Is the aircraft carrier obsolete?

[dps]

Right, but all that stuff is actually on board.  If communications or whatever are jammed, the plane can still continue on because there is a person able to tell it what to do.  But yeah, if the computer systems all shut down somehow, a lot of these fly by wire unstable designs are going to have some...issues.

Jamming or otherwise disrupting communications is one thing, but knocking out all of an aircraft's on-board electronics is a completely different matter.  I'm not sure anything but an EMP would do it, and I'm not sure you could generate enough of one with anything short of a nuke.  And an enemy wouldn't want to be generating an EMP near their own forces, either way.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Jamming or otherwise disrupting communications is one thing, but knocking out all of an aircraft's on-board electronics is a completely different matter.  I'm not sure anything but an EMP would do it, and I'm not sure you could generate enough of one with anything short of a nuke.  And an enemy wouldn't want to be generating an EMP near their own forces, either way.

Yeah, I'm not aware of anything (non EMP) that could do something like that either.  That would be a real shitty surprise for a lot of pilots though if someone did figure something out.

[Neil]

Big carrier size is dictated by the weight of modern aircraft, not their wingspan.  Carriers have to be able to accelerate 50 tons of aircraft to 160 knots for launch and slow 150-knot 50-ton aircraft to speed zero for landing.  That takes room, even with catapults and arresting gear.   Once you are committed to that kind of room, you might as well go super-carrier because the marginal benefits outweigh marginal costs.

However, drones are maybe a third the weight of a strike fighter, and so can take of and land from much, much smaller areas at much, much lower speeds.  Drones will never be as capable in any kind of air-air action, but they won't rely on air-air action for survival.  They will rely on stealth and numbers.  You can afford a lot of drones and destroyers (and cruise missiles) for $12 billion worth of carrier and another $8 billion or so in aircraft.

The big payload delivery drones aren't all that much smaller than the Phantoms and Intruders that the supercarriers were running in the 60s.  Max takeoff weight is about 70-80% from what I can find.  It's not like you're going to be able to build a 25,000-ton drone carrier or something, even if you wanted to.  When it comes to the big drones like the Global Hawk or the X-47, you're probably going to be launching them off CVNs anyways.

[grumbler]

[I wouldn't be willing to take that bet, and I question why you would willingly believe something like that knowing what you do about the defense procurement...process.  If Global Hawk is "only" going to cost $40-50 million (where are you seeing this, btw), how is an armed UCAV that can operate in non-permissive areas going to be even cheaper than that?  Why is the operating cost of a UCAV going to be significantly cheaper?  They will still require regular maintenance and repair. 

Fine, you can disagree that unmanned vehicles of a given type are significantly cheaper than manned ones.  I don't think that history is on your side, but that's fine.  As for why unmanned aircraft are significantly cheaper to operate (besides saving on crew costs), it largely has to do with the different reliability standards for maintenance and replacement between manned and unmanned anything.  Rockets designed for unmanned space missions cost a lot less than those for manned missions.  Space shuttle marginal costs were about $8,000 (total program costs over all missions about $23,000 per pound) to low earth orbit, according to the wiki, while Ariadne's marginal cost was less than half that (and total program costs about a third), while Proton was one quarter and one-eighth, though proton costs are probably not directly comparable.  And, while the numbers probably aren't right, the proportions probably are.

Right now...

Who is talking about right now?

Okay, what don't you understand?  There isn't the space for real drone operations off of a current DDG or CG.

There are no drones for them to operate.  I suppose you could argue, if you were aware of all possible drone designs, that no drone could ever be built to operate off of current DDG and CGs, but so what?

Without a carrier, where are you sea basing aircraft? 

Sigh.  I give up.  You haven't even attempted to comprehend a fucking thing I've written, have you?  All the bullshit about the Ticos and Burkes and Global Hawks and whatnot that you've been spewing has nothing whatsoever to do with my contention.  I'm done.

[grumbler]

The big payload delivery drones aren't all that much smaller than the Phantoms and Intruders that the supercarriers were running in the 60s.  Max takeoff weight is about 70-80% from what I can find.  It's not like you're going to be able to build a 25,000-ton drone carrier or something, even if you wanted to.  When it comes to the big drones like the Global Hawk or the X-47, you're probably going to be launching them off CVNs anyways.

Yep.  But we are talking about drones 30 or so years from now.  Global Hawk won't be one of the contenders.  Until those contenders come along, as I pointed out, carriers will be the bees knees. 

[Neil]

The big payload delivery drones aren't all that much smaller than the Phantoms and Intruders that the supercarriers were running in the 60s.  Max takeoff weight is about 70-80% from what I can find.  It's not like you're going to be able to build a 25,000-ton drone carrier or something, even if you wanted to.  When it comes to the big drones like the Global Hawk or the X-47, you're probably going to be launching them off CVNs anyways.

Yep.  But we are talking about drones 30 or so years from now.  Global Hawk won't be one of the contenders.  Until those contenders come along, as I pointed out, carriers will be the bees knees.

I wonder what the drones of 30 years from now will be like.  Is it likely that they'll get a decent strike platform under 15 tons?

Really, it's kind of interesting.  For the longest time, the size of aircraft was driving up the size of the carriers.  But once they brought in the CVNs, the size of the aircraft pretty much plateaued for a variety of reasons.  Some of them were technological (like the obsolescence of aircraft-delivered hydrogen bombs), some of them were financial (the expense of the CVNs was already the cause of a lot of reluctance in Congress), some of them were institutional (the elimination of the two-man carrier aircraft), but they all served to limit the growth in aircraft size.

[grumbler]

I wonder what the drones of 30 years from now will be like.  Is it likely that they'll get a decent strike platform under 15 tons?

Sure.  The Tomahawk is under 2 tons.

Really, it's kind of interesting.  For the longest time, the size of aircraft was driving up the size of the carriers.  But once they brought in the CVNs, the size of the aircraft pretty much plateaued for a variety of reasons.  Some of them were technological (like the obsolescence of aircraft-delivered hydrogen bombs), some of them were financial (the expense of the CVNs was already the cause of a lot of reluctance in Congress), some of them were institutional (the elimination of the two-man carrier aircraft), but they all served to limit the growth in aircraft size.

I think that cost was the big driver, and it forced the aviation admirals to accept aircraft performance in range and payload that would have been anathema a generation earlier.  Aircraft grew too expensive to keep specialized fighter and attack types, and the strikefighters are, frankly, not all that great at either job.  That's why we don't see the A-12 or a follow-on to the F-14. 

[MadBurgerMaker]

Fine, you can disagree that unmanned vehicles of a given type are significantly cheaper than manned ones.  I don't think that history is on your side, but that's fine.  As for why unmanned aircraft are significantly cheaper to operate (besides saving on crew costs), it largely has to do with the different reliability standards for maintenance and replacement between manned and unmanned anything.  Rockets designed for unmanned space missions cost a lot less than those for manned missions.  Space shuttle marginal costs were about $8,000 (total program costs over all missions about $23,000 per pound) to low earth orbit, according to the wiki, while Ariadne's marginal cost was less than half that (and total program costs about a third), while Proton was one quarter and one-eighth, though proton costs are probably not directly comparable.  And, while the numbers probably aren't right, the proportions probably are.

What I know is a Global Hawk costs in the range of $150 million dollars.  A Reaper, which can carry smaller 500lb bombs, Hellfires, and I think Stingers now, costs the Navy around $30 million (they call them something else, Mariner, IIRC, which is a shame since Reaper is definitely a cool name) and is also pretty freaking big.  None of these things can deliver a Maverick or 2k JDAM or Sidewinder or AMRAAM or Harpoon or HARM or anything like that.

Who is talking about right now?

There are no drones for them to operate.  I suppose you could argue, if you were aware of all possible drone designs, that no drone could ever be built to operate off of current DDG and CGs, but so what?

You were talking about right now on page 1 when you said we currently have "Aegis destroyers" and "Aegis cruisers" that can carry the types of drones we are talking about.  We don't without a) major tech advances including things like VTOL drones, totally automated programming that doesn't shit itself when something looks different/AI/major advances in instant BVR control/communications, and smaller designs that can handle a respectable amount of ordinance, etc, and b) getting rid of very useful things like helicopters to free up space, and probably several other things. 

Sigh.  I give up.  You haven't even attempted to comprehend a fucking thing I've written, have you?  All the bullshit about the Ticos and Burkes and Global Hawks and whatnot that you've been spewing has nothing whatsoever to do with my contention. 

Except when you specifically mentioned Burkes and Ticos, right? 

They have the ships (all the Aegis cruisers and half the Aegis destroyers) but they don't have the drones yet.

Unless we have other AEGIS cruisers and destroyers that no one knows about?  Thirty years from now (there probably won't be any Ticos btw), if we've come up with a kickass UCAV that can take off and land vertically while carrying enough of a payload for a long enough range to actually do away with a carrier air wing and the bigass ships they go on, a relatively small destroyer is still a shitty way to go. 

How many are you going to have to send over somewhere to make up for the amount of aircraft one CVN can haul?  20? 30? More?  If they're the size of a current Seahawk, because it still has to be able to carry ordinance, lets say you can shove two in a hangar.  We've got the biggest navy in the world by far, and you're looking at sending like half our damn fleet somewhere to make up for one carrier.  The alternative to this is, of course, to put the same number of them on a CVN and surround it with several destroyers, then do the same thing a few more times and have hundreds of these awesome UCAVs flying around all over the place. 

They also wouldn't need to be VTOL anymore.  I just saved a few billion in R&D right there.  We could build a new amphib with that kind of cash.  Hey we could also put up a helo when a guy falls in the water and perform VERTREPs when we need to!  Bonus!

I'm done.

Doesn't really look like it, as I see yet another cruise missile post and something about Global Hawk not being a contender while failing to mention an actual UCAV that currently exists in a testing form, was brought up in the post, will be semi-automated, doesn't have solo a/a capability, and is fucking huge and requires a carrier.  Also, they're going to be over $100,000,000.  More like 150, actually.

http://news.usni.org/2013/12/23/navy-uclass-will-stealthy-tomcat-size

Thats a real upcoming UCAV, not some fantasy bullshit.  70,000lbs and the size of a damn F-14, and half of your 30 year time limit before they even have real operational experience with it to see what UCAVs can actually contribute to a carrier air wing.  The only way that is going into a destroyer hangar is if it bluescreens and crashes into one. 

[Tonitrus]

MBM, arguing with grumbler is like thermonuclear war...you don't want to play that game.

[MadBurgerMaker]

MBM, arguing with grumbler is like thermonuclear war...you don't want to play that game.

I know.  At least it's an interesting topic though.  UCAVs and UAVs are pretty nifty, and carriers are gigantic floating targets.

E:  Well, I guess last month the Navy pushed delivery for that UCLASS back to 2022 or 2023, so add another couple of years to actual "field testing" of this thing.  Bummer.

[Tonitrus]

:timmah: The answer is giant submarine carriers!  :timmah:

[MadBurgerMaker]

   I gotta admit my inner nerd really finds that cool.

*F-35 smashes into that bow plane thing after a fish on the deck FODs the engine and the whole thing sinks*

[Neil]

I wonder what the drones of 30 years from now will be like.  Is it likely that they'll get a decent strike platform under 15 tons?

Sure.  The Tomahawk is under 2 tons.

And the Tomahawk is great for the sorts of operations that the USN finds itself in now, whether that means blowing up a terrorist stronghold or glassing a baby formula factory/weapons plant.  But in a wartime situation, where the intensity of your operations goes way, way up, are they cost effective?  Will you end up with a production bottleneck?  I'm also a little more leery of the Tomahawk, since once it's fired, it is expended.  The advantage of an aircraft, be it UAV or convention airplane, is that if you launch it, you have the ability to call off an attack without having blown a million and a half dollars.  It's not a bad idea, when you're using missiles on terrorists.

Really, it's kind of interesting.  For the longest time, the size of aircraft was driving up the size of the carriers.  But once they brought in the CVNs, the size of the aircraft pretty much plateaued for a variety of reasons.  Some of them were technological (like the obsolescence of aircraft-delivered hydrogen bombs), some of them were financial (the expense of the CVNs was already the cause of a lot of reluctance in Congress), some of them were institutional (the elimination of the two-man carrier aircraft), but they all served to limit the growth in aircraft size.

I think that cost was the big driver, and it forced the aviation admirals to accept aircraft performance in range and payload that would have been anathema a generation earlier.  Aircraft grew too expensive to keep specialized fighter and attack types, and the strikefighters are, frankly, not all that great at either job.  That's why we don't see the A-12 or a follow-on to the F-14.

Cost-cutting times are always interesting times in naval design.  The treaty years were the same.  Still, it's nice of the USN to leave it to the USAF to waste American taxpayer money on white elephant aircraft.  After all, if the USN made a successor to the F-14, what would it do?  It's not like the terrorists have Backfires to splash.

[Neil]

  I gotta admit my inner nerd really finds that cool.

*F-35 smashes into that bow plane thing after a fish on the deck FODs the engine and the whole thing sinks*

You laugh, but there's a very good reason that carriers are built so high.  Keeping the sea away from your planes is a good thing.  If you try and land on a deck full of fish, you're going to have a rough time of it.  Not to mention all the deck crew that keep slipping and falling into jet engines.

[MadBurgerMaker]

You laugh, but there's a very good reason that carriers are built so high.  Keeping the sea away from your planes is a good thing.  If you try and land on a deck full of fish, you're going to have a rough time of it.  Not to mention all the deck crew that keep slipping and falling into jet engines.

Yeah, FOD walkdowns are great fun.  Looks like theres a complete lack of any kind of railing and safety netting around the edge of that thing too, now that I look at it again.  That deck is ultra hazardous.

STILL COOL THOUGH  

E:  Looks like a choppy day too.  Having your plane suck in a bunch of seawater on takeoff because a wave broke over the bow would ruin anyone's day too.