How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

OT: anything goes!

Moderator: Edi

User avatar
cosmicalstorm
Jedi Council Member
Posts: 1642
Joined: 2008-02-14 09:35am

How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by cosmicalstorm »

I came across this little piece a few weeks ago and it has been nagging in the back of my head since. I think some US cybersecurity czar namedropped it. Supposedly it had instigated a lot of debate in Washington. Anyway, It does sound a bit too far fetched to me. Would the US really swallow a non-nuclear ballistic missile into one of its carriers without any action? Is it some odd repeat of the old (debunked) Millenium-Challenge War Nerd theory?

I'll post the first two pages out of four, which get a stupid editing due to the PDF source and a direct link to the PDF below that.

(I think the guy is way out there with this.)
How the United States Lost the Naval War
of 2015
by James Kraska
James Kraska is a guest investigator at the Marine Policy Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution and the former Oceans Policy Adviser for the Director of Strategic Plans & Policy,
Joint Chiefs of Staff. The views presented are those of the author and do not reflect the official
position of the Department of Defense. He may be reached at james.kraska@gmail.com.
Abstract: Years of strategic missteps in oceans policy, naval strategy and a force
structure in decline set the stage for U.S. defeat at sea in 2015. After decades
of double-digit budget increases, the People’s Liberation Army (Navy) was
operating some of the most impressive systems in the world, including a
medium-range ballistic missile that could hit a moving aircraft carrier and
a super-quiet diesel electric submarine that was stealthier than U.S. nuclear
submarines. Coupling this new asymmetric naval force to visionary maritime
strategy and oceans policy, China ensured that all elements of national power
promoted its goal of dominating the East China Sea. The United States, in
contrast, had a declining naval force structured around 10 aircraft carriers
spread thinly throughout the globe. With a maritime strategy focused on lowerorder
partnerships,and anational oceans policy thatdevaluedstrategic interests
in freedom of navigation, the stage was set for defeat at sea. This article recounts
howChina destroyed the USS George Washington in the East China Sea in 2015.
The political fallout from the disaster ended 75 years of U.S. dominance in the
Pacific Ocean and cemented China’s position as the Asian hegemon.
By 2015, U.S. command of the global commons could no longer be
taken for granted. The oceans and the airspace above them had been
the exclusive domain of the U.S. Navy and the nation’s edifice of
military power for seventy-five years. During the age of U.S. supremacy, the
Navy used the oceans as the world’s largest maneuver space to outflank its
enemies. Maritime mobility on the surface of the ocean, in the air and under
the water was the cornerstone of U.S. military power.1 The United States was
able to utilize its maritime dominance to envelop and topple rogue regimes, as
1 Barry Posen, ‘‘Command of the Commons: The Military Foundations of U.S. Hegemony,’’
International Security Summer 2003, pp. 5-46.

it demonstrated in Grenada and Panama, and use the maritime commons to
ferry huge ground armies to the other side of the world and sustain them
indefinitely, as it did in Vietnam and twice in Iraq. The unique capability to
project decisive power rapidly in any corner of the world gave the United
States deterrent power and unrivalled military influence.
All that changed in 2015, when the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
USS George Washington, forward-deployed to Yokosuka, Japan, sunk to the
bottom of the East China Sea. More than 4,000 sailors and airmen died and the
Navy lost eighty aircraft. A ship that would take seven years and $ 9 billion to
replace slipped into the waves. The incident upset not just the balance of naval
power in Asia, but ushered in a new epoch of international order in which
Beijing emerged to displace the United States.
Red Sky in Morning—Sailor’s Warning
The warning signs—the series of political, diplomatic and strategic
missteps—had been unfolding for more than two decades. Globalization,
developments in the international law of the sea, and the revolution in military
affairs aided the emergence of China and other new naval powers. Globalization
was a democratizing force among navies. The wealth effect of expanding
trade and rising economies combined with the spread of doctrine, training and
operational art, serving as a force multiplier. The result of globalization was a
vastly improved Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) Navy in terms of its force
structure and warfighting skills. The proliferation of advanced weapons
technology helped nations that historically had never exercised naval power
to make generational leaps in precision-guided munitions. Already, a number
of regional states had developed or acquired sophisticated anti-ship cruise
missiles and super-quiet diesel electric submarines armed with sensitive wakehoming
torpedoes.
A collection of unfriendly coastal states had invested heavily in
asymmetric anti-access technologies and strategies to counter the power of
U.S. naval forces. In 1991, Iraq used a mixture of crude pre-World War I
contact navalmines and sophisticatedmagnetic and acoustic influencemines
launched from small rubber boats. The country deployed over 1,100 mines in
the first Gulf War, but most of them were either inoperable or improperly
positioned. Yet Baghdad still reaped success in using mines to secure its
seaside flank off Kuwait City. The USS Tripoli struck a moored contact mine,
which ripped a 16 20 foot cavern below the waterline; hours later, and
despite proceeding with deliberate caution to avoidmines, the USS Princeton
struck a mine that cracked her superstructure and caused severe deck
buckling.2 The Persian Gulf is a relatively small, semi-enclosed body ofwater,
and in narrow seas mines are an effective anti-access weapon. The Pacific
http://www.fpri.org/orbis/5401/kraska.navalwar2015.pdf
User avatar
Mr Bean
Lord of Irony
Posts: 22431
Joined: 2002-07-04 08:36am

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Mr Bean »

First read through it's bullshit

This lead in section tells you already all you need to know
OP wrote:After decades
of double-digit budget increases, the People’s Liberation Army (Navy) was
operating some of the most impressive systems in the world, including a
medium-range ballistic missile that could hit a moving aircraft carrier and
a super-quiet diesel electric submarine that was stealthier than U.S. nuclear
submarines. Coupling this new asymmetric naval force to visionary maritime
strategy and oceans policy, China ensured that all elements of national power
promoted its goal of dominating the East China Sea
First off an interesting fact, The PLA spends less on it's entire military than America spends on it's Navy alone (Fifty billion less to be exact) so from the first sentence of scaremongering already demonstrates the authors purpose, to lie, obfuscate and state half truths to push a political point. Second the statement a ballistic missile that can hit an aircraft carrier is meaningless when you know the problem in anti-ship weaponry for the past thirty years has been less hitting ships and more being able to break through active defenses. Aircraft carriers are not small targets not agile ones so again another statement that makes more sense when you understand the author's agenda.

Lastly we get to the best part, "new asymmetric naval force" which is a nice sounding turn of phrase as it is utterly meaninglessness. Never mind the authors stated belief that the sinking of a aircraft carrier by a hostile power we can't invade won't result in either a nuke em till they glowed response or a massive air campaign to cripple the country and annihilate it's Airforce and Navy.

"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe
Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
User avatar
Sea Skimmer
Yankee Capitalist Air Pirate
Posts: 37389
Joined: 2002-07-03 11:49pm
Location: Passchendaele City, HAB

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Sea Skimmer »

China has not in fact ever tested its supposed anti ship ballistic missile even once; nor would such a threat be new or impossible to counter with existing weapons. This is someone trying to play budget games making threats in the future decades look like they are just around the corner. The idea that the US loosing a single warship would be our utter defeat is just absurd anyway. The idea that China might cripple a carrier with a non nuclear EMP weapon is a lot more concerning, because it could actually cast doubt on a US reaction. China sinks a US carrier and its all out war. I was adding up some numbers recently as well, and it looks like by 2020 China will only be facing about 60 modern diesel submarines in the navies around it.. that alone is a rather pressing reason for them to build naval power no matter what Chinese intentions vs the US are.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
AniThyng
Sith Devotee
Posts: 2760
Joined: 2003-09-08 12:47pm
Location: Took an arrow in the knee.
Contact:

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by AniThyng »

What exactly does the author want the US Navy to build though? Presumably not more carriers?
I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character :P
User avatar
Sea Skimmer
Yankee Capitalist Air Pirate
Posts: 37389
Joined: 2002-07-03 11:49pm
Location: Passchendaele City, HAB

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Sea Skimmer »

Throw more money at high capability surface combattants capable of effective BMD operations, and the submarine fleet I'd reckon. As it is the USN attack submarine force is basically reason number one why the US isn't going to loose a naval war with China. The US has more nuclear attack submarines then China has modern diesels, and even in the worst case situation they could simply blockade China. Because of the high cost of such weapons and the specialist industry needed to make them, even if China could match US quality somehow it would take a long time to match US numbers even if they did not increase in turn.

The USN has no real need of more big deck carriers even in dooms day conventional war with China scenarios, what it really does need is more aircraft to fly off of them. Its kind of silly building such large ships but only having a goal of 48 fighters on deck. Supposedly the USN does intend to speed up work on UCAVs for carrier deck launch, since more manned stuff isn't likely, but that will take a long time to mean anything.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
User avatar
Anguirus
Sith Marauder
Posts: 3702
Joined: 2005-09-11 02:36pm
Contact:

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Anguirus »

I feel like the idea of the US losing any naval war in any future near enough to be predicted at all is really far-fetched. I'm not an expert, but it seems like even over and above our general military dominance, the US really puts a MASSIVE amount more into a combat navy than anyone else. Isn't our naval budget something like "larger than every other country put together and then some?"

I've read articles that a carrier group can't be effectively made immune to nuclear attack from the air, ground-based missiles, or sea (torpedoes) but I'm not sure what CAN, and then we have tons more nukes than anyone else, so attacking a carrier group like that seems strategically a bit...short-sighted.
"I spit on metaphysics, sir."

"I pity the woman you marry." -Liberty

This is the guy they want to use to win over "young people?" Are they completely daft? I'd rather vote for a pile of shit than a Jesus freak social regressive.
Here's hoping that his political career goes down in flames and, hopefully, a hilarious gay sex scandal.
-Tanasinn
You can't expect sodomy to ruin every conservative politician in this country. -Battlehymn Republic
My blog, please check out and comment! http://decepticylon.blogspot.com
User avatar
Sea Skimmer
Yankee Capitalist Air Pirate
Posts: 37389
Joined: 2002-07-03 11:49pm
Location: Passchendaele City, HAB

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Sea Skimmer »

Anguirus wrote:I feel like the idea of the US losing any naval war in any future near enough to be predicted at all is really far-fetched. I'm not an expert, but it seems like even over and above our general military dominance, the US really puts a MASSIVE amount more into a combat navy than anyone else. Isn't our naval budget something like "larger than every other country put together and then some?"
The navy budget is about 150 billion a year; I don't know what world naval spending is but I'd suspect it is similar. For overall defense spending the US has about a 40% share, China has more like a 12% share even adjusting for hidden spending. The official Chinese defense budget is like 120 billion dollar, but actually its at least 50% bigger, though rising fast. However worker wages are rising rapidly in China too, and they are trying to field better systems which are naturally a lot more expensive. Right now even in terms of number of jet fighters the US outright outnumbers the Chinese, on top of higher quality across the board, China for example still needing to replace hundreds of obsolete J-7 fighters.
I've read articles that a carrier group can't be effectively made immune to nuclear attack from the air, ground-based missiles, or sea (torpedoes) but I'm not sure what CAN, and then we have tons more nukes than anyone else, so attacking a carrier group like that seems strategically a bit...short-sighted.
Yes, nuclear war kind of makes all other considerations go out the window. The huge cities of China, and its heavy reliance on just a few rivers for almost all of its water supplies make it every bit if not more vulnerable to nuclear attacks then the heavily urban US is. Just one nuke landing on the three gorges dam could flood out as many as 300 million people... and put the largest city in China under 20 feet of radioactive water. Its very hard to believe either side would let itself be pushed into a nuclear war over any of the likely dispute areas, like the south china sea; but personally I think any war at all is highly unlikely. For the moment China is still at the point of building up to just be able to defend itself remotely effectively, let alone going on the offensive.

Its really just silly how so much focus goes into MY GOD CHINA MIGHT BEAT ONE AIRCRAFT CARRIER! This is 9% of our entire naval carrier strength and 1/50th our fighter force. Life will be much more concerning when China can field multiple carrier battle groups, backed up by modern nuclear subs, then it having an anti ship ballistic missile that costs a fortune per shot. Its going to be further off then 2015 for assets like that to be in service in numbers and fully operational. Personally I kind of worry more about the few US auxiliaries crossing the wide open Pacific being blown away by an anti ship ballistic missile then the carrier decks, operating with protective escorts.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
User avatar
Uraniun235
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 13772
Joined: 2002-09-12 12:47am
Location: OREGON
Contact:

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Uraniun235 »

AniThyng wrote:What exactly does the author want the US Navy to build though? Presumably not more carriers?
The impression I usually get from essays like these is of an author furiously masturbating over swarms of small "cheap" boats.
"There is no "taboo" on using nuclear weapons." -Julhelm
Image
What is Project Zohar?
"On a serious note (well not really) I did sometimes jump in and rate nBSG episodes a '5' before the episode even aired or I saw it." - RogueIce explaining that episode ratings on SDN tv show threads are bunk
User avatar
mr friendly guy
The Doctor
Posts: 11235
Joined: 2004-12-12 10:55pm
Location: In a 1960s police telephone box somewhere in Australia

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by mr friendly guy »

Sea Skimmer wrote: Its really just silly how so much focus goes into MY GOD CHINA MIGHT BEAT ONE AIRCRAFT CARRIER! This is 9% of our entire naval carrier strength and 1/50th our fighter force. Life will be much more concerning when China can field multiple carrier battle groups, backed up by modern nuclear subs, then it having an anti ship ballistic missile that costs a fortune per shot. Its going to be further off then 2015 for assets like that to be in service in numbers and fully operational. Personally I kind of worry more about the few US auxiliaries crossing the wide open Pacific being blown away by an anti ship ballistic missile then the carrier decks, operating with protective escorts.
Skimmer, how much would one of these ASBM costs vs an aircraft carrier's cost? Or to put it another way, how many would China need to field to have an equivalent cost of building an aircraft carrier? In which case, will it be value for money (giving that a missile most probably has less maintenance cost than an aircraft carrier).
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.

Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
Jim Raynor
Sith Devotee
Posts: 2922
Joined: 2002-07-11 04:42am

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Jim Raynor »

Uraniun235 wrote:
AniThyng wrote:What exactly does the author want the US Navy to build though? Presumably not more carriers?
The impression I usually get from essays like these is of an author furiously masturbating over swarms of small "cheap" boats.
It's stupid contrarianism posing insight, from what I can see. China may or may not have a few working anti-carrier ballistic missiles in the future? We need to go small and cheap then! No one's built effective weapons against small boats in the last few decades!
"They're not triangular, but they are more or less blade-shaped"- Thrawn McEwok on the shape of Bakura destroyers

"Lovely. It's known as impugning character regarding statement of professional qualifications' in the legal world"- Karen Traviss, crying libel because I said that no soldier she interviewed would claim that he can take on billion-to-one odds

"I've already laid out rules for this thread that we're not going to make these evidential demands"- Dark Moose on supporting your claims
User avatar
The Duchess of Zeon
Gözde
Posts: 14566
Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by The Duchess of Zeon »

We can just start modifying all of our DDGs to operate with SM-3 as a defence against this thing. It isn't going to be an ICBM, people, the velocity is going to be substantially lower and it's not going to have the space and weight for any kind of sophisticated decoys. Remember that for an ASBM to be effective in a conventional rather than nuclear armed sense, the reentry vehicle with warhead must be able to maneouvre, and that means it needs prodiguous quantities of fuel. These kinds of fits are comparable to what the UK did with Chevaline in the 1970s, which was so expensive it killed MIRVing their SLBMs and still didn't work too well. Then the Chinese must also be able to keep the carrier under constant tracking and feed the data to the reentry vehicle.

So, it can either have a nuke on board, in which case this discussion is irrelevant, or you essentially have a hypersonic glide bomb, which is dangerous, but well within the abilities of SM-3 to intercept. The shallow trajectory will be problematic but not overwhelmingly so, warning times will actually be longer than for a cruise missile attack... All in all, because our defensive technology has improved, I would actually expect this hypothetical ASBM to be no more effective than a Shipwreck against a carrier group and to cost three times as much.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.

In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
User avatar
PhilosopherOfSorts
Jedi Master
Posts: 1008
Joined: 2008-10-28 07:11pm
Location: Waynesburg, PA, its small, its insignifigant, its almost West Virginia.

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by PhilosopherOfSorts »

Like China's going to attack its greatest trade partner anyway. I'm sure they want the US to stop giving them money and start giving them the business end of our military instead, because that makes so much sense.
A fuse is a physical embodyment of zen, in order for it to succeed, it must fail.

Power to the Peaceful

If you have friends like mine, raise your glasses. If you don't, raise your standards.
User avatar
Sarevok
The Fearless One
Posts: 10681
Joined: 2002-12-24 07:29am
Location: The Covenants last and final line of defense

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Sarevok »

What if the ASBM is not only intended for use against US? How would say an Indian carrier or surface action group fare?
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
Sky Captain
Jedi Master
Posts: 1267
Joined: 2008-11-14 12:47pm
Location: Latvia

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Sky Captain »

I suppose any succesful missile attack against carrier battle group would have to be a saturation attack involving multiple missiles to overcome the missile defence. Maybe a close distance sneak attack may also work if missile is launched against carrier while it transits busy shipping channel from nearby cargo ship so close that it takes only seconds to reach carrier. However would a single missile be enough to sink a carrier? Much smaller destroyers have survived missile strike. A carrier likely would suffer a mission kill, but few months at shipyard should be enough to fix it. A sneak attack with heavy torpedo may work better since it would actually damage the bottom of the carrier, but it would take longer for torpedo to reach carrier maybe allowing more warning time. Are there any means how to intercept/evade a modern torpedo?
But what such attack would accomplish other than start a war? Blowing up few carriers won't cripple the US ability to retaliate and turn the offending nations military forces into scrap metal. If offending nation has significant nuclear ICBM forces then nukes fly and it is game over.
User avatar
Sea Skimmer
Yankee Capitalist Air Pirate
Posts: 37389
Joined: 2002-07-03 11:49pm
Location: Passchendaele City, HAB

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Sea Skimmer »

Sky Captain wrote:I suppose any succesful missile attack against carrier battle group would have to be a saturation attack involving multiple missiles to overcome the missile defence. Maybe a close distance sneak attack may also work if missile is launched against carrier while it transits busy shipping channel from nearby cargo ship so close that it takes only seconds to reach carrier. However would a single missile be enough to sink a carrier?
Hit location Hit location Hit location! A single missile in the most optimal location might do comically little damage after say, detonation against an anchor; on the other hand a hit into a hanger while arming and fueling operations are ongoing could be catastrophic, and much worse would be a very heavy missile piercing a magazine leading to an explosion on par with a small nuclear weapon. In general though a carrier is much more likely to burn to the point it must be scuttled, then directly sunk by enemy missiles.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
User avatar
Mr Bean
Lord of Irony
Posts: 22431
Joined: 2002-07-04 08:36am

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Mr Bean »

It's something lots of people training on years on damage assets on the equivalent of a game of Battleship think about Naval vessels that you just have to hit it X times with Y sized warhead and it will sink. What any person who's done the basic course in DC work in the Navy will tell you how tricky it is to sink a modern warship and yet how easy it is to sink one. A DC1 with three years on a ship might be able to tell you the three places you could use an 10 kilogram explosive and sink the ship and the six hundred places a 250 kilogram bomb could go off and not affect the ship in combat ability at all.

Every modern ship has places where the golden BB can hit and bam you lose the ship regardless of all the efforts of every human agency. There are also hundreds more places where hits could cripple a ship but DC personnel can repair the ship back to fighting ability in under an hour, in some case in minutes. Redundant bulkheads and lets be blunt using the crew spaces as extra armoring for specific areas goes a long way to give Naval ships the ability to take damage but still be able to fight at some reduced strength.

For example if you went right now and took your average US carrier and knocked a ten foot by ten foot hole in her side I'd say that with the average US ship damage control ability you'd have to knock two more identical holes in her side at the water line before flight operations might not be possible after an hour or two of damage control work. Granted the steels sheets thrown over the holes are not smart to sail around with more than a week but you sure as heck could do so for the day or two required to get to safety of a safe harbor conducting combat ops the entire time.

"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe
Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
Lord of the Abyss
Village Idiot
Posts: 4046
Joined: 2005-06-15 12:21am
Location: The Abyss

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Lord of the Abyss »

Sarevok wrote:What if the ASBM is not only intended for use against US? How would say an Indian carrier or surface action group fare?
India also has nukes, which means the Chinese aren't going to start a war with them either. The risk just isn't worth any possible gain.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
User avatar
Sea Skimmer
Yankee Capitalist Air Pirate
Posts: 37389
Joined: 2002-07-03 11:49pm
Location: Passchendaele City, HAB

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Sea Skimmer »

Sarevok wrote:What if the ASBM is not only intended for use against US? How would say an Indian carrier or surface action group fare?
India has made no indications of deploying anything remotely like ABM at sea, so not good, though by the time a Chinese ASBM is actually tested on moving ship targets (no sign this has ever happened according to the USN in 2010, while bullshit claiming it was operational anyway) and deployed in operationally relevant numbers that may well change. Depending on the guidance used, it may also be completely possible to spoof the guidance of said ASBM with smoke and chaff cartridges, active radar jamming or laser blinding. These are all much cheaper and easier to deploy then ABM weapons. Course, it would be a foolish thing to attack the Indian navy anyway. India is astride the route the considerable majority of Chinese oil imports must sail. Sinking the Indian navy in the Indian ocean would accomplish very little, since India could always send out random fishing trawlers with machine guns and RPGs to stop China's oil imports, something India almost certainly would not do in a more isolated war such a pure border conflict. The Indian navy is highly highly unlikely to sortie into the South China sea to die; at least not with surface forces. Meanwhile DF-21 range is too short to cover all of India's landmass, let alone the ocean area its fleet might occupy to the south so no fighting off an Indian blockade strategy with. So the weapons overall value against India is fairly limited. It only really makes sense against the USN in the western Pacific, and in my mind the idea that it would deliver some kind of EMP warhead makes the most sense. Its surely hard to make an effective non nuclear EMP; but if you could deliver such a device directly onto the carriers flight deck it would certainly help.

China needs major surface, submarine and aircraft carrier forces to fight a successful naval war against India, and building those forces is immensely expensive. Its not impossible, or indeed unlikely that the ASBM will never actually be tested over water or deployed in serious numbers precisely because the money would be better spent on forces with more flexibility for all sorts of conflicts and showing Chinese prestige around Asia and the globe. Nobody is going to be impressed by more missiles on parades when nobody can even know if they are fake or not.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
User avatar
Skgoa
Jedi Master
Posts: 1389
Joined: 2007-08-02 01:39pm
Location: Dresden, valley of the clueless

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Skgoa »

Sea Skimmer wrote: So the weapons overall value against India is fairly limited. It only really makes sense against the USN in the western Pacific, and in my mind the idea that it would deliver some kind of EMP warhead makes the most sense. Its surely hard to make an effective non nuclear EMP; but if you could deliver such a device directly onto the carriers flight deck it would certainly help.
How far away could it be effective? Aren't military electronic hardened against such attacks?
http://www.politicalcompass.org/test
Economic Left/Right: -7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.74

This is pre-WWII. You can sort of tell from the sketch style, from thee way it refers to Japan (Japan in the 1950s was still rebuilding from WWII), the spelling of Tokyo, lots of details. Nothing obvious... except that the upper right hand corner of the page reads "November 1931." --- Simon_Jester
User avatar
Winston Blake
Sith Devotee
Posts: 2529
Joined: 2004-03-26 01:58am
Location: Australia

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Winston Blake »

How America lost the Naval War of 2015:

- China cleverly infiltrated the Pentagon with agents promoting mountains of warm, steaming bullshit.
- The Pentagon was successfully converted into a Powerpoint-based bizbabble organisation, filled with people with marketing degrees and MBAs.
- The USN wasted craploads of money on endless poorly-written studies and abortive pork projects, such as the Light, Air-Mobile, Expeditionary Destroyer for Unconventional Combat (LAMEDUC).
- China won by default when the multi-billion dollar fleet of 3 LAMEDUCs (out of a planned 80 before cancellation) exploded upon each trying to launch a single missile at a Chinese fishing trawler that they thought was a recon picket.
- It wasn't - China agrees not to publicise the '2015 incident' in exchange for favourable trade conditions.

Proponents of the Light, Air-Mobile, Expeditionary Anti-Ship Strategic Doctrine (LAMEASS Doctrine) have since produced numerous naval wargame simulations showing that this failure was minor and could be easily remedied by reactivating the Iowa-class battleships and making them air-mobile, which is expected to create many jobs in all fifty states.
Robert Gilruth to Max Faget on the Apollo program: “Max, we’re going to go back there one day, and when we do, they’re going to find out how tough it is.”
User avatar
Sea Skimmer
Yankee Capitalist Air Pirate
Posts: 37389
Joined: 2002-07-03 11:49pm
Location: Passchendaele City, HAB

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Sea Skimmer »

Skgoa wrote: How far away could it be effective?
Depends on the radiated power, wavelength and the nature of the target. Tens of meters rather then hundreds of meters though is what one should be thinking in terms of for a conventional one; though they also would typically have directional antennas so the effect would be like a claymore. So a missile bursting 50m above the deck of a CVN might only kill or wound a few people, if any, but it could disable enough systems on the carrier that it cannot engage in combat for a protracted period. If the Chinese did this to a whole slew of US bases and ships moving to support Taiwan, suddenly we have this serious problem in which we've taken almost no human losses but we simply cannot engage the Chinese. That's a very difficult situation militarily, and politically. China blows up CVN, killed more Americans than September 11th is just a repeat of the Japanese blunder at Pearl Harbor... starting a war that's a fight to the finish from the onset when you have no victory plan. Bad idea.

Of course, the US has been working on its own devices as long as anyone else has been; and has shown considerable interest in long range conventional strike missiles. So you could have some future 2030s war in which both sides disable each others major military forces, and like twenty people died from pacemaker failure. Maybe...

Aren't military electronic hardened against such attacks?
A whole big pile of stuff is not; though depending on the details many items of equipment might be disabled, but not destroyed so you could turn the back on. Until recently nobody considered non nuclear EMPs a serious threat because nobody could build a powerful enough one to be effective in a portable package and that still might not be the case but many people are getting close. EMP used to mean nuclear war, at which point it would be expected that something like a CVN would be vaporized. So why harden? It was only done for strategic systems Meanwhile the US has gone and scrapped most of the test facilities it even had for this sort of thing since the end of the cold war.

Hardening is a flexible term. A normal commercial surge protector can provide a degree of protection for example, on the other hand something like complete protection requires sealing electronics inside a grounded metal cage as well as actually isolating the surge protectors from the device (cage within a cage) because a high enough power pulse hitting a surge protector device will actually blast out more EM radiation from the surge protector. Plus you need to do some other stuff which is generally a pain in the ass and your endlessly vulnerable to detail flaws leaking energy.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
User avatar
Sarevok
The Fearless One
Posts: 10681
Joined: 2002-12-24 07:29am
Location: The Covenants last and final line of defense

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by Sarevok »

So Skimmer would you say missiles with EMP warheads are like fictional ion cannons ? Disable rather than destroy a vessel. Perhaps even board and capture ?
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
User avatar
cosmicalstorm
Jedi Council Member
Posts: 1642
Joined: 2008-02-14 09:35am

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by cosmicalstorm »

I haven't checked in on this topic in a few days. But wow, thanks as usual Skimmer!
HMS Conqueror
Crybaby
Posts: 441
Joined: 2010-05-15 01:57pm

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by HMS Conqueror »

I too am worried about how US's declining force of merely ten carriers, being as they are only several times the tonnage of all the rest of the world's capital ships combined, are going to defeat diesel-electric submarines copied from 1980s Soviet blueprints and a jury rigged ICBM. I really and truly am.

This is masturbatory invasion-scare fiction without even the decency to add characters. If you do not realise why:

1. The anti-ship ICBM has never been tested. While it's portrayed as some kind of post-carrier weapon, the technology is old. It's a lame substitute for having a carrier, dressed up to make it sound like an innovation.

2. This is because the difficulty of sinking a carrier is not in delivering a large enough weapon at a long enough range, it's seeing where the carrier is. The ability to engage a carrier is still limited by aerial reconnaissance - which is why you need a carrier of your own to fight a carrier.

3. The notion that any country could fire a ballistic missile without being it being immediately obvious to everyone, or that it could plausibly claim such a launch and hit was a random shipboard explosion, is paranoid fantasy.

4. I don't care who you are; if a country sinks a capital warship without provocation that is an act of war. There is no scenario in which the US isn't going to respond to that by deploying its entire navy and air force into the Pacific and calling on its allies.

5. Even granting this lulzy scenario it has no effect beyond the narrow confines the West Pacific.
HMS Conqueror
Crybaby
Posts: 441
Joined: 2010-05-15 01:57pm

Re: How America lost the Naval War of 2015?

Post by HMS Conqueror »

-
Post Reply