SNAFU!

Thursday, August 09, 2012

Carrier Navy. Threat Personified. Chinese Subs.

On October 26, 2006, a Chinese Song class submarine is said to have "popped up" and "surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and missiles before being detected" within 5 nautical miles (9 km) of the carrier USS Kitty Hawk while she was operating in the Pacific Ocean

The series continues despite some catcalls from the cheap seats.

You would think that after a regiment of SU-27's and Fast Attack Missile Boats, that the carrier in our mythical exercise would begin to catch a break.

NOT GONNA HAPPEN!

In 2006 a Chinese Song Class Sub was able to pop up virtually in the center of a Carrier Battle Group. The stunning thing. She was undetected. This points to another weakness in the carrier force. The lack of a proper fast flying anti-sub asset. The Anti-Sub Helos do good work in restricted waters but over open ocean and a fast moving carrier force it becomes a bit of an issue. You say well no problem we have P-8's coming online and P-3's right? Well not so fast. They'll be searching for Boomers and attempting to sweep the area ahead of the fleet. Quiet diesel subs will still be an issue.

In this scenario they would seek to lay in wait and pop up for quick shots on the carrier group. The hope would be to cut reaction down to mere seconds...almost too quick for automatic systems to react, definitely too quick for the officers on the bridge to give the order to fire.

On a sidenote, the British experience in the Falklands must be taken into account too. Many have talked about decoys and what they would do to incoming missiles. The Brits found that decoyed missiles sometimes hit other ships in your task force. Additionally if the attack by the subs is timed to coincide with the attacks by the fighters and fast attack boats you can bump up the number of missiles going after our carrier in this mythical incident to 1200.

1200 missiles going after a carrier in a max effort attack. Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles still have to be included (I can tell you now I'm thinking at least 5 per carrier) and bombers and a few stealth aircraft.

This is gonna get good.

New Zealand SWAT conducts helo-assault during raid on dot com house!

via Tactical Life.

Wow.

A heliborne assault to go after a dot com guy? A coordinated ground force follow on force? I wonder what they would do against some of our drug dealers! And I thought US police were militarized!

Task Force Jaguar. Chinook & Merlin aircraft

Absolute Beauty.

One of the most beautiful airplanes ever made.

Upping the ante. Tossing in Chinese surface forces against a US Carrier.

I've been gentle with those that believe that the status quo for the US Navy's carriers is ok.

Time to end the nonsense and slap the dogshit out of those that think that we're ready to deal with a max effort being tossed at our nation's pride.

So with that, lets put into this mix a small surface combatant. The Chinese version of our streetfighter concept the Houbei Class Fast Attack Craft. Specs are from Wiki.

General characteristics
Displacement:	220 long tons (224 t) full load
Length:	42.6 m (139 ft 9 in)
Beam:	12.2 m (40 ft 0 in)
Draught:	1.5 m (4 ft 11 in)
Propulsion:	2 diesel engines @ 6,865 hp (5,119 kW) with 4 waterjet propulsors by MARI
Speed:	36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph)
Complement:	12^[2]
Sensors and processing systems:	Surface search radar: 1 Type 362 Navigational radar: 1 Electro-optics: HEOS 300
Armament:	• Anti-ship missiles: 8 C-801/802/803 in friction stir welded aluminium missile launch containers^[3] or • Land-attack missiles: 8 Hongniao missile-2 long range land attack cruise missiles.^[4] • Surface-to-air missiles: FLS-1 surface-to-air launcher with 12 QW class MANPAD missiles • 1 × licensed copy of KBP AO-18 6-barrel 30 mm gun (AK-630) by ZEERI
Notes:	Details remain speculative

Can't find an estimated range for the boat but it doesn't have to range far. Its missiles will make up for any short legs it might have and 36 knots is'nt anything to sneeze at.

Speaking of missiles.

8 anti-ship missiles per ship. If we can expect the Chinese to modernize and upgrade the current fit then those vaunted one missile carrier killers can be expected in the near future...but even wthout them, the Chinese have 89 of these boats at 8 missiles a piece which puts another 700 plus missiles into the air combined with the 400 that were launched by our mythical SU-27's in this exercise.

1100 plus missiles and we only have two systems involved. A couple of Regiments of SU-27's and some fast attack missile boats.

We still aren't including subs, bombers, J-20's or J-10's. We also haven't added any friction to the equation by having mines being laid in the area, the threat of anti-ship ballistic missiles, hacking or space warfare aimed at taking out communication relays and ISR assets.

1100 anti-ship missiles are streaking toward one of our carriers in this mythical exercise and the heavy hitters haven't even shown up yet.

Do you think our carriers could withstand this attack?

UPDATE:

Because Aussie Digger is being an asshole, let me fast forward this little series. But first let me say that it was suppose to build up to including Xian Bombers, subs, and a mythical regiment of J-20's and J-10's. The whole point of it was to say that instead of building a navy to fight in the littorals the US Navy has a responsibility to continue to build towards winning the blue water fight. In light of that fact which I hoped to illustrate over the course of a few more posts, I was saying that the naval equivalent of land based counter insurgency (littoral warfare) is past its sell by date and by extension the LCS too. Thanks Aussie Digger and Company for ruining what was building to be an enjoyable little exercise. Hope you're happy.