Anti-Carrier Trump Card

seriously, carriers are sitting ducks. and missile defence is so overrated. even if it does work, just use more missiles and the thing is 100k ton of sea polluting junk...

so back to the topic about what the ANTI-CARRIER TRUMP CARD is...

id say its the cruise missiles and subs

chopsticks said:

seriously, carriers are sitting ducks. and missile defence is so overrated. even if it does work, just use more missiles and the thing is 100k ton of sea polluting junk...

so back to the topic about what the ANTI-CARRIER TRUMP CARD is...

id say its the cruise missiles and subs

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Cruise missile and sub threat against carriers are overrated.

I would love to see you explain how you can get targeting info on the carrier without having your recon asset destroyed before they can even know where the carrier is.

I don't believe there is a trump card in the sense that with relatively small investment you can destroy an american carrier. I've said it before, there's no silver bullet, no one huge weakness that's readily open to exploit.

There's two main ways to go about it. Either take a high tech, expensive route, also route that is uncertain and that might take decades, where the goal is to have technology superior than what the carrier has prepared for. Or you use whatever level of lower tech systems in accordance with huge numbers to overwhelm the defenses. Such approach takes less time to prepare and is more certain. It can again be approached from two sides - less human losses to achieve the goal and much higher money cost, or big numbers of humans for a relatively small amount of money. Humans would there play the role of computer/navigation/sensor/targeting/etc. It all depends on what you can, as a country that is attacking a us carrier, afford yourself.

Locating and targeting goes the same way. it can be done with relatively low tech systems too, you just have to have a damn big number of them and be prepared for big losses.

Something else now, seemingly off topic but not really, i'll explain later. I've tried to get an answer on defencetalk forum but no one did answer. anyway. Is there a two-way datalink system that can't be properly jammed if the transmitter and reciever are close enough? I'm not talking just radio waves, any kind of data link, from laser to soundwaves to physical shockwaves to whatever you can think of. Also, what would be that distance where the link cant be jammed in todays war enviroment for your proposed system? Any kind of actual physical link is out of the question, though.

I posted this before. I have some Questions. I have been going thru the post histroy. I have notice that many agreed that the US Carrier Groups are infallable and that they are a major balance to the Chinese offense against Taiwan.

While I agree they are very capable, but don't Aircraft Carriers can only launch a major offensive on the first sortie. Subsequent actions of, refueling, reloading, recovery of aircraft and launching will deminish the effectiveness drastically ?

Do their fighters actually think they can shoot down 5 to 10 enemy fighters with enemy AWAC support ? I don't remember any instance where that has happened. In order to keep their carrier save, their aircraft needs to fly quite a distance. Their loitering time on station is very limited and targets will likely be specific.

Basic Design of Aircraft carriers are not very different from those of WWII. Maybe the engine types, engine housing, CWS, improve efficiency. Is recall yorktown and other japanese carriers were sunk with just a few medium bombs. It was their fuel and internal munitions that sunk them. Don't the modern carriers have that problems too. Especially laden with JP-5.

chopsticks said:

seriously, carriers are sitting ducks. and missile defence is so overrated.

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Well, apparently it is so overrated that every major nation that is adversarily inclined towards the US has been trying to crack the problem for fifty years and none of them have been able to do it yet.

The US Navy is prepared for any conceivable, known technology in the ASW or ASM fields right now. Either the adversary has to come up with something that is not prepared for (and super-cavitating weapons copuld represent such a threat), or be willing to lose virtually their entire navy or airforce to get through to a single carrier battle group.

Then they would be facing eleven more that would be coming at them with a serious bit in their mouth.

Of course the other possibility is to go nuclear (if they can target the carrier), but that would play to an even larger US advantage.

Basic Design of Aircraft carriers are not very different from those of WWII. Maybe the engine types, engine housing, CWS, improve efficiency. Is recall yorktown and other japanese carriers were sunk with just a few medium bombs. It was their fuel and internal munitions that sunk them. Don't the modern carriers have that problems too. Especially laden with JP-5.

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Are you kidding? A Nimitz class is triple the weight of any USN CV from WW 2.And its armoured. WW 2 CV's had teak wood flight decks. And very little armor. They had virtually no safety rules reguarding the handling of ammo.

Yes those WW 2 CV's were sunk with a few bombs and dozens of secondary explosions.

I've posted this before and here I go again,...On all modern USN Cv's (59 and up) have armored flight decks, Hangar decks. The Hull is armored from the water line down. On a Nimitz class the nuke reactors compartments are armoured with 16" armour. So are the magazines. The redundacy of the compartmnets and water tigh intregity of a USN CV would have to be seen to be believed.

There are full sprinkler systems on USN CV's along with other redundant fire fighting systems. Among them light water and full fire mains. Every sea going sailor in the USN from an Admiral to a seaman is trained in fire fighting and damage control.

You mentioned the JP-5 fuel used on board. It is a hazzard. But the USN has countered that with numerous safeguards. Among them numerous overboard discharges and safety valves.

All the safety systems on a CV work in unison with each other through monitoring through Damage Control Central.. None of these sort of safety features was available during WW 2.

There have been two major fires aboard USN CV's since WW 2 involving the explosion of bombs on the flight deck. Those ships Forrestal and Enterprise survived to operate again. The Enterprise is still in comission. the Forrestal was decomissioned in 1992. Check out these links for more info.





As a testimony to the USN improvement in overall safety training there has been no repeat of the these sort of destructive fires since these fires occuired in the late 60's.

IDonT said:

Cruise missile and sub threat against carriers are overrated.
I would love to see you explain how you can get targeting info on the carrier without having your recon asset destroyed before they can even know where the carrier is.

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Possible to do with satellites (if you have one overhead), or if the carrier group is near major sea traffic lanes, spying via civian ships.

Cruise missiles can be pre-programmed to fly to a map coordinate and use radar/optical imaging to search for targets. The next generation of cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles are likely to have stealth & anti-missile defense avoidance capabilities:


Since this is all hypothetical, we can only guess on their performance.

However the one thing that would absolutely sink a carrier, or even the whole battle group, is your nation's economy and its ability to pay for & support the navy. Had the Soviet Union not fell apart, the Russians would probably be operating a carrier battle group with 2 x 85,000 ton carriers today:


The USN today is the world's largest and most powerful navy. But its continued existence and survival is dependent on the US economy. If something catastrophic occurs and the US enters a long recession, there'll be a lot of pressure on cutting military expenditures. I think that was one of the themes in Tom Clancy's novel "Debt of Honor".

If memory serves, Tom Clancy also had a Japanese airline pilot crash his 747 into the US Capital, wiping out the US government. This book was published prior to 9-11. Errie, huh?

the best way to defeaT a carrier is to isolate it from its escorts. mutiple fleets can decoy. but there isn one way to deafeat a cvbg other than nuke it. im not saying its invincible. a variety of methods combined can take it on.
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a cvbg is impossible to sink, so why not rmove it from the battle instead? lure it away, or set upo certain obstacles to force it on a certain route. let it get lost when a typhoon hits. thats what the americans did to overly foirtified jap islands in ww2. rather than invade, just isonlate the garrison

MIGleader said:

the best way to defeaT a carrier is to isolate it from its escorts.

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Not going to happen, unless you destroy those escorts. They will operate as a team with the principle goal of defending the carrier. The configuration and position of the group is designed to be mutually supportive and layerd in protecting the carrier. The cost to destroy them and then get through to the carrier would be great indeed.

MIGleader said:

so why not rmove it from the battle instead? lure it away

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The Japanese effectively did this during the Battle of Leyte Gulf and achived their goal of letting their principle surface combatants in another task force to get very near the US anchorage off Samar (where the completely botched the opportunity when small American escort carriers and a few destroyers drove them off-that is a great story to read and can be found in Samuel Eliot Morison's, "The Two Ocen War".)

But the "lure" was four of their carriers, with only 116 aircraft...opposed to Halsey's large carrier task force with over 700 aircraft on board. But it was still enough to get the US carriers to come out to confront them.

The "lure" worked...but at horrific cost to the Japanese. The outcome was obvious. All four of the principle carriers were lost, along with many of their escorts.

I do not believe the PLAN has that type of lure to offer, or to risk.

Jeff Head said:

The Japanese effectively did this during the Battle of Leyte Gulf and achived their goal of letting their principle surface combatants in another task force to get very near the US anchorage off Samar (where the completely botched the opportunity when small American escort carriers and a few destroyers drove them off-that is a great story to read and can be found in Samuel Eliot Morison's, "The Two Ocen War".)

But the "lure" was four of their carriers, with only 116 aircraft...opposed to Halsey's large carrier task force with over 700 aircraft on board. But it was still enough to get the US carriers to come out to confront them.

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But even with that lure, Halsey still could and should have (and indeed some American admirals including Nimitz thought he actually had) dispatched his battleships to cover the San Bernardino straight. Had he done that, the Japanese force would have been met by four modern battleships, each with blindfire radar fire control.

Given the very poor performance of the Japanese against the CVE escorts (a mere six destroyers and four destroyer escorts fought on the American side) it seems rather likely that 16 inch gunfire would have totally defeated them.

The "lure" worked...but at horrific cost to the Japanese. The outcome was obvious. Three of the carriers were lost, along with many of their escorts.

I do not believe the PLAN has that type of lure to offer, or to risk.

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All four carriers got sunk, and the rout was so complete that a number of Japanese ships got caught and sunk by American cruiser gunfire.