The world's newest aircraft carriers

Which ship? You're not talking about the carrier I assume. Because even if under attack a U.S. carrier is not supposed to fire even its close in weapons systems except as a last resort because of the possibility of causing damage on the flight deck

 

I know... The key word here is Strike group"s"... Not just one, but several of them cruising the world's oceans. We're talking about several "navy+air force" badass joint operation forces mobilizing with nuclear powered ships carrying nuclear missiles... Sh.t loads of deterrence, the best of its kind being able to be moved "anywhere" that has shores to seas having access to oceans...

But the brain-dead zombies here confuse this ferocious power projection ability with "digital demonstrations of some non-existing nuke systems"

So sad...

 

The ship that is trying to destroy the missile is not able to react until the missile breaches the horizon.

Regardless .. this is all water under the bridge. Did you see the news on the latest Russian anti-ship missile ? The Zircon was bad enough .. hypersonic (mach 6- with a range of 600 miles A missile the Brits say is unstoppable.

The newest missile was announced by Putin the other day along with a number of other technologies that were developed to re-stabilize the balance of power and nuclear detente.

The Kinzhal is the latest upgrade to the arsenal. Mach 10 with a range of 1200 miles and ability to take evasive maneuvers which, if true, is a crazy technological feat at hypersonic speeds.

Think what you like about the Russians but they have been at the forefront of missile technology for decades and their stuff just keeps getting better. They have been working with India and China to develop better missile technology.

India just completed a hypersonic test (mach 7) of its new Brahmos-A anti ship missile - a project that came to fruition by working in close conjunction with Russia.

Time to retire most of our carrier fleet.

 

And naturally you believe the Russians?!? The same ones that claimed for years that their "new" Topol-M ICBM was a new unstoppable missile when it reality it was 25 years old.

And without carriers how do you suggest projecting air power into an area if you have no nearby overseas bases?

 

It should not have to. There are other ships and aircraft between it and the missile that will take care of it for them.

Asking a carrier to take out a missile is a last ditch option. Kind of like asking the US President to take out a potential assassin because they had already killed or wounded all of their Secret Service agents.

And most of the Badgers were destroyed. This aircraft by that time had largely been retired as an active bomber, and was mostly used for naval recon, acquisition, and tracking. With the loss of these aircraft, they were not able to accomplish that role.

I should have been more specific, in that I was talking about the Badger and not the Backfire (which is what I meant when I said "giving NATO almost unrestricted access to the North Atlantic")..

 

And it is most likely that the first interceptions will not be by ship missiles, but by aircraft missiles.

They are not hampered by "horizon" in the same way that surface ships are.

And I for one am not as enthusiastic by the "long range over the horizon" missiles that you seem to be. I see a great many problems involved, not the least of which is target acquisition.

You are relying upon firing a missile 200-300 miles away from it's target, at a location that you only think it is going to be at. And then expecting it to travel all that distance, and to actually find the ships in the location once it gets there.

Then to be able to pick out a single ship (somehow while remaining under the horizon) then to close with and strike it.

Sounds more to me like somebody playing Battleship with only a single shot.

C-6!

Miss!

Well, there goes another missile.

And since unlike in a game the ships here are always moving, you can not even line up for a second one.

 

Actually in the initial air battle, only five of the Badgers were shot down by a USAF flight of F-15s being ferried to Europe under the command of Major Amelia "Buns" Nakamura.

In the later battle where the Backfires were massacred, half the TU-16 Badgers in that battle were shot down. More survived because they were attacking a fixed target (the U.S. amphibious ships along the shore) and were able to launch at maximum range and begin to flee.

 

Someone was claiming that planes do not generally take out missiles. During an attack it would be hard to intercept fighters (which would be coming simultaneously) while running after a missile salvo.

Regardless ... assuming our out classed and old F-18's are busy running for their lives and so do no have time to chase down missiles or fail to intercept the numerous salvo's of missiles coming from different directions (either missing our having run out of ammo)

The ship - be it the carrier or the ships defending the carrier - have very little time to react once the missile breaks the horizon.

In the case of the newer hypersonic missiles such as the Zircon - which travels Mach 6-8 or the Kinzhal (which travels mach 10 and conducts evasive maneuvers) the ship has little to do but brace for impact as anti missile systems will not work against missiles comming at those speeds and the kinetic force alone is enough to cripple any ship.

Best to put most of our fleet into retirement and stop wasting money. We can still have a couple strike groups around to instill fear into smaller nations such as Zambia or some such thing but against modern missile technology our carriers are obsolete floating cities of metal.

 

200 mile away ... Try 1200 miles away as that is the range of the latest Russian hypersonic anti ship missile.

Of course technology exists to find ships once they get close. We are not living in the 1940's.

The problem with missiles is for the price of a 15 Billion dollar carrier, you can build 15000 x 1 million dollar missiles. Never mind the cost of the strike group and the cost of operation and maintenance.

 

Even worse!

OK, now let me put that in real world data, maybe now you can understand.

You have a missile launcher in Los Angeles, and you are trying to shoot at a Bus that is driving in Seattle.

But that Bus is surrounded by aircraft, and trucks, and other vehicles. Oh, and they are all moving, and you only have the vaguest idea where they are at. Except this is a magical off-road bus. It is going to be turning in random directions at random times, so between the time you fire and the time the missile gets there it is going to be miles away in a different direction than you think it would be.

Think you can even find the bus, let alone hit it?

Nope, I don't think so.

You seem to believe that these weapons are some kind of magic creation. That they will always be able to find and hit their target. The truth is something far different.

 

Not to worry. He thinks missiles launched at moving targets use GPS for guidance....

 

And that GPS will magically tell them where the target is as well.

 

Not a great analogy but, obviously if the target is being tracked, then the missile can track the target.

 

No, it is not. Or else it would know the missile is coming.

And the same below the horizon works both ways. If the ship can not see the missile, the missile can not see the ship.

No, there is no tracking. These things are fired at the expected position that the ship will be in. Kind of like skeet shooting.

But imagine skeet shooting, with a dozen or more other clay pigeons. Each one can shoot down the shotgun blast. And each can and does move in random directions.

 

And that is simply not true. The "target" (in this case a ship) will almost certainly have a far, far larger more powerful radar than the approaching missile. Which means the shipboard radar will almost certainly detect the approaching missile long before the missile detects the ship.

In this case, size most certainly matters.

 

So what are you saying ? That an aircraft carrier can not be tracked beyond the horizon ?

This is simply untrue. Further, just because a missile can track a ship by tracking the signals it is putting out, does not mean the ship knows the missile is there.

Regardless - even if the ship knows the missile is coming - should it survive the aircraft trying to shoot it down - the ship can not do much until the missile breaches the horizon at which point (in the case of supersonic missiles) time is short.

Here is a description of how such an attack would be defended.
https://defencyclopedia.com/2014/12...vy-can-shoot-down-the-deadly-brahmos-missile/

 

And to take it a step further, even ships and aircraft today can fire weapons at inbound missiles they can not even see. The E2D with Cooperative Engagement Capability can direct SM series missiles from ships as well as AMRAAM missiles from aircraft onto targets they can not even see yet.

Because of modern data linking, they slave their fire control systems to the AWAC bird, and can then fire at targets beyond the visual horizon.

And there is no fighter or bomber that has the sheer RADAR power of an AWAC aircraft. The exact power of their RADAR is still classified, but it is known to be able to reach out over 300 miles and be able to pick up a single target the size of a helicopter. And a carrier travels with 4 of these birds (at least 1 flying at all times outside of bad weather).

And if they are close to ground aircraft support, they also use the Air Force E-3 Sentry. This has an even more powerful RADAR, capable of detecting even single missiles at ranges of over 400 miles.

So why people keep concentrating on only what the ships themselves see is absolutely beyond me. Yet another example of one dimensional thinking.

 

So what if the ship detects the missile - it still has to shoot it down.

Further - the missile can detect the ship by detecting this powerful radar but the missile itself is not detected because it is not emitting a signal.

 

There are over the horizon radars, but from my understanding they mainly are capable of tracking objects that while over the horizon are airborne such as missiles and aircraft, not objects which are on the surface.

Have you ever heard of "surface clutter"? That is where objects on the Earths surface produce radar returns that muddles the radar picture of the object the radar is trying to detect.

Now you will say "what objects would you have on the ocean"?

Waves. The ocean is rarely calm as a millpond (term used in Titanic) and its my understanding that naval commanders are trained to search for rougher seas to hide their vessels in. This is especially true of larger ships like supercarriers which can and do conduct flight operations in Sea State Four.

 

If the missile is not emitting a signal how does it find the target?

 

No, a missile can NOT track a ship via signals.

Since you brought up the BrahMos once again, let's see how it tracks it's targets.

Internal Navigation System (INS), which is verified by GPS.
Final navigation at destination by INS and GPS.
Terminal tracking by Active RADAR.

This is not even a RADAR tracking missile like the HARM, which follows the emissions from outside sources. This only navigates to it's target via pre-programmed directions, then entirely by it's own RADAR in the final phase.

So stop making things up.

 

No, they can not.

At this time, only a few missiles operate based on ARM-HARM systems. Specifically, they are the P-500, P-700, and the newest generation of EXOCET.

That's it. None of the other missiles you have been bringing up over and over again work based on ARM-HARM.

Stop making things up! Do some research please.

 

It has a sensor that detects the targets signal.

http://www.businessinsider.com/navy...ip-missile-identify-and-track-targets-2017-11

 

Don't blame me for your ignorance.

http://www.businessinsider.com/navy...ip-missile-identify-and-track-targets-2017-11

 

Over the Horizon RADAR does exist. But it is horribly inaccurate, suffering from a bad depth of field because they are not directly seeing the target and problems with backscatter and clutter. Essentially they are used for early warning only.

At most, with such a system they will get enough feedback to say "Well, there is ship moving off in that direction". But not enough definition to even tell if it is an amphib, a carrier, a supertanker, a large cruise ship, or a large container ship. Generally they are only used to acquire a potential target, where a ship or aircraft is then sent out along the vector to try and identify what the detected target actually is.

I am not aware of any nation other than China (with their DF-21D) that is attempting to use such a system as a fire control system. And I even have serious doubts as to how well such a system will work for China.