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05-14-2026LAST POST
Llarry wroteWe sure have!
Carrier strike groups -- the carrier, the aircraft and the surface combatants and submarines that accompany it -- are a very formidable weapon. I do worry about the vulnerability, though. The Navy's position is that aircraft carriers are a tough target -- they move and they have escorts with good armament. I still worry; the battleship admirals of the 1920s thought that battleships would last forever; they didn't. Nothing lasts forever.
Given the compartmenting and size, I don't think a single missile would sink a carrier, it would hobble it and take it out of the fight and there would be massive losses, but it would have to be a "perfect" hit to drop one in my opinion. The largest spaces inside that could be filled are the engine rooms and reactor auxiliary rooms, both totally isolable from each other, I believe, IIRC, you could completely fill one with seawater and retain buoyancy.
Fully laden with fuel, planes and people I have seen over 100k tons displacement and as low as 70 something empty. That says to me you have about 30k tons of buffer and probably closer to 40k tons.
30t is 22m gallons of water which is around 3m cubic feet.
Then you have CIWS which is anecdotally so sensitive that it will shoot seagulls out of the sky. You'd probably also have planes that would try to intercept or even sacrifice themselves for the carrier.
I do believe it would be a very hard target. To get a hit, you'd need to be asleep, no planes launched, CIWS inactive and even then survivability is extremely high.
billnchristy wroteGood post. But I don't think CIWS can deal effectively with a ballistic missile threat. The good news, I think, is that the war in Ukraine has shown that hypersonics may not be quite as formidable as advertised. I think the accompanying surface combatants will play an important role in defense against missile attack, too.I suppose a surprise attack could cause one to be hit. Can you imagine the wrath that would follow though?
Given the compartmenting and size, I don't think a single missile would sink a carrier, it would hobble it and take it out of the fight and there would be massive losses, but it would have to be a "perfect" hit to drop one in my opinion. The largest spaces inside that could be filled are the engine rooms and reactor auxiliary rooms, both totally isolable from each other, I believe, IIRC, you could completely fill one with seawater and retain buoyancy.
Fully laden with fuel, planes and people I have seen over 100k tons displacement and as low as 70 something empty. That says to me you have about 30k tons of buffer and probably closer to 40k tons.
30t is 22m gallons of water which is around 3m cubic feet.
Then you have CIWS which is anecdotally so sensitive that it will shoot seagulls out of the sky. You'd probably also have planes that would try to intercept or even sacrifice themselves for the carrier.
I do believe it would be a very hard target. To get a hit, you'd need to be asleep, no planes launched, CIWS inactive and even then survivability is extremely high.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-26
But the U.S. Navy is working on a counter: The Standard Extended Range Active Missile or SM-6. Also being bought by the Japanese and Australian navies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-174_Standard_ERAM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis#:~:text=Operation%20Praying%20Mantis%20was%20an,damage%20to%20an%20American%20warship.
We destroyed Iran's Navy in one afternoon after one of our ships hit a mine and was damaged but no loss of crew.
I would gather our response to a carrier being hit as even more pronounced, though these days, who knows.
Llarry wroteAlmost certainly a 15'' shell through the thinly armoured top deck above the main magazine.When the UK battle cruiser HMS Hood fought the German battleship Bismarck in May of 1941, the Hood blew up catastrophically and sank; of her 1,418 crew, only three survived. An investigation concluded that the Hood's after magazine had blown up, although there is some question about whether it was a German shell or a turret explosion.
The Hood was due a major refit which would have included a thicker armoured upper deck to counter steeply angled shell hits but was pushed back into service as Britain's flagship to counter the active Bismarck threat.
The first, USS Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) was completed in 1988, so is now 35 years old.
As the ships have entered the fleet, they've been improved. The first of the latest version, the Flight III ships, is DDG 125. I'll attach a graphic of the improvements in the Flight III DDGs.
c1pher wroteI do not have an engineering background, but it appears to me that improved cooling is a key to advanced technology.What’s impressive is they have taken the Porsche approach and applied constant enhancement and improvement. The SPY6 is so advanced they went from SPY1 after many updates to SPY6 and will be moving to SPY7 soon to harness GaN to simplify cooling challenges that have always been a hurdle to get over.
The T-ESDs were followed by a class of ships with a similar hull design but the addition of a large flight deck. These are designated ESB (Expeditionary Sea Base) and the Navy is building six of the type. The ESBs are commissioned ships and military-manned. Of the three already in service, one is based in Bahrain, one in Crete and one in Saipan. My impression is that the ESBs have been primarily used for basing mine countermeasure helicopters and special operations forces, but they seem to be very versatile. They have only light weapons, so are only suitable for low threat operations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expeditionary_Transfer_Dock
The airship has engines with props that would hit the carrier island. The carrier island has various projections that would easily hit the airship, which is very thin-skinned. I see nothing holding the two together. It all looks very dubious to me.
Llarry wroteDon't know...https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/I'm not sure what to make of this photo -- was photoshop around in the late 1920s and early 1930s?
I volunteered for subs but got picked for carrier, so glad I did honestly but I got to train on an S5W sub and later repaired the S8G prototype in Ballston Spa and I was shocked at how huge the engine room was compared to the old boomers.
Kinda cool that I was in the navy from 1996-2005 and got to work on a WWII destroyer engine room, 2 1960s reactor plants, a 1990s reactor plant, a 1980s sub engine room, and a 1990s sub reactor.
3798j wroteOK, I'm in. January 27, 1928. Must've been quite a hairy evolution that had two COs sweating bullets.Don't know...https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/
The Los Angeles and her later airship sisters had a converted oiler -- the USS Patoka -- for a tender that had a proper mooring mast constructed on the stern.
jselander44 wroteName one ship sunk by a USN submarine since 1945.All these posts talking about targets...
OK, just bustin' on you. You are right; when push comes to shove there will be lots and lots of targets. Not only have we not fired a torpedo in anger since 1945, but we also have not attacked a submarine -- nuclear or conventional -- since then. All hell will break loose if either thing happens.
I watched The Last Ship, so now I know one USN destroyer is crewed by covert operators and can single handedly take on the entire world UNLESS it goes up against a ghost Iowa class battleship...
My gramps was Navy, dad was a Coastie, I ended up Army. Growing up I wanted to join the Navy, sometimes I wish I had because of the traveling the world. One of these days I need to visit a port and see some ships in person.
