How the United States Lost the Naval War of 2015

http://www.fpri.org/orbis/5401/kraska.navalwar2015.pdf

by DanielBMarkham • 17 years ago

31 46 17 years ago

gwern• 17 years ago

Blah blah blah. 'I'm a Navy shill and let me tell you, China's going to kill us all within a very implausibly short-time if we don't shovel billions into cool new ships & weapons. We must eliminate the carrier gap!'

Haven't we heard this story before?

And here I was hoping for an interesting analysis of the Iran wargames and the dismal results for the carrier groups, but all I got was let's build a bigger bluewater fleet.

stcredzero2• 17 years ago

I'd put more resources into cruise missiles launched from submarines and small missile carrying craft with stealth technology.

eru4• 17 years ago

How about putting more resources into bribery. It seemed to work quite well in Iraq, and took out opposing forces cheaper than weapons. And with less blood shed, of course.

irrelative• 17 years ago

Indeed. It was a Tom Clancy book with a hawkish pitch. Let me know when the movie adaptation comes out.

blueben• 17 years ago

Because there isn't enough pornography on DVD already...

You know the author of this story was hot and bothered during the entire writing process. A Christian, no doubt, too. Probably skipped Bible study when they covered the section that says "Those who delight in violence [God] abhors".

hugh_4• 17 years ago

For those who can't be bothered reading it, the posited scenario goes something like this:

1. China torpedoes a US aircraft carrier for no particularly good reason

2. China claims that the US aircraft carrier exploded all on its own, and nobody can prove otherwise

3. The US doesn't bother to retaliate

4. The US has thus "lost the Naval War of 2015".

Does this scenario strike anyone as especially plausible?

tokenadult• 17 years ago

Couldn't the United States send some nuclear-tipped missiles to China in response, and then claim the explosions were simply explosions of the warheads stockpiled in China? I just don't buy 3. as a likely response. Possible, but not likely.

hugh_4• 17 years ago

And unless step 3 seems not just "likely" but "damn near certain", there's no way the Chinese are going to be dumb enough to attempt step 1.

stcredzero2• 17 years ago

There would be records of the radar track in the computers of the Aegis cruisers in the task force. There may well be evidence of the launch captured by satellites.

ELINT is very powerful, and the US intelligence agencies have been at this game since before WWII. Their sneakiness boggles the mind! They were using signals bounced off of the moon to spy on Soviet equipment, and disguised the whole thing as radio astronomy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ

If you are going to go up against the US defense establishment, you'd better be damned sure you know what you're doing.

If I were the US, facing such an asymmetric threat, I'd keep most of my carrier groups around for the short term as a boondoggle, then come up with my own novel threat against my opponent's shipping.

(Sub launched cruise missiles, or mines? The advanced 21st century version, of course.)

hugh_4• 17 years ago

(Sub launched cruise missiles, or mines?)

Nukes.

If I were the US, I'd simply make it an official matter of policy that any attack from a nuclear power would result in an immediate nuclear response, the logic being that once two nuclear powers are at war it's probably going to turn nuclear eventually, so you might as well make the first strike.

cabalamat2• 17 years ago

> China torpedoes a US aircraft carrier for no particularly good reason

No. The scenario is that China hits a US carrier with a (conventionally armed) ballistic missile, for no particularly good reason

hugh_4• 17 years ago

I stand corrected. Don't aircraft carriers have pretty good missile defence systems, though?

ryanwaggoner• 17 years ago

Amusing. I enjoyed this part:

The incident—could it really be called a ‘‘war’’?—

Well, when you're making up some hypothetical event in the future, you can call it anything you want. Kind of weird to question it yourself though.

This whole thing is pretty stupid, though. As a former Navy guy, I find it pretty hard to believe that the US wouldn't be able to prove that China was responsible, or that they wouldn't retaliate even if they couldn't prove it.

ynniv2• 17 years ago

And Iraq has chemical weapons, and Iran is a dangerous nuclear power, blah blah blah... Isn't $500 billion a year (50% of the federal budget!) enough for you people?

markpneyer• 17 years ago

The federal budget is significantly more than 1 Trillion USD

ynniv2• 17 years ago

Yeah, the numbers change year to year, and the most recent numbers are even greater. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budg...], I tally ~ $743 billion in defense and veterans affairs. Add a large percentage of the $220 billion in interest payments. The important question percentage-wise is whether you include Social Security.

Anyway, the fraction of the budget is really besides the point. We spend an inordinate amount of money on the military, and there is no viable threats to defend against. China is the best pick because they spend the second most money ($85 billion), but can we legitimately think that we'll go to physical war with such a huge trade partner?

Our military is funded by campfire stories and yellow press.

shpxnvz• 17 years ago

More like 27% of the 2008 federal budget.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

ahi2• 17 years ago

That number doesn't include wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

javery• 17 years ago

Modern Carriers can't fit through the Panama Canal and I am sure they would be fine going around the tip of South America.

eru4• 17 years ago

They are planning to enlarge the Canal. Though I do not know whether it will be large enough for carriers. (Probably not.)

sethg2• 17 years ago

Out of every $100 spent on national defense worldwide, $40–$50 are spent by the United States. About 30% of the US Federal budget is military spending, and about 13% is paying interest on money we borrowed for previous military spending.¹ Any hypothetical war that the US couldn’t win unless it spends even more coin on military hardware is not a hypothetical war that the US should be hypothetically fighting in the first place.

¹ http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spendi...

gaius2• 17 years ago

What the US gets for that money tho' is a vast amount of tech that eventually ends up with the general public. I have two GPSs on me at the moment. Which is ridiculous but hey, they're so cheap, why not stick one in every electronic device?! There's a reason that all that comes out of the US.

The EU as a whole spends about half what the US does on defence and ends up with about 10% of the capability. Hmm.

eru4• 17 years ago

Your first argument would be more interesting, if you could compare it with a situation where the money remains in civilian hands.

(E.g. during the Second World War a lot of new technology came out of the military, too. But that was only to expect, since all resources went into the military.)

sker• 17 years ago

Keep in mind that US defense contrctors are probably the most expensive in the world. How much does a Lockheed Martin engineer makes versus a Chinese contractor engineer?

The US spending 40-50% of the world's defense budget doesn't say much other than the fact that a lot of people are getting very rich in America. Don't get me wrong, they are still far ahead from everyone else, but I don't think that's a valid metric unless you adjust for purchasing power.

ahi2• 17 years ago

Surface navies are useless against competent organized opponents. Carrier groups are for power projection to scare the natives, little else. During a $250 million war game in 2002, OPFOR sunk the US fleet in the Persian Gulf. Sorry I can't find the original: http://bassreport.com/forum/rec.boats.t664050.htm

And another from the War Nerd: http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carrier...

He repeats this quote from the US Naval Institute about 10 times in that last article: "Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack," and points out that ballistic missiles are 50 year old tech.

The solution to defending a surface navy isn't to throw money at it, but to mothball it.

sethg2• 17 years ago

That is a rather glaring flaw in the OP’s argument, innit? “The Chinese could bring down one of our massive ships with one cheap missile! Therefore we need... an even larger quantity of massive ships than we have now!”

HistoryInAction2• 17 years ago

The references are pretty interesting for this article. I highly recommend the "Pentagon's Wasting Assets" article by Andrew Bachevich, which talks about this in a section of it from a less inflammatory perspective (mostly focusing on the Hormouz and Taiwanese Straits, as well as the 2002 war game mentioned below)

It's a known thought that since the late 80s, the Chinese Navy has been led by strategists who follow Mahanian decisive battle theory. It'll be interesting to see how carrier air groups are integrated into a theory that was adopted in the turn of the 20th century for a 'big gun'/dreadnought/battleship navy that was made obsolete by the emergence of naval air power.

Billy Mitchell just keeps winning...

johngalt• 17 years ago

This is almost the exact scenario of "Debt of Honor" by Tom Clancy. Only it was a Japanese sub that ambushed a carrier.

How the United States Lost the Naval War of 2015

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