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We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

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Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#211

Post by ericmay »

jabl wrote: post #175
ericmay wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it would be the U.S. Navy, but not quite. First, how do you even locate the carrier groups? Let’s say you do get lucky and find them. Ok. Now let’s say you launch missiles - ok the carrier group can move and also shoot down missiles. Oh and once you do launch those missiles you’ve committed to a big time war, and you’re open to counter-attack by American forces - not just the carriers but also land-based strike…

> First, how do you even locate the carrier groups? Perhaps by these SAR satellites China has been launching? SAR satellites have AFAIU been fairly effectively miniaturized recently, enabling a wannabe-superpower like China to send up hundreds or even thousands of them if they want to, making it infeasible to destroy them all cost-effectively at least with today's technology. I'm not sure what the current level of co…

> Perhaps by these SAR satellites China has been launching? SAR satellites have AFAIU been fairly effectively miniaturized recently, enabling a wannabe-superpower like China to send up hundreds or even thousands of them if they want to, making it infeasible to destroy them all cost-effectively at least with today's technology.

Sure it's possible. I think it's challenging overall but it seems neither of us are completely sure.

> Considerably more difficult for ballistic missiles.

Kind of. Ballistic missiles follow a predictable trajectory - the difference is these hypersonic missiles while mostly following predictable trajectories they can adjust a little bit more at the last second to hit a target.

> I would also imagine that missiles in principle could be relatively affordable if they were mass-produced; today they are expensive because they are expensive to develop and there's no demand for a huge number of them. So you could saturate the defenses with enough missiles that even if many were shot down, at some point a sufficient number of them are going to get through.

Potentially, but then the U.S. may have its own counter-measures. As I think about the costs, the cheapest the cruise missile got to was around $1,000,000. So I wonder how cheap you can make hypersonic missiles in order to create enough of them? They'd have to be hypersonic too b/c the U.S. is likely shooting down others that get too close to the CSG.

But also, what if China goes and builds all these missiles for a war that never comes? Or rather, what if the U.S. just keeps the fleet out of range and just chokes off Chinese supply lines from the sea?

> Of course not. Then again, China probably doesn't build those missiles because they think US carrier groups will easily shoot them down. Both sides certainly have smart people, as well as ossified bureaucracies gunning for the last war.

I agree.

> Note I'm not saying the time of carriers is gone. But it's been 80 years since carriers became the kingmakers of naval force projection, and technology has developed quite a bit since, and there (luckily!) has been no major conflict testing out these new developments. I just think it's foolish to be very certain one way or another.

My bias here is not so much with carriers or the U.S. Navy but by overestimating these missiles and their effectiveness. Whenever I hear all of the armchair generals talking about something (myself included) I immediately have to wonder how we're wrong and why we're wrong. It's like everyone predicting the next market bubble - they latch on to a relatable idea (China has so many missiles they can blow up all of our ships) and stick to it and then barely question that assumption.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#212

Post by magicsmoke »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #186
ufmace wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read, Japan never had anywhere near the industrial capability to pull any of that off. Even landing troops and maintaining a garrison at all on Midway and the Hawaiian islands would stretch them to the limit - they arguably already didn't have the troops to spare to do that along with their other commitments in their Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere plan. Taking Hawaii at all is already outlandi…

Yes Japan has almost no natural resources which is why they invaded Asian countries in the first place. But allied submarines and seaplanes were hammering their supply lines constantly to the point they could barely get anything shipped to Japan. The war was a Japanese gamble and quite a few intelligent Japanese predicted it would fail.

That's the reason behind why Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. Japan's invasion of the rest of China though was an act of militaristic hubris that caused a net loss in resources over 4 years and led them to invade the rest of southeast asia to patch this hemorrhage which then drew the US into the conflict with its oil embargo.

Japanese military planners in 1937 knew an invasion of China would be a waste of precious resources for little potential gain. But they were sidelined by younger military officers that wanted a shot at battlefield glory and ignored orders from above for a ceasefire after the Marco Polo bridge incident. And after the first battlefield victories started rolling in it became politically impossible to halt the momentum for continued war.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#213

Post by RugnirViking »

ericmay wrote: post #210
RugnirViking wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how far is the radar range? Can you truly detect ship signatures with radar without the CSG being out of your range? yes. > Anyway, let’s say you launch missiles. Ok? Ships move. Ship missile defense shoots down some missiles, etc. ships move means nothing at all, the missiles are tracking the ships with radar. missile defence shoots down some missiles yes, but usually the idea with these types of attacks is ov…

> ships move means nothing at all, the missiles are tracking the ships with radar. missile defence shoots down some missiles yes, but usually the idea with these types of attacks is overwhealimg air defence systems with volume of fire, so you fire on the order of 30 missiles at once, and use a probabalistic attack to ensure one or two make it through I think you're misunderstanding how these missile systems work and…

Missiles are not targeted at a location. They absolubtely do "lock on" and can track a moving target. They would simply not be able to function if that were not that case. Why even use a missile at all if it worked like that, just fire a big gun. Sure there are countermeasures, but manouvering a ship won't do anything on its own. The only way things like that help is when combined with chaff or heat signature dummies.

What makes you think that tracking a ship the size of a skyscraper would be difficult but that tracking a missile would be easy? Yes, the US satelite network will soon be able to detect this type of missile launches, they are working on that capability right now - I never said ships wouldn't know that they are coming, just that there is little they can do with that information if more than one or two missiles are launched.

You seem to be vastly underestimating how well these missiles can manouver. They can't adjust "slightly", they can make sharp turns, with many times more g-forces than a regular plane - a ship has no chance to outmanouver them, any manouvers would only be to present a lower profile to a single missile or to try to confuse the missile's tracking system using some other countermeasures

as for reading articles about the millitary "sounding the alarm" how does the dod itself sound https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/1934290...

Finally cost. Yes these missiles are expensive but that is several orders of magnitude lower than an aircraft carrier. Heck, its orders of magnitude lower than a single plane on that carrier

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#214

Post by jabl »

jcranmer wrote: post #208
tosbalok2 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand how you could question American ability to resupply Hawaii but not Japan's I'm claiming that if one side has a carrier and the other side doesn't, that will determine who can reliably move convoys across the pacific. The carriers have such an enormous capacity for reconnaissance, it's hard for me to imagine a convoy sneaking past them. So if Japan has a carrier dedicated to the blockade of Hawaii…

That is not how convoys work. You're proposing using capital ships--ships of which even the largest numbers had single digit numbers --to escort convoys. This takes them out of the action for any other offensive or defensive naval operation you might want to use. Instead, you'd use destroyers (of which you have hundreds ) and cruisers (merely dozens ). This also lets you have several escort vessels per convoy, which…

> You're proposing using capital ships--ships of which even the largest numbers had single digit numbers--to escort convoys. This takes them out of the action for any other offensive or defensive naval operation you might want to use. Instead, you'd use destroyers (of which you have hundreds) and cruisers (merely dozens). This also lets you have several escort vessels per convoy, which is superior because two ships can be in two places at once which a single ship cannot.

The Allies (mostly the US) built lots of escort carriers, precisely for escorting convoys (be it "normal" convoys or invasion fleets in the Pacific), and AFAIK they were considered pretty successful and took some of the glory of winning the battle of the Atlantic. But yeah, you can, with some justification, argue that escort carriers aren't capital ships.

> The Germans did attempt using surface ships to raid convoys, but their record was absolutely abysmal

IIRC the German auxiliary cruisers (HilfsKreuzer) were considered pretty successful, as they were cheap and since they were just converted merchant ships with guns etc. hidden they could often get quite close to a target before revealing themselves. But these were used for picking off lone merchantmen, not convoys.

> it's pretty universally agreed among naval historians that not building those ships would have been better for Germany.

Yes, the German capital ships were an almost complete waste of resources. Those resources would have been much better spent on, say, u-boats and land-based aircraft. I guess the only positive return Germany got from them was as a sort of 'fleet in being', in that their mere existence forced the allies to commit their own capital ships to the area in case they turned up to attack some convoy.

Of course, had the Germans not built their own capital ships, the Allies would have also reacted, e.g. by not building or stationing their own capital ships in the area, and spending more resources on, say, anti-submarine efforts. So I'm not certain the battle of the Atlantic would have turned out any different in this case either, just even more bloody.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#215

Post by nojokes »

seoaeu wrote: post #207
nojokes wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War time effort = create new vaccine factories when needed, share the know-how, do what ever necessary. And when did they start to ramp up the production?

Moderna started ramping up back in August [0], two and a half months after they'd dosed the first stage 1 trial participant [1]. I'm just really not convinced that their scaling up was that bad that they could have done it six months faster. There are real bottlenecks involved, and some extremely specialized equipment. Not to mention that even in WW2, the United States' new naval shipyards took something like 9 month…

And they should already have started in spring or before and share the knowledge to others how to make mRNA vaccines.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#216

Post by fmajid »

onepointsixC wrote: post #85
fmajid wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/21/usa.julianborg... General Van Riper used low-tech but effective techniques like using motorcycle messengers to transmit orders in a way that could not be intercepted by US ELINT/COMINT or blocked by jamming. We are lucky Saddam did not have inventive Marine generals, because any general smart enough to be effective would have been eliminated as a potential threat to his r…

You're missing the part where those motorcycle messengers move at the speed of light, that the speed boats used were tiny commercial ones which could have never loaded let alone fired the heavy cruise missiles used and that blue force's defenses were off because the simulator otherwise would unintentionally target civilian shipping and aviation. If the Iranians could have they would have done so already. There's a re…

As the old joke goes, Iran will fight America to the last Iraqi…

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#217

Post by koheripbal »

i56asg5h wrote: post #35

Colonel Billy Mitchell, the "father of the US Air Force," was famously court marshalled in 1925. He had predicted that in the future Japan would attack Pearl Harbor with aircraft. He predicted 'aircraft traveling 1000 miles per hour would fight each other in the stratosphere'. He predicted troopers would one day parachute behind enemy lines. He predicted long range heavy bombers. He aggressively argued for stronger i…

Not to be pedantic, but he was court martialled for calling his superiors criminally negligent to the media.

The video you linked makes that clear.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#218

Post by ericmay »

RugnirViking wrote: post #213
ericmay wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ships move means nothing at all, the missiles are tracking the ships with radar. missile defence shoots down some missiles yes, but usually the idea with these types of attacks is overwhealimg air defence systems with volume of fire, so you fire on the order of 30 missiles at once, and use a probabalistic attack to ensure one or two make it through I think you're misunderstanding how these missile systems work and…

Missiles are not targeted at a location. They absolubtely do "lock on" and can track a moving target. They would simply not be able to function if that were not that case. Why even use a missile at all if it worked like that, just fire a big gun. Sure there are countermeasures, but manouvering a ship won't do anything on its own. The only way things like that help is when combined with chaff or heat signature dummies…

> Missiles are not targeted at a location. They absolubtely do "lock on" and can track a moving target. They would simply not be able to function if that were not that case. Why even use a missile at all if it worked like that, just fire a big gun. Sure there are countermeasures, but manouvering a ship won't do anything on its own. The only way things like that help is when combined with chaff or heat signature dummies.

I don't think this is correct with ballistic missiles or these hypersonic missiles - please correct me if I'm wrong. My understanding is that it's not like a fighter jet locking on to a target and firing a missile. When these missiles are fired they are launched into a general area - in this case where the Chinese think the U.S. Navy ships are, and then after that the missiles will lock on to a target as they re-enter the atmosphere - they have a few seconds to adjust course and do so. They can miss.

> You seem to be vastly underestimating how well these missiles can manouver. They can't adjust "slightly", they can make sharp turns, with many times more g-forces than a regular plane - a ship has no chance to outmanouver them, any manouvers would only be to present a lower profile to a single missile or to try to confuse the missile's tracking system using some other countermeasures

What I'm not saying is the U.S. Navy can just run away or something from the missiles once they are in range, but the ships can move and the missiles can miss.

> as for reading articles about the millitary "sounding the alarm" how does the dod itself sound

It doesn't sound like anything - it's no different. These are just reports that come out form the bureaucracy. The DoD sounds the alarm on all sorts of things.

https://www.ausn.org/post/navy-sounds-the-alarm-on-biden-s-d...

> Finally cost. Yes these missiles are expensive but that is several orders of magnitude lower than an aircraft carrier. Heck, its orders of magnitude lower than a single plane on that carrier

Cheaper than a carrier but dunno about planes. Maybe the cost can come down over time if they aren't already cheaper.

Also in the grand scheme of things the US Navy can just stay out of their range and harass supply lines, and then U.S. forces in the region can attack these missile systems and destroy them, then the US Navy can move in.

The main concern really isn't these missiles. They present a problem, of course, because they make it difficult for the U.S. Navy to effectively operate in the region (and by effectively operate we mean unimpeded), but they aren't an ace in the hole or some sort of trump card that the Chinese have.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#219

Post by onepointsixC »

willhslade wrote: post #107
snakke wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your hunch is correct. There is a quote from a british naval officer that roughly says that -if they were right [on aircraft carriers being the next best thing and battleships being obsolete] they'd win the war. If they were wrong, they'd lose the empire.- The exact quote escapes my google-fu sadly. I'm quite postive I've seen it in either one of Indy Neidell and his team's WW2 week-by-week episode[0] or one of the m…

Just to play devils advocate isn't this happening right now with the US army's dependence on aircraft carriers vs the Chinese and Russian supersonic missiles?

No because Aircraft carriers are mobile and thus significantly harder to hit. Supersonic and Hypersonic's are most effective against fixed assets like airfields and bases who's locations are known ahead of time. China for example likely has missile right now aimed at Okinawa and Guam, just waiting for the order to launch.

Compare that to trying to hit say the USS Ronald Reagan. It is capable of moving 700 miles a day. They need to track its location, have a firing solution, and continuously update the tracking to ensure they actually hit it as opposed to a near miss. All of these stages could be disrupted by US assets.

Re: We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor

#220

Post by onepointsixC »

koheripbal wrote: post #205
willhslade wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to play devils advocate isn't this happening right now with the US army's dependence on aircraft carriers vs the Chinese and Russian supersonic missiles?

Yes, absolutely. The US invests heavily in aircraft carriers because they've worked so magnificently at force projection around the world, without any need for regional bases. ...but with the advent of hypersonic missiles, drones, small attack boats, I have serious doubt how long they would last in any modern non-nuclear conflict.

How long will any regional base last? China or Russia knows where they are and would launch against them in the first minutes of a conflict. CSG's are the most survivable force projection assets that the US has.
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