this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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honest question doesn't aircraft carriers serves mostly to bully small and underdeveloped nations?
like, something that size and slow, seems like a easy target for any decent navy or air force
Yes, but also no. They're explicitly FOR someone with a "decent navy or airforce". Against an enemy using conventional naval forces and tactics aircraft carriers are king. You basically can't beat them with a conventional ship.
Three dudes in a dingy with a death wish and a big enough bomb? It's fucked. Or at least none of its fancy defenses will do shit, if they can get past its escort. The US navy lies awake at night scared of drones and cheap SCUDs. But they're BEGGING for someone to bring a "decent" navy against an aircraft carrier.
Also want to point out that this is almost all theoretical doctrine. There hasn't really been peer-level fleet combat since WW2 so realistically we can only guess at what kind of doctrine and weapons work and which don't.
We can only guess. But every single thing the US puts out about its doctrine, about its capacity and about its plans are about how much they can't wait for China to try to build a modern-but-slightly-out-of-date Yamato (For some reason) so they can do the pacific campaign but better.
Not sure if you meant the battleship or just Japan in general, but funny either way
What do you mean by "conventional naval forces" here? WW2 dreadnought? Or something like this, specifically with anti-ship missiles to kill carrier groups?
Not really true, Swedes of all people proven several years ago that even farily cheap conventional submarines can be very dangerous to US carriers, and lots of navies have those.
If you're going for a "decent navy" plan, there is hardly any better use for your money than ordering few Kilo II subs or similar.
Carriers are the naval past, subs continue on into the future, but you can't conquer shit with a sub.
We are not talking about any conquering here though. And btw you can't conquer anything with a carrier either, it's pure racket weapon.
Yes, I was referring to amphibious ships which allow you to land boots on shore.
Yeah but also on very small scale since each LHA can carry 1687 marines without heavy support. And there are 9 of them currently, so using just them and other ships for support they can conquer some islands or make a shore landing at most. That make them also mostly a terror weapon, like the XV - XIX century raids colonizers did. Not a serious conquering like in Iraq.
you cant conquer things with weapons, that's not how you occupy/hold land. the only thing that works is boots.
Yes, I was referring to amphibious ships which allow you to land boots on shore.
All you need is a lot of cheap, shitty missiles on a lot of cheap, shitty platforms. Three dudes on one dinghy will get got by the .50 cals, 25mm, and Phalanxes (they learned from the Cole in the Gulf of Aden). Lots of dudes on lots of cheap, fast boats with the cheapest, most basic anti-ship missiles will take out any modern surface navy ship. The IRGCN swarm tactics will work.
So much tacticool technology used by Burgerland is for bullying nations that can't meaningfully fight back.
Fuckin A-10
Or AC-130 being even more in point, never deployed when the victims have any AA capability.
Oh geez, yes! And it has a classically USian pretentious name too, doesn't it? Spook or something
Spooky, stinger and ghostrider depending on configuration.
Yes, US military is geared for that, the fact revealed by the ammunition and supply debacle in the Ukraine war.
Carriers are used for the good old gunboat diplomacy.
And it's not only even hypersonic missiles that are danger to them. Quite long time ago Swedish navy proven during the NATO maneuvers that competently used non-nuclear submarine can sink the carrier too. There's also strange coincidence between Iran proving they have working supercavitating torpedoes and USN reluctance to sail the carriers into Persian Gulf. Btw NATO still don't have such torpedoes too while USSR had them since 1977.
Don't they cope about those torpedoes with "oh yeah well they're unguided and therefore bad unlike glorious USN stuff"?
Their cope about this one is that Iran doesn't have a good platform for it.
The thing is they're not coping about supercavitating torpedoes on their own. Like I've never seen anyone say that's bad or lame. The US DID try to steal the tech back in the early 2000s too. With most stuff like this the tone is a combination of pointing out the US' superior platforms and "We can't allow a missile gap" rhetoric to build hype for more military procurement.
Like think about it. If you say the weapon is useless you can't sell the countermeasure. So the weapon is good, but they can't use it well yet... BUT ONE DAY THEY MIGHT, so you need to buy the newest raytheon/general dynamics//whatever toy.
Excellent point. Thanks!
They are guided, idk where they get that they aren't.
Standard of proof for flaws in a NATO weapon: "I want a declassified combat report from a NATO source that explicitly states word for word what you're saying."
Standard of proof for flaws in non-NATO weapons:
main source: racism
"weapon x bad because orientals are dumb". "they dont have value for human life so their arm their soldiers with cheap things". "this decent weapon they have is stolen superior western tech"
Actually this one is soviet tech that the US tried to steal.
screeches loudly RUSSIAN PROPAGANDIST EVIL SEE SEE PEE TANKIE redacted redacted insert racism
Just something I've read in Russian liberal press like a decade ago
Ah so the universal liberal source: their ass.
That is the US's MO for their wars. To be fair, that has been the vast majority of conflicts they have engaged in so it makes a certain degree of sense. They are the world's playground bully.