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Iran plans to build aircraft carrier, boost naval warfare capabilities

I don't doubt Iran could build an aircraft carrier, but it's a question whether they should and how effective it would be.

if they really want one why not buy a Type 001A and 44 Mig-29K to go with it?? guaranteed to have it in 3 to 4 years.
 
Well, aircraft carriers have been around since the 1920s, and historically the advantage of carriers was that their aircraft had greater range than the big guns on battleships.
So, which ships have greater range than the carriers today?

Modernized Russian Kirov class? With 600 km P800 Oniks? Indian destroyers with an 800km Brahmos version? China's Type 055? YJ18 operational range is given as 220–540 km. The YJ-100 subsonic anti-ship missile version of the CJ-10 has a range a range of 800 km (500 mi; 430 nmi). No aerial refuelling here!

Well, a large number of heavily armed destroyers like the Arleigh Burkes have high survivability in terms of active defence systems like missiles and CIWS. Realistically, if you have allowed your carrier to take physical damage, you have already failed to prevent the enemy from breaking down your numerous ranged defences like fighter aircraft and escorts.
With a carrier group you would still have that defensive capability of the destroyers, in addition to the long range coverage provided by the carrier's airgroup and its own closer in defences. If you allow your DDG to take physical damage, you have failed just as badly (perhaps even more so, given your unit's armament and available consort ship protection) to prevent the enemy from breaking down your defences. The point is that when it comes down to it, a carrier is harder to sink than a Burke DDG. Its like the secret service; you expect your ddg's to take a bullet for presidentt CVN. Still, it is nice if you have a president that is fit and doesn't suffer a stroke at the first sign of trouble and possibly can even hit an attacker. You never ever want to be in that situation, but should you ever be, it is nice if POTUS can shoot or has a black belt in something.

Granted. Carriers are very flexible, allowing them to partake in wide offensives on enemy states. But what about naval warfare? In such a case, cruise missiles can do the job.
What about naval warfare? Thusfar in the incidents we've had with antiship missiles, they have typically not sunk the ships in question outright. Subsequent fires (i.e. absent or failing damage control) usually did them in. A carrier group is not going to sit around waiting to become a target. An attacking for will force have to locate the group, and then box it in, if it is to have a chance at kill via a great number of missiles (a few simply won't do it). And, in the case of eg USN, what is to stop USN from putting a large group of its own DDGs/SSNs in between to engage the opponent if the carrier group is threatened: two can play at that game.

Yes, but I am talking about a large number of DDGs to 1 CVN not 3 small CVNs to 1 large CVN.
So was I. USN has 10-11 CVN plus some 22 CG Ticonderoga and 62 DDG Burke. That's 84 active escorts total and about 7-8 per carrier. Not counting any other smaller surface ships, or any AV-8B/F35B capable LHA/LHDs. How many similar sized and armed CG/DDG would you see as 'equal firepower' to a single carrier? That plus 7-8 should be and equivalent force to a single CSG.

Yes, but this isn't this less relevant in ship-to-ship combat? After all, if you can afford 10 DDGs to 1 CVN, you have a lot of ordinance. Furthermore, naval battles aren't typically as long as what America uses its carriers for (anti-ground ops mostly) and there are a far more smaller number of combatants. It is conceivable that 1 DDG would have enough armament to destroy another DDG several times over (ceteris paribas). Same for 10 DDGs vs 10 DDGs, etc.
CGs/DDGs don't carry just cruisemissiles or antishipmissiles. They always have a mix. This limits individual ship firepower for ny specific role besides self defence against air attack. Unless you appoint specialist ships e.g. one ship serves as arsenal ship and another as AAW ship. Consider AB with 96 vls cells. Antiship missile load out is usually limited to 8 or 16. I'm assuming Flight 2A with 16 Mk41 launched LRASM here. Land attack cruise missile load out (Tomahawk) usually double that: 24. The rest (56 cells) is e.g. 16 Asroc plus 40 cells for e.g. 8 cells quadpacked ESSM (32 missiles), and 32 cells for SM2MR, SM3, SM6.
If you want to do antiground ops, you lower antiship missile load from 16 to 8 cells, ESSM from 8 to 4 cells, and Asroc from 16 to 12 cells in order to pack an extra 16 Tomahawks cruisemissiles (i.e. from 24 to 40). Tomahawk has a 450kg unitary warhead or a submunitions dispenser with BLU-97/B Combined Effects Bom, so you need a mix of those e.g. 20/20.
If you want to do antiship ops, you increase LRASM load by dropping ASROC from 16 to 12, ESSM from 8 to 4 4-packs, Tomahawks from 24 to 16. Your AShM count goes from 16 to 32.
And so on, times the number of your surface combattants.

A modern air wing consists of roughly 1,500 personnel and 74–78 aircraft. The current U.S. Navy carrier air wing consists of:
  • Four Strike Fighter (VFA) Squadrons, with twelve F/A-18E/F Super Hornets each, or ten F/A-18C Hornets each (over forty strike fighters total). The typical mix is one F/A-18F (two-seat) Super Hornet squadron, and three single-seat F/A-18E Super Hornet squadrons or a mix of F/A-18E Super Hornet and F/A-18C Hornet squadrons, though some air wings have two F/A-18F (two-seat) squadrons. In two airwings one of the F/A-18C Hornet squadrons is a U.S. Marine Corps Fighter Attack (VMFA) Squadron.
  • One Electronic Attack (VAQ) Squadron, made up of five EA-18G Growlers.
  • One Carrier Airborne Early Warning (VAW) Squadron, with four E-2C Hawkeyes or five E-2D "Advanced" Hawkeyes
  • One Helicopter Sea Combat (HSC) Squadron of eight MH-60S Seahawks
  • One Helicopter Maritime Strike (HSM) Squadron of eleven MH-60R Seahawks, 3–5 of which are typically based in detachments on other ships of the carrier strike group.
  • A Fleet Logistics Support (VRC) Squadron Detachment of two C-2A Greyhounds;
So, today, you got 12 F/A-18E and 30 F/A-18C or 24 /A-18E and 20 F/A-18C to work with, besides the ships in your escort. F/A-18C takes up to 6,200 kg of ordnance and F/A-18E takes (8,050 kg). You can put 4 Harpoon on each in addition to 2 Sidewinder and 2 Amraam and a centreline fuel tank. So, that's 168 to 176 of the 124km Harpoon or 270km SLAM-ER or 370km+ JASSM / LRASM or 1000 km JASSM-ER, in one go. So, for antiship strike, you'ld need some five or six DDGs with the loadout I indicated before just to equal the number of missiles of the airgroup. Add a few more - say, three - to counter the DDGs that are carrier escort. And then when you fire, your antiship missiles are gone, while the aircraft can in principal go back to refuel and rearm and be at it again. So, you need to have the upper hand numerically right from the start. That means imho, doubling the initial missile volley i.e. not 8-9 but 16-18 DDGs. Against 1 CVN, 3 DDG (not counted a SSN in yet). And if your opponent field 10 of those CSGs then you need potentially 160-180 DDGs, or double the number of Tico's and Burke's the USN currently has.
 
I don't doubt Iran could build an aircraft carrier, but it's a question whether they should and how effective it would be.

if they really want one why not buy a Type 001A and 44 Mig-29K to go with it?? guaranteed to have it in 3 to 4 years.

Iran really doesn't need one. It doesn't make sense given their defense budget and military doctrine. Aircraft carries are more offensive than defensive, unless there has been a change in their policy.

Like I said before this "aircraft" carrier could be something else entirely. Not in the traditional sense of what a AC should be.
 
Is this supposed to somehow mean the aircraft carrier as a naval weapon have become useless ?

Of course not. In fact I'm surprised you quoted that section of my post.

I don't think quite anybody is saying the carrier is useless as a naval weapon. I don't need to talk about the various weaponry carriers are equipped with.

But I think the carrier may be not as efficient at naval combat as it's equivalent price in conventional warships like destroyers.

That particular statement you replied to was really me saying that physical survivability of a ship should not be a decisive factor in determining it's effectiveness. This isn't WW2, ships aren't even armoured anymore. The focus is on long range firepower. If you've allowed your ship to take damage you've been tactically defeated.
 
I don't think quite anybody is saying the carrier is useless as a naval weapon. I don't need to talk about the various weaponry carriers are equipped with.

But I think the carrier may be not as efficient at naval combat as it's equivalent price in conventional warships like destroyers.

That particular statement you replied to was really me saying that physical survivability of a ship should not be a decisive factor in determining it's effectiveness. This isn't WW2, ships aren't even armoured anymore. The focus is on long range firepower. If you've allowed your ship to take damage you've been tactically defeated.
WW II was the first time fleets fought each other without seeing each other -- thanks to air power. Since then, other than a weapons accident on the USS Enterprise back in Jan 1969, which really did not cripple the ship's ability to conduct air operations should the damages came from combat, no one really know the survivability of an aircraft carrier under combat. Not even US and we are the world's master of the ship. And certainly not your Iran.
 
I don't doubt Iran could build an aircraft carrier, but it's a question whether they should and how effective it would be.

if they really want one why not buy a Type 001A and 44 Mig-29K to go with it?? guaranteed to have it in 3 to 4 years.
iran started qaher project for aircraft carriers at first because they said that qaher can fly in a short bond ... and we have our f14s too
 
I don't doubt Iran could build an aircraft carrier, but it's a question whether they should and how effective it would be.

if they really want one why not buy a Type 001A and 44 Mig-29K to go with it?? guaranteed to have it in 3 to 4 years.

i do
 
WW II was the first time fleets fought each other without seeing each other -- thanks to air power. Since then, other than a weapons accident on the USS Enterprise back in Jan 1969, which really did not cripple the ship's ability to conduct air operations should the damages came from combat, no one really know the survivability of an aircraft carrier under combat. Not even US and we are the world's master of the ship. And certainly not your Iran.
Note:
1) Besides the 1969 USS Enterprise incident, there was the 1967 USS Forrestal fire, after an unguided 5.0 in (127.0 mm) Mk-32 "Zuni" rocket, one of four contained in an LAU-10 underwing rocket pod mounted on an F-4B Phantom II (believed to be aircraft No. 110 from VF-11), accidentally fired. Nine bomb explosions eventually occurred on the flight deck, eight caused by the AN-M65 Composition B bombs cooking off under the heat of the fuel fires, and the ninth occurring as a sympathetic detonation between an AN-M65 and a newer 500 lb M117 H6 bomb that it was lying next to on the deck.

2) USS America,
one of three Kitty Hawk-class supercarriers built for the United States Navy in the 1960s, holds the distinction of being the first large aircraft carrier since Operation Crossroads in 1946 to be expended in weapons tests. In 2005, she was scuttled southeast of Cape Hatteras, after four weeks of tests. She was chosen to be a live-fire test and evaluation platform in 2005, to aid the design of future aircraft carriers. The Navy tested America with underwater explosives. These explosions were designed to simulate underwater attacks.

3. Experience from the following: Tarawa class LHA3 Belleau Wood, was decommissioned on 28 October 2005 and expended as a target and sunk off the coast of Hawaii as part of RIMPAC '06 exercises on 13 July 2006. Also sunk in sinkex were the Iwo Jima class LPHs USS Okinawa (LPH-3), USS Guadalcanal (LPH-7), USS Guam (LPH-9) and USS New Orleans (LPH-11)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Guadalcanal_(LPH-7)
 
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So, which ships have greater range than the carriers today?

Modernized Russian Kirov class? With 600 km P800 Oniks? Indian destroyers with an 800km Brahmos version? China's Type 055? YJ18 operational range is given as 220–540 km. The YJ-100 subsonic anti-ship missile version of the CJ-10 has a range a range of 800 km (500 mi; 430 nmi). No aerial refuelling here!

While the combination of aircraft and air-launched AShMs can outrange the 800 km Brahmos and its counterpart the operations of aircraft is limited by modern long range SAMs, like the Russian S-400 recently mounted on one of those Kirov class cruisers you mentioned or the SM-6 mounted on a variety of US ships.

With a carrier group you would still have that defensive capability of the destroyers, in addition to the long range coverage provided by the carrier's airgroup and its own closer in defences.

Well, that really comes down to the numbers, which I've worked out further below.

What about naval warfare? Thusfar in the incidents we've had with antiship missiles, they have typically not sunk the ships in question outright. Subsequent fires (i.e. absent or failing damage control) usually did them in.

Well, the aircraft have to use AShMs as well (just airborne), so its hardly advantage CVN.

And, in the case of eg USN, what is to stop USN from putting a large group of its own DDGs/SSNs in between to engage the opponent if the carrier group is threatened: two can play at that game.

Ceteris paribas. For the purposes of this discussion, we want to find out the capability of a CSG vs a fleet of smaller vessels like Cruisers and destroyers (though mostly destroyers). Specifically in relation to the carrier, so it would be helpful to compare the CVN + escorts (which form the CSG) with the DDGF (DDG Fleet) + escorts. The reason I include the escorts is because the CSG does not work without escorts, and to maintain ceteris paribas both sides must have the escorts, since our aim is to compare the CVN with the DDGF but we need the CVN's escorts (forming the CSG) for the comparison to be accurate.

So was I. USN has 10-11 CVN plus some 22 CG Ticonderoga and 62 DDG Burke. That's 84 active escorts total and about 7-8 per carrier. Not counting any other smaller surface ships, or any AV-8B/F35B capable LHA/LHDs. How many similar sized and armed CG/DDG would you see as 'equal firepower' to a single carrier? That plus 7-8 should be and equivalent force to a single CSG.

Well I'm going off a cost basis here. So we could say, the cost of a US supercarrier with all of its aircraft, vs the maximum number of advanced destroyers you could get for the same money. Both with an equal number of escorts.

CGs/DDGs don't carry just cruisemissiles or antishipmissiles. They always have a mix. This limits individual ship firepower for ny specific role besides self defence against air attack. Unless you appoint specialist ships e.g. one ship serves as arsenal ship and another as AAW ship. Consider AB with 96 vls cells. Antiship missile load out is usually limited to 8 or 16. I'm assuming Flight 2A with 16 Mk41 launched LRASM here. Land attack cruise missile load out (Tomahawk) usually double that: 24. The rest (56 cells) is e.g. 16 Asroc plus 40 cells for e.g. 8 cells quadpacked ESSM (32 missiles), and 32 cells for SM2MR, SM3, SM6.
If you want to do antiground ops, you lower antiship missile load from 16 to 8 cells, ESSM from 8 to 4 cells, and Asroc from 16 to 12 cells in order to pack an extra 16 Tomahawks cruisemissiles (i.e. from 24 to 40). Tomahawk has a 450kg unitary warhead or a submunitions dispenser with BLU-97/B Combined Effects Bom, so you need a mix of those e.g. 20/20.
If you want to do antiship ops, you increase LRASM load by dropping ASROC from 16 to 12, ESSM from 8 to 4 4-packs, Tomahawks from 24 to 16. Your AShM count goes from 16 to 32.
And so on, times the number of your surface combattants.

A modern air wing consists of roughly 1,500 personnel and 74–78 aircraft. The current U.S. Navy carrier air wing consists of:
  • Four Strike Fighter (VFA) Squadrons, with twelve F/A-18E/F Super Hornets each, or ten F/A-18C Hornets each (over forty strike fighters total). The typical mix is one F/A-18F (two-seat) Super Hornet squadron, and three single-seat F/A-18E Super Hornet squadrons or a mix of F/A-18E Super Hornet and F/A-18C Hornet squadrons, though some air wings have two F/A-18F (two-seat) squadrons. In two airwings one of the F/A-18C Hornet squadrons is a U.S. Marine Corps Fighter Attack (VMFA) Squadron.
  • One Electronic Attack (VAQ) Squadron, made up of five EA-18G Growlers.
  • One Carrier Airborne Early Warning (VAW) Squadron, with four E-2C Hawkeyes or five E-2D "Advanced" Hawkeyes
  • One Helicopter Sea Combat (HSC) Squadron of eight MH-60S Seahawks
  • One Helicopter Maritime Strike (HSM) Squadron of eleven MH-60R Seahawks, 3–5 of which are typically based in detachments on other ships of the carrier strike group.
  • A Fleet Logistics Support (VRC) Squadron Detachment of two C-2A Greyhounds;
So, today, you got 12 F/A-18E and 30 F/A-18C or 24 /A-18E and 20 F/A-18C to work with, besides the ships in your escort. F/A-18C takes up to 6,200 kg of ordnance and F/A-18E takes (8,050 kg). You can put 4 Harpoon on each in addition to 2 Sidewinder and 2 Amraam and a centreline fuel tank. So, that's 168 to 176 of the 124km Harpoon or 270km SLAM-ER or 370km+ JASSM / LRASM or 1000 km JASSM-ER, in one go. So, for antiship strike, you'ld need some five or six DDGs with the loadout I indicated before just to equal the number of missiles of the airgroup. Add a few more - say, three - to counter the DDGs that are carrier escort. And then when you fire, your antiship missiles are gone, while the aircraft can in principal go back to refuel and rearm and be at it again. So, you need to have the upper hand numerically right from the start. That means imho, doubling the initial missile volley i.e. not 8-9 but 16-18 DDGs. Against 1 CVN, 3 DDG (not counted a SSN in yet). And if your opponent field 10 of those CSGs then you need potentially 160-180 DDGs, or double the number of Tico's and Burke's the USN currently has.

Oh boy. I need to do a lot of Maths.

I think first I should work out cost.

So first we might as well use a current Nimitz class since you're using current fighters. The USS George H dubwa Bush cost about $6.2 billion in 2009. That makes about $7.2 billion today. For the aircraft:

VFA: 24 SHornets = 24x98.3 mil = $2.359 billion
20 Hornets (they each cost $29 mil in 2006, in 2017 they would be about $35 mil) = 20x35 mil = $700 million

VFA total = $3.059 billion

VAQ: 5 Growlers (In 2012 each was $68.2 mil, now $72.3 mil) = 5x72.3 = $361.5 million

VAW: 5 E-2D = 5x173.6 mil = $868 million

HSC = 8 MH-60S = 8x28.1 mil = $224.8 million

HSM = 11 MH-60R = 11x43 mil = $473 million

VRC = 2 C-2A = 2x40 mil = $80 million

Total cost of Carrier Air Wing = $5.066 billion (wow)

So total cost of a Nimitz class with its air wing is about $12.3 billion. I'm not even gonna go into maintenance.

Each Arleigh Burke costs about $1.98 billion. So for each Nimitz you could get 6 Arleigh Burkes.

Thats an additional 576 VLS cells. Which could mean anything from 48 to 192 extra AShMs.

So you've got a CSG on one side, with 1 CVN, 2 CGs and 6 DDGs. And on the other is the hypothetical DDSG (Destroyer Strike Group[?] :D), with 12 DDGs and 2 CGs (6 of those DDGs are part of the DDGF).

Just out of interest, how utterly astronomical is the cost of a fully kitted out Gerald Ford class CVN going to be, what with the actual CVN costing nearly double a Nimitz and the F-35... The F-35! Must be at least $20 billion...
 
Iran with a population of 80 million just doesn't have the expertise to build something massive like an aircraft carrier.
 
That settled it. Internet Iranians have established the aircraft carrier as useless.

Dont you know yet? Everything on the internet is true. Shame on you for thinking otherwise.
 
Note:
1) Besides the 1969 USS Enterprise incident, there was the 1967 USS Forrestal fire, after an unguided 5.0 in (127.0 mm) Mk-32 "Zuni" rocket, one of four contained in an LAU-10 underwing rocket pod mounted on an F-4B Phantom II (believed to be aircraft No. 110 from VF-11), accidentally fired. Nine bomb explosions eventually occurred on the flight deck, eight caused by the AN-M65 Composition B bombs cooking off under the heat of the fuel fires, and the ninth occurring as a sympathetic detonation between an AN-M65 and a newer 500 lb M117 H6 bomb that it was lying next to on the deck.

2) USS America,
one of three Kitty Hawk-class supercarriers built for the United States Navy in the 1960s, holds the distinction of being the first large aircraft carrier since Operation Crossroads in 1946 to be expended in weapons tests. In 2005, she was scuttled southeast of Cape Hatteras, after four weeks of tests. She was chosen to be a live-fire test and evaluation platform in 2005, to aid the design of future aircraft carriers. The Navy tested America with underwater explosives. These explosions were designed to simulate underwater attacks.

3. Experience from the following: Tarawa class LHA3 Belleau Wood, was decommissioned on 28 October 2005 and expended as a target and sunk off the coast of Hawaii as part of RIMPAC '06 exercises on 13 July 2006. Also sunk in sinkex were the Iwo Jima class LPHs USS Okinawa (LPH-3), USS Guadalcanal (LPH-7), USS Guam (LPH-9) and USS New Orleans (LPH-11)
A friend at work was an avionics tech on the Vinson for almost 5 yrs. He said pretty much the only way for a Nimitz-class ship to sink in combat is to literally just sit there and take hits from all sides, including from underwater, and even then, it would take literally hrs for an attacker to do it. Like how long it took for the Oriskany to sink, and that ship was of a WW II era design.

I understand that academically speaking, it is an interesting exercise to speculate how much it would take to perform X event, but then again, in the same academic vein, why people do not take into consideration INEXPERIENCE as factor is somewhat a mystery.

WW II was the first time fleets -- thanks to air power -- fought each other without seeing each other, and may very well be the last time navies fight each other while within sight of each other. Since then, the art and craft of fleet vs fleet have essentially been lost. As for the missile vs ship scenario, not even the famous Exocet hit on the Sheffield yielded any revelation on the effectiveness of that scenario. Essentially, no post WW II navy can speculate, let alone 'know', what it is like to fight a US aircraft carrier group. I do not mean to be hyperbolic, but air power pretty much rendered hundreds of yrs of naval combat knowledge to near irrelevancy. But here in this little corner of the Internet, I am reading from Iranians on how the aircraft carrier have been rendered impotent based upon how much it cost to build X, Y, and Z.
 
That settled it. Internet Iranians have established the aircraft carrier as useless.
:dance3:

But here in this little corner of the Internet, I am reading from Iranians on how the aircraft carrier have been rendered impotent based upon how much it cost to build X, Y, and Z.

... and yet, now Iran seeks a carrier!:woot:

[got to love this]
 
Iran with a population of 80 million just doesn't have the expertise to build something massive like an aircraft carrier.

Of course it doesn't, not yet anyway. But I don't see what population has to do with it. The UK is building carriers right now with a population of 60 million. But China with a population of a billion had to first buy a Russian carrier to learn how they work before actually building one (and even then largely a copy of the Russian Carrier)

That settled it. Internet Iranians have established the aircraft carrier as useless.

I don't know if you're referring to me, but I personally am not saying carriers are useless. Questioning and discussing the capabilities if carriers is not a crime, is it? Carriers are not some infallible Gods of the sea that one cannot oppose even with words.

... and yet, now Iran seeks a carrier!:woot:

[got to love this]

I wonder, if Iranian military officials have ever said carriers are useless.

A friend at work was an avionics tech on the Vinson for almost 5 yrs. He said pretty much the only way for a Nimitz-class ship to sink in combat is to literally just sit there and take hits from all sides, including from underwater, and even then, it would take literally hrs for an attacker to do it.

I'm not surprised. But a mission kill dealt by hits to the deck is easier than an outright sinking.
 

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