Chinese sub & Russian fighters humiliate Kittyhawk

 

It depends if you are on the offensive.  In a hypothethical US vs China conflict, a US carrier will not operate by itself but will be supported by other force multipliers (AWACS, Tankers, Bombers, etc).  A carrier strke group also has tomahawk cruise missile at its disposal too.

 

A plane's range is a function of its loadout.  (unless you have tankers).  There is a maximum take off weight to consider.  You can either lift off with many weapons and low fuel or low weapons and a full tank of gas.  Anti-ship missiles, especially the high speed Russian types are big and heavy.  In the Gulf war, US fighters typically fly with their tanks empty and refuel once airborne.     

 

On defense, on of the most powerful tools defenders typically use is harrassment.  By firing missiles that have minimal chances of hitting their target, it forces the attacker to do some violent manuevers.  These manuever will mess up their timing.  To break through the Aegis shield of the US carrier you need a critical mass in numbers.  There is a difference between 100 KH-59 arriving at the same time versus 10 Kh-59 arriving every minute for 10 minutes. 

 

 

This thread is starting to turn into a How to Sink a Carrier thread.

 

How to sink a carrier? The most popular and heated topic since the creation of the internet base military forums.

There are many factors to take a look at, such as what is the defence posture of the US carrier. This leads too the state of diplomatic affairs between the US and the hypothetical 3rd party, meaning, are they at war?

If open war is the case, then sinking a fully ready carrier is extremely difficult. Finding one in an open ocean, when it is at restricted emmision, is very hard. Your scout will have a very interesting albeit short life, the moment it gets within kill range of the carrier's CAP. Finding a carrier is the prerequisite in sinking it. Most people failed to grasp how important and difficult this task is.

If you look at history, there was only been 5 carrier vs carrier engagement (Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, Santa Cruz Islands, and Philippine Sea) Of the five, except for the Battle of Philippine Sea, the advantage remained on the force that found enemy first. Why? It is a matter of logistics. The attacker can pick the time and place for its attack to begin. Thus, its military assets are concentrated while the defenders assets are disperses. The defender can only send a fraction of its military assets to the specific threat area at a given time. Its other assets are at the carrier, on patrol, or enroute. At the start of the attack, the attacker enjoys relative numerical superiority to the defender.

Shipborne defensive systems, although very good in case of the Aegis equipped USN, are still a second tier defence. Stopping the enemy from lauching its missiles is still the best way of stopping an attack.

An attack on USN carrier that has a chance of success requires MASSIVE military assets that only the regional military powers possessed (Russia, China, India, France, UK). To assemble such an asset for a concentrated attack, these country need to strip other areas (especially large countries like Russia, China, and India) of military hardware. In this regard, this is politically impossible.

Secondly, risking such an large and expensive (politically and monetarily) asset on one attack is very risky. You do not want to put all your eggs on one basket. What happens if the attack succeeds but you lost more than half of your military force? A pissed off US will just bring another carrier against your severely depleted military force. In a worst case scenario, what if your attack failed and you lost a significant part of your military force? What then?

Before we can get into the specifics of "how to sink a US carrier", answer this question first. Can a country afford to attempt to sink a US carrier?

 

Originally posted by Sparten gcle2003, the use of a nuke has great startegic  political consequences which make its use difficult to say the least.

So? Wouldn't starting a world war have "great strategic political consequences" anyway?

Even one against a target at sea would entail great pressure to retaliate and an escalation would be inevitable. Anyways nations that have nukes have little interest in taking on the USN anyways, except China.

 

Not a fad but a necessity.  If you want an blue water navy that can do blue water operations, you need an organic airdefence and organic power project. 

 

No one here is talking about full on nuclear conflict.  Why do people always escalate such thing.  If nations can fight a limited war they will do so. 

 

HMS Vanguard was commissioned in 1946.  USS Missouri and USS Wisconsin in 1943.

 

That is beyond the point.  The battleship was obsolete because the carrier could do all its missions better.  Currently, no other platform can do all the missions a carrier can do better.