China's hypersonic missiles have shorter range than an F35 launched from a carrier with midair refuel drone.
The only issue is that we'd want our carriers closer in practice. Close to the action means faster response times. If we are willing to destroy Chinese satellites, then China's kill chain becomes much harder.
I'm not convinced that a drone or spyplane can reliably penetrate the defensive line of destroyers + cruisers + E2 Hawkeyes.
And satellites aren't even that reliable either, it may be possible to hide a carrier between satellite flyovers in practice.
A drone could not penetrate a defensive line of destroyers, cruisers, and E2 Hawkeyes.
However, a destroyer costs $870 million. I can build a drone for around $870 which has decent range, and sufficient firepower to do real damage if attacking with sufficient precision (e.g. placing a small explosive charge directly within a barrel).
That means I can launch a million drones for the cost of one destroyer. I'm pretty sure that a line of destroyers, cruisers, and E2 Hawkeyes wouldn't be able to destroy a fleet of a million drones. If they could, the cost of destroying each drone would likely be greater than the cost of the drone.
You can also launch 870 cruise missiles for the cost of one destroyer from a greater range with greater destruction.
Actually, this is wrong. That is the cost of the missiles, not the cost of the launch platform, nor the cost of the personnel, nor the cost of the logistics.
CRAM bullets cost cheaper than your drone, and those CRAMs are on each Destroyer. I think our cruisers have 2 CRAMs on them (but I forget exactly)
These CRAMs can aim-bot and destroy subsonic cruise missiles (500mph), and even supersonic cruise missiles (1000mph). That's why China has spent billions developing hypersonic missiles (2500+mph) to dodge our CRAMs and missile defenses.
How fast is your drone flying? Does it pull enough lateral Gs to dodge CRAM shots or avoid the Patriot defense missiles?
The "city-version" has shorter range, because we need the bullets to self-destroy themselves before they land on someone's property. So the Israeli "Iron Dome" is in fact, inferior, to the defense system on these Destroyers / Cruisers that surround the Carrier.
Tel Aviv's Iron Dome also has a much more difficult job: defending a population center rather than just a few ships. There will naturally be "holes" in the Iron Dome (just areas of the city that aren't as well defended).
In contrast: we can position our ships to maximize the chance of interception, and minimize the chance of our CRAM's failing.
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The worry about China's drones is their stealth spydrones which will try to triangulate the position of the carrier strike group. The drone then sends the coordinates to a hypersonic missile.
I'm not convinced that the stealth systems on those drones are sufficient to "hide" from radar, probably only good enough to prevent things like CRAM/Patriots from locking on. Without the ability to lock on, we don't have an ability to kill those drones from Destroyers / Cruisers.
That's where the Carrier comes in. The E2 Hawkeye has an aerial radar system and can get "eyes in the sky", making our targeting superior (maybe then our Patriots can hit). We can also launch fighters (F22 is probably sufficient) to close the distance and lock on / destroy the target... or even engage in a dogfight (radar-drones wouldn't have much dogfighting ability).
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How is China launching a million drones anyway? Their carriers aren't like ours. We have 4x catapults and 2x runways per carrier, I'm pretty sure China's carriers are only 1x runway. How many minutes does it take per launch?
If its an air battle you want, the 4x catapults + 2x runways the Supercarriers push will get more planes into the air than anything in the Chinese Navy... and we have something like 10 carriers fielded right now.
We're talking about Taiwan. China sets them up in the fields in a few of the rural communities near Xiamen. They simultaneously lift off from the fields. They fly at ~25mph. They take perhaps three hours to clear the water between Taiwan and China. There's a million of them. They're slow, but fairly agile.
Looking at the video, it looks like the C-RAM system is shooting perhaps dozens of rounds per second. Shooting down a million drones would take many hours of continuous shooting, assuming every bullet hit, which it wouldn't.
And a Patriot missile is $2-3 million.
I think the future of warfare is likely to be cheap, small, but smart and precision.
* A small drone flies into a gun barrel and explodes.
* A small drone flies into a jet air intake, and explodes, spraying material designed to damage the engine as it passes through
* A small drone deposits a chemical weapon in a ship's HVAC intake
* A small drone sprays corrosive paint on a camera, on a jet window, other surface we look through
* A small drone launches a single bullet to kill a mechanic
... and so on.
I think a lot of this goes like rock-paper-scissors, where a million $1000 drones overwhelms a $1 billion ship. On the other hand, a hundred thousand $10,000 drones could probably make quick work of a million $1000 drones. And so on.
As long as the ship is traveling 25mph away from a 25mph drone, its shooting them down with machine guns (and bullets are very, very cheap). A flock of drones flying at 25mph isn't a weapon, they're sitting ducks. Fully and completely ineffective at ever dealing damage to these warships.
Like, 25mph means that these drones are going to be within effective range of the machine guns for 10 minutes when the ship is standing still. And these AEGIS systems on these destroyers have 300km+ effective radar range.
Unless you have very expensive equipment on those drones: they'll be flying in blind and getting sniped. Either stealth (which prevents the CRAM from locking on), or superior radar (to see the ships before the ships see it), or a combination thereof.
And again: if they're not standing still: the ships can basically run around in circles and the drones would never catch up.
1) China doesn't need to destroy US ships; it merely needs to keep them distracted long enough to take control of Taiwan. If China moves quickly, the Taiwanese leadership are deported to Beijing, and there are boots on the ground, it's a done deal. Once that's done, it will be like Crimea. There's no way the US is getting drawn into a land war in Asia.
2) Ten minutes, at a dozen shots a minute, means a gun firing at 10 RPS can take out 6,000 drones. That's 0.6% of a flock.
3) You can't run circles around a flock of millions of drones, no matter how fast you go. A flock can cover a lot of space. The best you can do is run away, which would take US forces out-of-commission.
4) The Taiwan Straight is simply not that large. It's not hard for China to be aware of everything that happens there, even with a fleet of small, cheap AUVs. Heck, they could drop a few hundred thousand of these as well, if they wanted to.
5) It's equally not hard for China to communicate with a flock of drones. A directional spread spectrum link isn't easy to jam. At that range, even an optical link is practical, and not something where we have countermeasures.
6) A million drones can effectively blanket the whole Taiwan straight.
7) In terms of stealth, I'm not sure how technology will progress, but I'm pretty sure that building drones indistinguishable from birds on radar just wouldn't be that hard. I'm also pretty sure a flock of drones could be made to emulate other forms of craft, on radar.
8) I'm also pretty sure China wouldn't telegraph what they're doing. It's not like we can prepare countermeasures. I gave one example of a disruptive technology; there are dozens of others. To be honest, I have no idea how AEGIS would deal with a million targets, nor what having that many targets would do to its ability to track things like Chinese landing craft, unless the US were explicitly prepared for this particular threat.
Also, the C-RAM price-per-round is about $30. With a $1000 drone, things are cost-neutral if about 3% of rounds hit. At 10 kilometers, it would take rounds a little under 10 seconds to arrive. Even modestly chaotic trajectories would dodge most rounds.
Frankly: the discussion point of "suicide drones" is pretty ignorant.
25mph drones will not hold back a warship. They can't effectively close range at 10km out, let alone at 5km, 1km, or shorter. As I stated earlier: warships are literally faster than that.
The "meta" under discussion, by serious people (including Chinese investments / Chinese saber rattling) is the missile. 500mph cruise missiles, 1000mph supersonic missiles, and 3000mph hypersonic missiles.
If you're going to "suicide drone", you do it at 3000mph to impress people. You don't do it at 25mph. Even at 500mph and 1000mph, the methodology is so clearly ineffective that China has spent billions making 3000mph missiles instead.
The minute you start thinking about how these drones are going to take off, refuel, get their payloads (etc. etc.), is the minute you realize how impractical the whole proposal is. What kind of launch platform will these drones take off in? What's the effective range of a drone?
US Destroyers have tomahawk cruise missiles that can reliably hit targets 2000km away, and these missiles fly at 500mph+. How long does it take for your 25mph drone to cover the 2000km range that these Destroyers are at defending Taiwan?
By the time your drones get there, the Destroyers have already launched all their missiles and have gone home.
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How do you even find the warships in the first place? You keep saying "hundreds of drones", but drones flying at 10km high can only see 300km out.
Secondly: if you fly "like a bird" at say 1000meters, you can only see 100km out before the horizon blocks you. It'd be impossible to track down the warships firing from 2000km away.
At these ranges, the E2 Hawkeye of the Carrier will see your drones, and an appropriate response will be dispatched. Most likely, the warships will just avoid the drones. Hiding behind the horizon.
What kind of drone are you using to even try to tavel 2000km over water? I'm pretty sure that your typical $1000 drone simply don't have the range or speed to even get to the warships.
> There's no way the US is getting drawn into a land war in Asia.
Classic blunder or not, the US gets drawn into land wars in Asia fairly regularly (especially in the 21st century, where we’ve spent most of it involved in two at once.) 1950-1953 Korea, 1955-1973 Vietnam, 1991 Iraq, 2001-2021 Afghanistan, 2003-2011 Iraq II: Elecric Boogaloo, 2014-? Iraq III: Now with Syria, too.
The only issue is that we'd want our carriers closer in practice. Close to the action means faster response times. If we are willing to destroy Chinese satellites, then China's kill chain becomes much harder.
I'm not convinced that a drone or spyplane can reliably penetrate the defensive line of destroyers + cruisers + E2 Hawkeyes.
And satellites aren't even that reliable either, it may be possible to hide a carrier between satellite flyovers in practice.