Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

[Kampfwagen]

Re: How Do You Sink A Carrier?

Obi-Wan, I'm not here to argue that sinking is what one should do to a ship or just disable it.

I was just curious as to what it would take to sink/disable/render inoperable a carrier, not as to what is the most effective means to handling a carrier. In other words, the how-and-why of disabling it, not if it is a wise descision to do so.

 

[eecsmaster]

Re: How Do You Sink A Carrier?

A nuke. Seriously. Soviet SSNs were equiped with nuclear tipped heavy weight torps just for that purpose alone. The Backfires were equiped with nuclear tipped cruise missiles, and the Sunburn had a 250kt nuke payload.

 

[DarkEminence]

Re: How Do You Sink A Carrier?

Well, cvbg are usually deployed away from the shore to avoid land based fire (no person would harbor his cvbg on the shores of any hostile country unless he is sure he would win. Absolutely sure). I would have to agree and use submarines. I mean sure, if a submarine that was hidden in the water fired anything, within 5 minutes ASW would send the submarine to the repair dock at the bottom of the sea, but if the submarine used Skivals (sp, those fast Russian torpeodoes) not only would the cvbg be more preoccupied about dodging those rounds (there are no SM-3 missiles to use underwater ) there is a good chance that another sub could fire a more devestating and more precise round. I know, Carrier battlegroups routinely use submarine evasive procedures, but it is still worth a try.

 

[bd popeye]

Re: How Do You Sink A Carrier?

Well, cvbg are usually deployed away from the shore to avoid land based fire (no person would harbor his cvbg on the shores of any hostile country unless he is sure he would win. Absolutely sure). I would have to agree and use submarines. I mean sure, if a submarine that was hidden in the water fired anything, within 5 minutes ASW would send the submarine to the repair dock at the bottom of the sea, but if the submarine used Skivals (sp, those fast Russian torpeodoes) not only would the cvbg be more preoccupied about dodging those rounds (there are no SM-3 missiles to use underwater ) there is a good chance that another sub could fire a more devestating and more precise round. I know, Carrier battlegroups routinely use submarine evasive procedures, but it is still worth a try.

The first concern of any sub is how to penatrate the CSG AWS shield. No easy task. If one did penatrate the ASW it would them most likely be on a sucide mission as soon as it released it torpedo.

I too think that a torpedo such as a Russian Skvals or USN Mk48 or MK50 ADCAP could seriously disable a CV or sink a smaller CV or LPH. In fact in a 1992 USN SINKEX the ex-USS Okinawa after being pumlled with air launched weapons and surface naval gunfire was finally sunk by a MK48 ADCAP torpedo.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[renmin]

Re: How Do You Sink A Carrier?

One way could be to take out the escorts with several anti ship missile with incresing #s to bypass Aegis defenses. Then move in with the Submarines. Seriously, attacking any carrier group requires special planning and alot of weapons! Thats why a carrier has escorts!

 

[IDonT]

Re: How Do You Sink A Carrier?

How to sink a carrier? The most popular and heated topic since the creation of the internet base military forums.

There are many factors to take a look at, such as what is the defence posture of the US carrier. This leads too the state of diplomatic affairs between the US and the hypothetical 3rd party, meaning, are they at war?

If open war is the case, then sinking a fully ready carrier is extremely difficult. Finding one in an open ocean, when it is at restricted emmision, is very hard. Your scout will have a very interesting albeit short life, the moment it gets within kill range of the carrier's CAP. Finding a carrier is the prerequisite in sinking it. Most people failed to grasp how important and difficult this task is.

If you look at history, there was only been 5 carrier vs carrier engagement (Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, Santa Cruz Islands, and Philippine Sea) Of the five, except for the Battle of Philippine Sea, the advantage remained on the force that found enemy first. Why? It is a matter of logistics. The attacker can pick the time and place for its attack to begin. Thus, its military assets are concentrated while the defenders assets are disperses. The defender can only send a fraction of its military assets to the specific threat area at a given time. Its other assets are at the carrier, on patrol, or enroute. At the start of the attack, the attacker enjoys relative numerical superiority to the defender.

Shipborne defensive systems, although very good in case of the Aegis equipped USN, are still a second tier defence. Stopping the enemy from lauching its missiles is still the best way of stopping an attack.

An attack on USN carrier that has a chance of success requires MASSIVE military assets that only the regional military powers possessed (Russia, China, India, France, UK). To assemble such an asset for a concentrated attack, these country need to strip other areas (especially large countries like Russia, China, and India) of military hardware. In this regard, this is politically impossible.

Secondly, risking such an large and expensive (politically and monetarily) asset on one attack is very risky. You do not want to put all your eggs on one basket. What happens if the attack succeeds but you lost more than half of your military force? A pissed off US will just bring another carrier against your severely depleted military force. In a worst case scenario, what if your attack failed and you lost a significant part of your military force? What then?

Before we can get into the specifics of "how to sink a US carrier", answer this question first. Can a country afford to attempt to sink a US carrier?

 

[Kampfwagen]

Re: How Do You Sink A Carrier?

Of course not. Unless, from my limited understanding, you have dedicated carrier force yourself and have an equal standing navy with your oponent. But then again, as stated before, that is not the nature of the question. Again, to semi-quote Jeff Goldbloom, The question is wether or not to question if one should, but rather how one could.

Pardon my pickiness.

 

[Roger604]

Re: How Do You Sink A Carrier?

A carrier is a just an airbase. You would attack a carrier at sea as if it was an airbase on land. Find it, overwhelm the defense in numbers, and bomb the remains.

 

[Jeff Head]

Re: How Do You Sink A Carrier?

A carrier is a just an airbase. You would attack a carrier at sea as if it was an airbase on land. Find it, overwhelm the defense in numbers, and bomb the remains.

A mobile air base with more sophisticated defenses than almost any land base I know of.

You have stated a mouthful.

1) Find it. In war time a very difficult taks to do on the high seas.

2) Overwhelm it. You'd better have a huge air force, or an equally expensive naval air arm yourself...and the will to potentially lose a large part of it.

3) Bomb the remains. I believe that the telling blows in an air assault would be from missiles...both air launched and surface to surface....again only if you could reliably locate the carroier, and then overwhelm its defenses.

I personally believe the sub surface threat is the greatest to any carrier strike group and that a nation has as much chance of accomplishing such a mission from that perspective as any other. For the nations who can afford both, the chances of accomplishing a mission kill or an actual kill rise dramatically...but that does not mean any kind of a sure thing...its like rising from a 3% chance to an 8% chance (and those numbers are not meant to be definitive, onluy illustrative), if that nation is willing to take the risk of making the attempt. Because when that attempt is made, win or lose on the single attack, there is going to be hell to pay if it is made against a nation like the US that has eleven more waiting to extract a complete revenge.

A nation would have to be to the point of having a signifcant number of its own carrier task forces and associated at sea and land based assets for defense after the fact, to ever contemplate the attack, successful or not.

Just my opinion.

 

[The_Zergling]

Re: How Do You Sink A Carrier?

I dunno if this has been addressed before...

What countermeasures do carriers have against torpedoes launched from submarines? Putting aside the anti-submarine defenses that are obviously vital, if a sub gets within effective range and fires off a salvo of torpedoes, what are the options of the carrier (battle group) and is the carrier itself designed to (physically) withstand torpedo attacks? Or is there somewhat of a safety net around it?

Thanks.