(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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What do you think the fundamental role of an aircraft carrier is exactly?
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Sep 5, 2023 20:11
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Bug Squash posted:You have it backwards. The aircraft carrier isn't going to go obsolete because a drone carrier could destroy it. Maybe a Nimitz and larger is effectively invincible, maybe not. But that probably won't be the deciding factor. I strongly suspect the aircraft carrier is going to go obsolete because a drone carrier will do it's fundamental role many many times cheaper, more flexibly, and be a riskable asset. The aircraft carrier is still going to exist because there is so much money invested in them, but their actual involvement in warfare is going to become very rare. As long as the US intends to keep being the defender of global ocean trade, they will need aircraft carriers. Even if every aircraft is a drone, a mobile airfield is still a necessity for this strategic objective. You want to find a sweet spot between being able to reach your target, having a good buffer distance from said target, and also keeping a reasonable time-to-target. Loitering munitions and drones don't move as fast as missiles, so they have to based closer to the target. I could see small drone carriers being the future for most navies. The US will keep their super carriers, but the Black Sea is the place to watch for modern naval strategy. If this war ends Ukraine will build an extremely unique navy to replace what it lost.
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Sep 5, 2023 20:12
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ranbo das posted:What do you think the fundamental role of an aircraft carrier is exactly? Teleologically, to carry aircraft. Pragmatically, to allow various congresspeople to collect donations from MIC lobbyists
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Sep 5, 2023 20:15
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Bug Squash posted:I strongly suspect the aircraft carrier is going to go obsolete because a drone carrier will do it's fundamental role many many times cheaper, more flexibly, and be a riskable asset. citation needed. i'm pointing out the costs of this drone swarm ship is going to be ridiculous to the point you fulfill the role of a carrier battle group. again you can't just draw a straight line from ukraine amazon drones dropping grenades on tanks and infantry to naval battle groups that effectively control entire theaters of airspace. i mean for the most part it sounds like what you're describing is a guided missile boat but its drones, something that already exists. it's now unmanned. unmanned doesn't necessarily mean cheaper. ethanol fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Sep 5, 2023 |
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Sep 5, 2023 20:18
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ranbo das posted:What do you think the fundamental role of an aircraft carrier is exactly? initially read this as "fundamental foe" and couldn't think of anything other than "COVID outbreak onboard."
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Sep 5, 2023 20:23
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Tomn posted:Regarding tech obsolescence, especially with regards to naval warfare, it's worth noting that while a lot of popular imagination gets stuck on the big changes that did prove decisive, ("Nimble cheap aircraft make big battleships obsolete!") there were a lot of technological advances that turned out to be dead-ends, or useful but only after the tech had matured a lot more, or useful but not as originally intended. Great post! All this speculation is interesting, but I think Antigravitas is right about the only thing we can say for sure right now: Antigravitas posted:More to the point, drone counters are still largely in their infancy. Specialised anti drone defences are being worked on, from EW to kinetic to DE. The state has not reached equilibrium yet and I would hesitate to make any grand proclamations about the shape of the future battlefield just yet (except to say that anti-drone systems will certainly be a vital part).
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Sep 5, 2023 20:24
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Just because basic drone aircraft and boats exist doesn't mean that we have the technology to go whole-hog on it.
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Sep 5, 2023 20:24
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This is a very interesting talk but please return the drone discussion back to Ukraine from future US navy doctrine.
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Sep 5, 2023 20:40
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So about that Shaheed(?) that allegedly fell in Romania: https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1699085772517716451#m ...it probably did, but I think the map shows why Romania would prefer to not care...
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Sep 5, 2023 21:04
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fatherboxx posted:This is a very interesting talk but please return the drone discussion back to Ukraine from future US navy doctrine. We're seeing 12 cardboard box drones able to surprise and damage airframes on Russian airfields, partly due to a lack of significant radar signature (maybe?), partly due to volume. We're seeing single drone boats making semi effective attacks or attack attempts on the Kerch bridge. I think a lot of defense is predicted on having to defend against relatively small numbers of somewhat expensive equipment (airframes, precision munitions, remote semi-guided torpedoes). What happens when a fleet of 1000 drones (say the first 700 are ablative armor and fly a preprogrammed path via INS) flies towards an S-400? There are only so many missiles it can fire, and for a cost of single digit millions you are very likely able to, if not mission kill, then at least damage a modern SAM emplacement. Similarly, current ASM defenses like AEGIS assume that a "saturation" attack is a number on the tens range of high velocity missiles that require a fast response time and a massive, immediate expenditure of munitions. What happens when Angry R2D2 vomits its entire belt of ammunition on the first wave of cheap propellor driven flying bombs, and leaves the ship scrambling to reload before the next wave? I think this response is actually somewhat more aware than it should be, but for different reasons: ethanol posted:3 more phalanxes per ship then. how many of these drones moving at 50 mph do you think we could shoot down or sink with one phalanx? it's like sending a fleet of ww2 propeller planes at the carrier and saying well its defenses are calibrated for fast moving objects so it can't hit them I don't think it will be a problem for existing ship defense weapons hitting slower vehicles, but I think maintaining a continuous ability to fire will be THE problem. The US Navy has been experimenting with laser based defense platforms, and has briefly fielded some of them. Drone swarms and boat swarms are specifically problems anticipated to be handled by them, so it's not like the Navy is asleep to this threat. However, AIUI laser weapons require using the ship generators to power capacitors to provide sufficient continuous high energy amounts to fire destructive levels of power, and one of the problems with the existing laser weapons is the reload time and capacity, if not the cost. So, while it can handle problems cheaply, it's unclear whether it can handle all of them fast enough. While I have to jokingly assume that a Russian anti drone platform is going to be an increasingly elaborate cope cage built around a ship, I also have to wonder whether Ukraine will attempt to overwhelm any Russian Navy assets, Kerch bridge defenses, etc, by using a swarm of aerial drones against ships that probably have questionable air defense power in the first place. Even if it just results in superficial damage, I would expect that sufficient damage to exposed components on a ship could at least require a return to base for repairs and replacing damaged equipment. The Kerch bridge is unlikely to have any real damage done by payloads that drones can carry, but they could damage defenses around it to allow for a gap for stronger conventional munitions. I know this is almost Clancy Chat but I'm honestly surprised that we haven't actually seen massive drone swarm attacks attempted, given the price.
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Sep 5, 2023 21:20
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The US Air Force's planned Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program intends to have a fighter with much longer range. Aircraft carriers are great because they allow the US, France, and the UK to project airpower. That becomes less necessary if you can project airpower across half the Pacific from just Hawaii. The War in Ukraine highlights the types of trade-offs nations can--and should--make based on such requirements, though. The US is an expeditionary military. Ukraine's is not, and so investing in relatively short-range Gen 4 fighters such as F-16s or Grippens makes a lot of sense, and could even make sense 15-20 years from now. Likewise, if Russia doesn't intend to contest airspace more than a few hundred kilometers from the FLOT, they don't need to invest in such capabilities. The US--and by extension, some of the larger European countries--do need that capability, whether by more modern aircraft or by big ships with flat decks. That will, in turn, inform how much money they have to defend eastern Europe. In the short term, though, it could open up providing Ukraine with a lot of F-16s 2-4 years from now. Everyone is (rightly) focused on early 2024 at the moment, but if the West keeps the pilot training pipelines going once they're established, I think it's entirely plausible for Ukraine to have several hundred F-16s in 2025+. That could actually be enough to start gaining air superiority. I don't see any indication that Russia is meaningfully improving its ground-based air defense systems.
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Sep 5, 2023 21:25
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CIWS expend a gently caress ton of ammo because what they are trying to hit is relatively small and moving fast as gently caress. The same system being used on the drones we are seeing in use today would almost certainly require less ammo expenditure per kill than if they were trying to hit a missile going at Mach 3.
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Sep 5, 2023 21:28
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Dick Ripple posted:Threatening Donetsk would be bad news for the Russians, and we can only hope this turns into another Kharkiv scenario. Isn't this one of the original three axes of counterattack that Ukraine tried to open? From Velyka Novosilka down towards Mariupol? So might be Ukrainians just gently reviving that axis, for whatever purpose.
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Sep 5, 2023 21:30
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if you gave ukraine 300 f-16s today I dont see how they could operate them even by 2025 where do the pilots and maintainers come from
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Sep 5, 2023 21:31
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OctaMurk posted:where do the pilots and maintainers come from The training programs that have already started. They're doing the pilots in two tracks. One for experienced pilots converting to the F-16 in probably 3-6 months, the other for new pilots who will spend a year or more learning everything about flying combat in a 4th gen fighter.
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Sep 5, 2023 21:37
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mllaneza posted:The training programs that have already started. They're doing the pilots in two tracks. One for experienced pilots converting to the F-16 in probably 3-6 months, the other for new pilots who will spend a year or more learning everything about flying combat in a 4th gen fighter. you think these training programs will provide multiple hundreds of pilots, and thousands of aircrew to operate hundreds of f-16s by 2025?
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Sep 5, 2023 21:47
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Training pipelines can be multiplied quickly once they are established. It's not inconceivable to start with 30 airframes plus personnel and double it each year or year and a half. I'm not sure it'll happen with F-16s, but it's not impossible to do.
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Sep 5, 2023 21:55
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OctaMurk posted:you think these training programs will provide multiple hundreds of pilots, and thousands of aircrew to operate hundreds of f-16s by 2025? My understanding is that they are training enough pilots for ~80 airframes right now. It's a pipeline, though. Once the first batch gets out of English school, they can go to F-16 school. Let's assume the English school part and F-16 school part each take ~6 months. That's 160 airframes worth of people/year. We're starting late enough in 2023 that we're only getting the first ~80 in early 2024. So 80 (trained in 2023) + 160 (trained in 2024) = 240 airframes worth of pilots by 2025. So yes, I think it's possible. I don't have any information other than that which is published, and I haven't seen anyone state their intention to provide more than the ~80 (or whatever number) has been promised, so I don't know if the West will do this. I do think it's possible, though. You're correct that training aircrews and mechanics is just as important. I don't know how long that training takes, though I assume the West can provide certain types of higher-level maintenance in Poland, much as they're doing for other Western kit.
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Sep 5, 2023 21:56
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Volmarias posted:We're seeing 12 cardboard box drones able to surprise and damage airframes on Russian airfields, partly due to a lack of significant radar signature (maybe?), partly due to volume. Was it confirmed that it were the cardboard drones that attacked the airfield deep in Russia territory? Volmarias posted:I know this is almost Clancy Chat but I'm honestly surprised that we haven't actually seen massive drone swarm attacks attempted, given the price. Maybe in practice they are not that effective (a swarm is easier to detect maybe?) or cheap (since in this war there hundreds of places that need drones to be used and would not appreciate a supply bottleneck).
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Sep 5, 2023 21:57
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I don't have high hopes for NATO to train the number of pilots needed or supply multiple hundreds of F-16s when its been this hard to supply tanks to Ukraine. But I do think multiple hundreds of F-16s would change this conflict enormously if they appeared, even with S-300s and MiG-31s in play that's just a lot of aircraft with a lot of standoff weapons to deal with
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Sep 5, 2023 22:15
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I think hundreds is ridiculously optimistic, but F-16 availability is decent since a bunch of countries are replacing them with F-35s, while tank availability in Western Europe is crap.
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Sep 5, 2023 22:21
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yeah this war has emphatically taught everyone that no, you do not have enough tanks, nowhere even close. the same is not so much the case wrt airpower and both the supply of f16s is significant and they're in the middle of being replaced by superior jets that are pretty much at the peak rate of production so there's likely no better time to find a bunch of extra airframes around idk about hundreds, but yeah the situation with tanks and jets is very different
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Sep 5, 2023 22:29
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Herstory Begins Now posted:yeah this war has emphatically taught everyone that no, you do not have enough tanks, nowhere even close. the same is not so much the case wrt airpower and both the supply of f16s is significant and they're in the middle of being replaced by superior jets that are pretty much at the peak rate of production so there's likely no better time to find a bunch of extra airframes around And we need about 10x more tube artillery for a peer conflict cause unless things go nuclear and thus nothing matters, any peer conflict will last years and missile stockpiles will not hold up even for the most prolific producers. Not sure why western nations didn't get this memo from South Korea before, but they got it now.
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Sep 5, 2023 22:43
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Orthanc6 posted:And we need about 10x more tube artillery for a peer conflict cause unless things go nuclear and thus nothing matters, any peer conflict will last years and missile stockpiles will not hold up even for the most prolific producers. Not sure why western nations didn't get this memo from South Korea before, but they got it now. Well, we being the US probably don't. Like, you gotta remember that the reason why Ukraine needs so many and the US doesn't have so much is that the US doesn't use artillery in the same way that Ukraine or Russia does. The US doesn't have enough for the kind of war that Ukraine fights, but has had plenty for the kind of war they intend to fight.
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Sep 5, 2023 22:49
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It also helps that the US has incredibly good rounds for said tube artillery which likely drastically lessens the amount you need.
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Sep 5, 2023 22:50
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Was there a lot of artillery usage by the US during the GWOT and Iraq invasion/occupation? Seems like there wouldn't be but I don't know for sure.
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Sep 5, 2023 22:52
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Moon Slayer posted:Was there a lot of artillery usage by the US during the GWOT and Iraq invasion/occupation? Seems like there wouldn't be but I don't know for sure. go google m777 afghanistan. there are hundreds of videos of m777s firing onto rocky mountainsides. the effectiveness of them is obviously different when you're firing at small number of guerillas that pop out of caves basically already within your occupied territory for a few minutes to shoot some rockets into buildings...vs a frontline of trenches and what not. there were times when the m777 was used more traditionally but how many times was there a convention front line in the GWOT.. not often. but of course the threat of them just being there and popping off had a huge effect on keeping enemy forces from massing on us troops ethanol fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Sep 5, 2023 |
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Sep 5, 2023 23:05
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ranbo das posted:What do you think the fundamental role of an aircraft carrier is exactly? I feel like this may be an instance where comedy accurately represents the actual understanding of the masses on a subject. Volmarias posted:We're seeing 12 cardboard box drones able to surprise and damage airframes on Russian airfields, partly due to a lack of significant radar signature (maybe?), partly due to volume. We're seeing single drone boats making semi effective attacks or attack attempts on the Kerch bridge. I think a lot of defense is predicted on having to defend against relatively small numbers of somewhat expensive equipment (airframes, precision munitions, remote semi-guided torpedoes). What happens when a fleet of 1000 drones (say the first 700 are ablative armor and fly a preprogrammed path via INS) flies towards an S-400? There are only so many missiles it can fire, and for a cost of single digit millions you are very likely able to, if not mission kill, then at least damage a modern SAM emplacement. If you have a drone just using a pre-programmed inertial system then it's going to be somewhere between fairly and incredibly inaccurate, and if you're using a hybrid system alongside external monitoring and correction then surely the calculation isn't going to be 'Should we try to shoot down these thousand flying grenades' it will be 'Should we try to interrupt the control signal to these thousand flying grenades?'
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Sep 5, 2023 23:49
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Moon Slayer posted:Was there a lot of artillery usage by the US during the GWOT and Iraq invasion/occupation? Seems like there wouldn't be but I don't know for sure. The US still has a lot of artillery, but Ukraine and Russia focus on it a LOT more.
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Sep 6, 2023 00:51
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The bigger issue for US is probably the amount of shells.
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Sep 6, 2023 01:00
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The US used targeted munitions, especially air power. Plus there was very little organized defense works on the part of Iraq or Afghanistan.
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Sep 6, 2023 03:18
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wrong thread
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Sep 6, 2023 03:22
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Rugz posted:I feel like this may be an instance where comedy accurately represents the actual understanding of the masses on a subject. I meant more that if you can add a large number of even more inexpensive flying decoys, you don't actually have to give them sensors or explosives; it doesn't matter if they survive if their only job is to eat an AA munition instead of a drone that's got explosives, a camera, and the ability to recognize "that's an airplane" or "that's a boat" in the general vicinity of where you send it. All it needs to do is be able to travel in roughly the same direction at the same speed and be difficult enough to distinguish from the actual munition drones that it can contribute to overwhelming AA.
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Sep 6, 2023 06:16
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Kchama posted:The US still has a lot of artillery, but Ukraine and Russia focus on it a LOT more. There's an interesting thought - one of the takeaways a lot of people are getting from this war is the importance of artillery and artillery shell supply, but part of that is because both Ukraine and Russia are, well, built around artillery as a doctrine. I wonder if shell and artillery supply would be quite as important if we were looking at a major NATO combatant with full NATO training and equipment? Would effective air power be enough to make artillery shortages less pressing? Volmarias posted:I meant more that if you can add a large number of even more inexpensive flying decoys, you don't actually have to give them sensors or explosives; it doesn't matter if they survive if their only job is to eat an AA munition instead of a drone that's got explosives, a camera, and the ability to recognize "that's an airplane" or "that's a boat" in the general vicinity of where you send it. All it needs to do is be able to travel in roughly the same direction at the same speed and be difficult enough to distinguish from the actual munition drones that it can contribute to overwhelming AA. I feel like the question here is "Which part of the drone is the expensive bit?" It may be the case that the decoy drones you suggest aren't really that much cheaper than an actual drone and you might as well just make the whole thing and up your chances of an actual munition getting through. Broadly speaking I suspect that the engine will probably make up the bulk of the cost of the actual drone and since you're going to need an engine with a similar profile to the actual attack drones anyways so as to fool sensors you might not end up with a lot of cost to cut.
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Sep 6, 2023 07:11
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Tomn posted:There's an interesting thought - one of the takeaways a lot of people are getting from this war is the importance of artillery and artillery shell supply, but part of that is because both Ukraine and Russia are, well, built around artillery as a doctrine. I wonder if shell and artillery supply would be quite as important if we were looking at a major NATO combatant with full NATO training and equipment? Would effective air power be enough to make artillery shortages less pressing? Well US and NATO doctrine is very air power heavy. Most of their tactics and plans depend upon gaining air superiority. If this was NATO Vs Russia you would have seen an air battle for weeks if not months before many land based engagements likely. You would see a large scale attack from both SEAD/DEAD aircraft and targeted attacks on known anti-air infrastructure from long range cruise missiles. They likely wouldn’t be able to knock out all of Russia’s AA but at least enough of it to be able to hold reasonable air superiority in a majority of the conflict zone. After that you can coordinate precision bombing with your artillery for advances with armor. Look at the Coalition in the first Gulf War for a good example of it all working perfectly in action. Granted that was all best case scenarios in everything and a lot of brand new state of the art weapon systems being used for the first time so they had a major technological advantage. A modern conflict wouldn’t likely be as much of a difference in capabilities. You would likely see losses, especially in the opening days of the air war.
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Sep 6, 2023 07:28
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Tomn posted:There's an interesting thought - one of the takeaways a lot of people are getting from this war is the importance of artillery and artillery shell supply, but part of that is because both Ukraine and Russia are, well, built around artillery as a doctrine. I wonder if shell and artillery supply would be quite as important if we were looking at a major NATO combatant with full NATO training and equipment? Would effective air power be enough to make artillery shortages less pressing? The answer, given that NATO's European forces, even with the help of some non-NATO countries, almost ran out of several types of missiles when attacking the military powerhouse of.. *checks note* Libya? after just a week of sorties, is that no, nobody was even close to prepared ammo-wise for an actual war between two non-third countries that goes on for more than a few months.
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Sep 6, 2023 07:29
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Tomn posted:There's an interesting thought - one of the takeaways a lot of people are getting from this war is the importance of artillery and artillery shell supply, but part of that is because both Ukraine and Russia are, well, built around artillery as a doctrine. I wonder if shell and artillery supply would be quite as important if we were looking at a major NATO combatant with full NATO training and equipment? Would effective air power be enough to make artillery shortages less pressing? artillery would probably not hold the same total importance if it was russia vs. a NATO combatant, much like it would be much less generally important in a straight up ground conflict of some sort between the US and russia, even in either case ignoring the obvious Clancytones. it's definitely the vitally underpinning bare and bloody work in the scenario we have, a whole attempted russian land grab of a 'near peer' nation that went so badly for them that the current analysis is about if russia can just hold a remaining portion of the country they retreated to and entrenched with a mobilization, or if they're going to be ground down and pushed out of those areas as well, and what's turning out the most vital for the ground conflict on both sides. on the whole though i think the way the conflict shaped up has led a lot of world militaries to realize it's time to bulk up on artillery and shell supply pretty massively because it illustrated what it comes down to in most kinds of near peer or stalemate situations and it needed to be much much higher importance overall
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Sep 6, 2023 07:32
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Volmarias posted:What happens when a fleet of 1000 drones (say the first 700 are ablative armor and fly a preprogrammed path via INS) flies towards an S-400? There are only so many missiles it can fire, and for a cost of single digit millions you are very likely able to, if not mission kill, then at least damage a modern SAM emplacement. 900 of them will crash into each other and the rest fly so close together that one salvo from a SPAAG with proximity fuses takes them all out.
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Sep 6, 2023 08:03
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Paranoea posted:Isn't this one of the original three axes of counterattack that Ukraine tried to open? From Velyka Novosilka down towards Mariupol? So might be Ukrainians just gently reviving that axis, for whatever purpose. It was reported as possible/likely axes, whether Ukraine intended to make it a critical sector then or now I cannot say. Either case Ukraine has plenty of reserves or are doing a good job redeploying along their interior lines. https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-amputees-wounded-soldiers-e2c5c47ea4b8326d980e630d3df87b77 Keep seeing articles pop up about Ukrainians coming back to the fight after losing limbs. I hope the US is giving them access or at least know how on rehab and prosthetics given how much they have learned about putting soldiers back together the past 20 years. I am very curious as to what % of Russian vs Ukrainian soldiers are able to return after losing limbs, and what sort of impact that will have on the war.
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Sep 6, 2023 08:42
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Sounds good https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1699107041724236042?s=20 https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1699107047705296926 https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1699107053380260192 https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1699107058379845853?s=20 Charlz Guybon fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Sep 6, 2023 |
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Sep 6, 2023 09:36
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