Russia's naval doctrine and strategy

Does it require such advanced technology to integrate, for example, LRASM on a small ship?

That is likely the problem... not high tech enough... and smaller is cheaper, but also more limited in terms of multirole and flexibility...

@Mindstorm:

sorry for delaying my answer, I did some preliminary research and discovered many other aspects of our analysis that deserved attention, plus I had to attend other obligations. I will post here the first part of my answer and will continue with the rest in the coming days.

Mindstorm wrote:
LMFS let me start saying that both me and you know perfectly that this "Surgex "exercise was nothing more than a "puppet parade" constructed purposely by US Navy Command officials attempting to defend the role of aircraft carriers with severe personell and material augmentations and choosing ad hoc missions and equipemnt involved (in particular distance to targets and weapons of airwings) to produce absolutely unrwalizable sortie rate.

Yes I agree it was a carefully planned exercise, created by the USN in order to demonstrate they were still relevant in land attack missions like those the US military is interested in. And I can accept that wartime SGR (Sortie Generation Rate) can be much lower, as far as the opponent manages to create the kind of threats and variable conditions that impede the carrier command and crew to properly prepare themselves for optimum operation. But ultimately this predictability is a known characteristic of many military exercises, and on the other hand, the capacities demonstrated by the carrier were real. The report even identified many aspects that could be further improved. In essence, I accept the SURGEX values are not to be expected in real wartime operations unless in exceptional cases, but I dispute that the SGR is as critical in a naval warfare as it would be having effective weapons, which is not the case in the USN as I am repeating time after time. The land attack demands delivering huge amounts of payload on largely populated and built regions, while fleets are normally concentrated on tens of ships at most, that are heavily defended targets that can be defeated at best with highly sophisticated weapons but ultimately don't need the sheer amount of ordnance and therefore sorties that sustained land warfare demands. Interestingly, one of the few cases where an elevated SGR would be required would be DCA missions against the air power of a military using highly capable carriers, in order to contain the elevated number of attacks they could deliver on the onw fleet...

But i want to continue the analysis only to show how even within those parameters the cost and operative efficiency of aircraft carriers in any other role except remote ground attack against terribly inferior enemies is terribly low.  

The worst part about all this huge effort by the navy to remain relevant in the prestige role of being world policeman for the US government is that their effectiveness in land attack roles is actually very low compared to land-based air force, that is what was demonstrated in other conflicts and the USN was trying to refute with the SURGEX exercise.

https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0399carrier/

LMFS we are attempting to compute how much time would be required to the airwing to conduct long range operations and at what costs in terms of on-board fuel and ordance stock ,in other words what can produce the entire potential of an aircraft carrier in terms of sea control in a not WWII scenario.

I agree in doing this exercise, but what I understand as methodologically incorrect is not to consider the sensitivity of the scenario to the different approaches and weapons different navies may use. Using only the USN, a military organization focused in the land attack role and blatantly neglecting the naval strike role as a model can be accepted only by carriers detractors, but not by those like me that defend the role of air power in naval warfare.

So I think we should definitely explore the possibility of using Flanker platforms in our theoretical scenario on board the carrier-equipped CVN, with two options for the AShM loadout: 6 x Kh-31 or 3 x 3M54 like proposed by Novator. I submit that one single of those 3M54 missiles would probably sink a FFGX frigate, given the radar / AD constraints these vessels face against low flying targets and that I will detail on a later post.

Not, it was neither considered and neither could be executed at the condictions and preparations realized in this exercise.

I think this is a misinterpretation of the text:

Page 4

...Almost all the targets were within 200 nm of the USS Nimitz. These distances are not indicative of the maximum striking range of the aircraft, but rather were driven by the proximity of the carrier operating are to the target ranges. We show the maximum operational strike range that the strike / fighters could have reached, based on typical operational  employment and time airborne.

Page 31

...These distances are not indicative of the maximum striking range of the CVW-9 aircraft. Rather the distances were driven by the proximity of the carrier operating area relative to the Southern California target ranges. During the Surge, aircraft were frequently held overhead USS Nimitz awaiting recovery, time that in real operation would have been spent transiting to and from more distant targets. Figure 10 shows the maximum operational strike range that could have been reached on each strike sortie. (3)

(3) We based this computation on the aircraft flight times and on the requirement for aircraft to be in the Marshall pattern at the beginning of the recovery. We also accounted for the time required to engage, receive fuel, and disengage from tanker when refuelling was necessary. We estimated the time for strike aircraft to locate the target as ten minutes. We included a requirement to return to force on a 75 nautical mile dogleg (such a requirement was imposed during Operation Desert Storm)

The resulting table is not very precise but it would indicate roughly the following maximum ranges per sortie:

> ca. 20 sorties below 100 nm
> ca. 60 sorties between 100 and 200 nm
> ca. 440 sorties between 200 and 300 nm
> ca. 270 sorties between 300 and 400 nm
> ca. 40 sorties between 400 and 500 nm
> ca. 80 sorties more than 500 nm

If you observe at pag 31 you can see that among all the 727 strike missions completed in the 4 days and 2 hours :

What you refer is the distance to the target, not the distance effectively covered by the carrier's airwing during the exercise, as the flight time and specific statements in the report show.

Is eveident that is just this very reduced flgiht time (caused by the purposely chosen targets positioned at very small distance ) togheter with the personell augmentation at allow the enormous surge in the numbers of sorties.

I can't agree, see the argumentation above: they calculated maximum range based in actual flight time. In fact those times are also specified and roughly correspond with the mission times you calculated in your scenario and the ones I used, roughly 2 hours. The average flight time of the F/A-18C in the surge was 1.8 hours.

Now in our maritime strike scenario the F/A-18E/F would cover 390 n.mi or 722,28 km before LRASM relaease with a weapon and CFT load of over 5.3 tons.
Assuming a flight toward the delivery point at the same 10.000 m altitude at an optimistic speed of 0,7 mach - 754,74 km/h for the way heavier and drag-generating load, you have an average time of flight to target of about 57,5 minutes and 1 hour and 55 minutes of mission's flight .

See above, this flight time is perfectly compatible with those practised in the exercise, even when it implies striking at a range where  FFGX would need 15 hours of full speed sailing while the carrier remains in place to even get a chance to shoot.

BTW, I have not done the load / fuel against NATOPS check yet.

Naturally also the preparations before and after each maritime starike mission -and the fuel and weapons and repair times required - would be immensely more labour and time-intensive in comparison.

The 28 hoses present at the flight deck of the USS Nimitz were capable of ca. 1,000 lb/min, + 5 minutes needed for hook-up/disengage. So to top a F-18E would take something like 20 minutes for internal fuel, 9 minutes more for 3 x 480 gal EFT. But since these tasks can be done in parallel for as many aircraft as hoses are and also in parallel with weapons loading, nothing of this even comes close to threatening the proposed cycle time of 2 hours flight, 2 hours preparation time for 18 planes each time.

For the weapons loading part, I use JSM instead of LRASM since the later are heavier, would need a hoist and I have no values for this. For the exercise, 1,000 lb Mk 83 were used and they report two of them been loaded manually in 8 minutes, so I assume 16 minute for four JSM of similar (slightly lighter) weight. Fuzzing is difficult to estimate, it took 2-4 minutes per aircraft but I don't know how this is done with JSM exactly and how long does it take.
Using other weapons may imply using other launch racks, for which I don't have precise handling information.

Again I don't see a bottleneck in this area, since every squadron has two 15-strong ordnance handling teams and two squadrons would be involved in each sortie of 18 planes. That would result in a potential to load 30 planes over the given period of two hours time and without the rest of the crews even being involved. If four squadrons were involved and we make the calculation for 4 aircraft each squadron, all of them would be loaded in little more than 30 minutes. The remaining time would be used excess planes (we said there are two groups of 18 + 8 planes that allow to increase the tempo)

@Mindstorm:

I continue with my answers where I left it in my last post

I agree that it is absolutely not reasonable, because in the reality those carriers would almost certainly operate at thousands of km from CONUS in closed sea theatres (Baltic, Mediterranean Sea, Black sea, Persian Gulf etc....) and at only some hundreds of km from enemy EEZ, where would be trapped within engagement range even of coastal-batteries of enemy antiship missilse ,let aside ship and submarine mounted ones, and theirs weapon load would be constituted at 85-90 % of air to ground and air to air ordances ,not anti-ship missiles.

The US concept of operations of carriers (namely, pretending that they can use them directly against the territories of peer nations) does not make much sense, and increasingly less as more and more advanced AShM appear. In any case, despite their rethoric, in real world they take big precautions before sailing with their CSGs into closed seas where attack vectors are less predictable, enemies can be at sea, littoral and land, and reaction times are reduced.

Nevertheless, any fleet operating in such closed seas is going to suffer that kind of risks. I think it is more a discussion about using a capital-ship based fleet or not, not about carriers specifically.

The scenario chosen is the most favourable for the "perpetual-retreat" tactic ,that obviously would be irrealizable in reality because no technology capable to change wind direction exist today and at speed of over 20 knots in a forced direction it would be absolutely impossible to execute any take-off (above all with that weapon and fuel load) except with almost perfect cross wing direction.
But i have assumed, for pure sake of argumentation, that the wind's direction would perfectly match the directions where enemy group of ships alternatively pull the carriers.......admitting that the carrier would be even aware that a group of those low tonnage ships would be coming toward it in a particular direction ,models now existing suggest the opposite.....

 
The approach vector of the frigates depends on the starting conditions. I consider it reasonable to assume that the carrier group would not start completely surrounded and without room for movement. It has the full advantage in open seas, so why not use it? In fact, the question is how long a fleet composed by small displacement ships can pursuit a CVN than can sustain 30+ kt indefinitely. The USN RFI for the FFGX asked for 3,000 NM range @16 kts. The Italian version of the FREMM, which is the base for the FFGX, has a range of 6,800 nmi @15 kts with CODLAG propulsion, that means range at 30 kts would be a fraction of that.

As to the argument that the carrier may need a significant amount of time to sail into the wind to launch and recover planes, in the operational cycle that I calculated based on your proposed scenario, the carrier would need in the worst case to completely reverse for some minutes (5 minutes is enough to launch 18 planes if they have been already prepared, and such amount can be handled on the flight deck in parallel) and between 1 and 1:20 minutes per plane for recovery (between 18 and 24 minutes). So roughly ¼th of the time during those two hours cycle in the worst absolute case, for an effective speed of 22-23 kts (I don't know how much faster than 30 kts the carrier is in reality). FFGX is expected to be 26 kts+, so the potential close-in rate in this worst case is a bit uncertain. In order to check this in a more detailed way even, I would need to check wind over deck requirements for the given plane loads in both launch and recovery to see in what conditions this reversing of the carrier's heading may or may not be necessary, this may take a bit more of time. If the frigates would come too close, the carrier could increase the sortie interval and just recover distance. This is its choice, since the carrier aviation can threaten the frigates at long ranges but the opposite is not true.

It is interesting to consider that Russian shipbuilders have made the remark that giving an eventual VMF carrier full nuclear propulsion would be very expensive. This is the option USN took, it has the big advantage that their CVNs can sail full speed without caring about fuel consumption. But the rest of the ships in the fleet do not have that option and therefore I think that, being pragmatical, the last proposal from Krylov with CONAG propulsion would be sufficient and quite probably more economic.

The figure is for a single salvo against an insulated frigate with the defending ship using about half of its interceptors , in reality density of the most well executed salvo attack will never reach density greater than 12-13 missiles for minute and the frigates would converge in strike groups of at least 3 or 4 units capable each to cover the others, exchange data and jamming power for a significative surge of the PK of each single interceptor.

The convergence of frigates can indeed be a way of increasing the size of the salvo needed, but then one of the main advantages of the distributed fleet would disappear, since if would turn into an increasingly centralized fleet and not a distributed one, reducing the opposing side's ISR effort.

As to the AD capability of the FFGX itself, after reading more about their radars and interceptors I have to consider them not in the same category as an AEGIS DDG. I am not sure the frigate could allow itself to employ just the half of its interceptors, due to the reduced engagement time, I recalculated the radar horizon and considered some other limitations:

The radar is the AN/SPY-6(V)3: A 3-sided phased array fixed version of the EASR.
- It lacks the X band segment normally used for low target search, since it offers superior resolution and clutter rejection
- It uses only 9 RMA against 37 RMA in the case of an Arleigh Burke Flight III, for a fraction of the antenna gain and power performance
- Its altitude over the sea surface is roughly 18 m, which would result in a radar horizon of ca. 14 km against a target flying 5 m over the waves. Against a  0.9 M target that is ca. 45 seconds time, - against a 3 M target that is roughly 14 seconds or quite close to the reaction time of the ship's AD, estimated in ca. 10 seconds for an AEGIS fire control from detection to launch of the first interceptor in optimum conditions. Evaopration conditions can reduce that radar horizon to well below 10 km, which means that the system would not even have the chance to engage the incoming missile (that makes very clear IMHO why “Threat D” was assessed as critical by USN)
- Considering the beam deflection limitations of AESA technology and the lack of overlaping between the three arrays of the FFGX radar, it is questionable if the directions right at the deflection limits of the arrays are not especially vulnerable.
- A small tonnage vessel is specially subject to state of sea and therefore its radar horizon can be additionally affected due to the ship raising and sinking with the waves
- Atmospheric conditions affect through ducting the effective radar horizon, both increasing or reducing it. A serious attacker will consider this and organize their attacks when the fleet's radar field is compromised

http://cimsec.org/how-the-fleet-forgot-to-fight-pt-technical-standards/37361



- Detection of a low flying target against sea clutter is very dependent on radar grazing angles. An airborne sensor can (and actually does it in real world) change its altitude to accommodate to that reality, a surface based, fixed altitude radar cannot and that means during the approach of the missile there will be certain angles when it can be detected and times when it cannot.



- There is also a minimum engagement distance for SM missiles, not official but comparing to similar missiles like Aster a value of 3 km seems reasonable
- LRASM are specially low RCS, low flight missiles that are probably not very easy to detect for a ship's radar. That is the only way I can understand US reliance on such type of weapons.

Given all of the above as explained, I am not sure the frigates would be so effective in AD role as we are supposing until now. I cannot provide a corrected salvo size or level of effectiveness against the AShMs being considered, but it is clear to me that they are a low cost option to the Arleigh Burke and clearly a much lower-end ship overall. The cooperation of several ships would increase the amount of interceptors available but depending on the attack vector it may or may not be of help to improve detection.

An attacker relying on air power can come almost as close as they want to the fleet without airborne ISR and use even short range weapons against it. This is a fundamental asymmetry between the kind of weapons both sides need to employ in the naval strike mission (one needs high end, long range missiles while the other can employ short range, low cost ones). They can also decide when to attack, so that the environmental and tactical conditions suit them, unlike the fleet based only on surface assets.

That radar detection range is for bomber type airborne targets , detecting a surface reduced radar signature low tonnage ship on the sea clutter is all another story.....

Ships have a big RCS despite their design being optimised as of late. Regardless, detecting such vessels in the sea is going to be fairly simple even beyond the radar horizon, once they need to keep their radars permanently operating in order to detect potential incoming attacks. In active mode, the E-2D radar is capable of detecting CMs that AEGIS DDGs and CGs can not, despite being massively bigger than those in the FFGX and having also an X band component against low altitude targets.

This is very old (1983), referred to the E-2C, but it is not easy to get quantitative information about the performance of the E-2 against concrete targets. Just to show the kind of capabilities involved, even decades ago and even in case the frigates may go RF silent:

The system's surface surveillance capability is also very good, apparently the UHF band end-fire antenna mounted in the rotodome will allow the resolution of slow moving surface targets - patrol boat size vessels have been tracked beyond 100nm.

https://www.ausairpower.net/AADR-E-2C-AEW.html

Sea backscatter in UHF seems to be smaller than other bands, also its resistance to weather conditions is better. That makes it good against low speed surface targets:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0f9d/d4b4b7437bcc01b3bdb04c68f0d08460d343.pdf

the 4 E-2D on board a Nimitz

Part of the advantages in flexibility of a carrier mean that the E-2 airwing can be increased. 5 planes can normally be carried, proposals using the same ships currently existing consider 6 aircraft. The airwing in a carrier is highly flexible.

in war time situations can assure, through rotation, the continual presence at no more than 100-150 n.mi from the carrier and provide guidance toward 90 degrees in the direction of propable attack of the enemy to the air wing to attempt to intercept enemy bombers.

It is a classical procedure for carrier in play since the Cold Warknown as "Outher Air Battle" ( today USN has lost the F-14 and its interception capabilities).

That configuration as you say relates to Cold War scenarios oriented towards the threat of Soviet Tu-22M3 armed with Kh-22 missiles of 250 nm range. The time on station of the E-2D would allow to keep them at way longer distances than 200 nm if needed, specially if 5 aircraft are carried instead of 4.

Time on station, 175 nautical miles from base 4 hr. 24 min
Endurance with maximum fuel 6 hr. 15 min

https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/e-2.htm

This does not even consider the fact that in few years time the MQ-25 tanker will be available. It should allow to transfer 6800 kg of fuel at 500 nmi of the carrier, therefore more than capable of filling the tanks of the E-2 for another 6 hours on station. Hence AEW missions at extended ranges from the carrier would be easily implemented.

China has BM and cruise missiles to blow up Guam too. At least a carrier moves and is harder to find than an island.

marcellogo wrote:I doubt that the 16 tubes more the FFGX have instead of a Vulcano-capable 127mm gun (that I will consider ANYWAY a conceptual and doctrinal error) would host AA missiles and not ASROC (i.e. something way inferior to italian MILAS that use angled launcher instead), Harpoon (same when compared to OTOMAT ) and/or Tomahawk missiles.

I agree that normally the FFGX would carry ASW weapons, but for the scenario we tolerated the extended SAM load since it is within their capabilities.

Tsavo Lion wrote:Bingo: The bombers, B-1B and B-52s, are flying mostly out of Guam, and are seen as a replacement for US aircraft carriers, which would be too imperiled by Chinese missiles to use in these areas. Pentagon officials emphasize that the planes can bomb as many targets as a whole carrier group

They are slowly waking up, but still they seem to be two steps behind reality... of course a carrier would be ridiculously outgunned by the land-based forces of a superpower like China... but Guam and such vulnerable basing options available to US in the Western Pacific are just minimally better. Chinese have no fear of escalating the production of what they need (i.e. high performance long range BMs) as many orders of magnitude as it is necessary to be successful, and US would be wise not provoking them to test them on their forward bases.

As I posted, the VKS bombers (& modified transports) r no different in that regard. Their TU-22M3/95MC/160Ms have comparable, & some ways superior performances:

You cannot use / protect those bombers if they have to fly above waters controlled by USN or unfriendly countries. They would be dead meat before launching and if they launch, it would be long range and USN would be in the area of attack and have lots of time to shoot down their missiles. By now Russia has an advantage in hypersonic weapons, US is scrambling because they are perfectly aware of their huge vulnerabilities. But inevitably the gap will tend to be closed and missile defence will progress to counter current threats, you cannot permanently defeat a huge enemy force with a silver bullet like currently possible due to the abnormal gap opened by Russia in missile technology.

From bases in Russia, Iran, China, Vietnam, S/C. Africa/America & Cuba they can cover all of the SLOCs.

For that they would need to gain clout to establish bases abroad, pay and defend them, which will not be allowed by host countries or even sought by Russia unless they develop the naval forces needed to sustain a potential war effort far from Russia... and so to avoid them having a fleet like US, you are proposing them to become a colonial power with bases all over the world...just like US    

VMF CVNs will be easier to find, as they will need to cross GIUK, Gibraltar, Suez/Bab El Mandeb, Tsushima, & Malakka choke points before getting to open Atlantic/Pacific/Indian Oceans. The US has a mini space shuttle that can track them in real time 24/7.

Coverage of OTH radars extend for thousands of km too, how do you expect bombers to escape that, plus deployed fleet and naval aviation radar coverage? VMF may be tracked, but you have to consider it would operate together with their submarine complement to the surface fleet and you would need to counter their potential airwings / ASW force in order to harm them. What is the amount of CSGs that would be needed to defeat a single VMF surface group with say three squadron Su-57, advanced AShMs and a proper AEW cover? Exchange rate against fighters like F-18 and F-35 is potentially catastrophic for the US side, which BTW and against all odds is refusing to further develop the F-35C into NGAD and has just kicked off its development as a new platform, with the same already mentioned characteristics of speed, range and payload. A new platform takes a lot of time to be developed and Russia should make a good use of that time.

Tsavo Lion wrote:MiG-31s & Su-35s with IL-478s would escort them; their presence would be enough to dissuade the US their allies from blockading any SoCs/coasts.

Er... no. No way, really. Try to work out the details of that idea, you will see it is not even remotely feasible.

they already have access to bases& will get more if needed; those nations buy Russian/Chinese planes, ships & subs + S-300/400s. No need to be a colonial power in order to have beneficial trade & access to bases.

How do you protect a base in Cuba where you have bombers threatening CONUS and restricting US at their own doorstep??

What's the point matching the USN/AF & their allies on the high seas protecting overseas trade?

What is the point of matching the US base footprint instead? The costs of that structure are insanely high. And keeping all that in place, safe and operational, demands sea control to start with...

IMO its a luxury Russia can't afford.

Just a question: do you mean that seriously? If so, can I see your numbers? What is the amount that Russia can afford, and by how much building a functional ocean going fleet would exceed that?

Instead, better use subs & planes that r need to defend Russia anyway &

If they are needed to defend Russia they cannot be deployed at the other corner of the world fulfilling their mission.  

she will need at least 4-6 of them to have 1-2 deployed + 1-2 more on standby.

Or fifteen, as USN considers the minimum to cover all their duties... in reality 2 CVN + Kuznetsov would be acceptable, 3 CVN + K would be great. That is the difference between bullying the world and protecting your legitimate interests with the force, only when all other ways have failed.

That's at least 12-18 extra surface ships

Yeah well, when all countries do it like that, then just maybe that is the price of having actual power projection capabilities...

& 8-12 subs.

You said subs would be your proposed alternative and no additional units are necessary since they are already there to protect the country, why the surface fleet would need 8-12 additional ones?

So what are you trying to say here.... don't copy the west because they are fucking idiots with aircraft carriers... what you should do is copy a voiced opinion about the situation of US vs China that nobody will ever take seriously because strategic bombers would be more vulnerable to Chinese air defences and deployed naval forces than small strike air planes they normally carry.

So essentially don't copy what the west does but listen to what they say but have not actually done???

How about fucking ignore the US... this has nothing at all to do with the west and the US...

US carriers are dead meat, and that is because current and future Russian very high speed missiles render them vulnerable, but over time and with experience Russia is going to be able to develop tactics and defences against such threats anyway... and when they do those tactics and defences can be applied to Russian carriers.

The suggestion that big carriers are some how vulnerable but smaller carriers are safe is just stupid... which corvette anywhere on the planet is safe compared with a cruiser built using the same level of technology. Very simply a ship gets harder to defeat as it gets bigger, because its capacity to defend itself increases... a Corvette is not used to defend other ships... unless you count civilian fishing boats... in comparison a Cruiser is designed as area air defence platform for long range SAMs to cover an area and group of surface ships, which is further improved by coordinating all their sensors and missiles and guns. When a Cruiser is present all the smaller ships with it don't turn off their systems and take a nap... all the ships tactically use their radar and optical sensors and sonar and missiles and guns to defend each other... normally managed and coordinated by the biggest ship.

Add a small carrier and that will cost billions of dollars whether it is big or small, and you can probably extend eyes and ears to a 500km radius, which does make you safer and more capable, but a big carrier with aircraft like Su-57s with a 1,500km to 2,000km radius is rather better and is not going to be that much more expensive yet offers much much better performance.

Note the US is scared of big anti ship missiles and ballistic anti ship missiles and they currently have no answer... their current answer is to base long range strategic bombers in the Asia region and to use them instead, but I suspect the real solution will be IRBMs and IRCMs launched from South Korea and Japan and possibly Australia and India if they can swing it. When Australia was considering what it could use against Indonesia the options were cruise missiles launched from Submarines, ballistic intermediate range missiles, and F-111s. They chose the latter.

The point is that large heavy bombers would be easier to pick off than aircraft carriers... when US carrier aircraft operate above a group of American ships there are American fighter aircraft there to protect them along with AEGIS class cruisers to shoot down anti ship missiles... what is going to defend those long range bombers... and don't say fighters using inflight refuelling... even the US does not have enough inflight refuelling tankers to keep a decent force of fighters flying in the middle of nowhere.

This is just talk and talk is cheap... when they actually start scrapping actual aircraft carriers then we can talk about it.

GarryB wrote:US carriers are dead meat, and that is because current and future Russian very high speed missiles render them vulnerable, but over time and with experience Russia is going to be able to develop tactics and defences against such threats anyway... and when they do those tactics and defences can be applied to Russian carriers.

If you would have to entrust the AD of naval assets to someone, would you not choose Russians? They have already said that by the time US gets their act together and fields their newer missiles, they will already have the necessary defences in place... which in plain text means they have already tested them. S-500 is intended against ICBM-class targets, and even Pantsir has already hypersonic interceptors...

What is actually a no-go is trying to defend the ship if your radar horizon is limited to that of a surface vessel. As discussed above, there are circumstances where modern high supersonic missiles can cross that distance before the ship's defences can even react, much less intercept quite difficult targets with effectiveness. With hypersonic weapons this will be even more difficult, granted I don't know if the sea skimming approach is feasible even for a few km at those speeds or on the contrary they will just be used with high level cruising + terminal dive. In any case a surface vessel left to their own devices in terms of radar detection is on a very precarious situation and it is making that even worse due to its need to radiate continuously.

If you would have to entrust the AD of naval assets to someone, would you not choose Russians?

Yes, but if you have to rely on air defence from surface located platforms or a mix of air power and surface ships I would want both... it costs more, but is also more effective.

They have already said that by the time US gets their act together and fields their newer missiles, they will already have the necessary defences in place... which in plain text means they have already tested them. S-500 is intended against ICBM-class targets, and even Pantsir has already hypersonic interceptors...

But they will be better with aircraft like a naval Su-57 and an AWACS platform to improve performance and make them more survivable.

What is actually a no-go is trying to defend the ship if your radar horizon is limited to that of a surface vessel. As discussed above, there are circumstances where modern high supersonic missiles can cross that distance before the ship's defences can even react, much less intercept quite difficult targets with effectiveness. With hypersonic weapons this will be even more difficult, granted I don't know if the sea skimming approach is feasible even for a few km at those speeds or on the contrary they will just be used with high level cruising + terminal dive. In any case a surface vessel left to their own devices in terms of radar detection is on a very precarious situation and it is making that even worse due to its need to radiate continuously.

Surface ships alone can be protected by all sorts of radar and missiles and guns, but adding aircraft makes them only slightly more expensive but much much safer in terms of the distances they can see and they can run airborne radar 24/7 because anything they can detect they can direct other platforms to engage well before they get anywhere near them to attack... the mutual defence capacity means the aircraft make the ships safer and the ships make the aircraft safer...

And as I keep saying Russia does not need Nimitz or Ford class carriers, they don't need to be that big or that expensive, and having naval Su-57s will mean the US will have to come up with a new naval fighter to replace their F-35s... which will likely mean the US spending even more billions that they don't have on new fighters they wouldn't otherwise really need, yet they would be useful for Russia in relatively small numbers... it would be modifying a current type which is less expensive than developing something new from scratch.

The Su-57 will have low drag and high thrust to weight ratio so can probably operate from the K with full internal weapons and fuel loads from the short takeoff run positions and have excellent range and performance from carriers.

The shorter the SLOCs,

That is true but only relevant during war time... Russia produces its own food and energy so even if the west managed to cut all their SLOC it wont be a problem for Russia. Of course Russia will want to trade with the rest of the world because Russia has products the rest of the world can use that are better than western overhyped rubbish.

Russia could invest there too, to start benefiting from it sooner & save $Bs on CBGs that won't be needed.
In the meantime, the Pacific Fleet could see hard times ahead &  much closer to home:

The cost of 2 CVNs would be less than the bridge to the Crimea and would be much more useful because they would make Russian surface ships and subs safer in international waters.

If Russia wants to trade internationally without getting put in her place by the west because the west has carriers and Russia does not then it needs carriers... not urgently... 10-15 years time for the first CVN... especially if the rumours are true and they have cats for the kuznetsov...

This morning i have finally a bit of time, therefore i can return on the questions about maritime strike, sea control and cost and performance effciency of resources expended in aircraft carrier and its air winf against other most up-do-date Navy force composition.


First i want to adress the question of the sortie rate and the distance from the carrier:

LMFS wrote:I think this is a misinterpretation of the text:

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...Almost all the targets were within 200 nm of the USS Nimitz. These distances are not indicative of the maximum striking range of the aircraft, but rather were driven by the proximity of the carrier operating are to the target ranges. We show the maximum operational strike range that the strike / fighters could have reached, based on typical operational employment and time airborne.

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...These distances are not indicative of the maximum striking range of the CVW-9 aircraft. Rather the distances were driven by the proximity of the carrier operating area relative to the Southern California target ranges. During the Surge, aircraft were frequently held overhead USS Nimitz awaiting recovery, time that in real operation would have been spent transiting to and from more distant targets. Figure 10 shows the maximum operational strike range that could have been reached on each strike sortie. (3)

(3) We based this computation on the aircraft flight times and on the requirement for aircraft to be in the Marshall pattern at the beginning of the recovery. We also accounted for the time required to engage, receive fuel, and disengage from tanker when refuelling was necessary. We estimated the time for strike aircraft to locate the target as ten minutes. We included a requirement to return to force on a 75 nautical mile dogleg (such a requirement was imposed during Operation Desert Storm)

The resulting table is not very precise but it would indicate roughly the following maximum ranges per sortie:

> ca. 20 sorties below 100 nm
> ca. 60 sorties between 100 and 200 nm
> ca. 440 sorties between 200 and 300 nm
> ca. 270 sorties between 300 and 400 nm
> ca. 40 sorties between 400 and 500 nm
> ca. 80 sorties more than 500 nm

...................What you refer is the distance to the target, not the distance effectively covered by the carrier's airwing during the exercise, as the flight time and specific statements in the report show.................
...................I can't agree, see the argumentation above: they calculated maximum range based in actual flight time. In fact those times are also specified and roughly correspond with the mission times you calculated in your scenario and the ones I used, roughly 2 hours. The average flight time of the F/A-18C in the surge was 1.8 hours.

There is not any interpretation here LMFS, i've read that document almost ten years ago and since then i have not even given a glimpse of attention to the CLAIMS by parts of the US Navy officials responsible for this "surge parade" about the SUPPOSED range that theirs air wing could have reach and average time of flight but only to the hard, parametrical, measurable data of the range of each target hit and the initial position of the aircraft carrier; those are the unique comparable and measurable data involved, the rest are pure claims by parts of organizers of the surge event with clear self-evident vested interests in presenting a picture of the potential of theirs air wing totally unsupported by involved data.

Even more those pure claims appear absolutely ungrounded and irrational : in facts the Air Wing 9 was not based on a ground airfield placed too near to the exercise's targets but on a Nimitz-class nuclear carrier purposely prepared to support the sortie surge that could easily place itself at much greater distance from target's positions where theirs air wing could use at full theirs on-board fuel and the technical preparation before take-off so to PROVE in a measurable, comparable, parametrical way the capability of those aircraft to be prepared before and after each mission and to strike enemy targets at medium and long range maintaining the declared sortie rate.

Doing as done in the exercise instead would be totally unexplicable and irrational........unless, of course, that was done forcibly and on-purpose because the fuel and technical and maintenance preparations to strike targets at 60-70 nautical miles from the carrier, with few unsophisticated weapons, would require only a small fraction of the resources and efforts required to do effectively the same at 250 or 300 NMi of distance , and only that has allowed to present a similar level of sortie rate.

This obviously is not mine opinion but that shared by majority of the US Navy analysts taking into account the "arranged" result of Surge '97

https://blog.usni.org/posts/2009/08/27/the-monster-myths-of-the-cvl-concept

LMFS wrote:The approach vector of the frigates depends on the starting conditions. I consider it reasonable to assume that the carrier group would not start completely surrounded and without room for movement. It has the full advantage in open seas, so why not use it? In fact, the question is how long a fleet composed by small displacement ships can pursuit a CVN than can sustain 30+ kt indefinitely. The USN RFI for the FFGX asked for 3,000 NM range @16 kts. The Italian version of the FREMM, which is the base for the FFGX, has a range of 6,800 nmi @15 kts with CODLAG propulsion, that means range at 30 kts would be a fraction of that.

I think that to continue to apply simplicistic models ,incredibly optimistic assumptions and totally irreal, unrealizable tactics for sea control only for the sake of debate and to attempt to “aid” the side with the single aircraft carrier is not longer useful.
In the reality any aircraft carrier on this planet will not escape anywhere against a so high number of low-tonnage low signature enemy naval units for the simple reason that, for the wide majority of them, it will not even know of theirs presence and position before IR surveillance satellites would detect salvo launch of theirs anti ship missiles.

In facts today (leaving outside possible breaching of the enemy code of command and communications transmissions ,as happened in the WWII) the unique assets allowing each side to effectively detect the other at very long range and conduct and guide missile strikes at hundreds of km of distance on enemy naval units are :

1) Constellation of space-based radar and wide FOV electronic/infrared emission satellites, representing by far the most important ISR elements, for which a single, enormous, flat top ship as an aircraft carrier with theirs highly concentration of continous traffic of several dozen of aircraft taking-off at full afterburner and with radar with emission like E2-D is immensely easier to detect ,track and continously maintain under observation in comparison with 22 different low tonnage ships each of which with hundreds of times lower radar, infrared and electrocmagnetic signature.
That mean also that often active radar or passive EM surveillance satellites on different orbit could easily assure weapon grade continous track of any aircraft carrier but could easily lose track of a previously discovered corvette or frigate because the following satellite would be incapable to detect them within its area of coverage.

2) Sea bottom and suspended sonar and magnetic variation sensors networks. Also in this instance the difference in signature and area coverage would be simply immense.

3) Finally there are Long endurance UAVs . The discovery by part of those kind of assets of low signature ships in plain sea (in the littoral them would be easily downed by enemy air defense and ground based aviation) would happen mostly by chance. Anyhow this would represent the unique instance where an aircraft carrier could interrupt more easily the surveillance contact ,thanks to its air wing.

E-2D ,not differently than E-3 (and this is just the reason for which US's Air Force employ E-8 JSTARS to detect and maintain track of ground targets and now E-3 AWACS), is designed for maintain air coverage and has relatively poor look-down target detection of surface units in sea clutter.

Moreover in the reality of maritime conflicts possiblity to egress from a sea sector is almost always not even an option; it mean very often surrender critical strategic positions and assets to the enemy ; in the example i had described a carrier even only abandoning the Alaskan maritime sector would allow surrender and expose the entire US Nothern Command , and Missile Defence Forces to destruction or, worse taking control , doing the same on Western CONUS Pacific Sector would mean likely the destruction of the 65-70% basis and construction/maintenance potential of the US Navy.

Last note: aircraft carrier in order to employ theirs air wing must choose its direction of motion to follow wind's direction (even more at speed greater than 13-14 knots).

LMFS wrote:The convergence of frigates can indeed be a way of increasing the size of the salvo needed, but then one of the main advantages of the distributed fleet would disappear, since if would turn into an increasingly centralized fleet and not a distributed one, reducing the opposing side's ISR effort.

As to the AD capability of the FFGX itself, after reading more about their radars and interceptors I have to consider them not in the same category as an AEGIS DDG. I am not sure the frigate could allow itself to employ just the half of its interceptors, due to the reduced engagement time, I recalculated the radar horizon and considered some other limitations:

The radar is the AN/SPY-6(V)3: A 3-sided phased array fixed version of the EASR.
- It lacks the X band segment normally used for low target search, since it offers superior resolution and clutter rejection
- It uses only 9 RMA against 37 RMA in the case of an Arleigh Burke Flight III, for a fraction of the antenna gain and power performance
- Its altitude over the sea surface is roughly 18 m, which would result in a radar horizon of ca. 14 km against a target flying 5 m over the waves. Against a  0.9 M target that is ca. 45 seconds time, - against a 3 M target that is roughly 14 seconds or quite close to the reaction time of the ship's AD, estimated in ca. 10 seconds for an AEGIS fire control from detection to launch of the first interceptor in optimum conditions. Evaopration conditions can reduce that radar horizon to well below 10 km, which means that the system would not even have the chance to engage the incoming missile (that makes very clear IMHO why “Threat D” was assessed as critical by USN) Wink
- Considering the beam deflection limitations of AESA technology and the lack of overlaping between the three arrays of the FFGX radar, it is questionable if the directions right at the deflection limits of the arrays are not especially vulnerable.
- A small tonnage vessel is specially subject to state of sea and therefore its radar horizon can be additionally affected due to the ship raising and sinking with the waves
- Atmospheric conditions affect through ducting the effective radar horizon, both increasing or reducing it. A serious attacker will consider this and organize their attacks when the fleet's radar field is compromised

 

I believe that you have misunderstood the content of what you have read:

- At low altitude (up to 900m -1 km) the index of radar wave atmospheric refraction is almost constant ,it is called in facts standard refraction and just the stability of this factor allow to compute the radar horizon for low altitude ,low incidence of illumination angle (just the instance of ship borne radar against inbound AShM) with the so called "4/3 Earth model" -an approximation assuming the Earth's radius at 4/3 of its real value - to compute the standard increased radar horizon caused by the downward bending of the radar waves.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/193254619.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283349893_How_far_is_the_radar_horizon

To the contrary of what you think for long range airborne radars ,also those equiped with look-down SAR optimized for ground/sea level detection surveillance, is much more difficult to capitalize this effect and that for the simple reason that the geometrical horizon of theirs radars lie at enormous range where the powqer density is already incompatible with the extraction of the position of a target from the surface clutter, leaving aside extract the position of one from behind the geometrical horizon where radar dispersion surge enormously.

For a ship-borne very high power ,high aperture radar with detection range of 200-250 km against a 3 square meters target detect and track a target 12-14 km over its geometrical horizon at 25-30 km is a standard task , do the same at a geometrical horizon placed at 300 km of distance is almost impossible.

Separated mention deserve instead the problem of radar ducting (anyhow happening generally at far higher altitude than those of inblound antiship missiles) that can well create situations of detection at enormous distances or zone of radar shadow where the same target would appear intermittently on the screem.

Usually anyhow is very difficult for a stand-off attacker to capitalise the erratic manifestations of this phenomenon unless it manage to probe the atmospherical conditions in relatively close range of the ship (with something such as UAV/UCAVS) without that they will be downed; for ships monitoring of those amospheric parameters are used the on-board helicopters.

@Mindstorm: I was also busy these days to touch this issue, since it demands a significant research and documentation effort from me in order to try being minimally serious, but I will post the last part of my answer to your previous posts before addressing the new ones, even when I am not linking all the sources right now due to lack of time. Now, allow me to say the following: I am probably one of your fondest followers here and happy to admit you are much more knowledgeable than myself in all sorts of military issues, but sincerely, making the case for the use of air power in the naval domain is simply too easy (literally there are layers upon layers of conclusive arguments in their favour) for me to admit that in the future surface-only fleets have the upper hand against the ones that count on airborne assets. This is not going to happen, on the contrary, lighter and more abundant aircraft of all kinds will be used, both as defensive and offensive means, actually I prove below that smaller surface units like FFGX also plan using them.

Mindstorm wrote:
Without Space and Submarine based third party surveillance the discovery of enemy ship units would happen by pure chance ,likely by very long endurance UAVs and also in this instance the chance of discovery of the Nimitz calss carrier and of 22 dispersed frigates would be worlds a part in terms of probability of happening.

This touches one of the most crucial differences between a fleet with or without availability of air power in the naval warfare, which is the difference in radar horizon and range of available ISR and even the possibility of keeping RF emissions silent. I am going along with not restricting space based assets, which may or may not be the case in a concrete scenario, but it is obvious that without them and in an oceanic deployment the fleet without air ISR assets would be rendered essentially blind and defenceless, an eventuality a military planer will certainly not want to be unprepared for. In fact this is such an obvious shortcoming that the FFGX expects to carry a UH-60 + the MQ-8C helicopter type UAV. No question the range and capabilities of such assets are a far cry of those available to a carrier, and their vulnerability against the carrier's airwing, complete.

The very document you refer and that I was also checking while writing this reply explains in detail plans and proposals to integrate more capable ISR assets in the carrier's airwing. They mention some undefined U(C)AV to take care of such missions, but being more concrete, the RQ-9 was proposed in a naval ISR version for the BAMS program called Mariner, with almost 50 h persistence and for which carrier-compatible versions (w/ folding wings) were proposed. Therefore the technological availability of long range, long persistence ISR assets is given and it will very probably be the answer to distributed threats like the ones you propose, in the case that they actually have the offensive potential to threaten a CSG. That means a very different breed of AShM to those available to the USN now and used in our scenario.

BTW, do you have some reliable source about the actual integration of the LRASM in the Mk 41 VLS? I know Lockheed has done the necessary technical work, but until now the only officially approved integration I have seen is for bombers, fighters and patrol aircraft of the USN. Plus the FFGX is using the NSM, so it is not clear to me if the LRASM is finally going to be adopted for sea launch from the VLS. Not that I think it would be very crucial for our analysis, but for the sake of correctness.

Following with the ISR means: in the latest days we have seen an interesting Russian example of UAV that could be ideal for long range naval surveillance, namely the Helios from Kronshtadt. A catapult equipped carrier can use and importantly defend such assets, obviously a frigate can not. With the range announced, it may stay on station for practically one day at 400-500 nmi of the carrier... not counting on eventual tanker support, which could make it an asset capable of being almost permanently on station for the confrontation applicable period of time! So this is a race (distributed vs. centralized fleet composition) the on-board air power is in condition to win even before it starts.

The range i have proposed in mine scenario take into account space based and sea bed based sensor network providing to the carrier the capability to attack enemy frigates at safe distance (and obviously discover and follow a single flat top behemoth such as a Nimitz is for radar satellites orders of magnitude easier than discover and maintain contact with 22 reduced signature low tonnage ships).

This relates also to part of your last post, regarding the difficulty of E-2D to detect low speed targets against ground sea clutter. This capacity is explicitly mentioned by US military sources but actual technical parameters of the radar are kept under seven locks, so proving or refuting this may be difficult. As you may imagine I would need figures or sources to accept that an E-2D cannot detect a frigate in the open sea, not even considering that the frigate or frigate group cannot keep their radars off in order to have a minimum defensive capability.

So, on the one hand, the frigates need to keep their radars on not to be simply defenceless to any sort of attack; on the other, and accepting that some of the ships may be silent and use the radar information of other ships or could emit just intermittently as part of some tactics, it would be relevant to know what is the actual RCS of a modern frigate in the frequencies of interest. Being a 150 m metal structure and their hull having angles optimized against level radars but not airborne ones, I struggle to think they have actually low RCS in absolute terms for a naval ISR airborne radar, but I might be wrong, I have not researched this in depth yet. In principle it would seem their best defence is their low speed that complicates Doppler detection, but this being a very sensitive technique and given the stochastic parameters that can be used to characterize the sea clutter it is not obvious that a big vessel could escape detection even in the highly unlikely event of keeping its radars silent.

Why so long stand-off range ? Because allowing some groups of enemy ships to come closer ( let put at 800-900 km) to the carrier would expose it to the deadly risk that one or more groups not previosuly discovered would come near delivery range and the carrier at this point would confront several groups contemporaneously.

Even when I have built my case with that very big distance in mind, we would need to accept that a frigates can:

1) Outrun the carrier, which is not realistic on pure speed and range metrics.
2) Close 400 km gap with the carrier in a short enough time to avoid detection. For that to happen in 24 h, the frigate would need to be almost 10 kts faster than the carrier over that period of time. The carrier would need to stay practically static over that period, which would not be an acceptable wartime behavior at all.
3) Threaten the carrier's AD, even if no fighters are considered. Ignoring the 3 x Phalanx CIWS, a Nimitz can carry currently above 50 interceptors. So, not even considering CIWS or EW effects, the Mk 41 loadout of 5 frigates would be needed to overcome the amount of interceptors available to the carrier. In the simply never intended and therefore mostly absurd case of using the carrier without the support of several AEGIS DDGs or CGs (!)

In fact we should include them in the analysis, compensating their cost with an increased number of frigates, to avoid this exercise being simply unrealistic.

Arleigh Burkes cost ca. $1.8B per vessel (not to confuse with the shipyard cost, which is half of that but does not consider weapons and systems. The same applies to FFGX, BTW. With current figures, the AB cost between 50 and 100% more than the FFGX (no complete FFGX yet so no way of knowing for sure where the usual US cost overruns wil take the program). So let us add the DDGs to the carrier (3x) and add 6 frigates to the distributed fleet. Chances to threaten the carrier evaporate (if we are to consider a FFGX can deflect 35 AShMs, what can a massively more capable AB do, with early radar detection of the inbound missiles hundreds of km away and 96 VLS cells that translate into almost 400 x ESSM per ship? No surprise this is the way carriers are used in reality.

LMFS you are too intelligent and long time versed in military related matters to ignore that aircraft and theirs A-A missiles (unless purposely conceived and built for the mission) are almost useless in missile defense roles, the chances even only few interceptions are so incredibly low that US Navy ,in theirs models of carrier’s defense from anti ship missiles, discard it entirely and compute instead only the performances of the complex AEGIS AD systems on board the numerous ships parts of the carrier battle group that are present with almost the only role to provide cover to the otherwise totally defensless aircraft carrier.

Therfore i will consider all that that story on the 14 AAM missiles on the F/-18  and the 220 LRASM as a funny boutade…..    

I thank you, but if what I said is wrong, then I am guilty of being wrong with a conviction. AMRAAM was designed with look-down, shoot-down capabilities explicitly, its ability to down CMs and the role of fighters to do this as a fundamental part of the US territory defence strategy is well known. Also the role of fighters in thinning CM salvos with their AAMs is amply discussed in naval domain... I would appreciate evidence from your side. Of course the carrier, having an escort so capable as AEGIS vessels, rely mainly on them for anti-missile defence, since using fighters against very fast AShMs is not really viable and modern SAMs are cheap, readily usable and capable enough to be the weapon of choice.

In any case, both SM and ESSM-ER actually use the AMRAAM seeker and yet it is assumed they will be more than enough to down the AShMs, even in their most challenging terminal approach, with strongly reduced altitude and high-g manoeuvring. A CM in mid-course does not manoeuvrer vigorously and flies higher, and should be no big challenge to today's Doppler radars, AAM seekers and actuators. Where is the catch?

I will answer your replies of today later, and also touch the ARM use in naval domain, since I found interesting evidence in the meantime. If I find the time I would like to create a scenario with Russian assets too, since  the situation changes significantly due to the completely different missile technology available both to the frigates and to the strike fighters. In fact things could go more in favour of the frigate fleet, which considering weapons like Tsirkon becomes a real danger, unlike the poorly armed FFGX.

That bridge will last 100+ years, while each CVN lasts only 40-50 years at best.

The Bridge was built to make accessing a region of Russia easier and cheaper... it will pay for itself 100 times over.

A CVN will help keep ships and submarines safer from enemy attention... it will improve the situational awareness of any Russian surface group so they can make better decisions and make it much less likely Russian ships will be surprised.

That's why Russia & China r investing in them wherever it's feasible.

No one will lend Russia a CVN, and for less than the price of a new bridge spread over a decade or two it is easily affordable and be able to offer more capabilities than any number of smaller ships made in its place.

They are laying down two helicopter carrier landing ships which will require fixed wing air cover to have any chance of ever actually being useful... that alone requires aircraft carriers.

In fact, as history showed, a strong navy may encourage conflicts when there r no alternative overland trade routes.

Russia has no alternative overland trade routes that don't go through hostile countries...

I'm not saying Russia shouldn't have a strong navy; only that she shouldn't be betting her wellbeing on it as much as the US their allies do.

If she can't sail where she wants when she wants then she might as well isolate herself and accept a servants wage if the west is feeling generous enough to not just use her as a slave.

Moscow may lose her FE & access to the Pacific with it. A large meteor may explode over C. Russia or the Urals wiping out industry, population & infrastructure there, effecting many other regions.

And this can of tuna I have had in my fridge for two years might contain the right biological threat that could wipe out all man kind but it is no reason not to pay the mortgage...

Russia has to look at what is has now and what it can improve and develop and make better in every way, and expanding its blue water navy will instil confidence in potential trade partners around the world and that is what is going to help Russia and the rest of the world grow and develop... free trade that does not go through some middle man in the EU who takes a cut in both directions and lives off the labour or Russia and her trade partners.

Even the USN couldn't afford more than 1 Enterprise class CVN & 3 Seawolf SSNs. With so many CVNs, 1 of them forward deployed in Japan, there were lately still large gaps in deployments due to their maintenance/refit & training cycles being prolonged.

Couldn't care less about the USN and their problems.... they want to bully everyone everywhere all the time so they need 10 carrier groups and they can't afford them and it is destroying their economy which is a good thing.

Russia doesn't need to dominate the worlds oceans... but she does need to access them sometimes and she also needs to show potential trade partners that she can be reliable and offer everything they will lose when they cut the umbilical cord from the west and the west as usual goes apeshit and tries to regime change that country so they can continue to milk it of Lithium or oil or whatever else takes their interest...

The alleged Adm K. catapult, if installed, is going to be experimental;

Of course it is... just like the Ford class CVN and the Zumwalt destroyer class and their little LCAs or whatever they call them... the point is that the Adm K has fighters and an AEW helicopter that don't need cats to operate so even if the new experimental cats are totally useless it will still be an upgraded and improved CV... which is more than one can say for the Ford helicopter barge.

I doubt there's enough room for 4 AWACS planes on it. With only 2-3, it'll be a sitting duck.

It is experimental... even if it only had one AWACS plane and one Inflight refuelling plane that would be fine for testing.... AEW can continue to be done by Ka-31.

Sitting duck my ass... what sitting duck carries 12 supersonic 7.5 ton anti ship missiles and well over 200 SAMs to defend itself... including about 12 30mm 6 barrel gatling guns?

And that ignores the Fighter aircraft it carries...

IMO, in ideal circumstances, for better combat sustainability, they better deploy at least 2 CVNs & their escorts overseas.

Which is what I have been suggesting,,, but getting 2 CVNs built and the destroyers and cruisers they will need to operate with them to make them useful will take 20 years... and that is fine too.... they would not have anywhere to keep them if they had them right now.

For now experiment with new stuff on the Kuz.... new radars and new missiles and new cats and new electrical systems... this upgrade is going to be valuable... they will likely learn quite a bit, much of which might go into making their destroyers and cruisers more "electric".

To do that, they'll need to have 5-6 total in the N. & Pac. fleets.

Rubbish... they are not the worlds police force... they don't need to babysit anyone... at best they might need to send a carrier with ships and subs to a hot spot... having two CVNs and the Admiral K being a CV would be plenty. Upgrades and overhauls are planned and organised.... it is not the measles or pregnancy.... they can make sure no two vessels are out of the water at the same time except for emergencies and even then they will still have one more ship they can use... but the vast majority of time they will have two and sometimes three.

If the VMF is going to patrol SLOCs off S. America/Africa, it better have 1-2 forward deployed there.

They don't need any carriers forward deployed anywhere... from the Pacific and the Northern fleet bases and being able to cross the arctic ocean with icebreakers they should be able to get carriers where they need them quickly enough... they are not the worlds police and often a small group of "polite" specialists delivered by nuclear submarine running at 30knts 24/7 can get most places quickly enough... the surface ships they will need for three surface groups at best, but in normal practise they could probably mix and match... not every group of Russian ships would need air cover all the time...

It'll be more beneficial to build a railroad to Chukotka & Kamchatka with NPPs to make it another Kola with its many naval bases connected to the mainland all year round.
OTH, overseas air/missile bases r going to be less costly.

It is always better to develop Russian infrastructure and transport options...

LMFS you are too intelligent and long time versed in military related matters to ignore that aircraft and theirs A-A missiles (unless purposely conceived and built for the mission) are almost useless in missile defense roles,

I would think an Su-57 armed with R-37M and the newer bigger longer ranged missiles will have all sorts of ABM capacities and uses going forward... obviously not as potent as missiles mounted on a MiG-31 or MiG-41, but still useful...

An adapted 155mm M109 Paladin howitzer, under the control of the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), shot down a cruise missile during exercise.

Once the land version goes into production we can develop a similar naval gun as well. This is a very cost effective way to shoot down several cruise missiles.

I would agree, and it is a useful technology to be moving forwards with, but in 1982 when the British sent a force to retake the Falkland islands they had a variety of ships with a variety of weapons... from the archaic Sea Slug and Sea Cat, to the modern and impressive Sea Wolf and equally impressive (on paper) Sea Dart.

The Sea Wolf was shown in tests to be able to hit a 114mm artillery shell in mid flight... so in theory any group of ships where one ship was armed with Sea Wolf should have been safe from an attack by Exocet missiles.

Didn't work out that way.

But the Russians are working on guided shells and airburst rounds for intercepting flying objects with large calibre rounds... when they are flying level and straight they are relatively easy targets so firing shells at them makes a lot of sense.... even at distances like 50km away a 152mm air burst shell could shatter a low flying subsonic cruise missile if it is flying straight and level and not changing speed... a four round burst that brackets the area the missile is going to be in when the rounds arrive would be very efficient and cheap... and forcing enemy missiles to start manouvering at greater distances will reduce their effective range and energy...

But it is always easier to attack.

In all fairness the BQM-167 Skeeter which was the simulated target goes at most 0.93 Mach, A Kaliber does between 2.5 or 2.9

Also very true... but not all targets are as capable as the Kalibr... having gun shells you can fire at the easy targets frees up more missiles and more missile guidance channels to engage the harder ones.

It would be interesting though... because airburst rounds that spew 10kgs or more of ball bearings in the air in front of an incoming threat could be useful if you can get some material in the path of the weapon... in that case its own speed would count against it...

As they might say.. not hugely likely to work but ...worth a shot...

That's a massive difference and you forgot the mention the Paladin missed a shit ton before it finally got a lucky hit and that was the only hit in the entire exercise via the Paladin.

So a bit of work to do...

The irony is that with EM technology guns are going to become much more interesting soon...

And they are always versatile.

You can fire warning shots at Pirates... or you can just sink them....

In an attack with multiple missiles and much faster missiles that idea would be dead weight.

I think there are a lot of other situations that ship, or Russian ships could be involved in that don't involve enormous numbers of hypersonic weapons attacking them... in which case a gun can be more than just dead weight... it can be useful.

Hell... the Bulgarians and Russians had a joint venture in the 1980s to create a jamming round for the 152mm calibre guns... you fire it like a normal round... they reach about 22km but will jam SW and VSW radio communications to disrupt enemy command and control within a 700m radius of where the shell lands for 1 hour.

They created a 122mm calibre model too.

How hard would it be to put a jammer or decoy emitter into a shell that can be fired away from the ship to distract incoming missiles... you could give it wings and basic propulsion and make it a UAV that flys around for an hour or two emitting a jamming signal.... the incoming missiles might home on jam but the likelyhood of them actually hitting such a small target would be very low so it could keep operating for long periods and distract several enemy missiles... if it is a 152mm calibre you could fire the round 70km away from the ship... and soon 170km away from the ship...

This was just a research concept nothing more and it will not see the light of day.

That is a shame for the US because the potential is enormous even if the actual results to date are not impressive...