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Automating Future Aircraft Carriers
Roland Piquepaille writes "Britain and France will jointly build three new huge aircraft carriers which will be delivered between 2012 and 2014. With their 60,000 tonnes, these 275-meter-long carriers will be the largest warships outside of the U.S. Navy. They're going to cost about $4 billion each, but with their reduced crews due to automation, they'll save lots of money to taxpayers during their 50 years of use. StrategyPage tells us that these ships will need at most a crew of 800 sailors instead of 2,000 for ships of that size today. At a cost of $100K per sailor per year, this represents savings of more than $6 billion. Impressive -- if it works."
The US Navy's main project right now is the DD(X) destroyer. It uses advanced automation (damage control, weapon countermeasures), stealth, advanced radar, reduced crew, full control/integration with the rest of the fleet. The best toy: Its capability for rapid-fire, pinpoint 155mm shell attacks from up to 100 miles away may sometimes eliminate the need for aircraft carriers entirely, resulting in an operational cost probably an order of magnitude or two cheaper than a carrier, and with very little chance of any casualties. Of course many of those same capabilities are also going to soon be added to cruisers, aircraft carriers, etc.
It doesn't sound as impressive as a new aircraft carrier, but for most scenarios it's going to have amazing results. It's meant to be the first ship to arrive, and carriers will only be used for prolonged engagements.
Not sure what I think of this... On the one hand, if it's possible to save loadsamanny by automating non-critical jobs, then fair-enough, sounds cool. And the brits have something of a history in designing warships - presumably they'll not have forgotten too many of the important bits ...
:( ] is being adaptible. It'd be a real shame if the plug fell out of the automated aircraft-landing computer because of a nearby explosion ... Yes, I'm being facetious, but the point isn't. Machines can only perform within their limitations, and people frequently perform outside their normal potential when (a) their life depends on it, and (b) there's no other option...
On the other hand, during a conflict, a carrier is a pretty juicy target, and one thing humans *are* good at in combat [apart from dying
So, as long as we don't go to war, it'll probably be excellent. If we do, I hope they've thought of the consequences...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
The real problem with this mentality is that these are warships. Smaller crews are vastly less efficent at damage control and have much smaller margins for casualties before the ship ceases to be combat effective.
How many naval casualties have there been in the past 30-some years, particularly in France, the UK, and other Western nations? I can't find any data on it off-hand, but I get the impression that the number is quite small, particularly for aircraft carriers.
Alright, so the way I see it, the news here is that they're building these carriers. Good for them. I don't particularly care, but I understand that others here do. My complaint, rather, comment, is that the focus is on the money. The summary claims that the governments will save $6 billion by building these, but neglect that they could save $8 billion in building costs + billions more in employment costs.
So shouldn't the news be that the carriers are being built, not about how much the UK and French governments are "saving"?
One Electro-Magnetic Pulse will wipe out all their
Off-The-Shelf network equipment making the grand armada worthless.
The role you're thinking about for the Navy has also changed. Their is much less of a demand for huge "blue water" flotillas, and much more of a demand for smaller, lower-draft vessels to support shore operations.
The big carriers are nice, and I don't think anyone is suggesting that (at least in the USN) that they're going anywhere, anytime soon. The new destroyers are aimed at "littoral dominance," that is supporting ground troops and amphibious operations in coastal waters, in areas where you just can't take a carrier or a submarine. Right now we have to do most of that sort of warfare (patrolling near shores) with aircraft, and that gets expensive and impractical if you want to maintain a continuous presence.
The idea of the new destroyers is that they would allow us to maintain a presence and establish a platform for operations (e.g., special ops divers, artillery bombardment) in areas where right now we're limited to a temporary presence.
Nobody is really suggesting that we roll out a new round of Iowa-classes, as cool as I think the idea of 16" dia. naval gunnery is (find me an aircraft that can lay down 243,600 lbs. of ordnance every five minutes onto a target, near continuously).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I suspect most of the naval fatalities over the last 30 years are due primarily to ship-board accidents. The USS Forrestal (CVA 59) was nearly lost due to an accidental misfire on the deck which killed 134 people. Apparently several others have experieneced similiar problems. In 1989, 47 people were killed when a turret exploded (see here).
Realistically, it's far, far too expensive to maintain a modern navy of any size. The age of ship-to-ship combat is over. The nations that have surface ships generally don't use them except as a platform for deploying land forces.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Well there's some truth to that but in considering cost of ownership you also have to figure that in 50 years these things are going to need to be in the shipyard at least once a decade for maintenance, upgrades, repairs, etc. The U.S. Navy has thirteen aircraft carriers (if I recall correctly) but only a dozen on the water at any given time because they always have one of them in the shipyard getting an overhaul.
Still, it is cheaper than a conventional carrier if you can reduce the total crew needed. And the costs go beyond mere salary; clothes, food, supplies and training savings are there to be realized as well.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
They're impossible to intercept because radars can't see them due to reflections from water.
Not True. They are VERY HARD to detect. But really all it takes is more money getting exactly matched amplifiers (as build a million and throw away all but the three that match the closest) and really good m-backward wave oscillators. Theoretically, if we have 3 matched amps and a pure sinusoidal tone, it is possible to perfectly remove all forms of clutter (unwanted reflections from terrain) for any given range cell. The REAL problem is, in order to catch these fast missiles, you have to turn on your radar. And then you are vulnerable to HARM attacks.
I don't have the time, inclination, or online resources to teach detection theroy. Check out
Skolnik's Introduction to Radar for a real good start.
Actually, stopping Nazi's was a hard sell, the only reason the US declared war on Germany in WW2 was that Germany declared war first - and only after Roosevelt had goaded Hitler into declaring war first. The US public was in no mood to get involved with another war in Europe after the mess of our involvement in WW1 (which was probably a much larger mistake than getting involved in Iraq).
To get back on topic, the main reason the US was able to defeat Japan was that it started a major Naval construction program 1939-40, the Essex didn't come off the ways until 1943.
You certainly don't need a battleship anymore. Sea-skimming missles, torpedos, and automatically operated defense guns have changed things over the years. This isn't 1945.
True, battleships at the end of WWII were pretty much obsolete against airpower. However, with the advent of SAMs, a properly designed battleship (utilizing heavy armor) with vertical launch SAM systems would be nearly invulnerable to anything short of a submarine attack or a nuke in coastal areas. Most modern warships are so thin skinned that heavy bombardment from shore artillery could do some heavy damage. A battleship would be tough enough to take some hits while pounding targets within a few hundred miles with a combo of cruise missles and heavy shells. They'd even be big enough to house a couple of anti-sub helicopters!
Battleships of this class would be horribly expensive, but it might not be a bad idea to have one of these instead of five of these fancy destroyers, simply for the survivability of the platform.
well that would be why they're only building 3 of them between them (the french have another carrier of comparable size the charles de gaule), so that makes 4 total, at ~4 billion US dollars each + air group, out of budgets of ~25 billion USD each (so 16 billion dollars in aircraft carriers over probably 15 years in procurement, compared to 750 billion in military spending). And if you don't build aircraft carries what do you build a naval (invasion) force around? Aircraft are the only things at the moment which could hunt down potential sources of those missiles before they're in range and intercept them. The rest of the naval force, while equally at risk is far less glamourous than an aircraft carrier. The US for example, are building a new generation of aircraft carriers to replace the Nimitz class, the new class will likely be 10-20% larger than the Nimitz (so ~110 000 tons). Then there are missile cruisers, submarines etc... The idea of naval force composition will be to have a little of everything. A task force centered on aircraft carriers, and missile platforms (subs/surface ship) with troop transports and guarded by relatively cheap and relatively disposable ships will remain the norm for at least a few more years. Because don't kid yourself, if the russians have missiles and torpedos that can do that, so do we (or we will soon enough), which puts both parties on level footing.
I think the same arguement can be made for aircrat, and a lot of tanks etc... But we keep building them because warfighting technology is a constant back and forth evolution, we build a better, stealthier aircraft, they build a better radar with faster missile, so we build a better radar, faster missiles, and still faster, stealther aircarft, and repeat indefinately.
While its true that aircraft carriers are basically colonial war type weapons, there are still colonial wars to be fought. As the world sees stability in europe and south america, Africa is going to become more and more a focal point of operations, as well as UN operations where the national governments (who control the aforementioned missiles and rockets) are asking for help against insurgents.
Part of the problem of military equipment procurement (most notably naval capital ships) of course is planning for the 'next' war. Navy ships take a long time to build and usually aren't much use half done (compared to a tank division, which half built is at least half a division), so you have to plan well in advance, and usually its guess work. Who will it be against? Iran, North korea, iraq, the PRC, Japan, someone else? 50 years is a long time, (or more likely 30 years in UK/French service and 20 years in someone elses navy after they've been sold off). In 1900 would britain have predicted two wars with germany (and allied with france) in 40 years? Probably not. Yes yes, entente cordial... but against italy, japan, the ottoman turks, etc...? In 15 or 20 years the world may change again to some other threat. In WW2 the british were desperate for anything armoured that floated, and I think they'd hate to be caught without anything they need. Will, in the next 10 years people counter the threat of surface skimming missiles (lauched at an aircraft carrier at least), or track submarines trying to lauch torpedos? I think that's quite possible. 20 years? Very likely. Of course both sides continue this dance ad nauseum, but that's the nature of the business unfortunately.
When trying to decide what you'll need 20 years from now you can't just throw your hands in the air and say 'its hopeless we give up'. Thats essentially the attitude our government in canada has had, and the problem is that now, when there are *some* wars which are worth fighting (Sudan, specifically darfur, Afghanistan, and ongoing peacekeeping operations), we're depending on someone else to clear a path for us, and in some cases give us a ride, literally. The worst thing you can happen is a war lands on your lap and you're unprepared.
Couple points:
Russians also have supercavitation torpedoes which no one can intercept because of their speed.
Super-cav torpedoes are also mostly useless without nuclear warheads, since the noise they generate blinds the torpedo's own sensors. The original Russian model, the skval, had a nuclear-only role - it was designed to be fired into the center of an American battle group and detonated. They had no capability of actually hitting a ship.
The most advanced versions of the skval can be programmed to drop out of super-cav mode and go into target acuisition mode at more typical torpedo speeds when it reaches the general vicinity of the target. But slowing down and turning on active sonar makes it a target for other torpedos and hedgehog-like systems.
This is not even taking submarines into account. A sub can stay close to the sea floor with motors turned off. Once this thing goes above it, it will just launch half a dozen torpedoes and move on.
If it survives long enough. A sub can be detected by a myriad of systems contained in a carrier battle group. Helicopter dropped sono-bouys, MAD systems, active "sled" systems. The list is endless, but I shouldn't leave out the attack sub captain's worst nightmare: the sub (or two) that's escorting the carrier.
Also, in order to set up an ambush like that you have to know exactly where the carrier is going. You might be able to guess in general where the carrier is going, but exact times and routes are a closely guarded secret. Torpedos are relatively short range weapons - if you just pick a spot and wait you're unlikely to last until a target presents itself. A nuclear sub can stay submerged for months, but can be detected by reactor pump noise. A diesel can only spend a couple days submerged before it runs out of air.
In any event, the moment the sub attacks (successfully or not) it will be destroyed by helicopters, and an attack sub is a pretty expensive toy in its own right. You can't afford to lose half a dozen attack subs at $2Bn a pop sinking a $4Bn carrier.
If your point is an un-escorted carrier can be sunk pretty easily, I will certainly concede it. The un-escorted Argentinian 25th of May (oddly enough, originally commissioned as the British carrier Venerable) came within seconds of being sunk by a British submarine during the Falklands war. The carrier crew was completely unaware.
But first-world carriers are never deployed without escorts. The carrier is the innermost layer of a very large, juicy onion, and there isn't any non-nuclear system that can just waltz in and destroy it. I will eat my hat if Britain or France is even considering deploying that kind of asset without at least a half-dozen destroyers or cruisers. Britain, in particular, has extremely deadly destroyers.
No one seems to have explained why the Brits are commissioning these new carriers, so I suppose I'll have to.
Back in the 60s/70s, there was a theory that with expected missile developments, big warships would just be easy targets. And if you lost a big ship, you lost a major part of your fighting force.
The Falklands is instructive here. Taking the Belgrano out stopped the Argentine Navy at a stroke - if they had taken out the Canberra, Hermes or Invincible the Brits would probably have had to go home.
The answer would be a new generation of small carriers, cheap enough to build lots, so the loss of one would not be a major disaster. The idea had a lot going for it. Lots of ships meant that it was easier to maintain the world-wide navy role, and always have a ship near the scene of any trouble spot. You could make use of the S/VTOL Harrier. The Royal Navy loved the idea of overtaking the US Navy in this important category, and it meant more ship captain's jobs.
Both the US and the UK navy considered the idea. The US dropped it, and the UK went for it. Then the beancounters moved in.
Instead of a large fleet of small ships, the RN got a small fleet of small ships. This produced the worst of all possible worlds, a few, vulnerable ships. The RN have been suffering like this for the last 20 years, and have only recently been able to revert to getting the big ships back. Funnily enough, the US now seem to have a renewed interest in the 'lots of small ones' idea. perhaps it's time has come?
1) Just because a carrier was developed to fight large-scale conventional war does not mean it is not incapable of being useful in a small-scale unconventional war.
2) No one can pretend to know what the future holds for warfare. War is costly yes but that alone can not be relied upon to prevent nations from attacking each other. It was just 15 years ago that Saddam Hussein invaded his neighbor to the south and if we all followed your wisdom then our conventional war with what was the fourth largest army in the world could have proved a costly engagement.
3) Immense superiority of fire power is sometimes enough to deter attack. I suspect that the only reason that Beijing has not yet flexed their muscles over Taiwan is that their entire armed forces would be utterly crushed in a head-to-head conflict with the US. I also suspect that this is why Egypt, Syria and Lebanon have finally given up trying to go fight the Israelis vis-a-vis overt conventional warfare. Although a previous poster made the point that this forces outmatched nations to engage their enemies with unconventional tactics (ie. support to terrorist groups) the consequences of losing a conventional war are greater than the consequences of losing an unconventional one. In other words: I would fight a war where I lose 50 citizens a year to terrorist attacks, then one where I face the real possibility of losing everything.
The standard Navy joke is that they asked one of the Battleship CO's what he would do if his ship was hit by an Exocet. He replied that he'd call away sweepers. While they are expensive to operate, I still firmly believe that we should have kept all four of the (modified) Iowa-class on active service. Aside from their sheer survivability, they were also equipped with sixteen Harpoon missiles as well as sixteen Tomahawks which adds up to some serious long range striking power. The Navy was also in the testing phase, when I was medicaled out, for an 8" RAP (Rocket Assisted Projectile) discarding sabot round that would be fired from the 16" barrels, laser-guided no less, with a 250+ mile range. I don't know where you'd put the VLS launcher short of replacing one of the turrets which may not be a good idea, or replacing the amidships Tomahawk and Harpoon launchers which might not be too bad if you can stuff enough missiles in there. The only problem with that, from an Naval Engineering standpoint is that you'd be decreasing survivability of the platform if the ship took a hit to the amidships VLS launcher (which is where most cruise missiles are programmed to pop-up target, btw). Unless you armor plate the heck around and below the launcher. Interesting problem in moment-arms there as it would change the center of balance. Whatever. You'd also have to add the radar systems as well and Aegis ain't cheap although you might be able to get away with something like the SPS-49 (3-D Air Search). Possible. Likely? I think not. A long time ago ('80's) I had the idea of taking the various LPD's we were decommissioning and turning them into overgrown missile barges with VLS launchers. I did some back of an envelope calculations and you could have stuffed several hundred in each one. With our datalinks, any Aegis equipped ship could have controlled the launcher(s). The US Navy would have never gone for it, given the low top end speed of an LPD, but still an interesting idea and God knows we have a ton of them in mothballs. One Battleship, one Aegis Arleigh Burke destroyer, and one missile barge. Could definitely ruin somebody's whole day and you'd have all the threats covered. The Navy has always been fixated on new ships, rarely do they ever consider upgrading older ships. The last time that happened was the Spruance-class destroyers which Congress intentionally under-funded. It ended up costing them a lot more in the long run to upgrade them. [They were all supposed to be like the Kidd-class which are now going to Taiwan.] Aside from a few awaiting their turn, and one set aside for Museaum duty, the rest of them are on the bottom of the ocean (including my former ship ). We'll have to wait and see what they come up with. So far, I'm underwhelmed.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
One more thing I forgot to bring up is that stress is the ultimate fatigue generator. The last thing you need in flight deck operations are fatigued personnel. That duty is hazardous enough as things are without adding an additional fatigue factor. Heck, I don't even want fatigued personnel on my tincan (destroyer)! You make too many mistakes and mistakes will either kill you (almost happened here when I got nailed by 20,000 volts) or someone (everyone) else. Sorry, I don't buy this.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
The last time the English and French undertook a project like this i.e. Concorde - the costs soared five-fold between planning and implementation - to £1.134 billion - and the production models sold never even covered part of the cost. This has all the hall-makings of yet another Anglo-French financial disaster - although if they do as well with the carrier as they did with concorde we shall see some interesting technology. I lived under the concorde flight path for years - I could set my clock by it - and when it was retired I realised that I would miss it's elegant grace and beauty, the only SSL passenger transport in the world, as I would never see it fly again. Even if it was a little noisy ....
Sure, a carrier can strike at distances up to 1500 km away, given refueling each way, however they can't do it undetected, not in this environment of a fully wired planet with massive satellite coverage. Carrier battlegroups are just too damn big and their destinations are a target of almost every intelligence agency on the planet. One tincan, on the other hand, can be almost anywhere and you can build a lot more tincans than you can carriers even if their long range (and I mean seriously long!) is just Tomahawk missiles. SLAM and Harpoon missiles are no slouches either.
We'll find out when the Chinese get frisky enough to try to take Taiwan or some other idiotic target. They've been talking for years about tactics to take out our carriers and if they do succeed, well we'll see what raider tactics can do. Back to the Civil War anyone?
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
I think the theory that Prince Eugen (which ended up being one of the test ships at Bikini Atoll ... but that is another thread) could have had anything to due with Hood's demise has been long since put to rest, now that they have had a look at the remains of the wreck. The prevailing theory is a 15 inch shell penetrated the aft magazine. The last analysis I read suggested it wasn't even so much any gross weakness in her design ... Hood was just very unlucky. She got struck by a shell from the right orientation in exactly one of those few places were she just couldn't take it. If we could replay history, chances are this battle would longer, messier, and less conclusive, nine times out of ten (but of course, we'll never know for sure).
I will be the first to admit that the capabilities of the Iowa class battleship were
awesome -- especially their batteries of 16 inch guns that could propel VW
Beetle-sized (2,000 pound) shells.
The US Navy, however, has a brand new bag getting ready to be deployed --
electrically actuated railguns capable of firing aluminum projectiles at over
10,000 meters per second. At that speed, no explosives need to be used --
the sheer MxA of the projectiles are sufficient to destroy the target. Instead
of ballistic aiming, nearly direct aiming can be used once the earth's curvature
is taken into account. A rapid fire volley of such projectiles will actually create
its own weather pattern. (Think supersonic flight, partial vacuum behind the
projectiles, and shock waves.)
Modern Aegis class destroyers have power plants capable of generating over
30 MW of power, used for everything from propulsion to radar to ECM. Railguns
will make a far better fit on these destroyers than on the old Iowa class destroyers
of WW-II. The Iowa class destroyer was heavily dependent upon manpower --
with a standard crew of about 2,400 sailors, while aircraft carrier crews are
typically 5,000 or more (including air crews and pilots.)
The combined British-French project for highly automated aircraft carriers does
make sense, but only in conjunction with modern destroyers capable of providing
the necessary defensive screen.