Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Shipkillers are cheaper and more plentiful than ships, by far.

[Sheb]

And a fleet of aircraft carriers. Dont forget that Trump sent a fleet of aircraft carriers to Korea.
It would be over in a day

More than a day but carriers ARE basically instant win.

Why would they? I mean, they don't carry that many planes compared to what the USAF could move to land bases in Korea and Japan, and islands don't sink.

[smjjames]

And a fleet of aircraft carriers. Dont forget that Trump sent a fleet of aircraft carriers to Korea.
It would be over in a day

More than a day but carriers ARE basically instant win.

Actually I have also read articles that carriers are surprisingly vulnerable to modern anti ship weaponry.

There's a reason why they have those big carrier groups with them. Though really, it's been since WWII that anybody has actually tried to, so, we won't know for sure until one actually gets hit by said weaponry.

[Dunamisdeos]

And a fleet of aircraft carriers. Dont forget that Trump sent a fleet of aircraft carriers to Korea.
It would be over in a day

More than a day but carriers ARE basically instant win.

Actually I have also read articles that carriers are surprisingly vulnerable to modern anti ship weaponry.

There's a reason why they have those big carrier groups with them. Though really, it's been since WWII that anybody has actually tried to, so, we won't know for sure until one actually gets hit by said weaponry.

They test em' by sinking old ones. Not the same, but they know enough about what will happen.

[Loud Whispers]

Actually I have also read articles that carriers are surprisingly vulnerable to modern anti ship weaponry.

Nah, they're not. No military piece is invulnerable, but US supercarriers are pretty well-guarded. They move faster than most modern submarines, are surrounded in screens of submarines, destroyers, helicopters, jets and satellites all looking for and looking to intercept threats, notwithstanding the carrier's own defences

They're a fire magnet sure, what with them being mobile military bases with unequaled offensive power - to take one down is to score a decent victory. Short of getting a nuclear warhead successfully on one it's pretty difficult

[RedKing]

Except China has been working on anti-carrier weapons and tactics for at least 20 years now. If shit stayed conventional, and it looked like NK was gonna get steamrolled, I could see the PLA (with or without official sanction) handing the DPRK a few under the table to help even the odds (and blunt US force projection at the same time).

If there's an Achilles' heel to a modern carrier group, it's the interconnectedness. Disrupt the communications, info sharing, GPS, ATC, etc. and you go from a finely honed battlegroup to a bunch of boats trying not to hit each other and airplanes having to ad hoc the shit out of things in the middle of the ocean.

[Loud Whispers]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Kinda weird that you've got to factor in the cyber defences now too
Still, I know the UK & USA trains its officers and ratings to operate their ships in the event that everything sophisticated is fucked

[RedKing]

They do, but group coordination is a lot harder than shipboard coordination. How many sailors you think actually remember how the fuck to do semaphore flags or Morse code?

And coordinating with flights in the air could be a nightmare if comms were disrupted. My guess is that SOP would be for those squadrons to abort and head for the nearest friendly landing strip.


EDIT: In non-armchair general news today, the FBI raided Paul Manafort's home today.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[smjjames]

They do, but group coordination is a lot harder than shipboard coordination. How many sailors you think actually remember how the fuck to do semaphore flags or Morse code?

And coordinating with flights in the air could be a nightmare if comms were disrupted. My guess is that SOP would be for those squadrons to abort and head for the nearest friendly landing strip.

What if the nearest friendly airstrip in range (accounting for fuel) is the ship itself? I'm sure they train for all kinds of situations, including a loss of communication.

[Loud Whispers]

They do, but group coordination is a lot harder than shipboard coordination. How many sailors you think actually remember how the fuck to do semaphore flags or Morse code?

In the UK they're trained to do everything manually (manually is the wrong word but you get what I mean) without sophisticated electronics by standard (including ship and air coordination), with the logic being that since the sophisticated stuff is easier, it means they'll be much more capable of using it under stress. And if it's all broken, they can still operate with all their training. USA should then be even more advantaged in that because they've got so much more personnel per ship than anyone on the planet, the redundancy and division of labour made possible would be astonishing to any other nation. So a disastrous situation, but not one that would end US operations

And coordinating with flights in the air could be a nightmare if comms were disrupted. My guess is that SOP would be for those squadrons to abort and head for the nearest friendly landing strip.

They'd probably not land what with disrupted comms being a sign of enemies and enemies turning landed planes into dead planes
But yeah the threat is not theoretical, check this out:

Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.
Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.

They just fucked up the UAV's GPS and that was that

[RedKing]

They do, but group coordination is a lot harder than shipboard coordination. How many sailors you think actually remember how the fuck to do semaphore flags or Morse code?

In the UK they're trained to do everything manually (manually is the wrong word but you get what I mean) without sophisticated electronics by standard (including ship and air coordination), with the logic being that since the sophisticated stuff is easier, it means they'll be much more capable of using it under stress. And if it's all broken, they can still operate with all their training. USA should then be even more advantaged in that because they've got so much more personnel per ship than anyone on the planet, the redundancy and division of labour made possible would be astonishing to any other nation. So a disastrous situation, but not one that would end US operations

They've also got the problem of using Americans. 

"All our networks are down. You remember what a blue-and-white diamond flag means?"
"Let me Google it...oh....wait..."

I'm sure they are trained at some point in manual operations for comms, I'm just not confident that they'll retain that knowledge.

On a more serious note, as your story about the UAV in Iran shows, there's a ton of automated systems (and newer designs have been heavier and heavier on automation to reduce the number of personnel) that they could subvert rather than just disable. Air-defense systems suddenly rejecting IFF and firing on friendlies, for example.

I can't help but think about the pilot for the new Battlestar Galactica. And that's how America will be saved by a WWII carrier flying museum F4Us.

[smjjames]

Heh, I remember that one, Obama demanded it back and then Iran procceeded to troll the US by offering various colored models of it.

[sluissa]

They do, but group coordination is a lot harder than shipboard coordination. How many sailors you think actually remember how the fuck to do semaphore flags or Morse code?

And coordinating with flights in the air could be a nightmare if comms were disrupted. My guess is that SOP would be for those squadrons to abort and head for the nearest friendly landing strip.

What if the nearest friendly airstrip in range (accounting for fuel) is the ship itself? I'm sure they train for all kinds of situations, including a loss of communication.

Not saying it would never happen, but the Korean peninsula is a pretty crowded area geographically and modern planes have fairly large range. It wouldn't be a problem to fly to South Korea and land there, nor would it generally even be a problem to fly to Japan and land there either. Just try not to aim for China or Russia and you'd be fine (and even they MIGHT understand if NK was acting completely rogue and out of their interests.)

As for remembering morse code and flags, you'd probably be surprised. Especially if you have 4000+ crew on a carrier, you're likely to scrounge up a half dozen or so that do remember to put on the duty.

True jamming of radio communications would be difficult, however. Satellites are targets, of course. China can easily take one down. You could do a decent job over land you control with preparation of equipment to pump out massive amounts of RF energy. You could even do a decent job of annoying a particular target with a directed beam. But once again, short of detonating a nuclear weapon in the area, which would have other issues than simple jamming of the communications, you always have other frequencies and a nuclear powered ship can pump out a lot of RF energy in its immediate vicinity enough to get through any land based jamming and enough to keep a carrier group from bumping into each other. Aircraft might be an issue, but I'm sure they have plans for that, up to and including "Here is your mission, radios won't be an option, use your best judgement outside of mission parameters."

[Loud Whispers]

They've also got the problem of using Americans. 
"All our networks are down. You remember what a blue-and-white diamond flag means?"
"Let me Google it...oh....wait..."

At least 1 keeno would remember

I'm sure they are trained at some point in manual operations for comms, I'm just not confident that they'll retain that knowledge.

Cold war communications stuff is still pretty robust and tolerable for US peeps in the event of their more modern equipment getting fucked

On a more serious note, as your story about the UAV in Iran shows, there's a ton of automated systems (and newer designs have been heavier and heavier on automation to reduce the number of personnel) that they could subvert rather than just disable. Air-defense systems suddenly rejecting IFF and firing on friendlies, for example.

At least the US carrier group would still have effective defence from Phalanx units which by standard don't distinguish between friend or foe and just shoot everything
Although I suppose convincing US air defences that an incoming missile is not a threat would be a nightmare scenario. Not sure if it's possible, but then again I'm not sure it's impossible

*EDIT
I suppose it's also worth mentioning Chinese anti-satellite missile research

[RedKing]

State Department issues a statement saying "The international community is in agreement with the United States".

ಠ_ಠ

"It was a good week for diplomacy."

ಠ_ಠ

"We are all singing from the same hymnbook."

STAHP