rham wrote:I enjoy the banter too, no hard feelings here. At least the level of debate is better than in politics.
The problem is in the next 30 years who knows?
We could justify any weapon system on this basis. All weapons can have a theoretical justification. Just in case, we should have standing army of 200 000, equipped with tanks, transports, helicopters etc. Just in case we should satellite based weapons. Just in case we should design missile defences etc etc. Just in case, we need more drones, body armour, spying, cyber defence. The USA spends more than everyone else combined but remains fearful because of the need to fight all possible wars in the next 30 years. I would not choose carriers.
Aye at the end of the day no-one really knows as you say, we can only predict and ultimately guess. Preparation for the next conflict is absolutely vital but ultimately difficult because it's hard to predict what we need and how much we need. In this regard and in my opinion carriers are handy but I think your reasoning is valid too. I imagine in say 30 years time, with hindsight one of us will get to say "See, I told you so didn't I!". I hope that neither of us will have to say that mind.
rham wrote:The links I posted on these missiles are 2010. I do not think it is unreasonable stretch that these missiles will be in operation by 2020. (The Russian Sunburn missile already exists). The drive in China to develop more capable missiles to deny the USN entrance to the Taiwan straight is very strong. (As you say its in China's interest to hype up the missile)
The swarming attack is the one the USN games in the gulf, it is a mass attack by planes and missiles to overwhelm defences (the Aegis class is designed to cope but no one knows). Disabling a carrier is worth a whole lot of missiles and quite a few planes.
I definitely don't deny that the Chinese amongst others are seeking to develop these missiles and I'd say that a carrier group operating in the straights of Taiwan will be seriously mauled/destroyed even with the missiles that China has in it's arsenal today. This is why it's doctrine that will be key for the carriers success (i.e operating the carrier groups at the optimal range at all times and devolping optimal missile defence systems etc.) as with all systems. I agree that the swarming attack is deadly for the carrier but systems today are being designed with swarming in mind. Whether they work or not though is something to find out in the future...
rham wrote:As you say, no one knows what will happen in a real war. Unless the chinese fight a war using these missiles, then the only time we will have real insight into their capability (unless we steal one) is when it hurtles down at us at mach 8. It might not work, but would you risk the lives of all on board, your blue water fleet? I suspect for national survival yes (and in the case of the Falklands for national prestige / territory). For much else, I think no.
For example the much quoted Falklands, had Argentina had more working exocets, they could have sunk a carrier, they did not and this is speculation. The point is we underestimated the power of missiles before (so did almost all navies) and in a real shooting war there are chance events. At the time of the Falklands, the UK was the third naval power in the world and Argentina was a military midget. Yet those exocets made it a close run thing, our defensive measures turned out to be ineffective in a real war, whereas exocets turned out to be better than expected (although they had problems too). The whole point about defending against a single large offensive weapon like the carrier is you just need to knock it out to win. The defenders strategic drive to negate the carrier advantage in a war of national survival / prestige (invasion of Iran or in China's case Taiwan) is very strong. If they do not care about invading your territory they can focus their energy on defence and if they are willing to risk significant casualties to keep their regime / island possession, then they have a much easier job.
I agree that we'll never really find out the true capabilities of the missiles before they've seen at least some action but if we were operating against such a high tier opponent then it would probably be a matter of essentially national survival. I think that in this scenario we would be all out alongside our allies. Against smaller nations I think that as long as the doctrine is sound we'll risk the carrier but time might well prove me wrong. Regarding the exocets, I believe we hadn't underestimated the threat of the missile as every measure possible was taken to guard against them using the forces available and we already had a quite a few of them in service ourselves to gain an appreciation of their abilities. I do believe that our defences weren't as adequet as they should have been but the intelligence drive to limit the supply of the Exocets to Argentina proved to be potentially war-winning. We used our expertise gained in the falklands to good effect in the Gulf tanker war.
rham wrote:Argentina could never have occupied the Isle of White or the Scilly isles, they did not have the capability to operate beyond the fighter range of mainland. Nor on land were their soldiers a match for UK forces. The Falklands lesson to me is that defending your shore or near shore (Falklands was within fighter cover of the Argentinian mainland) is a whole lost easier than attacking someone else's. Further weak countries can defend against stronger ones by use of cheap missiles. The attacker as with the USN, needs to have very significant strength in depth, particularly against surface skimming anti ship missiles. The more advanced the foe the harder this becomes then either you change your doctrine or you build a more robust fleet. (The USN is now contemplating this)
Aye, being defensive is usually less expensive than being on the offensive and in amphibious operations the attacker has his work cut out for him. With regards to the Argentian land forces there were one or two battalions that were a match for the British and in terms of equipment, the Argentians often possessed better bits of kit (NVGs etc). One of the advantages of being a potential attacker however is that the deterance value of your amphibious forces your opponent to become defensive minded and delays him/her from becoming a power projecting enemy. Each comes with its advantages and disadvantages but I agree that today ships face a multitude of different threats at a time when the number of ships that can be sustained is dropping. Quite often quantity is indeed it's own quality.
rham wrote:Carriers came into their own in WW2. Before that we had battleships, we only realised they were doomed after Repulse and PoW were sunk as well at Pearl Harbour. The tank was once seen the dominant weapon, yet now the helicopter is probably supreme on land. History suggest that no weapon remains strategic for very long. It become tactical and therefore subject to tactical counter measures. I don't know if the Chinese missile will work, but given that we know cruise missiles have targeting good enough to fly through streets then by 2020 being able to hit a slow moving mass of metal is not impossible a priori. If carriers have had their day and the future is smaller expendable stealthy ships, fat lot of good a rationalised ship yard aimed at building last years behemoth is.
Battleships still had their role to play even after the destruction of Force Z. After the British attack on the Italian fleet based at Taranto in 1940 displayed the rise of naval aviation (The Japanese studied this attack before launching their equivalent on a much larger scale later on), Battleships were still useful in the ground bombardment role even up to the Gulf War (See the
USS Missouri re-activated in 1984) but i'd say that it was in 1940 that the fate of the battleship as the prominent capital ship was sealed. With regard to land forces, recent experiences with the attack helicopter have suggested that it wouldn't be as dominant as once thought in a conflict. Infact there hasn't been a dominant land weapon for quite some time - combined arms has always been the key to success. The key to cruise missiles has been the required satellites in space providing the relevant guidance systems and I imagine that this would be the case with the Chinese missiles too. Some say that the chinese don't have enough in orbit to target carrier groups (
http://www.defpro.com/news/details/17439/) but similary to the articles of the believers in the Dong Feng this is article is really just speculation with no hard facts. I think that whoever can control space will be in a lot better position to protect or destroy the carrier group. China has demonstrated an ability to destroy low orbit sattelites but has not expanded on those abilities. If the missiles do work as well as speculated then you are probably correct in saying that building a shipyard aimed at producing large warships is a waste of money. However it is also going to be producing smaller warships in the future and it may be the case that the missiles don't work as well as suggested in which case it is a sound investment.
rham wrote: The 500M + (and given the history of cost overruns want to bet it stays at this level) is for the one ship that is in early stages of construction, presumably easier to change. The cost of altering the completely build carrier is not known but can be safely assumed to be much much higher. Retrofitting catapults has never even been discussed nor if you read Liam Fox is it anywhere contemplated for the first carrier. The clue is design changes necessary to put it in the second, my understanding (but I don't know for sure) is that the actual deck needs to be lengthened which means the hull has to be altered, also the lift for the planes needs adjusted. These are not trivial retrofits to do to an existing carrier. My case stands, carrier one is a waste of metal.
I agree that the costs are going to overrun and we don't know exactly how much the final bill will be. The changes to the design will require more experience to be brought into the project and converting a carrier to cats is certaintly not trivial. However because the first carrier will be the one most likely to be mothballed, the second one will be of a better build quality, hopefully incorporating the lessons learned from building the first. If we were to have the active carrier sunk on operations then retrofitting the mothballed carrier and bringing it back to active duty will be less time consuming then building a completely new one. I think that the mothballed carrier will have it's uses, ideally it would be fully operational and it might well be in the future but it is dissapointing to see only one active carrier to be planned for in the immediate future. On the plus side if it encourages more interoperability with the US and French then this is a silver lining (not mentioning any sovereignty issues we might have the carrier ahem), coupled with the upgraded shipyard and I am still convinced that this project is not a total waste of money. We're still going to have one hell of an aircraft carrier once it's built and we've got the planes for it. As long as we don't get it run aground off Skye that is!
To be honest though, when it was first announced that we would have two large carriers instead of the three smaller carriers like we've had in the past I was a bit sceptical of the military thinking behind the decision and still am a tad. As you have mentioned before, quantity is an issue and a successful mission kill on your basket full of all your eggs should always be avoided. In the end it comes down to the type of plane to be flown. Harrier needed to be replaced a long time ago and the only plane to fufil the Vstol capability that would match up to 4th and 4.5th generation fighters would be the F-35b. This meant a new class of larger carrier had to be designed to accomodate this plane so we were always destined to move back to bigger ships in the absence of another suitable harrier replacement. Ideally three ships would be procured in terms of numbers but this would have been is far too expensive to maintain. Using two carriers would be the next step which would allow us to retain a degree of independence from the French but now we've got to depend on each another due to the fact we will only have once active one each. From the french experience of having only one carrier it is necessary to work with them due to the lack of carrier coverage when your sole carrier is in a dry dock getting it's refits done etc. I'm not happy with the way people have decided upon the carriers but I think the decision to rationalize the shipyards and the interoperability has made me a lot happier about things and has offset a few considerations that would be important otherwise.
rham wrote:If I was worried about fighting a long way from home, how would I do it? Use submarines with cruise missiles to cripple air defences, command and control, missile and air defence frigates to cover landing area and for force protection. (However, we could never invade China in essence we would be fighting to save Taiwan or for access to a third countries resources, neither case is likely to pass the existential threat to the nation test). Using large numbers of such ships, so that losses can be absorbed. It might not be work but the ability to devastate command and control from submarines and destroyers beyond fighter range (and these small fast targets are harder to hit with missiles) might act as a powerful deterrent.
I think in this scenario to adequately cover your ground troops you really do need air support whether it's launched from modern-day carriers or potentially future smaller carriers that operate combat UAV's but that's taking us into the whole manned vs unmanned fighter debate. I do agree though that large numbers of ships would be required which is why our reduction in the number of ships is disconcerting to say the least.
rham wrote:However, I more focus my energy on education of our population, decreasing invasive government, increasing prosperity, decreasing pollution and defending the home island against threats to our way of life. Its my opinion that much of woe has come from neglecting our own people because of dreams of being a first rate important power. Even saying all that I strongly believe the carriers even on their own pretext are a waste of money. Whats more I believe in time this will be admitted by authority (Cameron came pretty close), the only reason they were built is, it would have costed as much to cancel. Politically, spending the money with absolutely nothing to show was judged worse than building something and trying to pretend it might be useful and distracting people with flag waving. Military judgement did not come into it.
Going by your wishes then yes the aircraft carriers are a complete waste of money but I think ultimately they will be worth the effort in the long run, but again time will tell to be honest.