and turning while at speed

I somehow doubt this will replace SCs... from the pics/specs of it... it's at best a helicopter launch platform... no air group support to mention.

*shrugs*I can post links to inherent dangers of salt water and sulfuric acid ie from the batteries or the inherent dangers of nuclear powered reactors?
Again your point is? that is was too dangerous to develop? It was not developed due to nuclear power offered less refueling times. dangerous/hazardous never matters much to military minds.

WMS

I saw a picture of that being done at speed when I was stationed onboard the USS Eisenhower. One of the guys in my workcenter was on the ship when that picture was taken. He said they were at least at 30 degree tilt to port while making their turn.

The wake shown in the picture was something else given that I knew how long some of the parts of the ship clearly shown were.

But what is interesting is you can see the Iranian navy doing something similar to Van Riper when they 'buzz' US ships in the straits of Hormuz. They've gotten to within a few hundred meters of US navel assets while some yahoo on the radio is threatening the US sailors, thrown crates off the sides and gotten away with nothing more than a warning shot. The theory is sound, especially if you factor in a 'martyrs are cheap' attitude. As far as being able to call on thousands of kamikazes, it's not too far fetched. 30 or 40 PT boats with a exorcet each could saturate the defenses of a carrier pretty quickly and it only takes one good hit to cripple a ship.

Also the Palestinians may not be able to turn out a suicide bomber every day but don't forget they're also using them almost as quickly as they become available. I could see Iran training willing candidates then holding them in reserve until the time is right. That's the beauty of a PT boat, they don't need much in the way of crew. Even with a hundred or so willing martyrs you could probably crew enough boats to do some real damage.

Also don't forget some vintage US tech that the Iranians still have from the 70's. F14's might not be top of the line anymore but they still pack a punch.

And with current drone technology it won't take long to automate most of those little buggers. By 2070 it's probably SOP even with the large military.

that i know, just look at kursk...

but still, when a technology becomes more a risk to the user then to the enemy, then what?

and yes, both of the techs you listed has its own dangers.

i dont know, i just picked up the impression that peroxide based engines where somehow more hazardous then diesel electric at the time at some point...

or just fit them with these:
http://gizmodo.com/388195/first-person-rc-...actually-flying

current day predator drones on the cheap

holy shit, the USN is finally wising up to the fact that nuke-powered carriers are big, fat, expensive targets.

*dances a jig*

that being said, these are still probably a bit vulnerable to massed light aircraft and speedboats, but probably not AS vulnerable.

I need to verify, but I'm pretty sure the US sold Tomcats to Iraq, not Iran. And it wasn't long before they were all grounded because they didn't have to tech/know-how to keep them operational.

No it's Iran; hwoever, they are largely paper tigers. The cats sold to Iran were not fitted out with the same radar or missiles as the US versions. When you take those away from the Tomcat, what you are left with is a beautiful but underpowered and overall inferior and obselete interceptor. It wasn't until the F-14D (long after the Iranians got theirs) that the Cat got engines powerful enough to allow it to live up to its hollywood rep as a turn and burn machine, so the Iranians can't even use it as a decent dogfighter. Also bedeviling them is the previously-mentioned scarcity of spare parts.

That has led the Irians to retask their few airworthy 14's. Since they're equipped with a station for a RIO, the Iranians have pressed them into service as ad-hoc AWACS birds. They depend on their much more modern (and far better maintained) soviet hardware (Su-27's & Mig-29's) for air superiority.


-NR

Ah Soviet Surplus... Equipping the armies of the world on the cheap...

Still wish I picked up one of those Titanium Crowbars I heard about, however.

Pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Carriers are not and never have been designed to be the go to vehicle for unconventional threats. That's why the Navy is busily blowing wads of cash on the LCS, the Austin class LPD, DDX, CGX, and half a dozen other programs. The so called littoral "Brown Water" Navy is a vastly underdeveloped section of our force but with the resurrection of the Riverine Boat units and the introduction of craft specifically designed to support them, we're covering our bases.

They've gotten away with it because they know our military planners are (thankfully) unwilling to go to war with them over a couple of idiotic stunts.

30-40 PT boats against a carrier would in fact be a bad day. Against a couple of destroyers and cruisers with their main guns and harpoons and what not... not so effective I'd think. Knowing what we know now it'd take a fantastic act of willful idiocy to march an uncovered carrier into a situation without support.

And like I said, that's why we're developing LCS's, 60 knots will let it chase down any of those small boats.

Harpoons can not be fired at any target where a land mass ie island is in the seeker zone. Ask those on St Croix when a Poon was fire near them. That was why I had to get the firing keys from the CO each time I have to perform certain maintenance functions/jobs/tasks. Each time he was sweating it.

30-40 PT type of boats would rock a Carrier Battle Groups day, especially if in tight quarters like in the Straights. Tight quarters is vastly different than in open seas.

If the attack is done half way right, the CBG discovers the threat will inside the Zone, then ships firing guns and missiles mean alot of friendly fire incidents.

Harpoon does not care what target it hits, the largest target in the Seeker Zone gets the Prize, so using a Harpoon against small craft mixed in with larger ships is hell on the larger ships. The small ships squeak by, unfortunately they did not implement the TDT firing mode for the CIWS,. that would have enabled the Escorts ships to sweep the seas of the PT boats with little friendly fire issues. Yes the slow firing 50 cals and 20mm would reduce the numbers, but CIWS would shred them in large numbers.

If the PT boats wished cause issues with a CBG, they would not have to fire a shot or make any visible threats, just get ahead of the CBT and then trail behind them some of the very nice SOTA fishing nets and trawling lines. The Carrier might be able to power thru the nets but the Escorts will be dead in the water with fowled screws, and sea chests.

WMS

Well i misspoke, a harpoon is a bit excessive for a 20ft cigarette boat.

They haven't licked that seeker head problem?
<Edit> According to wiki Block IE harpoons have been upgraded to be able to attack ships in port or near large land masses.

I'm actually fairly certain they /have/ implemented TDT (if TDT means manual aiming for force protection) for CIWS guns. I've also been told that the deck guns on destroyers and cruisers are incredibly accurate and could "Shoot a traditional battleship artillery shell out of the sky".
<Edit> It looks like I misspoke on this topic too. I'm not seeing anything that says the CIWS is being upgraded to perform this role. Which would be nice because it's evidently useless against modern missiles

*sighs* They may have claimed to have enable the Seeker head issues but the issue when I was in service is that the seeker head "Choses" the largest target in the "Chosen" zone, so if two PT's and an destroyer are all in the same zone, the Destroyer gets the Prize. They may have reduced the size of the zone but if the PT's get inside the Zone, the Escorts get Pooned. Also if Pt boats were employing active countermeasures lock on could get interesting, active measures could include Chaff launchers.

As for 5-Inch/54-caliber (Mk 45) lightweight gun when I was in service and even later, in Rapid Fire Mode the Mount would break down over 50% of the time when attempted. It is the same gun mount the DDG-51 ARLEIGH BURKE-class, Ticonderoga class, and so on.

Yes the Mk 86 GFCS could shoot 16 inch shells in the correct conditions but again the mount failure rate under rapid fire, makes them impotent. I do not recall the target resolution of the AN/SPQ-9 Surface Surveillance and Tracking Radar. That is the FCS radar that would be the primary targeting method for the escorts against surface targets. The AN/SPG-60 of the Mk 86 GFCS is used for airborne targets. As for the AN/SPY-1 remember the Iranian Airliner incident of years ago.

But again the fishing net attack would be perfect.

WMS

Modern phalanx mounts have TV/Thermal sights. Block 1B Phalanx Surface Mode (PSUM)

CIWS is very effective against anything within its engagement zone, be it missiles, projectiles etc. Issue is the limited range of the engagement zone, and the limited ammunition capacity which limits the number of engagements.

But against fast moving PT's the TDT enable version would be best IMHO.

WMS

Didn't Hizbollah - who's right now taking control of Beirut, by the way - use a home-made drone to cripple an Israelie Corvette? Or was that later proven to be a real missile? You don't need many martyrs if you can rig some drones, and the tech curve advances rapidly to the point where they could probably built drones who can optically lock on a carrier.

Soviet surplus is US-Equivalent. Not all of it of course, the Russians have always made a lot of crap. But the MiG-35 is at least as good a plane as anything the US is flying. For all the crap about putting a flag at the bottom of the Arctic Sea, the actual point of that was demonstrating that their subs were still world class in diving ability.

Last I checked the Russians were mostly working with India (indeed the MiG-35 was very unsubtly revealed at an airshow in Bangalore), and not China. But if for some reason they do have access to Russian super science, there's no reason to believe that Chinese high end military equipment would be any worse than high end US equipment.

-Frank

The Mig-35 is roughly equivalent to the F-16, though late model F-16s still have plenty of advantages over it. Both are outclassed in the air by the F-15 and Su-27. And both of those are outclassed by the F-22.

Most of the new Chinese stuff is comparably to 80s Russian stuff with some 80s Western tech tacked on.

First: Real life drones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2juBhZpoqmE...feature=related

Second: I talked to a couple of Air Force air traffic controllers and they said that the F-22 pretty easily smoked both F-15 and F-16's during war games a couple months ago. Vectored thrust for the win!
<Edit> F-16's weren't involved in that particular war game, the traffic controller was talking about his time stateside.

That said Russia makes awesome aircraft, from what little we have on the Mig-35 I'd say it outclasses the F-16 and F-18 in terms of being a multi-role fighter. For one thing it looks like it has super cruise capabilities which is something neither the F-16 nor the F-18 can match. But it should probably be smoked pretty bad by an F-22. I might personally hate the F-22 (I liked the other design better) it really is a pretty slick piece of tech. It also appears that the Mig-35 can be fitted with vector thrust which should dramatically increase it's maneuverability.

You are getting the 1.42/I42 prototype (looks sorta like the Eurofighter) confused with the (current) MIG-35. The MIG-35 name was half-heated stuck to the F22 response that the Russians were working on, but the funding for it dried up around 2000. The MIG-35 the Indians are getting is the MIG-29 airframe with improved avionics, engines, and radar. The 1.42 could supercruise, the MIG-29/35 cannot.

Which was the gist of the link I posted; the day of the Battleship ended in the 40's, day of the tank sometime later (see: Grozny, Baghdad), now it's time to retire those huge floating targets we call carriers. I do believe light carriers WILL serve a purpose as a mobile landin' strip (see: Serbia), but the day of large CTF's roaming the seas looking for enemy fleets is over.

IMO.
IANAMT, but war on sea and land is changing in very radical ways-- technological superiority doesn't count so much. Example: Your multi-million dollar tank isn't so useful in cramped streets. Boils down to economics: always has, always will. I do have a hard-on for panzer batallions and SAG/CTF groups, but I'll leave that to my WW2-era wargames and won't apply it to modern or even future warfare scenarios for the sake of my troops, real or virtual. Too bad the US Military Command isn't as altrust and realist as me.

Well from the wiki article it said that the Mig-35 transited from Moscow to Bangalore in 3 hours which means it'd have to transit at or above supersonic speeds to get here.

Granted it does mention that it used in flight refueling so maybe they had the afterburner hammer down the entire time. Still, that's pretty impressive.

The optical targeting system sounds pretty damn cool too.


This is from the air show in India. Looks like the aircrafts got some pretty tight controls. If you go all the way to the end they do a really interesting demonstration of how quickly the vectored thrust operates.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWLYTAYG-9U...feature=related

I beg to differ, technology matters more than ever. Witness the crushing defeats that the US inflicted on Iraq in both Gulf wars with high tech, super mobile, but numerically unimpressive forces. Now if you want to say that technology matters relatively little in counterinsurgency operations that's probably true, but you can't extrapolate that to war in general.

Ok, I agree, but I'll go on to say that counterinsurgency is modern warfare.

The question is: Does a huge carrier really serve a purpose except giving the Navy a pat on the back and burning billions of dollars? Some will say yes, some will say no. Personally I would rather see that money spent on more useful things.

So being able to field an entire wing of aircraft from helos to ground attack to AWACS isn't a very useful ability? You think we'll be better served designing all our aircraft to fly anywhere in the world from a dwindling number of foreign bases and around all the countries that don't provide overflight rights?

That's not really true, it only seems that way because from an American point of view, because you enjoy such crushing superiority against the nations you fight that the war part of the war is basically a pushover. For countries other than the US, or if you ever had to fight a nation with a reasonably powerful army, fighting the war is can still be real issue.

Also what does IANAMT stand for? Acronymfinder doesn't recognize it.

At risk of getting off-topic... I doubt we'll see many/any conflicts between equally-mechanized/superior armies, since these militaries usually happen to belong to countries with nuclear weapons, which... well, you know.

The article I linked way back in this thread belongs to a larger column, and he discusses what he sees as the 'future of war' as well.

"IANAL" = I am not a Lawyer,
"IANAMT" = I am not a Military Theorist

For fighting mook states (heh ) and completly trashing them? Not really. Just like the Streetsam walks over gangers, the US military could have done without them. But they don't particularly help with restoring order in Iraq or Afghanistan right now.
If however you plan on playing Cold War II with China or Russia, then yes - they have a purpose.

But let's not get cought up in this. I'll just be flamed for being anti-american again.

2070: There was alot of warfare between nations in the last decades. It is reasonable to believe that the budget for certain parts of the armed forces is huge. In the case of CAS (and maybe the Caribbean League) I can see them building new carriers as they could run into maritime disputes.
Most of the other warfare has taken place on land and air.
Is there a carrier stationed in or near Seattle? I don't know, but highly doubt it as I can't recall reading about it. UCAS has no interest in the Middle East anymore, that problem is completly outsourced by 2070.

Most nations won't care for the other side of the world, they struggle to survive against the Cons and their new neighbours.
With that motivation it will be hard for any Navy to squeeze enough money out of the budget to fund this.

Carriers still serve a vital role because one of the keys to any victory is air superiority and it is impossible to achieve that without carriers currently. Doc is absolutely right because of the problems with fewer and fewer foreign bases and not enough range on most planes. Even with MASSIVE increases in aircraft ranges, the carrier is still superior because it is a mobile air base, complete with the support needed of an entire wing. And I personally have an intense hatred for massive naval ships. They are useful and I see them continuing to be useful in 2070. Can you say wings and wings of drones. I knew you could

For both realistic reasons and fluff/game purposes, I can see a Light Carrier or two deployed or assigned to the Pacific/Seattle area. Carriers won't disappear anytime soon, even if we seem to be the only two saying CTF's and their ilk are obsolete even TODAY.

Shows you how accurate wikipedia is. Its on the order of 6000km from Moscow to Bangalore. In a ferry configuration, the plane will be able to go somewher around 2500km with external fuel tanks. So it will have to tank at least once on the way, and tanking twice is much more likely. Assuming a ferry cruising speed of somewhere in the neighborhood of 600km/h that would imply a flight time of ~10 hours. Assume 2 tanks each taking around 45 minutes, and its possible that the flight was made in 13 hours, not 3. A 747, with its monstrously fast cruising speed, could get there in ~6.5 hours.

Whoa whoa whoa... my defense of the utility of an aircraft carrier has nothing to do with patriotism and everything to do with Marines who tell me that the only thing better than a bigger gun is artillery and the only thing better than that is close air support. Removing aircraft carriers removes naval aviation and that removes a huge amount of firepower from the Navy's inventory. That kind of precision firepower is not going to be replaced until the DDX and CGX actually hit the water. And even than they aren't going to replace the sort of utility you get by a having all those different sorts of aircraft.

Plus carriers have a service life of like 50 years, pretty good bang for you buck.

Provided subs don't blow your ass up, but that goes for any naval ship really.

Well, a drone carrier in the 20-30k ton displacement range and supporting a wing of 30-60 drones would be a great thing to have in your pocket. It would cost, what, a fourth or a tenth of what a 100K ton supercarrier would cost to man and operate and would provide more than 25% of the same general capabilities.

Of course, someone in 2070 has infinite money, a supercarrier parked off your coast and supporting a wing of 300+ drones is going to be a whole lot worse for you. But I'm not sure anyone will actually be able to afford that.

Lofwyr?

And has been since the demise of the Russian Bear. Still, their utility as floating airbases for the support of landbound operations remains.



Maybe so, but their capabilities overall will be degraded cf a Nimitz class: can't launch the larger airframes, so AWACs has to come from land-based assets; can't carry the number of airframes, so have to put more in-theatre to have the same throw-weight; aren't as spacious and aren't nuke powered so dont have the endurance on-station, so you need more of them; can't use them as fuel and supplies tenders for other elements of the fleet so you need to have a longer and more vulnerable log tail.



Pshaw! We can all *theorise*. These armchairs are *comfy* though.



I think that it's not changing, so much as *expanding* (which, yes, is a form of change). Wars are being fought under different conditions and rules of engagement. There has, since the end of siege warfare, been a tactical imperative to be able to fight street-to-street and house-to-house, so MOUT isn't *new*, it's just lower-intensity most of the time and fought (from the major nations' point of view) against *truly* irregular opponents. Technology still helps keep the body count scores in the modern nations' favour, but it's not enough to achieve "victory" because that can only come through a political process of dialogue and negotiation; there's no *military* foe to defeat. New theatres, such as littoral/brown water operations are assuming greater importance to the military because that's where the shooters are operating. The open seas are pretty much nailed down by the US, as it stands.

In some respects, the nature of modern warfare has regressed to the Colonial era. The political goals have changed (nowadays, the colonial powers would be happy with a friendly government, and wouldn't require a viceroy/governor and actual "possession" of the territory), but the Welsh Guards and Household Cavalry are once again fighting irregular tribesman light infantry in the Hindu Kush, and the Royal Navy is suppressing coastal "pirates" in the Arabian Gulf.



No, but it's still useful to make sure you actually get to the point of being able to engage the enemy in those streets, rather than being bogged down on the border. Ditto air superiority.



A bit of a truism, that. Economics or politics drives the wars. Once your conventional forces hit a guerilla situation, you have to start looking for a political solution, because guerillas don't usually go away. Your military are still the physical manifestation of your political will, and can have an effect on the political process, but it's a lot harder to control.



I shouldn't be so quick to dismiss armour and air power; they're good for your troops to have if you can afford them... It depends what funding them displaces. If a pair of through deck cruisers and their air groups means your grunts don't have body armour or secure transport or enough tactical airlift, then the Prime Minister's personal fiefdom bally well should suffer from procurement cuts.

Lofwyr can park himself off your coast and that's pretty much all you need to do there.

Unless you're employing 2070 Fuch's in which case you can turn loose his Anti-Dragon Task Force.



But waaaay back to the original point. I don't think there are but a handful of super carriers still tooling around. A squadron of drone carriers is probably pretty badass and you do avoid putting all your eggs in one basket.

That's not to say that a megacorps wouldn't necessarily buy one and modernize it just so it can have the biggest stick in a given fight. From my reading it sounds like posturing is still a huge part of inter mega relations.

Having large cannons (tanks, APC's, SPG's, whatever) supporting your advancing infantry is always useful, whether the environment is urban or not. I'll never dismiss this, just as I'll never dismiss carriers and other large blue-water vessels, no, but this isn't 1943 either and we shouldn't pretend it is.

I am at work and rather behind schedule yet I lack the discipline to logout of the forum, so here are some articles (same author) that summarize what I am/was trying to say;

RPG vs. M1
http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICL...mp;IBLOCK_ID=35


That last line is what I meant with: "Technology doesn't matter!"

Take America’s Navy Battle Group…Please!
http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICL...mp;IBLOCK_ID=35


With that last part of the quote, I'd like to add that I am not a troll, and that I am a member of my country's Navy.

But... but... we really aren't planning on making new SC's. No seriously, we're just now junking our non-nuke carriers and I believe we're pretty much done after that (until we build the Carrier21 or whatever the nextgen carriers are being called). The biggest investments were making is in troops carriers (LPD's), fast shallow combat and fire support vessels (DDX), and modular multi-role hulls (LCS). Hell we've even bought that cool Australian ferry that is really fast but incredibly shitty to actually transit in (my buddy says it's like sleeping on an airliner... for days).

As to tanks, I don't know, i really haven't heard of tanks dropping like flies and the Israeli's having been using them for years specifically for house to house. Yes they've made modifications but it's still the same frame.

Nah, it was a Chinese cruise missile.

Have you heard of their latest APC design? It's based off the Merkava battle tank chassis. It'll probably be one of the toughest APC designs out there, not as well armed as say a bradley, but dang will it be armored.

Wondering when their target area will upgrade to Iraq standards. Even their upgraded armor will have issues with properly made IED's.

hmm, given that the F-35 supposedly fix the biggest problem with the harrier (no supersonic flight), how likely is it that a larger carrier can be replaced by a group of 2-3 smaller ones? also, by being independent, you do not present a single big target. as in, loose the carrier and you loose all the aircraft it can field as well, loose 1 of 3 smaller ones and you only lost 1/3 of your force...

Actually, since we're talking military, and carriers at that, Lofwyr would not be sufficent. Take a look at Synner's answers in this Thread:



(bolded by me)

People mentioning the idea of small boats mobbing carrier and other types of battle groups reminded me of this boat. Now they were using them to smuggle stuff over the English Channel and the Strait of Gibraltar at speeds of up to 60 knots so it wouldn't be that hard to simply swap out the contraband and replace it with a load of high explosives.

One note the USSR engagement doctrine for dealing with a CBG was to destroy the ocean the CBG was cruising in.

How could they do that you say?

Well the former USSR used to have missiles like this AS-4 'Kitchen which came in at very high altitude at mach 3, from over 250nm, then performed a 85 degree dive into the target at mach 3 where its 350kt nuclear warhead went boom.

But the USN in its infinite wisdom has retired the only airframe capable of dealing with the USSR bombers that launched missiles like these aka the F-14 which was designed and built to carry the AIM-54 Phoenix Air to Air Missile.

Wonder where Putin will be spending his oil money.

WMS