You would also need to find a crew to run it. Which requires either a) ex military dudes with direct experience b) extremely talented engineers who can reverse engineer stuff and make it work.
For either, you are going to have to spend basically close to 5 mill a year just on salaries.
It's a given that aircraft carriers will be sunk in an all out war. They're useful to project power in anything less than an all out war, which fortunately is most of the time.
Edit: I'm a former nuclear submarine sailor. We call aircraft carriers 'targets'
The writing style of this article is interested, on one hand, it's packed full of details and information like a well-researched, human-written article.
On the other, there are many ChatGPTisms, it's not this, it's that, groups of 3 terms, em-dashes, etc.
My thinking is that there was a thorough draft written by a human that then was passed through an LLM and heavily modified. Not that there's a problem with that.
There are 2 things that are VERY classified when it comes to US military.
First is missle defense capability
Second is sonar.
I believe something like 10 years ago, the declassified sonar capability was that it could reconstruct a 3d image of a goldfish 10 miles away.
TLDR; US is never going going "win" wargames because its not a good idea to showcase the true capability. Same reason why F22 and F35s "lose" to other jets - US purposefully nerfs them and flies them at decreased envelopes.
Wonder if US/USN is even institutionally capable of moving away from carrier expeditionary model if on paper it's borderly demonsntratbly not survivable. Feel like too much of US national prestige is tied to muh 11+10 carrier+lhd literally legislated into law (10 US Code 8062a). Too much big dick energy ego tied to arguably obsolecent platform, well at least for peer war.
Submarines similar to spamming ballistic or antiship missiles is one of those things we'll never really have a full answer for. There's only so many sonobouys you can drop in a huge ocean you need to transit. Ships just like soldiers will always be expendable at some level.
Interesting (to me) that the AIP is based on a Stirling engine. It's the first time I've heard of one being used at scale. No doubt HNers will have countless other applications at their fingertips, but to me they've always been only theoretically useful desk toys.
Only an armchair enthusiast, but: these diesel/electric subs are quite slow and have limited range, certainly compared to a carrier group. Even with the new(ish) Air Independent Propulsion, they can stay underwater for a long time - maybe weeks - but can't go very fast. Their limited endurance also means they have to stay close-ish to their bases. The AIP bit often relies on special fuels (hydrogen, ethanol, and in any case, compressed oxygen) meaning they can't refuel at any random port, or generate the fuel at sea, like recharging batteries from diesel power.
They are amazing and great at coastal operations, but I just don't see how they can chase a carrier group around. They could of course lie in wait and pick the right spot/get lucky, but I'm not sure if this is a viable strategy.
See PRC recently revealed XXLUUVs (US will be building them too I imagine), large submarine drones, long endurance, no crew, i.e. expendable blue water one way munition launchers. Space ISR means all movement of carrier groups at any given time is essentially known. Group of XXLUUVs can be plotted on different intercept trajectories. They can be spatially distributed to handoff shadowing. The real problem is not even ASW anymore, imagine subsect of XXLUUVs fleet blasting active sonar not trying even to hide to find subsurface, queue meme of that trumpet boy following annoyed girl. i.e. loud drones that weaponize their expendability as trip wire. Imagine conop: we know where your expensive manned surface/subsurface platforms are, we don't care about being sunk, we're always going to be blasting sensors so we know if you're trying to take us out, mean while we're close enough that we can counter fire before your munitions reach us, and since we're in terminal range, we have weapons grade track all ready. If you ignore us, we're just going to keep following you with weapons grade track that we're broadcasting for other platforms, some of which are other XXLUUVs just outside your ASW range that you don't know about. This moves away from technologic subsurface cat and mouse to industrial/attritional, i.e. PRC can crank out more theatre level XXLUUVs than US can SSNs or their own UUVs.
As a former Navy officer, the best description I ever heard of a conventionally powered submarine is "a mobile minefield." Nuclear is a different story.
In case of a war with China, the US aircraft carriers would operate quite far out in the sea, most likely many hundreds of miles away from the continent. Submarines could try to get at them, but again, the most likely US tactic would be to have the carriers constantly on the move. China has 48 old Type 33 diesel-electric submarines, with a top (submerged) speed of 13 knots, less than half the top speed of any US carrier. The only hope for such a submarine to catch a carrier strike group would be to lie in wait. But the ocean is very large, and such a strategy is probabilistically very unlikely to succeed. China also has 6 nuclear attack submarines. It is however quite likely that in the even of a war, they'd be the first to be targeted by the US Navy. Sinking ships (or submarines) goes both ways.
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[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 59.1 ms ] threadUnfortunately, skull shaped volcano islands are harder to come by.
For either, you are going to have to spend basically close to 5 mill a year just on salaries.
The article even mentions the added use of layered defence to try and counter this move.
Edit: I'm a former nuclear submarine sailor. We call aircraft carriers 'targets'
On the other, there are many ChatGPTisms, it's not this, it's that, groups of 3 terms, em-dashes, etc.
My thinking is that there was a thorough draft written by a human that then was passed through an LLM and heavily modified. Not that there's a problem with that.
Nothing on the "tariff shelf" is gonna fix that, only bankrupt the country like his casino
And next war is going to be just thousands upon thousands of drones since apparently we have no way to stop them over airports and everything else
First is missle defense capability
Second is sonar.
I believe something like 10 years ago, the declassified sonar capability was that it could reconstruct a 3d image of a goldfish 10 miles away.
TLDR; US is never going going "win" wargames because its not a good idea to showcase the true capability. Same reason why F22 and F35s "lose" to other jets - US purposefully nerfs them and flies them at decreased envelopes.
They are amazing and great at coastal operations, but I just don't see how they can chase a carrier group around. They could of course lie in wait and pick the right spot/get lucky, but I'm not sure if this is a viable strategy.
"we have only to be lucky once, you will have to be lucky always"