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From: dand%tekigm2.men.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Dan C Duval)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Are Aircraft Carriers Obsolete?
Message-ID: <3331@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 21 Jan 89 02:05:38 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Lines: 221
Approved: military@att.att.com

This is one of my favorite topics, so I'll give it a go-around. Please forgive
me if I bring up a bunch of semi-technical type stuff. I'm also going to
rearrange the order in which the points were made.

>What is the reason for having aircraft carriers?  Aren't they a total waste
>of money? ...
>Aren't capital ships and carrier battle groups as obsolete as horse cavalry?
>Don't people remember HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales?  How about 
>HMS Sheffield and Gen. Belgrano?  Do you actually have to send an AEGIS ship
>to the bottom in order to prove sea power obsolete?  Or would even that
>be enough?

First of all, let's establish that ships will never go away. They are the
cheapest way of hauling bulk cargos from one point to the other and the
most efficient in terms of tons moved per mile per unit energy. If you discount
any one of those three terms -- tons, miles, or energy-unit -- there are better
ways than ships to move things. But all three taken together, ships will be
the most efficient, though slow, of course. So there will be ships. 

Modern war is not so much war upon civilians (though it appears that way) as
it is upon the opponent's ability to produce weapons and use those weapons.
The fact that armies and navies fight each other is more a matter that each is
trying to keep the weapons of the other side from interfering with the flow
of weapons, manpower, and materiel into their own sides forces. In other words,
a submarine which is prosecuting a war would prefer to attack a warship only
because that warship will prevent the sub from attacking merchant vessels;
otherwise, it is better for the attacking nation to interfere with the merchant
vessels of the other side and even the survival of the sub is lower priority
than destroying the productive capacity of the enemy (though I imagine that the
crew has a somewhat different point of view on this.) This is the war of
attrition. Warriors would like to think there is some glory in this, knight
fighting knight and the like, but it is really nothing more glamorous than
kicking your opponent in the groin in order to win. Thus, ship will fight ship.

The submariners will try to tell you that everything that floats is a target
and that it is only a matter of time before everything on the surface has been
sunk. However, if a Sea King or LAMPS II scatters a pattern of actively-pinging
sonobuoys around, the sub will evade -- read that as: run away. And nothing
will put sweat on the lip of a bubblehead faster than suggesting that an
enemy sub is hiding in the bubblehead's prop wash.

The surface ships which carry the ASW (Anti-Submarine Warfare) helicopters
will be of every size from barges to supercarriers, the larger ships having
the capacity to carry more helicopters, more fuel and weaponry, and better
repair facitilies. More helicopters that operate more often make a better
protection from submarines than the one machine operating from a barge,
making only one one-hour scan every four to five hours. The modern supercarriers
can operate ASW helicopter patrols 24 hours per day for the better part of a
week.

The problem is that helicopters are easy targets to gunfire and missiles from
enemy aircraft and ships. So the fleet carries anti-air and anti-surface
weapons of various sorts, with the fixed-wing aircraft being the most
versatile and the ones with the longest reach. Piloted weapons are reusable and
can use better discrimination about which target to hit, but the unpiloted
fixed-wing aircraft (cruise missiles, for instance) are somewhat cheaper per
unit, though more expensive per use. Multiple weapons are kept in the inventory
to meet different needs and to prevent the enemy from coming up with a
single, effective countermeasure.

Land-based air advocates have claimed the death of the navy since airpower
started (Gen. William "Billy" Mitchell, for instance, during and just after
World War I.) Naval airpower has proved itself time and again to be better
because: 1) it is there (land-based planes take hours to arrive at the battle
scene when called; compare this with the ready-5 aircraft on a carrier, ready
to be on-station within five minutes); 2) it can stay there (an F-15 at the end
of its range might have only a 5-minute limit on how long it can engage; the
F-14 launched from a carrier deck can stay over the carrier for 2.5 hours or
until its weapons require reloading, whichever happens first); and 3) it is
more efficient in terms of aircraft to provide fleet cover (a carrier-based
aircraft which spends three hours over the battle group would have to be replaced
by three land-based planes which required two hours to get to the battle group
and each supplied only one hour's cover.) Combine all these together and it
is clear that the carrier-based aircraft can provide more planes over the group
for a longer time when they are needed than can a comparable number of land-based
aircraft.

The question then is, how long can a carrier survive in combat?

>In a global conflict, the aircraft carriers would all be destroyed immediately
>by missiles.  A missile costs a lot less than an aircraft carrier.
>
>In a conflict against an industrialized nation, like Argentina, capital ships
>must stay far away to avoid being hit by a Silkworm or an Exocet or even a
>torpedo.

Let's rule out the use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons will most certainly
spell the end of any surface force, so I will grant that naval forces are
useless in a nuclear war. But then again, so is everything that has ever existed,
so it becomes a moot point.

Let's make it clear that we are talking about the US Navy, as it is the only
real carrier force in the world. Note that both France and the USSR are trying
to make themselves major players in the carrier game as well.

Let's also make it clear that the only military force capable of giving the
US Navy a run for its money is the navy of the Soviet Union. Even the blue-water
navies of France and Britain could only damage the US fleet, not really destroy it.

The Soviet Union poses essentially two major threats on the US Navy: the
nuclear attack submarines and combined missile-air strikes. As far as the
submarines go, the US Navy has frigates, aircraft (helos and fixed-wing),
and other submarines to counter these. Whether all this will be effective or not
in actual combat is not known.

For the aircraft threat, a number of things are done by the US Navy which are
not done by any other navy in the world. US carriers carry E-2C Hawkeyes to
start the air defense of the battle group far away, backed by F-14s armed with
the Phoenix missile, a stand-off weapon with a 100-mile range. Mid-range air
defense will be left to the Aegis systems, backed by Standard SM-2 and
RAMs (Rolling Airframe Missiles). Close-in defense will be handled by the
Phalanx systems.

In the Falklands, the British had a severe disadvantage against the
Argentine air attacks in that they had little early warning of air attacks.
Ships set out between the mainland and the Falklands to act as radar pickets
came under heavy attack, the same as the radar pickets used at the end of
Word War II by the US Navy. Their small carriers could not carry any sort of
AWACS aircraft and their closest land base was too far away for any land-based
air-search aircraft. The US Navy carries its AWACS aircraft with them, allowing
both the early warning of an air attack and the possibility of coordinating
the response to that attack.

The Soviet Navy will have to rely upon a massive strike (overwhelm the defenses
sort of attack) on a US battle group in order to get through to the ships. (This
is also about the only shot their ships and planes will have before both arms
have to go back to port/base to rearm.) This is what the Aegis systems were
designed to handle (not lone airliners). If they are able to do the job in combat,
we win. If not, there is still some question about how badly damaged the
battle group will be. As Bill Thacker said, the carriers will be able to
sustain some level of damage. How much? I don't know. The Navy doesn't know. The
Soviets don't know. I'm hoping there will never be an experiment under actual
combat conditions carried out between the two forces.

Because of the Falklands and the _Stark_ hit, some people have claimed that
the Exocet prevents hostile naval forces from operating anywhere near them.
Most of these people are those who build and/or sell the Exocet, mind you.
Note also that what has been proved by these incidents is that the Exocet
seems to work fine against ships which do not have or are not operating their
Close-In Weapons Systems (CIWS). The British frigates had no CIWS (their
ships have subsequently been armed with Phalanx first and recently upgraded
with the Goalkeeper CIWS.) The _Stark_ has Phalanx, but it was kept in Standby
mode, unable to fire. Neither of these situations is likely to occur in a
US-USSR knockdown-dragout: US Navy vessels have Phalanx and in a combat situation
they will be armed and operating (the Rules Of Engagement will not be the same
as those the _Stark_ was operating under.)

The sinking of the _Prince of Wales_ and the _Repulse_ showed that aircraft
could sink major warships (people didn't believe it up to that point.) The use
of the Exocet against the British ships off the Falklands showed that defenses
against missile attacks were necessary, on virtually all warships (people
didn't all seem to think so up to that point.) One thing that we can see from
history is that ships sink and weapons change and newer and better ships are
built. Individual ships become old and/or obsolete (some even as they are
built, such as the USS _Vesuvius_). But the concept of the warship has lasted
for several millenia and, except for a completely indiscriminate destroyer
like nuclear weaponry, I expect the concept to last for a little longer, at least.

One last note, on the revival of the battleships. In World War II, the battleships
_Yamato_ and _Musashi_ each required about 10 torpedos and 5+ armor-piercing bombs
(the _Musashi_ took 17(!) 1000lb. bomb hits) to sink them. The US _Iowa_ class
vessels are considered to have a comparable protection system (armor and
compartmentation). If one of these battleships took the same two missile hits
that the _Stark_ did, in the same place on the ship, the missiles (one of which
did not explode) would have impacted on 12 inches of hardened armor plate,
rather than on the unarmored skin of the frigate. Not to mention that the
Exocet is not an armor-piercing weapon. The general assessment is that the
current generation of sea-skimming missiles will not penetrate the armor of
the four battleships, allowing them to go places and absorb damage that other
ships could not do.

For instance, if we assume that the Soviet 533mm torpedos are roughly equivalent
to the US 22" torpedo of World War II in hitting power and that the SS-N-19
missile can do about the same amount of damage as the 1000lb armor-piercing
bomb, then if a Soviet _Akula_ class attack sub were to fire it six torpedos
tubes, reload, and fire six more and -- at the same time -- a Soviet
_Kirov_ class cruiser were to deliver its load of 20 SS-N-19s on that same
target, AND ALL OF THOSE TORPEDOS AND MISSILES HIT, the battleship would sink.
In other words, it would take two of the Soviet Union's most powerful warships
to sink one battleship, even if every weapon were a hit and both of the
attackers were allowed the time to get all of their weapons away.

One reason the battleship has a place in current naval warfare is because
the scale of battle has changed. More than four hundred aircraft were used
to attack the _Yamato_ (and these planes were available for a strike every day);
it would take the entire inventory of guided-missile cruisers and guided-missile
destroyers in the Soviet navy to deliver 400 missiles (and each missile could be
used only once.) Granted, the missiles are smarter today but so are the defenses.

All in all, the battleship is not invulnerable -- given enough time to work on
it, it can be sunk -- but it is much more survivable than any other warship
in existence today. And each battleship carries 48 missiles each, twice the
ordnance load of their nearest competitors (the Soviet _Kirov_ class cruisers.)

>Only in a conflict with a third-world nation, like Lebanon or Libya, can 
>sea power have any effect.  And the same effect can be provided by long-range
>land-based bombers.  In the assassination attempt against Khadaffi, our land-
>based bombers actually had enough range to detour around the Iberian
>peninsula and fly over the Strait of Gibraltar!

This is false on its face. To counter the US Navy, the Soviets have built one
of the most powerful blue-water fleets that ever existed. Rather than relying
on just their attack submarines, they are building super-carriers. Rather than
building hordes of small missile boats, they have been building large missile
cruisers and missile destroyers. In other words, they are building a navy that
is very much like the US Navy in its composition and mix of ship types.

Now, if a nation with a strong maritime tradition, such as the US, France, or
Britain were expanding their fleet, we could claim that they were letting
past glories blind them to the realities of naval warfare. But the USSR is
not a long-time naval power. Their best-known naval adventure ended in an
inglorious defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1902. Yet, a nation who
has traditionally depended upon their strong land army and land-based air force
spent the better part of the last two decades building a blue-water navy.
I expect it is because they see some value in warships and they do not believe
that airpower has made the naval warship obsolete.

Dan C Duval
dand@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM

I'll put my soap-box away for a bit, now.