Apologies if I sound a bit off this week - have been quite unwell, but I'm hoping my passion for naval force design and history shows through regardless. I made a conscious decision not to clickbait this video as "the end of the carrier" although it probably belongs in that series. It just didn't seem right given the conclusion is probably that the world will have more fleet carrier displacement in service in a decade than it does now. That said, I think the threats discussed (even if uncertain) are very real, as are the challenges CVs and CVNs face if they want to win budget dollars over other, potentially much cheaper and/or more specialised systems.
When China decides to go to War with Taiwan, they mean business and the world divides into two spheres. China won't invade Taiwan unless there are willing to risk MAD exchange In all war game senarios, 1. Chinese side of Taiwan Strait is littered with millions of active sonor bouys (this makes all Submarines Chinese, Taiwanese and American postion known to everyone from Philipines, Guam, all mainland bases, Korea and Japanese waters. 2.. China fires a single Nuclear ICBM for air burst detontaion over international waters, to demostrate intention. 3. If US Carriers approach they are targeted with multiple Nuclear airburst in International waters, each closer to the carrier force until Carrier force is wiped out. 4. At this stage USA can decide to Launch an ICMB MAD mainland strike knowing China will retalitate or sit out. 5. What ever happens the world is now trading with US or China
I dont think powerpoint existed when i was in school. We had apple II's and then iMACs, which my friend stole the RAM out of. We also used plastic rulers to open the computer lab door so we could use it any time we wanted. Netdragons game and Newgrounds were the number one place for games in school. @Mightydoggo @@Mightydoggo
The Kuznetsov doesn't get enough credit for trying to set the record for 'number of times caught fire by a single vessel'. It has truly earned its place in the history books. Also, get well soon Perun!
The most remarkable aspect of the Kuznetsov's record is that it was always set on fire by itself, rather than enemy action. It's the world's most self-igniting carrier. There was an infamous report by a CNN reporter during a riot in the USA that the protests were 'mostly peaceful but occasionally fiery', as he stood in front of a major conflagration that brightly illuminated the nighttime scene. The same phrase aptly describes the Kuznetsov, as its combat operations record so far is launching just 420 missions over Syria.
A frigate going against an Arliegh Burke destroyer protecting the carrier is a joke in itself. The 40 anti ship missiles a frigate can launch will be smacked out of the sky by half of 1 Burke's payload. Then the attacking frigate will be trying to get away at 40 knots/hr, while F35s and F18s chase it down at 800 knots/hr.
@@Budget_PrepperBut they've got lots and lots and lots of those little things. Hardly even frigate size. And they all have at least 4 launchers, from what I've seen.
@@Budget_Prepper it’s usually the crew and the captain of the ship that usually decide the outcome of the naval engagement along with a little bit of luck on one side or the other
"The human infantryman is comically vulnerable to everything from bullets and blunt force to beer and boredom." Oof. That last half is almost painfully true.
the joke told about soldiers in every anglophone nation is that if left alone in a sealed chamber for ten minutes with three ball bearings, when you return the soldier will have lost one, broke one, and eaten one. Never let a soldier go bored.
Having been a point on the lead of said infantry, my personal experience confirms Perun. More interesting is the ability of our military bureaucracy to transition. In my experience, this may be a vain hope as clearly in my failed war, we were poorly equipped with obsolete gear. Perhaps the classic was our use of converting leaky ponchos into tarps in a tropical rain forest. At the time, high quality tents were already available to private backpacking. A wet infantryman is not too effective. Nor keeping key things like ammunition and weapons clean and working.
Jerry Pournelle, in the Falkenberg's Legion series, taught us that one of the bigger threats to infantry strength in garrison is "le cafard", the bug, and the recommended preventative is a rifle and opportunity to use it.
Won't be surprised to see (50 years in the future or so) a fleet of US submarine carriers/arsenal ships, carrying aerial and naval drones and missiles, and a crew of 5 :) That's if I live long enough.
It always amazes me that us Aussies have had three aircraft carriers - the HMAS Sydney and HMAS Melbourne from the Majestic class, and the HMAS Vengeance from the Colossus class. Nowadays, it seems like our Gov would baulk at the idea of having such capabilities, I guess because geopolitics and doctine has changed, and we are so closely aligned with the US and UK that it makes more sense for us to support them than spend tens of billions building our own. I guess our helicopter carriers will have to do for now.
I think after the United states pulled out of South East Asia in the 70s, Australian doctrine changed from a offensive military strategy to a defence strategy. We lost the need for the carriers as our allies were half a world away. Such a shame honestly
The price of running a CV has shot up since then. The Majestic/Colossus' were small light carriers, about 1/4th the size of a Queen Elizabeth. Small CVs like that just don't cut it anymore, and for economies like Australia/Canada, building a 50-60k ton CV (or bigger) is just too much of an ask. Even for the UK 2 QEs was a massive undertaking
I highly recommend a video by hypohystericalhistory on the question of potential Australian naval aviation capabilities, titled: "The F-35B Option: the Future of Australian Naval Aviation?" I'd post the link, but in my experience those tend to just vanish.
I’d like to add my vote of high praise for the superior content. It’s well-organized, clear, persuasive and extremely informative. Even the humor is great. You guys just don’t seem to ever mess up!🎉
"That's enough fuel to fill up a Toyota Camry about 80,000 times, or a Ram 1500 long enough to reach the next gas station" "...rapid aircraft-to-submarine conversion" 💀
I think a common misunderstanding about carrier vulnerability is that while the ocean is large, it also isn’t empty. Knowing something is out there is far easier than knowing that thing is a carrier. You know what looks a lot like a carrier on radar? A cargo ship. Additionally, Blip Enhancement systems mounted to escorts can create false carriers, directing attacks at less valuable assets. I always like to characterize it as a game of “Where’s Waldo” except in this case there’s five Waldos only one of which is real and if you aren’t careful either with your snooper or your strike force you may see some irreplaceable losses all against a “Waldo” that isn’t the real one. This problem was so bad that the Soviets had a policy of visually confirming a carrier after acquiring it on radar. I can’t say the life expectancy of those aircrews was great in the event of a hot war. Synthetic aperture radar mitigates this as it is harder to deceive with blip enhancement (hence its inclusion on the Tu-22MR) but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are ECM methods that can neutralize it.
my father served in the navy in the late 80s and even back then they had an EW system on the ships that used multiple methods of tricking and intercepting missiles. on of the examples were inflatable radar reflectors that deploy and create copy signatures of the targeted ship, if we had those in the 80s I imagine we have gotten better at it today. I am trying to remember the other methods these systems used but I think it involved directional jamming to throw off guidance and finally tracking the target to aid the CIWS in shooting it down.
@@dominuslogik484 They still have those though against SAR they’re less effective. The navy also liked putting radar reflectors on auxiliary ships to similar effect. More modern decoys like Nulka use active decoy methods kind of like MALD but for ships. EW is a fascinating topic and one that isn’t looked at nearly enough.
@@aidanmattson681 MALD is probably the funniest name for a decoy to me because of the slang term "malding" or to be "mald" which is when something is making a person so mad they must be losing hair or balding because of it lol. outside of that MALD has been combat tested in Ukraine against Russia so we know it works well at least. Ukraine does seem like a really good place to test equipment that more or less sat around unused for 20-30 years; if you think about it as low risk since the tech is old anyway but knowing if any concepts were good or not is very valuable. example is that the switchblade UCAVs were not really that good, the MALD and GMLRS are extremely effective as well as Excalibur. the Bradley seems about as effective as we expected it to be, Javelin and NLAW were both very good too. hell even Patriot has been proven well in the war, I feel like a lot of systems currently available on the market benefit from documented usage in Ukraine because its increased international demand for the products by a large margin.
Warships emit incredible amounts of electronic signals No commercial ship does. Electronic emissions are easier to ident from space than even massive ships themselves. And, really, massive ships are very easy to tracy real time from space.
StarLink could be (maybe already has been) utilized to track any select electronic emissions. Or to relay that info by laser from and to other orbiting platforms.
@jeckjeck3119 that seems way too politically, socially, and religiously loaded for it to be one he'd be willing to make. I have 0 issues being wrong there and would love to see that video I just don't think it would happen
@@jeckjeck3119more the fact that the USA failed to win the hearts and mind of the people there. The Americans were foreign invaders, maybe only some people in Kabul were willing to back. Regardless Islam and decentralisation of power can go together. It’s just a matter of aligning incentives.
I know you couldn't fit everything in, but as many military historians, as well as wartime leaders at the time admitted, the sinking of the Royal Navy's HMS Repulse / Prince of Wales by Japanese Air Power was a turning point - where the future of the battleship was truly considered to be limited - and the aircraft carrier was etched into naval history as the future. It's insanely ironic, because while Japan was the first ever navy to assemble a carrier strike group (they did this more out of necessity, because they were limited by international treaties preventing them from building more battleships) - they would ultimately turn back to the battleship, wasting a lot of resources building IJN Yamato and Musashi. Arguably the best battleships in the world at the time, yes, but at the same time obsolete. To add to the irony, by the end of WW2, with all their carriers sunk, and land based air corps decimated, the Japanese would send out their flagships Yamato and Musashi to battle without air cover - where they would meet the very same fate as Repulse, and Prince of Wales.
Kind of outlying examples though, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse had a tiny escort and no air support, having not had time to probably refit and work up after having reached Singapore. They were attacked by over 70 Japanese aircraft, most trained specifically to attack large warships. The whole engagement was very lop-sided. Likewise, Yamato and Musashi would probably been very potent, had they still had some decent air cover to allow them to close with the American fleet.
@@pgf289 the current Europe/Russian's/🇺🇸 proxies and now israeli/jew/USA-proxy-defences ( USA 🇺🇸 really should quit being a bossy+nosey old-lady neighbours lol aka follow Monroe doctrine as that's your decision/deal's with the rest of the world and Europe ) showed the need for uss-Montana or new jersey-( with nuke propulsion and modernisation's for 2030's ) battleship as there's really no replacement same with carriers as both have unique designs/job ones great at air support and recon and the other is great for shoreline-support and escort and or taking damages/game-tank and clearing a pathway's-ect duties and both could helpful in emergencies-support ie power-generation and cargo ect
The post 1939 US doctrine for the war in Pacific against Japan was carrier and land based aircraft power projection, although they had War Plan Orange against Japan which contains a scenario where USN standard battleships against IJNs own battleships near Philippines, but then after Fleet Problem exercises in 1930s they finally realized that carrier centered battlefleet would be much more successful in large ocean like Pacific, plus the range from Hawaii-continental US-US Garrisons in Pacific would need sea control ability that the carriers could project. Also worth mentioning in one of the Fleet Problems USN carriers striked Hawaii in an exercise to show how vulnerable anchored warships to carrier based aircraft, this would happen again in 1941, but this time is for real. Weird that historians said that Pearl Harbor attack is drawn up by looking at RN attack on Taranto, but the actual inspiration of Taranto was from this particular Fleet Problem the USN had. Weird that the USN had a scenario like this and was unprepared in 1941 against the real deal.
Some more interesting stuff about the Yamato: The Yamato (and the Musashi) were so big and consumed so much fuel, that the Japanese never used them. Until they suicided them at the very end of the war. The oil consumption of these molochs would have been too big. So the Yamato was at harbor and it was used as fuel depot for other ships. And the admiral resided on the Yamato of course, as flagship. Since the Yamato never saw action during the war (until the very end), it was referred to "Hotel Yamato" by Japanese soldiers / marines. Did you by any chance read the Pacific War trilogy by Ian Toll?
I love Perun's way with words. Things like "very rapid kinetically induced adjustment" is just the perfect euphemism for what two US carriers can do to you...
High quality, informative and just absolutely hilarious while also being factually accurate. This is honestly peak content. I have been binging your stuff for the last week, and it's always great.
"In conclusion, though my government apparently disagrees, the development of either very long range land based naval attack aviation or the ability to facilitate their deployment at sea is REALLY FREAKING COOL"
I'm pretty sure there are legal restrictions to how much dry humor you can put into one video, and that having both Perun AND Drachinifel in the same video would exceed that limit by a fairly large margin.
Add total protection with ESSM, 127mm gun, Phalanx CIWS, ECM, Nulka, ESM, RBOC, ASROC, Triple torpedo tubes, Seahawk MH-60R, Tomahawk, Harpoon, soon to be VL-LRASM and networked to all major assets.
In the event an aircraft carrier gets lost, my primary question is: how fast can it be replaced? I know building one can take quite a while, same goes with training the crew. Aircraft Carriers may not be obsolete, but they sure as hell are expensive
you won't practically be able to contract a new carrier during a short war. If you have a reserved hull you might rush a reactivation or if one is completed but not quite in active service you might rush it into service. You don't have many options.
Yes. In a short, high intensity peer conflict, the question isn't whether the US Navy loses a carrier or not. It is how many. They are unlikely to lose a third of the fleet against anybody in that scenario, let alone more. But 1 is certain. 2 probable. 3 possible. In a long war, it becomes a question of how soon does the US start investing in building more of the things. The sooner and more put into it, the faster the replacements come.
If you are involved in a war like ww2 about a year assuming you have the slip available. Money, time and unions will not be an issue. The reason stuff like ships take so long in peacetime is the desire to reduce expense. This is not a concern during a war. They want all the ships last week.
@ADobbin1 The real problem would be certifying a new shipyard to build them. There is currently only one in the US, and the slipways are limited. Plus unions may not care, but nuclear safety does.
The QE are such interesting carriers. It's easy to go "Oh, no cats, so cats better" but the F-35B actually outperforms the Charles de Gaulle's launch limits for the Rafale M (as per the French themselves that it can't launch at full weight compared to details of the UK' and USN's own testing showing the F-35 can). Goes to show the importance of a generational difference in aircraft tech. There's so much complexity and context between carriers that "simple rules" never really apply. Many simply overlook because STOVL and assume it means less, but it's not always.
I feel like too much commentary on the QE class focuses on what they don’t have (nuclear propulsion, cats and traps) instead of what they actually deliver, a modern supercarrier capability with much lower through life costs and manpower requirements than most of its peers.
@@guillaumefigarella1704 How much ordnance it can carry with it. The French Air Force has excplicitly stated it's much less than the normal land launch limit. Only 1 cruise missile rather than 2, or 2 less bombs than normal, even if it's closer, highlighting the fuel reduction. Remember the CdG's catapults are quite small for catobar, they are substantially weaker than ones off a Nimitz or Ford.
@@immortallvulture For some reason people forget that the escorts are all conventionally powered and need refuelling as well.... But if you really want to blow their mind....telll them that the QE Class are actually the fastest in service carriers.....and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future...
I mean. They can destroy helicopters rather well with their ability to deliver small anti air missiles to their targets, at a far greater range than most sam systems.
Seeing the new @PerunAU video drop every Sunday is the true highlight of the week. Thank you for your work. It's truly amazing how you can compile such high-quality content week after week!
This is one of those topics that I've actually been curious about for a long time but would have never thought to ask you to cover. As such, I'm about 150% excited for it. Score one for data nerds and the power they have to read minds.
I'd actually say Arleigh Burke is a better analogue to the Star Destroyer. Both are almost monolithic symbols of their respective navies, as they make up the overwhelming majority of hulls in service. And both are used in a number of roles for which they're vastly overkill and a smaller ship should be used instead - incidentally, that often involve chasing smugglers too. Yet, just like the Empire just threw more ISDs at their problems rather than adapt their equipment and doctrine, we just kept cranking more Burkes out (73 in service now with 18 more well on the way) in the 2000s and 2010s to replace everything, because we knew how to build them and they did what we need our surface combatants to do. Even if they were manpower-heavy, had major limitations, and were very expensive for what we used them for, politicians were so scared of a Zumwalt repeat they'd rather deal with a long list of known flaws instead. At least the ship is beginning to right itself in the real world.
27:17 The role of carriers in humanitarian operations is something I find fascinating as a justification of military spending in support of civil efforts. 🕊🌊🛫 43:43 I think I see where the Red Alert Dreadnought came from. 🚀🚀🚢
There has been so much ink spilled over the UK's decision to buy STOVL F-35B, so a few things I'd like to add: CATOBAR has a bigger training burden than STOVL, and the French Navy only manages to qualify it's pilots by borrwing deck time from the US, not so the RN (which also has experience operating in the south atlantic with STOVL carriers and feels, perhaps with justification that it might not have been able to operate CATOBAR sorties in some of the weather conditions that it did with the Harrier Force). The other issue I'd quickly like to highlight is that while yes the RAF has ended up with the F-35B, for a rather small airforce the FAA/RAF have now a neat trick up their sleeves. While the Italian Navy for example is limited to it's 30 odd F-35B's, while the Airforce flies it's A's, the RAF can, at a moments notice embark all of it's F-35s onto the two carriers and suddenly surge their capacity. *edit* Doesn't Thailand operate an Aircraft carrier just for cocktail parites and parades?
It's far more limiting to HAVE to buy a single type of aircraft than to train with your allies. It's hard to see the US ever saying no to a cross country training exercise, meanwhile parts that break in an aircraft need to be replaced and therefore brought in, regardless of how political sheninigans turn out there will always be constraint in logistics, time and availability. The fact the CDG can even hold up the a QE is insane to think about, it's a fairly old design with older generation aircraft that's also quite small. By the time the PANG rolls out the QE will have been outclassed in every single regards except plane generation, even more so if there's a second PANG. Also the QE will have to shape 6th gen fighter procurement if it wants to maintain its edge. If the 6th gen fighter isn't vtol capable then they will be stuck with f-35 when everyone else moves onto 6th gen, placing it in the shoes of the CDG currently while also being objectively worse at everything else too. The only good thing that came out of making the class vtol was the ability to make 2 of them, france isn't sure if it wants another PANG. But in every other regard the QE is going to become a relic much sooner that it should've been, it won't retain it's edge for long.
@@pougetguillaume4632Except CdG cannot hold up to QE at all. It's smaller, carries much less aicraft, much less stores, is slower and the planes it carries are shorter ranged with lower takeoff loads. QE is a quantum leap ahead of CdG.
@@Retrosicotte "carries much less aircraft" Right the QE has a normal carry capacity of 36 fighters, the CDG? Maximum 36 fighters............ Yes the QE has a bigger carry capacity but not "much" and only in large deployement, want to know why the maximum is 36 for the CDG? Because unlike the QE it can carry a fancy piece of equipement that enables a carrier strike group to be even more dangerous than it normally is: an hawkeye, 2 to be more precise. Sure it doesn't carry bombs but this thing is absolutely essential to any proper american carrier group and is completly absent from british carriers for obvious reasons. What i mean by the CDG being even comparable at all to the QE isn't that its' better, faster, stronger, but simply more useful, it is endurant on missions and provides capabilities that are simply put, inexistant on the QE. This is why the CDG is comparable, it does things the QE cannot while being remarkably similar in harder factor like carry capacity, aircraft range. Not a quantum leap lol, barely a hop
Academically rigorous. Very informative with great sign posting for those who wish to dive deeper. Delivered like a broadcast professional. Love the dark humour throw-ins. Thank you! 😜
@@BNRmatt Touche. PLN " Joseph Pilsudski" with some airplane/ chopper abilities would go a long way when it comes to interrupting soviet shipping lanes across Baltic. Also 6 new submarines- 2 sub divisions
51:20 Colonel Triggerhappy and Major-General Hothead have now joined Perun's army, also featuring Private Conscriptovich, Sergeant Bicepsky, Captain Bullshitsky, Colonel Kleptovsky, General Oligarchov, and of course volunteers Pavel & His Mates.
Speaking of prototype issues, I remember watching a documentary of the Nimitz first deployment in the Pacific… Needless to say it went through a wormhole and went back to December 6, 1941 and had it not found the return wormhole it likely would’ve participated in the defense of Pearl Harbor… I’m starting to think that might not have been a documentary
Thought I recognized that avatar. Greetings, fellow Majority Report listener ;) And greetings from Switzerland, where you find locally-supported agriculture pretty much everywhere - cows grazing right in the middle of a suburban neighborhood! It's madness I tell you!
Why would you fly aircraft in space, assuming you could? If you wish to attack ground or sea-based targets from space, you fling dense objects at them, perhaps palladium rods. You want something that can survive entry into the atmosphere without losing too much mass to ablation. You want that mass to hit with great velocity. Targeting could be a problem, so it might be a good idea to fire huge salvos rather than design onboard guidance systems that will survive entering the atmosphere. Such a “simple” system will cost you many times what a carrier will cost. It comes with its own vulnerabilities, such as high velocity bits of metal flying about in orbit. Your space advantage can be quickly denied by the adversary creating orbital space junk.
@MarcosElMalo2 easy. Relativity. The speed you can react to something is limited by the speed of light. Already having a small group equipped with weapons and someone that can react in the area (the plane) is a big advantage.
I again shall take to paraphrasing The Chieftain: it’s not a question of vulnerability, but of capabilities, what does a weapon or system bring to the table. If systems were rendered obsolete by weapons that could defeat them, than infantry would have been rendered obsolete 10000 years ago.
The human body is ridiculously vulnerable but it has the distinct advantage of being paired, ideally, with a human brain - which is the real reason it’s never been replaced in its role A day will come where this happens but not for some time I suspect, general AI is much harder than most think
4 minutes in, 26 comments. 9:00 - "One of them spends a lot of it's spare time on fire" - lol 10:00 - "... fill up a Prius 80,00 times or a RAM 1500 long enought to reach the next gas station" - lol
Kuznetzov is nowhere near so capable as Liaoning to say nothing of Shandong. It literally needs a tug, regularly has accidents water system is shit, literally only 2 heads... for the entire ship.
Okay. A drone carrier is terrifying, and is the obvious evolution of the design. It both magnifies how many airframes one can project, as well as reducing possible carrier size and cost.
@@grahamstrouse1165 You misunderstand me. These aren't necessarily the drones already in use. These are drones that mimic fighter dynamics and deployment. These drones, already in development, would mean more airframes per ship (smaller, less weight), less cost, less risk to personnel, and more range than standard drones. A carrier for this platform is not at all redundant. It's evolution.
@@mikegould6590Just use a normal carrier. The USN does feasibility studies on smaller sized carriers like multiple times a year and every single times concludes that decreases in size lowers sortie rates so much that it isn’t worth it.
you realise that smaller drones with less payload are just going to be less capable than fighter size drones. There is no reason to design new carriers that take forever to build and design when you can just design a drone that suits the carrier....
@@tobin9575Not necessarily, the kinds of designs that would never suit having a person in them might be able to be launched and landed in ways that also would never suit a person, which in turn would likely require a differently designed carrier It would serve the same role but operate quite differently
I appreciate the work that goes into these descriptions of the military industry. In his effort to be fair, you will find a lot of insight that would be available at a military university like West Point, US Air Force, or Navel Acadamy. While there are lesser academies that provide such instruction, these are the better known with decent football programs. Perun mixes in some politics, but not necessarily at the expense of any given nation or branch of the military. I'd say support the presentations if you care to continue seeing them presented.
I keep finding this channel to be on my required news list. I have learned so much more about geopolitics here than on at least 99% of the talking heads I used to listen too.
20:05 correction @Perun There was no cost overrun per say on this project of the UK aircraft carriers - there was a big argument over cost/design but when agreed upon there were no issues. The then-Labour government made a fixed-price agreement and everyone was sticking to the design and fixed cost. The new Conservative government then asked for a redesign mainly due to infighting and political defence groups wanting their design to win the design contract. So after 75% of one ship was completed and 25% of another was completed - the new government asked for a review of the aircraft carriers to a new design. This in turn delayed the aircraft construction by up to 1 to 2 years - During that time the government was asked to pay a £350 to £380 million resigned review costs and was told this would also break the fixed cost agreement. And the idiots of the government went ahead with the redesign review. QED the ship construction price went up from £1.5bn each to £3bn each and the UK ended up with the same aircraft carriers because the result of the delays was if you want Z instead of X that was agreed upon we have to start again from scratch because the design you want will never work into what we built already.
You've missed off the bit where the Treasury delayed the build by a year to generate some in year savings....which were dwarfed by the £1.5bn extra the delay cost...
reeks of too much power in too few hands.. the UK is really a laggard when it comes to it's political processes compared to what other nations do (while no one really is a top performer)
The RAF have been providing a significant portion of the carrier air wing for decades now (Joint Force Harrier onwards). The Fleet Air Arm is not what once was. They HAVE to have maritime capable jets.
I’m still baffled by the Brit’s decision to give away their Harriers. They’re a little long in the tooth but they’re still pretty capable. The QE only had 17 operational F-35s during her first patrol, and ~50% were US Marine Corps fighters. The Brits don’t have enough money to field enough F-35s on the QEs to make them relevant.
15:53 The Gerald Ford class carriers trying to be more stealthy makes me think of an elephant putting a lamp shade over its head thinking it is blending in and hiding
First off, Love your analysis and research coming from someone who’s served on one of the mentioned platforms (USN). I think the common thing that gets overlooked is that one carrier or even one Carrier Strike Group (CSG) operate in a vacuum. Between other CSGs, Surface action groups, Submarines, and allied nations provide a lot of situational awareness to protect the group and the Combatant Commander at large. Yes, historically we’ve used single CSGs for peacetime patrol, but we’re even seeing it now where a situation escalates, multiple groups are joined together (Ford and Ike off the coast of Israel)
I don’t think many people overlook this. Unfortunately what most people DO overlook is the small size of most modern CBGs. A typical escort group today consists of about 4-6 frigates, destroyers & cruisers. There’s usually gonna be an SSN lurking around, too, but submarines are fundamentally offensive weapons. They also don’t like to advertise their presence. This makes interoperability with surface groups a little dicey. We just don’t have enough ships. When Operation Desert Storm kicked off the US Navy still had close to 600 combatant warships. Now we’ve got about half that number & most of our most useful assets are Cold War vintage designs. At any given time we might be able to activate a third of our 300 pr so destroyers, cruisers, carriers & submarines. That’s for all operations everywhere in the world. Readiness is a real problem & maintenance & upkeep have been badly degraded in recent years.
One thing I’d like to add: range is safety. The more range you have, the farther away from the danger you can operate, and the safer you become. A USN super carrier using F35C is going to be safer than a USMC carrier using F35B because it can operate from farther away.
Add to it how larger carriers permit aerial refuellers like that blended wing body drone that your americans are testing. In medium carriers like ours, we have to rely on buddy refuelling. Which makes our smaller airwing even smaller.
@32:00 Small correction: Chantiers de l'Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire never built a CVN. CDG was built by the Brest Arsenal (now Naval Group). However, Chantiers de l'Atlantique did build Foch back in the 50ies, a conventional CATOBAR, and it's pretty much the only Dockyard in France capable to accommodate PA-NG (Brest is too small).
While it's true the PLAN's current average of about 300 sorties/week is nowhere near what a Nimitz does, that is still a very high number for a STOBAR carrier, and among non-CATOBAR types only the QEs have a shot at beating them. That's even more impressive when you consider Liaoning wasn't designed to be operated the way the Chinese use her: J-15s primarily launch from the single waist JBD so they can carry their full weapons and fuel load, rather than from the two bow positions.
"no nighttime training ops". Unless you've made this claim 10 years ago, otherwise this statement will be false. I mean they have plenty of clips showing exactly that
5:25 there is one thing you did miss about the early days of carriers Perun. The thing that I believe Drachinifel points out which a lot of early aircraft in the 10's and 20's that could fly off carriers couldn't carry a large enough payload to be effective as an antiship weapon or bomber. While this ability would be gained with future aircraft, at the time it just wasn't really an ability and that ability wouldn't really be present until the carrier aircraft just prior to the war. So in short carriers in the early days very much were still secondary to Battleships. If an alternate WWII had somehow occured in the late 20's early 30's the battleships and other surface assets would have remained the prime fighting element where carriers would at least intially (war trend to drive development so we can assume that aircraft development would have reached the historical WWII level sooner) would have been a scouting and scout hunting asset with limited antiship and land attack potential in the 10's, 20's and most of the 30's on the simple fact of lacking capable aircraft (a problem the US Navy has today) the aircraft of the times on carriers lacked range speed and payload to be much more than scouts. Development did change that but at the time Saratoga and Lexington or any other carrier of the era where not the assets they would become in WWII based on their airwings development. A futher side note would be that Billy Michille's sinking of the Ostfriesland was A done with land base Bombers of the era not carrier aircraft of the time B as usual not a manned manuvering target that could do damage control or shoot back and C it took multiple runs before they caused enough damage to sink the ship and this was with the heavy bombers of the time. So the officer was correct for the time based on current abilities of aircraft in the 20's but he did not account for future development.
@ Perun - Dude, I love your take on military affairs and geopolitical content. Keep doing what you do and I will be right here soaking it all up. Notification 🛎 set on EVERYTHING. 😂❤
Small ships in general never get the credit they're due, probably in part because they're meant to be more expendable. If you look into naval history there's tons of disparaging nicknames, bad press, and black humor around DEs, DDs, FFs, and OPVs. Which, it must be said, seem to be continually forgotten, only to be brought up again by the next generation: there's not a single complaint about LCS today, for instance, that wasn't also said about Perry, at least until the Stark incident quelled the critics.
@@GintaPPE1000 destroyers deserve respected as they are the maddest of Lasses in the navy. HMS Glowworm going ramming speed on Hipper, Taffy III and particularly USS Johnston and Hatsuzuki facing off against overwhelming odds for 2 hours so the survivors of the carriers could escape during Leyte Gulf. And this are just a few examples, don't underestimate the little guys, they are the backbone of the navy
Oh, I don't know, the Jeep carriers along with a handful of DDs and DEs gave a pretty good account of themselves off of some island called Samar. But overall, you are right. if it were to me, I'd suggest a ratio of 3:1 jeep/jump jet carriers to fleet carriers.
When I was in Navy Bootcamp, we were told a story of when the first Nuclear-powered CV was going into sea trials, and they essentially did a 'flank drill' or something like that. Essentially going from a dead stop to flank speed as quickly as possible. The Enterprise took off so fast and with so much torque that it actually twisted the keel of the ship, and threw up bow waves up and over the flight deck. We were also told that they very much could outrun their escorting fleets if they wanted/needed to.
The 2005 encounter between the Gotland class diesel-electric sub and the USS Ronald Reagan has often been reported as a testament to the vulnerability of carriers to stealthy submarine platforms. What is also often overlooked are the specific ROE that dictated the course of engagement, some elements of which were not necessarily realistic expectations for standards of combat operations. It's still food for thought, but like everything else to consider in such a complex environment, it remains challenging to draw hard and fast conclusions that will support large shifts in operational doctrine and evolution of defensive capabilities. Per the article from the National Interest, the Gotland did not survive the encounter, and at the end of the exercise, "It was shipped back to Sweden on a mobile dry dock rather than making the journey on its own power."
The Gotland class is specifically designed to operate in the Baltic Sea. It's not and never was intended to cross oceans. It made its way TO California in a transport ship and it made its way back home in the same way.
The aircraft carrier itself is not the important part. The aircraft are. The carrier itself finds its value only in terms of the fleet defense and alpha strike it can support/project. So, unless modern air combat becomes obsolete, the carrier will not.
@@090giver090 but its a possible end to air power, It travels at the speed of light so dodging it out, Plane are not armored to the level of tanks, and there is nothing to hide behind in the sky
@@graveperil2169 Ground and sea-based, absolutely no, lasers will always be the line-of-sight weapon. Yes, light can curve, but there's no way to control that as a weapon. Also, even powerful laser needs many seconds to shoot down even small drones, but manned fixed-wing aircraft are much tougher than that. By the time you fired the laser at the aircraft, it could retaliate by firing its own weapons on you before you could concentrate enough energy to cause any meaningful damage. If you want to use directed-energy weapon at long-range, below-the-horizon, guess how you will do that? With airpower! By putting laser weapons on the aircraft.
@@graveperil2169 Yes, _in theory._ In practive my bet is that air power would just evolve to counter new threat, not go entirely extinct. Also you don't need to uparmor planes to withstand laser, you... polish it (or put any potential reflective coating to scatter as much energy as possible instead of absorb it that cause its damage effects).
One thought with things like carriers is that your opponent devotes a lot of time and effort focusing on the carriers that they ignore other threats which can have an intangible benefit in a strategic sense.
For me you provide the best analitics related to armies/ air force & navies. Putting into balance pros & cons (teorethical but expecially real life) helps us understand better the concepts begind usign different types of equipment. Keep up the very good job you are performing already
This is mostly for myself: Before I move past the 2:05 mark, if any technology is arguably obsolete, what would replace the function of (in this case) power projection around the globe, that a carrier serves. If there's nothing to supersede or replace that function, the carrier group will remain, regardless of counter measures. The only thing that'll happen is that the counter measures will be explored.
One point to add to the Build a Bear concept: Until the *very* recent (in terms of the timelines on which carriers are designed) advent of EMALS, CATOBAR *required* a steam plant. Non-nuclear steam propulsion has been on the way out for decades, in favor of diesel or gas turbine. Conventional steam required maintaining training pipelines and logistics chains in order to manage a powerplant that was far less efficient in terms of space, weight, and maintenance, but which only provided catapults, but not the logistic and strategic benefits of nuclear.
If you don't have a steam plant for propulsion, it's easy to have the steam delivered by e.g. what is known as a donkey boiler. There are other ways of generating steam than to nick it from your propulsion plant. That said, EMALS is still the way to go, steam is just obsolete.
@@grahamstrouse1165 Probably quite unneccessarily so. My guess is that General Atomics messed up. Shouldn't be that hard. There are amusement park rides that use the exact same type of linear motor. Furthermore, using today's battery technology should be much easier than the flywheel energy storage that GA went for.
@@grahamstrouse1165I’ve heard it really hasn’t, that the big error numbers are mostly made up of minor software errors that are self-repaired or very very quickly fixed with human intervention. Assuming you are talking about recent performance and not the actual system integration in the past of course.
Another example of how big carriers are a deterrent, is how Argentinian intelligence assessed feasibility of taking the Falklands in 1982. Argentina figured that Britain had just scrapped HMS Ark Royal (a super carrier), so the Falklands would be easy. But Britain still had two strike carriers (Invisible and Hermes, both with Harriers), long range Vulcan bombers, and nuclear (powered) subs. My point is, the brief British “super-carrier gap” was perceived as a weakness.
The Royal Navy was lucky that the Argentine submariners never trained a real torpedo shoot before the war. They had one British carrier in their sights but f u the wiring of the torpedoes ...
