Armor, meet gunpowder. Battleship, meet air power. Aircraft Carrier, meet ballistic missile.

[bushmeister0]

Gary Brecher writes for Alternet that aircraft carriers are sitting ducks. "The Chinese military has developed a ballistic missile, Dong Feng 21, specifically designed to kill U.S. aircraft carriers." He cites this sentence from a report by the U.S. Naval Institute:

"Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at Mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2,000 kilometers in less than 12 minutes."

http://www.alternet.org/audits/134830/navy%27s_big_weak... (expensive)_defenseless_sitting_ducks/?page=1

The article states also: "Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack"

Mark Gaffney wrote a few years back on the Russian version of a carrier killer the SS-N-22 Sunburn (which they've reportedly sold to the Iranians for possible use in the Persian Gulf against the 5th fleet).

Gaffney writes: "I was shocked when I learned the facts about these Russian-made cruise missiles . . . Although the Russian navy continues to rust in port, and the Russian army is in disarray, in certain key areas Russian technology is actually superior to our own. And nowhere is this truer than in the vital area of anti-ship cruise missile technology, where the Russians hold at least a ten-year lead over the US.

The Sunburn can deliver a 200-kiloton nuclear payload, or: a 750-pound conventional warhead, within a range of 100 miles, more than twice the range of the Exocet. The Sunburn combines a Mach 2.1 speed (two times the speed of sound) with a flight pattern that hugs the deck and includes 'violent end maneuvers' to elude enemy defenses. The missile was specifically designed to defeat the US Aegis radar defense system. Should a US Navy Phalanx point defense somehow manage to detect an incoming Sunburn missile, the system has only seconds to calculate a fire solution not enough time to take out the intruding missile. The US Phalanx defense employs a six-barreled gun that fires 3,000 depleted-uranium rounds a minute, but the gun must have precise coordinates to destroy an intruder 'just in time.'

The Sunburn's combined supersonic speed and payload size produce tremendous kinetic energy on impact, with devastating consequences for ship and crew. A single one of these missiles can sink a large warship, yet costs considerably less than a fighter jet. Although the Navy has been phasing out the older Phalanx defense system, its replacement, known as the Rolling Action Missile (RAM) has never been tested against the weapon it seems destined to one day face in combat.

http://www.rense.com/general59/theSunburniransawesome.h...

So, I'm thinking that $11 billion the Navy is planning on spending for the USS Gerald Ford might be better spent elsewhere, like working on anti-ballistic missile system to defend all our surface ships, if that's even possible.

Brecher's analysis at Alternet, that the Navy's top brass is much like the financial whiz-kids at AIG and BOA, etc, is very apt. Despite Billy Mitchel's many warnings and practical examples of the fact that battleships had become obsolete in the face of air power, they chose to keep building them and focus instead on destroying Mitchel's career. Before Pearl Harbor, the Admirals always appropriated a big battleship from which to command the fleet. After Pearl Harbor, they decided taking their flag to an aircraft carrier was a better idea, and way more glamorous.

A modern, obtuse, case in point; Brecher interviewed Vice Admiral John Bird, commander of the 7th Fleet, who told him, "The purpose of the Navy is not to fight. The mere presence of the Navy should suffice," to keep everyone in line.

Yes, Vice-Admiral, and prices in the housing market can only go up!

[Occam Bandage]

1. The best defense against anti-ship cruise missiles is distance.

All that need happen is the carrier remain 110 miles off shore, and the Sunburn is nothing but an extraordinarily large paperweight.

[bushmeister0]

2. What about inside the Strait of Hormuz?

[Occam Bandage]

4. What about it?

It is true that aircraft carriers do enter the Strait, but there's no chance in Hell that they'd be within 200 miles of shore if we were planning on any hostilities with Iran. The only threat regarding the strait and aircraft carriers would be a Pearl-Harbor-esque sneak attack out of the blue, which is an unreasonable fear. Iran doesn't want a war any more than you or I do.

[bushmeister0]

8. I'm not saying Iran wants a war with us.

But if you're in the business of war making, the fact that you have absolutely not defense against such weapons in the event of hostilities -- they always plan for every contingency -- you ought to be worried. I don't think a "Pearl-Harbor-esque sneak attack out of the blue," is not such an unreasonable fear, just ask the crew of the USS Cole. And, it would be difficult to keep the Strait open -- the raison d tere of the US 5th Fleet -- from 200 miles away. The Strait is on 34 miles wide, pretty tight quarters and a military planner's nightmare. Any ship entering such a tight space would be a sitting duck.

I'm just saying, are we really spending our defense dollars wisely and does the top brass know what they're doing or are they the Dick Fold's of the military?

[Occam Bandage]

14. To say we have "absolutely no defense" is incorrect.

We have an absolutely unassailable defense against the Sunburn. It is called "being 200 miles from shore." We are of course also working on many anti-missile programs, and on updating the systems we currently have in place. Military spending is hardly limited; every program that might possibly be useful gets as much money as it wants.

Keeping an aircraft carrier in the Strait would not do anything to help keep it open in the middle of a shooting war. A carrier is just as capable of launching sorties from 120 miles away as it is from 20 miles away. There would certainly be ships in the strait, but not carriers. We may well lose a destroyer in the event of such a war; Gaza demonstrated how difficult it is to monitor for missile launch systems.

As for the Cole? If a Sunburn missile were to strike an aircraft carrier out of the blue, Iran would cease to exist. They are well aware of this. There is a significant difference between "a few terrorists on a raft with some bombs" and "the tightly-guarded centerpiece of a nation's anti-American defenses being deployed and used." One is an act by people we are already effectively at war with. The other is a premeditated and deliberate act of war.

[bushmeister0]

23. Hmm, so all the Iranians would have to do then, or the Chinese for that

matter, is keep heading towards a carrier in a speed boat and the carrier would have to keep moving back to stay out of range, right? If that kept up, the carrier might wind up back in port before too long.

[qazplm]

25. well you know there are these things

called ships, subs, and planes that make up a carrier fleet who's sole purpose is to protect the carrier that might make it a wee bit hard for that speed boat to get anywhere close to the carrier.

Of course, the other thing is that carriers dont have some special signature that the missile homes on to. You have to know where the carrier is, with pretty good specificity, and that means you have to either have a satellite giving you real time information or a plane.

Plane isn't going to happen, and China doesn't have a ton of sats up there yet and Iran I'm not worried about so unless the Russians are helping, it will be very hard for a ship to get close enough.

[bushmeister0]

28. I wasn't serious. I was taking the poster's scenerio to it's most absurd

conclusion.

The Chinese do have sats, though, that's why the USAF is so preoccupied with their "high frontier" war in space plans.

A plane is possible, judging by the numerous flyovers of our carriers by the Russians recently.

From what I understand, these anti-ship missiles use radar to find their targets, anyway.

In any case, we could go 'round and 'round, if all you defenders of the carrier model are correct about the tactics of the situation, that still doesn't alter the fact that the very existence of these weapons and their proven deadly effectiveness, changes the strategic calculation, regardless. We no longer have the ability to just steam into the South China Sea or the Strait of Hormuz or any number of other places with impunity anymore. Drip, drip, drip.

[yurbud]

19. shooting fish in a barrel--block the strait, shoot at leisure

[Tesha]

3. You really don't think the launcher can be made mobile?

Carriers are sitting ducks against anyone with a smidgen of
technical sophistication and stealth.

Their defenses are designed against a full frontal naval attack
(as in the last big war) and not against, say, twenty supersonic
missiles coming from twenty directions at once. One of these
days we may have this demonstrated to us in a quite-
uncomfortable way.

Tesha

[Occam Bandage]

5. Sure I do. I also don't think the Iranians would be able to get a ship within 100 miles.

The Chinese are another matter entirely, but a shooting war with China would be so mutually destructive that we could probably trade 'unstoppable' weapons back and forth for hours. If we honestly expected war with China, it would probably be fought entirely with long-range missiles for the first few weeks.

[guy]

22. Nope.

This is not about the sunburn. The sunburn does mach 2.5

This one does mach 10. The missile really doesn't need a warhead, kinetic energy alone would destroy the ship.

[DS1]

6. So, is it a ballistic missile or a ocean-hugging missile?

And Mach 10?

This article seems pretty poorly written

[Occam Bandage]

7. The Sunburn is sea-hugging.

The DF-21 is a medium-range hypersonic ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead. Use of that against an aircraft carrier would probably represent the end of coastal and urban China, of Japan, of Korea, of Taiwan, and of urban America.

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. The anti-ship version is with a conventional warhead

The 'U.S. Naval Institute' (not, despite its name, a government organisation - it's an independent group for people interested in US naval matters) article is here:

https://www.usni.org/forthemedia/ChineseKillWeapon.asp

And the blog that picked up the Chinese blog:

7. How beneficial is this system?
That I really would have no idea. I wouldn't even know how much damage would 1 missile cause on a carrier. I would think that if this system can even temporarily put one carrier out of commission and/or keep carrier groups further out from the mainland, it would've achieved its purpose.

8. Are there other launch platforms to this system?
I always thought that an-air launched version of ASBM from JH-7A is possible. There are certainly a large variety of short range ballistic missiles that JH-7A would be able to carry and provide updates for. I have not thought about launching ASBM from a SSBN, since that could easily be mistaken for a nuclear missile.

http://informationdissemination.blogspot.com/2009/03/pl...

[bushmeister0]

11. You might be correct, ballistic missiles go up and then go down

but the U.S. Navy Institute report calls it a ballistic missile, I'm just pointing that out.

[Occam Bandage]

16. The DF-21 is ballistic and hypersonic. nt

[rrneck]

9. Our navy

is just like every other navy ever built - it is best at projecting imperial power. Unfortunately, the days of empire are over, and our navy is becoming increasingly irrelevant. A billion dollar carrier group can have its effectiveness seriously eroded or even compromised by a few million dollar missiles.

Why don't we just throw money at 'em?

[DavidDvorkin]

13. Ten-rupee jezail

From Kipling's "Arithmetic on the Frontier":

A scrimmage in a Border Station--
A canter down some dark defile--
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail--
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

[bushmeister0]

15. Like those tee-shirt cannons at football games!

[depakid]

10. Spy vs. spy

From the week gone by on the directed-energy weapons front: defense contractor Northrop Grumman reported that it got a solid-state laser to fire a beam with a potency of 105.5 kilowatts.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10201745-76.html

That is actually what looks like might be an effective defense down the line.

(Depa's note: the development is cool in its own right- but the topic of discussion would be Carriers vs. Land Bases vs. withdrawal- so, kindly ease up in advance on the messenger).

[bushmeister0]

18. Again, it comes down to money for the DoD.

Noah Shachtman at Wired's Danger Room blog of the news from Northrop (says):

"Does that mean energy weapons are a done deal? Hardly. There are still all sorts of technical issues--thermal management and miniaturization, to name two--that have to be handled first. Then, the ray gunners have to find the money. The National Academies figure it'll take another $100 million to get battlefield lasers right."

I know, let's cut out the construction of one of the upcoming Ford-class carriers and spend it on building lasers that don't weigh a ton and only work in a laboratory. Of course, the minute we achieve energy weapon nirvana, the Chinese will have developed a gigantic mirror that will deflect the beam back at us.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Ah, well. Just throw another $800 Billion at the Pentagon and they'll "defend" us.

At least until "defense" spending completely bankrupts the nation.

[Traveling_Home]

17. Ballistic Missle meet Nuclear Response

I think a lot of the tech work being done on the US anti-missle installation planned for Eastern Europe wil be applicable to ship board use.

Even now, talk is that the US or Japan was ready to take out the N. Korean ballistic missle with anti-missle technology; Israeli also has much improved variants of the Patriots.

Maybe the reality is more like Nuclear deterrance now (and China doesn't want to hurt us, we owe too much money) and anti-missle very soon.

[bushmeister0]

20. In real battle has the Patriot every actually shot down a missile?

I know they're real good at shooting down our planes down, though.

[yurbud]

21. unless Obama follows through on neo-con/Likud plan to attack Iran, this is all academic

If he does do it, we'll see this play out in a couple of hours.

During the Bush years, the whole world was depending on Iran, Russia, and China to behave with more restraint and reason than we did.

I hope that won't have to be the case with Obama.

[bushmeister0]

24. I agree with you on the Obama message. Let's hope calmer heads prevail

but the issue of the continued usefulness of multi-billion dollar weapons systems like aircraft carrier attack groups is not academic. It's bleeding us dry. If we need them, fine. If not, if this is just a pride thing on the part of the Navy and a money thing on the part of the military industrial complex, then I say the current state of affairs is a massive boondoggle that's not only bankrupting us but also endangering the lives of the sailors on board all those ships and threatening our rule of the high seas, to boot.

[cobalt1999]

27. Any nuclear missle use will mean destruction for the user.

Nice to develop it, but it's not something they'd ever launch without already launching a full scale missle attack on U.S. cities.

In other words, it's useless except in all out nuclear war.

[pinto]

29. Locking.

We routinely remove posts that cite rence. We don't want to be any part of supporting the website through mention on Democratic Underground.

Thanks.