[borisk]

Very interesting. Wonder what does building an aircraft carrier fleet say about China's military priorities. Are they more focused on occupying Taiwan, or on keeping the Malacca Straight open for commerce, or on power projection across the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

[wongarsu]

Taiwan is just 150 miles / 250km from the Chinese mainland. You can just use a regular airfield. When talking about the island chains around Taiwan you get a bit further out, but nothing you can't handle with one midair refueling.

On the other hand if China were to prepare for a war in the South China Sea aircraft carriers would be very useful. They have a couple airstrips there, but they are vulnerable and not as flexible as bringing a couple carriers to the coast of your enemy. It's also a good deterrent as a pure show of force.

Keeping the Malacca Straight open might also be a big part of it.

[Andaith]

I think it says they aspire to being a global power, not just a regional power. They want the ability to project power anywhere, just like the USA.

[simonblack]

Probably more about keeping distant sea lanes like the Malacca Strait open in the short term, until the overland routes are more developed. After which, carriers are a waste of resources.

Otherwise I'd say it's just as silly for China to build obsolete carriers as it is for the US to keep building them.

Missiles outrange carriers which in turn outrange battleships. The battleships became obsolete in 1941. The carriers became obsolete in the early 2000s.

[YZF]

Missiles out-range carriers but the cost of hitting a target in Yemen with a Tomahawk missile launched from afar (2 million dollars, range 2500km) is much higher than the cost of dropping a bomb (~ 16k dollars) from a jet on said target. Even after amortizing all the other costs. The firepower an aircraft carrier brings with it to any location it gets to is really hard to match with missiles. More than the "bandwidth" and cost of that, there's also latency. Drones are another thing to compare to.

[simonblack]

much higher than the cost of dropping a bomb (~ 16k dollars) from a jet on said target

If you can operate a jet fighter-bomber for less than (say) $200 K an hour* I'd be very surprised. And that doesn't take into account the servicing time on modern 'hangar queens' to get them ready for their next sortie. And what's the cost per hour of operating a carrier??

Try to include ALL your costs in working out the cost-efficiency.

* Let's be really generous and say you get 10,000 hours of service life out of a fighter jet. (The designed service life is only 8,000 hours.) The F-35 costs around 130 million bucks so over 10,000 hours that cost comes out to $13,000 per hour in just amortising the purchase cost, without adding in the operating costs themselves.

[YZF]

A jet can also carry a lot of bombs and you might need the jet for other missions anyways.

I agree completely but I think the economics still favor the jets, especially if you need any precision or control, if you just want to lob explosives as cheap as possible maybe the equation is a bit different (though lobbing a lot of them over very large distances is still expensive).

[bbor]

Yeah I am far from an expert in actual academic military studies (?), but I think there’s a lot of theory still riding on “big boat capable of deploying a variety of aircraft”, even if they’re not used exactly how they were in past wars, cold and hot. Just, like, from a million miles up: planes and drones are a lot more useful than missiles alone, and the economic angle you highlight is just one of the basic differences in tactical affordances.

…”weaponry studies”? Now I’m curious to what extent there exists an academic commentary on stuff like this, separate from internal researchers/stakeholders…

[actionfromafar]

Even if we accept the premise, carriers are still formidable force projection against non-peer adversaries. Imagine for instance a chinese carrier vs the Philippines, not vs the US.

[unyttigfjelltol]

Carriers outswarm long-range missiles and out-loiter long-range air patrols.

But more to the point if you can't defend a mobile ocean-going fortress, what can you defend?

[lmm]

> if you can't defend a mobile ocean-going fortress, what can you defend?

Underground bunkers (I believe Sweden has a decent history of converting caves into aircraft hangers). Just as we don't really have conventional fortresses on land any more, only trenches and bunkers, as munitions get better we're reaching a point where the only way to keep anything safe is to bury it.

[hollerith]

We found out that the battleship had become obsolete because of a world war. We aren't going to know for sure whether the carrier is obsolete till the next major naval war.

[skhunted]

Why do you think aircraft carriers are obsolete?

[JohnBooty]

Note how Ukraine sunk much of Russia's Black Sea fleet... without having a navy of their own to speak of. No carriers involved but it's a harbinger of what's to come. Missiles and drones.

Carriers are increasingly vulnerable against things like missiles and drones that are multiple orders of magnitude cheaper. Think about how a carrier group would defend itself against, say, a heterogenous attack of 100-200 combined simultaneous ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, and/or manned aircraft.

Obviously carrier groups have multiple layers of missile defense: CWIS, combat air patrols, etc. But you only need one missile to get through and that carrier is quite possibly going to be unable to launch planes for quite a while.

And even if you don't hit the carrier, the carrier is going to be undertaking evasive maneuvers during the attack. That means no planes taking off and landing. For a very early example of this, look at the Battle of Midway. The American air attacks were disorganized and sporadic. And yet, they largely kept the Japanese carriers from flying planes for much of the day, leading to a crushing American victory just as their window of opportunity closed.

None of this exactly means carriers are "obsolete." Against non-peers, that is still a whole lotta force projection.

[skhunted]

There are no missiles capable of loitering. (And if there were then they be essentially like airplanes and air dominance is what matters.) As such land launched missiles are mostly useless against carriers in open seas. By the time the missile reaches the carrier group the group will have moved position.

It’s hard to find a specific ship in open seas. The Russian navy suffers from a lack of combined arms and force protection. A carrier battle group is far more capable of defense than the Russian navy in the Black Sea.

I don’t believe you are well versed in modern naval operations. I’m not either but the fact that France, UK, Brazil, India, and China have aircraft carriers suggests they aren’t obsolete. Carriers are well protected. Not invincible.

The reference to Midway is odd because without aircraft carriers the U.S. would have lost the battle. Likewise, without carriers the Japanese would not have stood a chance.

[maxglute]

Carriers are extremely slow. High end missiles are extremely fast. 40 knots < mach 15 / 1000s of knots. Carriers cannot, and have not ever been able to out run land based mach 10+ IRBMs missiles - the relevant type designed to hit carriers at sprint + airwing + standoff range or deter them from entering range where carriers can operate at all.

The entire carriers are fast and will be where missiles will not misconception comes from people conflating carrier speed (slow), with adversary ability to plan/execute counter strike operations (typically even slower). The prior assumption is _most_ US adversaries lack ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) which would constrain mission planning to many hours which gives carriers room to move 100s of nautical miles, either outside of retaliatory missile ranges or simply adversary OODA loop, i.e. adversaries simply don't have hardware or software (as in processes) to plan a counter strike in time. It's not that carriers are fast, but adversaries are too slow in terms of operation planning to launch their fast hardware, giving carriers lots of time to slowly get to safety.

This is doesn't apply to high end adversaries with proper ISR (i.e. PRC who launched 100s of ISR satellites last few years) who pretty much knows where US carriers are at all times and have near persistent coverage of their operations, who can launch saturation strikes of mach 15+ missiles that can reach carriers within 30 minutes in indopac that can't be outrun and in salvo sizes that carrier groups does not have magazine depth to defend against.

[skhunted]

Middle launched from mainland China at a carrier fleet 1000 miles away isn’t going to hit with the current missile technology. Missiles are great at hitting fixed targets. They have some room for adjustments and maneuverability but not enough as it currently stands. Pinpointing within 100ft where a carrier is in open seas is highly nontrivial.

[Someone]

Ukraine apparently uses remotely operated drone boats that are cheap, can loiter, and aren’t easily detected because they need not be high above the waterline (Theirs probably are noisy, but only when moving)

If all you want is defense against an enemy deploying an airfield (aka aircraft carrier) close to your border, I think you could build thousands of them for the price of an aircraft carrier.

A bit like a minefield with mines that can target ships passing by.

An attacker would have to use mine sweepers to destroy them, protecting them with their carrier further out, but, these things being mobile, you could keep replacing them. Not invincible, but I think it is something planners are looking at.

[skhunted]

In the future such things as you describe will be a problem but not at this time. China can’t invade Taiwan because it doesn’t have the ability to deal with carrier fleets.

[JohnBooty]

    There are no missiles capable of loitering.

Blatantly incorrect, and I'm not sure what you wrote that in response to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering_munition

    The reference to Midway is odd because without aircraft 
    carriers the U.S. would have lost the battle.

Aircraft carriers were obviously the dominant force in the Pacific, almost a century ago. No argument there. There was really nothing to counter them, except fighters launched from other aircraft carriers.

Whether we're talking about 1942 or 2024, aircraft carriers can't perform evasive maneuvers and launch/land fighters simultaneously. You pretty much can't land a non-VTOL plane on a carrier doing anything but traveling in a straight line into the wind.

During the Battle of Midway, the USN fortuitiously exploited this weakness more effectively than the IJN. It was a big factor in the US victory.

    [Carriers] aren’t obsolete

As has been stated by myself and others multiple times: they're not entirely obsolete and still serve an important purpose. The vast majority of potential adversaries are not peers or near-peer capable of advanced missile attacks.

But if you don't think a carrier group is extremely vulnerable to a superpower with advanced missile technology, you might literally be thinking in 1942 terms.

    I don’t believe you are well versed in modern naval 
    operations. I’m not either 

One of these statements is correct.

[skhunted]

Those that are big enough to do major damage to an aircraft carrier can be intercepted by aircraft. Which is what I referred to when I mentioned air dominance being the key in this case.

There are no loitering missiles. If you read the wikipedia link you'd see this written:

Loitering munitions fit in the niche between cruise missiles and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs or combat drones), sharing characteristics with both.

Aircraft carriers matter greatly in peer to peer naval supremacy. China is building aircraft carriers to contest the seas around Taiwan against the U.S.

You are not well versed in modern naval operations. Neither am I.

[daniel-thompson]

carriers can be used to project power in scenarios short of all-out war, which is the common case, at the moment

[jowea]

Will overland routes ever be as cheap and used as sea routes?

And I feel the better comparison is does "missile on aircraft on carrier outrange hostile missile?"

[maxglute]

IMO slow acquisition = still playing around / PLANavy brass + CPC big bois thinks it's nice for dick measuring contest, with some limited peacetime use to wag said dick for diplomacy/"presence"/propaganda.

The reality seems to be that PRC is profoundly not serious about building carriers. They now have ~300x ship building capacity vs US, and outputs in one year as much tonnage as entire US WW2 5-year ship building program, yet is building up carriers at extremely slow rate (2.5 in ~15 years - with 01/liaoning rebuilt from USSR Varyag hull), when they can be spamming 2-3+ carriers PER year. For reference US was laying/building/launching/commissioning a Forrestal class and other large displacement carriers almost every year post WW2. It would be fairly easy for PRC to build 10+ carriers within a few years, but they don't, nor do they seem to be prioritizing building out requisit airwings. Relevant carrier programs are moving along, but it seems far from urgent. This is not the aquisition posture of a force that prioritizes / values carriers.

Compare to say PRC subsurface... they had shit subs until recently, but have consistently tried to close gap and built a lot of boats. Now that latest gen PLAN subs within 1ish generation of USN, they're expanding sub shipyards to build 6-8s simultaneously, i.e. 3-4x than US. Good sign they really care about subs.

TLDR is I don't know if PRC sees expansive role of carriers for future priorities, but it's still worth hedging / building up capability just in case. Real question is, why is PRC building so few carriers, why do most major carrier operators maintain minimal carrier fleet, which includes USN, whose minimum carrier #s are constrained by law (11+10 operational carriers/amphibious assault ships from 10 USC. 8062) and therefore we don't really know what USN priority would be if planners have freedom pursue any force composition. We do know USN insists it needs to build up against PRC but future navy force design is hedging on distributed lethality of more smaller hulls while maintaining the LEAST amount of carries they are legally obligated to operate, which to my knowledge they've never exceeded.