Wargame: Modern Fleet Action

[Matt]

This post springs from several great, in-depth conversation we've had over the last few months over alternate history defense questions. I'm planning on doing a series of these were we can discuss what certain aspects of modern, peer combat would look like. The first deals with what a fleet action would look like in modern times.

IOTL the United States Navy has been nearly unquestioned master of the oceans since the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1944. Nothing resembling a full scale fleet action has taken place since the Battle of the Philippine Sea, which say the IJN's Mobile Fleet sortied to challenge the US Navy's Fifth Fleet as US troops landed in the Philippines. Carriers have not faced each other since then, and the closest action that approached the scale and scope of a full sized fleet action was the Indian Navy's defeat of the Pakistan Navy in 1971. In addition Argentina attempted to defeat the Royal Navy during the Falklands War in 1982, but by utilizing land based aircraft.

Cold War thought was dominated by scenarios which are best described in Red Storm Rising's famous chapter Night of the Vampires when a USN carrier battle group is challenged by the Soviet Navy's long range bombers carrying anti-ship missiles. Similarly most modern threats to USN control of the seas envisions challenges that emerge while the fleet is operating in the littoral, and exposed to the threat of land based missiles and small missile boats.

So, for purposes of this thought exercise imagine a peer/near-peer opponent of the United States that is able to field multiple super-carriers and their attendant escorts. We will simply call them REDFOR for brevity sake, since who they are is largely immaterial. REDFOR has sortied a large naval task force consisting of 3 CVBG, each centered around a Nimitz-class equivalent. They intend to challenge the US and it's allies for control of the North Atlantic. If the US/NATO respond in kind, how does a modern carrier-centric fleet action look?

 

[Riain]

Extensive use of Over the Horizon radar and various satellites would make hiding difficult and would certainly attract the attention of the enemy in the opening hours of a conflict, I'd expect ASAT and ultra long range strikes against OTHR would be the first things that would happen.

Once these off-board sensors are degraded I'd think the advantage would go to the side with the best on-board sensors, which I where the USN with their Hawkeyes etc would have the advantage. I think they'd use this awareness edge to further blind the enemy, using effects -based targeting to strike at key ships and land bases that hold the most value to the enemy. Once under purely local control the enemy can be defeated in detail with basic bombs etc.

I don't know if the enemy will be able to do the same to the USN due to not having the fixed wing support aircraft that the USN has.

 

[Aber]

If the US/NATO respond in kind, how does a modern carrier-centric fleet action look?

A victory for the side with the best attack submarines?

 

[phx1138]

There's an issue of OPFOR doctrine, here: how does the aggressor treat the U.S./NATO force? Does it lead with large numbers of cruise missiles, or something else?

As Tom Clancy's character put it, "The Russians cheated. They were smart."

 

[DaveBC]

Are we stipulating that for some reason this is strictly a conventional engagement between two naval forces and their respective air arms?

Because presumably any such peer of the U.S. will have its own nuclear forces and any engagement of this sort is likely to be part of some sort of larger escalation towards a nuclear exchange.

I'm okay with that limitation. I just want to be clear that that's what we're speculating about and not the probably quite likely ladder of "how this turns into World War III."

 

[Matt]

There's an issue of OPFOR doctrine, here: how does the aggressor treat the U.S./NATO force? Does it lead with large numbers of cruise missiles, or something else?

As Tom Clancy's character put it, "The Russians cheated. THey were smart."

Well, that's sort of how I got into thinking about this one. I know how a non-carrier oriented force would engage an enemy fleet, but I'm not sure even the USN has put alot of thought on how carriers fight carriers in a modern age.

Are we stipulating that for some reason this is strictly a conventional engagement between two naval forces and their respective air arms?

Because presumably any such peer of the U.S. will have its own nuclear forces and any engagement of this sort is likely to be part of some sort of larger escalation towards a nuclear exchange.

I'm okay with that limitation. I just want to be clear that that's what we're speculating about and not the probably quite likely ladder of "how this turns into World War III."

My first thought was that each side would launch enough tactical nuclear ASM until it worked but that's not as nearly as interesting of a thought scenario. For purposes of this excercise there are external factors that prevent BLUFOR and REDFOR from using CBRN.

 

[CV12Hornet]

Extensive use of Over the Horizon radar and various satellites would make hiding difficult and would certainly attract the attention of the enemy in the opening hours of a conflict, I'd expect ASAT and ultra long range strikes against OTHR would be the first things that would happen.

Once these off-board sensors are degraded I'd think the advantage would go to the side with the best on-board sensors, which I where the USN with their Hawkeyes etc would have the advantage. I think they'd use this awareness edge to further blind the enemy, using effects -based targeting to strike at key ships and land bases that hold the most value to the enemy. Once under purely local control the enemy can be defeated in detail with basic bombs etc.

I don't know if the enemy will be able to do the same to the USN due to not having the fixed wing support aircraft that the USN has.

You'd be surprised. Satellites have known tracks and can be evaded, only certain kinds of satellites are even suitable for finding a carrier, and they can be shot down if the US Navy decides to use, say, a few SM-3s as ASAT missiles. Over the horizon radar, meanwhile, has issues identifying ships as anything other than ships; most radars of that range won't be able to tell a supercarrier from a freighter. A carrier under EMCON is thus surprisingly hard to find.

I do agree that the victory goes to the side with the better on-board sensors.

A victory for the side with the best attack submarines?

Attack submarines are not a panacea against carriers, not in the open ocean with room to maneuver. Yes, if an attack submarine gets into a proper attack position it's likely to ruin a carrier's day, but subs have even more issues finding a carrier than surface and aerial forces, and the speed of a CVN presents additional problems surface and aerial forces don't need to deal with.

The best submarine for tackling a CBG is an SSGN, but at that point we're not talking about carrier-on-carrier.

@Matt, we need to know more about both sides' capabilities to properly answer this question. Are we assuming current-day capabilities for the US Navy, and if not, from when? The OPFOR's carriers are Nimitz-equivalents, but what aircraft do they carry, and what do their escorts look like?

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Any opfor to the USN in the North Atlantic that is not the UK or pretty much another NATO nation is going to be Massively challenged Geographically as between them the NATO nations can, with great advantage, pretty much rule the entire North Atlantic with LRMP Aircraft (as well as land based strike planes and fighters for much of it) and bases etc before we even start to consider Satellites and who has the better CBG in a given engagement.

This advantage can of course be over turned to some extent if the Opfor had superior technology to the NATO forces but this superiority 'gap' would have to be vast and encompass a number of technologies in order to overcome the 'natural' advantage NATO enjoys.

 

[Riain]

You'd be surprised. Satellites have known tracks and can be evaded, only certain kinds of satellites are even suitable for finding a carrier, and they can be shot down if the US Navy decides to use, say, a few SM-3s as ASAT missiles. Over the horizon radar, meanwhile, has issues identifying ships as anything other than ships; most radars of that range won't be able to tell a supercarrier from a freighter. A carrier under EMCON is thus surprisingly hard to find.

Yes a carrier can be hard to find, but the fact that it has to avoid satellite tracks, othr, more conventional surveillance while maintaining emcon puts significant limits on the CBG freedom of action. Avoiding these things will narrow down the places the enemy has to look, and destroying them opens up considerable advantages for the USN/NATO navies.

I think the war would start with a simultaneous strike against satellites, othr and other surveillance assets so at D+1 hour the prewar track picture the enemy has built up by data fusion is totally obsolete.

 

[Deleted member 9338]

A victory for the side with the best attack submarines?

My thoughts exactly, SSNs or SSGNs will make life difficult

 

[CV12Hornet]

Yes a carrier can be hard to find, but the fact that it has to avoid satellite tracks, othr, more conventional surveillance while maintaining emcon puts significant limits on the CBG freedom of action. Avoiding these things will narrow down the places the enemy has to look, and destroying them opens up considerable advantages for the USN/NATO navies.

I think the war would start with a simultaneous strike against satellites, othr and other surveillance assets so at D+1 hour the prewar track picture the enemy has built up by data fusion is totally obsolete.

US carrier battle groups have snuck up on the Soviets before. Granted, this in peacetime, but peacetime just means you can't shoot. Surveillance is a-okay, and simulated attacks are a-okay too.

Fundamentally, the range of aircraft means that conventional surveillance assets have just too much ocean to search. Assuming Super Hornets, the OPFOR has to search an area of ocean around their carriers twice the size of Texas. And that's not counting the array of decoy operations the Americans can run, or the use of air-launched missiles. This is one of the reasons I want a better breakdown of the air wings involved; finding a CBG running Super Hornets is a very different task from finding one running F-35Cs or A-6s.

And the US carriers aren't as limited as you'd think. The CBG may be running silent, but it can receive from every other surveillance asset the US has, an array as formidable as anything anyone else has.

Now, granted, this applies to the OPFOR, too, which is why reconnaissance is critical.

My thoughts exactly, SSNs or SSGNs will make life difficult

Again, SSNs have serious problems with speed (it's noisy) and surveillance. SSGNs are much better, but they're not carrier escorts, and so don't factor into this scenario.

 

[jsb]

This is one of the reasons I want a better breakdown of the air wings involved; finding a CBG running Super Hornets is a very different task from finding one running F-35Cs or A-6s.

This also leads to question about the two sides, the current USN CVs are not really expecting to fight other CVs or real peers so in this AU would they and the opposition be different?

What has happened to satellites and Sosus networks that could detect them compared to the relative atrophy at least in public in OTL over the 30 years since the end of the cold war?

I think the war would start with a simultaneous strike against satellites

Would this be allowed or would it simply be regarded as far to provocative as it could be regarded as destroying the early warning systems in the start of a pre-emptive nuclear 1st strike on the RED homeland and simply end in a exchange of ICBMs?

 

[CalBear]

This post springs from several great, in-depth conversation we've had over the last few months over alternate history defense questions. I'm planning on doing a series of these were we can discuss what certain aspects of modern, peer combat would look like. The first deals with what a fleet action would look like in modern times.

IOTL the United States Navy has been nearly unquestioned master of the oceans since the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1944. Nothing resembling a full scale fleet action has taken place since the Battle of the Philippine Sea, which say the IJN's Mobile Fleet sortied to challenge the US Navy's Fifth Fleet as US troops landed in the Philippines. Carriers have not faced each other since then, and the closest action that approached the scale and scope of a full sized fleet action was the Indian Navy's defeat of the Pakistan Navy in 1971. In addition Argentina attempted to defeat the Royal Navy during the Falklands War in 1982, but by utilizing land based aircraft.

Cold War thought was dominated by scenarios which are best described in Red Storm Rising's famous chapter Night of the Vampires when a USN carrier battle group is challenged by the Soviet Navy's long range bombers carrying anti-ship missiles. Similarly most modern threats to USN control of the seas envisions challenges that emerge while the fleet is operating in the littoral, and exposed to the threat of land based missiles and small missile boats.

So, for purposes of this thought exercise imagine a peer/near-peer opponent of the United States that is able to field multiple super-carriers and their attendant escorts. We will simply call them REDFOR for brevity sake, since who they are is largely immaterial. REDFOR has sortied a large naval task force consisting of 3 CVBG, each centered around a Nimitz-class equivalent. They intend to challenge the US and it's allies for control of the North Atlantic. If the US/NATO respond in kind, how does a modern carrier-centric fleet action look?

When?

A victory for the side with the best attack submarines?

Pretty much.

If you had a peer-to-peer engagement both formations would be moving at max speed, which knocks sonar performance off the end of the table due to flow noise off the sensors not to mention the fact that the carriers will need to work with the weather to launch and recover planes, making their movements at least somewhat predictable. Throw in the fact that both sides fighters would be hunting recon assets like fixed wing ASW and some sub CO is getting a Navy Cross (or the OPFOR equivalent).

 

[Riain]

Would this be allowed or would it simply be regarded as far to provocative as it could be regarded as destroying the early warning systems in the start of a pre-emptive nuclear 1st strike on the RED homeland and simply end in a exchange of ICBMs?

It depends on what satellites and radar are targeted I imagine. Hitting geosynchronous missile launch satellites and the big missile tracking radars would certainly make the enemy think that, but hitting them wouldn't help the navy very much. In contrast surface surveillance othr radar and LEO radar and spy satellites being destroyed needn't cause a missile launch panic because the missile detection systems will be intact.

 

[Deleted member 9338]

Again, SSNs have serious problems with speed (it's noisy) and surveillance. SSGNs are much better, but they're not carrier escorts, and so don't factor into this scenario.

So the SSNs can only use torpedos? A bit limiting but ok.

As for the speed they can operate below the thermal, but I think you want this to be only aircraft, right?

 

[Riain]

@CV12Hornet , I first read that article back in my uni days, it goes a long way to explaining the Falklands. What I do wonder about is the proliferation of satellites, oth radar and data fusion since 1999.

 

[gatordad699]

A victory for the side with the best attack submarines?

Pretty much.

If you had a peer-to-peer engagement both formations would be moving at max speed, which knocks sonar performance off the end of the table due to flow noise off the sensors not to mention the fact that the carriers will need to work with the weather to launch and recover planes, making their movements at least somewhat predictable. Throw in the fact that both sides fighters would be hunting recon assets like fixed wing ASW and some sub CO is getting a Navy Cross (or the OPFOR equivalent).

Completely agree with Aber and CalBear. SSNs do not really have problems with speed. They go way below the layer, go to flank, and haul butt for a while. They then slow down, pop up above the layer, and see what they can hear. Seawolfs (all 2 of them (Carter is a spec ops boat)) and Virginia's have WAA so they can still hear really well without the towed array out. Depending on any convergence zones they can hear fast moving surface ships a long way away. Or they can to to PD for a sec, put up a mast and download data from other platforms. There are only 2 non VLS 688s left, so all the rest have at least 12 VLS tubes for missile launches. Once a SSN gets inside the screen (which is much easier they you would think, especially against fast moving ships with degraded sonar) they probably only need one MK48 into a carrier to give it a mission kill. Or they sink a few escorts and degrade the groups AAA and ASW. The only ASW platform an SSN really fears is another SSN or a helicopter. This is why every American (and every Soviet one my boat happened to come across) carrier battle group has an SSN attached to it. And good luck if an American SSGN gets to launch 176 missiles at a battle group. Ohios are still one of the hardest nuke boats to detect around. They can go fairly fast in natural circulation and are very quiet.

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

The detection problem is the heart of why navies fear the littoral. After the Yom Kippur War, the US Army observed that ground combat technology had reached the point “if you can see it, you can kill it” and started building doctrine around that, but the Navy’s known that since WWII. There are a lot of ways that shore-based or near-shore defenses can make things incredibly unpleasant. One reason I think USMC doctrine thinking about making the Spratleys or similar islets scary for the Chinese Navy is really visionary thinking.

There simply isn’t and won’t be for 20 years at least a REDFOR that can or would put three big CVNs in the open ocean. The US Navy needs to be thinking about how to contest the littorals both offensively and defensively.

 

[Riain]

On a related note I recently read that the USN had fallen behind in anti ship missiles but is undertaking several programs that will give it a lot of options in the near future.

 

[McPherson]

This post springs from several great, in-depth conversation we've had over the last few months over alternate history defense questions. I'm planning on doing a series of these were we can discuss what certain aspects of modern, peer combat would look like. The first deals with what a fleet action would look like in modern times.

Carriers fighting for their lives against anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, EW mission kill weapons and subs. But that is the final stage of the battle. Back to it in a moment.

IOTL the United States Navy has been nearly unquestioned master of the oceans since the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1944. Nothing resembling a full scale fleet action has taken place since the Battle of the Philippine Sea, which say the IJN's Mobile Fleet sortied to challenge the US Navy's Fifth Fleet as US troops landed in the Philippines. Carriers have not faced each other since then, and the closest action that approached the scale and scope of a full sized fleet action was the Indian Navy's defeat of the Pakistan Navy in 1971. In addition Argentina attempted to defeat the Royal Navy during the Falklands War in 1982, but by utilizing land based aircraft.

1. Leyte Gulf. The Philippine Sea was the Marianas Turkey Shoot. Saipan, Tinian, Guam.
2. Bump and scrape war.
3. Falklands was a mini Okinawa; except the British were both brilliant and incredibly ill-prepared.

Cold War thought was dominated by scenarios which are best described in Red Storm Rising's famous chapter Night of the Vampires when a USN carrier battle group is challenged by the Soviet Navy's long range bombers carrying anti-ship missiles. Similarly most modern threats to USN control of the seas envisions challenges that emerge while the fleet is operating in the littoral, and exposed to the threat of land based missiles and small missile boats.

Actually the current problem, and it has been for the last 30 years has been the USN fighting possibly for choke points and aviation and missile attack to and from enemy coastlines. This resembles a replay of the Napoleonic era naval campaigns.

So, for purposes of this thought exercise imagine a peer/near-peer opponent of the United States that is able to field multiple super-carriers and their attendant escorts. We will simply call them REDFOR for brevity sake, since who they are is largely immaterial. REDFOR has sortied a large naval task force consisting of 3 CVBG, each centered around a Nimitz-class equivalent. They intend to challenge the US and it's allies for control of the North Atlantic. If the US/NATO respond in kind, how does a modern carrier-centric fleet action look?

An exchange of EMP warheads after the opposing Rohrsat constellations detect each others' blobs. This happens because Beidou and whatever replaced Lacrosse are far more resilient to ASAT kills than most people suppose. I can see the US employing ground to orbit countermeasures that attack up and down telemetry links, but these are LoS and that is planetary horizon limited.

Assuming the peer degrades the USN to a similar extent, we are back to WW II. Who has the better recon platform? All of a sudden it depends on Mark I eyeballs and the waterfalls aboard US subs. And with today's weapons and those blinding results; not too good for avoiding sharks.

Extensive use of Over the Horizon radar and various satellites would make hiding difficult and would certainly attract the attention of the enemy in the opening hours of a conflict, I'd expect ASAT and ultra long range strikes against OTHR would be the first things that would happen.

One would be stupid not to blind those systems through asymmetric electronic means. Iraq wars 1000 x. Win the sensor battle that way and avoid the escalation ladder that leads to city killing.

Once these off-board sensors are degraded I'd think the advantage would go to the side with the best on-board sensors, which I where the USN with their Hawkeyes etc would have the advantage. I think they'd use this awareness edge to further blind the enemy, using effects -based targeting to strike at key ships and land bases that hold the most value to the enemy. Once under purely local control the enemy can be defeated in detail with basic bombs etc.

Best sonars and trained sub drivers.

I don't know if the enemy will be able to do the same to the USN due to not having the fixed wing support aircraft that the USN has.

See above. Addendum. USN needs to scatter its anti-ship teeth across the fleet because there will be a lot of platforms blinded; extensive use of land based anti-ship missile attack based on game theory and quite a submarine combat before naval air power ever comes into play.