Other nations operating supercarriers

CalBear

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The purpose of a supercarrier is sea control and from that can come power projection. During the Cold War the USN planned to take the fight to Soviet sea denail forces at sea and then advance to destroy their bases, only then would it start to support Marine landings etc. In the Falklands the 2 RN carriers would have cleaned-up any Arg naval forces that went to sea, abandoning other tasks to do it.

So any country which desires to control the sea, even if locally and temporarily, needs powerful fleet carriers to clean-up local enemy naval power.

The costing for a CBG seem to be based on clean sheets of paper, which navies who'd want a big carrier force never are. Even the RN will have aircraft available for it's big carriers, bought and paid for elsewhere. It's all part of an ongoing naval programme, to divorce big carriers from the rest of the navy is false.


Not really. The need to become a force projection, deep water player, requires a completely different sort of escort vessel, and far more of them, than would pre-exist. A good example of this is the PLAN, they would be starting from a clean sheet of paper.

A less obvious, but equally valid, example is the Royal Navy. The RN has procured several new SSN (Asture class) hulls. These are sufficient, presumably, for current RN needs but would not become part of any future CBG. Even current DDG & FGG force is insufficient for needs. The new Type 45 destroyer is an eight ship class, few enough for current UK needs without carrier escort duties. A single carrier group would require five, perhaps six, of these platforms, along with two SSN, a replenishment ship, and a separate underway support group in the case of extened deployments (say a fleet oiler and two DDG as escorts). This single CBG has absorbed the entire modern RN, save two SSN. Since the UK is planning two decks, you now need to buy an additional five-six Type 45s at $1.7B a pop, just to escort the second deck. The UK will also need to build at least four more Astures for non-carrier escort work, at least six more modern DDG to provide escort for Amphibious vessels, independent operations & contribution to NATO sanding forces and the EU military structure.

Much the same can be said for France, whose escorts are horribly long in the tooth, save the Horizon class FFG and proposed FREMM ships. Both of these classes are, unfortunately, too slow to really operate with a battle group (Horizon tops out at 29 knots, FREMM is supposed to be 27 knots), rather like the OHP class FFG that the U.S. was forced to use in the carrier escort role while the Spruances came aboard. If the French want to run a real force (at least two, probably three decks) they will need 10 more escorts MORE capable than the FFG's currently planned.

As noted earlier, you can go on the cheap, but if you do, expect someone to start punching holes in your carriers (something that really upsets the taxpayers).
 
CalBear, in this day and age 5 T45s to protect a carrier is massive overkill, who posseses a force powerful enough that a pair is T45s and some T23s can't handle? And ther RN has to build the T45 regardless of if they run big or small carriers, or no carriers at all.

But to delve back into the past, as far as I can work out the 12 x T42s replaced 3 cancelled Bristols and 8 actual Counties and the (planned) 12 xT22s replaced the Tiger, Blake and older ASW frigates in various ASW roles. In their final configuratons both classes were good deep water escorts capable of acting in concert with fleet units, indeed the T22s were seen as key fleet units in the Falkands. So as far as I can envisage it a CVA01 CBG in about 1985 would consist of 1 CVA, 2 Bristols, 1 or 2 T42s, at least 2 T22s and probably a smaller frigate or 2 as ASW dogsbody. That is a tough nut to crack for all but the largest non WP countires.
 

CalBear

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CalBear, in this day and age 5 T45s to protect a carrier is massive overkill, who posseses a force powerful enough that a pair is T45s and some T23s can't handle? And ther RN has to build the T45 regardless of if they run big or small carriers, or no carriers at all.

But to delve back into the past, as far as I can work out the 12 x T42s replaced 3 cancelled Bristols and 8 actual Counties and the (planned) 12 xT22s replaced the Tiger, Blake and older ASW frigates in various ASW roles. In their final configuratons both classes were good deep water escorts capable of acting in concert with fleet units, indeed the T22s were seen as key fleet units in the Falkands. So as far as I can envisage it a CVA01 CBG in about 1985 would consist of 1 CVA, 2 Bristols, 1 or 2 T42s, at least 2 T22s and probably a smaller frigate or 2 as ASW dogsbody. That is a tough nut to crack for all but the largest non WP countires.

With the significant changes coming in HVM technology over the next few years I would say that any carrier WITHOUT at least four AGEIS style escorts sailing in a box/diamond formation, and a couple of ASW detailed ships with current generation tails working the area, along with at least one, ideally three, 688 flight II or better SSNs sanitizing the area (unless you are in very restricted waters like the Gulf) is almost an invitation for some tricky bastard in an SSK to get his country's equivalent of the Navy Cross or Red Banner pinned on his uniform. This, BTW, very much includes the USN.

The USN made the same mistake with the OHP class FFG as the RN made with the Type 22. If they had been true fleet escorts the RN wouldn't have lost two Type 42 DDG, two Type 21 FFG, two LSL, & a RORO ship carrying a dozen helos (actually, if the Type 22 was a true AAW ship the Argies wouldn't have been able to STRAFE one and get home untouched). Hell, if the Argentines had better fuzes, the RN would have lost more of their "top notch" AAW ships.

FFG's are convoy escorts or brown water ships, not CBG escorts.
 
Even without the Falklands the RN realised that it had made errors with the T42s & T22s, primarily for spurious financial/political reasons, and later versions were stretched. These final versions, (which could have been the intial versions with a bit more foresight) were both around 5000 tons, this is more like destroyer size in 1980, considerably more than contemarary frigates which were about 3-4000 tons (OHP 3800-4100). What's more, even with their tightarse equipment fitout they were equipped better than an OHP, the Sheffield class had 2 SAM illumination channels and the Broadsword also could engage multiple air targets in its own defence, even though it was an ASW destroyer along the lines of USS Spruance.

But the lack of size wasn't the reason why Sheffeild and Coventry were sunk. They were both equipped with the 50s vintage 965 radar, rather than the cancelled 988 3D or the 1022 radar of Exeter and Invincible. This would have allowed engagements in low-level land/sea clutter environments, assuming of course that the accompanying T22 hadn't masked the Coventry's shot at the Skyhawks at the vital moment. As for the T22s 'problems' they were new ships designed for deep-water ASW, not inshore engagements of ultra-low & tight-formation flying, dumb-bomb, attack aircraft. It took a bit of time to tune their SAM systems for that environment, but even so I recall that the Seawolf scored only 1 or 2 less kills than the more numerous and long range Sea Dart.

As for the escort you describe, I'll beleive it when I see it, I just can't see the realistic threat to warrant such a massive escort.
 

CalBear

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Even without the Falklands the RN realised that it had made errors with the T42s & T22s, primarily for spurious financial/political reasons, and later versions were stretched. These final versions, (which could have been the intial versions with a bit more foresight) were both around 5000 tons, this is more like destroyer size in 1980, considerably more than contemarary frigates which were about 3-4000 tons (OHP 3800-4100). What's more, even with their tightarse equipment fitout they were equipped better than an OHP, the Sheffield class had 2 SAM illumination channels and the Broadsword also could engage multiple air targets in its own defence, even though it was an ASW destroyer along the lines of USS Spruance.

But the lack of size wasn't the reason why Sheffeild and Coventry were sunk. They were both equipped with the 50s vintage 965 radar, rather than the cancelled 988 3D or the 1022 radar of Exeter and Invincible. This would have allowed engagements in low-level land/sea clutter environments, assuming of course that the accompanying T22 hadn't masked the Coventry's shot at the Skyhawks at the vital moment. As for the T22s 'problems' they were new ships designed for deep-water ASW, not inshore engagements of ultra-low & tight-formation flying, dumb-bomb, attack aircraft. It took a bit of time to tune their SAM systems for that environment, but even so I recall that the Seawolf scored only 1 or 2 less kills than the more numerous and long range Sea Dart.

As for the escort you describe, I'll beleive it when I see it, I just can't see the realistic threat to warrant such a massive escort.

You ever notice that it's always the two of us that take these kinds of naval warfare questions and turn them in "angels on the head of a pin" exchanges?:D
 
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