Crossed Missiles

We’ve all seen the photos of deck mounted racks of anti-ship missiles, right?  It’s almost always two 4-cannister racks mounted in a side-by-side, criss-cross arrangement so that the two racks point in opposite directions.

 

NSM Launcher Racks

This arrangement is neat, compact, and efficient … and idiotically foolish from a combat perspective.  It puts the ship’s entire dedicated anti-ship weaponry in one location, susceptible to a single hit which would eliminate the ship’s entire anti-ship capability.

 

Worse, on the Independence LCS variant, a single hit on or near the missile racks would also likely destroy the 57 mm gun since neither the racks nor the gun are armored.  Simple shrapnel would destroy both missiles and gun.

 

NSM Launchers on Independence Class - Note Proximity

to 57 mm Gun

The Freedom variant LCS has a proposed slightly different Naval Strike Missile (NSM) rack arrangement with the two racks separated a bit.  I haven’t actually seen a photo of a Freedom variant with installed NSM racks yet so that arrangement is only speculative.  Still, as seen in the photo below, the racks are not far apart and are even closer to the 57 mm gun than on the Independence variant.  A single hit in that area would certainly destroy the two missile racks and the gun.

 

NSM Launchers - Note Proximity to 57 mm Gun and 

Vulnerability to a Single Hit

It’s not just the LCS.  Below is a photo of criss-crossed Harpoon racks on a Burke class destroyer.

 

Harpoon Racks on Burke Class

The criss-cross arrangement has always been a characteristic of US ships.  Below is a photo of criss-crossed Harpoon racks on the stern of a Ticonderoga class cruiser.

 

Harpoon Racks on Stern of Ticonderoga Class

One of the tenets of combat effectiveness and survivability is separation of equipment.  In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

 

It’s bad enough that our ‘ship of the line’ Burke class destroyer would mount only eight dedicated anti-ship missiles - a woefully small amount for naval combat – but to risk losing all of them to a single hit is sheer idiocy that violates common sense combat design principles.  The missile racks need to be separated, as far apart as possible.  In general terms, one rack should be located forward and the other aft, either on the centerline or staggered offset to port and starboard.

 

 

 

________________________________________

 

On a related note, below is a photo of a Harpoon canister being loaded on a rack, for those of you who are wondering about reloading at sea during a battle.  Sorry, can’t be done with the current arrangement. 

Harpoon Canister Being Loaded Onto Rack

On a related, related note, you may recall that the Perry class frigate’s Mk13 single arm missile launcher had a 40-missile magazine that could accommodate a mix of Standard and Harpoon missiles.  That old, obsolete ability to carry a large number of anti-ship missiles is starting to look pretty good, now, isn’t it?

 

Perry Class Mk13 Missile Launcher

Satellite Survivability

There are a lot of misconceptions about satellites in war.  So many people believe that they can be used to instantaneously target and attack ships at sea, as if the satellites are directly connected to the firing button of every missile shooting asset we – or the enemy – has.  That’s not even remotely true but that’s not the point of this post.

 

Another widely held belief is that every satellite in orbit will be destroyed in the opening hours of a war.  However, while the US and China have both demonstrated the ability to destroy satellites using missiles or orbital ‘seeding’ of debris, there is no evidence that either side possesses sufficient satellite destruction capacity to completely eliminate the other’s satellites in a matter of hours.  How many satellites will be destroyed in the opening days of a war?  5%?  50%?  90%?  No one knows, at least not in the public domain. 

 

What is certain is that many satellites will be quickly destroyed and that, due to depleted numbers, surviving surveillance satellites will be tasked with high priority surveillance, meaning nuclear monitoring and mass troop movements.  Individual ship movements will be a much lower priority, bordering on unavailable.

 

Everyone is focused on the physical destruction of satellites but what gets overlooked is that satellites are extremely vulnerable to being rendered inoperable (mission kill, in a sense) via software and communication attacks. 

 

All satellites depend on software control systems for guidance, movement, alignment, operation, data transmission, and data interpretation.  That represents a lot of opportunities for software disruption via cyber attacks, hacks, viruses, etc.  Every satellite that can receive a ground control signal (and that’s all of them) is susceptible to software attacks.  Just from the cyber attacks that have been publicly acknowledged, we know that China has thoroughly penetrated our industrial and military networks.  It is elementary logic to assume that China knows our satellite software systems and is prepared to cyber-disrupt our satellites the moment war begins.  Unlike the limited degree of physical destruction, cyber-destruction has the potential to eliminate nearly all our satellite capabilities.

 

The other vulnerability is communications.  After all, a fully functioning satellite is useless if its data can’t be transmitted and received.  Satellite data transmissions are vulnerable to communication link disruptions, jamming, false signal injection, etc.  We’ve seen examples of this for years with Russian interference and manipulation of GPS signals.  As with cyber-destruction of satellites, the potential for communications disruption is likely greater than the potential for physical damage.

 

It seems likely that the predictions of massive satellite ‘destruction’ in the opening hours of war are correct, however, the method of that destruction is likely to be software cyber attacks and communications disruption more so than physical destruction.  Nevertheless, the end result is the same.  We’ll have few remaining functioning satellite assets and those that survive will be tasked with only the highest priorities.  Searching for individual ships on the ocean will not be one of those tasks.

 

Satellite survivability is of immense importance for both offensive and defensive operational planning.  We have to know to what degree we can depend on satellite surveillance, if at all, and we have to know to what degree our forces will be susceptible to enemy satellite surveillance.  Hopefully, the Navy, who ought to have a much better informed grasp of all this, has taken satellite survivability into account in its planning … not that I’ve seen any evidence of war planning.

Battleship UAVs

We tend to think of UAVs as new technology.  The Navy has visions of UAVs cruising out to leisurely circle over enemy forces and report targeting data back to undetected ships that will launch missiles to rain down on the hapless enemy.  Indeed, this is the heart of the distributed lethality concept. 

Setting aside the immense degree of fantasy, wishful thinking in that concept, it is interesting to recall that unmanned spotter aircraft are not all that new.  Just as the Navy used DASH drones for ASW decades ago, so too US Navy battleships (remember those?) used UAVs for gunfire spotting from the mid-1980’s through the mid-2000’s.  Of course, at that time the UAVs were referred to as Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPV).  The RPV of choice was the RQ-2 Pioneer.

RQ-2 Pioneer

As a reminder, the RQ-2 Pioneer was a mid-size, unmanned aircraft that was launched via rocket assist or a small catapult from the ship’s fantail and recovered using a net system.  It had an autopilot, inertial navigation, and 2-way C-band line-of-sight data link with a range limit of 100 nm.(4)  A common payload was the Wescam DS-12 EO/IR (Electro-Optical/Infrared) sensor. 

Battleship and RPV - A Lethal Combination

When not in use on the battleships, RPVs were disassembled and stored in steel ‘blast boxes’ aft of the Number 3 turret.(8)  The boxes were required to protect the units from the extreme over-pressure of the 16” guns.

Here are some specs on the Pioneer.

RQ-2 Pioneer UAV Specs (2)
Number built	175
Deployment	1986 – 2007
Endurance	5 hr
Range	100 nm
Payload	75 lb
Dimensions	14 ft long x 17 ft wingspan
Ceiling	15,000 ft
Speed	110 kts

The USS Iowa became the test bed for the RQ-2 Pioneer in December 1986.  Iowa experimented with RQ-2 Pioneer RPVs in 1987 exercises (Display Determination ’87) with Turkey and managed to surreptitiously launched an RPV in spite of Turkey’s objections to provide spotting support for a subsequent live fire event.(3)

RPV Launch

The Marines obtained Pioneer aircraft in 1987 and operated them from LHA amphibious ships as reconnaissance assets.  Reportedly, 5 Austin class LPDs were also equipped to operate Pioneers.(4)

Wisconsin and Missouri used their Pioneer RPVs to provide reconnaissance during the 1991 Desert Storm conflict and participated in the amphibious feint directed at the east coast of Kuwait.

After Missouri’s initial sustained shelling of the [Faylaka] island, Wisconsin sent its Pioneer buzzing over Iraqi heads in preparation for another barrage, during which Iraqi soldiers could be seen looking up blindly into the air waving makeshift white flags signaling their surrender.

It would be the first time an enemy surrendered to an unmanned vehicle and a testament as to how brutally powerful the Battleships’ main battery were, even in the modern era of so called “smart warfare.” (1)

During Wisconsin’s eight months in the Persian Gulf in support of Desert Storm, she accumulated 348 RPV flight hours.(1)  Including land based Marine units, Pioneers flew 533 sorties during Desert Storm.(5)  Another report states that 30 Pioneers flew 858 combat sorties (2781 hrs).(6)

RPV In Recovery Net

In 1998, Pioneer  accumulated more than 300 at-sea flight hours and was continuously deployed with cruises on USS Shreveport; USS Denver; USS Austin; and USS Cleveland.(7)

While the Pioneer RPVs were quite successful, the main takeaway from the Navy’s RPV experience is the operating environment and, unfortunately, this lesson has not been recognized.

Permissive Environment – It must be noted that the battleship’s RPVs were used in permissive environments without aerial or surface-to-air threats.  Thus, the RPVs were able to leisurely hover over the target areas.  This is the model the Navy seems to believe in today.  The Navy makes absolutely no allowance for enemy resistance.  Would we allow UAVs to leisurely circle over our forces, sending back spotting information?  Of course not!  So, why would the enemy allow us to do that?  They won’t!  Why then, are we so sure that slow, non-stealthy UAVs will be the backbone of our battlefield surveillance efforts?  It makes no sense.

We’ve seen that the Saudis and Israel and even Iran routinely shoot down UAVs.  Why do we think our UAVs will survive over a Chinese force?  They won’t!  In fact, our UAV lifespans will likely be measured in seconds or, on a good day, minutes.

Summary – So, what does all this tell us?  It tells us that unmanned spotter – or, more generally, surveillance – UAVs can be a very powerful tool but not as we plan to use them.  Loss rates under current planning will be near 100% and effectiveness, in terms of surveillance, will be near zero.  The successful counter to this is numbers and, to a lesser degree, stealth.  If we flood an area with more UAVs than the enemy can shoot down we’ll accomplish our surveillance objectives.  To do this requires cheap, expendable UAVs that can be thrown into battle in large numbers combined with a very robust master data assembly program that can put together the fragmentary bits of data that are received before each UAV dies.  The concept is described in this post: “PieceIt Together”.  Here’s a closely related post: “The Next Cruiser and Mini-Hawks”.  And:  “UAVs – Numbers Matter”.

This discussion should also suggest the need for a UAV carrier capable of operating hundreds of small UAVs and managing their communications and data.

An excellent exercise would be for the Navy to send their chosen UAVs to monitor an Army unit tasked with destroying the UAVs – a true live fire exercise.  Add in our best efforts at disrupting the UAV communications and we’d have an exercise that would tell us much about our UAV capabilities and our counter-UAV capabilities.

The Navy needs to get serious about determining the survivability and effectiveness of UAVs in a peer combat scenario before we commit them to war.  UAVs are the foundation of so many of our plans and yet we have no evidence to suggest that they are survivable or effective in combat.  In fact, operational experience strongly demonstrates that they are neither survivable nor effective.

____________________________________

(1)“Battleships Pulled Off The Biggest Ruse Of Operation Desert Storm 25 Years Ago”, Tyler Rogoway, 20-Jan-2016,

https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/battleships-pulled-off-the-biggest-ruse-of-operation-de-1754104974

(2)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAI_RQ-2_Pioneer

(3)https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/the-battleship-the-drone-and-the-chocolate-chip-cookies/

(4)http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app2/q-2.html

(5)https://olive-drab.com/idphoto/id_photos_uav_rq2.php

(6)http://www.unicraft.biz/on/pioneer/pioneer.htm

(7)https://web.archive.org/web/20070715081423/https://wrc.navair-rdte.navy.mil/warfighter_enc/aircraft/UAVs/pioneer.htm

(8)https://www.pearlharborhistoricsites.org/blog/they-called-them-rpv

Carrier Retirement Rationale

Much is being made of the Navy’s “plan” to forego the USS Truman’s midlife refueling and overhaul (RCOH) and retire the Nimitz class carrier decades early.  ComNavOps has stated that it’s just a ploy by the Navy to get additional funding from Congress.  However, for sake of discussion, let’s take the Navy at face value and see if their rationale holds up.

There appear to be two ?related? reasons being offered by the Navy for early retiring the carrier:  money and survivability.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan made the hard call to retire the USS Truman decades early — cutting the Navy’s carrier fleet by nine percent — to free up funding for new weapons more likely to survive a war with China. (1)

So, the Navy sees the carrier as not being survivable in a future war with China and wants more funding for weapons that it believes will be more effective.

What are the projected savings from retiring the carrier?

Not refueling the nuclear reactor core of the USS Truman would save the roughly $6.5 billion it would have cost to overhaul, plus $1 billion a year in operating costs thereafter, at the price of retiring the carrier about 25 years early. (1)

These savings figures are highly suspect but, again, let’s take them at face value.  After all, the Navy wouldn’t lie to us, right? 

So, what would be done with these savings?  The Navy/military would acquire new types of weapons supposedly better suited to future combat.  These weapons would include,

...large numbers of smaller, robotic vessels, both small surface ships and mini-submarines … a mix of robotic scout ships … and unmanned missile boats … arsenal of long-range, precision-guided, non-nuclear missiles …  hypersonic missiles … (1)

All right, we’ve laid out the Navy’s rationale.  Now, let’s examine the logic of it.

Survivability – If the Navy believes carriers are not survivable then why are we not retiring more carriers given how expensive they are to operate?   More to the point, why are we building new carriers?  The Navy’s position, as they’ve laid it out, appears to be:  “Our carriers aren’t survivable so let’s build more of them.” 

Let’s take it a step further.  If carriers aren’t survivable, does it make more sense to lose $1B-$8B (the construction cost range of the Nimitzes from first to last) as each is sunk or to lose $15B which is the cost of the Fords that the Navy wants to continue to build?  Wouldn’t it be better to let China sink cheaper, older carriers instead of brand new, hideously expensive carriers?

I’m beginning to think that the logic of survivability does not support the Navy’s rationale.

Money – Here’s where it gets tricky because you can make almost any case you want by manipulating what is and is not considered.  Still, let’s give it a look.

The Navy wants to retire a carrier so as to save money that can then be used to finance new, alternate weapon systems.  Okay, how much money is really being saved?  Using the Navy’s own, suspect figures,

Truman Savings
Refuel/Overhaul*	$6B
Operating Cost at $1B x 25 yrs	$25B
Total Savings	$31B
*Published costs range from $4B-$7B, depending on what is included in the figure.

That’s a lot of money!  No wonder they want to retire a carrier early.  Hmm …  Just for shits and giggles, I wonder how much money the Navy could save if, instead, they simply didn’t build a Ford?

Ford Savings
Construction	$15B
Midlife Overhaul*	$2B
Operating Cost at $1B x 50 yrs**	$50B
Total Savings	$67B
*A carrier intended to operate for 50 years will still need a midlife overhaul even if its reactor does not need refueling. ** Presumably, the operating costs will be the same but the lifespan will be double that of the Truman.  Reduced personnel costs will be offset by greater complexity and maintenance costs.  Manning will, undoubtedly increase as it did for the LCS and will for the Zumwalt.  Costs will probably be a wash, in the end.

Wow, I thought the Truman savings was a lot of money but simply not building one Ford would save over twice as much! 

Wait a minute …  If foregoing a Ford would save twice as much money shouldn’t the Navy want to keep the Truman and drop a Ford?

I’m beginning to think that the logic of the money savings does not support the Navy’s rationale.

Well, there you have it.  Even accepting the Navy’s rationale and cost figures at face value, the scenario is illogical.

I’m beginning to think the Navy has concocted a nonsensical scenario in a transparent attempt to extort more budget funds from Congress.  No.  No, wait.  I apologize.  The Navy has the utmost integrity and is the most honest and transparent organization this proud nation has.  The Navy’s leaders have nothing but the good of America foremost in their hearts and minds.  So, despite the illogic, I’ll place all my trust in the Navy.  Go get ‘em, Navy!  Stick to your guns, do the illogical, and make me proud!

____________________________________

(1)Breaking Defense, “Why DoD Cut A Carrier in 2020 Budget: Survivable Robots & Missiles Vs. China ”, Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., 12-Mar-2019,

https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/why-cut-a-carrier-to-fund-survivable-robots-missiles-vs-china/

EMP

Once upon a time (as all good fairy tales begin), the Navy required electromagnetic pulse (EMP) hardening in all its electronics to counter possible Soviet nuclear weapon effects.  That requirement has dropped by the wayside over the last few decades along with EMCON (emissions control) operations, basic seamanship, and many other capabilities.

To refresh, EMP is a short duration, electromagnetic energy burst across a fairly wide spectrum of the electromagnetic (EM) field.  It has the effect of damaging and destroying electronic devices.  EMP can occur naturally, as in lightning strikes, or from man-made weapons.  The best known source of EMP is a nuclear weapon detonated in the atmosphere high above the target.  Today, smaller, non-nuclear weapons can generate EMP thereby allowing tactical use of EMP without the devastating and long lasting effects of nuclear weapons and radiation.  This also makes EMP weapon use politically acceptable as opposed to nuclear weapons.

The US has acknowledged the existence of a missile-mounted EMP device known as CHAMP (Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project) which was developed by Boeing and the US Air Force.  CHAMP appears capable of delivering multiple microwave EMP bursts during a single flight and can target specific frequencies. (1)  A publicly acknowledged test occurred in 2012 in which various types of electronic devices inside a building were disabled by an EMP missile flying by.

CHAMP EMP Concept Missile

There are numerous reports of Chinese, Russian, and NKorean EMP weapons although details are, understandably, sparse.

A good discussion of the scope of the EMP threat is available in an Oct 2017 statement for the record to Congress from Dr. William Graham, chairman of the Congressionally established Commission To Assess The Threat To The United States From Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. (2)  Dr. Graham’s statement was focused on NKorean EMP threats but it is not hard to extrapolate the threat to Russia and China who have more resources and, presumably, more advanced EMP programs.  A report to the Commission further details the potential EMP threats. (3)

Presumably, we have continued to develop our EMP weapons – I hope so, at any rate.  Lacking any further information in the public domain, there is nothing more to be said about offensive EMP weapons.

Defensively, as noted, we used to build ships with component EMP hardening.  We need to return to that design requirement.  Herein we see yet another negative impact of the LCS program.  Prior to the LCS, the Navy operated for years with a clear, simple survivability design requirement.  OPNAVINST 9070.1 defined survivability for ships and Level 1, the lowest level, mandated EMP hardening among other requirements.  When the LCS was shown to have been designed without adhering to any formal survivability requirement the Navy spent years defending it with outright lies about some mythical Level 1+ survivability.  After this was proven false (see, “Rationalize Survivability”), the Navy finally opted to issue a rewritten survivability document which eliminated all specific survivability requirements in favor of a nebulous, feel-good, non-specific description of generic survivability.  Thus ended the requirement for EMP hardening.  Thanks LCS.  To be fair, the Navy had probably abandoned EMP hardening prior to the LCS but I can’t pin down exactly when that occurred.

Back to task …

Unless we want to risk the specter of a ship or fleet lying dead in the water, immobilized and neutered by an EMP burst, we need to start – well, return – to designing ships for combat and designing to a mandated survivability rather than some feel-good policy intended to allow the Navy to save face.  We once knew how to build warships and we’d better remember how, quickly.  The new frigate would be a good place to start.  Let’s demand that it be built as a warship, not some glorified LCS (which is exactly and literally what it will be, I’m afraid).

________________________________

(1)Boeing website,

http://www.boeing.com/features/2012/10/bds-champ-10-22-12.page

(2)https://docs.house.gov/meetings/HM/HM09/20171012/106467/HHRG-115-HM09-Wstate-PryP-20171012.pdf

(3)http://www.firstempcommission.org/uploads/1/1/9/5/119571849/nuclear_emp_attack_scenarios_and_combined-arms_cyber_warfare_by_peter_pry_july_2017.pdf

Survival On The Modern Battlefield

The lethality of the modern land battlefield argues against the survival and effectiveness of unprotected infantry.  Indeed, it strongly suggests that only armored vehicles have any reasonable expectation of survival long enough to be effective.  For the infantry, this means that heavy armored personnel carriers (HAPC) are mandatory.  The U.S. military’s fascination with unarmored or lightly armored “jeeps” in various forms (such as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle) is misguided in the extreme.  The Russian lesson in artillery in Ukraine should have been eye-opening for the US and allies.

Similarly, the naval battlefield will be one of immense lethality where only the big and strong (armored) will survive.  Of course, this has always been a characteristic of naval warfare.  Naval battles have always been short, vicious, and deadly, especially for the smaller vessels like WWII destroyers and even cruisers.

Consider our modern U.S. Navy.  Our 90 or so surface warships, the Burkes and Ticonderogas, are likely one-hit kills or, at best, mission kills due to the combination of near complete absence of armor and reduced crew size for effective damage control. 

Our most powerful ships are one-hit kills?

Does this seem wise?

During WWII, ships had to be sunk or very badly damaged to knock them out of a fight and it required immense amounts of ordnance to accomplish.  Today, a single anti-radar, air burst missile can achieve a mission kill. 

Consider the Burke class destroyer.  For all its many VLS cells and impressive Aegis radar arrays, its combat effectiveness ultimately comes down to three SPG-62 missile guidance radars (illuminators).  All three are exposed high on the superstructure, unprotected by any surrounding structures to any great extent.  In other words, they’re out in the open just waiting for some simple shrapnel to wander by.  Worse, two of the three illuminators are located within 10 ft of each other which begs for 2/3 of the ship’s fire control to be eliminated with a single hit.  This violates the survival design maxim of separation of critical items and there is nothing more critical to an Aegis AAW ship than its illuminators.

Consider the recent history of “hits” on US Navy ships.  The Stark, Cole, Port Royal, Antietam, McCain, and Fitzgerald were all rendered mission kills and most were nearly sunk by a single “hit”.  Ponder what that means for the modern naval battlefield.  An entire battlegroup could be wiped out or mission killed by a dozen individual hits.  That’s a pretty low bar for the enemy to achieve!  In WWII, it required dozens (usually many dozens) of hits on a ship to sink it or render it a mission kill.  In fact, mission kills were fairly rare.  A ship either sank or continued fighting.  Losing a few illuminators should not be the end of a ship’s usefulness and yet that is exactly the situation, today.

If we’re going to intentionally and knowingly build one-hit ships then we ought to, at least, be building them much, much cheaper.  Losing a $2B Burke to a single hit is criminal.

If we want expensive ships then we need to build them to absorb damage and keep fighting.  That means firepower and armor and lots of it.  We need to remember what a warship is for, what dangers it faces, and design accordingly.

Carrier Vulnerability and Operational Reality

There is a persistent faction of naval thinkers out there who believe that a carrier is an outdated, obsolete, vulnerable target just waiting to be sunk by Chinese “carrier killer” ballistic missiles, submarine torpedoes, massive supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, and all manner of converging, lethal weaponry that can’t be stopped.  In fact, if one listens to these people, the only question one comes away with is, how can the vast array of attacking weapons not collide among themselves as they approach the carrier!  I guess they probably will but there will be so many that it won’t matter.

Obviously, the rest of this post is going to be about how wrong these people are and the lead in to that discussion is the question, why are these people so very wrong?  How did they come to such an incorrect conclusion?

The answer is one of ComNavOps pet peeves:  they consider the carrier in isolation rather than in its true operational form.

If one considers a lone carrier, sitting out at sea, presumably motionless in these thinker’s minds, with no support and no purpose other than to survive, fighting off wave after wave of attacks, then, sure, it is inevitable that, sooner or later, the carrier will be sunk.  So, that’s it then.  The carrier is obsolete and unsurvivable.  We need to say goodbye to the carrier, the mainstay of naval power since WWII and move on in our naval thinking to the next mainstay – networks, perhaps?  Or small UAVs?  But, I digress …

The problem with this line of thinking, as I noted, is that it considers the carrier in isolation rather than in its true operational form.

We need to keep firmly in mind the true nature of a carrier. It's not a carrier - it's a carrier GROUP. That's an incredibly important distinction. One lone carrier is somewhat vulnerable. However, a wartime carrier group would consist of 3-4 carriers, 300 some aircraft, and 30 or so Aegis cruisers/destroyers (you’re not going to risk 3-4 carriers without substantial escorts, are you?  Check the WWII historical escort ratios) with multiple Hawkeyes out in all directions providing situational awareness. It is an immensely powerful, LAYERED, defense.

The layered defense includes long range carrier fighters, long range Standard missiles/Aegis, medium range ESSM, short range SeaRAM/CIWS, passive ECM and decoys, and more. Nothing is getting through all of that easily. Nothing is invulnerable but a carrier group on a wartime footing is as close as you can get to invulnerable.

Regarding escort numbers, consider our WWII experience and Adm. Marc Mitscher’s description of a carrier group composition..

“Said Mitscher: "The ideal composition of a fast-carrier task force is four carriers, six to eight support vessels and not less than 18 destroyers, preferably 24. More than four carriers in a task group cannot be advantageously used due to the amount of air room required. Less than four carriers requires an uneconomical use of support ships and screening vessels." (1)

Even this description is a bit light.  Every carrier group had multiple cruisers and, often battleships attached in addition to the listed destroyers.

We’ve gotten so used to single carriers sailing around in peacetime with only 3-4 escorts that we’ve come to believe that’s how carriers will fight in a war and that’s just plain wrong.  We’ve also gotten so used to a numerically tiny navy that we’ve come to believe that escorts of up to 30 vessels is unthinkable.  Well, combat will change our thinking quickly enough.  We learned all this in WWII and have completely forgotten it.

Multiply This By Four !

There is another, almost always overlooked, layer to the carrier’s defense and that is that a carrier group's best defense is a good offense. We all think of a carrier, on its own, sitting in the middle of the ocean trying to fight off wave after wave of attackers and we conclude that the carrier, ultimately, has no hope. The reality, however, is that the carrier group has a mission. It doesn't stay in one place. It moves at high speed to a mission execution point, executes the mission, and returns to base. During that movement and execution, rather than passively playing defense and hoping to survive long enough to execute the mission, the group would be launching massive Tomahawk cruise missile attacks against all likely enemy bases and missile sites to suppress attacks before they even begin. This is the part of the layered defense that most people overlook and the part that, properly planned and executed, can be the most effective.

If each Aegis escort (Burkes) had 30 Tomahawk missiles, the group of 30 escorts would have an inventory of 900 Tomahawks.  That’s a lot of suppression over a thousand mile radius!

Recall, typical WWII carrier strike operations.  The carrier group would dash into aircraft range of the strike target, launch fighter sweeps to suppress enemy counterattacks, strike the target, and leave before effective counterattacks could be mounted.  The same holds true today except that we now have thousand mile suppression attack capability.

The submarine is probably the carrier group's greatest threat and we'll come to regret the loss of the S-3 Viking. Still, a carrier group is going to be moving at 30 kts and no submarine, unless it gets lucky and finds itself dead in the group’s path, is going to catch up to a carrier group without giving itself away.

Even if a submarine managed to launch a salvo of torpedoes at a carrier, none would make it to the carrier.  With an escort of 30 vessels, the torpedoes would latch on to the escorts rather than the carriers.  That would be tragic for the unlucky escort but that’s part of their job description.  Again, the group is a very tough nut to crack.

“Consideration in isolation” is one of the major problems with modern naval thought and analysis and its application leads inexorably to incorrect conclusions.  It’s at the root of the win-a-war-singlehanded school of thought that leads to massively capable (only on paper) and massively expensive ship designs such as the Burke.  Instead of recognizing that a Burke is just one ship and should have only one main function as part of a group of other ships, each with their specialized functions, we load it up with every function we can think of because we consider it in isolation.  Seriously, does anyone think a single ship has the time to train to perfection as an AAW, BMD, ASW, ASuW, group air defense controller (when the Ticos are gone), and land attack platform?  Good grief, the acronyms alone would take a year to master!  It’s been demonstrated that we can’t even train to perform basic seamanship proficiently yet we believe that a single ship will master all those disparate combat functions?  That’s a fantasy that Walt Disney would be proud of.

A carrier, when considered in its proper operational form as a group, is the most survivable military asset there is.  It’s time to put the misguided, incorrect notions about carrier vulnerability to rest.

________________________________________

(1)Taylor, Theodore, “The Magnificent Mitscher”, Naval Institute Press, ISBN 1-59114-850-2, p. 316

Alternative Survivability

We just discussed alternative methods of achieving stealth (see, "Alternative Stealth").  Well, survivability follows along similar lines.  For this discussion, note that I’m referring to survivability as the ability to avoid taking a hit rather than the ability to recover from a hit which is damage mitigation and control.

Many people consider survivability to be all or nothing, meaning armor or nothing.  When we consider survivability, we tend to think of, for example, a single ship versus a single enemy ship, sub, missile, torpedo, mine, or whatever and if that match up produces an unfavorable result we all too often conclude that there is nothing we can do to enhance survivability short of adding massive amounts of armor which many people erroneously believe is not feasible, having completely forgotten that we did this routinely in WWII ship design and construction.  But, I digress …    

The “torpedo is instant doom” crowd exemplifies this thought process.  They look at, say, a destroyer and observe, correctly, that it cannot completely shrug off a torpedo so they conclude that the destroyer is not survivable and there is nothing we can do to make it so.  In fact, many of these “thinkers” go a step further and conclude that since we can’t make the destroyer invulnerable to a torpedo, there’s no reason to apply any armor or protective measures whatsoever!  Of course, we’ve already disproven that notion (see, "Armor For Dummies" and "Torpedo Lethality Myth"). 

Now, for a one-on-one scenario, that view of survivability is not totally unreasonable, however, ships and aircraft do not fight in one-on-one scenarios.  Thus, their survivability can be provided by means other than their inherent survivability characteristics.  Survivability, like stealth, can be achieved by alternate means.

For example, an amphibious naval gun support vessel's survivability can be provided by a combination of tactics and "jointness" rather than armor. The WWII rocket equipped landing ship, LSM(R) (see, "LSM(R) - Fire Support Ship"), was an example of an unarmored, thin-skinned, slow, naval fire support vessel that was tactically protected in that it was not committed (exposed) until after battleships and cruisers had thoroughly softened up the defenses and, even then, only when the assault waves were on the way in and a curtain of large caliber shelling was in place and aircraft were systematically bombing the assault site. No effective return fire was possible so the ship was protected and its survivability was reasonably ensured even though the ship, itself, had no special survivability characteristics.

Stealth and Alternative Stealth (includes EW/ECM) – Stealth is certainly a major aspect of survivability and we discussed it in the previous post.

Suppressive Fire – As described in the preceding example about the LSM(R), there’s nothing like the ability to keep an enemy’s head down and preoccupied to ensure one’s own survivability.  While the obvious example is suppressive barrage fire during an amphibious assault (setting aside the fact that we don’t actually have that capability!) the concept can be readily applied to any operation.  A task force attacking an enemy base can use a constant barrage of cruise missiles to keep the enemy from assembling and executing a counterattack.  An enemy submarine base can be subjected to attack to damage subs and delay/preclude their deployment while they undergo repair.  The damage doesn’t even have to be particularly serious – it just has to delay deployment which enhances the survivability of our ships.  The same applies to suppressing the aerial operations at an airbase.

Area AAW – Not every ship has to be able to singlehandedly fight off entire aircraft and missile attack waves.  We have specialized Aegis ships to provide area anti-air defense.  Many/most ships only need medium range (out to 20 miles) air defense to deal with leakers.

Enhanced Close In Defensive Fire – Our current ship design philosophy decidedly minimizes the close range defensive AAW capability.  The Burke class destroyer, our major surface ship and the backbone of the Navy, has 0-2 CIWS.  This is woefully inadequate.  Every ship should have at least 2 CIWS and major classes should have a minimum of 4 along with multiple SeaRAM close range missile launchers.

Size – Submarines are loathe to give away their position by wasting a torpedo against a small corvette.  They’d rather wait for a larger, more valuable target.  Thus, small size can confer a degree of invulnerability under certain circumstances.  Conversely, larger size makes a more attractive target and an easier one to locate and “lock” on to.  No matter how much stealth we apply to a ship, the fact remains that larger ships are easier to detect than smaller ones.  We should carefully factor this realization into our unending pursuit of ever larger, ever more multi-purpose ships. 

There are perfectly valid reasons for large platforms.  For example, a very long range, very heavy payload, air supremacy fighter can’t help but be big.  That’s fine.  On the other hand, the Burke class, which tries to combine every function the Navy can think of into a single vessel doesn’t need to be that big.  The Burkes should be broken up into smaller “chunks” as we discussed in a previous post (see, "Break Up The Burkes").  “Chunk” ships make poor business cases but good combat survivability and effectiveness cases.

Escorts & Numbers – Simple statistics assures us that greater numbers of ships or aircraft translates to enhanced survivability for any individual unit.  Let’s be honest, though, that’s not an actual increase in survivability, that’s just more favorable statistics.  Where numbers do enhance survivability is in sheer presence.  For example, if a submarine is stalking a carrier and only has to elude a single escort to make the attack, the sub’s job is a lot easier than if it has to account for a dozen escorts.  Or, another example, four Aegis escorts can provide better AAW protection than three, or two, or one.  Numbers matter and the more escorts we can provide, the greater the survivability of the ships being escorted.

Air Cover – This is an obvious means of enhancing survivability.  If we can provide sufficient air cover then the survivability of the entire fleet increases.  This suggests that our current level of half-strength air wings and only nine functional carriers is misguided in the extreme.  The carrier not only provides strike capability but survivability for the fleet.  We desperately need more air cover and that can only come from larger air wings and more carriers.

The conclusion is that protection doesn't have to come from armor or special construction which is costly and has to be repeated for every ship. With good tactics and proper fleet force structure we can provide protection to all ships without having to build it into every ship.  However, don’t misinterpret that as a statement that armor has no place in ship design.  ComNavOps believes that armor is vital and should be part of every ship, to the degree appropriate for its role, as was done in WWII.  The point is that armor does not have to be the sole provider of survivability and that survivability can be greatly enhanced through alternative means that can complement and supplement armor.

When we discuss ship designs we almost invariably do so in isolation.  If the proposed ship can’t fend off every threat known to exist by itself then we conclude that it’s a poor design.  How many times have I heard people state that a small, cheap ASW corvette must have short range and close in AAW protection plus anti-ship missiles?  These people consider the corvette in isolation and want to make it capable of handling every known threat instead of recognizing that the corvette’s survivability can be ensured by alternative means.

It’s somewhat ironic that our WWII fathers understood the value of smaller, individual ships with unique, specialized functions and built those ships in appropriate numbers while we, today, with the benefit of all that institutional knowledge, have chosen to build only one type of surface warship that attempts to combine every surface warship function into a single, large, expensive hull.  Similarly, we’ve chosen to build only one type of carrier (how many types did we have in WWII?).  And so on.

We are deliberately decreasing our survivability.  This is just stunningly stupid.