Wyndstryker
Member
Harriers, and at that time they were brand new. They shot down several without taking an air loss themselves, but they can't stop all the missiles. One Argentine plane was capable of sinking a ship.
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Is the United States' navy useless in a symmetrical war?
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Harriers, and at that time they were brand new. They shot down several without taking an air loss themselves, but they can't stop all the missiles. One Argentine plane was capable of sinking a ship.
Uh no, being able to destroy a satellite in low earth orbit from a moving ship is significantly harder and not the same as destroying it by launching from land.
DonasaurusRex
Online Ho Champ
ah well the US had the Tomcat at the time for intercepting missiles , didnt know harriers were in teh interceptor role, would've guessed attack or support planes.
Mr. Wedgewood
Member
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/sea-based-x-band-radar-1-sbx-1/
I always wondered what the full capabilities of this huge golfball thing I see almost everyday on the drive home.
I always wondered what the full capabilities of this huge golfball thing I see almost everyday on the drive home.
Thats pretty interesting. Kinda sad that they didn't let it run naturally. Seems like they couldn't handle losing even in a simulation.
"Winning" or "losing" wasn't the point of the exercise, the point was to test and practice the new network-centric warfare concept. The Red Force commander, van Riper, hijacked it to prove some kind of point. He exploited the rules in a way that made his forces overpowered compared to their real-life counterparts and was assisted by having Blue Force not even using their self-defense capabilities (because a Blue Force commander had ordered them "turned off" because they weren't supposed to be part of that exercise during that point - something that never ever happens in real life) resulting in a completely unrealistic outcome.
The reasons they couldn't handle "losing" was that they weren't supposed to. It was a $250 million dollar exercise that included a simulated amphibious assault. Just going "dang, he beat us, back to the drawing board" would have meant throwing all that away, wasting personnel time and depriving them of valuable practice in order to "beat" van Riper. That's just ridiculous.
The Millennium Challenge got way too much print with media all over the world using it as proof that the USN can be easily countered despite it proving nothing because it was never really intended to.
Mook1e
Member
I'm surprised more posters aren't discussing this. It's very significant with regards to the OP scenario.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/nov/13/20061113-121539-3317r/?page=all
I remember the Chinese diesel sub popping up behind my old ride back in the day.
Epsilon-delta
Banned
What rating did you choose?
If that's your old ride, I'm sure you already know that peacetime isn't wartime. A US carrier group in wartime would have deployed a much tighter ASW screen. They didn't detect the sub because they had no real reason to look for it, if it was actually during a shooting war with China - or even during escalating tensions that could potentially lead to one - that would obviously not be the case.
But even so yeah, if there's anything that might keep USN admirals up at night it should be diesel-electrics. Thankfully they seem to understand that and have trained with other nations that deploy advanced models - like the Gotland class, which is something of a point of pride for us Swedes.
They only gave me one option at MEPS, dont want to say here though. Its a desk job though.
Active duty enlisted
Epsilon-delta
Banned
Sounds like Crypto in the CIC, but have fun in boot and A-school!
Mook1e
Member
Yep, but I also know the problems we had finding OTHER Chinese submarines when we actually wanted to and employed the entire CVBG to do it. They're nasty little buggers. We've gotten better, but they're probably still a higher threat than the ballistics from medium and long range.
Souldestroyer Reborn
Banned
So let's say in this hypothetical situation that it is USofA against the rest of the world.
Go.
I don't think you understand the implications of spending twice as much as the rest of the world combined on military.
Souldestroyer Reborn
Banned
If it was every country in the world vs the US (which would never happen) nukes would start to fly and that would be humanity's extinction event.
Wyndstryker
Member
Spending is great at getting all the new toys first. Being second/third also allows copying to be a viable option at saving costs. As long as the number 1 doesn't use it first on number 2 and 3, being number 2 / 3 allows getting good stuff cheaper due to not spending as much in R&D. Might not be as good but can be just as effective cause in the end, all it takes is one bullet to kill a person, or one missile to sink a carrier.
The US can win any symmetrical war, but all it takes is a few battles to change it into an asymmetrical war. I would not want to fight a developed nation that has technology in an asymmetrical warfare scenario. They would have options available that the Taliban would only dream of using. With modern weapons and a populace that is determined, any occupation becomes a bloodbath.
thesuperfunk
Member
^^ people make this mistake all the time about war games. It's less about winning and losing and more about getting some reps in.
It seems like Van Riper (and someone high up in Navy command who could give the order to shut off the defense systems) wanted to get a message across to the sailors that they weren't invincible even with the greatest hardware, so they rigged up a scenario to do just that.
If this were actually a remotely plausible scenario, the navy would have already significantly updated their doctrines. An attack like that in the real world could maybe do some damage to a fleet led by overconfident admirals and commanders before they adjust to the tactic, but it is basically impossible to be able to do it on that scale, because no one has the assets to pull something like that off in the real world. It only worked in the exercise because the red team got to use whatever resources he said he had, while in a real war, he'd be limited to the stuff he actually had.
Occupation would likely never be a plan for the US military in a symmetrical war anyway. Depends on what the war is fought over and what the endgame goal is of course, but the US doesn't need territory.
The only realistic scenario I would see the US willingly engaging in a symmetrical war would be to protect a close ally and/or to prevent a regional power from interfering in our diplomatic and trade relations with another nation. Scenario 1A in likelihood would probably be China trying to do some fuckery with Taiwan. 1B and 1C are probably the same scenario but with Japan and Korea.
In that case the navy's role would mostly probably be just to provide air superiority over Taiwanese airspace and prevent China from trying to land troops on Taiwan. In this role, they could keep the fleet relatively safe from land based anti ship cruise missiles launched from the Chinese mainland which is at the moment the biggest threat.
Same situation on the European front if Russia did something crazy like attack Poland or another NATO member. I'm not sure Putin is crazy enough to test NATO directly though.
I see the China situation as more likely though because with the amount of population they have, China is likely to need more resources than they can produce domestically, which has historically been the number 1 cause for war. Russia has plenty of resources and a declining population, their only reason for starting a war is ego driven nationalistic dick waving.
I highly doubt you can find carriers by a satellite in the world's oceans. The US has gone through many war games, and have probably mapped every single island. They could be hidden indefinitely.
The US's military might is crazy. I forget the exact numbers, but the US Navy could separate from its homeland, and it would still have the second largest air force in the world (second to the US Air Force).
And don't US Navy ships have rail guns now? They would annihilate any enemy air base.
Fun to think about, for sure. Great for a movie, but not real life of course!
The US's military might is crazy. I forget the exact numbers, but the US Navy could separate from its homeland, and it would still have the second largest air force in the world (second to the US Air Force).
And don't US Navy ships have rail guns now? They would annihilate any enemy air base.
Fun to think about, for sure. Great for a movie, but not real life of course!
Well you can find them easily enough, but you can't fix a position to launch a missile strike by satellite, as the information is way out of date by the time it gets to the launch decision, and it's not like a spy satellite can hover over the target and provide real time updates on the target's positioning to the missile in flight(unlike what we see in the movies).
Calamari41
41 > 38
Why do people keep assuming that the carrier battle groups are just going to sit there and do nothing but try to bat away missile attacks? Those things are going to be busy taking out all of the launch sites, port cities, and overall manufacturing infrastructure of whatever country has decided to go after them.
Some miracle all-in effort that magically resulted in a carrier going down is equivalent to the Battle of Endor happening the way it did, except the Emperor and Vader aren't there and they have ten other Death Stars with full Star Destroyer fleets attached to each one.
Some miracle all-in effort that magically resulted in a carrier going down is equivalent to the Battle of Endor happening the way it did, except the Emperor and Vader aren't there and they have ten other Death Stars with full Star Destroyer fleets attached to each one.
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