I think you are seriously overestimating the damage potential of a hypersonic weapon, even one launched from a ballistic missile. If it got real lucky and penetrated one of the reactors resulting in a meltdown, then this may be a possibility, but outside of that you're not going to "mission kill" a supercarrier with a single hit from any weapon that doesn't have the word "nuclear" in the name.
J-35 carrier fighter (PLAN) thread
- Thread starter Deino
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Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Well actually there is a chart that convert mass of 300kg speeding at mach 8 which is equivalent to 1.70 metric ton of TNT. Now this is just kinetic energy not counting any explosive. Once you breach the deck the secondary explosive can be activated
Now how much damage can 1Ton TNT do Here it is I would say it can cause massive damage
Now how much damage can 1Ton TNT do Here it is I would say it can cause massive damage
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Not even scatter bomblet making the carrier runway uneven with potholes(which is extremely unsafe for fighter jet to both land and takeoff) is a "mission kill" forcing it to port for repair?
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Tell that to the Forestall that was nearly lost thanks to a rocket pod.
Yes, if it was just an empty shell, stripped bare and buttoned tight like the infamous US weapons test on the USS America, a supercarrier will be nigh on impossible to kill with a hit from anything (tests done with nukes on warships were surprisingly ineffective actually). Although an IRBM with up to 1ton of HE in the warhead coming in at M10+ will probably give it a pretty good go.
But a crewed and operational carrier will have vast quantities of fuel, munitions and other flammables on board, that generally do not react well to penetration and dentonarions.
The real extra threat from hypersonics compared to conventional missiles is from their extreme penetration potential.
Warships are designed to be able to effectively contain the detonation and fires from a conventional missile to within the small number of compartments hit.
A hypersonic can punch through a far higher number of bulkheads and compartments because of their sheer speed.
That will allow fires and smoke to spread far wider and be much more difficult to quickly contain and bring under control.
You have to also bear in mind that a warship isn’t just steel and plastic. A core component is the flesh and blood crew.
A warship’s hull could be quickly patched up after a hit and fire, but if large numbers of the ship’s crew were killed or injuried from the hit and subsequent fire, that warship is mission killed until it can get in fresh replacement crews.
Similar deal with the radars and other core mission systems. Welding some steel plates to cover the hole in your ship isn’t going to do anything for that radar or C&C center that also got holed and gutted by fire from the hit.
Yep. The whole point of those island bases is to serve as complementary support garrisons for forward deployed strike groups and carrier groups. By themselves they actually don’t do much, but operating with naval battle groups they act as hubs that can enhance persistence and project area control.
Definitely a hypersonic projectile depending on configuration could have great penetrating capability, but a direct hit weapon would be significantly harder to guide on to target than a proximity-fused warhead or a bomblet dispersal warhead, and it is not clear to me that any hypersonic weapons would be direct hit weapons, at least initially. Even if some of them were to be successfully designed this way, you have yet to demonstrate that a hypersonic projectile actually has the ability to mission kill a carrier, either by setting internal fires or killing "large numbers" of crew, the numbers of which you have not specified or quoted any source as being "large" enough to mission kill a carrier. You also forget that a "crewed and operational" carrier is exactly what the Forrestal was, and it wasn't the Zuni that caused all the destruction but the rest of the equipment on the flight deck. So your hypothetical carrier wouldn't be any or more less crewed or operational than the Forrestal was. Third, greater penetration doesn't automatically translate into greater destruction of fuel and weapons inside the ship. Fuel and weapons are stored at the peripheral areas of the carrier, not in the middle. A deep penetration of a hypersonic weapon into the bowels of the ship isn't going to significantly increase the chance of some weapons or fuel getting lit on fire and isn't going to cause nearly as much damage as an explosion on the flight deck.
1.7 tons of TNT translates into what damage against a carrier, exactly? It's nice to see explosions move air and earth but this doesn't translate well into moving hardened steel.
Depends on the extent of damage. I'm sure that with smaller holes they would have the equipment and materials to patch the flight deck. It isn't like the USN doesn't anticipate bomblet type attacks and would be surprised by an opponent who uses such attacks on their carriers.
1)Fair point. But restrictions are high, efficiency is lower than mixed airwings potential. It's especially applicable to operational tempo.
2)You have only this many of them.
3)Short story: yes, if you can allow yourself to have it.
Even in case of forward bases, which become themselves much harder to pin down.
It's what RAF harrier force(and future f-35 force) was about.
4)If we speak about airforce, it actually does.
Air Force has one, not two. They don't need FC-31 in any form. They have hundreds of 4th generation platforms, though, which will also require replacement at some point.
Navy now has 0, but neither of variants at hand really performs what they need.
No offense, but short answer is no. Wrong conclusions because of wrong knowledge.
1.Marine air historically has only one main mission: support of the guys in the ground. They look at everything from this point of view. This is why, say, when navy went with A-7, Marines sticked with A-4. A-7 was many times cooler airplane and light bomber, but not your grunts guarding angel; When navy went hornet - Marines again were "all in", because it allowed them precisely to get what they wanted(excellent strike fighter for their needs in this case); on the other hand, they didn't really care much about Rhino when it appeared, because, well, nothing useful to them for hell lot of a cost.
Harriers have appeared in USMC not because of the navy to begin with. Harriers appeared because moderate attack aircraft closer is better than any shiny aircraft afar. Vietnam experience. USMC Harriers, btw, represent one of the finest CAS formations in the world till today. And not because they can carry many bombs, but because they put the few they have when necessary and where it's necessary.
2)USMC have 35Cs on order. Agreement with a navy.(marine squadrons are always on carriers) But you can't forward base them.
3)a single supersonic cruise missile hit likely meant kill for an US carrier since early 1960s till now. Nothing new here. First you actually have to get this missile into this carrier somehow.
