What might the aircraft carriers of the future look like ?

[uk 75]

big jobs?

 

[uk 75]

The size of current US carriers is derived from the cancelled America and the USN's desire to carry bombers able to nuke the USSR. When Polaris finally killed this role off (making the lovely Vigilante a recce rather than àn attacker) the size of fighters needed to defend carriers against Soviet bombers and missiles was reaching Vigilante levels. The RN envisaged CVA01 operating a large VG fighter/attacker in the 70s before reality intruded.
The Cold War ended leaving the big US carriers in the same bushfire role as the UK and French ships, hence FA18s then F35Cs.
Does the US need a Vigilante attacker for the 2030s?.

 

[shin_getter]

Reusable rocketry, aka starship, means that fighters is not adequate defense, and neither would cruisers help very much. It'd take space superiority to safely operate an carrier, and that basically takes it out from being the point of the spear.

That said, in most wars the application of violence is limited, and aircraft carriers can do that. The reduction in (lower performance) aircraft costs means that everyone can have them, if only to take on nacrosubs. Giant "attack" aircraft carriers would only be for bullying minor powers.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The size of current US carriers is derived from the cancelled America and the USN's desire to carry bombers able to nuke the USSR. When Polaris finally killed this role off (making the lovely Vigilante a recce rather than àn attacker) the size of fighters needed to defend carriers against Soviet bombers and missiles was reaching Vigilante levels. The RN envisaged CVA01 operating a large VG fighter/attacker in the 70s before reality intruded.
The Cold War ended leaving the big US carriers in the same bushfire role as the UK and French ships, hence FA18s then F35Cs.
Does the US need a Vigilante attacker for the 2030s?.

Yes.

The effective strike range of the carriers when they had A-6s was some 800nmi. When the A-6s were replaced with Hornets, that range went down to maybe 300nmi. Super Bugs made that ~400nmi. The USN wants that 500nmi back.

 

[SSgtC]

Reusable rocketry, aka starship, means that fighters is not adequate defense, and neither would cruisers help very much. It'd take space superiority to safely operate an carrier, and that basically takes it out from being the point of the spear.

That said, most wars and application of violence is limited, and aircraft carriers can do that. The reduction in (lower performance) aircraft costs means that everyone can have them, if only to take on nacrosubs. Giant "attack" aircraft carriers would only be for bullying minor powers.

The number of nations that use anti-ship ballistic missiles to track, target, and hit a carrier at sea can be counted on no fingers. The US might be able to do so if they wanted to. No one else has proven the ability to do so.

 

[_Del_]

The USN wants that 500nmi back.

It's really the only justification to have a supercarrier. And with modern threats it probably needs even more reach.
Otherwise, it's an extremely expensive sea control ship. Which isn't useless, but probably hasn't justified the money spent on them in the past decade or two.

 

[royabulgaf]

I think the future of aircraft carriers will be smaller ships, like the Turkish assault carrier Anadolu. The air wing will be mostly unmanned and the anti-air is handled by SAMs. They also have a carrier in the 60,000 ton range in the planning stage. Again, this will have mostly unmanned aircraft.

 

[Nx4eu]

Type 076 like

 

[Scott Kenny]

It's really the only justification to have a supercarrier. And with modern threats it probably needs even more reach.

Agreed, I expect that the FAXX has a combat radius of at least 1000nmi, and probably desires 1500nmi. Which isn't unreasonable for an F111 sized aircraft with similarly efficient engines, as the F-111C has an 1100nmi combat radius.

 

[shin_getter]

The number of nations that use anti-ship ballistic missiles to track, target, and hit a carrier at sea can be counted on no fingers. The US might be able to do so if they wanted to.

The future is a long time. If it is proven doable and civilization do not collapse, every competitor would get it eventually.

Agreed, I expect that the FAXX has a combat radius of at least 1000nmi, and probably desires 1500nmi. Which isn't unreasonable for an F111 sized aircraft with similarly efficient engines, as the F-111C has an 1100nmi combat radius.

At this point land masses can fight each other directly and not bother with carriers. The ultimate limitation on aircraft carriers is the size of the planet and its oceans.

At the current moment it is unclear whether to invest in carriers or invest in running TBM under some Japanese islands and fund that stealth tanker program.

 

[Colonial-Marine]

The future is a long time. If it is proven doable and civilization do not collapse, every competitor would get it eventually.

I don't think that's true once you reach a certain level of technological complexity. Otherwise, every nation in the world would have an impressive arsenal of nuclear weapons. I can't imagine seeing ballistic missiles like the DF-21 on the international market soon.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The future is a long time. If it is proven doable and civilization do not collapse, every competitor would get it eventually.

I'm quite confused on how exactly the targeting works out.

At this point land masses can fight each other directly and not bother with carriers. The ultimate limitation on aircraft carriers is the size of the planet and its oceans.

At the current moment it is unclear whether to invest in carriers or invest in running TBM under some Japanese islands and fund that stealth tanker program.

Stealth tankers need to happen regardless.

Carriers have significant advantages over subs, for example. All an SSGN can do is a single, pretty impressive strike of ~154 Tomahawks/or whatever, before it has to go back and reload. A carrier can do multiples of those.

 

[shin_getter]

I'm quite confused on how exactly the targeting works out.

Sensors are ever improving, and forces with reusable space launchers can throw up 10,000 constellations for the cost of a cruiser. A handheld nikon is enough to get good ID of Carrier sized object no problem from LEO. Radar is more involved, but tens of thousands of AESA arrays in orbit is profitable and just need some preplanning and programming to serve the other role.

The proper counter measure for the side attacking with carriers would also run a space campaign to remove the opposing constellation.

Even without space assets, hypersonic gliders can be thrown over the place with reusable rocketry.
------
Also when one side wins the space campaign, persistent space based ISR and strike is on the table. The total throw weight here may not be the greatest, but it can be allocated to the most decisive targets as terrestrial defense in depth provides no protection. Destruction of launch infrastructure and asat systems would be the first shot.

I'm not sure how one would fight a conventional war against a opponent with real time 1m resolution across your entire territory and enough processing power to OODA out of that data set.

Carriers have significant advantages over subs, for example. All an SSGN can do is a single, pretty impressive strike of ~154 Tomahawks/or whatever, before it has to go back and reload. A carrier can do multiples of those.

154 tomahawks? That is two sorties on a starship and time to target is even better. Insert your expectation for turnaround time. If the fleet size is significant due to dual use for purpose of space infrastructure, like power sats or solar shades or something, well that can quickly become the bulk of the national throw weight. If starship is built for ~250m each as some have guessed.... it is plausible to crank them out in fleets.

SSGN is also extremely inefficient solution to the underwater missile shooting problem. It makes more sense to tow float upward missile pods and preplace them, dragged by extremely cheap vehicles like crawling on 5knots with pure electrics UUV without a pressure hull. Missiles would be the expensive part of the system. "Subsurface superiority" vehicles should be ones with performance, not the missile haulers.

 

[Dilandu]

The proper counter measure for the side attacking with carriers would also run a space campaign to remove the opposing constellation.

I kinda doubt it would be possible. Destruction - or even significant degradation - of thousands-satellite constellation would require a comparable number of interceptions either with kinetics, or with directed energy weapons. Not even considering the opponent countermeasures, it would be a space battle of truly epic proportions. Hardly something that could be done merely in support of naval operations.

And even the complete elimination of enemy own constellations would not prevent him from receiving all required data from neutral nations constellations - even just from commercial ones.

Also when one side wins the space campaign, persistent space based ISR and strike is on the table. The total throw weight here may not be the greatest, but it can be allocated to the most decisive targets as terrestrial defense in depth provides no protection. Destruction of launch infrastructure and asat systems would be the first shot.

I doubt that such kind of "total space superiority" could be achieved, unless one side is very significantly more powerful than other.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Sensors are ever improving, and forces with reusable space launchers can throw up 10,000 constellations for the cost of a cruiser. A handheld nikon is enough to get good ID of Carrier sized object no problem from LEO. Radar is more involved, but tens of thousands of AESA arrays in orbit is profitable and just need some preplanning and programming to serve the other role.

The proper counter measure for the side attacking with carriers would also run a space campaign to remove the opposing constellation.

Even without space assets, hypersonic gliders can be thrown over the place with reusable rocketry.

Right, but how does the hypersonic see the target?

Thermals are just about useless due to plasma sheath temps. Radar is out due to carbon-carbon parts being reflective to radar waves. How fast can you go before the ionization blackout cuts any communications?

Hypersonics versus a fixed target is easy, we've been doing that for 60odd years now with fancy inertial units.

But hypersonics versus maneuvering targets is a different discussion.

 

[_Del_]

How fast can you go before the ionization blackout cuts any communications?

Real fast. That one is solved. The other problems asked are lasting questions that would need answers. Some potential solutions exist for some of those others to various degrees of satisfaction, but those are still open questions.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Real fast. That one is solved. The other problems asked are lasting questions that would need answers. Some potential solutions exist for some of those others to various degrees of satisfaction, but those are still open questions.

Yeah, I'm seeing "off-weapon targeting tells hypersonic where it's going" as the least-bad targeting method.

Which implies people identifying and engaging those off-weapon targeting assets.

 

[shin_getter]

Hypersonic is the delivery method, and it is not the entire flight regime. You can skip out into space or burn energy to slow down before turning on the sensors. The point is to provide a credible threat while being extremely expensive to intercept. Since the time to target is short and one can always reinforce with a stream of sensors, only a short snapshot is needed to complete the kill chain.

You can also mix in cheap gliders without high performance sensors, this is very neat if it is order of magnitude cheaper than interceptors. The point is that you can likely figure out where the carrier is just by looking at what is being shot down and win virtual attrition by draining interceptors from fleets. If the defender tries to get lucky by intercepting less and then you can increase the fraction sensors shot at the problem.

Alternatively just target the ABM escorts. If the escorts rely on active sensors, easy targeting. If the escort works on passive sensors (if it can be done at all) than one can surprise them with active radar in poor weather or something, and surface ships no matter how stealthy still leave wakes. High energy interceptor projectiles are also likely easy to detect at range.

This become much more difficult if the carrier defense includes space based top cover. That said I haven't figured out how exactly does "contested" space warfare could work.