Navy aircraft carrier group moves into contested South China Sea

Again, I call bullshit. All the hype surrounding those supposed hyper-missiles (which no one has ever actually seen) completely discounts a CBG's formidable and quite effective countermeasures. It baffles me how people think they're just sitting there with little to no protection. Submarines always have been, and will continue to be, a much larger threat than this hypothetical missile.

Finally, this isn't really a game of Chicken. This deployment is just a normal WESTPAC deployment, which have been happening multiple times per year since WW2 ended. They're just making a big deal of it now to hype things up.

MCPO Roger Collins

Actually there is quite a good amount of evidence (unclassified) in reputable Defense related journals, like US Naval Institute Proceedings Magazine, that is not just hype for Defense Contractors who are hoping to get a bigger slice of the Defense Pie, that shows that these Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles have done well in advanced testing. I have posted several of these articles here on RP. There are also other threats such as the hyper-sonic cruise missile systems.

The Truth is, our carriers have not faced an advance technology Opponent like the Russians or Chinese (our most likely potential "Carrier Killer Adversaries) or a third world country that was armed with these kind of Ballistic Missile Technologies. It is not Bullshit, as you say, but a real and present danger to our Super Carriers. If it was not so, then our carriers would not be operating at their most extreme stand off ranges, when there is a potential for this kind of anti-ship technology. Most of my family who have served in the Navy, Father, Uncle, numerous cousins, have been carrier sailors in war and peace. Carriers are best suited against third world countries with limited or no Anti-Aircraft Carrier (or ship) Ballistic Missile technologies. They are increasingly seen as vulnerable against countries that have advanced anti-ship weaponry.

Example:
http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2010-01/fortress-sea-carrier-invulnerability-myth
https://www.quora.com/How-vulnerable-are-the-US-aircraft-carriers-and-battle-groups-to-enemy-attack

Millennium Challenge 2002 The Simulated Invasion of Iraq
The idea was to validate new technologies and popular strategic concepts, i.e. netcentric warfare, through an elaborate simulation.

Booz-Allen-Hamilton was hired by the DOD to build and run the simulation (computer and live) called “Millennium Challenge 2002” where Blue Force (USA) was to invade a smaller Middle Eastern nation (aka Iraq) defended by the Red Force. This was the largest, most sophisticated and costly war simulation – running around $250 million. As I recall, it took months to build and was supposed to run two weeks or more.

They picked retired Marine Lieutenant General Paul van Riper to lead the Red Force. Excellent choice. General van Riper spent 41 years in the Corps, rising in the ranks from an enlisted Marine to Assistant Chief of Staff, Command, Control, Communications, and Computer and as Director of Intelligence. He also served as President of the Marine Corps University. He was a decorated infantry officer earning two Silver Stars, the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star with Combat “V” and the Purple Heart. And for you Army people out there, he also went through Airborne and earned his Ranger Tab (not authorized for wearing on a Marine uniform). He is a consummate gentleman, intellectual and warrior.




“There ain’t no rules in a knife fight.”
Van Riper must have been a fan of Butch Cassidy, because he didn’t followed the implied rules (assumptions of behavior made by Blue Force and the DOD).

But what did they expect from a Marine and a Ranger?!! He introduced asymmetrical warfare into the simulation. General van Riper sunk the whole carrier battle group in two days using speed boats; he eschewed electronics (using messengers on motorcycles) and generally screwed up the “assumptions” of the Blue Team. He destroyed 16 warships including an aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships on the second day of the exercise using small boats and a massive cruise missile strike. Ouch!

Sec. Def. Rumsfeld ordered the fleet refloated and the powers that be informed van Riper he had to play by new rules. Van Riper told them to “pound sand” (my words, not his) saying that the whole purpose of the exercise was to learn, not to ensure “victory” to the Blue Forces. Essentially, “the fix was in” and van Riper walked away from the game. And what did we learn?

How vulnerable are the US aircraft carriers and battle groups to enemy attack? Probably not that vulnerable with today’s technologies.

Moving from the tactical to the strategic: "How vulnerable are we to asymmetrical warfare?" Plenty!

The idea of occupying ground, a core tenant of conventional warfare, is irrelevant. The boundary between war and peace is blurred, as is the boundary between national and homeland security. To think otherwise is to invite disaster. Conventional metrics, like body count, are meaningless – today’s conflict is no longer run by accountants. It cannot be run with Lanchester attrition equations. And the outcomes or consequences are non-linear, meaning that a few attackers can produce results out of proportion to the effort –the consequences are asymmetrical.

Want more? Read the manuscript, Unrestricted Warfare was published in 1999 by two PRC Air Force Colonels. It lays out specifics for PRC asymmetrical attacks against the USA. The language is stilted and we lose a bit in translation, but the thought process is both rigorous and provocative...

“The only point which is certain . . . war will no longer be what it originally was. Which is to say that, if in the days to come mankind has no choice but to engage in war, it can no longer be carried out in the ways with which we are familiar.”