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Have you seen Mr. Jerry Hendrix’s writing
That’s true of all weapons always, no? It seems like ASBMs are ahead of missile defense. But missile defense is a far more serious problem for a carrier than for an AEGIS destroyer/cruiser, far more for modern super-carriers than smaller carriers. The fleet has to be used & defended as it is–but this use & defense might change it enormously. That’s what we’re talking about here.
Some are predicting the end of manned aircraft in this generation; others the end of a fleet of large ships; others think power projection might be replaced by missile attacks anywhere in the world within the hour…
My comment was about MRBM platforms. Anyway, a fixed concrete runway is a lot cheaper, faster to build, and easier to repair than an aircraft carrier. Especially when you consider its relative value in-theater. China has hundreds of airfields. The US has a handful of aircraft carriers.
Maybe I’m missing your point.
Point is some are worried about cost and vulnerability but they ignore the big picture. What is the cost of a permanent base? What are the odds you can have a permanent base within striking distance of any target/theater? You don’t need basing rights for a carrier…do you want to need permission to establish an airbase? The Navy’s job is to project power and protect the seaways. Fixed bases are limited in the former and barely able in the latter. There is a reason the Constitution mentions navy. A carrier is expensive but can be recycled. A moving carrier is vulnerable….a fixed base is more vulnerable. I would put my bets on a carrier task force for hiding and defending the assets. How much of this debate is rooted in an unwillingness to fund the military over social, or to even be bothered with defense? Or an unwillingness to invest in the R&D to keep ahead of enemy technology? Rather than worry about carriers, one should be worried about the real targets….our massive, undefended cities. They are the low hanging fruit the enemy can exploit. The same naysayers have fought missile defense when the threat is there and the blackmail potential is real -just threaten attacks to get a country to bend to your will. We are entering a new, dangerous time, one where our defense can no longer blanket the free world, defend seaways, and even defend the US.
Ok. But the particular sub-conversation you jumped into was a debate about whether our carriers are vulnerable to ASBMs. You seemed to claim that ASBM launches can be deterred because of the retaliatory strike it would bring against the launch site. I countered that to the Chinese, the loss of those launch sites is trivial compared to the benefit of fencing off a huge chunk of the Western Pacific against US carriers. We were talking about carriers’ value as power projection systems, not the defensive posture of US cities, so I am having a hard time following your line of reasoning here.
If we can agree that fixed bases offer at least some benefits over carriers, then some of the recent moves by the services has gone a ways to curtail costs while maintaining forward “bases” – AND keeping contacts and relationships with foreign militaries.
We have come up with a method whereby we “rent” a space on the base to store forward-based gear in storage mode. We have a local contact who oversees the gear and maintains relations with the local military. Periodically we have “joint exercises” with this military, bringing in forces to take part in the exercise. This gives us continued experience in the area/weather and an ongoing relationship with the local military – at a fraction of the cost, political as well as monetary, of maintaining a fully functional base.
Say next year China profers to Taiwan an ultimatum–surrender or war within hours. What could or would America do? War? Acquiescenc? Something in-between? What?
Bah! America would acquiese. No one in DC has any stomach for war anymore. Even the little war we have been in in the sandbox has everyone’s knickers all atwist. Imagine what a real war would do – one with casualties in the multiple 10’s of thousands.
We have had a little over 5000 KIA in more than 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I understand that this is easy for me to say since I’m not in the military, but the allies had nearly that many (about 4400) killed in one day in the invasion of Normandy. In the grand scheme of military history, we’ve done pretty well.
To M Wilson: Hardly. Everything we have is vulnerable to something. We develop better tactics and better defensive capabilities. You can’t project power without carriers in the vast Pacific or most anywhere that isn’t a large landmass. If our carriers are vulnerable, we fix it, we don’t throw in the towel and wring our hands. The roadblock is will to do it. I also merely point out that the same point about carriers applies to cities. Should we abandon them? Do we have the will to defend them?
Mr. Herring, you have no choice but to defend your cities. Carriers are weapons of war, not the thing itself for which war is fought–peace, the peaceful life of American cities.
Carrier battle doctrine looks so strange–it has not been tested in a real war in three generations; it looks like it might be in the next generation; & carriers have never attacked a land power or operated near the enemy homeland, where he can operate far larger numbers of missiles & aircraft than a few carriers can.
If the people who decide how Americans live & die in the military decide that changes in the airwing & new defenses against ASBMs can do the job, that’s fine with me. But the threats to carriers seem to me serious enough to begin to wonder what the Navy should like in the future. Shall America depend on a fleet of ten carriers in the next generation, like in the previous three?
I fear that. I fear it is true; that the Chinese & the Americans who matter know it; that there is something else holding back the Chinese–that whatever it is, it may be overcome–that it bodes nothing good for America. I am sometimes surprised to see how much more fearful I am than most people I know who look at political things. I know almost no one who fears a war is coming, ever–but I look sometimes into my own heart & I know that if I were running China, I would conquer…
“Hardly” what? I don’t know what comment of mine you are dismissing.
I’m not sure if you’re even reading my comments. I have not once hinted that we should “throw in the towel and wring our hands”. I love aircraft carriers. I just brought up a couple of near- to medium-term challenges that will change the cost-benefit ratio of carriers: CPGS and ASBMs.
And finally, “will to do it” is not the roadblock. Technological advances have rendered once-dominant military technologies obsolete throughout history. Cavalry, swords, siege engines, flintlock rifles, zeppelins, propeller planes, battleships. As much as I’d hate to see it, there’s no reason carriers are ultimately immune to obsolescence. And it’s entirely possible they will remain dominant. But you seem to be saying we must defend the aircraft carrier with the same desperation as our cities. You are mistakenly equating the means of defense with the ends.
Bah! America would acquiese. No one in DC has any stomach for war anymore. Even the little war we have been in in the sandbox has everyone’s knickers all atwist. Imagine what a real war would do – one with casualties in the multiple 10′s of thousands.
Then the Taiwanese, South Koreans, and Japanese had better put the finishing touches on a couple of dozen nuclear warheads and a delivery system capable of reaching Chinese population centers.
Now there I am wholly in agreement with you.
Americans have a will for war; just not a prolonged war. We have previously, and would in the future I suspect, go to war if attacked – democrats not withstanding. But I am not sure whether we still have a will for serious war over other parts of the world – even if important to us and our well-being. Our sense of “our interests” has gotten rather warped.
Perhaps that’s good, perhaps it’s not. But it is what it is.
You say we have no choice but to defend the cities but the left has fought that for decades. Carrier battle groups are the best way to secure the sea lanes for everyone, and few countries seemed motivated to field a navy capable of doing so. Some will field a navy capable of offensive fighting in a small theater but the oceans are large.
Forwarding basing is a tricky thing….either you secure the rights by force or you hope for permission. Forward bases are more vulnerable than a carrier battle group. The Chinese navy is no match for ours. They must decide if any attack would mean a full blown war with us or if any attack will be met by only a war of words from a neutered US. The Chinese must also weigh the economic benefits of new territory vs the economic loss in trade and asset confiscation.
I am confident that our technology is ahead of theirs, for now. The Pacific is huge. Even the Japanese could only secure tactical victories over fixed ports while missing out on the carriers at sea in WWII.
My military experience was not in the navy but in the Air Force, where I was involved in air defense, including missile defense.
“Hardly” what? I don’t know what comment of mine you are dismissing.”
The last one. I do not agree with the premise that the launch platforms will reach and target the carriers first in a carrier battle group. I don’t agree that the carriers are that vulnerable. I don’t agree that even if they were, that if the Chinese were to engage in a full-blown war with us that carriers would be less needed rather than more needed. I don’t agree with the premise that land-based is more secure than a fleeting fleet.
“I’m not sure if you’re even reading my comments. I have not once hinted that we should “throw in the towel and wring our hands”.”
I am. This thread is based on an article that wanted to give up on carriers because they are vulnerable….more vulnerable than they are. We can afford a carrier a lot more than we can afford multiple fixed bases – that is right, you can’t do a one for one comparison since carriers deploy wherever needed while fixed bases must be built everywhere needed then abandoned when not needed.
I identified the disease…the one that makes people not fund technology, whether for the cities or the military.
You think Chinese ASBMs which were specifically built in the service of an A2AD strategy would not be used against our aircraft carriers? I must be reading you wrong.
How vulnerable is “that” vulnerable? There’s a cost-benefit analysis buried in here somewhere.
Which part don’t you agree with, that carriers would be less needed or more needed? Whichever you go with, “more needed” doesn’t necessarily translate to “more effective”.
I don’t think I said “more secure”, but I did say cheaper, quicker to build, and easier to repair. More resilient if you like.
Quit reading too much into what I say.The Chinese can develop whatever they want. Whether they can employ them effectively against our technology and tactics is an entirely different matter. Surely you recognize that to do so would bring on a full scale war with the US.
“That vulnerable” ie so much so that we should retire them and prefer fixed basing…or fear their loss. We should have enough that the loss of one would not alter the course of the war.
Your cost benefit analysis overlooks too many things.
It’s not only about winning a war. It’s about deterrence. If the Chinese believe the US will not deploy carriers to its backyard, they will be a lot more bold. And we would have to call their bluff. Would we? If it meant, say, a 10% chance to lose a carrier? How many carriers would you give up for Taiwan?
And what could you possibly mean “your cost benefit analysis overlooks too many things”? I haven’t done one. I have only said that one would be done, and that there are some important things that will affect it.
I haven’t drawn any conclusions at all, only tossed around some important factors to consider, and here you are assailing my posts as if I’ve written off aircraft carriers.
I think a more concise way to express one of my points is that, some day the Chinese may decide to move on Taiwan. And they will do so not on the notion that they can sink enough of our carriers to win a full scale war, but rather once they believe they can deter the United States from engaging in a war, even from entering the theater with aircraft carriers at all, because the risk of loss would be too great compared to the potential upside, namely, repelling the invasion of Taiwan. ASBMs are designed for that specific purpose and we would be foolish not to take them seriously.
We will be deterred, not because we fear their missile, but because we have lost the will to fight. The quickest way to project power is the carrier battle group. Nothing has changed that even though weapons are far more modern than in WWII.
No doubt — for now. CPGS may change that. And ASBMs may neuter carriers in certain regions of the world. Since we’re talking about the future, let’s consider how those will affect the assumptions we make today, rather than just asserting that carriers aren’t “that vulnerable” and that the US would win an all-out war, since those are only a few of the important considerations.
We shouldn’t just fight at all costs for fighting’s sake. There may come a point where carriers aren’t effective and survivable enough to justify their cost. Do you disagree with that?
So our collective doubts seem to concentrate in three places. 1. Defense against subs & ballistic missiles. 2. The obsolescence of the airwing. 3. The weakness of the carrier near the enemy’s shores?
1. Does anyone believe that American arms can protect carriers from Chinese subs in the waters around China? Elsewhere on the high seas?
Do ballistic missiles require space-based warfare, possibly with laser? Or is some kind of AEGIS missile defense combined with the Navy’s pet projects–like the rail gun–sufficient to the task? Or is the main hope that evasion plus incompetence on the part of the Chinese will deliver carriers from the tender mercies of the ASBMs?
2. I take it we are agreed that the airwing of the carrier requires changing. Can American jets like the F22 & F35 destroy the Chinese or Russian jets? Is air superiority fighting still the American advantage? Is America building enough of these jets; in case of war, can they be maintained & repaired, can they do enough sorties a day in case of a serious air battle?
So what seems likelier in the next decade or two, a new generation air superiority fighter or a drone airwing for carriers?
3. I take it we are looking to satellite & cyber warfare & strikes on command & control & communications capabilities to blind the enemy. Otherwise, carriers are simply too vulnerable near the enemy’s shores…
Other points of contention? We’ll discuss this again in four years, so let’s prepare.
Yes
Carriers do not deploy solo but as part of a task group, if carriers are too vulnerable to submarines, then we have failed in R&D, deployment, and tactics of anti-submarine forces and of our own submarines.
The ocean is big and sea lanes must be defended. You will not do that without carriers.
Don’t assign roles to carriers that long range bombers should do.
Don’t pitch out assets when tactics modification would suffice.
Any technology we have could be outdated if we don’t invest in R&D and procurement. Why don’t we invest? Because entitlement spending consumes so much of the budget, as does paying for big government, there is little will to fund defense. Entitlement share of GDP is 13.8% while defense is 3.5%. Yet we have just as many poor people as before but can’t seem to win a war.
If you want to forward deploy bases, use the Air Force. Don’t forget the role of the Navy day to day-protect sea lanes of travel world wide.
Missile defense requires the so called Brilliant Eyes side but not the Brilliant Pebbles…and sensors have long been integrated.
You can go just so far with drones …. and who will fly them? Pilot retention is a problem now. Do you want eyes with the shooter or eyes remoted to a safe bunker somewhere, dependent on a line of communication?
Thank you for helping me understand your point of view. You believe the aircraft carrier, unlike thousands of other technologies throughout human history, will never become obsolete from now until the end of time.
That helps me calibrate your other comments.
Is that the best analysis you can come up with from my talking points? I thought this would be an intellectual exercise but I was wrong. Time to move on.
Ok, let’s calm down–or let’s move on to the hate thread–it’s really food for the spirit.
I agree you should not be cross-examined. I also think that you need to be more clear about Mr. Wilson’s questions about your prognostications regarding the obsolescence of carriers, which the rest of us believe a question of time…
…with the time in question being the time it takes for Skynet to become self-aware.