by Andrei Martyanov for the Saker blog
“Tomorrow war breaks out; an autonomous torpedo boat—two officers, a dozen men—meets one of these liners carrying a cargo richer than that of the richest galleons of Spain and a crew and passengers of many hundreds. . . . The torpedo boat will follow from afar, invisible, the liner it has met; and, once night has fallen, perfectly silently and tranquilly it will send into the abyss liner, cargo, crew, passengers; and, his soul not only at rest but fully satisfied, the captain of the torpedo boat will continue his cruise.” That vision was captured in 1870s by French Admiral Aube—one of the fathers of what became known as Jeune Ecole (Young School), a French naval doctrine born out of desperation and financial austerity in the wake of Franko-Prussian War. The only answer, it seemed then, to a France’s need to stay in the competition with the naval superpower of the day, British Empire, was to utilize new tools of naval war—shells and torpedoes. Swarms of small, and affordable, torpedo and cannon boats, Aube’s thinking went, would attack adversary’s merchant ships and combatants in coordinated attack and sink them. The concept, inevitably, utterly failed and had a profound negative effect on French naval development, effectively arresting a building of the large battleships. Jeune Ecole also influenced Russians, who also slowed their entrance into the age of large armored battleships, dedicating much of their attention to experimentation with new, sometimes dubious, naval concepts. The new technology was simply not adequate. In May of 1905 Russian Navy would sustain a catastrophic defeat in the Battle of Tsushima—the event which would continue to color Russian and Soviet naval thinking for almost a century. But nothing, not even Tsushima debacle, would compare to an unprecedented naval catastrophe which befell Soviet Navy in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. In fact, history has no record of a nation simply refusing from inheriting a world class advanced navy, the second largest and capable navy in the world, and allowing it to rot and wither away. Two fundamental ideas, apart from a chaos which post-Soviet Russia has become in 1990s, were responsible for the virtual death of the Soviet Navy:
1. The West in general and its leader, the United States, were not viewed as enemies anymore, Russia was to be incorporated into this Western World Order and as such she didn’t need armed forces in general, and navy in particular, which had global reach and were capable to fight and defeat NATO;
2. As anything “Soviet”, the Soviet Navy was deemed as backward, not technologically advanced and it lacked what the US Navy had—many nuclear aircraft carriers. In fact, carrier-centrism of the US Navy was looked at both with admiration and envy.
Needless to say, those, utterly false, ideas originated on the “intellectual” top of Russian so called liberal reformers who found themselves in power in early 1990s. They originated in the company of people most of whom far from having any serious military and academic background never served a day in the uniform and their claim to “expertise” was in raw political power and revulsion towards anything that was achieved during Soviet times. Most of those people were humanities “educated” ideologues, such as one of the main brains behind a destruction of Russian economy in 1990s, Yegor Gaidar, economist by trade, or, for that matter, Boris Yeltsin himself—a power hungry cynical opportunist-apparatchik utterly unqualified for any serious military-political task. Many in “free”, a euphemism for anti-Russian, Russian media cheered on a destruction of any remaining vestiges of Soviet system. The Navy was Soviet and as such it was supposed to be dismantled. By 1999 this task was largely accomplished and the Soviet, now Russian, Navy, or, rather, what was left of it, was effectively reduced to a hollow force barely capable to deploy a single nuclear ballistic missile submarine on patrol. Many modern ships and submarines were scrapped or sold abroad for a fraction of their real cost. Often they were sold with secret communications, navigation and weapons’ control systems intact. In 1999 NATO unleashed its aggression against Yugoslavia, Russia not only was left on the sidelines as a passive observer of a military atrocity committed against independent nation on a completely false premises, but eventually Russia was both coerced and bought into betraying Serbia. It was then that the depth of Russia’s fall was exposed to such a degree that the change was inevitable. Those days the phrase “if Russia still had 5th OPESK, there would have been no attack on Serbia” was floating around many Russian military and political forums. Many were lamenting a destruction of the famed Firth Operational Squadron (5th OPESK), also known as Mediterranean Squadron—a massive Soviet naval force which was more than capable of preventing any attack on Serbia. Not only this force was gone in 1999, but once mighty Black Sea Fleet was reduced to a nothing more than a total of a brigade of heterogeneous, mostly obsolete, forces, but its main naval base of Sevastopol was not in Russia proper anymore. No better were things with the Pacific Fleet, which was reduced to several submarines and surface combatants barely capable of making it to sea. Baltic Fleet was rusting in its bases and even premier Soviet/Russian Northern Fleet, despite having Russia’s only aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and having the brand new nuclear battlecruiser Peter the Great in its order of battle, was a pale shadow of what used to be Soviet Northern Fleet. Humiliation in Yugoslavia was compounded with the Kursk tragedy, which completely illuminated criminal consequences of Russian “reforms” and “reformers” destroying Russia’s military. NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 completely overturned two major “liberal” assumptions about Russian military. Not only the combined West, especially the United States, never stopped the Cold War against Russia, now emboldened by Russia’s real and perceived weakness and gross overestimation of own capabilities, it showed its real face and intentions. Moreover, suddenly this, supposedly, backward and not carrier-centric Soviet Navy was needed as never before, but it was nowhere to be found bar some remnants of it which have been preserved by sheer miracle and efforts of people who believed that destructive reformist bacchanalia in Russia at some point must be stopped. What many liberal reformers didn’t know, of course, was the fact that Soviet Navy far from being backward, by early 1980s was undergoing a massive transformation started in 1970s by its legendary Commander Admiral Sergei Gorshkov. There were number of technologies and concepts in which Soviet Navy led the world, including many things which the United States Navy could offer. Yes, the Soviet Navy was global in sense that it could conduct operations in what is defined as ocean or remote sea zones—far from its bases. Unlike its US counterpart, however, Soviet Navy was never a Sea Control force. Sea Control, also known as roughly equivalent to Favorable Operational Regime in Russia, being the ability to conduct any uninterrupted maritime activity from naval operations to commercial shipping, meaning keeping Sea Lines of Communications (SLOC) open. US Navy was designed as such from the onset with the United States as a nation conceived as the “World’s Island” in Admiral Zumwalt’s definition. US Navy also, after the WW II, slowly but surely, while trying to preserve the disappearing mission for its carriers, which bathed themselves in glory during War in the Pacific, started to evolve into the Power Projection tool of the American Empire, which emerged unscarred and prospered dramatically during and after WW II. USSR, which bore the brunt of WW II, didn’t have a luxury of such a prosperity, nor, realistically, had it intentions to project power anywhere around the globe. The main task for the Soviet Navy was to eventually provide maritime security of the flanks of Soviet Armies fighting in Europe against NATO, and to interdict NATO’s SLOC in the Atlantic, thus cutting supplies to Western European Theater of Operations. That meant fighting in Mediterranean, Baltic and in what has become known as GIUK gap. But the most important task was not to allow any power projection by NATO navies against Soviet territory first and foremost—this mission is known in the West as Sea Denial, later supplemented with now popular A2/AD—Anti-Access/Access-Denial concepts. While the US Navy’s posture remained aggressive and offensive since WW II, Soviet Navy’s posture remained defensive. By the year 2000 Russia simply had no real forces to even fight its A2/AD battles, not to speak of Sea Denial battles in remote sea zones, let alone any ocean—any such attempt would have been easily suppressed by the US Navy and if not for nuclear deterrent, Russian Navy was not a contender. Yet, Soviet Navy left after itself a massive scientific, technological and tactical-operational heritage. Since its inception, Russian Navy was never in a good position being geographically split into 4 Fleets and 1 Flotilla—an arrangement which complicates things enormously, yet there is no alternative, such as digging Panama Canal, in case of the US Navy, capable of fast inter-theater maneuver with its forces. Such pressures do create a very different view on naval matters and after Kursk disaster it became clear that A2/AD must become the primary task for Russian Navy in the nearest perspective. Some effective and affordable solutions were needed. Some lessons from Jeune Ecole also could be drawn, since unlike in 1870s in 2000s proper technologies have truly arrived.
Jeune École Mk.2?
It was 21 October 1967, when a three-missile salvo from a Soviet built 62-ton, Egyptian Komar-class missile boat sunk the INS Eilat with a new weapon, the P-15 Termit-class antishipping cruise missile (ASCM). Naval warfare changed dramatically. In fact, the revolution Jeune École sought to launch a century before happened because the technology arrived. The Soviet Navy immediately recognized both the advantages and shortcomings of this new technology, and saw its enormous promise. This was not the case with the U.S. Navy, which didn’t consider any cruise missile to be important enough to supplement, let alone substitute, U.S. carrier aviation. Later, Elmo Zumwalt would recite in his memoirs a message he received (at the time he was serving as the head of the Division of Systems Analysis) through the Chief Naval Officer’s aide system that the new Harpoon cruise missile should not have a range of more than 50 miles. The Soviet Navy, not burdened by the politics of internal “trade unions,” had no problems with the range and, wanted both range and speeds of its ASCMs to be as great as possible. A new Russian Navy announced its arrival on 7 October 2015 with a salvo of 26 Kalibr (3M14) cruise missiles launched from the Caspian Sea at Islamic State targets in Syria. Out of the four ships which launched missiles, three of the project 21631 Buyan-class missile corvettes barely displaced 900 tons and would not be considered a serious combatant by any large navy. Yet, there they were small, inexpensive, and designed mostly for boats with a strategic reach of 2500 kilometers for their land attack weapons and ability to strike any surface target 600 kilometers away. The Soviet Navy always placed a great emphasis on its Mosquito missile fleet. So much so, that deploying those small ships to the Mediterranean became a permanent feature in operations of what was the Soviet Fifth Operational Squadron in 1970s and 80s. But only with the maturing of missile and targeting technologies, which was demonstrated in Syria to a devastating effect, both from ships and submarines, the Jeune École promise envisioned by Admiral Aube has been fulfilled. The operations of Russian Navy’s Buyan-class missile ships made an impression globally, so much so that Milan Vego, a long-time authority on small combat craft and professor of joint military operations at the U.S. Naval War College, noted that many navalists overlook the capabilities of smaller craft. “We have been somehow dismissive about the increasing combat power of small combatants,” he said. “The US Navy and other navies, blue water navies, really have to pay more attention to what is going on. These smaller ships are less than 1,000 tons. It is very dangerous to be dismissive, especially in smaller straits where they can do a lot of damage.” The Soviet and Russian Navy has never been dismissive of smaller ships. In fact, today these ships play an important role in a multipronged approach to Russia’s A2/AD force structure, including the ability for inter-theater maneuvers with such ships, using Russia’s river waterways. Construction plans for both the Buyan-class and the brand new Karakurt (project 22800) small-missile ships are impressive. Karakurts, unlike their Buyan-class predecessors, despite smaller displacement are much better sea keeping platforms, which also feature a more respectable organic air defense capability represented by a navalized version of the Pantzir air defense complex. Construction of 18 of these ships is planned. Together with a dozen operational or under construction Buyans, such a force gives the Russian Navy both operational flexibility and distributed lethality in her littoral and near sea zone. When operational, these small ships will give the Russian Navy around 240 missiles, both land attack and antishipping, in a theoretical “first salvo” across several theaters. When integrated into Russia’s A2/AD force with its air defense and air force components and combined with other naval assets, these small combatants will become a game-changer. They also are a perfect indicator of Russia’s limited naval ambitions, which are primarily defensive. Considering a transitional period for Russia’s shipbuilding industry from foreign (Ukraine, Germany) power plant suppliers to domestic ones and the inevitable delay in commissioning larger combatants such as the Frigates of project 11356, the role of Russia’s Mosquito fleet grows even larger in defense of Russia’s interests in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Obviously, Russia of 2017 cannot be compared to Russia of 2000 or even of the year 2008. It is a different country today; not only Russia is steadily, despite all undeniable problems, becomes an economic and technological powerhouse, she leads the military world in some crucial very hi-end technologies. This leadership was laid in Soviet years. But nowhere Russia’s leadership is manifested more than in antishipping missiles. Modern Russian antishipping missiles’ arsenal is simply unrivaled in the word–all of it is high super-sonic. Last week this arsenal became hyper-sonic with 3M22 Zircon missile becoming operational. This Mach=8 capable weapon rewrites naval tactics completely because no current or nearest future defense systems are capable to intercept it. Paradoxically, it is here that Russian Navy faces its main challenge. The challenge is not in the fact that Russian Navy has to become at some point of time a Blue Water force—some contours of this force are already recognizable today—from advanced nuclear and non-nuclear missile-carrying submarines to large surface combatants, such as Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates. The issue for the Russian Navy is what to do with the ships Russians dedicated so much effort in making obsolete—large aircraft carriers? It is a conundrum.
Russia’s Naval Paradoxes
The Russian Navy doesn’t have a classic CATOBAR aircraft carrier not just because of economic reasons, despite popular western opinion. Russia is capable, even under economic sanctions, to pursue such a goal. The construction of the Zvezda shipyard in Russia’s Far East which, when complete, will be able to build ships up to 350,000 tons of displacement and a length of up to 360 meters, is a clear indication that, despite some issues with Russia’s shipbuilding industry, the development of Russian aircraft carriers is impeded by more than money. The Zvezda shipyard will be more than capable of building large CATOBAR carriers. But will it? While the recent document titled “Fundamentals of Russia’s State Naval Policy Through 2030” openly states Russia’s serious maritime ambitions, the document emphasizes the use of high precision and hypersonic weapons and is ambiguous on the fate of carriers, stating that there are plans for the “creation of aircraft carrying complex” in the future. On 18 July, Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov revealed that discussion on the development and production of a brand new Yakovlev STOVL (based on the ideas of the Yak-141) aircraft is in full swing and it must enter serial production in 2025. For the Russian large carrier “trade union” and global navalists the news was devastating. Yet, this announcement by Borisov indicated clearly Russia’s ever intensive doctrinal debate and struggle with the carrier issue because it was the Soviet/Russian Navy that developed and today deploys an array of ASCMs designed precisely to make large, expensive carriers obsolete. The Russian Navy knows the capabilities of its missiles. It also understands that the U.S. Navy, as well as other serious navies, inevitably will break the hypersonic barrier, as well as develop a genuine distributed lethality, and this will rewrite the rules of naval warfare. Already, the U.S. Navy deploys some long-range subsonic missiles, such as the LRASM, whose salvo is extremely difficult to defend against. With long-range hypersonic technology, in a hypothetical Russian case, something as expensive as the proposed Storm-class carrier in battle is simSTOVL aircraftply providing for a fat, expensive, and prestigious target. In real combat, even damage to the decks of carriers makes them nothing more than a huge pile of metal incapable to launch or land fixed-wing aircraft. Russia’s very limited power projection needs can be met by other means, especially against the background of the mediocre performance of the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier in Syria.
Some of the problems of cost and deck survivability of CATOBAR carriers are mitigated somewhat in STOVL carriers. In the end, the Soviet/Russian Navy has substantial experience operating these type of carriers. The appearance of the Yak-141 (NATO “Freestyle”) STOVL aircraft in the late 1980s heralded a new set of capabilities for aircraft of this type, with it being a genuine supersonic jet with a respectable range and combat load. Only the collapse of the Soviet Union and an extreme economic crisis stopped the Yak-141 program. Considering Russia’s internationally recognized experience with combat aircraft it is only reasonable to assume that the new STOVL aircraft, if it ever goes into production, will be an impressive machine. If launched into production this aircraft very likely will account for the not always commendable experiences of the U.S. Navy’s F-35B program. Moreover, it opens the road for numerous, multipurpose carriers able to meet tactical and operational tasks required by the Russian Navy. But will Russian Navy take this path? In the end, apart from serious tactical and operational considerations there is a serious aesthetic (visual) appeal of large carriers as an embodiment of the national power. To be sure, the Russian Navy was looking attentively at the US Navy’s LHA-6 (USS America) as one of the possible avenues to pursue with its own carrier program. With America-class ships costing around $3.4 billion, financial comparisons, especially adjusted for Russia’s economic realities, are not in favor of the proposed CVNski, let alone U.S. CVNs whose costs reach upward of $13 billion. Operation costs are also immense. Borisov’s announcement indicates serious rethinking of carriers’ role in the Russian Navy. Old Russian truism states that everything new is well-forgotten old. We may yet see a return, this time on a completely new technological level, to a not so forgotten concept of STOVL carriers, which will vary both in displacement and in capability and which will be more suited for, due to their much lower costs compared to CVNs and deck survivability, for operations in increasingly deadly, long-range super and hypersonic missile-dominated oceans.
Throughout its history, the Russian Navy had to operate under unfavorable geopolitical, economic, and combat conditions. These pressures often led to unorthodox solutions, from the bizarre looking round Popovka coastal battleship to an operational adaptation of Jeune Ecole’ to the new technological realities of ASCMs and to leading the way with drastic expanding of the capabilities’ envelope for STOVL aircraft with the revolutionary Yak-141. A “continuous series of matches between newfangled and old-fashioned military techniques,” in Toynbee’s words, is a never-ending story of technical, tactical, and strategic innovation. One of these matches is between the antishipping missile and the large aircraft carrier. This match finally reached a decisive point when the only role left for large carriers will be that of projecting power against weak opponents. But even this role, considering the proliferation of missile technologies may prove to be a bridge too far in the nearest future. Reducing the cost of carriers to levels which offer a compromise between combat performance and acceptable risks for operations becomes increasingly not just a well-meaning wish, but an imperative. Can STOVL carriers offer a viable alternative? In terms of costs they can. In the end, only these type of carriers and STOVL aircraft can show their real modern combat record against a relatively competent adversary during the Falklands War. Due to their significantly lower costs, such carriers may provide what really counts in combat—numbers. In the end, even massive Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class STOVL carriers’ costs is estimated to be around $8 billion—not bad for two ships capable of carrying together 80 combat aircraft. What the Russian Navy can do for $8 billion remains to be seen, but judging by the costs of Russian-made hardware since the mid-2000s, Russia probably will be able to eventually deploy more than two STOVL carriers. Emergence of relatively inexpensive and numerous STOVL carriers and possibly of the STOVL aircraft with characteristics rivaling those of being used from CVNs, coupled with further proliferation of the long-range hypersonic weapon, may write a final chapter for this drama in Soviet/Russian Navy. What, however, is clear already is the fact that even today Russian Navy, for all its industry and force structure issues, reached a technological and operational plateau which is a truly great foundation for not only defending Russia’s own shores and littoral—that is already has been achieved—but eventually returning Russian Navy into ocean as a true guarantor of stability and real peace in the face of crumbling Pax Americana, whose collapse may yet unleash a string of small and large wars. This kind of Peace and Stability Power Projection is what the world is in dire need for. Dramatically contrasting cases of Libya and Syria are a stark reminder of the changing geopolitical and technological paradigm.
Andrei Martyanov has extensive knowledge of naval issues, and has been published in US Naval Institute Proceedings. Using the handle “SmoothieX12,” he has written over 130,000 words of comments at The Unz Review, overwhelmingly on Russian and military matters.
Great article Andrei and good to see you here. Much less trolls compared to Unz Review,lol.
I would like to hear your opinion on Kursk disaster. Do you think there is a remote chance that Kursk was actually sunk by The Americans, American submarine “Memphis”, to be precise.
This is a link to an interesting article about this possibility.
http://www.pravdareport.com/society/stories/12-08-2016/121163-kursk_submarine-0/
I personally am not in a position to make conclusions one way or another. But I find (and some very serious Russian submarine professionals do it too) what Vice-Admiral Ryazantsev wrote on Kursk to be most compelling and professional. It is expected from a man who commanded different nuclear-powered subs, then a division of those and later became combat training inspector of MOD.
http://avtonomka.org/vospominaniya/content/24-vitse-admiral-ryazantsev-valerij-dmitrievich.html
The tragedy of the Kursk submarine remind me of the Estonia ferry’s disaster
on the Baltic Sea 1994 in wich 852 people died.
BBC: On this day hundreds feared dead in ferry disaster
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/28/newsid_2542000/2542093.stm
BBC: New clue to Estonia sinking
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1123056.stm
Owlcation: The sinking of the MS Estonia
https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Sinking-of-the-MS-Estonia
Red Ice Radio: The sinking of MS Estonia – Henning Witte
Part 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5YrkKQ4JAI
Part 2- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6POYo1G6f4
Part 3 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okrSIvXlyIs
Part 4 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmp83ejRizI
Henning Witte is the lawyer of the Estonia disater’s survivors. He is German, lives and works
sice many years in Sweden.
I’ll keep praying that the Russian ‘sword’ – navally-spaeking – will be made fully sharp.
Nice piece, interesting thoughts !
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John Keegan concluded in “The Price of Admiralty” that CVNs, and surface shipping more generally, in the blue-water context, were rendered obsolete (in Tier-1 conflict type) by anti-ship missile developments; that the future of naval combat belonged to submarines and aircraft.
One paradox of CVNs is their psychological hold on the imagination, seemingly preventing for common analysts the elementary distinction of the aircraft from the carrier. Techno-historically, aircraft had to be “carried” to theatre because of limited range, persistence; infrastructure requirements. By the 1970s, B-52s were circumnavigating the globe with fuel-tanker support, and the CVNs were credibly threatened by land-based **naval** Tu-22 “Backfires”. The burden of proof in the CVN debate in any navy concerns comparisions of investment in CVNs versus comparable investments in long-range aviation. I judge long-range aviation as the far better yield potential for generating blue-water and force-projection capabilities, over the full range of use-cases, including those requiring ground force insertion and support.
There are many technical aspects to this judgement, perhaps the most salient relates evolution of air-superiority operations and associated technologies, existing and prospective. Techno-historically, requirements indicated small, fast, maneuverable aircraft to contend. As long as this remained/s the case, the CVNs will have –in principle– a future as mandatories for any aspirinant to force projection on the globe. In my amateur opinion, a super-heavy, in many regards, strategic, air-superiority fighter is now feasible. In much the same way the early torpedo-boat concept was sound but predated its technical feasibility, the 20th-century experiments in BVR missile-duel-centric platforms were premature, but reflected sound analysis. There was even in the 1950s a USAF experiment carrying a light-fighter _on_ a bomber, to be launched when close to defender interceptor area of operations. With the rise of combat drones, networked swarms of dogfighter drones capable of 20g turns becomes something to seriously consider, and the possibility remains of ferrying these to operational zones in larger aircraft. The carrier in this case is not a ship, but a larger aircraft. What is the difference between this dogfighter drone and a simply more-capable long range missile ? Maybe not so much, for example it may be possible to create missiles with better persistence and turning capabilities; together with advanced data-networking, could kill off kinematic evasion as a workable tactic. Other defensive technologies are maturing — lasers and directed energy weapons can fry seekers and electronics. In this case the larger platforms become better air-superiority option than the small fighters, because of larger airframe to accomodate the necessary gear. A similar dynamic occurs in the stealth/counterstealth/radar/jamming contest. If we make a big air-superiority fighter out of the Tu-160, we have a tremendous capacity for accomodation of gear mass: L-Band radars, lasers, jammming equipment, decoys, missiles, drones, bigger better IRST modules. The prospective AA Tu-160 pretty massively out-equips traditional opponents; an RCS optimised airframe (snake intakes, faceted body, twin-canted tails would go a long way), supercruise abilities, the range… A big enough L-band array and capable enough IRST modules on a Tu-160, I don’t see the F-35/F-22 or equivalents having stealthy sneak-up options. I think they’ll be detected at 200-300km in a vague-enough sense to have sensor drones launched in their direction, which will close to ranges sufficient for more accurate targeting-level tracking with AESA &or IRST. Simply by making the Tu-160 airframe into a giant L-band/AESA antennae, not clear what the result would be –I’m an amateur and have not graduated MIT–, simply I guess it would be roughly equivalent to an A-100 AWACS in certain respects, sufficient to detect 5th gen fighters at high BVR engagement ranges, especially if augmented by ferried sensor drone ring networks. Over the open ocean, I think 300km engagement ranges would be typical.
CVNs take weeks ingress, and weeks to egress; in the most abstract mechanics of maneuver-warfare on the strategic plane (speed * mass applies at scale, maneuver principles apply at scale), it is highly significant that equivalent (or substantially better) strike, airborne (in lieu of so-called “amphibious”, even though large proportion of these operations are now helicopter-borne assault rather than LCS beach storming), &or air-superiority packages could be put into operation in hours. Equivalent ‘mass’ of force, but 10 times greater speed, offers to policy makers vastly expanded pallete of ‘options’.
Persistence concerns addressed by a combination of tanker support enhancements and high-persistence aircraft designs, those that can stay aloft and on station far longer than traditionally.
WIG — Wing-In-Ground amphibious platforms for heavy-troop assault, patrol, high-speed missile-carrying platforms. Soviets went far and this technology has great promise to wide range of applications, including surface naval combat. These are more audacious than the corvettes, but offer the same sensor and weapons loadout with far greater speed, yielding better survivability and maneuver-warfare potential. Depending on amphibious properties, these may be the future of the small-node / small-craft doctrine. For carrying heavy payload (mechanised units) over oceans, they have unmatched speed/payload potential of any competing tech out there.
Keegan may have been partly wrong to judge the surface ship totally obsolete. They offer a highly persistent platform with ample surveillance and strike caps over a wide region. Paraphrasing, we could say the maxim in modern war-planning is to make the nodes of our combat networks as small as possible but no smaller. What do I mean ? Well, it depends on the weapon and sensor requirements; for the Kalibr a little boat is okay, even a bomber. For an S-500 battery and a radar system capable of theatre aerospace missile defence one might require a Leader class, or maybe the Gorschkov platform would be sufficient.
The light-carrier concept renaissance (Wasp, America) I consider a weak, though esthetically seductive option. It has the advantage that all the technology is worked out, and in Tier-2 conflict types (Falklands classic example) it can show high utility, but in contemporary terms, a country capable of first-class engineering will yield better return on investment with the more techically adventurous path outlined above. Airborne troops, strategic air force, heavy air-superiority fighters, ample tanker support, high-persistence drone networks, heavy transports, maybe WIG amphibious transports and missile-boats. When an ‘airhead’ (airborne equivalent of beachhead) is established, helos and light frontal aviation can be brought in, for all the advantages they confer, but at least in initial assault stages of prospective strategic airborne assault, heavy crafts can perform CAS and frontal interdiction duties with precision short-range weapons. For countries that cannot afford the investment –financially or in terms of technical resources, the light-carrier represents a good balanced option. Neither the USA nor Russia I would put in that category. Both would benefit from dropping the CVN concept into historical memory and proceeding apace putting the majority of their blue-water chips into aerospace and submarine forces, with surface combatants like Gorschkov and Leader conceived more as peacetime sentinels, valuable as intelligence/sensor nodes, valuable as missile platforms in the opening stages of a Tier-1 conflict, but not expected to survive long. The newer corvettes option is cool, in the brown-water, riverine, home region operations of Russia, as well as a distributed blue-water attack network. I think in the long-run these should be supplanted by WIG amphib equivalents for persistent blue water patrols (carrying Kalibrs, Zirons), and supplanted by newer variants of the naval Tu-22 (or perhaps a naval strike Tu-160, or perhaps an as-yet unknown platform) for targeted strike combat operations. Consider, between the corvettes, the WIG, the Tu-22, they all can carry the same missiles, so what is the advantage of the corvette that makes up for reduced maneuver value ? Only persistence, and persistence is only relevant in peacetime anymore. If I can fly an aircraft around the world in some hours, it matters less that a ship is already on station out there somewhere. When it took weeks to get to that place, then it mattered. Now, not so much.
The paradox of the submarines is that while difficult to attack, they pose no threat to aircraft, and have very limited surveillance capabilities with respect to anything not in the water. Therefore, outside the boomers and land attack, if surface combatants are minimised by technological obsolescence, subs can only threaten merchant shipping, cannot have a major influence on naval battles that are primarily between aircraft. For this reason, I will put my amateur 2cents on Keegan’s judgement, and say the future of naval warfare belongs to aircraft, period. Subs and surface-combatants will continue to be important, with critical roles, but the central players in any Tier-1 conflicts will be aerospace units. Over the oceans and in intercontinental force-projection situations it will be aerospace units that determine the outcome. For modern navies this indicates a culturally difficult but technically mandatory transition away from their familiars of millenia — the boats and ships. The Soviet Navy was quite progressive in having an independent air-combat arm in the Backfires; this is a tradition to renew, strengthen, and run with.
Putin condemns Kim’s self defence missile test against the Evil Empire aka The Great Satan and probably will be rewarded by the Western Partners with more sanctions. He deserved it justly for being such good vassal.Bravo Vlad, they know,they can count on you.
Great read there, appreciate the complexity and scope of this article!
So can I take a backseat now?
Please do as you see fit, your words are very informative. At first, I thought this was one of your esssays.
Looking forward to more, thanks.
I second that, T1.
No Ma’am, you’re still required on the bridge.
“In fact, history has no record of a nation simply refusing from inheriting a world class advanced navy, the second largest and capable navy in the world, and allowing it to rot and wither away”.
Not quite true.
“On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di’s loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was ‘to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas’ and unite the world in Confucian harmony.
“Their journey would last for over two years and take them around the globe but by the time they returned home, China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. And so the great ships were left to rot and the records of their journey were destroyed. And with them, the knowledge that the Chinese had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan, reached America seventy years before Columbus, and Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook…”
https://www.amazon.co.uk/1421-Year-China-Discovered-World/dp/0553815229/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1511973679&sr=8-2&keywords=menzies+1421
Slightly off topic but…
“Swarms of small, and affordable, torpedo and cannon boats”
Which what the Italian Navy during WW2 exceled at on paper, but also became dangerous by adding special forces divers to the mix.
love those “caspian sea monsters” ekranoplanes too……..could deliver troops, heavy equipment quite quickly i can imagine, or longrange torpedoes, missiles
The cost efficient of modern navy missile to battle ship is something like 1:20 000 or even 1:50 000. Quite the near the rate of WW2 armor mine (type of Tellermine) versus combat armor. It’s just that you need likely just few missiles to destroy totally battle ship while armor mine cut just trucks and defender needed 200-500 mines to knock down one combat armor (one mine above other caused more serious damage to tanks).
Defense weapons are incredible cheap in modern warfare.
Techinically, you need enough missiles to saturate the target’s missile defense system plus a few more to sink a modern battleship/dreadnought/ship-of-the-line.
Hypersonic strike vehicles are overwhelming in ones.
Firing from land, ship and air with hypersonic missiles will overwhelm US defenses. Thus, 1-3 is all you need to decommission any of the 12 ACCs.
Add submersible drones and the inept US navy will sink worse than what the Japs did to them.
Then US is terrified by Russian, Chinese and Iranian missiles. Just look at recent postings in any of those regions.
They can scare the hell out of nations with no significant missiles for defense.
But even NK with three task forces breathing all over the Peninsula seems unafraid.
The day of projecting power via carriers is over.
And all those jet planes on them are mooted by systems like S-400.
You don’t even need nukes to keep the Hegemon far, far away.
Agree. Russia has learned many lessons from AMERICAN barbarism as they destroyed numerous countries that could not fight them back. Yugoslavia was a good example. Russia was weak then and could not help them, thus they were devastated by US/NATO airforce downing only few planes. Today, Serbia is supplied with S 300 and S 400 and they would down at least 50 planes in no time, if the cowards would attack them again.So Russia has developed defensive missiles to such an extent that no one could penetrate their air-space or approach their shores with any chance of success. At the same time they are arming their friends with these weapons and by the time they all have them, American aggression will be over, for if they attack they’ll get more than bloody noses. China is the same. They have developed superior weapons, including one they call “carrier killers”, The task forces surrounding them have only few hours to live in case of confrontation.That includes all American basis around them and Russia. Russia and China and all the countries not under American boot, have had enough of them and are quiet fighting back this new age Evil Empire, till it either self-destroys itself (as Roman empire did), or they destroy it in eventual confrontation,.Destroyed it must be.
But maginot line could not protect the French from tge German army.
Aggressive army always win over defensive formations.
Rusdia must taje the battle and war to home countrues of angliamerican parasites.
True about the missiles: but you also need reconnaissance assets that can detect a carrier several 100s of km away : satellites, radars, aviation, subs, and spies: how do you keep these assets functional against a US carrier group? If a carrier is forced by neocons in Washington to stay within the confined waters of the Persian Gulf it can easily be detected and sunk (and Iran nuked in revenge) but a rational commander will keep his carrier moving and away from shore.
The Russian SHORAD are amazing but the task of getting up to date targeting information of a carrier group will not be easy
True about the missiles: but you also need reconnaissance assets that can detect a carrier several 100s of km away : satellites, radars, aviation, subs, and spies: how do you keep these assets functional against a US carrier group?
http://www.deagel.com/Space-Systems/Liana_a003037001.aspx
Issue of targeting is key but it largely was solved or is being solved.
But, still those sats can be taken out before moving in. And US experts talk about how fragile is the “kill chain” that must be intact to hit a fast moving ship. Indeed, all of the the US experts talk about softening the target before moving in with full force. I suppose that entails to taking out such SATS, sending special operations forces destroying anti-ship missile batteries, massive missile salvos against navy ports, etc.etc. Therefore, it appears they still believe there is a place for aircraft carriers but just that they need to wait a bit more before entering the theater with full force.
As an expert, what is your response to this line of thinking which seems prominent among american naval experts?
“But, still those sats can be taken out before moving in. And US experts talk about how fragile is the “kill chain” that must be intact to hit a fast moving ship.”
Targeting information is:
1. Bearing (Azimuth), range, elevation (for AD complexes);
2. Geographic coordinates of the target.
3. Decay (growing obsolescence of the not-real time data) which factors in the above 2 pps.
Targeting information, apart from satellites, such as Liana, could also be and always is obtained through classic means of detection from radar, sonar, visual, wake, heat signatures, drones, AWACS aircraft etc. In general, all this creates what is known as a battle-space. Profiles of salvos of modern anti-shipping missiles are complex and all modern ASCMs are shoot-and-forget weapons with their own active homing devices. As an example, in accordance to open sources, the radar seeker of P-800 Onyx has a detection range of between 40 to 70 kilometers–it can and it does provide enough coverage in salvo to be “shot at” last known position of the target, the missile effectively does what is called in Russian “dorazvedka”, an additional reconnaissance. So, satellites, while extremely important, in case of war are just one of the means of targeting. Moreover, said Liana is in such orbit (1000 km), and with Russia having anti-satellite weapons herself, it is doubtful that taking out such sats will be that easy.
OK, therefore just spotting the ship should be sufficient to sink it as long as there are sufficient number of anti-ship missiles within range.
Obviously, if the range of the missiles are bigger than the aircraft that the carrier wields then using carriers against enemies with such defenses would be imprudent. That brings Iran into my mind. They clearly have missile technology but I am not sure if their missiles can maneuver or follow a target.
Your position is clear on use of aircraft carriers against peer opponents of the US, but how about countries like DPRK or Iran which are clearly not peers but have large standing armies and significant technological base of their own? If the aircraft carriers cannot be used against them, then the US does not even have a chance to destroy the country as they cannot sustain a long air campaign without carriers, let alone invade them. And there are good changes that their forward bases would become a liability rather than an asset.
Iran has capability to create a mess in Gulf and near. Yes, the way modern US carriers evolved–they are good for bombing weak opponents into the stone age. They are not for peer-to-near-peer, let alone peer-to-peer scenarios.
OK, therefore just spotting the ship should be sufficient to sink it as long as there are sufficient number of anti-ship missiles within range.
Yes, you can say that, if to put it in the most simple terms. Reality, of course, is more complex but if I have targeting data, in modern systems, I will have firing solution almost instantly.
The old soviet med squadron could have stopped the US and NATO from attacking Serbia? Really?
IIRC, the Serbian operation used the existing forces that NATO still had in Europe eating up tax dollars and searching high and low for an enemy to justify those tax dollars. It was Dubya’s massing of more than 100,000 troops for the Iraq Invasion that drew down the numbers stationed in Europe to prevent the hypothetical Soviet attack. They were still there in 1999, and while I haven’t looked it up, I’d be surprised if they weren’t the bulk of the forces used to attack Serbia.
The attack was purely an air attack, and was launched mainly from NATO’s European air bases especially a big one in Northern Italy. Perhaps NATO did their usual trick of launching some Tomahawks as a part of the attack, but I’d very much doubt that this was a key and irreplaceable component of the attack. The campaign was largely a high-altitude bombing campaign which was later revealed to be largely ineffective.
The one thing the Soviet’s didn’t possess was the sort of navy that can project air-power. They had just the one ship that was called an aircraft carrier, and even that was a hybrid between a missile cruiser and an air-craft carrier. It was not capable of denying Serbian air-space to the might of NATO’s air forces.
Serbia is a land-locked country. The closest approach would be in the Adriatic gulf. And while the Soviets did have some long range SAM capabilities, again I don’t see where placing a task force in the Adriatic would deny Serbian airspace to NATO. About the only thing I can think of along those lines would be to drive the task force all the way to near Venice, and then try to catch planes flying to and from the airbases there. Which of course could be countered by moving aircraft to bases in Southern (formerly West) Germany.
And, since the mission appears to be to start a shooting war, placing such a task force at the top end of the Adriatic to begin a shooting war is simply a very good way to lose a task force.
In the end, the Russian leadership decided that Serbia was not worth going to war about. They tried a bit of a power play/bluff by putting Russian paratroopers at the airport, but then were forced to back off because of this basic fact that they didn’t believe it was worth starting a shooting war to defend Serbia. A naval task force in the Black Sea, having to traverse NATO in the Dardenelles, then sail up into the Adriatic presenting itself as a large target seems to add little to their firepower and seems to do nothing to alter the basic calculation that led to Russia’s backing down.
The only backup cited by the author is comments on military bulletin boards at the time. I tend to like to play computer games that are combat simulations. These tend to draw a lot of US former military people to their bulletin boards. So, I feel like I’m familiar with these sorts of bulletin boards. And I would not listen to a word they say nor treat them as any sort of sound advice. The American versions I’m familiar with tend to be a lot of blowhards that massively over-estimate capabilities and give a lot of very bad advice should any actual policy decider happen to read them.
The Russians should resist any and every temptation to build aircraft carriers.
It would be better to invest the money and manpower in long range aircraft instead; particularly in missile-launching bombers, air transport and aerial refuelers.
What do you guys think about STOVL carriers and VSTOL aircraft in particular.
I think VSTOL aircraft are a dead end, for a given size and weight and cost and complexity, especially with separate lift engines that are dead weight most of the mission, you could get a much better aircraft with a CATOBAR design.
Lets face it, modern Russian carrier aircraft will be mainly air defence, so AEW and CAP, with ASW being performed by helos.
As such a modern 5th gen light or medium fighter has a very high power to weight ratio so from a very small ship with an EM cat it should be easily able to get airborne with a full load of fuel and AAMs quite easily and if needed act as the eyes and ears and first punch or first shield of the fleet.
I think super carriers are white elephants, but if you are in contested waters and you get a contact approaching being able to send out an aircraft to investigate could mean the difference between protecting yourself from a real threat or blindly shooting down an Iranian Airbus.
The high mortality rate of VSTOLs (Aircraft that is because the Russian Navy had excellent pilot safety systems that threw the crew out of the plane if there was a problem on landing or taking off) makes them even more expensive, and their main trick of being able to take off from anywhere is not really true with FOD issues on land and space issues at sea…
There is perhaps a place for small light carriers along the lines of the Majestic or later Centaur classes powered by gas turbines. Whether the Russians currently have suitable aircraft or could modify existing airframes is well outside my area of specialty. But how to power the catapults and arrestors if powered by gas turbines?
Why limit carriers to gas turbine propulsion?
For Russia, a carrier is for use beyond the reach of Russian Air Power, so when operating far from Russia it makes sense to be nuke propelled so it can keep up with the other vessels it is operating with and operate a long way from base.
They have developed new generation reactors for large vessels… they have put some on ice breakers.
They are designed to not need refueling over their operational lives, which should make them much much cheaper.
Also the arrester cables are geared so they should not need power…. in fact you could probably use them to generate power when used.
EM cats is a technology that would be useful in terms of EM weapons as well as the technology would be related.
If they want cats then it makes as much sense to develop steam powered cats as it does to develop a new matchlock sniper rifle.
I don’t like small carriers any more than I like super carriers…. something in the middle with a design that maximises the number of aircraft embarked and their performance is the goal AFAIK.
If this brina a known anti russian decries aircrFt carrier then it meBs the Rusdian must build aurcrFt carriers in number Bd switch economy into war economy.
AM
Well done analysis. A lot of material to discuss further, also.
Great article, my compliments to the author.
On the other hand, please provide an option to adjust the line length; the optimal length, for the eye to follow the line comfortable, is between 50 to 65 characters—I’ve counted over a 100, twice as long.
Thank you, the article is well worth reading. It is a little ‘physically’ difficult to read because of some very long paragraphs. Perhaps the big chunks could be broken up into 2 or 3 smaller paragraphs ?
Face It, The Mighty US Aircraft Carrier Is Finished
“In the next great powers war, or perhaps even in a conflict with a mid-tier power like Iran, at least one of our aircraft carriers will sink to the bottom of the sea.”
http://russia-insider.com/en/face-it-mighty-us-aircraft-carrier-finished/ri21769