans.
You're going to see more weapon systems moutned on more or less the same size of ship, it's unlikely blue water navy ships will get smaller just for the basic size requirement for deep ocean operation. If you think carriers will disappear, then, lol lmao no. The future of drone warfare is going to be fighters master-control'ing a bunch of drones and heavy EW and jamming and all that shit. AI is nowhere close to creating autonomous kill drones, so a lot of warfare is going to be based on human operators of large drone fleets and likely tethered systems and carrier launched ones at that.
>anyone who is capable of launching 10,000 drones
I take it you haven't been to a fireworks show recently, huh?
Its not only possible you can buy the kit to do it off the shelf
>10,000 drones keeping CIWS busy
Launching 10,000 isn't hard.
Launching 10,000 simultaneously is a completely different matter...
The best "saturation" that russia achieved was 20 shaheds+iskander+kinzhal+kalibr+s-300 against a kyiv-patriots. It didn't work.
Gaza shows how hard is deplete SAM defense if your enemy isn't too stupid.
>cheaper
No. More expensive. Lasers have zero relevance. They don't do anything better.
The aircraft are expensive but they are useful for doing the things aircraft do.
A laser boat can be ignored, it has bb gun range and you can just whallop it with swarms of missiles fired from over the horizon
>laser fleet with no aircraft
Whats the point of it? A carrier is a mobile air base. It projects air power to support ground troops. Usually landed on enemy territory by other ships.
A bunch of badly armed ships sat out in out in the ocean can just sit in the ocean, its not a threat to anything, it cant attack fleets, it cant attack jets, it cant project power on shore, its just a pointless array of barges
>lasers allow cheap ships to mot worry about missiles
No they dont, they are equally or even more vulnerable to missiles. You can swarm those ships and drain their batteries just as good
Your stuff about drone swarms makes sense, kinda. Lasers is just like some weird gay fetish you keep trying to wedge into everything
The side that has long range radar planes and drones will beat the side that only has drones
Those people are retarded. Your single laser isn't going to deal with the massed salvos of fast missiles that are gonna come your way.
In the 80s the Soviet doctrine was to attack a carrier group with 100+ TU22Ms simultaneously and have the lob all their missiles at once. You're going to need a lot if lasers
What if as many ships as you could buy for the price of a carrier group were loaded with with as many lasers as possible? Wouldn’t that BTFO of all the missiles and aircraft a carrier group could launch?
The problem with that plan is it reduces the stand-off range of a carrier even more, as well as reducing the armament a plane can take off with. At that point wouldn’t it make more sense to just get rid of manned aircraft altogether and switch to drone carriers built to be as small and cheap as possible?
I assume drones are going to become more vulnerable to electronic warfare. So they would still be less effective than manned aircraft.
All those ships need batteries, those batteries drain, now they're out of "ammo", zero upgrade over existing platform. Make the nuclear and maybe you could run the lasers off direct power, but now your whole fleet is nuclear and costs more than the carrier group you're trying to supplant
Also lasers reduce the stand off range dramatically. Missiles plus awacs means hundreds of miles of potential range, lasers at surface level can only go so far. You wanna merk stuff as far out as possible and reduce the incoming volley as much as you can.
Also pretty sure lasers suck at their extreme long ranges as they need to burn through more atmosphere
I think you need to abandon your dreams of lasers and focus more on drones. Drones good, decoys good, guns good, missiles good, lasers meme
Also your flotilla of lasers is hardly a good trade for a portable air base. Floating in the sea pew pewing at seagulls doesn't provide close air support for supporting troop landings etc.
The more i read it the sillier it is. Firstly carrier groups will NOT always be survivable against anything, and this is cos they carry finite defensive ammo. Nobody has laser armed ships in their carrier groups but if they did they'd have less offensive range than missiles, and the power hungry nature of the lasers would limit their number to the point a saturation attack would still work anyway.
Because of that, aircraft aren't obsolete and neither can a less expensive vessel shoot down all the planes. You can solve the issue posed by a laser boat by not flying near it. All it can hit is what it can see from the surface, whereas the planes can lob sea skimming missiles from way over the horizon without the ship ever seeing the planes. Launch enough planes and lob enough missiles to overwhelm the number of lasers and no more laser boat.
As for drones everyone will be flying them from cartiers soon, and at least the bongs are already working on it. Don't forget suicide drones and the like need big ass warheads, but clouds of decoys would work for draining all the missiles.
I don't think lasers are relevant. Especially as all laser ships need nuke power, thats gonna get pricey
Small drones would do nothing more than scratch it. And it would take probably dozens of cruise missile to actually have a chance at making it sink. With hit's defenses and escorts it would take an absolutely massive strike to actually work. It's questionable any nation could even have that many resources at one point at one time. And the factor completely being ignored is that these weapons need to be launched form somewhere. The airpower on a carrier would just erase any gathering of resources acting as the launch point.
>nothing more than scratch it
That’s all you really have to do to cause huge problems for the actual launching and landing of planes. You don’t have to sink the carrier to cripple its ability to project force. Once it can’t launch planes it becomes far more vulnerable to any subsequent attack and more likely to be hit by a missile big enough to actually destroy it
The US made AN/SEQ-3 laser managed an entire 1 mile of range in 2017.
The bongs followed up with their triumphant TWO mile range laser in 2022. With a purchase cost of 115 million dollars each.
These are able to take down a small drone at that range, spending 2 or 3 seconds on the target to kill it. Assuming the laser can instantly acauire a new target, thats about the same speed of engagement as SM3 missiles which are currently used to attack imbound threats, but those missiles habe a range of up to 1200km.
Right now, and in the near future, lasers are a fucking joke, they suck, they are dogshit, they do nothing, they are nothing.
This is like the "lets turn passenger jets into bombers" shit all over again
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>äää
shut the fuck up, youre in every thread
Meh he's alright, best behaved namefag in years
>best smelling piece of shit in the toilet
hEs aLrIgHt
Aircraft are always going to expand your defensive and offensive range. With modern day technology a carrier can strike targets well over 1000 kilometers away.
You can't blow up a nuclear carrier off your coast because you'll have two nuclear melt downs off your coast
Nuclear carriers are just nuclear powered cargo ships planes can fly off of. Cargo ships are always needed. Nuclear powered ships can haul alot of cargo extremely cheap and very fast
/Thead
>You can't blow up a nuclear carrier off your coast because you'll have two nuclear melt downs
Unironically retarded.
Not wrong. Sinking a carrier would result in at least two nuclear melt downs in large Chinese population centers as retaliatory strikes.
Ford's have 2 reactors that are huge meant for 30 years. They'd probably keep running until the seawater gradually put them out atleast a year those things would kill everything in a 10 k by 50 k tear drop shape. If Iran or Pakistan or China tried that off one of their coast of Persian gulf it would be a cataclysmic. It's why they just sit there and take it.
Bait
>against drone swarms
tiny quad copter drones cant fly hundreds of kilometers to sink a carrier
and they cant carry anti-ship bombs either
>cruise missile saturation bombardments
you mean sub-sonic, low-altitude missiles that can be shot down by CAP?
>and hypersonics
overhyped, apparently the 90s era patriot can shoot them down
and hypersonics actually have less range than regular missiles
>because lasers are getting good enough to shoot them down easily, but wouldn’t that mean that aircraft themselves are becoming obsolete?
the airplane drastically increases the strike range of a naval group
which means greater controlled battlespace which is the end-all, be-all of naval warfare
whoever controls a larger space has greater ability to maneuver and greater ability to have positional advantage
All you are retards. If drones become an issue all it takes is someone to install 2 AWAC "jammers" similar to the Krasukha.
From there all the CV would need to do is point it's two new flashlights at the drones and their circuitry will disolder, melt and catch fire.
It's a thing the ruztards figured out. It's also why NATO AESA panels are starting to also double as jammers. B/C at the end of the day they will "jam" the drones by melting them.
And who has the supplies and armaments to take out a supercarrier? CHINA? have you SEEN a battlegroup?
Not only you lack even the most basic understanding of logistics, time constraints, and OODA loops, but you also fall for bottom of the barrel propaganda such as Pershing-tier "hypersonics".
Lurk 3 days (read: 2 years) before posting again.
So I'm a huge red storm rising fan, and I've been an f-14 fanboy since the early 90s ( thank swatkats and top gun for that). I've read about fleet air defense extensively, and the gist of it is, it's really hard to kill a carrier. And it really hasn't changed much even today.
First, you must find it. This is vastly more difficult than you think. Yes even with satellites. Even IF you get a possible location from a rorsat ( that hasn't already been shot down) then you have to guess where it's going to vector a long range Maritime recon plane out there to get a more accurate and current fix. Then, you've gonna get lots of cruise missiles out to that location. And then you have to be able to race in past the awacs detection range and launch your missiles before you get shot down by the carriers fleet defence aircraft. Then, you better have got a lot launched because the aegis is going to start thinning them out pretty quickly, along with the other ships medium range sam's once they are in more medium range. I know a lot less about the modern aegis capability than the 80s stuff, but iirc it can put out like x3 more sams in the same time frame than the legacy ships. Finally you have close in point defense like CWIS, and to get to OPs point, now potentially laser defence.
In the 80s, it was basically a toss up as to who would win. In the book, the soviets get some hits in but don't sink the carrier and it gets repaired later. In the modern day, I'd say the odds have shifted more in favor of the carrier. The Chinese currently have nowhere near the capability that the soviets had with their mach 2 backfires. Losing the tomcat/Phoenix was a setback for a time, but now that's been finally matched by the rhino and the latest amraams. Plus the aegis is much more capable, and laser point defense really should be game changing if when it's truly operational. And all this analysis tracks with the USNs decisions like retiring tomcat, they knew it wasn't necessary vs CCP.
>that hasn't already been shot down
I doubt any conflict will escalate to ASAT warfare, as that would quickly fill Earth's orbit with debris, making satellites blyat unknown technology for several decades at least.
>hypersonics
No. Laser are too short ranged. An ASBM would already have hit the ship
>a laser of approximately 100 kW could engage [...] a artillery, and mortars
I would like to know how they arrive at these conclusions. I´ve fooled around with lasers and to cut metal, you need quite the focused power. Not just power. An example: With a hobby laser of 100w you can´t cut metal of 1mm thickness, not EVEN half of that actually. Such a laser has a focus of less then 0.1mm. Let´s say for simplifications sake that the power was distributed over 0.1 x 0.1 mm. Then the power density would be 10kw/mm2. You can easily cut metal with a 3kw laser and the fokus of those industrial sytems is good. I´ve ordered parts with cut slits before, they too seem to have a focus of less then 0.1mm. So we might say that their power density is probably around 300kw/mm2.
Now you might say that 100kw is much more then that, but here´s the crutch:
Can they even focus?
Industrial lasers focus over a distance of a few cm or a few inches you might say. Focusing over a variable distance ranging from a few hundred meters to 1-2 km to a single point is impossible. How well can they keep the focus? Do they do that at all or do they just have a main battle distance or something similar? If they can`t get a smaller spot then 10mm, then they can´t reach a higher power density then 1kw/mm2. That is surely not enough to cut into shells. I doubt that it is even enough to damage them.
This quote is about a 2022 test of the 50kW laser being trialed on the Stryker combat vehicle.
> “The Army designed very clear vignettes that they wanted the system to perform against, and we successfully met all their objectives. In the vignettes, the DE M-SHORAD system shot down multiple mortars, demonstrating repeatable success with a high-energy laser in combat-realistic scenarios.”
Did they specify "shot down multiple mortars" or show footage? The admittedly older demonstration vids i saw only showed lasers being able to hit artillery shells in flight (IR-camera vid showing a rather large spot), not actually destroying them.
No footage and even the army only ordered 4 prototypes for testing, so it's not like we're ready to go all in on this shit yet, but if that's what 50kW is doing, 100kW or 150kW is certainly going to be capable.
Watch more old footage from the 00s. Lots of mortar shells exploding midair.
industrial lasers need to burn a clean, tiny hole through sheet metal. Laser CIWS just needs to heat its target until the electronics, the warhead or the hull gives in and melts. You don't need beam focus, just sheer wattage dumped into the enemy
Even industrial lasers need some help (oxygen) to cut steel plates. Aluminum is far harder.
it would be easy to take out an aircraft carrier by anyone large enough to also field an aircraft carrier. its just in that event, the aircraft carriers are the least of your problems. it would be the same as having 20,000 soldiers on wooden boats with zero aa defense.
if anyone actually took it out, you should probably stop worrying about aircraft carriers, and start worrying about nukes.
>What good is a carrier if a smaller, cheaper vessel can easily shoot down all of its planes?
can they detect the planes?