U S aircraft carriers. Every day easier to kill.
Jan 8, 2017 14:29:19 GMT -5
jrchico, pgantioch, and 1 more like this
Post by agog on Jan 8, 2017 14:29:19 GMT -5
Aircraft carriers have been the backbone of the United State's naval force projection strategy for more than seventy-five years.
Before that it was battleships for about fifty-five years. Remember the Maine! All the international naval power treaties, pre-WW2, were based on battleship tonnage.
We were fortunate as a nation to have the lead in the battleship's replacement, the aircraft carrier, when the theories of the young Turk naval planners, that the days of the Dreadnaughts were over, were proven true at Pearl Harbor and even earlier at the Italian port of Taranto.
The Royal Navy showed the way for the Japanese Imperial Navy and anyone else who was paying attention, with their aircraft carrier launched attack on the battleships of the Italian Navy at their well defended by coastal batteries, anchorage at Taranto Harbor.
The Fairy (sp?) Swordfish biplane torpedo planes, affectionately called stringbags by pilots and ground crews could reach a top speed of ninety miles per hour on most days but not when carrying a heavy, non aerodynamic torpedo. The top fighters of the day were topping out at over three hundred-fifty mph. The Royal Navy Swordfishes came at daybreak with the rising sun low and at their back making visual sighting from the targeted ships nearly impossible in the glare.
The pride of the Italian fleet, whose battlewagons boasted the highest top and cruising speeds of any fleet in the world, the true greyhounds of the seas, was destroyed in minutes. I do not recall if any stringbags were lost in the engagement.
All this by way of showing that one day's king of the roost military platform can be obsoleted before sunset by a new technology/weapons platform.
So what's the new, aircraft carrier obsoleting weapon platform? Supersonic stealth sea skimming anti-ship missiles? Nope, so far they can be effectively countered with Phalanx ultra high rate of fire radar directed guns. That is the Phalanx'x design mission. Perhaps Silkworm class anti-ship missiles in a flurry could overwhelm the Phalanx installations. We're getting close with the mention of flurry. And less expensive with the mention of Silkworm class rather than the super sonic stealth anti-ship missiles which are quite expensive at this time to produce.
The key will be flurry and low price. Flurry means hard if not impossible to defend against and low price means a huge flurry but still way less expensive as a carrier and it's support group. Ten thousand, sixty mile per hour drones, only slightly more capable than the type purchased at radio shack would overwhelm the Phalanx. It'd be like fighting a swarm of mosquitos with a machine gun, wouldn't want to be that mosquito that caught a bullet but the swarm itself would be virtually unharmed. One in a hundred could be equipped with a nav system. Some with H E, some with super C-4, some with magnetic tracks to crawl under the hull and detonate, some with gas. Heck, use your imagination. The young Turks of our's and other's forces are using their imaginations.
Before that it was battleships for about fifty-five years. Remember the Maine! All the international naval power treaties, pre-WW2, were based on battleship tonnage.
We were fortunate as a nation to have the lead in the battleship's replacement, the aircraft carrier, when the theories of the young Turk naval planners, that the days of the Dreadnaughts were over, were proven true at Pearl Harbor and even earlier at the Italian port of Taranto.
The Royal Navy showed the way for the Japanese Imperial Navy and anyone else who was paying attention, with their aircraft carrier launched attack on the battleships of the Italian Navy at their well defended by coastal batteries, anchorage at Taranto Harbor.
The Fairy (sp?) Swordfish biplane torpedo planes, affectionately called stringbags by pilots and ground crews could reach a top speed of ninety miles per hour on most days but not when carrying a heavy, non aerodynamic torpedo. The top fighters of the day were topping out at over three hundred-fifty mph. The Royal Navy Swordfishes came at daybreak with the rising sun low and at their back making visual sighting from the targeted ships nearly impossible in the glare.
The pride of the Italian fleet, whose battlewagons boasted the highest top and cruising speeds of any fleet in the world, the true greyhounds of the seas, was destroyed in minutes. I do not recall if any stringbags were lost in the engagement.
All this by way of showing that one day's king of the roost military platform can be obsoleted before sunset by a new technology/weapons platform.
So what's the new, aircraft carrier obsoleting weapon platform? Supersonic stealth sea skimming anti-ship missiles? Nope, so far they can be effectively countered with Phalanx ultra high rate of fire radar directed guns. That is the Phalanx'x design mission. Perhaps Silkworm class anti-ship missiles in a flurry could overwhelm the Phalanx installations. We're getting close with the mention of flurry. And less expensive with the mention of Silkworm class rather than the super sonic stealth anti-ship missiles which are quite expensive at this time to produce.
The key will be flurry and low price. Flurry means hard if not impossible to defend against and low price means a huge flurry but still way less expensive as a carrier and it's support group. Ten thousand, sixty mile per hour drones, only slightly more capable than the type purchased at radio shack would overwhelm the Phalanx. It'd be like fighting a swarm of mosquitos with a machine gun, wouldn't want to be that mosquito that caught a bullet but the swarm itself would be virtually unharmed. One in a hundred could be equipped with a nav system. Some with H E, some with super C-4, some with magnetic tracks to crawl under the hull and detonate, some with gas. Heck, use your imagination. The young Turks of our's and other's forces are using their imaginations.