Back in the day Victory Games had their Fleet series of games featuring America vs Russia. The scenarios were ridiculous, but the games were entertaining.

Surely you have heard the stories about Poland where Germany invaded with tanks and Poland responded with Calvery. Sometimes in technology there are dramatic break throughs. Today tanks in a war against the big powers are nothing more than easy targets. Well, so are warships thanks to break throughs in missile technology. A carrier group can be easily taken out with a dozen or so hypersonic missiles. In a real war, not some regional conflict, a carrier group or two carrier groups will be destroyed by technologically advanced hypersonic missiles. Not the accompanying subs, they are much more difficult to target.

The navy knows this, they aren’t saying it in public but their vulnerability is known. The problem is we don’t have an alternative. What that means is if China invades Taiwan or Russia goes into Eastern Europe our navy has no other option but to go into the shallow water with the carrier group and possibly get destroyed. Don’t misunderstand the implications here if that happens those subs are armed with nukes and those nukes will likely be used.

Wrong. We,too,have missiles, and accurate ones, and we have air supremacy.

Speaking of the Russian navy. I was an electronic warfare technician for the US Navy throughout most of the 80s. We had a copy of an old board game called Harpoon that simulated navy warfare with the Russians. The problem was that all the information for the naval weapons systems on both sides was not close to accurate. So, we fixed it and play the game with very classified information from our pubs that we used for are job. It turned out to be a great teaching tool for the guys under me and it was fun. We just kept it in our pubs safe with the rest of the classified stuff. Well one day an officer needed one of our pubs and found the game. For some reason he was not happy about our new secret game and took it and I had a lot of explaining to do right on up to the XO. But when I showed them how to play the game they all got a funny look on their faces and said we will get back to you on this matter do not do it again and tell nobody you did this. I thought for sure the hammer was going to come down hard but I heard nothing. After about a month I got the courage the ask the Warrant in charge of us. He said they packed it up and set it the pentagon no doubt take credit for all the work my men and I did. But I took the W and kept quiet. Oh and by the way, we would taken the Russian navy out quickly back then as we found out using the numbers to play the game.

JDZ, you should have written your response in Polish it would have been even funnier. I think you are sincere and well intentioned. Feel free to prove me wrong on this one point. There is no defense against a hypersonic, missile flying 15 feet above the ocean aimed at a carrier. It cannot be detected in time to target it. We are desperately trying to build our own hypersonic missiles but they in the end offensive weapons and there is no effective defense to them. SO at best when we do perfect a hypersonic missile it will not prevent the Chinese from destroying a carrier group or two it will only allow us to destroy theirs as well. Little consolation to the 15,000 or so sailors who would die when their carrier group was blown out of the water. u

Horsecrap. In the first place, everyone knows that crude, simple, cheap Russian weapons (the Kalashnikov, the WWWII T-34 work great though they have their limitations, but state-of-the-art Russian stuff not so much.

The enemy, moreover, has to find that carrier or ship to hit it, and we have much more advanced electronic warfare capabilities than they do.

Beyond that, hypersonic missiles have some serious weaknesses. The real trick isn’t just the speed. Ordinary ballistic missiles actually reach “hypersonic” speeds. The hypersonic missile threat relies on the missile flying very low, trying to elude detection and interception. But… moving that fast through the lower atmosphere results in friction heating the missile and making it much easier to detect and intercept, plus cranking up the speed to that level inside the lower atmosphere requires a much bigger engine again producing a much larger heat signature and a much easier target. We do have counter-missiles.

I would warn you to be cautious in taking the propaganda being liberally dispensed by anti-Ukraine, anti-US, anti-Israel sources all in for Russia (and China and Iran) loudly preaching Defeatism and Isolationism (Mark Wauck, Weapons and Strategy’s Stephen Bryan, and the like). These guys are not reliable to say the least.

I don’t know those guys. I’m not a fan of or a reader of Russian propaganda. I am a 20 year military veteran, a patriot and someone who loves his country. We have, intentionally I believe, weakened our military while simultaneously increased our dependence on China and the Middle East.

The problem for the carrier group is not on the high seas it is in the small areas like the Taiwan strait, Mediterranean, Red Sea, Yellow Sea, etc. But that is the way a Carrier fleet is used in battle; move in close enough so that the planes are effective and use the defenses of the carrier fleet to protect the carrier. But everything changed with the hypersonic missile and for that matter with drones. The hypersonic missile cannot be defended against in close quarters. For example the Tiawan Strait where the distance from launch to strike may be under a minute of time and will not be detected by the U.S. navy more than 5 seconds before impact. THAT is a fact, it is known by the Navy and they don’t want to talk about it. If China goes all in with Taiwan the U.S. will deploy at least one carrier fleet to defend Tiawan and perhaps two. China will take them out like sitting ducks. China will lose a lot of their own aircraft and ships in the battle but they have them to lose. The political and military impact of losing an entire fleet within 2-4 hours of them committing to the fight will be stunning. The same thing could happen in the Med if Russia declares or is forced into a war with NATO. Again, the opposing forces will lose ships, planes, men and all kinds of equipment but do not misunderstand the effect of wiping out one or two entire carrier groups in a few hours of fighting.

You can disagree that it can happen. You can be unhappy that we have allowed ourselves to get into this position where it can happen. But you can no longer say no one told you it can happen. I suggest you do more research.

Carriers don’t have to get up close in shallow water. The planes they carry do the fighting and have long ranges.

The limit for carrier launched planes in a distant war zone where we don’t have complete air superiority is far less than you imply. And the effectiveness of carrier launched aircraft decreases dramatically with distance. The likely greatest distance a carrier would settle for in this kind of battle would not exceed 200 miles, likely under 100 if they thought it was possible. Unfortunately that is about 2-4 minutes flight for a hypersonic missile that can evade discovery until less than 5 seconds before impact. These missiles are called ship killers for a reason. The concern is that our political leaders are over confident and uninformed and will fight the last war and ignore this new and deadly technology. The Navy knows the risk but the Navy will follow orders and sail into harms way. We are on the verge of war on at least three fronts right now. Taiwan is the worst scenario for our carrier fleets. If China chooses to invade Taiwan we will send carriers and other warships to the battle and China will use hypersonic ship killers against them. Simple as that, And then we will know…