via IDRW.org.
I wonder what the classified war games the Pentagon runs says about this...if the Russian think tank is right then that's pretty impressive and a better performance than I thought. Four carriers would in theory be able to neutralize the PLA by themselves.
China would have to sacrifice up to 40% of its People’s Liberation Army Navy fleet in an attempt to sink a super aircraft carrier like the USS Gerald R Ford in a campaign, according to a report from the Moscow-based Military-Industrial Courier.
China currently possesses several effective weapons systems that could be used against a US carrier battle group, including its DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles and 12 guided-missile destroyers.
The country’s two Type 051C and six Type 052C destroyers are all equipped with anti-ship missiles such as the YJ-83, C-805 and YJ-62, and they would also pose a serious threat against US carriers within the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, China has purchased four Sovremenny-class destroyers equipped with Moskit SSM P-270 anti-ship missiles from Russia, the report said.
Aside from the Liaoning, the country’s first aircraft carrier, the PLA Navy currently has 15 Type 054A frigates carrying HQ-16 surface-to-air missile within its vertical launching system. With the capability to defend the Chinese fleet against the US carrier-based aircrafts, Type 054A is able to sink enemy vessel with its C-803 anti-ship missile as well.
If a US carrier battle group were to enter the waters of the Chinese coast, the PLA Navy could also deploy its 10 Type 056 corvettes and 40 Type 022 missile boats to fight in guerrilla warfare at sea against the US Navy, the report said. Both vessels able to launch anti-ship missiles such as YJ-83 and C-803 and the United States Navy would loses 10% of its strength in the region if one of its carriers were to be sunk.
However, the PLA Navy would not be able to sink a US aircraft carrier easily. According to the Forbes magazine, several countermethods have been developed by the US Navy to defend its aircraft carriers from Chinese attacks. While long-range unmanned aerial vehicles are able to destroy Chinese missile facilities, F-35 fighters with a combat range of 200 and 300 nautical miles enables the US ships to fight without entering the Chinese coastline.
The Military-Industrial Courier estimated that between 30%-40% of China’s total naval strength would be lost to simply destroy one US carrier. Meanwhile, the biggest weakness for the US Navy in a potential conflict with the PLA Navy would be how to deploy its 11 carriers, 88 surface combat vessels, 55 Littoral Combat Ships and 31 amphibious assault ships to the Western Pacific in a short period of time, the report said.
This reported not even counting the subs lol think about what damage a conventional Ohio class submarine can do to Chinese surface surface ships and coastal deployment
ReplyDeleteI'll disagree with this report.
ReplyDeleteAll you need is one PLAN sub penetrating a fleet and torpedo the carrier. The torpedo ain't fired to SINK the carrier. Instead it is meant to DISABLE the propeller. Now the US carrier is a sitting duck. I am not sure if it can launch aircraft to defend the carrier. When your carrier is disabled, the escorts start circling the "wagon".
This now takes away one piece of an aircraft carrier's survivability: Mobility
yeah i've been chewing on this one for a bit...but when you have a carrier moving out at a top speed of almost 40 knots its gonna be hard for a sub to catch it without giving itself up. stay out in blue water and you have a real hard target for everyone except the good guys.
DeleteSol,
DeleteJust want to drive you nuts. So you say "stay out in blue waters" and the fleet will be hard to target?
I beg to differ. Let's just say we eliminate RORSAT-like and focus on the sea. Let's just say we eliminate long range patrol air assets. There's one thing left that US Navy can't get rid off, intelligence ships.
Remember the Russian intelligence ships stalking US fleet off Vietnam and during the Israeli conflicts? They were like gum to the sole of your shoes. Unless PRoC pisses off Russia, what do you think would happen if you have three countries (PRoC, Russia and North Korea) sending their intelligence ships to shadow US carrier fleet.
not really difficult. you setup a 500 mile exclusion zone around your carriers at war. any nation that doesn't want to be involved is warned that their warships need to stay at least that far away or risk being sunk. then you setup an orbit of uav's above those ships with jamming gear and you have fun doing whatever it is you're going to do.
Deletei don't see the russians as a problem. i'm not even seeing their spy sats as issues. the ocean is big. but a real problem is going to be humint and hacking. they can tell when our fleet sets sail by having a fisherman on the dock and if they have hacked our systems they can predict our moves by the sifting through the messages.
i'm still chewing on this.
one thing that still gets me is that they're talking navy against navy. if a us fleet sailed that close they'd be facing off with land based air too. i don't know.
One would assume that one of the first procedures in going to war with a peer/near-peer would be to either hand deliver or use public-private encryption to deliver new crypto codes to all vessels. Hacking modern encrypted comms is not really feasible atm.
DeleteChinese sub surfaces near U.S. carrier:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492804/The-uninvited-guest-Chinese-sub-pops-middle-U-S-Navy-exercise-leaving-military-chiefs-red-faced.html
This report seems to make several assumptions.
ReplyDelete1. USN missile counter-measures will work as advertised (When has that ever happened?)
2. The F-35 will work as advertised (Good luck with that... They aren't even carrier capable yet)
3. "long-range unmanned aerial vehicles are able to destroy Chinese missile facilities" (Huh? These don't even exist yet! All they got is the X-47B one-off!)
4. As others have mentioned, what about the submarines?
ignore the part about the F-35. at best its going to be a bit player as far as the carrier air wing is concerned and might be relegated to strike only. i don't give the chinese subs much worry. they caught the navy napping. if we're talking about wartime with emissions control, screens out etc, i dont' think they'll get subs through.
Deletewhat i'm not sure of is a missile swarm attack. an all quadrant attack with hundreds of anti-ship missiles could run us out of bullets. the chinese could pull something like that off. additionally though, why we would send only one carrier to fight the chinese? i see that as an all hands on deck affair and you're talking about at least 6....we sent that many to kill iraq!
I remain not so convinced, in reality it would probably only take one or two good missile or torpedo hits to sink a CV, meanwhile ASMs will continue to improve in regards to range, speed and stealth becoming much more deadly. Without a comparable increase in defensive counter-systems it could become easier to sink such ships, additionally the PLA plans to build 3 modern CVs and reorganize their fleet arround carrier battle groups. E.g. Perseus as a next-gen ASM.
ReplyDeleteThe PLA would probably play it defensive drawing the USN within range of shorebased fighter support(where they could outnumber the airwings by more than 10:1), submarines, and its small missile attack boats where it will attempt to destroy the USN carrier wings and sink the ships. I am very skeptical about the scenario in which this occured, I doubt the PLA would try and engage the numerically, technologically and much larger (per ship) USN in a BLUE WATER ENGAGEMENT. Furthermore I believe this most likely ignores the potential employment of nuclear based ASMs which their russian friends are so fond off.
The current PLA force structure is not designed to engage the USN in a Blue-water engagement. Furthermore as a testament to the PLA there are now 15 active Type54A frigates which first entered service in 2007, before then they lacked a modern frigate with proper VLS for large missiles. They are now transitioning into a blue water force structure as part of the development of their military.
Neither side is going to go nuclear unless they want a doomsday. At the first nuclear AShM, I would fully expect and Ohio to pop up and obliterate the majority of the Chinese coastline. And as of last I heard, the Russians had converted all of their nuclear ASM to conventional munitions. Both the US and Russia basically gave up on the tactical use of nuclear weapons because there isn't a viable way to deploy nuclear weapons tactically without it bleeding over to strategic nuclear weapon use.
DeleteYou wouldn't advertise it, actually standard US policy is to neither confirm nor deny the existence of nuclear weapons on-board USN vassals. Many of these systems that have been removed from active service as per START treaty terms and put in long-term storage could easily be reactivated, infact for all we know the aptly called 'anti-carrier ballistic missiles' that china has are equipped with nuclear warheads(which makes sense, and should be assumed under a worst case scenario).
DeleteYou say neither 'side' is going to use nuclear weapons unless they want MAD (which is somewhat outdated with the advent of effective ABM systems), well a fullscale nuclear attack is exactly the sort of way you could achieve such a thing so no I don't think they would use it in retaliation for naval nuking which is a legitimate wartime action and a way to cheaply level the playing field. But this isn't even what I was getting at.
If you don't think the US is going to respond to a nuclear attack against its forces in kind, then you've got a lot to learn. The US would likely have an ohio spinning up missiles within an hour and taking out ports and military facilities through out china. In this day and age, using a nuke will beget many nukes back at you. ABM or not, MAD is still firmly on the table. We will respond at least in kind to any nuclear attack against any US forces or civilians. Its pretty hard and in stone US military doctrine: if you nuke us, we'll nuke you, ten fold. And it really doesn't matter who the president is, we'll respond in kind. We may not go full out but I would expect at least 3-4 Trident IIs with 4-5 warheads each with the targets being those which would most damage the Chinese military.
DeleteAnyone who doesn't think we'd respond with nuclear force isn't playing with a full deck of cards. To not respond is to simply invite more nuclear attacks against US forces. We've made it very clear in the past to the Soviets what the repercussions of tactical nuclear weapons would be as they have made clear to us what would happen if we used them. We publicly stated we will respond in kind to any nuclear attacks against US interested, material, and persons. It isn't a question of would we respond, its a question of how soon and how many warheads we would use. There is a reason that both us and Russia have given up on tactical nuclear weapons, and it isn't that both sides wouldn't respond.
From a purely wargaming point of view.
ReplyDeleteThe US is hurt a lot more by the loss of three carriers (groups?) than China is its entire fleet.
Getting the Chinese fleet to commit suicide might be harder than their 25* admirals believe, but they would be "winning" at that exchange rate.
Ive argued a few times that Germany saving the High Seas Fleet was a strategic blunder, victorious, they could have broken the supply lines from Britain to Northern France, defeated, they were no worse off.
The real question is, which side is going to win the hacking war during this engagement? Yeah, you might get a couple of ships sunk, but that is a nail in the can compared to the damage caused on each countries infrastructure. I guess the real loser would be living in the dark for a while...
ReplyDeleteNobody here has actually taken to consideration that China doesn't even need to deploy any ships to counteract with the United States Navy's aircraft carrier battle group... The Dong Feng 21D and the Hong Qi 18 ASBM missile systems are both capable of taking out American Aircraft carriers at roughly 1200-1700 miles off the coast of China... The Chinese have 70-80~ DongFeng 21D, and a crap load of HQ-18 missiles. China would obviously deploy their navy, but, could cut off the US Navy, in about ten minutes prior entering the OTH radar zone... Also, there was an incident a couple years back that had shown the power of a Chinese submarine. A submarine emerged roughly a quarter-half a mile from the carrier battlegroup. The carrier battlegroup, if there had been more submarines, could have been completely wiped out.
ReplyDelete