Aircraft Carriers have been obsolete for a long time

Originally posted by Jepic


A nuclear powered destroyer fleet can be anywhere in less than 5 days and have just as much ordinance as a carrier group.

So 5 days or 120 hours they can be anywhere Bull and indeed 5h*t your from the UK so am I lets say Argentina get all hot and bothered with the Falklands again and we had destroyers in the UK the distance in an almost perfect straight line to the Falklands from the south coast of the UK is 7700 miles divide that by 120 hours in 5 days the average speed would be 64 miles per hour what Destroyer does that speed oh and that's not halfway round the world.

reply to post by Jepic

Actually it's pretty much pure logic that any number of VLS boxes will outgun any number of aircraft.

Sure, and just what, exactly, is a missile going to lock onto, on a stealth aircraft....???

Your VLS missiles will still be in their tubes of your fantasy destroyer fleet, while it's being sunk.

Pure logic indeed.

Originally posted by eriktheawful

Originally posted by Jepic
reply to post by eriktheawful

 

Good points. Now if you incorporated all these advantages that the carrier has into the destroyer, and increased the number of VLS boxes on each destroyer, would you still say the carrier is superior when it becomes outgunned by sheer number of these boxes?

To incorporate all the things a carrier has and can do and can carry means building a ship that is a lot larger than a destroyer.
It means giving it a flight deck (or did you miss the part of using fixed wing air craft that have much longer ranges than helicopters for resupply and transport?).

We already have ships like that. They are called Aircraft Carriers.

So one could argue that what we need to do is install more missile launchers on an aircraft carrier.

Why? That's what your Cruisers and Destroyers are for. They provide both defense and offensive abilities for the carrier group.

Reading through your posts, there is a lot of things you don't understand about missiles and how they work. Missiles can never replace aircraft. Aircraft provide a much more diverse options and can be used over and over again.
Once you fire a missile, it's gone. One shot, that's it.

Missile are fast, but they are not moving at the speed of light. I used to be involved in all sorts of DT&E drills (Detect To Engage), where we detect the incoming missiles and shoot them down. The methods of which involve many different things ranging from ECM, Aircraft to intercept with their missiles, missile intercept and gun fire intercept (CIWIS gives most of us sailors the warm fuzzies about anti ship missiles).

Best defense is early detection of any missile launch. This means having the distance to detect and the ability to have that long range detection.

Your destroyers do not have that ability. They only see surface launches IF there are radar platforms in the sky sending that data back........and a destroyer fleet can't deploy those aircraft.

So the only way to make your destroyer fleet as good as a carrier group, is to have one of the destroyers be the same size as a carrier for all that resupply, and to have an actual flight deck so that all sorts of aircraft can land and take off.........which means you just turned your destroyer into a Aircraft Carrier.

Got to go for now. I'll reply to you guys later.

reply to post by Jepic

Put them both in a fleet of let's say 10 ships. Have them go at each other right now! Both of them are attacking each other as we speak. 10 destroyers and 10 aircraft carriers of the same size. Who wins?

The planes from the aircraft carriers launch prior to the destroyer fleet being in missile range (since the sensor planes detected the location of the destroyers). The stealth aircraft bomb the destroyers to slag before they even knew what hit them. The stealth subs sink any leftovers. Big party on the aircraft carriers.

Of course, you can't even make the comparison, because a carrier doesn't fight alone. It is DESIGNED as a battle GROUP, with different ships in different roles. For example, Aegis ships to intercept the missiles from the fantasy fleet. This is akin to saying who will win between Batman and Superman (Superman, assuming Batman has no Kryptonite).

Originally posted by Jepic

I respect your point and experience but take it this way.

All things on par (that means radar, medical capabilites,etc...) which platform is superior according to you. Now both ships are the same size. The size of a carrier let's say.

Which is superior?
A. A ship filled with VLS boxes.
B. A ship filled with aircraft.

Put them both in a fleet of let's say 10 ships. Have them go at each other right now! Both of them are attacking each other as we speak. 10 destroyers and 10 aircraft carriers of the same size. Who wins?

Now I'll check back later because I have to go for now.

See, now you've changed it to a "What If?" idea. And this is not how reality works as far a naval ships go.

Aircraft carriers are NOT (repeat to get it into you head NOT) deployed by themselves. They are deployed in a group with other ships that defend it.

That's like saying: SSN Attack Sub vs Aircraft Carrier. DUH!

That's why you have frigates and ASU destroyers with the carrier, so that they can help detect and engage a sub.

However, as for you Massive VLS ship that you've built: No problem.

I'd use a carrier group, that coordinates a DTOT of cruise missiles at your ship. I would have 8 ships in the group deploy 16 Harpoon cruise missiles that would carry out a DTOT (Date Time On Top) so that all 16 missile reach your ship at the same time.

Half of these missiles I would direct to have skim impact, the other half would use a pop-up attack.

Each missile that get's past your defense systems (and btw way......all those missiles fly very low to the water....so low that even surface radar can't see them. I can't say exactly how low...Sorry, OPSEC...but if I could stand on water, I would reach up and touch them). They would be lost in the surface clutter of the radar returns.

Once the missiles get close enough, IF you have a ships self defense system such as CIWIS, your ship will see them and engage the missiles.......but you see, that's why I sent 16 that all arrive at the same time. So that all 8 of your CIWIS are engaged, while my remaining 8 Harpoon missiles get through.

These missile are designed to penetrate up to 16 inches of steel. The skimmers will slam into and penetrate your hull.
The pop-ups will dive down and go through your deck.

Once inside, each missile will detonate with the force of a 3,000 pound bomb.

Your ship is gone. You'd be lucky to see the burnt out hull floating.

Here's a old video showing some Harpoon detonations:

Originally posted by Gazrok
reply to post by Jepic

 

Put them both in a fleet of let's say 10 ships. Have them go at each other right now! Both of them are attacking each other as we speak. 10 destroyers and 10 aircraft carriers of the same size. Who wins?

The planes from the aircraft carriers launch prior to the destroyer fleet being in missile range (since the sensor planes detected the location of the destroyers). The stealth aircraft bomb the destroyers to slag before they even knew what hit them. The stealth subs sink any leftovers. Big party on the aircraft carriers.

Of course, you can't even make the comparison, because a carrier doesn't fight alone. It is DESIGNED as a battle GROUP, with different ships in different roles. For example, Aegis ships to intercept the missiles from the fantasy fleet. This is akin to saying who will win between Batman and Superman (Superman, assuming Batman has no Kryptonite).

Well said and that is exactly what would happen. Aircraft carriers are not outdated and are still a very important arm of the power projection plam. (U.S. Naval Academy graduate here, so I know a tad bit about the Navy.)

reply to post by Komodo


Then how did the USS Stark, a much smaller ship, survive an Exocet hit, with very minor damage?

It would seem that this entire thread is a massive troll by the op.
I responded twice and my responses seem to have been ignored by the op.

It's obvious Aircraft Carriers are not or will not be obsolete for some time to come.

reply to post by Jepic


The fact that they don't want them to sink from the weight, and would like them to move at over two knots.

Here is a good article outlining pointing out good arguments about the future of aircraft carriers.

thediplomat.com...

Two detailed arguments on the end of the aircraft carrier emerged earlier this month. The first, which has already received notable attention in the naval blogosphere, comes from Captain Jerry Hendrix in the form of the first Center for a New American Security (CNAS) “Disruptive Defense” paper. CNAS’s Disruptive Defense series seeks to provide analysts an opportunity to “present hard-hitting arguments” on controversial U.S. defense issues.

Hendrix argues that the modern American nuclear aircraft carrier (CVN) is, in cost-effectiveness terms, unequal to the task of managing the proliferation of anti-access technologies, particularly China’s DF-21D Anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM).

This argument has not gone unchallenged. As Bryan McGrath argues over at Information Dissemination, a straight comparison between the costs of a CVN and of 1,227 DF-21s is surely misleading; both weapons require support systems not included in that cost, and the carrier is considerably more flexible in usage than the ballistic missile.

The article also goes on to explain that many countries are ditching carriers and moving to amphibious assault ships.
But I think that the article brilliantly points to the decline of the carrier being the lack of a vtol plane. Since most countries don't have catobar carriers. And the last harrier produced was in 03.

IMO countries with carriers should switch out from planes to attack helicopters until a replacement to the harrier can be made.

Originally posted by Gazrok
reply to post by Jepic

 

Put them both in a fleet of let's say 10 ships. Have them go at each other right now! Both of them are attacking each other as we speak. 10 destroyers and 10 aircraft carriers of the same size. Who wins?

The planes from the aircraft carriers launch prior to the destroyer fleet being in missile range (since the sensor planes detected the location of the destroyers). The stealth aircraft bomb the destroyers to slag before they even knew what hit them. The stealth subs sink any leftovers. Big party on the aircraft carriers.

Of course, you can't even make the comparison, because a carrier doesn't fight alone. It is DESIGNED as a battle GROUP, with different ships in different roles. For example, Aegis ships to intercept the missiles from the fantasy fleet. This is akin to saying who will win between Batman and Superman (Superman, assuming Batman has no Kryptonite).

Stealth you say! Good... Destroyers and missiles can be stealthy too. Planes won't really make it near the fleet then.

reply to post by Jepic


No reply on the average speed then

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by Komodo

 

Then how did the USS Stark, a much smaller ship, survive an Exocet hit, with very minor damage?

First let me say that I knew shipmates on the Stark that died. I had been in the Navy for 2 years when this happened.

The main reason for the loss of the Sheffield was the fact that the missile destroyed the control room for the engine room and destroyed the ship's firemain.

The firemain is a very important component of any ship. Without it, you have a very, VERY bad situation on board. Your fire teams are going to have a rough time putting out fires. Fire suppresion systems, for like your missile rooms and magazines are out and will not work.
Dewatering equipment used to pump out spaces below deck can not be used (induction systems that depend upon use of the firemain).

With the stark, one missile didn't detonate, but passed right through the ship. It penetrated the hull and entered the "Goat Locker" (that's the chief petty officer's quarters).
The 2nd missile penetrated the control room berthing quarters, just aft of the missile magazine, and did detonate.

However, the Stark's firemain was intact and operational. The impact from the 2nd missile and detonation caused the fire suppression system in the missile magazine to engage.

In the case of the Sheffield: the missile caused a lot of fuel to ignite, and the firemain was ruptured. The fire was not able to be put under control and after 3 days they had to abandon the ship.

This is a case of luck. If the Stark had been hit by the 2nd missile a little bit more forward than it was, it would have made direct impact with her missile mag and detonated. It would have been much worse, and the ship would more likely have been a total loss as it's missile mag detonated too.

So the Stark was "Lucky" in where it got hit and the fact that damage control teams had a working firemain to work with.

Sheffield on the other hand was unlucky. Even though by all reports the missile failed to detonate, it did ignite a very large fuel fire, and ruptured the firemain, removing the damage control team's ability to fight the fire and save the ship.

reply to post by eriktheawful


You are going to send 18 harpoons against a destroyer fleet and expect that the officers inside the destroyers will just sit there looking at their watches waiting for the missile to hit home? You don't believe the ships will launch a coordinated strike to neutralize the missiles while still far away?

And what of the counter-attack? How many projectiles can your group take on in the wake of an massive attack?

Originally posted by Hopechest

Originally posted by Jepic

Originally posted by totallackey
reply to post by Jepic

 

The ocean.

There is no other weapon that possesses the combined might of an aircraft carrier.

A couple of missiles from a destroyer and your carrier is as I said above just a big sinking chunk of steel filled with precious, wasted and lost "could have been" resources that may cost you big time during a war.

You really think a carrier group is going to allow a destroyer within range to fire its missiles?

Probably not.

The HK subs attached to a carrier group would knock a Destroyer to the bottom of the ocean by the time it's able to get in range of the actual carrier.

Originally posted by grey580
It would seem that this entire thread is a massive troll by the op.
I responded twice and my responses seem to have been ignored by the op.

It's obvious Aircraft Carriers are not or will not be obsolete for some time to come.

I was quite busy replying to everyone so I might have missed your comment.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by Jepic

 

The fact that they don't want them to sink from the weight, and would like them to move at over two knots.

That has nothing to do with weight but with engine power and buoyancy.

reply to post by Jepic



What about this piece of BS YOU said

Originally posted by Jepic

A nuclear powered destroyer fleet can be anywhere in less than 5 days and have just as much ordinance as a carrier group.

Originally posted by Procession101

Originally posted by Hopechest

Originally posted by Jepic

Originally posted by totallackey
reply to post by Jepic

 

The ocean.

There is no other weapon that possesses the combined might of an aircraft carrier.

A couple of missiles from a destroyer and your carrier is as I said above just a big sinking chunk of steel filled with precious, wasted and lost "could have been" resources that may cost you big time during a war.

You really think a carrier group is going to allow a destroyer within range to fire its missiles?

Probably not.

The HK subs attached to a carrier group would knock a Destroyer to the bottom of the ocean by the time it's able to get in range of the actual carrier.

Right because the destroyer fleet obviously won't notice the sub much less the incoming torpedo... And they obviously won't intercept both of these targets...