The Navy’s striking power has steadily changed throughout history.
Guns - Initially, sailing ships carried their cannon right up alongside the enemy and then proceeded to pound away until the enemy submitted (sinkings were relatively rare). With the passing of the age of sail and the advent of steam and armor, the only thing that changed was the range of the guns and the speed and maneuverability of the ships. The objective was still the same – to batter the enemy until they sank (submitting was no longer an option).
Aircraft - With WWII, the primary striking power of the fleet began to shift from naval guns to aircraft and the aircraft carrier emerged as the new strike force. This continued through Vietnam and the Cold War. So called ‘alpha’ strikes were the primary striking power of the fleet. The battleship was retired without replacement and the largest gun in the fleet was the 5” and most ships have only one of those.
Missiles – More recently, missiles have begun to replace the aircraft. Modern anti-air systems have grown too deadly for manned aircraft, even stealth aircraft, to be considered the primary striking force. Not only does the Navy not have any survivable strike aircraft but even the limited buy of F-35Cs does not appear to be intended as strike aircraft but, instead, as surveillance and targeting nodes in the Navy’s fantasy network of sensors and missile shooters. Thus, the Navy appears to envision the F-35C as a missile enabler/supporter rather than a strike asset.
Just as importantly – and perhaps more so – defender’s anti-ship missiles have forced the carrier to stand off to such ranges as to nearly invalidate the use of strike aircraft. Without a doubt, the new striking power of the fleet is missiles: cruise, ballistic, hypersonic.
This, then, is the state of affairs, currently. We are in the final stages of transforming from a carrier strike navy to a missile strike navy. We already see more than ample proof of this in the form of Tomahawk missiles which have become the main strike weapon of the Navy. Even the remnants of carrier aviation are geared not at delivering bombs but at launching missiles such as the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) and the developing hypersonic missiles. As ComNavOps has repeatedly stated, the new role of the carrier is not strike but, rather, escort and protection of the true striking force of the Navy which is the Tomahawk (hopefully, soon to be LRASM) armed Burkes. SSGNs, until they are retired, also constitute a significant portion of our naval strike power. While we are not replacing the SSGNs with dedicated replacements, we are expanding the missile carrying capacity of new Virginia class subs so as to provide a replacement in the aggregate. One can question the wisdom of this but the trend towards missiles as the strike power of the fleet is clear enough. Just slightly further in the future, one can readily see the movement towards hypersonic missiles on ships and aircraft.
While this ends the discussion of the development of naval striking power from its beginnings until now, I offer the next, predictable, future step in strike development for your consideration.
AI/Robotics – Though not available in any useful form, yet, one can easily imagine the next step in striking power to be artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced robotics. Mere missiles will be rendered ineffective by AI-enhanced defenses and lasers which will require AI-enhanced strike weapons to overcome the defenses. Such strike weapons will run the gamut from individual, small ground robots to AI-enhanced cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles. The logical extension of this would be AI-enhanced swarms of missiles acting as a single striking entity but with the intelligence to actively and intelligently modify their attack in response to the defenses and targets encountered.
Lessons
Before we discuss what all this means, let’s list the lessons from the preceding discussion:
- Aircraft have been replaced by missiles as the striking power of the fleet and Tomahawk cruise missiles have become the standard strike weapon of the fleet.
- The Navy has no stealthy (survivable) strike aircraft.
- The role of the carrier has changed from strike to escort. Carrier aircraft now exist to defend the Burke strikers.
- Carrier aircraft cannot perform naval strike even with long range anti-ship missiles like LRASM due to the targeting problem.
- Burkes, and SSGNs until they’re retired, are the new striking power of the fleet.
Implications
Now, what do those lessons mean for the future of the Navy? What are the implications for force structure and operating doctrine? Here are the issues and implications:
We should be adapting the carrier and the air wing to the new role of escort for the real missile shooters, the Burkes/SSGNs. This means emphasizing long range, air superiority fighters which means that the current F-18 and F-35 are ill-suited and have no place in the future air wing and should no longer be procured. We’ve already discussed how to obtain a new aircraft in just five years so ceasing procurement will not result in aircraft shortfalls (see, “How to Build a Better Aircraft”).
Even trying to use aircraft as LRASM shooters is only marginally effective due to numbers. For example, a strike aircraft can only carry two missiles for any appreciable distance. Thus, it would require huge numbers of aircraft to mass enough missiles to create an effective strike. We’ve noted that it required nearly a hundred Tomahawks to partially destroy a single, undefended Syrian airbase in the recent past. A full strike against a peer defended target would require 300 missiles or more. That would require 150 aircraft or the entire combat air wing of four carrier air wings (and that would leave nothing for tanking or carrier defense!). By comparison, a single SSGN can launch 150+ missiles and two SSGNs meet the requirements for our illustrative strike of 300 missiles. This is why retiring the SSGNs without replacement is such a mistake.
Air wings need to be mainly fighter aircraft with a single shorter range strike squadron that can be swapped out, as needed, to further increase the fighter complement. The strike aircraft should be a new, simple, low end design conceptually similar to the A-4 or A-7.
We need a new, very long range, very long endurance, air superiority fighter. Conceptually, this would be akin to the F-14 and would encompass a combination of the best features of both the F-14 and F-22.
We desperately need a new cruise missile to replace the obsolete Tomahawk. Presumably, this would be the LRASM which is being developed for aircraft launch and we should be working, right now, on a vertical launch, shipboard version (VL-LRASM), as well. The Navy has discussed a desire for a VL-LRASM and done some preliminary work but development seems to have ground to a halt. Further, we should be starting development of the LRASM replacement which should be an AI-enhanced, very long range missile. The LRASM should be viewed as just a stopgap measure.
New missiles need to be self-targeting. They need to be capable of being fired in a general direction and actively implementing their own search and targeting without the need for traditional surveillance and contact tracking and targeting. This is a research effort that needs to begin immediately. Pieces of the concept are already under development but a focused, integrated research effort is needed.
We need very long range, stealthy, survivable sensor assets to complement the very long range missiles that we currently have. Million mile missiles are useless when paired with 20 mile sensors! Our current UAVs, P-8s, helos, and whatnot that we are depending on for surveillance and targeting are not survivable over a peer battlefield.
We need large caliber naval guns. Are guns obsolete? Of course not! Naval gunfire is overwhelming and superior in every way to aircraft delivered munitions except in range. There will still be circumstances where close range, overwhelming firepower is needed and large caliber naval guns are still be best solution for those scenarios.
Summary
Understanding the evolution of naval striking power enables us to see the current and future realities. This allows us to properly design our force structure and assess which assets we currently have that will prove useful in combat and which won’t.
For far too long, our force structure design has been based on technology rather than strategy. We’ve procured whatever new technology we could get without regard to its usefulness – hence, the useless LCS, Zumwalt, Ford, etc. We need to return to combat needs-based asset design backed by a clear understanding of how naval combat and striking power is evolving.
We need to develop a force structure that will actually be useful in the war with China. Our previous follies have already given us an LCS that has no use, whatsoever, in high end war along with Fords, Zumwalts, JHSVs, etc. that have little relevance or use. Let’s not keep repeating that same mistake.
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater either. Incat can deliver a 110M ferry 2 years and 2 months after signing the contract. I want, non complicated, procurement that goes from idea to reality inside 1 presidential term as a norm. Production runs completed before a Senator completes their second term. Forget any other specific issue. Make that a goal, before getting back into other decision making.
ReplyDeleteThe problem I see with relying on cruise missiles for the striking punch is that once you shoot your load, that's it. You're going to have to return to port in order to reload, and that's going to take a while since we need to transit from the combat zone back to port to reload and then sail back to the combat zone again.
ReplyDelete"New missiles need to be self-targeting. They need to be capable of being fired in a general direction and actively implementing their own search and targeting without the need for traditional surveillance and contact tracking and targeting. "
Manufacturers claim that LRASM and NSM have threat libraries loaded into the missiles, allowing the missile to compare the IIR image of the ship it's looking at with the database to determine if it's a valid target (enemy warship) or civilian ship to be avoided. Given the current issues with machine learning and AI recognition of images, I think this is a claim that's a little fanciful, and will need a lot of time to mature (I'm reminded of how the USN essentially wanted Aegis in the 50s, and it took until the 90s for Aegis to happen).
Something to consider - if the Army's 1000 mile railgun artillery program comes to fruition, then stationing guns in Luzon allows you to cover the entirety of the Chinese shore. I can see value in that.
3 fast ferries with 32 cells each @ 35 knots, Loading up 840nm away and you can sustain 32 vls a day for about the price of a B-21. 1 day travel each way and a day to load. Figure 4 ships really so you have a day up launching at targets.
DeleteSustaining 32 VLS a day isn't much help when you're firing hundreds of missiles at one go. Consider Syria: that one Tomahawk strike on the airbase took 60 TLAMs alone. In the opening stages of OIF, 700 Tomahawks were fired into Iraq out of a total Navy inventory of 1200 TLAMs.
Delete"once you shoot your load, that's it. You're going to have to return to port in order to reload"
DeleteYou just described naval warfare. That's how navies operate in war. So many people seem to think ships deploy on a permanent basis and just sit somewhere, fighting battle after battle. That's not even a little bit true. Ships group together for a mission, go execute that mission, and return to port. So, shooting all your missiles is not a problem. In fact, it would be the normal way to operate in war.
"threat libraries"
DeleteWhen I refer to self-targeting, I'm talking about much more than comparing images to a library. I'm talking about intelligent search where the missile decides what search pattern to use based on signals, if any, it is detecting, makes decisions about what routes to take based on threats, if any, evaluates the desirability (not just identity) of targets (should I attack or bypass and look for better targets?), allocates targeting assignments based on threats, difficulty, number of surviving missiles, and what the mission goal is. In other words, I'm talking about a missile that 'thinks' like a person and makes judgements.
"1000 mile railgun artillery … allows you to cover the entirety of the Chinese shore. I can see value in that."
DeleteHow do you target a thousand miles away? No UAV is going to survive a thousand mile flight through the Chinese A2/AD zone. This is exactly what I described in the post about a million mile missile coupled to a 20 mile sensing system. No one has yet solved the distant targeting problem. This is why the Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile is no threat - they can't target at thousand+ miles any more than we can.
"fast ferries"
DeleteDo you know of a ferry with a 1700 nm range at 35 kts?
It only needs the 840 (or thereabouts). We aren't going to have gas at the resupply port? The going standard is 1100-1200nm loaded. It won't even be loaded on the way back. I like to think of it as racing a bomber to a certain extent. Ideally I'd like more than 32 cells, but no one has shown a concept of suc a thing therefore I assume there may be a challenge in upping that number on platforms available.
Delete"Ships group together for a mission, go execute that mission, and return to port. So, shooting all your missiles is not a problem. In fact, it would be the normal way to operate in war."
DeleteSure, but I'm cognizant of the fac that the Chinese are in a better position because they're fighting in their own backyard, so the engagement-RTB-reload-redeploy cycle is going to be faster for them. I'm just trying to look at it from a holistic standpoint, identifying gaps that need to be worked around. Which ties in with the idea of using railgun artillery based in Luzon to keep the pressure up on the Chinese. Be hard for them to reload their ships pierside if they're getting shelled, since the GPS coordinates of their docks, ports and naval bases are all known things. Which ties into my reply to your other point:
"How do you target a thousand miles away? No UAV is going to survive a thousand mile flight through the Chinese A2/AD zone. This is exactly what I described in the post about a million mile missile coupled to a 20 mile sensing system."
The same way you target Tomahawks for 1000 mile shots, or ICBMs for intercontinental attacks: GPS and INS. Recall what you wrote in the main post:
"We’ve noted that it required nearly a hundred Tomahawks to partially destroy a single, undefended Syrian airbase in the recent past. A full strike against a peer defended target would require 300 missiles or more."
My envisioned CONOPS is to use railgun artillery based in Luzon to conduct long range bombardment of static, fixed targets that would otherwise act as tarpits eating up the available supply of TLAMs at sea. Keep TLAM and LRASM for mobile targets that require the missile to self-correct on its approach, and use the Army's railgun artillery to service static targets, i.e. Chinese airbases, naval bases, air defense command centers, supply depots. Sure, there's only so far inland that 1000 miles gets you from Luzon, but you can still reach about 300 miles inland to China. It lets you put rounds into 10 of China's provinces, the entirety of the south, all their coastal provinces facing the South China Sea and East China Sea, and the crown jewels of their economy, like Guangdong and Shanghai.
So how I envision things going is that the cruise missiles aboard USN ships would be prioritised for naval engagement; once the missiles are all spent, our warships would return pierside to reload - either at Singapore or Malaysia or even Da Nang or Subic - and then railgun artillery would take over, keeping the pressure on the chinese by bombarding their bases. It'd be great if we could time the bombardments so that we're catching Chinese warships as they're reloading pierside, but I'll settle for ruining the docks and their airbases.
That said, this is predicated on three things: 1) being able to get basing in the Phillipines, 2) a window of time before the Chinese find the source of this artillery and attempt retaliatory fires with their IRBM TELs, and 3) the Army's railgun artillery actually working (which is the biggest If, given the Army's many failed procurements).
"When I refer to self-targeting, I'm talking about much more than comparing images to a library. I'm talking about intelligent search where the missile decides what search pattern to use based on signals, if any, it is detecting, makes decisions about what routes to take based on threats, if any, evaluates the desirability (not just identity) of targets (should I attack or bypass and look for better targets?), allocates targeting assignments based on threats, difficulty, number of surviving missiles, and what the mission goal is. In other words, I'm talking about a missile that 'thinks' like a person and makes judgements."
DeleteThis would be an excellent capability to have, of course, but I think it's 20+ years ahead.
"My envisioned CONOPS is to use railgun artillery based in Luzon to conduct long range bombardment of static, fixed targets that would otherwise act as tarpits eating up the available supply of TLAMs at sea."
DeleteNo way in Hell the Philippines will let America do that, in my opinion, but very-long-range railgun artillery in this kind of role could be useful and cheap.
Maybe based in Japanese islands?
"This would be an excellent capability to have, of course, but I think it's 20+ years ahead."
DeleteYes, it is! But it's something we should be researching now.
"My envisioned CONOPS is to use railgun artillery based in Luzon to conduct long range bombardment of static, fixed targets that would otherwise act as tarpits eating up the available supply of TLAMs at sea."
DeleteThat's a fair concept of operations. It has several problems and you've identified some of them. One of the biggest problems is that you need a direct hit to get any useful effect. Assuming you're talking about inert rounds, a near miss doesn't do anything. No explosion. No shrapnel. The kinetic energy calcs demonstrate that the energy isn't actually all that great especially at the end of a thousand mile arc. As an area bombardment weapon, rail guns are poor performers. We've also discussed the phenomenon of a round passing clean through the target and doing little damage (bullet through a piece of paper analogy). For example, a rail gun round hitting a dock would just make a six inch or so hole as it passes through and nothing would happen.
Of course, the technology doesn't exist so it's all moot, at this point.
Thinking about it, what's the expected CEP for a railgun at 1000 miles?
DeleteYou'll need some serious accuracy there, no matter the speed.
"Army's 1000 mile rail gun program...."
DeleteI don't think that the Army program is a railgun. It appears to be a conventional propellant gun with a projectile that has a ram jet. There is no publication that I have found that describes it as a rail gun.
"One of the biggest problems is that you need a direct hit to get any useful effect. Assuming you're talking about inert rounds, a near miss doesn't do anything. No explosion. No shrapnel."
Delete@ComNavOps: to clarify, I'm assuming that these railguns will be firing HE-frag. A railgun is merely how you throw the shell out your gun: just because it's a railgun doesn't mean you're limited to KE projectiles only, or that these KE projectiles can't carry a bursting charge to turn them into shrapnel. I'm envisioning something at least in the same ballpark as M795.
To me, the ideal multipurpose artillery round would be something like a cross between AMP and M795: smart fused HE-frag with a hardened nose to aid penetration against hardened targets, with a smart fuse that you can set for airburst, point impact, or delayed detonation. We already have impact and time fuses for artillery shells, and multimode smart fuses for tank rounds have been a thing for over a decade and half, so this is one of the least technologically demanding aspects of the concept.
But ultimately this is moot, because the technology doesn't exist as a viable, deployable weapon - it's going to take time for this to mature beyond the R&D phase.
"I'm assuming that these railguns will be firing HE-frag"
DeleteThe problem with that is the cost. Once you abandon inert rounds and start adding fuzing, sensors, explosive, wiring, circuit boards, smart software, hardening to withstand the rail gun acceleration, shielding to withstand the electrical fields, etc. the cost balloons. Consider the 'simple' LRLAP round for the Zumwalt gun. The LRLAP cost grew to near a million dollars per round!!!!!!!!!!
"The problem with that is the cost."
DeleteIf we're really worried about cost, time fuses have been a thing since Vietnam. We have computers to calculate time of flight now, instead of doing it by hand, so you can just adjust and set the time for when you want the fuse to go off and detonate the round - that's the Killer Junior technique.
But I mean, by the time we've put in GPS guidance and shock hardening, smart fusing isn't really adding *that* much, in the grand scheme of things. The Army is perfectly willing to buy 117,000 dollar Hellfires, and 200,000 dollar TOWs in bulk, and hand out 175,000 dollar Javelin missiles to the infantry squad. Big Army is planning on a wholescale replacement of the existing inventory of HEAT, MPAT and HE-OR-T rounds with AMP (we're looking at tens of thousands of smart-fused HE-frag 120mm rounds being bought, at the very least), and large buys of smart-fused 30mm HE-frag for the IM SHORAD Stryker and Stryker Dragoon.
The problem with the Zumwalts was the death spiral of costs going up and buys getting cut and the lack of economies of scale. Assuming a fully funded program that the Army is serious about, in order to give themselves an organic deep strike capability in excess of their present tactical ballistic missile arsenal, a capability independant of the Air Force, I would expect the cost per round to be much, much lower than a million dollars.
...but then again, as I've said before, this assumes that Army procurement doesn't fuck things up, which is probably the biggest item that requires suspension of disbelief.
"The Army is perfectly willing to buy 117,000 dollar Hellfires …"
DeleteYou're missing a nuance, here. The weapons you've listed as being expensive but perfectly acceptable are all precision guided with the assumption that they'll be one-shot-one-hit weapons. In that case, expending a couple hundred thousand dollar weapon to destroy a thirty million dollar tank is a good trade. In contrast, an area fired rail gun round (meaning non-precision) that is more likely to hit nothing of importance and requires many rounds to achieve a significant effect is a, potentially, huge expenditure.
You're also equating $100k-$200k rounds with a rail gun round that is more likely to be $800k (the LRLAP low end cost) - $1M+. That's a significant cost differential.
"The problem with the Zumwalts was the death spiral of costs going up and buys getting cut and the lack of economies of scale."
The problem with the LRLAP wasn't economy of scale. The initial cost of the LRLAP was set long ago when the cut from 32 ships to 3 was made. From that point on, the scale was set and constant. Despite that, the cost of the LRLAP continued to increase, year after year. The cost increase was due to the complexity of the round and the level of technology that kept being added to try to achieve the required performance (which was never achieved). The LRLAP cost is likely the STARTING point for a thousand mile, smart, explosive, fuzed, hardened, shielded rail gun round.
You're demonstrating the all too common tendency we have today to hugely underestimate the costs of technology. Just slap a warhead and a fuze on the inert rail gun round and we're done - it won't cost anything. The reality, as demonstrated by the LRLAP fiasco, is that a high tech round will have a high tech price tag and a non-existent capability, such as you're describing, will have a mammoth price tag.
We couldn't get a 'simple' $800k-$1M LRLAP round to fly 70km with acceptable accuracy so what makes us think we can get a much more complex and non-existent rail gun round to fly a thousand miles with pinpoint accuracy for significantly less money?
Such a rail gun would be a physically huge object and effectively immobile. In other words, it will be a big fat juicy target.
DeleteYou're all pretending like you'll be able to fire round after round with it, taking out multiple targets. The reality is that once the fighting starts, it's life expectancy will be measured in minutes.
Or are you assuming the enemy won't be smart enough to target it themselves asap? A thousand miles is nothing today (for missiles and air-launched stand-off weapons) and certainly won't be by the time this fantasy gun gets made.
The analogy of the $117,000 Hellfire vs the $30 million tank holds true here too. Except here the railgun will be the high value target and whatever the enemy will lob at it will be cheap in comparison.
R.
"You're missing a nuance, here. The weapons you've listed as being expensive but perfectly acceptable are all precision guided with the assumption that they'll be one-shot-one-hit weapons. In that case, expending a couple hundred thousand dollar weapon to destroy a thirty million dollar tank is a good trade. In contrast, an area fired rail gun round (meaning non-precision) that is more likely to hit nothing of importance and requires many rounds to achieve a significant effect is a, potentially, huge expenditure."
DeleteSure, but Big Army has also used those 175 thousand dollar Javelins to shoot thousand dollar MG nests and snipers, and considers that an acceptable use of resources because it lets the infantry squad retaliate outside their usual engagement bracket, without needing to call in supporting fires. (Your mileage may vary.)
There's fusing, and there's fusing. In my mind, if you want cheap rounds for area bombardment, then you don't need anything fancy. Mechanical quick time fuses and impact fuses have been around for over half a century and are in mass production to feed artillery shells that are fired by the ton. Bursting charges have been around since artillery was invented. In my research, I've seen a price range between 400-1000 dollars for the M795 shell, with fuses being claimed to be 100 USD (impact fuse) and 400 USD (mechanical quick time fuse). You gotta ask yourself how expensive a simple unguided HE-frag round can cost (M795 has "only" 20 lbs of explosive filler), even if it has to survive being fired out of a railgun.
I think where we're having a disconnect here is that you have a bias towards area area bombardment with artillery. It certainly can be used for that, but based on the released literature, and the realities of firing rounds out to 1000 miles, I see this as more of a complement/alternative to conventional IRBMs. This would be the Army using guided long range artillery to complement the Navy using cruise missiles. This is for attacking static, fixed targets that we already know the positions of: bases, supply depots, military infrastructure. We don't need to do blind area bombardment because we already know the position of what we're shooting at. Now of course, there's still a use for area bombardment, but I'd argue that's still better served by existing 40 mile guns, which are going to be more responsive to a shifting engagement because these are guns supporting forces directly engaged in combat (which ties into that post on loitering munitions and my thinking behind that, but that's still a ways in writing).
Let's say the guided railgun rounds cost a cool million; Tomahawks cost that much as well. If something's worth shooting with a million dollar Tomahawk, it's worth shooting with a million dollar railgun round - that's the logic I see, anyhow. (And hell, Big Army is already firing 175,000 dollar Javelins against enemy snipers and MG nests so the infantry squad can retaliate outside of their range bracket, without needing to call for supporting fires...)
But in all this discussion, I'm reminded of a conversation I had some time ago, with an interesting argument brought up: that due to their low rate of fire (being limited by having to charge up electrical power), railguns would never be able to deliver the volume of fire required for saturation bombardment. With each shot being so precious in charging time and electrical power, the railgun round would by necessity have to be guided, and fired at static, fixed targets - the same employment profile as the conventional IRBMs that China talks up so much. I think subconsciously I've been thinking of that in mind all this time, without actually stating so clearly from the get go, which perhaps is why we're both talking at cross purposes here. Chalk up another problem with railguns.
Delete(I don't know about you, but I've found this discussion rather stimulating, as an intellectual excercise.)
As an aside, I see two paths for the Army railgun. One is to concentrate purely on using the railgun to deliver precision fires with guided rounds at 1000 miles; the other option is to accept reduced range in order to deliver unguided HE-frag rounds with acceptable accuraccy. Which is something Big Army sort of did with M795 and Excalibur, except that it turned out that at 24 miles (40km, standard range of American artillery), you can still get unguided HE-frag to hit accurately enough that Excalibur is unneeded, and if you want to shoot beyond that range bracket, the Army has ATACMS and can call on the Air Force to drop bombs.
But given the power and time costs with railgun shots... I dunno.
"If something's worth shooting with a million dollar Tomahawk, it's worth shooting with a million dollar railgun round"
DeleteWhoa! Back the money truck up! A million dollar Tomahawk has a significant effect with its THOUSAND POUND WARHEAD. The million dollar rail gun round (5" round, maybe? maybe smaller?) would have, what, a 20-40 lb warhead?
It's one thing to expend a million dollar missile that can produce a major explosion and another to expend a million dollar rail gun round that can produce a minor explosion.
I can't get past the technology and cost issue. I look at the LRLAP (and other long range guided projectile programs through the years) and I see massive costs for 'simple' performance. A thousand mile rail gun round would be many times more complex and difficult to achieve so how can the cost not be many times the LRLAP?
DeleteI also have a severe problem with the degree of damage a rail gun projectile can do. If inert, it can only do very focused and minimal damage. If explosive, the cost skyrockets.
I see the best use for rail gun artillery as 'blind' area bombardment by inert rounds. In order to make that work, you'd need to fire hundreds/thousands of rounds at a single target - true saturation area coverage. Each would likely do fairly minimal damage but sheer numbers would get the job done. Of course, the technology doesn't exist to fire hundreds of rounds in a brief period from a rail gun. We could make up for that by building hundreds of rail guns so that each only has to fire a handful of rounds at a time but that's a mammoth cost in itself.
I'd really like to see a demonstration of a rail gun round against a soft target like a building or dock. Every video you see of a rail gun is against three feet of steel and thus it produces a visually impressive display of energy release. Show me a video of what happens when a rail gun inert round hits a soft target. I'm betting almost nothing happens other than a projectile diameter hole gets drilled through the target and the target remains perfectly functional unless you get lucky and hit a vital piece of equipment. If I'm right, that argues for explosive rounds and then the cost soars.
The hacker who can slip a faulty component into the supply chain is laughing at all of us. He just crapped up the whole plan while drinking his morning coffee.
DeleteKey issue of rail gun is repeatability, after fire first round, how fast you can charge and fire second run. Not just US, several nations have demonstrated their rail guns (Turkey was one, for instance). For all, fire first shot is OK but it takes long time to charge and fire second shot. Size and cooling are other problems.
DeleteSo far, only China has put a test rail gun on ship (an amphitheater landing ship) with barely acceptable size.
It is US' target that rail guns fire non-explosive ammunition, not others. It is not against physical laws to fire explosive ammunitions. Question is what is your goal?
Apparently, China is leading in this front. You can google the web and find picture of its test railgun on ship. As usual, China would not release more information until they are deployed. Even then, unless China will export it, China releases less information than US would.
Y'know, there's nothing that actually says that a railgun has to fire a 5" round. The Navy railgun program fires a 5" round because they want to use the same round in conventional 5" guns; the Army hasn't chosen to have that same constraint. They've said nothing about making the railgun round reverse-compatible with 155mm.
DeleteThe more I think about it, the more I'm starting to wonder if the Army's 1000 mile railgun is less akin to conventional artillery, and more for firing an IRBM-class weapon, i.e. using the railgun as a replacement for the booster stage. It's having IRBM range and capability, without being people looking at you sideways for increasing your IRBM arsenal (hence why China talks up their ASBMs as anti-airbase and anti-CVN weapons, so nobody really notices that they're recapitalising their IRBM arsenal).
"Army's 1000 mile railgun"
DeleteWhile a rail gun discussion is interesting in its own right, have you actually seen anything indicating the Army is pursuing a rail gun? As another commenter noted, the only articles I can find about 1000 mile artillery are cannon with rocket assisted projectiles. Are you, possible, confusing the two concepts?
Returning to rail guns, have you thought about the warhead size for an explosive rail gun projectile? If you want a useful size you'd be in the hundreds of pounds on up to 1000+ lb category. I'm not aware of any current rail gun technology that could throw an unpowered projectile of that size over that range. The rail gun that would be required would the size of a football field!
If you watch pictures and videos carefully, you can find most rail gun mouth are rectangular than round.
DeleteUsually, Army has 4" (~105mm) and 6"(~155mm) guns while Navy 3" and 5". I don't know why. After realized railgun wouldn't be developed soon, DDG 1000 planned to install 155mm gun but Navy found that it has no this standard.
If you calculate curvature of earth, then, you can easily find that there is no benefit to have railgun to fire horizontally more than 120 miles. So called ultra long range artillery is to use dynamite to replace first stage of rocket. A common name is called projectile. Soviet Union pioneered on this. Several US development ended up in failure. Today, China is most advance in this front as they have resources to continue develop from learned Soviet technologies.
Leave it to a good railgun discussion to end my lurking spree. My greatest takeaways from what's been said so far:
Delete1. The most relevant CONOPS for this platform is for bombardment of fixed strategic targets in mainland China from ~1000 mi range from bases in the first island chain. Somebody call the Marines, we've got the perfect tool for their "austere bases"! Joking aside, if this platform performed well in that role then it's a valid CONOPS.
2. This thing would be tactically immobile - no "shoot and scoot" - and could be observed being unloaded and set up by satellite days in advance before delivering a sustained rate of fire that is strictly inferior to a missile battery firing a comparable number of ATACMS, TLAMs, or any future replacement missile.
3. The cost for a dumb fused, unguided round with a small HE filler mass (10-20kg) would be well over 200k, likely around 500k. A GPS-INS, Radar/IR/anti-radiation sensor-fusion, autonomously target-selecting, precision guided round would be at least $1M for the same 10kg warhead. Either way - and even if you fudge the numbers by a factor of 10 - it costs you tons more $$$ to get 1 ton of TNT on a target compared to a single $1M tomahawk. Not good.
4. The technical challenges that drive up railgun projectile costs - mostly extreme physical and electrical hardening - don't affect rocket-assisted conventional tube artillery, but these have high per-round costs of their own due to the rocket motor integrated into each round. When scaled up to "IRBM first stage replacement" scale, they also have the same issue of tactical immobility compared to HIMARS-ATACMS and similar SRBM/MRBM TELs.
My conclusion:
I see rocket-assisted artillery as a potentially valuable extension of traditional artillery out to the ~200km mark, but it is plagued by the same cost-to-tonnage ratio as any ballistic weapon at 1000+ mi ranges (including ballistic missiles, which are tremendously expensive compared to cruise missiles), and neither a massive railgun nor a conventional gun firing any type of projectile out to 1000 mi could compete with mobile launcher-fired TLAMs on launcher tactical mobility, launcher attrition acceptability, cost-per-tonnage of delivered TNT, or accuracy. There is an argument that if one of these systems could deliver 100 unguided 10kg warheads for $1M it would be superior for saturating IADS compared to tomahawk swarms, but they're nowhere near this cost metric and such ballistic projectiles are relatively easy targets for interceptor missiles *as well as C-RAM systems* compared to swarming, TERCON-hugging cruise missiles even before discussing the next generation's stealth capabilities and terminal maneuvering.
This brings us back to the paradigm that I for one started with: get more missile shooters into the Area of Operation. The smartest way to do that probably isn't to give them to marines on "austere bases" or to build arsenal ships... well, kind of. One likely choice is to build more Burkes and arm them with more TLAMs, but I'm most in favor of recapitalizing the SSGN fleet as we phase out the rest of the Ohios - we can even name them after Pacific Islands and let the Marines man the fire controls so they can pretend they came up with a good idea.
"Leave it to a good railgun discussion to end my lurking spree. My greatest takeaways from what's been said so far:"
DeleteReally good comment! Keep doing it!
"we can even name them after Pacific Islands and let the Marines man the fire controls so they can pretend they came up with a good idea."
Ouch! That is one of the best 'shots' I've ever read on this blog. Priceless!
"missiles have begun to replace the aircraft"
ReplyDeleteI don't think so. They are complimentary. Missiles fired from aircrafts have longer ranges than same missiles fired from ships (gravity in play). Furthermore, aircrafts can carry missiles to hundreds miles from fleet and launch there. This is another reason which Navy doesn't like F-35C because it cannot carry many heavy missiles. F-35C is a single engine fighter. To maintain its stealthy, missiles can only load in its weapon bay which is small. However, drop bombs on top of enemy ships become impossible. Aircrafts have to fire missiles outside enemy's SAM range. Likewise, enemies will fire outside Navy's SM-2's range.
"I don't think so."
DeleteIt's not really a debatable point. Tomahawk strikes have become the main form of strike. Aircraft are now only used for anti-terrorist, uncontested type strikes.
Go back and reread the post about aircraft launching missiles, targeting issues, and numbers.
That's why future anti ship and strike missiles need to be like what the Soviets built, missiles going mach 1-3 with warheads double that of a tomahawk.
DeleteStick modern guidance systems on bigger and fast missiles.
A single 80's era SS-N-19 Shipwreck was heavier than the max weapon load of an A-7 Corsair II.
"A single 80's era SS-N-19 Shipwreck was heavier than the max weapon load of an A-7 Corsair II."
DeleteOn the other hand, a Shipwreck was a large target traveling in a fairly straight line and if you hit it, you eliminated a weapons load equal to an entire A-7 Corsair II.
So, bigger has advantages and disadvantages, depending on the circumstances.
Real issue is what possible counterpart Navy face?
DeleteTo be clear, I don't advocate to fight China as nuclear war is not bearable. We can NOT rely on China's fear of nuclear war. However, Navy needs to prepare to counter any foreign nation, include today's allies.
Chinese navy's rising can be described as too far too fast. Several Navy's developments such as LCS, DDG1000, ... become strategic blunders largely because they are useless toward Chinese fleet. Now, Navy has to think on how to face another powerful navy in open sea.
Both US and China emphasize on beyond visual range attack thus naval guns have become secondary. Missiles become most important weapons. To launch missiles from aircrafts (include drone) is preferred as ranges are extended plus safety to the fleet (at most, lost an aircraft). Due to water's much higher resistance than air, it is impossible to have very fast long range torpedo. Even so, torpedo are still useful as submarines are hard to detect, especially in deep water. China has great progress in their torpedo (Fish-8, Fish-10, etc.).
Carrier based aircrafts is still a weak point of China. J-15 is not stealthy plus numbers are limited. However, this is not a big problem for China as it never plans (or unable) to dispatch her carriers far away. Their main mission is to extend defense circle.
Force structure and operating doctrine need to be rethought in order to drive procurement and task organization. We must be prepared to win a peer war with China and Russia (although I would try to triangulate Russia against China diplomatically). But as long as neither China nor Russia believes they can beat us in a peer war, we can expect a series of proxy wars, as in Cold War I, and we need to be able to win those too. Build proved systems instead of gee-whiz technology.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the air wing:
- A long-range air superiority fighter/interceptor is clearly needed and should be the biggest part of the air wing. Have 3 squadrons of 12, total 36.
- Jerry Hendrix has proposed restoring the carrier strike capability, and to that end has proposed an attack aircraft with stealth, long legs, and a heavy payload. Have 1 squadron of 12.
- S-3s—or updated replacements—need to go back on carriers. Have a squadron of 12, with 6 ASW, 5 tankers, and 1 COD.
- 6 AEW (E-2 or replacement) and 6 EW
- 7 helos
- 1 V-22 (backup COD plus inter task force delivery, since the Navy loves V-22s)
- 5 drone tankers to supplement the S-3/replacement tankers, as they become available, for a total count of 85.
- Marines need a “Marine A-10” that can operate off Lightning Carriers and short or unprepared strips ashore, has a big gun and carry a big bomb load, and is rugged and easy to maintain. F-35B isn’t that airplane but can be a poor interim while that airplane is developed.
For carriers, stop building Fords, hope and pray that they work someday, and build more Nimitzes and conventional CVs like something between Kitty Hawks and Midways. We can build 1 each of the latter two for about the cost of a Ford, and both have carried air wings larger than 85. Until the conventional CVs come into the fleet, convert LHAs/LHDs to interim “Lightning Carriers” and replace them as amphibs with traditional PhibRons and combined arms MEUs that can actually make assaults, in those proxy wars if not against China or Russia.
We need SSGNs as primary strike platforms. The Navy’s 355-ship plan had 5 of them based on the Columbias and coming after the Columbia run is finished, at a cost of about $7.4 billion each, or $37 billion total. Instead build 20 of them based on the earlier and cheaper Ohio design, which originally cost less than $3 billion each. If we could build 20 for $5 billion each, that would be $100 billion. Build 30 Virginia VPMs for $3.1 billion each or $93 billion total, and build 30 smaller and cheaper ASW-focused SSNs, maybe based on the French Barracuda at about $1.7 billion each, for $51 billion total. Also, build 30 SSKs for littoral and choke point missions, at $800 million each, or $24 billion total. So 20 SSGNs, 30 VPM SSNs, 30 ASW SSNs, and 30 SSKs for a total of $268 billion, where the Navy has proposed 5 SSGNs, 28 VPMs, and 33 SSNs for $305 billion (CBO cost estimate).
Agree totally on the need for a Tomahawk upgrade/replacement and with your thoughts about LRSAM as an interim. The Navy has never taken cruise missiles as seriously as they should. We need longer-range, faster, and more powerful cruise missiles for anti-ship and land attack, plus some SRBMs/IRBMs.
We need something larger than Burkes for the strike role. Let Burkes be primarily AAW destroyers. Replace Ticonderogas with larger cruisers, Des Moines size with 2x3 8-inch guns fore and aft, 192 VLS cells and a flight deck for launching small UAVs, with a hangar underneath from which small USVs and UUVs can be launched over the side. Also build modern battleships, based on the 1980s battlecruiser, basically something to out-Kirov the Kirovs and out-Kiev the Kievs, with 2x3 16-inch guns forward, 288 VLS cells, of which 32 would be large cells for SRBMs/IRBMs and/or an anti-ship missile like the Russian Shipwreck, and an angled flight deck with ski jump for operating 8-10 F-35Bs and helos. Cruisers and battleships would be the primary NGFS platforms.
Numbers and employment would be based on the old 2-1/2 war concept—two simultaneous peer wars, plus an engagement with a rogue state or terror group.
DeleteCarriers—Have carrier battle groups (CVBG) of two carriers, one CVN and one CV, that could combine to form 4-carrier task forces (CTF). Have two CTFs for China, one north and one south, operating initially beyond the range of China’s A2/AD system and providing cover for strike units inside that system, until that system is degraded sufficiently to permit carrier ops inside it. Have two CTFs for Russia, one in the North Sea and one in the Med, and one CTF in the Mideast for the rogue state or terror group. That is 5 CTFs (10 CVBGs) and have 1 CVBG in reserve/surge on each coast, total 12 CVBGs.
Battleships—Combine with an ASW helo carrier to form a surface action/hunter killer group (SAG/HUK) that would primarily perform sea control on the high seas, outside the range of land-based air, and secondarily support amphibious assaults. Have two SAG/HUKs operating in the WestPac the two China CTFs, one SAG/HUK in the GIUK Gap and another in the North Atlantic to back up the European CTFs, and two SAG/HUKs in the Indian Ocean. Add one SAG/HUK in reserve/surge on each coast for a total of 8 SAG/HUK.
Escorts—Have 20 escort squadrons (CortRons), one for each CVBG and SAG/HUK, consisting of 1 cruiser, 2 AAW destroyers (could be Burkes), 3 GP escorts (could be FREMMs), and 4 ASW frigates (ASW specialists with defensive ASuW and AAW).
Amphibs—Three amphibious ready groups (ARG)/Marine expeditionary units (MEU) in WestPac, three in Europe, and two in the Indian Ocean, plus one in reserve/surge on each coast, total 10.
Submarines—Utilize the 20 SSGNs for strike as needed. Deploy one SSN with each CVBG and SAG/HUK, use the rest as necessary. Deploy the SSKs in littoral and choke points, to free the SSNs for operations that require them.
Littoral—Operate out of advance bases to control littoral and choke points, including first island chain, Malacca and Sunda Straits, eastern Mediterranean, Baltic, Arabian/Persian Gulf, and Straits of Hormuz. Adopt CAPT Wayne Hughes’s NNFM concepts, to include 30 corvettes optimized for shallow water ASW, 30 missile patrol boats for anti-ship and land attack, the aforementioned 30 SSKS, and 30 mine countermeasures ships of two types—15 MHCs and 15 mother ships for helo and drone sweeps.
Auxiliaries—20 dedicated AOEs to support CVBGs and SAG/HUKs, and another 20 AORs and AKs for backup and support of other units, 15 expeditionary support ships with secondary mission of providing UNREP/RAS, six tenders deployed to advance bases, six ATF/ARS/ASR, and six geographic survey ships. Convert two of the Zumwalts to flagships for 6th and 7th Fleets, and the third to a test/evaluation platform for future systems.
Harden all bases for defense against ballistic missile and other attacks and convert the San Antonios to the HII anti-ballistic missile/ballistic missile defense (ABM/BMD) ships to provide additional protection. Provide all ships with self-defense capabilities including SeaRAM and Phalanx.
Running the numbers, the resulting fleet is 600 ships in total. By building a bunch of cheaper single-purpose ships under the high-low approach, and avoiding expensive unproved technology on larger units, the cost/ship is reduced from $2.8 billion for the Navy’s 355-ship fleet to $1.4 billion. This enables this larger fleet to be built for slightly less money. If we extend the average service life to 40 years (longer for more expensive carriers and battleships, shorter for smaller and cheaper units) we can build this fleet and maintain it going forward for about $21-23 billion a year, not far removed from current ship construction expenditure levels.
I like the carrier idea and air wing. I like the sub plan too, but I really think your numbers are low and based on current Navy happy path estimates. Realty is 9.32B is the cheapest Columbia in the budget. If the U.S. chose to build an SSK we would be challenged to keep it under a billion. The French SSNs break 2B. I know everyone loves the Des Moines, but they would end up being our Kirov with low numbers. I want bigger too, but when you look at the system of systems involved any such ship needs to be kept down to Zumwalt of a little larger. Certainly inside the length of an LPD-17
DeleteI think you could hit--or beat--those cost numbers if you imposed some proper discipline on the process.
DeleteCBO estimates the Columbias at $7.5B for the lot of them. I'm not really addressing that here. I'm talking about reviving the Ohio line for purpose-built SSGNs that should be cheaper than Columbia adaptations. What I've seen for the French Barracudas is a turnkey contract for 6 of them for US$10.2B, which is where I got my $1.7B number. A Des Moines with the hybrid propulsion system from Makin Island should be relatively cheap since it's all proved technology. Same for the battlewagon, nothing new in either one but the missiles.
DeleteThat's my point. By going with proved technology, and by building a bunch of low-end ships to grow the numbers, we can get cost/ship down, if we have proper discipline in the process.
More SSGNs would be great, but 100+ VLS ships aren't that useful, in my opinion.
DeleteAlso, large cruisers and battleships look pretty redundant to me.
I think we'd pay the same for a restarted Ohio. You are buying a production system. Once its gone, you pay for it again to a certain extent. Especially with a multi decade gap. I do like the Makin Island propulsion plant for a go with what you know design short of a cruiser (Let's call it a DLG). Maybe cut back to 4 SSDGs. It would still make for a ship that was a tier up from the FFGs, a clean sheet Burke replacement if needed. I'm not sure it would get a Des Moines size ship where it needs to very fast.
DeleteThe Ohio cost number is probably the softest number in the plan. Maybe you save a billion or so by building a smaller version with say 20 silos instead of 24, 18 for 126 VLS Tomahawks or successors and 2 for special operations forces. I do think the Ohio-based SSGN is such a good concept that it needs to be retained, but we can't go paying $7-9B apiece for them.
DeleteWell, the last Ohio mid life refueling was 400 million so the life of ship reactor core is worth say 5% in making the comparison. I'm pretty sure the missile tubes won't shave billions off no matter the qty.
DeleteTo circle back to the title topic, I see Naval missions basically being permutations around two objectives--power projection and sea control/denial. I see strike as part of power projection and in the fleet structure I outlined above, it would come from several sources:
Delete- SSGNs, and I don't know why we are not building replacements, and developing better cruise missiles
- VPMs, as kind of poor man's SSGNs, also with cruise missiles
- My proposed battleships and cruisers, with missiles and big guns
- Carriers, if we build Jerry Hendrix's long-range, stealthy attack aircraft
So where does the Navy stand on strike? Of those platforms, the only one that the Navy currently has planned are the VPMs (there are 5 of what appear to be SSGNs in the pipeline after the Columbia class run, but none before that). The Navy is becoming a defensive fleet, with very limited strike capability and additionally no way to launch a credible Marine assault force to project power ashore.
Of course, any viable strike capability depends on improved cruise (and possibly short and intermediate range ballistic) missiles. The failure to develop better cruise missiles has been a chronic failing for 50 years, and is a real head scratcher for me. If we are going to have a legitimate power projection capability going forward, we are going to have to get much better in land attack cruise and other missiles, and if we are going to have a legitimate sea control/denial capability, we need better anti-ship missiles as well. I am not quite sure what the Navy is thinking about in any of these areas.
I think that the sweet spot for surface ships in the # of VLS vs "eggs in one basket" is 100-ish. On the other hand, the SSGNs are excellent platforms due to their stealth and survivability. The beauty of an. SSGN Ohio restart is theres no long drawn out design phase, and there should be no new tech to sort out. Just use the latest and greatest versions of existing systems. SSGNs are, imho, the most capable platforms we currently have, and it'd be a wise choice to look into a new replacement version asap, with a run of 10-12 boats. Being able to bring that much firepower to the western pacific is a great way to blast a path into the island chains, and hurt the PLAN and its bases if we need to...
Delete"I think that the sweet spot for surface ships in the # of VLS vs "eggs in one basket" is 100-ish. On the other hand, the SSGNs are excellent platforms due to their stealth and survivability. The beauty of an. SSGN Ohio restart is theres no long drawn out design phase, and there should be no new tech to sort out. Just use the latest and greatest versions of existing systems. SSGNs are, imho, the most capable platforms we currently have, and it'd be a wise choice to look into a new replacement version asap, with a run of 10-12 boats. Being able to bring that much firepower to the western pacific is a great way to blast a path into the island chains, and hurt the PLAN and its bases if we need to..."
DeleteGenerally agree. My reasoning behind more VLS cells on the battleships and cruisers is that given the number of missile hits required to conduct a successful strike, per ComNavOps, and the need to carry multiple types (AAW, ASuW, ASW) there need to be that many missiles somewhere.
As far as strike platforms, a couple more come to mind after giving it more thought:
- AAW destroyers, GP escorts, and ASW frigates, although it would be a primary mission of the GP escorts
- ComNavOps's land attack frigate included in his amphibious force, and CAPT Wayne Hughes's missile patrol boats included in his littoral forces would both be able to operate closer in and provide strike capability
A VLS compatible LRASM is coming, correct?? Would there be a range penalty? And whats the chance of a SSGN-usable version?? Would that be more attractive than an antiship Tomahawk redux??
DeleteIn the thread on railguns I also concluded that the bulk of our long-range strike should come from SSGNs and immediately noted that these should be Ohio derivatives. I know CNOps and Chip and their disagreements on fleet structure, but that's one part of Chip's fleet structure above that I can't agree with enough - we need a big buy of Ohio SSGNs whether that's new-build hulls, conversion of retiring boats, or a combination of both. I'm not as sold on the battlecruiser or SSK for the "eggs in one basket" and basing concerns, respectively, but letting the DDG/CG fleet focus on AAW and building a new AAW CG to mount the thiccest AEGIS panels Raytheon sells are both winners in my book. NGFS is great and I can be sold on a dedicated vessel for doing that in a moderately contested environment - after we buy minesweepers and a functional amphibious fleet, but any coastline sufficiently sanitized of SSKs to operate capital ships in could readily be sanitized of enemy fighters and SAMs allowing CAS to operate in full force. A true battlecruiser with 196 VLS, a handful of IRBMs, and around a dozen 16-inch guns is just too much ship - particularly too many thinly armored launch tubes that react violently to HE - for a role that requires you to get really close to sea mines, SSKs, shore-based rockets, and artillery pieces.
DeleteJust a note to everyone noting that pre-1980 designed ships are all superior to new designs so lets buy lots-and-lots of old "cheap" ships -- that ship has sailed. Defense contractors, who bribe Navy officers by the sackful, know something about finance and will NOT sell you old designs at old prices. If you want to buy a Forrestal-class CV, it will cost you 5% less than a Ford-class CV. If you want to buy a Coontz-class DDG, it will cost you 6% less than the latest Burke. Look at the LCS, you were buying a WWII Elco PT boat with NO TORPEDOES and the price was hundreds of millions of dollars. The cost of the bribes has to be made up somewhere.
ReplyDeleteCome on, now. This is a sophomoric comment and has only a partial element of fact to it. It is true that carrier costs have risen more than the rate of inflation. I posted on this. See, Carrier Costs
DeleteOn the other hand, Burke costs have held steady after adjustment for inflation although the Navy's accounting games and gimmicks of late make it difficult to tell.
The LCS was not a PT boat without torpedoes. You may like or dislike the LCS concept but it most certainly was not a PT boat in its conceptual origin.
While bribes may make a handy point of criticism and while there most definitely is some major conflict of interest going on, this has little to do with the actual cost of ships or aircraft.
If you'd like to make some point about ship costs having risen, or some related point, why don't you try again but do so with facts. For example, get the actual cost of a Forrestal, as built, and make the adjustment for inflation and factor in the conventional power and then compare the cost to a Nimitz (or Ford, although no one can explain the runaway cost of a Ford!). Give us a meaningful, insightful comment!
The Navy has to ask for things that allow for competition and quantity, block buys. Any carrier designed and sized for portions to be bid out to Philly, and maybe GD Bath and EB. Corvette's really invite competition. Think of the 8 bidders for OPC.
Deletehttps://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2021/02/26/more-missiles-dispersed-forces-are-key-to-stopping-chinese-invasion-of-taiwan-says-former-us-navy-official/
ReplyDeleteAgree, not only do we need a lot more missiles but I think we need to increase the type and variety of ASMs, cruise missiles we have to complicate China defense. Just coming at this problem with the same systems is too "easy" to play defense, need to have volume with different speeds and LO.
UNRELATED news, it looks like Australia and France sub deal is dead. I cant find the article anymore that came out this morning but it looked dead, they were talking $60 to $80? billion for 12 subs?!? Canada is also having problems with their new frigate program, already talking about blowing the budget....nobody seems to have a good handle on military programs apart maybe from Scandinavian countries?
If I picked a had their act together, western navy right now I'd pick Italy.
Deletehttps://www.defensenews.com/naval/2021/02/26/canadas-new-frigate-is-getting-heavier-more-expensive
DeleteIf I'm reading this correctly, Canada is looking at a 4bn USD frigate?
That's nuts.
@Lonfo. Frigate fully loaded at 9400 tonnes...that's kind of heavy for frigate,no? LOL! I really don't know what Western military are doing anymore, sadly neither do they!
DeleteYeah, it's a "frigate" with DDG displacement, bizarre naming (maybe "destroyer" sounded too aggressive?), although Japan's totally-not-carriers still win that game.
DeleteStill, 4bn for a wannabe Burke is ridiculous, maybe someone can enlighten me on what's going on with Canada.
@Lonfo. Irony being Canada went with a "proven" Euro/Brit design Type 21 so I presume they were trying to save some money and time....but they blew it up to carry just about everything under the sun. I mean, if you are going to put a SPY7 radar, you going for big bucks and size really, like you said, it's a DDG! Were they that stupid, knew it all along and trying to pull a fast one on gvt or just like USN, plain stupid?!? Maybe all 3!
DeleteThe Aussie Sub project is going ahead just fine.
DeleteHere's a good interview on it on March 1st
https://youtu.be/54GGccWzTS0
Andrew
The Austraian Hunter's will cost more than their Hobart's using their own accounting. That's the first sign of trouble to me. The Australian sub deal is garbage too. Canada's mess tops them all. They need leadership from the indispensable nation and aren't getting squat. BAE is a problem.
ReplyDelete"For far too long, our force structure design has been based on technology rather than strategy. We’ve procured whatever new technology we could get without regard to its usefulness"
ReplyDeleteGreat post but why including lasers and hypersonic missiles, think your words above apply. Lasers have been in development for over a decade and $10 billion plus spent and yet not one weapon system yet to achieve TRL 7.
Why planning for tens of $billions being spent on development of hypersonic missiles, why reinventing the wheel, the land attack conventional ballistic missile the Pershing II of the early 80's carried out the self same mission an was self targeting.
The Type 26/Hunter class is designed to be the quietest frigate. This is to allow it to hear underwater without it's own noise drowning out what it is listening for. That is what makes it expensive.
ReplyDeleteYesterday the Australian Government and Naval Group made up and the Attack class subs are back on track.
The has been a big change in laser technology recently. Instead of one big laser you now chain lots of smaller lasers. That is how Lockheed Martin built this one. From multiple small lasers. See https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-31765015.
Looking back over the original and subsequent posts to this thread, I am struck by the Navy’s almost total lack of viable strike assets, and even more by the apparent lack of intent to correct this. Consider:
ReplyDelete- We have the SSBNs for nuclear strike, and they aren’t going away. But SSGNs are.
- The largest guns we have available are 5-inchers on the Ticonderogas and Burkes. But are we really going to bring them in close enough to attack anything ashore with 5-inch guns? 57mm popguns on LCSs and FFG(X)s are not strike weapons.
- Carrier-based aircraft have gotten steadily shorter legs over the last 50 years, so that there really is no viable carrier strike mission.
- We have never really placed much emphasis on cruise, hypersonic, or short/intermediate ballistic missiles, and as a result have fallen way behind the Russians and Chinese in this area, with respect to both anti-ship and land attack applications.
- As far as projection of power ashore, the Marines have been pretty much neutered.
Does no flag officer perceive any need for a strike function? We are building a Navy that can (maybe) keep itself relatively safe at sea, but its ability to project power ashore is almost non-existent outside of sub-launched cruise missiles, and we are reducing the number of launch tubes for those.
Navy missions are basically subsets of two categories—sea control and power projection. We may be okay at sea control, although the lack of supersonic or hypersonic anti-ship missiles calls that into question. But I don’t see any viable power projection capability at the level needed to prosecute a peer war.
ComNavOps’s proposed fleet (see tab) does contain several strike platforms—principally SSGNs, battleships, and cruisers. I’ve approached it similarly but with a few differences—3 fewer carriers, and additional 2 battleships and 12 cruisers, converting LHAs/LHDs to interim “Lightning Carriers” until a new class of conventional CV can join the fleet in numbers, reconstituting the old PhibRon structure for amphibs, and a littoral force based on CAPT Wayne Hughes’s ideas. We’ve argued back and forth over details, but I think either of our approaches would build a much more viable fleet than the Navy’s current plans, both for the sea control and the power projection components.
Should someone drop by the Pentagon and remind the Navy brass that the basic reason to have a Navy is to fight—and win—wars?
"strike"
Delete"new class of conventional CV"
You're placing a lot of emphasis on carriers. Carriers have only a very limited strike capability (or desirability!) in high end, peer war. Manned aircraft are no longer survivable against peer defended targets. They're a viable strike asset only against low end, third world, terrorist type targets.
As you embark on building your fleet of dozens of carriers, you need to work out how the air wing will be used. They'll be decimated in high end strikes so what role does that leave?
Yes, an aircraft can carry one or two cruise missiles and launch from a large stand off distance but, if that's the case, why use aircraft? We can already launch many more than one or two cruise missiles from a thousand miles. This applies to both land attack and anti-ship (assuming we get the ship launched LRASM into service).
Help me out, please, ComNavOps. I just don’t see where we are far apart.
DeleteYou say that I am placing a lot of emphasis on carriers. But in your proposed fleet structure you have 27 carriers (15 supercarriers and 12 conventional). That's more than in my proposed fleet structure (12 CVN and 12 CV, with LHAs/LHDs serving as interim Lightning Carriers until the CVs enter the fleet, since they really aren’t good as amphibs) and more than I have seen in any other proposed fleet structure. Perhaps we are the ones who should be asking you why you are embarking on building a fleet of so many carriers.
Repeating from two of my posts above, I pretty clearly laid out my hierarchy of strike platforms:
- SSGNs
- VPMs, as kind of poor man's SSGNs
- My proposed battleships and cruisers, with IRBM/SRBM and hypersonic, supersonic, and subsonic cruise anti-ship and land attack missiles and big guns
- AAW destroyers, GP escorts, and ASW frigates, with NSM or similar, as a primary mission of the GP escorts and a secondary mission for the others (maybe not crystal clear where these ranked vis a vis carriers, but the rest are clear and this should be from context)
- Carriers, if we build Jerry Hendrix's long-range, stealthy attack aircraft
- ComNavOps's land attack frigate included in his amphibious force, and CAPT Wayne Hughes's missile patrol boats included in his littoral forces would both be able to operate closer in and provide strike capability
There is also a need for extensive development in cruise and other land attack and anti-ship missiles, an area where the Navy has been woefully deficient and disinterested for 50 years. We are way behind Russia and China in this area, and we had better start catching up soon and fast.
There is a reason why carriers are way down that list. And note that not only are carriers fairly far down the list, but there is a very big “if” attached to carriers as strike platforms, particularly in anything approaching a peer war. That does not mean no strike missions for carriers ever, by the way. I could foresee a situation where we deteriorated China’s A2/AD system to the extent that we could risk bringing carriers in closer to do more strike stuff. Aside from that, I expect Cold War II to devolve into a series of proxy wars rather than direct confrontations between nuclear-capable powers, just like Cold War I did, and in those engagements even a short-range carrier strike capability could be useful. I don’t really see anything dissimilar to the approach you have proposed.
But to reiterate, let’s go back over my punch list, in order of priority:
1) Build more SSGNs
2) Catch up and pull ahead in missile technology and production—IRBM, SRBM, hypersonic, supersonic, and subsonic cruise—this is actually 1b)
3) Bring back big guns with battleships (16-inch) and cruisers (8-inch), with both also serving as platforms for large numbers of missiles of multiple types
4) Build some GP escorts with large numbers of NSM (or other strike missile) launchers
5) Develop a long-range carrier strike aircraft
6) Build some cheaper land attack and anti-ship missile craft for use in amphibious and littoral operations
I hope that clarifies.
" I just don’t see where we are far apart."
DeleteWe couldn't be further apart! You see carriers as strike platforms and I see them as localized air superiority platforms and escorts for Tomahawk shooters. Totally different roles bordering on polar opposites!
All of this is laid out in the various posts and comments of the blog.
My number requirements come from recognition of the complete absence of useful bases in a China war. No, we're not going to have access to bases in Philippines, Japan, Indochina, Vietnam, or anywhere else as so many people seem to think. That only leaves carriers to provide air cover/superiority and it will require lots of carriers to do that, operating in groups of 4.
As a bit of historical comparison, we required around two dozen fleet carriers and an equal number of light carriers to defeat a small island nation. How much more would we need to defeat a mammoth peer country with resources equal to our own?
"We couldn't be further apart! You see carriers as strike platforms and I see them as localized air superiority platforms and escorts for Tomahawk shooters. Totally different roles bordering on polar opposites!"
DeleteUmm, I see them as 5th priority, contingent upon development of a currently non-existent long-range stealthy strike aircraft. Until that happens, I see them as providing localized air superiority as needed by the various shooters listed above them in the order of priority.
I think you are trying to make a distinction where there is no substantive difference.
As far as the "two dozen fleet carriers and an equal number of light carriers to defeat a small island nation," that was a situation where the carriers were very much used for strike.
Delete"You see carriers as strike platforms..."
DeleteJust wondering, where did you get that from?
"attack aircraft with stealth, long legs, and a heavy payload. Have 1 squadron of 12."
Delete"Carriers, if we build Jerry Hendrix's long-range, stealthy attack aircraft"
"bringing carriers in closer to do more strike stuff."
"even a short-range carrier strike capability could be useful."
"Develop a long-range carrier strike aircraft"
All written in the context of the subs go first, then surface ships with carriers providing air cover, then finally carriers.
DeleteStrike platform implies to me that strike is the primary mission, and that it is somewhere near the top of the strike order of battle. 12 aircraft out of 80 is not the primary mission, and sixth in line after SSGNs, VPMs, battleships, cruisers, and smaller surface combatants is near the top of the order of battle. If you want to say that makes it a strike platform, go ahead. I certainly don't call it a primary strike platform based upon that.
DeleteI also think we should return S-3s or a modern replacement to carriers, but that doesn't make the carrier an ASW platform. Carriers are airports, and their mission is a function of whatever aircraft we put aboard them. Should we send them charging into the A2/AD to launch strikes against the Chinese mainland in the opening days of a peer war against China? Absolutely not, that would be utter stupidity. But should they be able to come in after A2/AD is disabled and launch strike missions to clean up? Sure.
DeleteI don't think a head-on peer war with China or Russia will ever actually happen, at least not as long as China and Russia believe they would lose such a war and we don't do anything stupid. Having as many ways as possible to launch strike missions against them would seem a key factor in asserting superiority. What I would expect instead is a series of tangential proxy wars, and in those engagements a carrier strike capability could prove quite useful.
So, no, I don't believe in throwing away carrier strike capability entirely, as we have effectively now. The more tools you have in your box, the better. But it is not the first role of carriers. If you want to call that a strike platform, have at it.
To be honest, Tmahawks and ALCM's were never meant to be "non-nuclear". Using conventional warheads they are too easily shot out the sky at sea, or against land targets they are just 1000lb bombs, which can destroy a "point" target , but cannot do much else such destroy an installion or a fort/bunker complex or a city. Look at what little 66 did to a Syrian airbase. Tomahawks and AlCM's only rise to the occasion when you put a W-80 or W-84 on them. This was a known thing long ago. They were "nuclear weapons" and were only adapted to non-nuclear warfare, when the MIC realized you can't go using nukes in basically counterinsugency warfare. And a quick reference to the Vietnam War shows how ineffective just using conventional TNT bombs is, just in mere tonnage.
ReplyDelete"Tomahawks and AlCM's only rise to the occasion when you put a W-80 or W-84 on them."
DeleteYou raise a fascinating topic but I see it a bit differently. While it's true that cruise missiles may not be able to permanently destroy many targets (many can be rebuilt/repaired in short order) that is not their main purpose. In the scenarios you refer to, cruise missiles are being misused. Cruise missiles, like artillery, are not intended to be the only means of destruction. Instead, they are intended to establish favorable conditions for OTHER ACTIONS. For example, while cruise missiles may not permanently destroy an airbase (it can be quickly rebuilt and repaired), it can halt the airbase's function for a period of time which allows another action such as, say, an amphibious assault which will then occupy or destroy the base.
The Syrian incident you refer to was not intended to destroy the airbase but, rather, to send a political message. One can certainly debate the merits of such messaging but, again, the purpose was not destruction.
Similarly, Vietnam was not an example of the failure of explosives, it was an example of the failure of proper application of explosives. Done properly, we should have mined harbors on day one, bombed Hanoi, seized Haiphong and Hanoi, directly attacked airbases, bombed staging sites in Laos, sank Russian supply ships, and so forth.
Cruise missiles are like any tool. Properly used they are effective. Improperly used they are not.