Modern Carrier Battle Group..Strategies and Tactics

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Hendrik_2000 said:

China is not some 3rd world country . They themselves export jamming system. And there is such thing as secure data link Good luck try to jam this

China's secure communications quantum leap
By Matthew Luce

A team of 15 Chinese researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences, a government-directed research center, in May published a research paper announcing a successful demonstration of "quantum teleportation" (liangzi yinxing chuan) over 16 kilometers of free space.

These researchers claimed to have the first successful experiment in the world. The technology on display has the potential to revolutionize secure communications for military and intelligence organizations and may become the watershed of a research race in communication and information technology.

Although much of the science behind this technology is still young, quantum technologies have wide-ranging applications for the fields of cryptography, remote sensing and secure satellite

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its not just about communications. one of the system could be disable/destroyed. RADR signal are still relative easy to jam. you think US will just sail to china coast with its CVBG without jamming/disable/destroy part of system beforehand. on top of that china has to detect, locate, and track it first. and that part of system can also be destroyed or jammed. there are always weakness in any system. if its wireless, RF etc it can be jammed.

---------- Post added at 10:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:38 AM ----------

Hendrik_2000 said:

WE been thru this before. A commercial satellite operator with only 4 optical satellites can find Ex Varyag with no problem using computer name Eyeball mark1. Now last I heard China has 17(SAR, Optolectronic) Yaogan series and Shijian series Plus god know how many more total 70 satellites with the best integrated system money can buy. so I don't see detection is any problem here. Dunn and Haagt come with the conclusion that China can track a target 5 hr continuously over any spot in western Pacific

What is sauce for the geese is sauce for the gander. China can equally degrade or render useless the US sensor by launching preemptive EMP attack if hostility is started after repeated warning

Read this monograph from 2007 by RAND
Entering the Dragon's Lair
Chinese Antiaccess Strategies and Their Implications for the United States

by
Roger Cliff,
Mark Burles,
Michael S. Chase,
Derek Eaton,
Kevin L. Pollpeter

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EMP Attacks
A number of Chinese writers suggest utilizing EMP weapons to disrupt
the U.S. C4ISR system. One Chinese source (Dai, 1999, p. 272)
describes EMP attacks as including
nuclear EMP attacks and nonnuclear EMP attacks. Nuclear and
thermonuclear explosions create a large EMP effect that can cause
electronic equipment to be overloaded and ruined. This type of
large nuclear EMP can cause electronic systems within hundreds
to over a thousand kilometers to be destroyed. The effective power
of a nonnuclear EMP burst is several million times greater than
those of current jammers (reaching 10,000 MW) and can burn
unprotected and highly sensitive and even complete electronic
equipment (systems) [sic], as well as destroy the normal operation
of computer systems. [authors’ translation]
Another source (Nie, 1999, p. 185) speaks of using EMP weapons
as part of an attack on an aircraft carrier strike group:
We can use the Second Artillery or the Air Force to deliver an
EMP bomb to the enemy’s large naval force to destroy the enemy’s
warning and detection systems, operational command sysPotential
Implications for U.S. Theater Access 57
tems, and other electronic information systems. [authors’ translation]
2
Attacks on Satellites
Space warfare, a subset of information warfare, is also receiving an
increasing amount of attention from Chinese military writers. The
U.S. military’s use of space for strategic reconnaissance, communications,
navigation and positioning, and early warning have highlighted
the importance of space as a force multiplier. In part because of these
observations, Chinese writers have predicted that space power will
develop as airpower has developed, from a reconnaissance force into a
strategic bombing force. Because of this, space is thought to be the next
“strategic vantage point” from which the control of the air, land, and
sea will be determined. According to this logic, the importance of seizing

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they find it by share chance. also how old was that image data. can china track the CVBG in real time. i only quote from the RAND article you post it. and they even said, the SM3 is the last line of defense. before US use SM3, US will try anything to disable chinese system. also most military product has redundancy agains emp attack. as far as i know US still has the best military equipment and resource to disable other countries radar/satelite. CVBG will sail to the range of DF21 before the commander is sure the threat of DF21 is neutrilize by disable system essential for DF21 1st. this can be done with combine force of US air force, NAVY, and other deparment.

US is not gonna allow chinese satelite, OH radar and other system to freely detect/track the carrier

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Let's get back to carriers.
With increasingly defensive roles the numbers of manned aircrafts the air wing will play a reduced role while stand off capability and stealthy observation for precision strikes will increase in importance. One measure could be to operate aircrafts from the carrier as low observeable protected refuelling groups for cruise missiles with aerial refuelling and thus with much extended range. Some of these cruise missiles might even return to a place where they can be recovered.

My idea is precise very long range missile strikes (a kind of super-stand-off-ability), defensive operations of the manned air wing (protecting the surface ships, surveillance gear, aerial tankers and raids by ground forces), intense surveillance and intelligence gathering abilities (including commando forces, satellites and UAV) and a lot of tankers for aerial refueling of cruise missiles with much cheaper engines (it's less load and less risk for an aircraft to watch and carry the fuel for cruise missiles with the warheads than doing the bomb delivery themselves).
The carrier may get a new/old friend, the battleship/large arsenal ship. Both will improve each other's capability and there will be even hybrid systems. While gun artillery of old battleships is not suited for naval warfare any more (and has only limited requirements for amphibious operations), artillery on the new concept battleships/large arsenal ships might still prove highly valuable for space warfare, see project HARP (). It's the cheapest means to send a destructive payload into space to wreak havoc.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

s002wjh said:

its not just about communications. one of the system could be disable/destroyed. RADR signal are still relative easy to jam. you think US will just sail to china coast with its CVBG without jamming/disable/destroy part of system beforehand. on top of that china has to detect, locate, and track it first. and that part of system can also be destroyed or jammed. there are always weakness in any system. if its wireless, RF etc it can be jammed.

---------- Post added at 10:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:38 AM ----------



they find it by share chance. also how old was that image data. can china track the CVBG in real time. i only quote from the RAND article you post it. and they even said, the SM3 is the last line of defense. before US use SM3, US will try anything to disable chinese system. also most military product has redundancy agains emp attack. as far as i know US still has the best military equipment and resource to disable other countries radar/satelite. CVBG will sail to the range of DF21 before the commander is sure the threat of DF21 is neutrilize by disable system essential for DF21 1st. this can be done with combine force of US air force, NAVY, and other deparment.

US is not gonna allow chinese satelite, OH radar and other system to freely detect/track the carrier

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You discuss the ability of China to track and destroy a carrier in her littoral and the US ability to neutralize that ability.
Could the US create a carrier "imitation" that sails in order to trigger DF21 and find out how the whole complex works in order to neutralize it? They could even use the oldest real carrier hull they get their hands on or a converted merchantship of suitable size for that task (with little crew). I have doubts that you can pull off the same trick several times, so DF21 may be an ace up their sleeve, but you can only use it a few times or even just once before the enemy has countermeasures against your system, including more than just the missile.
Even if DF21 is a sucessful littoral area denial system, the SLOC are global and thus China gets cut off from most trade of the world if the US assembles her carriers outside missile range. The role of land based weapons seems slightly overstated.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Kurt said:

You discuss the ability of China to track and destroy a carrier in her littoral and the US ability to neutralize that ability.
Could the US create a carrier "imitation" that sails in order to trigger DF21 and find out how the whole complex works in order to neutralize it? They could even use the oldest real carrier hull they get their hands on or a converted merchantship of suitable size for that task (with little crew). I have doubts that you can pull off the same trick several times, so DF21 may be an ace up their sleeve, but you can only use it a few times or even just once before the enemy has countermeasures against your system, including more than just the missile.
Even if DF21 is a sucessful littoral area denial system, the SLOC are global and thus China gets cut off from most trade of the world if the US assembles her carriers outside missile range. The role of land based weapons seems slightly overstated.

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DF-21D isn't a littoral area denial system, that's the job of 022s. DF-21D is a regional aera denial system.

As for the idea of a replica carrier hull... well first you'll need to convince the chinese it actually is a USN supercarrier, everything from size, looks, EM emissions, acoustic signature (sonar), visual ID need to be taken into account. Then there's the carrier's CVBG in the first place, anywhere up to a dozen destroyers and cruisers which should surround your carrier surrogate. So for this to work you'll need either more destroyer and cruiser surrogates or actually place in real ships.
Let's say the PLA take the bait, what does the opfor gain? If they have their radars and satellites on they can track the trajectory of the missile and possibly get themselves in a better position to defend against the real thing -- but people have tracked each others ballistic missile firings for decades, and we can hardly say that's helped them gain a silver bullet to defend. It'll help, but probably not much espicially if full scale hostilities erupt not long after that first shot is fired (meaning less time to process/put into action the data you collected). What about gaining knowledge of how to disrupt the DF-21Ds sensor feeds? Well if they're tracking chinese satellites while the DF-21D is launched at the carrier surrogate they might understand the role satellites will have to play a little bit better and possibly have info on which satellites in particular are important to the system.
I think assuming that the US can just manage to intefere with electronic transmissions and datalinks is also unbalanced -- why not assume the same conditions for the chinese >_>

---------- Post added at 10:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:13 AM ----------

s002wjh said:

its not just about communications. one of the system could be disable/destroyed. RADR signal are still relative easy to jam. you think US will just sail to china coast with its CVBG without jamming/disable/destroy part of system beforehand. on top of that china has to detect, locate, and track it first. and that part of system can also be destroyed or jammed. there are always weakness in any system. if its wireless, RF etc it can be jammed.

Click to expand...

That depends on the scenario we're lining out.
If you look back a few posts, I put up the scenario a certain island is declaring formal independence and china moves to blockade it with its navy, and warns the entire world (i.e.: the US) that if foreign military vessels come within a set distance (a few hundred kms lets say) such an action will be interpreted as hostile. (Tbh this is the most likely scenario in which the US and PRC can come into conflict for the forseeable future -- taiwan is the highest flashpoint, though you can replace it with a south china seas dispute which would work as well).
At this point, the US wants to send in carriers, but the chinese have repeatedly warned about their DF-21D (and submarines, YJ-62, 022s) will be used against said carriers if they move into the "demilitarized zone".
If the US attacks chinese satellites or OTH stations then it'll amount to a declaration of war anyway, so while it'll be harder for the chinese to use DF-21D to sink USN CVNs, you can expect massive casualties on both sides from the sh*t which hits the fan after -- which could easily amount to greater men lost than the few thousand of hands on a carrier.

they find it by share chance. also how old was that image data. can china track the CVBG in real time. i only quote from the RAND article you post it. and they even said, the SM3 is the last line of defense. before US use SM3, US will try anything to disable chinese system. also most military product has redundancy agains emp attack. as far as i know US still has the best military equipment and resource to disable other countries radar/satelite. CVBG will sail to the range of DF21 before the commander is sure the threat of DF21 is neutrilize by disable system essential for DF21 1st. this can be done with combine force of US air force, NAVY, and other deparment.

US is not gonna allow chinese satelite, OH radar and other system to freely detect/track the carrier

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Then it becomes a question of simply who's better... jeezus no one's saying it'll be easy (or that it's been easy) to put DF-21D into a workable system.

And I think many people are thinking about the actual military details too much -- the simple fact that there is a DF-21D, among the PLA's other A2AD weapons like the 400km YJ-62 AShM, 022s, and AIP SSKs all linked up with a future informationization network, means the US will have to really comprehend the consequences of sailing in the far westpac in a time of high conflict.
In the scenario I lined out above, if taiwan did declare formal independence and the PLAN did move to blockade it, the USN would certainly move in with carriers without a second thought if weapons like DF-21D, YJ-62 SSKs etc didn't exist. But the fact that they do, and that they have the potential to inflict massive casualties on the US side means the US will have to think twice about just how much they value the [sarcasm]freedom[/sarcasm] of taiwan. Sure the US can go ahead and say well we're going to attack your satellites, and OTH stations before we move our carriers into the "demilitarized zone" so it'll be harder for you to track our ships and thus fire your missiles -- but such an act will be equal to declaring war anyway, and in such a conflict between the US and PRC the theatre will be greater than just the seas around taiwan -- in other words, expect massive casualties on both sides. The Chinese public all see Taiwan as something that they are willing to fight for, how about the US public? Having fought in two long, draining wars in the 21st century and now fighting against their nearest peer not to mention banker? Unless you conjure up some major china-hate to overlook the losses and the two country's economic relations I can't imagine the public standing for another war. Because people love to go to war if they can win easily, but start getting butthurt when they see the fight is actually costing them.


----

If the reply to what I said above is "well the US is going to attack chinese satellites and OTH radars anyway to make it harder to fire DF-21Ds even if it means all out war" -- fine then, but by that point all bets will be off anyway.
DF-21D is as much a strategic psychological weapon of deterrence as an ICBM, B-2, or indeed an american super carrier is.

---------- Post added at 10:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:15 AM ----------

Kurt said:

Let's get back to carriers.
With increasingly defensive roles the numbers of manned aircrafts the air wing will play a reduced role while stand off capability and stealthy observation for precision strikes will increase in importance. One measure could be to operate aircrafts from the carrier as low observeable protected refuelling groups for cruise missiles with aerial refuelling and thus with much extended range. Some of these cruise missiles might even return to a place where they can be recovered.

My idea is precise very long range missile strikes (a kind of super-stand-off-ability), defensive operations of the manned air wing (protecting the surface ships, surveillance gear, aerial tankers and raids by ground forces), intense surveillance and intelligence gathering abilities (including commando forces, satellites and UAV) and a lot of tankers for aerial refueling of cruise missiles with much cheaper engines (it's less load and less risk for an aircraft to watch and carry the fuel for cruise missiles with the warheads than doing the bomb delivery themselves).
The carrier may get a new/old friend, the battleship/large arsenal ship. Both will improve each other's capability and there will be even hybrid systems. While gun artillery of old battleships is not suited for naval warfare any more (and has only limited requirements for amphibious operations), artillery on the new concept battleships/large arsenal ships might still prove highly valuable for space warfare, see project HARP (

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). It's the cheapest means to send a destructive payload into space to wreak havoc.

Click to expand...

Wait what? So are you saying carriers should be equipped with unmanned air wings capable of launching super long range missiles while accompanied by arsenal ships that has guns to fire weapons into space??
I'm sorry but that's just too futuristic for me, the closest to real life we've coem to that is the USN's plans for UCAS to complement their manned F-35s and F-18E/Fs.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Carriers, arsenal ships and others can launch cruise missiles. The carrier has the ability to supply aerial refueling. These cruise missiles would have the mentioned super range. It's the logical step for me to counter increased area denial attempts.
"Regional area denial" is littoral defense because the Chinese littoral goes as far as the second island chain.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Kurt said:

Carriers, arsenal ships and others can launch cruise missiles. The carrier has the ability to supply aerial refueling. These cruise missiles would have the mentioned super range. It's the logical step for me to counter increased area denial attempts.

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I don't think there is a real single logical counter to A2AD weapons. Long range cruise missiles, ASAT, BMD weapons, SSNs, monitoring satellites etc can all help in their own ways.

"Regional area denial" is littoral defense because the Chinese littoral goes as far as the second island chain.

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... The definition of the word littoral is the sea which is considered close to shore. The "Chinese littoral" does not extend to the second island chain -- until the 2000s the PLAN couldn't even consistently operate out to that distance. Calling the AShBM as a weapon for "littoral defence" implies its range only extends a few dozen kilometers from the coast rather than thousands of kilometers (2700 km to be exact).

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Kurt said:

Let's get back to carriers.
My idea is precise very long range missile strikes (a kind of super-stand-off-ability), defensive operations of the manned air wing (protecting the surface ships, surveillance gear, aerial tankers and raids by ground forces), intense surveillance and intelligence gathering abilities (including commando forces, satellites and UAV) and a lot of tankers for aerial refueling of cruise missiles with much cheaper engines (it's less load and less risk for an aircraft to watch and carry the fuel for cruise missiles with the warheads than doing the bomb delivery themselves).

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Your idea has become fact. Behold Intense surveillance and intelligence gathering at your finger tips. Park this baby over suspected launch sites for the DF-21 and no launch will ever go unnoticed



".......a new spy satellite being developed by DARPA. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s latest proof-of-concept project is called the Membrane Optical Imager for Real-Time Exploitation (MOIRE), and would provide real-time images and video of any place on Earth at any time — a capability that, so far, only exists in the realm of movies and science fiction.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

Your idea has become fact. Behold Intense surveillance and intelligence gathering at your finger tips. Park this baby over suspected launch sites for the DF-21 and no launch will ever go unnoticed

.......a new spy satellite being developed by DARPA. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s latest proof-of-concept project is called the Membrane Optical Imager for Real-Time Exploitation (MOIRE), and would provide real-time images and video of any place on Earth at any time — a capability that, so far, only exists in the realm of movies and science fiction.

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you forget that china is already capable of blinding imagery satellite with laser.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

I'm wondering if a mod can change the title of the thread to "Chinese Area Denial Weapons" or something of that nature?

The thread was originally meant to be about the use of DF-21D possibly making it harder for carriers to operate and the possibility of systems like prompt global strike making carriers obsolete... which clearly isn't going to happen any time soon.
Instead we've put discussions about AShBM, debates about its feasibility and other area denial discussion into this thread, and the subject should deserve it own thread but I don't want to start a new one given the wealth of discussion we've already had.

Re: The End of the Carrier Age?

I'm wondering if a mod can change the title of the thread to "Chinese Area Denial Weapons" or something of that nature?

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why people labeled every weapons system china fielded "area denial".
sorry Bltizo but I am not at ease with this expression. If the AShBM was developped by USN, nobody will call it "USN area denial weapons"
the df-21d is an powerfull offensive weapon. call it "Area Denial Weapons" make it look like a "toy"