Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rice!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!cbnews!henry@zoo.toronto.edu
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Are Aircraft Carriers Obsolete?
Message-ID: <3353@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 23 Jan 89 02:26:55 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Lines: 40
Approved: military@att.att.com

>...A carrier will almost never be found without a large number
>of escorting ships...  The
>possibility of a submarine or a missile getting through these defenses
>is quite limited.  Granted it CAN happen but the chances are not that
>great.  Even if a missile did get through, the damage it would do to a
>Nimitz class (for example) would not be very great. 

One missile, yes (although one should not forget that the Sheffield was
gutted by a fire started by a missile which failed to even explode).
In a serious war against a prepared opponent, a carrier task force could
expect missiles to come in mass salvos, not one or two at a time.
The effectiveness of the defences against this sort of attack is much
less clear.

>... Phalanx CIWS system.  This system is capable of
>firing 3000 depleted uranium rounds per minute.  It is entirely self automated.

It's never been tested in its normal look-down orientation.  (All major
tests that I'm aware of have put the Phalanx just above the water, a much
more favorable situation.)  And the 3000/minute firing rate is a bit
academic when the standard Phalanx only carries something like 20 seconds'
worth of ammunition.  (I forget the exact number, but it's not large.)
Even granted that it fires short bursts, it is not at all unrealistic to
expect it to run out of ammunition quickly when faced with a mass raid.

>In any war in which sea power has played a role, ships have been sunk. 
>In the next war (god forbid), AEGIS equipped ships will go to the bottom
>as well.  This is a fact of war.  One ships or several going to the
>bottom will not change the fact that sea power is something that can
>not be ignored...

Sea power *can* be safely ignored if you can expect to sink much of it
in the first few days of a war.  Current US shipbuilding policy basically
assumes that relatively few ships will be lost, at least in the crucial
categories (carriers, Aegis cruisers), because too few of them are built
to allow for major attrition.  It is insane to be vitally dependent on
a resource which you can count on your fingers.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu