http://gizmodo.com/388227/uss-independence...ngly-affordable

"Last month, the US Navy and General Dynamics took the lid off the new U.S.S Independence littoral combat ship (LCS). This beast will sail close to the shore and throw everything imaginable at an enemy—from armored vehicles and helicopters to shells, torpedoes and missiles. Plus, it can hustle at a rumored 60 knots. Basically, that means the enemy will have a difficult time escaping the wrath of this mighty vessel no matter where they are."

now thats highly interesting.

makes one suspect that corps, while fielding less men then nations, will make up for it with more high tech weapon systems.

still, they will probably be into the high them hard and hit them fast style of war. blitzkrieg taken to the nth degree and then some.
so if they cant break the back of the enemy in one swift move, or at least produce so much shock and awe that the enemy folds from sheer shock, they will probably loose as they cant maintain a war of attrition.

still, i guess that so far they have gotten away with it as the fighting strength of the big nations have gotten a beating from the increased hostility of the wilderness, new powerful nations based around magic rather then tech and industry, and had their industrial capacities reduced by the corps going "non-national".

right now usa have the final say as to who general dynamic or lockheed martin can do business with. but what if that ceased to happen? what could that do to the power balance? makes me think of ww1 where all sides fielded maxim machineguns made on license in the respective nations.

i really do suspect that globalization of the economies of the world will have a interesting effect on wars. especially if the corps can fight of any attempt at emergency nationalization of their production facilities. hmm, i wonder what kinds of national debts the orbital holds...

It sounds like an assault carrier- usually named after battles they are usually with names like Iwo Jima and Guadelcanal. The most recent one is the USS New York actually made with steel from ground zero.

I'm gonna really question a 60 knot speed. MAYBE smaller boats can get that but not something that can carry aircraft. The mass needed for even a harrier flight deck is too much for that and 60 knots is unbelievably fast. 30-40 knots is considered really booking in ships. In WW2 Battleships could only do around 25 knots and even the american fast carriers, SOTA in design because they stripped off the battle plates of the british ships and replaced it with teak, could only do 30-35 knots.

Something tells me the USS New York is going to be up front and person in any conflict during her lifetime with that kind of history behind her.

Hats off to the men and women that will serve her, may she do her country proud!

the speed claims could have somthing to do with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimaran

As one who witnessed a Nuclear Powered Super Carrier outrun it escorts including mine, a 4 gas turbine powered destroyer.

My destroyer in Emergency Battle Override has performed at ~40+ knots in seas of 3 to 4 feet swells and it was not a hull like this one has. Was interesting watching the Russian Naval unit compete with us in the Dakota Dash of long ago.

My big question is how they will "hide" the roostertail of the wake water moving at those speeds. The Pegasus class hydrofoils were capable of speeds near those but the roostertail was a very large RADAR target. Even my destroyer put up a wall of water at her fantail when letting down her hair so to speak.

Today's Nuclear Powered Supercarriers are capable of speeds greater than my destroyer could do, and when the SC let it all out, all speed measuring devices/equipment on all ships around the SC were disabled. SC speeds are still classified even today.

But since the Naval High Command does not learn from the past, they will go exclusively with these, and the SC will fade away, until it hits the fan again, and the USN finds these pocket carriers lack what it takes.

WMS

I was just gonna post about this
reminds me of some of the SR boats

That's way awesome. They just turned off the sensors, huh? That kinda makes you wonder what other statistics are still classified. Can't see them ever ditching super carriers, though. These don't look like they have the same kind of sea legs that the big boys have. I like the idea of close-in assault carriers, particularly if they're cheap, but it dosen't seem like they would have the same capacity for time-at-sea.

and the same level of presence...

if one want to show one is paying attention, one send a carrier group. if one dont want to show it, one send a sub.

As someone with a massive hard-on for the naval hardware I apologize ahead of time if I drag this into minutiaeville.

The Independence and other LCS's (I think there are still two competing designs) aren't really pocket carriers so much as utility ships. They combine the speed of a destroyer (or better if the speed reports are to be believed. 60+ knots is "Ridiculous Speed" for most naval engagements) with interchangeable mission oriented modules.
I read a riveting description of how three LCS’s operating in concert could tackle a low intensity conflict like terrorists trying to disrupt shipping by launching suicide attacks in the Persian Gulf. One ship had a SEAL team module (living quarters, armory, equipment), the other had a bevy of drones (a couple of remote RHIB boats, UAVs, and a fancy submarine drone), and the last one had a bunch of missile tubes stuffed into its mission module. They used the RHIBs to interdict bombers enroute to their targets, UAV’s to backtrack to their point of origin, SEAL’s to actually secure the target, and missiles to provide them with close support and swat down follow on attacks (using the UAVs to extend sensor network far outside of the ships organic capabilities). Throw in a DDX for some railgun finger of god goodness and you have quiet a handy unit.
Basically the LCS is all about flexibility and the ability to scale force. It falls in the spectrum of vessels between the stealth of a sub and the Righteous Fist of Inevitable Vengeance that is a carrier battle group. Unlike a carrier, or for that matter an amphibious assault ship, it has the speed and armament to mix it up in a stand up naval fight. You don’t need a squadron of destroyers and cruisers to protect it, nor do you need a sub tasked to shadow it (although that might not be a bad idea).

But the LCS isn’t an assault carrier; we have LHA, LHD’s for that role. The LCS only caries a couple of helos whereas a true amphibious assault ship carries a reinforced helicopter squadron, a handful of V/STOL aircraft, and an entire expeditionary unit of Marines with 30 days of logistical support.

The Austin and it's sister ships (including the New York) are actually LPD's, a class I'm intimately familiar with and love as my first duty station was aboard the Dubuque, a LPD of the previous generation. As much as I love them they are primarily taxi cabs for Marines. Totally awesome taxi cabs that can carry upwards of 600 Marines, armor, a couple of helos, and put everything shore in a LCAC or a couple of LCU’s, but taxis nonetheless. The Austin class is larger, faster, stealthier, and has a myriad of awesome upgrades over the older LPD's (which got built during and slightly after Vietnam). Plus it has bunks that you can sit up in, that’s almost worth the price of admission right there.

I do disagree with my esteemed colleague WMS though. I don't think naval planners are being dismissive about super carriers. Super carriers of various designs are considered the linchpin for "Sea Basing" which is the pre-positioning large forces in international waters so we don’t have to worry about some dumb Marine in Okinawa jeopardizing our strategic footing in a hemisphere. LCS ships are designed to work in conjunction with these Sea Bases, pushing sensors, spec ops, and other elements closer to shore and therefore closer to the enemy. We need a ship that’s more than a one trick pony and that can get in and out fast, disgorging all manner of interesting death. Or hell, humanitarian aid. Pull all the war modules out, throw in a surgical suite, a refrigerated cargo container full of vaccines, pack the holds full of rebuilding material, and you’ve got a 60 knot gift basket that can park itself at unprepared piers.

*shivers* Mmm… Navy shit… Mmm…

And yeah, carriers can book. So can destroyers and frigates but I’m fairly certain the fastest ship in our inventory is the carrier. Something about having four nuke power plants and screws the size of small houses. I had a sub guy claim that subs are actually the fastest ships out there, which makes a bit of sense as they’re essentially large nuke powered torpedoes. But I tell you what, when I get to the Lincoln in Seattle I’ll let you guys knows what it’s like.

Did anyone else catch that report a couple of months ago about a Chinese sub "accidentally" sneaking into a US carrier battle group?

Yeah, that scared the hell out of me. We've got the tech to detect them, which means that somebody is getting complacent with procedure.

So complacent that it snuck past an entire carrier battle group? Or perhaps they Chinese have just gotten very very good at making quiet diesel electric subs.

I was of the understanding that Chinese sub squadrons, while the most advanced part of their navy, were still a good pace behind us in terms of both stealth and detection technology. I know they have a lot of money coming in, but I find it hard to believe that they've gone from Soviet surplus to U.S.-equivalent technology in.. ten years?

I suppose the only question I have is this: Do you think they'll take credit, or would they require cash for one o' these babies?

Who knows? They do have nuclear power, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to imagine they'd managed to get it into a sub. Or hell, just made some crazy stealthy breakthrough for their subs. Ten years is a long time in tech terms.

Nuclear reactors aren't the whole key to the stealth equation. You need fairly sophisticated cavitation technology to break up your bubbles and keep your screw quiet. It's a lot more then just shoving some control rods in the ol' core.

The modified type 39/Song class subs are probably pretty good (the early production type 39s had some sort of problem). Similar to the Russian Kilo, but probably with better passive sonar.

could be the picked up a trick or two from what the swedish navy have available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotland_class_submarine

Oh it's not that they can't put a nuke in a sub, it's just that it's cheaper and easier to make them using tech that's been around for a hundred years. Furthermore, and this is the dirty little secret of the US sub program, diesel/electric subs can actually be quieter than a nuke sub (everything else being equal, like screw cavitation and all that). A nuke generates power by creating high pressure steam and that is a fairly loud process. Diesel subs rely on batteries when running under the waves and as such only have to silence their propulsion and screws.

The obvious advantage of nuclear power is that it allows a sub to run virtually forever without surfacing a necessary attribute for a "boomer", a nuclear detterent sub. However, for something like an attack sub which is significantly smaller and designed primarily to kill entire fleets without being detected, you can't carry all that many supplies to being with so the advantages of a nuclear power plant are reduced somewhat. A friend of mine on an attack sub related that there's so little space they actually stack supplies in the passageways and lay planks over the top so you can walk over them. They also had to hot rack which is the fairly disturbing practice of forcing two people to share one bunk (thankfully not at the same time).

The link that hobgoblin put up pretty much sums it up. Modern desiel electric subs are extremely difficult to detect, I have no doubt that the Chinese are busily building subs like this.

We thought that about Russian aviation during the cold war, and then they rolled out the SU-27 and quietly reminded us not to underrate the efficiency of highly motivated engineers

The main disadvantage of diesel/electric subs is their lack of medium/high speed underwater endurance. You can't go for very long at 10+ knots like a nuke sub can, so your ability to actually chase/intercept a surface fleet is fairly limited. In barrier patrol and constricted waters, they can be right bastards.

except if you look at the gotland class i linked to, its supposedly faster submerged (20 knots) then surfaced (11 knots)...

and its supposed to manage 2 weeks submerged...

The other issue is wether or not their tactics call for open water intercepts or waiting for a battle group to settle into an area of operation. Carriers might be able to put the hammer down and all but fly, but when they're actually launching and recovering aircraft they go a great deal slower (though far from slow, they keep their speed up and face into the wind to make take offs easier).

All subs are faster submerged, since submerged subs don't generate wake drag. Modern diesel/electric subs can manage 20 or 25 knots while submerged, but they can't do it for any length of time (a few hours at most). The endurance envelope submerged will look something like 200-500 miles at 2-5 knots (around 7-10 days of total submerged time), but maybe only 50-150 miles at 10 knots, and maybe only 20-50 miles at 20 knots.

Nuke subs can go 20+ knots submerged basically forever.

can they do that without any kind of cavitation risk?

The max 'quiet' speed of the western attack subs is somewhere around 20 knots. If they want to put the hammer down, then can go 30+ knots, but it makes plenty of noise.

[edit]
Note that the ~20 knot max quiet speed is still pretty loud. Nuke subs still use the ~5 knot creep, just like diesel boats do.
[/edit]

so if you want to sneak up on some fleet, your not going to get there very fast

Would work something like this:

Yankee/capitalist/pig-dog carrier group is detected by surface assests, and your sub gets intercept order. You plot intercept course and order max quiet speed (15 knots) and go 200 miles (takes around 13 or 14 hours to get there), putting you around 150 miles in front of yankee carrier group. Then you reduce to creep speed of ~3 knots and wait. You will get to shoot at evil yankees in around 8 hours.

A diesel sub would have had to be at the right place to begin with. A nuke sub can run to the right place at max quiet speed, thus making for a much greater operational area.

In a somewhat related note. Any of you play Wolves the Pacific? Fantastic WWII sub simulator, gave me a lot for respect for the Silent Service.

I also like it because on the easier settings I've actually been able to sneak up right next to a big slow ship and shell it to death my little itty bitty deck gun (and the stray shells from it's escorts).

Water and damage effects are pretty cool too.

Agreed but the topic header is what I was basically responding to.

As for who is fastest.....my bet is on the carrier, also my destroyer had massive ~40+ feet variable pitch screws.

As for subs sneaking in, it happened all the time when I was in service but it was mostly our or allied subs doing to the carrier group.

As for ASW detection, speed is a limiting factor in the detection process. My last ship had towed sonar array, of a vintage design, at that time only two on each coast. But that array with the Ocean Systems Technicians "Old Hands" could and did detect diesels ours and theirs at very long distances 100+ nm. But to perform this sonar magic 1-2 knots was the fastest we could do with out breaking the array cable. Also higher speeds reduced the sensitivity of the array. This also meant my ship was 200+nm ahead of the battle group, with mean we got sh*t for supplies etc.

WMS

there's subs that utilize fuel-cells and the such now, and of course modified engines drawing the power from those sources also making less noise again . . there ARE now pretty much VERY silent things . . there was this gag about looking for the silent spot in the ocean to find certain subs . . but those new ones don't even leave said silent spot, they generate ambient sounds to blend into the background clutter as far as i understood . .

I was/am intrigued by the German WWII designs that used hydrogen peroxide for a fuel source.

WMS

I've heard tell of advanced screw designs that actually induced and controlled cavitation to mimic various sorts of vessels. Not at all sure how true that is though.

im guessing your referring to this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine




as if the normal ones wasn't dangerous enough...

LInks
The Walter Submarine Turbine
Type XVIII
Type XXII
Type XXIV
Type XXVI
Were slated to use the Walter Turbine

WMS

Carriers are obsolete, even moreso in 2070.
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?AR...mp;IBLOCK_ID=35

"What the battleship was in 1941, the aircraft carrier is now: a big, proud, expensive... sitting duck."

...

But so damned cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide#Hazards

*Shrugs*

The article isn't coming up at work so I'll have to reserve my judgement till I get back to my room. However I'd like to see what the replacement for a vessel that can carry all those aircraft, all that distance, and at 40+ knots. It certainly isn't going to be an LCS or really any other ship currently in development in America.

Now give it another 20-30 years for UCAV technology to mature and I'm sure we'll see drone carriers that are much smaller but perform the same function. But as long as the world is pissed off at us and international water remain clear, carriers are going to be the best way to put a whole lot of firepower in theater very quickly.

I'd also point out that we did pull a battleship out retirement almost 50 years after the war it was designed to fight in.

I will agree that super carriers probably don't exist in 2070. As near as I can tell no one has fought a real decisive naval battle since the Awakening nor has the world seen any sort of international conflict where you'd even use something as overkill as a carrier. Most of the conflicts described tend to be very asymetric with weighting going towards the megacorps in the fight. It's not like the huk were going to rub some bamboo together and squirt out a carrier or two.
Plus they're basically useless to megacorps for the amount of money you spend on one. Probably just better to add a few more Thor round launcher instead.

Not really, it' not so much a question of mass, but rather surface area to mass and raw power available. The USS Enterprise used to be the fastest capital ship in the world with a classified top speed that was known to be second only to the Navy's hydros. She earned that title because carriers naturally have a relatively low surface area to mass ratio and because when she was being desinged (way back in the day), the Navy brass didn't believe the engineers when they said she'd only need two of those new-fangled nuclear reactors, so they ordered eight to be installed.

-NR

What can you say, sometimes quantity has a quality all of it's own.

Interesting article. It's really difficult to assess how much of Ripen's success is due to the parameters of the exercise, though, and how successful it would be now it's been seen once. And, as has been said, no matter how vulnerable a carrier is, it can still do things that assets based in the Continental US simply can't. Heck it can provide a level of air support in the former Yugoslavia (for example) that aircraft based in *Italy* can't.

So, as long as "force projection" is a desirable capability, and the supercarrier will be on the scene. It might mutate to be a drone platform, but timelag and fragility of comms combined with lack of trust in autonomous systems to make the right fire/nofire decisions might make the idea of the fast jet pilot have a longer life.

Note that the author of the examples suggests that Argentinian Exocets "shredded" the British fleet in the Falklands. Exocet sank 1 destroyer and 1 converted container ship. Here's a linkto a list. Most of the damage was done by freefall bombs, and if we (the British) had had a supercarrier with AWACS and Tomcats with their Phoenix, the Argentinian air force would have ceased to exist on its first bombing sortie.

The article ignores two keys facts.

1. The Navy has freely admitted since the early days of nuclear warfare that carriers aren't really expected to surive beyond the initial conflict in a high-intensity war and were never meant to. When you go high intensity on both sides, survivability becomes a quaint term.

2. Van Riper earned his victory by cheating as much, if not more so, as the admirals who "refloated" the lost ships. Van Riper did this by ruthlessly abusing the system before the game ever began. He took advantage of the fact that the battle was a computer simulation where the orders were executed flawlessly. If someone had used Van Ripper's system in real life, the odds of it working as well are very low. If nothign else, the sheer scope of the network would have risked singal to noise confusion and also exposure of the orders to intelligence assets on the ground. Likewise, the computer literaly gave Ripper an unlimited number of personnel for kamakazie missions. While there are obviously some zealots who will sacrifice themselves, the number is relatively low. In Palenstine, the radicals couldn't even maintain a one suicide bomber a day rate, and Iran has less than 15 times the population of Palenstine. Thus the odds of them being able to call upon thousands of kamakazies at any one time are virtually nil.

That's not to say Van Riper was utterly wrong. What his cheating did was to highlight something the Navy already knew and was addressing, namely that blue water ships are less than ideal for what amount to littoral combat. There's scads of new ships and weapons systems being designed to address this; however, under the current administration those programs had suffered cutbacks as emphasis was placed elsewhere. That leaves one to conclude that Van Riper's true strategy was to embarass the administration enough to refocus on the programs it already had in palce.

-Nr

Bringing this back to Shadowrun for a sec, who has carriers then? Given how exspensive the are to maintain, I could only see a handfull of naitons and a few corps having the resources to maintain one. I think the biggest battle listed in cannon SR fiction is the Omega order against Aztechnoloy.

Nations that might have active carrier groups:
UCAS
CAS
Russia
Azlan
the Kingdom of Hawaii might have had one, (inherited from the UCAS) but they probably sold it off

Corps:
The corporate court?
Aztechnology

Some beg to differ

As for Shadowrun: I doubt it is useful to have carriers in 2070. Especially with the change to the Movement power you can basically reach most positions on the earth from a normal airforce base. Then again, I guess the need to spend alot of money on prestige/intimidation objects has not changed in favor of a more solution oriented spending.

The CAS is credited in SoNA as having the lagest standing military in NA. They also are said to have the largest navy, and I foresee it having a carrier or two. And your mention of the movement power, why use it on one or two aircraft when you can move an entire squadron with support staff and crew.

Because it is saving so much money. Nothing speaks against long-term binding Airspirits to granting movement and concealment to planes. You would not even need the mages most of the year. I think the Navy would protest as it won't be their budget anymore.

So it all depends on how integrated you see the military by 2070. It would be perfectly logical for them to be as they are now and it would also be perfectly logical to be a highly integrated taskforce including heavy use of magic.
Old nations who had large standing armys will probably still do that, yet I can see some of the new nations/corps to use more cost efficient ways.

In SR, carriers really aren't going to be around anymore... at least, not the supercarriers. Need precision bombing on a target? Send up a half dozen guided missiles with pilot programs or, better yet, riggers controlling them. Don't have time to wait for the missiles to get to you? Drones can hit just as hard as a big aircraft, but will be alot smaller.

hmm, didnt iran do something similar during the iran iraq war?

as in, send young men to the front with basically just a mark of martyrdom and the orders to rush the iraqi positions, get into hand to hand fighting and grab any weapon they could get hold of?

There's still the issue of logistics for those drones, and a place to land them when they're done. Canon (at least, in Rigger 3, IIRC) said that both the Imperial Japanese and UCAS had sizable carrier fleets.

*sigh*... 60 knots is not unreasonable. Many of the large deck ships can reach speeds in excess of 30 knots. Why do all their spec sheets say 30+? Because you don't necessarily want everyone to know just how quickly you can get from point A to point B. In many cases, a large deck is unable to go as fast as the engines would allow due to physical stresses.

With that said, you'd be very surprised at just how fast a Nimitz class (nuclear powered) carrier can go once it gets up to speed. Large doesn't necessarily mean slow top speed. It does however make acceleration a bitch.