Does the US Navy have its robot-warship concept all wrong?

[sl8]

Related thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016245768


From https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/01/10/does-the-us-navy-have-its-robot-warship-concept-all-wrong/

Does the US Navy have its robot-warship concept all wrong?

By: David B. Larter ? 3 days ago



The Navy's plans for a large unmanned surface vessel should look less like a big Sea Hunter, shown, and a bit more like a traditional corvette, according to a new study from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy’s plans for unleashing robot warships on the world’s oceans may need some work, according to a new study.

The way the Navy describes its planned large unmanned surface vessel, or LUSV, is as an external missile magazine that can significantly boost the number of missile tubes fielded for significantly less money than buying Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which cost nearly $2 billion per hull.

The problem? China is pumping out warships like it’s going out of style: A recent photo of a Chinese shipyard taken by an airline passenger showed nine destroyers under construction and an aircraft carrier. In 2018, China surpassed the U.S. Navy as the world’s largest naval force.

That has led the U.S. Navy to aggressively push toward an LUSV equipped with a vertical launching system, or VLS, to get the punch of a missile-shooting frigate for less money.

[...]

[C_U_L8R]

1. Miniature swarms of robot submersables

These things look like big lumbering robot targets. Old school.

[Blues Heron]

2. It's so expensive to have conflict

unreal really. What a waste. All 8 billion of us really need to cooperate from here on out.

[marble falls]

3. China is larger in numbers but they certainly do not begin to match the USN in ability ...

to project power anywhere on the planet.

[Ghost Dog]

4. China only needs to protect the mainland,

including through area-denial in home waters.

[marble falls]

5. If the US wants to put the 7th Fleet anywhere on China's coast ...

there's not a freaking thing effective thing they could do about it short of initiating nuclear war.

Its headquartered in Yokosuka, Japan; less than five hundred miles from North Korea or China.

My money is on the USN in any sort of naval confrontation with China.

[Ghost Dog]

6. Sure. But why would the US ever want

to do that?

[marble falls]

7. That wasn't the point of the OP, the OP suggested that the Chinese somehow ...

has developed parity with other world fleets, that they might be a challenge on the white water.

The US uses its fleets around the world for policy reasons, including in the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean not because they have the intent to use it but to remind other political entities it is there to use in case of the need to use it.

We rattle sabers with it. If there were a US or an ally's ship confiscated in the Chinese aggressive claims of territorial sovereignty in the South Chinese Seas, where the US has sent warships through to underline our claims that the area is international waters, the 7th Fleet would definitely make a presence. Just like with the Russians in other places there have been "incidents" with Chinese Naval vessels in the South China Seas. The Chinese understand not to push it too far.

[NickB79]

8. This has been considered. The US Navy comes out poorly even without nuclear weapons used

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/china-us-war/594793/

If a war broke out between the United States and China, the clash between two of the world’s most powerful militaries would be horrific. And the United States could very well lose.

That’s a concern among current and former defense officials and military analysts, one of whom told Breaking Defense earlier this year that in war games simulating great-power conflict in which the United States fights Russia and China, the United States “gets its ass handed to it.”

snip

Notably, the likeliest U.S.-China war scenarios take place in Asia—it’s not that a Chinese “victory” means the Chinese Communist Party takes over Washington, but that the U.S. can’t successfully eject China from Japanese-claimed territory or Taiwan. In an attempt to do so, besides cyberattacks, the United States could attack Chinese forces from the air or sea. The problem is that China has spent at least the past 20 years, partly informed by observations of how the U.S. conducted the Gulf War in the 1990s, preparing for exactly this kind of conflict, and investing in defenses that could violently thwart a U.S. approach.

It has missiles that can sink ships. It has missiles that can down airplanes. And it has missiles that could theoretically reach U.S. regional bases in Japan and Guam, leaving planes and runways vulnerable to attack. “Many Chinese observers suggest that missile strikes on air bases would be part of the opening salvos of a war,” notes Rand’s “U.S.-China Military Scorecard.” Shutting down such a base even for a matter of days, according to Rand, could be enough to change the course of the conflict.

snip

Yet the growth of Chinese capabilities represents a big change from about 20 years ago, when President Bill Clinton sent aircraft carriers near the Taiwan Strait to deter Chinese threats against the island. China at the time had been firing missiles toward Taiwan, but its missile arsenal was far less capable and precise. “When that carrier was deployed by President Clinton, the Chinese couldn’t even find it,” Chris Brose, the former staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a separate talk at the Aspen forum. “And they’ve spent 25 years not only figuring out how to find systems like that, but how to overwhelm them with very large volumes of precision weapons.”

If the U.S. were to deploy an aircraft carrier near the strait when there was a real possibility of conflict, Brose said, “let’s put it this way, I wouldn’t want to be on that aircraft carrier.”

[marble falls]

9. Fortunately aircrafts carriers don't go anywhere and station alone. I'd rather be on the carrier ...

than anywhere in China.

[NickB79]

10. The war games they modeled used full carrier battle groups

A full compliment of support ships didn't prevent the carriers from being hit hard by Chinese anti-ship missiles.