I’d lost track of The War Nerd, Gary Brecher, which is the pen name for John Dolan, who used to write at The Exile. He was mentioned a while back by Anne Laurie, but I wanted to put in a plug for him, for a couple of reasons.
First, I like the notion of serious, well-informed writing by a persona that has a point of view that is almost farcical in its devotion to the subject. Gary is a made-up character who supposedly lives in Fresno, has a terrible data entry job, and spent his entire youth reading Jane’s guides to different war machinery as well as histories of war. He’s quite well-informed on the latter, as his takedown of Victor Davis Hanson shows. He’s also smart about current military hardware and unafraid to point out that, for example, aircraft carriers would be sitting ducks in a war against a real military power.
Second, even though he’s a military buff, he doesn’t think that American forces should be used willy-nilly. If I had to classify my position on war, I’d say I’m an isolationist, and he comes fairly close to that label. For example, like Brecher, I think most of the picking sides on “humanitarian” interventions, like Kosovo, is nuts.
I have not read his latest stuff, since I just found his new home at NSFWcorp, but once I’ve paid my $3/month fee (cheap!), I’ll read his back columns and report back.
Todd
Screw that. It’s Thursday lunchtime, and I’m sitting at Captain Tony’s Saloon in Key West, listening to live music and +3.
It might be the start of a really long day….
aimai
That victor davis hanson piece makes me want to stand up and cheer. Its that good.
Southern Beale
Speaking of war nerd, apparently they’ve uncovered some more graft in the grift known as the Iraq War. General Dynamics, which had a lovely no-bid contract to repair Stryker vehicles, has apparently been making thousands and thousands of parts the military can’t even use, let alone needed. For example, we only needed 15 pinions to fix a suspension problem but somehow managed to buy 9,179 of them. And nobody noticed! Amazing!
Shouldn’t there be some kind of Congressional investigation?
Biscuits
I have completely forgotten about the war nerd. I too enjoyed reading him and I’m just a silly haus Frau. He is well worth the price. I’m signing up too. Thanks for the link.
sharl
Ah, the War Nerd. You’ve inspired me to dig up and re-read his meandering-but-fascinating discussion of the history of Tibetan wars.
Good (though occasionally grim) lunchtime reading.
Pococurante
You’d enjoy this book then.
Someone needs to root for the Men of Munich.
sharl
@Southern Beale: Some of the mil-tweeters I follow were on that a few days ago, during which time someone thought it would be fun to see where $900M in “lost” assets would fall on the list of different nations’ military budgets (from wikipedia) :
Of course, ain’t quite so funny when you consider the nonstop efforts to cut the non-military budget. But let’s not think about that, mmkay?
Surreal American
The local fishwrap in my area still carries Victor Dumbass Hanson’s column. Which explains my profuse gratitude to you for posting the link to the War Nerd’s epic smackdown of VDH. It was a pleasure to re-read that piece.
Narcissus
six whole comments
the Conster
@aimai:
Seriously good. I wonder what VDH thought of it, but my guess is that when it was brought to his attention, he didn’t make it past the title.
DFS
Did Dolan ever actually come out and own up that the War Nerd was a gimmick? Last I checked he was still kayfabing it, but that was years ago.
Always loved his articles, anyway. His two-parter on Lebanon was an old favorite of mine, especially now that the early-’80s Lebanese intervention is turning into the textbook case on why urban counterinsurgency is fucked.
His position on intervention, I think, was summed up in this old classic, where he laid out the case for conquering Saudi Arabia.
mistermix
@DFS: Yeah, if you look at his most recent American Conservative article, it says “Gary Brecher, the War Nerd, is the alter ego of John Dolan, a poet and novelist.”
Lee
Man that sitting ducks article is out-fucking-standing.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Having served on a carrier, we knew we had one job: Get the planes to where they were supposed to be; the carrier group was there to ensure that we could get our planes to their destination. It was bonus if we were to get the planes back.
Having said that, most of our fleet serves one purpose: Keep other countries from attempting to control the oceans. For all of our many faults, keeping the sea lanes pretty open and free of tolls is one of our better contributions to the world.
EconWatcher
The exile was such an interesting combo of satire, incisive commentary you couldn’t find anywhere else, and lewd trash. Particularly interesting for Russophiles like me. It was doomed from the start, but it held on longer in Moscow than anyone could have reasonably expected.
Taibbi was plainly the most talented, and also probably the biggest jerk in the bunch of them. So I suppose it’s not surprising that he’s the one who landed in the cat bird’s seat after it was all over.
Redshirt
I read War Nerd, but I hear War Pigs:
Lee
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Yeah but pointing that out does not make a good article :)
Trollhattan
@the Conster:
You’re not technically allowed to use VDH and “thought” in the same sentence. Adjacent is right out.
Steeplejack
@Southern Beale:
Excellent piece. My rage gland is depleted.
LarryB
Sounds like my brother.
Redshirt
I’ve always assumed Carriers are sitting ducks, and thought this was common knowledge. Hell, in WW2 they were sitting ducks, and if any survived, it was usually because of luck.
The point is (was) force projection. But that will become irrelevant soon enough if not now, with the prevalence/accuracy of missiles and drones.
Schlemizel
Funny about aircraft carriers
I had a friend who joined the Navy in the 60’s. He was stationed about an ECM ship off the coast of Viet Nam. The ECM ship had two jobs really; detect enemy stuff (planes, boats what have you) and to try and hide American stuff from the enemy.
One of the toys they had made enemy radar think the ECM ship was an aircraft carrier. This was supposed to confuse the enemy giving the actual aircraft carrier more time. This friend said that when Nixon mined the harbor of Haiphong in 72 the rumor was the Chinese would be coming. Oddly enough, a critical piece of the wave guide for that particular toy became broken and there were no spare parts to fix it.
The German military had a saying:
Alle Planung ist für die Katz, wenn ein Winkel pisst auf dem zündloch Ihrer Muskete
All planning is for naught if an angle pisses in the touch hole of your musket
Trollhattan
@LarryB:
Ditto, a passion that’s never waned. Not that he (MIT boy w/ photographic memory) DOES anything with his encylopedic knowledge and massive WWII library, but it wouldn’t hurt for a few of these war-humping monkeys to chat with him.
Hoodie
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): The fleet, maybe, but carriers are mostly for throwing little countries against the wall and feeding the egos of admirals. You don’t need carriers to deal with pirates and subs can take out anything bigger than that. One of these can do much of the job of a carrier, without all the infrastructure of a carrier battle group.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Can somebody clue me in here? I read the article in question and seems to me there is a large assumption buried in his argument, which is that the missiles in question would be carrying a nuclear payload (and if nukes are flying, then quite frankly protecting our carriers at sea is probably one of our lesser problems at that point). I don’t see any presentation regarding the survivability of the targeted carriers in the face of conventional payloads, and IIRC during WW2 carriers were not all that easy to sink unless you got a lucky shot in and blew up a magazine. Is that missing analysis referenced somewhere else in his oeuvre?
Redshirt
I would assume the carrier of the near future will be drastically different. Smaller, for example, as its cargo will be drone planes. Perhaps even planes with vertical take off capabilities. Hell, the carrier itself could be a drone. Why not?
Raven
@Redshirt: The jeep carriers (Kaiser Coffins) survived the Battle of Samar because their hulls were so flimsy the Japanese HE rounds went through both sides without detonating.
Redshirt
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I’m guessing, but the payloads of conventional missiles today is way larger than in WW2. A direct hit or two would be sufficient to sink a carrier today.
Barry
Andrew Bacevich also dismantled VDH’s book on the western way of war (‘Carnage and Culture’), to the point where if VDH wasn’t an esteemed historian, he’d have been asked to leave academia.
I can’t find the review, but if anybody can, please post a link.
Redshirt
@Raven: That’s funny, though I’m sure it wasn’t at the time for the men on board.
Raven
@Schlemizel: Ever ready “The Arnhietner Affair” by Sheehan?
Raven
@Redshirt: funnier than if they went off and sunk the craft!
...now I try to be amused
@Schlemizel: Alle Planung ist für die Katz = All planning is for naught.
“All planning is for the cat”? Interesting expression.
Tehanu
@Biscuits:
Me too. The man can write and he does not offer BS.
Raven
@Redshirt: This was also the battle where an American pilot threw a coke bottle at the largest battle wagon in the world!
Jim C
Boy howdy, did this line make me laugh.
Redshirt
@Raven: True that. “Don’t worry boys! This ship is so flimsy the bombs will pass right through it!”
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Redshirt:
One needn’t even sink a carrier – disabling its ability to launch planes has the same effect in the short term.
Va Highlander
I fell in love with The War Nerd during the Iraq fiasco. His analysis was little short of inspired. And hilarious.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
The admirals think none of the ships will sink; the generals think all of the ships will sink. Carriers are a big target, and will most likely sink because they are targets and will get hit, a lot. They are designed to continue floating, and working, for that matter, after taking a lot of damage.
ETA: For the record, I think it’s time we stopped building so many and concentrated on other Navy craft, even though i do like the electromagnetic launch and shorter tower of the new design.
Schlemizel
@…now I try to be amused:
It might have been ‘engle’ but I’m rusty & too tired to look it up
Anoniminous
War Nerd’s take on Millenium Challenge ’02 navy wargame is a Must Read.
Teaser:
Va Highlander
@Redshirt:
It is and the fact was entered into the official record, when Rickover had his exit interview with some pissed-off Congress critters.
Don’t know about now but they used to put transmitters on frigates, and the like, to lure cruise missiles away from the flattops. A friend’s dad was skipper of a fast-attack sub, sunk a carrier during a red-blue game, and was unsuccessfully hauled before the mast for it.
scav
@Schlemizel: forget Katz, i was wondering about the winkle because I rather assumed only an angel ( not angle) would have sufficient aim to focus his pee into a hole on a musket. Certainly more than a mere man is required, and diapers never came up in my geometry claases at least.
Amir Khalid
@…now I try to be amused:
My bilingual Langenscheidt Standard Dictionary confirms the expression does indeed exist. As does ein Kater haben, “to have a tomcat” — to have a hangover.
Gravenstone
@LarryB: Yeah, my own teenaged years just phoned to say “hello”.
Hoodie
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): The problem with carriers is that they’re ridiculously expensive and need an entire battle group to protect them — poorly (which is what the War Nerd is saying). To justify having them, you do stupid stuff like Iraq. They’ve distorted the Navy’s mission and force structure much like the Space Shuttle distorted NASA’s.
scav
@Amir Khalid: I’ve googled the Katz part (not the stellar tomcat part, thanks!) but I’m still working in the peeing winkle. help from the print world?
Trollhattan
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Have a sketchy understanding of the concerns, which sweem to revolve around the asymmetrical nature of missile (and torpedo) vs. carrier, whereby a relatively cheap weapon can disable or even sink a giant capital ship. And clouds of cheap weapons means some will probably get through.
The Chinese have some folks concerned, due to their development of a ballistic antiship missile, but others ask how they can hit a single ship that will have traveled several miles in the time between launch and delivery.
We don’t have dreadnaughts because carrier-based planes rendered them obsolete. At some point, weapon advances will render carriers obsolete.
Frankly, with the next generation of carrier aircraft costing as much as a ship, each, I doubt we’ll need many carriers to host the handful we’ll be able to afford to build.
Suffern ACE
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Our Littoral Combat Ship is not doing so well. It is possible that big huge carriers are what we build well.
Our 70 ton replacement Ground Combat Vehicle probably needs big ships to carry it around anyway.
scav
Huzzah! found a version! in here, just to cite, but nothing relevant
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Hoodie: The Navy didn’t need Iraq to justify aircraft carriers, that was entirely Bush. The Navy has 70% of the surface area of the earth to justify carriers. They’re floating airports, and have been useful when you need planes where you don’t have a runway you can lease. And yes, seeing one in port is pretty awe inspiring due to its size – it’s even more impressive when you’re looking down from the flight deck. Are they potential targets, yes they are. But, while they are expensive, they have their purpose, no less than the purpose of a submarine whose job is to float around and hope it never has to do its job.
As I stated above, though, I do think there can be too many of them.
It also helps that the US Constitution states that a Navy is to be maintained. (That’s a poke at my Army relatives.)
srv
If you enjoy war history and the lessons learned from them, may I suggest Graphic Firing Table. Great writer and has a series of battles which changed history.
Great research with pics. He also blogs about everything else.
Omnes Omnibus
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): The Army, nevertheless, remains the senior service.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s certainly the case in China, where the navy is known as the People’s Liberation Army Navy.
scav
@Certified Mutant Enemy: Ohhh, anyone else hoping for an Army — Army Navy game?
Amir Khalid
@scav:
Winkel means a corner of a room or an angle, and the expression wenn ein Winkel auf dem zündloch Ihrer Muskete pisst is something of a puzzler. The phrase wenn ein Engel … “if an angel …” would make more sense here, I think.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
It is somewhat amusing to contemplate what our 2nd Amendment fetishists would have conjured up in the way of a navy, given the opportunity: “A well regulated flotilla being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and sail warships shall not be infringed.”
Fortunately the Founders were not complete idiots. Commerce in their day went almost entirely by water and there were some things they knew better than to let a bunch of amateurs fuck around with.
Hoodie
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): I didn’t mean to imply the Navy wanted to go into Iraq, they probably didn’t. What I was saying is the presence of that capability has nothing to do with defense and everything to do with enabling the kind of ego-gratifying crap that guys like Bush want to do. None of what you list as benefits has anything to do with protecting the sea lanes. You don’t board ships from a carrier; cheaper surface ships can do that and are smaller targets, easier to defend and much less costly to lose. Subs don’t just lay around hoping to never have to do their jobs; a single converted Ohio-class SSGN played a major role in taking out Libyan air defenses, and attack and guided missile subs are a non-nuclear deterrent to any major flotilla operations to say, invade Taiwan. A few small carriers can do most of the showing the flag/humanitarian support/floating airport stuff you seem to be talking about; the aircraft complement on a typical carrier is not really set up to do that anyway. They’re designed for deep interdiction, air superiority, surveillance and close air support for marines. Carriers are not needed for surveillance or interdiction with the advent of satellites, cruise missiles and sophisticated drones. Air superiority is pretty meaningless against someone like the Chinese. That mostly leaves close air support for ground combat ops, which is where we get back to Iraq.
Amir Khalid
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Wouldn’t America have achieved a Somalia-style libertarian paradise that much sooner?
Mr Stagger Lee
@Anoniminous: His take on the debacle of Israeli military in Lebenon in 2006, as well as the fall of Chinese Gordon in the Sudan also the Modoc wars in California was some classic reading.
Redshirt
Has anyone seen any design of a sub which can carry drones? That would be a killer app. Literally.
scav
@Amir Khalid: Thanks for the winkel clarification, I was getting tangled up in shellfish, shades of light blue and footwear from the 60s. Interwebs. I think I’ve now cleared my brain enough to go after those Modoc wars.
Raven
@Redshirt: launching them would be even cooler!
TooManyJens
OT, but the Chicago Sun-Times just announced that Roger Ebert has died.
Raven
WASHINGTON: This Saturday the Navy will christen its newest nuclear-powered submarine, the $2.6 billion USS Minnesota at the Newport News shipyard in Virginia. Countless movies have cemented the popular image of subs as stealthy underwater killers, stalking hapless surface vessels with periscope and torpedo. But today’s Navy is experimenting with launching robotic mini-subs and even unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from Virginia-class attack subs like the Minnesota.
OCt 2012
Redshirt
@Raven: I’m assuming they’d surface then launch. But submerged launching is certainly inevitable.
And speaking of inevitable: The Navy and Air Force are in for radical changes in the next 50 years, because of drones. Once the technology is sophisticated/mature enough, why would you have piloted planes? Piloted ships? Piloted subs? Why wouldn’t they all be drones?
Drone infantry is inevitable as well, though further down the line.
Amir Khalid
@Redshirt:
If you can design a sub to fire missiles, it seems to me that designing one to launch drones would be a fairly trivial issue. I could be wrong on this, but recovering the drones might be trickier.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Hoodie: Yes, but the original purpose of the SSGN’s was to be a threat that hopefully never had to do their job. As for some of the other stuff, I’m not entirely disagreeing with you. Though I doubt smaller carriers will pull off the 3 months at a time that a large carrier is able to do – which would be longer if those pesky humans didn’t have to be on board. What would you call a remote piloted aircraft carrier?
Certified Mutant Enemy
The Japanese dabbled in submersible aircraft carriers…
Raven
@Redshirt: drone burnin and stirrin would be good.
Roger Moore
@Redshirt:
Sure, but there’s a serious question about whether you’re going to be able to get a direct hit or two. A ballistic missile with a 10 minute flight time should be able to get within nuclear near miss range of a carrier just by leading it based on course and speed, but that’s not going to be good enough to do the job with a conventional payload. For that, you’re going to need some kind of terminal guidance, which is going to be tricky as hell when you’re dealing with all the problems of atmospheric reentry. I’d like to see some actual proof of performance before we start flipping out about how our carriers are doomed.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Redshirt: The Japanese had a WW2 sub that could launch aircraft. They almost made it to the US coast, but had to turn around when the US started getting close to Japan.
Lee
Roger Ebert has died according to CNN :(
Raven
@Certified Mutant Enemy: damn
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Roger Moore: As a comment on that, who’s sure that a direct hit or two would sink a carrier? What kind of stats do we have on that?
David Koch
@TooManyJens:
Oh fuck!
Rest In Peace, Roger, you will be greatly missed. Say hello to Gene for us.
Redshirt
@Raven: Maybe at first glance. I worry about two main things in the long term regarding drones:
1. They make war easier to wage. If our boys (children) aren’t in the line of fire, who’s going to care if we go to war?
2. What happens when private interests have the same military infrastructure as countries? If you’re ExxonMobile, you can afford your own drone army. That’s a whole new world.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The Japanese I-400-class submarine was designed with the range to travel anywhere in the world and return (to have the capability of attacking the USA from the west or east coast). These boats were the largest submarines ever built until the 1960’s.
An attack on the Panama Canal was planned at one point…
Redshirt
@Roger Moore: Maybe I read the article wrong, but these “carrier killer” missles fly low and fast and are GPS guided. I assume when launched, they hit their target, and there’s not much you can do about it in terms of counter measures. Maybe huge chaff clouds? Maybe.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Redshirt:
Essentially cruise missiles…
Roger Moore
@Redshirt:
Lack of reliable communications technology. Remotely controlled vehicles are great until somebody jams your com link, and completely autonomous killing machines are still a dubious proposition.
Redshirt
@Roger Moore: Now, yes. In 20 years? 30? I bet we’ll have worked out the kinks.
It’s going to be a drone future – drones buzzing all over our cities, for example. Drones and AI everywhere. These planes and ships and subs will be self guided.
Anoniminous
The actual cost of a US carrier group is too time intensive for me to actually compute. But $30 billion is a justifiable, low ball, figure – not including the cost of the air component.
For $30 billion a nation can hie themselves over to China and pick up (roughly) 15,000 Soaring Dragon attack drones with a reported payload of 650kg or 1 air launched AM39 Exocet.
Using known Swarm Technology a nation could release all 15,000 with the command, “Go get ’em, boys” and you don’t need ground based CIC. Granted the drones would need enough smarts to only launch when over water and only within designated target parameters — easy enough to do.
Assuming no drone losses (not possible) that’s 500 missiles per ship – assuming 30 ships (unlikely) per carrier group. Assuming a highly unlikely 90% loss of drones during the attack still talking 50 missiles per ship.
Result: fish habitat.
Roger Moore
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
It depends on the size of the warhead, but a couple of hits with 1 ton warheads are likely to mess up a carrier’s day something fierce, even if it doesn’t manage to sink it. And, FWIW, if those missiles are actually coming in at Mach 10, they don’t actually need any explosives to do their job; that’s right about the point where their kinetic energy is as large as the chemical energy of high explosives.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Fixed for better action movie scene.
MikeJ
@Redshirt:
Phalanx is a close in, last ditch defense against cruise missiles. They work in tests, but I don’t think they’ve ever been used in real life.
Anoniminous
@Redshirt:
Surface skimming missiles make sense if attacking horizontally. From the air the most effectively attack angle is 90 degress. Additionally, the closer the attack gets to a right angle the greater the number of hits since there isn’t an anti-missile system that can work pointing straight up.
Rex Everything
John Dolan’s pretty sweet, but there’s no way he’ll last around here. He’s either too much of a firebagger, or too committed to reality’s well known firebagging bias—depends on one’s POV—to stay in Balloon Juice’s good graces.
geg6
Haven’t read the thread to see if anyone has posted about this yet…
OT, Roger Ebert has passed away. RIP.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/roger-ebert-dead.php
? Martin
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Excluding nukes, the dynamics of the situation are unbelievably different than they were. Carriers are only really vulnerable to subs and long range missiles. The working theory is that anything on the surface within torpedo/anti-ship missile range isn’t going to last long enough against a US carrier group to take out the carrier. Between our almost certain air control and the cruisers/destroyers that are protecting the carrier, plus the carriers own defenses (they have computer controlled anti-missile guns) that anything under 500 miles has very limited effectiveness. Beyond that range, you have medium and long range missiles (like our tomahawk) that could damage a carrier, but not likely sink it. Anti-ship missiles are designed to come in at water level and sink the vessel, and we can bring a tomahawk in at that kind of angle, but nobody else can. Everyone else is dropping it from above and hoping to hell they can hit it. The carrier deck is pretty resilient and while a hit will shut the carrier operations down for some time, sinking it is another matter entirely. A sub has the best chance, but carrier groups have sub escorts, so getting one in isn’t easy either.
The real question is ‘who are we fighting’. The assumption with armchair generals (and Hollywood) is that we’re fighting ourselves. That our enemy has everything we do. Well, they don’t. The Russians have a number of subs capable of destroying a US carrier. China has several (though not as many as we have carriers). And that’s it unless we expect to declare war on France or the UK.
Up against comparable carrier groups, yeah, that’d present a real threat, but there are literally no comparable carrier groups. Russia has one carrier half the size of any of ours. China has another. That’s it. We own the ocean. We pretty much own the air as well. And if we lost a carrier, we’d still have more than the rest of the world combined. The only reason we stress over losing one is that they’re so fucking expensive.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
After clicking thru several more of WarNerd’s articles, it reads to me that his key point isn’t that a swarm of cruise missiles will quickly and easily sink a carrier, but rather that they can damage the flight deck and associated infrastructure to the point where the carrier can no longer launch and retrieve aircraft, beyond which point attempts to sink it may then proceed in a more leisurely fashion. That strikes me as more plausible threat than the headline version.
David Koch
@Rex Everything:
Oh you mean the reality of joining Grover Norquist, Drudge, Red state, and Fixxed News to kill healthcare. Yeah, that’s some reality, it’s led them to bankruptcy. Keep fucking Grover’s chicken.
Va Highlander
@Roger Moore: “Death From Below”, dude. This is no job for truck drivers.
As I recall, what was discussed was putting a tactical nuke on a keel-breaker, like the Mark 48. The resulting bubble would swallow the ship whole. One shot, one kill.
Trollhattan
@geg6:
Wow, he published his final column just yesterday.
Fare thee well, Roger, and well done, sir.
KXB
My favorite War Nerd column is the one he wrote during the Israel-Lebanon war in ’06 – he was one of the few to call it accurately, that Israel had no damn clue what it was doing. And that Hezebollah re-affirmed their reputation for being a bunch of tough, scary mother-fuckers. Olmert’s gov’t soon collapsed as a result of that fiasco.
eemom
@David Koch:
heh. Thanks for linking that. Interesting comments too — sounds like the old lakey place is really circling the drain.
Also too, one never hears much about Lady Jane anymore…..does she still show up on teevee?
eemom
Roger Ebert deserves his own thread. RIP.
Trollhattan
@Va Highlander:
Sounds vaguely like what happened to the Deepwater Horizon, only the giant bubble was composed of fuel.
Schlemizel
from my limited background which involved building boomy things for the military the real reason we loves us some aircraft carrier is because it transport the important thing to a place where it can be used against anyone. Its the extension of air power that makes the carrier king.
That certainly will not be the case if we can launch drones from smaller, faster, ships or even from longer distances and fly them from North Dakota. The problem will be that the Navy will want its own drone force since it is giving up surface ships.
St Ronnie wanted to have nuclear missiles shuttled around the Western US on trains with launch platforms. It was an overly complex & much too expensive option. The simpler, cheaper choice would have been water based launches with missiles carried by various ships & then just pushed overboard to launch. When I asked why we were not developing that technology a very nice Admiral explained, “The Navy got the last big toy, now its the Army’s turn to get a toy so we will do it from trains”
Its thinking like that which has built the military we have today
Maude
@TooManyJens:
#65
Thank you, so sad. A decent man.
MikeJ
@Anoniminous: Where do you park 15,000 aircraft and launch them? How quickly can they taxi and take off? How close to the carrier are they going to be when they take off? Drones are slow and generally unprotected from attack. They’re easy to shoot down. Once you started launching the airbases from which they launch would be targets.
Also, $30B is thrown around like it’s nothing. That’s 2/3rds of UK military budget.
Spend that on drones and you have no missiles, no fuel, no airbases, no maintenance, no security, no command and control, no radar, no army, no navy.
SatanicPanic
@TooManyJens: Oh man, I had heard the cancer was back, didn’t know it was so bad. One of my heroes, going to miss that guy.
Schlemizel
@Anoniminous:
Modern anti-ship missiles hug the surface until they get a lock. Then they go straight up & straight down on their targets.
“Gatekeeper” was designed for a standard missile trajectory coming in high at an angle. It works on that really well but I never saw film of it against this more modern attack. I have no idea if it would work as well. I also don’t know how well it would work against a large number of incoming targets. I believe it failed the Brits during the Falklands war & allowed an Exocet using this pattern to sink the HMS Sheffield – don’t recall the loss of life that resulted.
Schlemizel
@Schlemizel:
huh! just wiki’ed the Sheffield. The missile didn’t explode when it hit the ship! it also didn’t perform the up/down maneuver but stuck the ship 8″ above the water line.
so scrub all that other stuff
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Redshirt:
I’m amazed no one beat me to posting this video.
Roger Moore
@Redshirt:
They’re describing it as a ballistic missile (ASBM), which means it’s going way the hell up before coming back down to hit its targets. That’s the only practical way of achieving the Mach 10 speed they’re talking about. If you try going that fast where there’s much atmosphere around, you’re going to melt long before you get to your target. It makes me very suspicious of the whole thing. If it’s a ballistic missile, the claims of great maneuverability and unpredictable flight path are hard to believe. Hell, the idea that they can depend on drones and radar to help guide the thing is a bit screwy, since a carrier group is going to be doing its damnedest to kill any enemy recon capability anywhere near it, and they have very good capability to do exactly that. The idea that we should just give up on the idea of carriers because of some technology that’s being blogged about by Chinese military bloggers is crazy. Actually, a pretty good rule of thumb is that anyone who tells you that new technology X makes old technology Y instantly obsolete should be treated with suspicion.
Redshirt
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: LOL. What a hamfest!
Redshirt
@Roger Moore: Agreed. I don’t see what the concern is at all. Carriers are always vulnerable. Go ahead, try and sink one. One carrier means nothing.
As for communications, imagine a drone swarm, spread over many kilometers. Each micro drone a comm hub capable of linking with satellites above.
Anoniminous
@Schlemizel:
A “pop-up” attack profile increases the time to target and presents the defender a larger target window for counter-measurements. “Top-down” attack means the defender has, about, 27 seconds (attack altitude of 30,000′) to acquire and initiate counters before boom but Top-down is more difficult to pull off. Like much else, it’s a trade off, neither is perfect.
If I was designing the attack package I’d mix-and-match shore launched, ship launched (including subs,) and drone launched missiles. The neat thing about horizontal launch is you can include missiles with different speeds in the mix. So the attacker would first see a wave of Mach 1 Exocets and then a wave of Mach 2.5 Silkworms bursting through about 2 miles from the target area. Give the targeting computers the digital fidgets.
Anoniminous
@Roger Moore:
True enough.
However, old technology must tactically evolve because of the development of new technology. Swords are still effective if someone sticks ’em with the pointy end but a brigade of swordsmen would better tactically ineffective against a company of infantry with modern weapons.
Annoyingly, for military planners, even having superior technology doesn’t guarantee battlefield success. The French had superior tanks in 1940. Didn’t help because the Germans employed their tanks in combined arms teams and had superior tactical training and deployment.
The Combined Arms or new technologies is often the key. WW One wasn’t a bloodbath because of the technological development of the machine gun or barbed wire or indirect artillery fire. It was the combination of all three that did it. Barbed wire slowed down the attackers so the defenders could get their machine guns firing en echelon while artillery pounded them and buggered Command and Control.
Karmus
OMG The War Nerd! I used to read him all the time, until I squeezed the Exile archives dry. Speaking of dry, after I dry my eyes over Roger Ebert (and get back from Steak ‘n’ Shake) I will have to check that out. Thank you for the heads up!
LanceThruster
Great find. Thx for the ref.
Redshirt
Swarm is the future.
dmbeaster
@Redshirt:
The Pacific War in WWII gets written up as if it was about carrier warfare, but carrier warfare lasted for all of about 6 months, and ended at Midway in June, 1942. Carriers allowed force projection, but it was still about land-based aircraft. Cant sink an island after all, whereas carriers were very vulnerable. You would not send them into an area dominated by enemy land-based aircraft.
Anne Laurie
@…now I try to be amused:
‘All your plans go to the cat’ = nothing but tattered bits suitable for cat toys?
That would put the cats & the pissing angels in collusion, which seems appropriate.
P.S. Seconding MisterMix, The NSFWCorp subscription is totally worth it!
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Having said that, most of our fleet serves one purpose: Keep other countries from attempting to control the oceans. For all of our many faults, keeping the sea lanes pretty open and free of tolls is one of our better contributions to the world.
I’m sorry, but in what universe is keeping the sea lanes firmly under the control of *one* country and its allies the same as “keeping them open”?
Would you care to debate this point with, for example, the people of Gaza, or of Iraq, or of Iran, or of the former Yugoslavia, or of Cuba?
Tripod
He has a good article floating around somewhere in which he and his s.o. ended up out of work and housing. Complete with the difficulties in climbing back up the American shitpile. He ended up taking a teaching job in Iraq and running afoul of the Bush GOP cronies running the school.
Cygil
The most recent conventional naval confrontation between decently armed and technologically sophisticated opponents, had Britain teetering on the edge of naval defeat (although this fact was censored at the time) against a disorganized Argentinian offense. In particular, it turns out the British fleet had virtually no defense against the Exocet missile, and some say if Argentina had just five more Exocets, the result of the war would have been the opposite of what actually happened because it never would have gotten to the ground campaign, where Britain was always certain to win.
I’ve seen numerous reports that US Naval planners are in denial of China’s new supersonic anti-ship missile program to which warships will, again, have virtually no defense beyond stealth. True, one conventionally armed missile won’t sink a carrier, but it can punch holes in a supercarrier’s protective escort, allowing submarines in for the kill.
heckblazer
This post from Lawyers, Guns & Money says things better than I can:
“In general, it’s best not to get one’s defense news from the War Nerd; if you’ve been paying attention to the conversation (in this space and elsewhere) you’ve known about Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles for quite some time, and you have a much better handle on the issue than is presented in the linked article. You know, for example, that we *may* be moving from a world in which it’s impossible to hit a moving aircraft carrier with a ballistic missile to a world in which it’s exceedingly difficult to do so. You know that the targeting and intelligence requirements for such a maneuver are immense, and there there are several steps in the identification-launch-terminal guidance-strike sequence that can be disrupted through a variety of counter-measures. You know that the evidence that the Chinese have a DF-21 capable of such targeting (not to mention the intelligence and communications infrastructure necessary to support the launch) is exceedingly thin.
You also know that professional naval officers have been thinking about this possibility considerably longer, and in considerably more detail, than Gary Brecher has. You know that the Chinese ASBM is hardly the first weapon that was supposed to render aircraft carriers obsolete; cruise missiles and submarines are its notional predecessors. You know that the question of the vulnerability of aircraft carriers has been debated ad nauseum in the Navy and in the larger defense community; to characterize this debate as such…[quote on foolish admirals omitted]… is so detached from the reality of this conversation as to cross into the surreal.