Hiding an aircraft carrier battle group on the open sea isn’t possible.
Whoa. That’s.. not true? Maybe in thirty years if radar + imaging gets dramatically better, but.. As bean says, it’s a big ocean, and very easy to hide in inclement weather with drones and electronic counter-warfare and automated point-defence systems that are already very good and etc. The “carriers are doomed” still seems to be quite acontroversialcontention.
I commend you for giving a fair shake to both sides of the issue. There are two big questions at play: How easy it is to find warships and how hard it is to defend against incoming missiles.
Detecting Warships
Bean’s original analysis seems to revolve around surface-based and air-based radar. The price of space travel is going down. I take it for granted we will have many optical cameras in orbit (or, in case satellites are destroyed en masse, then via drones). It might be possible to hide temporarily under a cloud, but once weather changes your ships are visible to anyone with a big space program.
Shooting Down Missiles
In plain English, the missile can’t tell the carrier from a destroyer with a blip enhancer or a merchantman.
Bean’s original analysis seems bearish on today’s missile guidance and targeting systems. I think that they are getting better quickly alongside space travel and machine learning. It may be true today that a missile can’t tell warships apart but I would be surprised if that were still for the most advanced anti-ship ballistic missiles in 2050.
My post is premised on the idea that even if you could shoot down an incoming swarm of missile it would cost far more than the price of the missiles. I could be wrong because my analysis only accounts for interceptor missiles. There are a variety of non-missile defenses to consider.
But there are other defenses besides missiles. There’s also electronic warfare to consider. This is a fantasticallycomplicatedtopic, and we can’t know the answer without an actual war…
This is a big question mark because the most advanced missile defense systems of today haven’t been battle-tested against the most advanced anti-ship ballistic missiles.
Aye, these are all reasonable points, but there will be corresponding advances on the US side in evading detection, adding confusion, and masking signals. I recommend the podcast episode, I listened to it this morning—Bean’s clearly evolved on this, but basically says, “I think it will come down to a cyber race to see who has better zero-days.”
I have so far resisted thinking in terms of “I think it will come down to a cyber race to see who has better zero-days” because my heuristic for this sort of thing is that programmers tend to overestimate our own importance. But then I think about WWI where technological advances were vastly underestimated by the military establishment on the Western Front. It could go either way.
Whoa. That’s.. not true? Maybe in thirty years if radar + imaging gets dramatically better, but.. As bean says, it’s a big ocean, and very easy to hide in inclement weather with drones and electronic counter-warfare and automated point-defence systems that are already very good and etc. The “carriers are doomed” still seems to be quite a controversial contention.
Ah, Bean is now somewhat less sure about the survivability of carriers against China, although important to note: genuinely unsure.
I commend you for giving a fair shake to both sides of the issue. There are two big questions at play: How easy it is to find warships and how hard it is to defend against incoming missiles.
Detecting Warships
Bean’s original analysis seems to revolve around surface-based and air-based radar. The price of space travel is going down. I take it for granted we will have many optical cameras in orbit (or, in case satellites are destroyed en masse, then via drones). It might be possible to hide temporarily under a cloud, but once weather changes your ships are visible to anyone with a big space program.
Shooting Down Missiles
Bean’s original analysis seems bearish on today’s missile guidance and targeting systems. I think that they are getting better quickly alongside space travel and machine learning. It may be true today that a missile can’t tell warships apart but I would be surprised if that were still for the most advanced anti-ship ballistic missiles in 2050.
My post is premised on the idea that even if you could shoot down an incoming swarm of missile it would cost far more than the price of the missiles. I could be wrong because my analysis only accounts for interceptor missiles. There are a variety of non-missile defenses to consider.
This is a big question mark because the most advanced missile defense systems of today haven’t been battle-tested against the most advanced anti-ship ballistic missiles.
Aye, these are all reasonable points, but there will be corresponding advances on the US side in evading detection, adding confusion, and masking signals. I recommend the podcast episode, I listened to it this morning—Bean’s clearly evolved on this, but basically says, “I think it will come down to a cyber race to see who has better zero-days.”
Yes to all.
I have so far resisted thinking in terms of “I think it will come down to a cyber race to see who has better zero-days” because my heuristic for this sort of thing is that programmers tend to overestimate our own importance. But then I think about WWI where technological advances were vastly underestimated by the military establishment on the Western Front. It could go either way.