Another example of supercarriers being needed.

[Meathead]

I know that I don't have all the answers...


But I know that an aircraft carrier is an awfully big target hard to miss...

Drones do seem to be more fuel efficient than regular aircraft...

And aircraft carrier GROUPS do seem to use a LOT of fuel... which isn't exactly always easy to obtain in a theatre of operation.

Which Germany had much much better tanks but without the gas/diesel they made for nice lawn ornaments too far away from battle lines to do any good.

Fuel, munitions, mobility, communications and food...these things are needed to win wars. I'm not sure that a C1-30 can land on an aircraft carrier...or take off from one. But I am about sure that an aircraft carrier group needs a container ship load of supplies on a regular basis to operate. But a floating city is hard to miss just the same.

The supercarriers don't need fuel just their aircraft, being nuclear they carry all they need on them.

 

[Dayton3]

I know that I don't have all the answers...


But I know that an aircraft carrier is an awfully big target hard to miss...

Drones do seem to be more fuel efficient than regular aircraft...

You have actual evidence to support either of those claims?

Thought not.

 

[JohnDB]

The supercarriers don't need fuel, being nuclear they carry all they need on them.

Okay...I get that part...but I don't think that they are entirely electrical...that just wouldn't be right in a lot of ways. As an electrician I would be terrified if the nuclear reactor was the sole source of all power on the carrier. That's just not how things are done. For a laundry list of reasons.
They must burn a lot of diesel for generators...and jets still need jet fuel too.

Just saying...physics are telling me that they use diesel and jet fuel...a lot of it.

 

[JohnDB]

You have actual evidence to support either of those claims?

Thought not.

Flight time...drones have been claimed to be able to fly for extremely long flight times...days at a time. Especially the surveillance drones. The ones carrying munitions?...at a guess probably not as long but environmental systems aren't needed so that would leave room for fuel and weight. Controls by pilot weight would be gone too.

 

[Dayton3]

Flight time...drones have been claimed to be able to fly for extremely long flight times...days at a time. Especially the surveillance drones. The ones carrying munitions?...at a guess probably not as long but environmental systems aren't needed so that would leave room for fuel and weight. Controls by pilot weight would be gone too.

You can have long flight times when the flights are one way.

 

[JohnDB]

You can have long flight times when the flights are one way.

Drones aren't cheap...I don't think that they are all that disposable.

 

[Mushroom]

I'm not sure that a C1-30 can land on an aircraft carrier...or take off from one. But I am about sure that an aircraft carrier group needs a container ship load of supplies on a regular basis to operate. But a floating city is hard to miss just the same.

Actually, it can. And it was done as a test during the Cold War, as a test program.



And supplies are not a problem, that is why the US is recognized as the leader in the world in UNREP (underway replenishment). The US had been doing that since before WWII, and has it down to a science by now.

But you would be surprised how hard it is to find a ship on the ocean. Japan sailed 4 carriers and almost 50 other ships to within a couple hundred miles of Hawaii in 1941, completely undetected. And trying to locate even a carrier without knowing where to look is almost impossible. Imagine trying to find a bus, somewhere in the Gobi desert. That is a lot of area to cover, to try and find something that is always moving.

 

[JohnDB]

Nuclear power generation is one of those things that are usually non-stop... meaning that you don't stop the reaction because it requires explosives to restart...

However...the multiple safeties in place are very quick about shutting it down.

Increases in output have to be slowly ramped up... otherwise you have Chernobyl again.

Actually, it can. And it was done as a test during the Cold War, as a test program.



And supplies are not a problem, that is why the US is recognized as the leader in the world in UNREP (underway replenishment). The US had been doing that since before WWII, and has it down to a science by now.

But you would be surprised how hard it is to find a ship on the ocean. Japan sailed 4 carriers and almost 50 other ships to within a couple hundred miles of Hawaii in 1941, completely undetected. And trying to locate even a carrier without knowing where to look is almost impossible. Imagine trying to find a bus, somewhere in the Gobi desert. That is a lot of area to cover, to try and find something that is always moving.

Radar and surveillance satellite tech has come a very long way since that time...much much easier today as we are 80 years past then.

 

[Mushroom]

Drones aren't cheap...I don't think that they are all that disposable.

They come in at around $20 million each. Or about a third of an F/A-18.

But the biggest issue most see with them is that they can (and have been) rendered completely ineffective by radio jamming techniques. A great many missions that they were to have done in Syria had to be scrapped for that very reason. We know for a fact that Russia has specific equipment to render communications with drones impossible, and if anybody thinks the US and China do not have this ability also, they are fooling themselves.

Because unlike a manned aircraft, a drone can do nothing without constant 2-way communication. Which also means they are easier to detect and triangulate their location. Throw up a lot of EM hash, and at least our newer generation of drones are smart enough to realize all communication has been lost and they will return to their base. But without firing a shot.

 

[justinacolmena]

since there is a lot of land nearby to base supplemental ground support and air bases on. If we can afford it doing both would be best

Like hey shut up you woke piece of military dumbass shit. Air strikes with fucking "ground support." No shit. Wake up already. That air force jet cargo bay is full of bales of opium and USD $100 bills earnest money from buyers who sampled the product. They're shooting friendlies from planes and helicopters in the sky.

 

[JohnDB]

They come in at around $20 million each. Or about a third of an F/A-18.

But the biggest issue most see with them is that they can (and have been) rendered completely ineffective by radio jamming techniques. A great many missions that they were to have done in Syria had to be scrapped for that very reason. We know for a fact that Russia has specific equipment to render communications with drones impossible, and if anybody thinks the US and China do not have this ability also, they are fooling themselves.

Because unlike a manned aircraft, a drone can do nothing without constant 2-way communication. Which also means they are easier to detect and triangulate their location. Throw up a lot of EM hash, and at least our newer generation of drones are smart enough to realize all communication has been lost and they will return to their base. But without firing a shot.

Jamming all radio communications is as easy as shooting a howitzer barrel full of magnets into the sky...dumb and stupid...but it works and is fairly inexpensive. Laws of physics is a bitch...they work every time.

 

[Mushroom]

Radar and surveillance satellite tech has come a very long way since that time...much much easier today as we are 80 years past then.

You are still looking for a very small object, in thousands of square miles of water.

Also satellites are not "real time". So say you get a pass over the location of a carrier every 2 hours. At an average underway speed of around 25 miles per hour and it could go in any direction, that means every two hours the analysts are having to search around a thousand square miles of ocean to try and find it again. Easy if it stayed on the same course and speed.

But if they start making their movements erratic and unpredictable, then good luck locating it again, before the next image comes in and you have to do it all over again. Such a group can move on average around 600 miles in a day. In any direction. Put a pin in the location it was in the day before, then the circle it could be inside of the next day is literally over a million square miles.

A≈4.52×10(6)

As I said, finding a bus in the Gobi desert. There is a reason the Sailor's Prayer starts "Oh Lord, thy sea is so vast and my boat is so small."

 

[Mushroom]

Jamming all radio communications is as easy as shooting a howitzer barrel full of magnets into the sky...dumb and stupid...but it works and is fairly inexpensive. Laws of physics is a bitch...they work every time.

Very inexpensive. You do not even need to find the right frequency, just throw up a broad spectrum and jam everything. The down side is that you lose your own communications other than by ground wire. But you do not need to do it all the time. Just throw it on like they did in Syria when the warning came across that an attack was on the way.

They have only been as effective as they have been because they have been used against independent groups not associated or equipped by a nation-state. So against ISIS or Taliban, piece of cake. They used consumer garage door openers to trigger their bombs, and make primitive drones with commercial off the shelf parts. But against say Turkey, Russia, the US or even North Korea, do not expect them to be anywhere near as effective. Almost any country with the capability to build radio transmitters can build such a device. Then simply mount it in a truck. Something that is so simple that it was done in WWII by partisans to avoid capture by the Germans.

This Is the ATV-Mounted Jammer That Took Down an Iranian Drone

The drone was less than a mile from the USS Boxer when the Marines caused it to crash.

www.popularmechanics.com

 

[Jarlaxle]

Exactly. At about the same time they started to use Heavy Cruiser hulls rather than oilers and colliers and converting them.

In reality, the hull size of a heavy cruiser and a battleship is not all that much. The biggest difference is the armor on the hull, and the guns.

Top is the USS Missouri (BB-63), and below that is the USS Alaska (CB-1). The BB weighs a lot more, but size wise there is not a huge difference.

And so see the scale, the carrier at the bottom is the USS Croatan (CVE-25), which after the war was transferred to the Military Sealift Command. Where she remained in service until 1970. If any ever wondered how the Air Cavalry got their helicopters to Vietnam, you are looking at it. She spent most of her time until finally removed from service moving aircraft all around the world.

The largest destroyer on the bottom is a Fletcher class. The other smaller ones are WWI era 4 stackers.

Of course, you also have exceptions to that. Like the IJN Shinano.

Literally built on a Battleship hull, intended to be the third ship of the Yamato class. But after losses at Midway, it was instead finished as a carrier. Rushed into service, and sunk ten days into it's service life. But the concept was as old as carriers.

The US Navy had never, not once, has a carrier, not one carrier, built on a heavy cruiser hull.

 

[JohnDB]

You are still looking for a very small object, in thousands of square miles of water.

Also satellites are not "real time". So say you get a pass over the location of a carrier every 2 hours. At an average underway speed of around 25 miles per hour and it could go in any direction, that means every two hours the analysts are having to search around a thousand square miles of ocean to try and find it again. Easy if it stayed on the same course and speed.

But if they start making their movements erratic and unpredictable, then good luck locating it again, before the next image comes in and you have to do it all over again. Such a group can move on average around 600 miles in a day. In any direction. Put a pin in the location it was in the day before, then the circle it could be inside of the next day is literally over a million square miles.

A≈4.52×10(6)

As I said, finding a bus in the Gobi desert. There is a reason the Sailor's Prayer starts "Oh Lord, thy sea is so vast and my boat is so small."

But I would think that if they can make a car with even a semi working self driving mode that a search program could find a ship in a million square miles of ocean and a person could be used to confirm that it was indeed a ship.
I'm not saying that what you are saying is wrong...but that advances in tech are somewhat astounding these days.

Of course picking out the one ship you are looking for out of the thousands traversing the oceans on a daily basis might be a bit of a sticking point and computers are helpful...but they aren't that smart. Also you have to actually task surveillance satellites to looking too...and the Earth is a big place to monitor with a lot of bad guys hiding like cockroaches everywhere possible.
We don't have an unlimited supply of satellites or manpower to analyze their feeds. Or people who can simplify and put the most pertinent information in a 15 minute brief.

But I would think that an aircraft carrier could have drone surveillance 24/7 of a large enough perimeter if in hostile waters. Just a matter of having enough 20-somethings who know how to play video games...

 

[Mushroom]

The US Navy had never, not once, has a carrier, not one carrier, built on a heavy cruiser hull.

Wrong. I already mentioned the Saipan class.

A total of two built, A carrier superstructure built on the hull of a Baltimore class Heavy Cruiser.

 

[Mushroom]

But I would think that an aircraft carrier could have drone surveillance 24/7 of a large enough perimeter if in hostile waters. Just a matter of having enough 20-somethings who know how to play video games...

That is why they have half a dozen or more ships escorting one wherever they go. And that is only during peace time, expect that to increase dramatically if a shooting war ever starts.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Wrong. I already mentioned the Saipan class.

A total of two built, A carrier superstructure built on the hull of a Baltimore class Heavy Cruiser.

That were never actually used as such, and the white elephants were quickly converted to other uses.

Every full-size fleet carrier was designed from the keel up as such, starting in 1930. The only ones converted were the battlecruiser-based Lexington-class. The light carriers (Independence-class) were quick-n-dirty (unarmored, crowded, poor seakeeping) conversions because they could be built quickly. Ranger, Wasp, the Yorktown-class, and the Essex-class were all designed from scratch as carriers. So were the Midway-class.

 

[Mushroom]

That were never actually used as such, and the white elephants were quickly converted to other uses.

Once again, you are wrong. The USS Saipan served as a fleet carrier for 3 years, and was even the first US carrier to deploy with jets on board. She was the flagship for Carrier Division 17, and patrolled off the Korean cost during the early days of the armistice. And even flew Corsairs in support of the French at the close of the Indochina War.

So yes, she was indeed used as a carrier on active service. And the USS Wright was as well, but only as a training carrier for midshipmen and Naval Aviators learning to land and take off from carriers.

But they were "white elephants", because when they were designed and built, carriers were still new, and many were questioning still if having a few big carriers, or multiple small carriers would be the best solution. And the big carriers side won that argument. So all of the other ones were repurposed, sold, or scrapped.

But contrary to your claims, the Saipan class was indeed based on a Heavy Cruiser hull, and did actually serve as a carrier. They were not converted to their later purposes until after 3 years of service in their original rolls.

And the Lexington Class was built because they had 2 hulls under construction, that the Navy was forbidden by the Washington Naval Treaty to complete. The US was already at it's limit, but as the carrier was still considered "experimental", and any ships already under construction could be converted instead into carriers and still be within the guidelines of the treaty..

The UK also quickly did the same thing, as did Japan, Italy, and France. The IJN Akagi was supposed to be an Amagi class Battlecruiser (46k tons, ten 16" guns). The Amagi was also undergoing conversion when she was heavily damaged in the drydock during an earthquake and was scrapped.

 

[Markle]

And you're just a troll, so what's new? The fact is you don't know any more than anybody else, and it chaps your ass no end, which is why you have tantrums when your rather shallow knowledge you got from Reader's Digests and old Time/Life collections isn't the last word on anything. And, your obsessive hatred of drones is just hilarious; they can built in all sizes, despite your delusions to the contrary, and they will carry more bang for the buck than manned craft will, at about half the costs. Get used to it.

What you're intentionally ignoring is the fact that we are now blind in the most violent, terrorist training grounds in the world. Without eyes and ears on the ground, we're as exposed and as much in danger as we were on September 10, 2001.

We're in deep doo doo.