Your Nation's Warships, Batch 3

[The Manticoran Empire]

OK. Can I get an answer to my question regarding air wing composition and escorts?

No.

It's not a trivia question and there is no one correct answer.

Is there a composition that is more effective or is it dealers choice?

Can I just slap 100 fighters on the carrier and give them no supporting aircraft and stick a bunch of frigates as escorts?

[Gallia-]

Is there a composition

No.

It actually involves a fair amount of analysis and consideration of context.

Can I just slap 100 fighters on the carrier and give them no supporting aircraft and stick a bunch of frigates as escorts?

You can do whatever you want. You're a reasonably literate person.

You're not bound by abstract things like spot factor and concrete things like maintenance requirements. You're bound by your own personal whims as "the author".

[The Manticoran Empire]

Is there a composition

No.

It actually involves a fair amount of analysis and consideration of context.

Can I just slap 100 fighters on the carrier and give them no supporting aircraft and stick a bunch of frigates as escorts?

You can do whatever you want. You're a reasonably literate person.

I don't know if that was literal or sarcastic but whatever.

What sort of context?

[The Manticoran Empire]

Is there a composition

No.

It actually involves a fair amount of analysis and consideration of context.

Can I just slap 100 fighters on the carrier and give them no supporting aircraft and stick a bunch of frigates as escorts?

You can do whatever you want. You're a reasonably literate person.

You're not bound by abstract things like spot factor and concrete things like maintenance requirements. You're bound by your own personal whims as "the author".

Be that as it may, I'd still much prefer to get it "right" on the abstract and concrete things that I don't fully grasp. The Navy is not something I am particularly familiar with. With that in mind, please excuse the inevitable cascade of dumb questions and inane assumptions that am very likely to have made and will likely continue to make.

[Gallia-]

I don't know if that was literal or sarcastic but whatever.

If you thought about the posts you read with the same vigor that you hastily reply you might come to understand which of the two mutually exclusive binaries it really is.

What sort of context?

Everything.

Budget is affected by tax revenue which is affected by GDP which is affected by tax levy which is affected by government spending which is affected by aesthetic, history, and demographics, which is affected by economic development, which is affected by history and government policy, etc. etc. Manpower is affected by demographics, which is affected by economic development, which is affected by historical factors and policy, which is affected by <insert historiography school here>, etc. Spot factor is affected by reference airframe and wing area, which is affected by bias and naval requirement, which is affected by the role the airplane should perform, which is affected by history, etc. Maintenance requirement height is affected by required height for airframe which is affected by things like landing gear arrangement, engine size, use of ejection seat, required ground-crew clearance, etc.

You don't know any of this nor have any desire to learn any of it so you're better off just using Google to find something from the USN and copying that verbatim.

The Navy is not something I am particularly familiar with.

You have the combined intellectual resource of mankind at your fingertips and you're asking a 20-something, drunk, bored, university student on a weekend binge these questions. Remarkable.

please excuse the inevitable cascade of dumb questions and inane assumptions that am very likely to have made and will likely continue to make.

If I didn't excuse them I wouldn't be replying to you; I'd be drawing abstract art posters in Inkscape or something.

Just go on fas.org and read stuff like this: https://fas.org/irp/doddir/navy/rfs/index.html

ffs

[The Manticoran Empire]

What sort of context?

Everything.

Budget is affected by tax revenue which is affected by GDP which is affected by tax levy which is affected by government spending which is affected by aesthetic, history, and demographics, which is affected by economic development, which is affected by history and government policy, etc. etc. Manpower is affected by demographics, which is affected by economic development, which is affected by historical factors and policy, which is affected by <insert historiography school here>, etc. Spot factor is affected by reference airframe and wing area, which is affected by bias and naval requirement, which is affected by the role the airplane should perform, which is affected by history, etc. Maintenance requirement height is affected by required height for airframe which is affected by things like landing gear arrangement, engine size, use of ejection seat, required ground-crew clearance, etc.

You don't know any of this nor have any desire to learn any of it so you're better off just using Google to find something from the USN and copying that verbatim.

Well, if I wasn't interested in learning, I wouldn't bother asking questions. However, that is more or less irrelevant. If I am understanding this, and please correct me if I am wrong on any of these, is that the overall composition of a naval armada (or any military force) is dependent on the availability of funds and manpower, as well as by the role the force or weapon system is expected to play in accomplishing the goals set by the nation. The budget is set by the government and is limited by the amount of revenue generated by said government, which is limited in turn by the economic strength of the nation. Poor historical government policies result in a weak economy while good historical government policies possibly result in a strong economy.
The manpower issue, if I'm not mistaken, is more difficult to address in technologically and social advanced societies where there are economic incentives not to join the military, particularly in cases where the military carries a cultural stigma with it.
Spot Factor I'm not so sure on, but as it is based on the air frame and wing area of an aircraft, I assume it has to do with the storage of said aircraft.
Maintenance requirement is based on the components themselves and can vary based on use, the environment in which they are stored, and the care given when storing them, among other things. Things that are seldom used and carefully stored in a friendly environment will require less maintenance.
Am I good on that so far or am I off?

The Navy is not something I am particularly familiar with.

You have the combined intellectual resource of mankind at your fingertips and you're asking a 20-something, drunk, bored, university student on a weekend binge these questions. Remarkable.

please excuse the inevitable cascade of dumb questions and inane assumptions that am very likely to have made and will likely continue to make.

If I didn't excuse them I wouldn't be replying to you; I'd be drawing abstract art posters in Inkscape or something.

Just go on fas.org and read stuff like this: https://fas.org/irp/doddir/navy/rfs/index.html

ffs[/quote]
Okay.

[Post War America]

-snip-

To Save Galla some time I will try and answer some of the questions that would not entirely be ass pulls from me.

If I am understanding this, and please correct me if I am wrong on any of these, is that the overall composition of a naval armada (or any military force) is dependent on the availability of funds and manpower, as well as by the role the force or weapon system is expected to play in accomplishing the goals set by the nation.

Yes, this is what is ideal, and practiced by real world nations to the best of their ability.

The budget is set by the government and is limited by the amount of revenue generated by said government, which is limited in turn by the economic strength of the nation.

Yes, generally speaking, though you do have cases where deficit spending is a thing, and additionally other cases where access to a certain natural resources (irl this is oil) will inflate the govt. budget artificially if they own the processing rights to that resource. On NS however, you can generally disregard that particular path to government funding as, unless you are in a closed canon with finite resources generally everyone will be self-sufficient in the natural resources department or at most only nominally dependent on resources.

Poor historical government policies result in a weak economy while good historical government policies possibly result in a strong economy.

Again usually this is the case.

The manpower issue, if I'm not mistaken, is more difficult to address in technologically and social advanced societies where there are economic incentives not to join the military, particularly in cases where the military carries a cultural stigma with it.

In the real world this is the case, and considering the economics of it, generally yes the more options, economically speaking, there are to earn a living besides fighting, the less likely people are going to choose fighting as a profession. Similarly, if there is a cultural stigma against soldiers there will be less people willing to be soldiers. Willingness to volunteer is a factor that can be sidestepped to an extent by conscription, that being said, conscripts do make poor officers, and NCOs, and generally speaking should only be used in a defensive posture.

[Gallia-]

Economic development leads to negative demographics anyway. So manpower is always a problem and will be until the last man. Only the United States is able to avoid the problem to the point that it isn't relying on foreign navies for filling its more technical positions. And even that seems to be something that will be a thing of the past in the next couple decades as good petty officers retire or whatever. Conscripts are fine and make perfectly adequate soldiers, though. The idea that conscripts are bad is mostly a end result of 1960s/'70s counter-culture and 1980s neo-liberalism emphasizing the "me" over "we".

The same people who promulgated the concepts of a "work-life balance" and "mindfulness" (as opposed to, well, the "work is life" of the 1940s) ended up destroying the Western world, for the most part.

So, of course, if you have a generation of narcissists then you will have poor conscripts. But that applies to volunteers as well, since narcissists would either be toxic soldiers or simply not bother volunteering in the first place. Which either means your soldiers are bad or you have a manpower crunch like the entire Western world is currently suffering, to varying degrees. In its worst, you will not have enough men to man the tanks, warships, and aircraft you have, and you will be required to ask foreign allies for assistance in operating basic things like said warships, tanks, and aircraft.

The British navy is an example, since it uses U.S. Coast Guard technicians on its frigates. The U.S. Navy is approaching a similar level of manpower collapse, but not quite as bad, since it has shore billets to pull petty officers from, and it has been at a constant state of combat readiness for the past 10 years. The USN is probably comparable to the Reagan era naval buildup's manpower shortage than anything else.

[Theodosiya]

Is a navy centered on frigates(DZP)-destroyers(Sejong)-cruisers(Slava) as main surface combatants and Improved Kilo-Type 214, Oscars and Akula good enough against basically anyone without aircraft carriers?

[Austrasien]

Is a navy centered on frigates(DZP)-destroyers(Sejong)-cruisers(Slava) as main surface combatants and Improved Kilo-Type 214, Oscars and Akula good enough against basically anyone without aircraft carriers?

Flankers (you have those, right?) are enough against anyone without carriers.

[Theodosiya]

Is a navy centered on frigates(DZP)-destroyers(Sejong)-cruisers(Slava) as main surface combatants and Improved Kilo-Type 214, Oscars and Akula good enough against basically anyone without aircraft carriers?

Flankers (you have those, right?) are enough against anyone without carriers.

Su-33s and MiG-29K, but in naval aviation, without aircraft carriers. Oh, and Tu-22M, the only aircraft shared by navy and air force. Air force operate F-16V and Su-35. I'm talking about ships, tho.

[Austrasien]

You don't need them for that. Ships without air cover are pathetically vulnerable to aircraft.

[Theodosiya]

You don't need them for that. Ships without air cover are pathetically vulnerable to aircraft.

Yes, but, I still need ships too. What's the point of having a naval aviation without the important part of the navy, that is , warships?

[Gallia-]

You don't need them for that. Ships without air cover are pathetically vulnerable to aircraft.

Yes, but, I still need ships too. What's the point of having a naval aviation without the important part of the navy, that is , warships?

Naval aviation is the reason warships exist, not the other way around.

People with purely land-based naval aviation also have small navies. Germany is not a super naval power.

Aviation has been the most important war arm since WW1 for a good reason: it can find things and attack them at the same time.

Now radio-electronic domain is becoming the new aviation.

[Austrasien]

Never forgetti

Unlike land the sea offers no consistent cover from above. If ship is caught out in the open it cannot run, it cannot hide and it cannot even fight back effectively against aircraft. Only vessels with signatures small enough they cannot easily be located by ISR have any hope of operating in spite of hostile air power and this is an uphill struggle. As the narco-submarines attest even small boats will not consistently escape the notice of sophisticated ISR.

[Gallia-]

[Pharthan]

No.

It's not a trivia question and there is no one correct answer.

Is there a composition that is more effective or is it dealers choice?

Can I just slap 100 fighters on the carrier and give them no supporting aircraft and stick a bunch of frigates as escorts?

Can you just slap 100 fighters on the carrier and give them no supporting aircraft? Yes. You can pull a "my carrier launches 50 F-22s and 50 B-2s and 50 A-10s." But it wouldn't be advised.

What you equip your carrier with is based on what capabilities you want.
Do you want to kill enemy aircraft? If yes, equip fighters.
Do you want to kill enemy ground targets/ships? If yes, equip strike aircraft (most multirole fighters can do this too).
Do you want to kill/detect enemy submarines? If yes, equip a few helicopters.
Do you want to rescue downed pilots you have, or are the SOL? If yes, equip a few helicopters.
Do you want to have overall role versatility for other utilitarian things, like picking people up, dropping people off, supply transfers, photo ops, et cetera? If yes, equip a few helicopters.
Do you want to be able to see the enemy coming without having a widespread screen of picket ships? If yes, equip AEW aircraft.
Do you want to be able to get supplies/mail/personnel at greater range than a helicopter or *god forbid* a UNREP can get you? Equip a COD (Carrier Onboard Delivery, not Call of Duty) aircraft or two. If your ship is big enough.

Basically, at least a few helicopters, bro.

When it comes to maintenance, consolidation of parts is important.
Hence why the US Navy effectively equips only three types of aircraft with a few modifications to the types. F/A-18s (with the E/F models and the EA-18G), the C-2 and E-2, and SH-60 Seahawks.

[Gallia-]

>Helicopters
>Kill subs

Ha.

S-3 Viking cannot be replaced by Son of Seasprite.

[Pharthan]

>Helicopters
>Kill subs

Ha.

S-3 Viking cannot be replaced by Son of Seasprite.

LAMPS III is one of the few things my susmarin buds find to be spoopy
They make fun of us sirfachey types all the time. "LAMPS III bro."
"But then we just run underneath a thermal layer."
"Yeah, but that means you ran away."
"Touche."

[Gallia-]

>Helicopters
>Kill subs

Ha.

S-3 Viking cannot be replaced by Son of Seasprite.

LAMPS III is one of the few things my susmarin buds find to be spoopy
They make fun of us sirfachey types all the time. "LAMPS III bro."
"But then we just run underneath a thermal layer."
"Yeah, but that means you ran away."
"Touche."

The sub just comes back later that night and mission kills the carrier with a couple torpedoes. Cue a thirty six month rebuild. Unlike the carrier, the sub can hide from its predators. The carrier is always audible.

Anyway the point is the USN has a massive, gaping void in the "carrier based offensive ASW" platform. Probably because the USN thought that it could retire Viking and replace it with Poseidon, but I doubt an airliner in Singapore will be very useful in helping a carrier in the South China Sea avoid 100 km range Chinese torpedoes of the 2020s TBH. And airliners aren't survivable in battlefields anyway. There's plenty of historical evidence for that one. LAMPS is rapidly become as useless as ASROC. Where the USN can now actually detect submarines like it's 1960 again, it can't actually attack them, because it doesn't have a carrier based offensive sub killer like S-3 or S-2.

Since Common Support Aircraft died it might have to settle for SV-22s or something exceedingly mediocre/worthless.

Seahawk doesn't have the legs or the speed to do the offensive sub killing mission. It just defends the surface escort or HVU it's assigned to. Worthless for winning the undersea battle, which demands being able to kill subs from hundreds of km.

So while the USN can hear the sub, it can't actually kill the sub. It can just avoid it. Not really ideal, TBH. A carrier based ASW aircraft would have the benefit of cohabitating with similarly legged fighter-escorts, give the carrier the ability to lay sonobuoy barriers, and react faster to SURTASS LFA data than a shore-based aircraft like P-3 or P-8. All around a good investment, but curiously not being invested in by the USN for the Fords. It's just F-35Cs.

About the only thing that keeps surface fleets relevant is the inability of undersea and airborne systems to coordinate as well as a surface unit TBH. Which might change in the future if things like the laser communication demonstration from the '90s ever lead to anything practically useful, or the sonar transmission packet exchange. LFA packet switching network across the seafloor enables American sub fleet to talk to itself. Surface ships forever reduced to USVs and small coast guard vessels? Possibly.

/subsupremacy

Also F/A-18C/D and -E/F are functionally different aircraft. They just "look" similar. F/A-18E/F shares no real parts with F/A-18C/D, despite what Boeing sold SECDEF Cheney.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Is there a composition that is more effective or is it dealers choice?

Can I just slap 100 fighters on the carrier and give them no supporting aircraft and stick a bunch of frigates as escorts?

Can you just slap 100 fighters on the carrier and give them no supporting aircraft? Yes. You can pull a "my carrier launches 50 F-22s and 50 B-2s and 50 A-10s." But it wouldn't be advised.

What you equip your carrier with is based on what capabilities you want.
Do you want to kill enemy aircraft? If yes, equip fighters.
Do you want to kill enemy ground targets/ships? If yes, equip strike aircraft (most multirole fighters can do this too).
Do you want to kill/detect enemy submarines? If yes, equip a few helicopters.
Do you want to rescue downed pilots you have, or are the SOL? If yes, equip a few helicopters.
Do you want to have overall role versatility for other utilitarian things, like picking people up, dropping people off, supply transfers, photo ops, et cetera? If yes, equip a few helicopters.
Do you want to be able to see the enemy coming without having a widespread screen of picket ships? If yes, equip AEW aircraft.
Do you want to be able to get supplies/mail/personnel at greater range than a helicopter or *god forbid* a UNREP can get you? Equip a COD (Carrier Onboard Delivery, not Call of Duty) aircraft or two. If your ship is big enough.

Basically, at least a few helicopters, bro.

When it comes to maintenance, consolidation of parts is important.
Hence why the US Navy effectively equips only three types of aircraft with a few modifications to the types. F/A-18s (with the E/F models and the EA-18G), the C-2 and E-2, and SH-60 Seahawks.

I use Enterprise, Nimitz, and Gerald Ford class carriers in my fleet and I've used USN air wing composition as my blueprint. I'm just wondering if the S-3 Viking could be kept for use as a long range multi-role aircraft.

[Gallia-]

It's old.

The replacement was called Common Support Aircraft. It was supposed to replace S-3/E-2/C-2.

[The Manticoran Empire]

It's old.

The replacement was called Common Support Aircraft. It was supposed to replace S-3/E-2/C-2.

Well CSA ended and I couldn't really find anything that would tell me what it would look like so could the S-3 just be updated with new builds?

[Pharthan]

The sub just comes back later that night and mission kills the carrier with a couple torpedoes. Cue a thirty six month rebuild. Unlike the carrier, the sub can hide from its predators. The carrier is always audible.

Anyway the point is the USN has a massive, gaping void in the "carrier based offensive ASW" platform. Probably because the USN thought that it could retire Viking and replace it with Poseidon, but I doubt an airliner in Singapore will be very useful in helping a carrier in the South China Sea avoid 100 km range Chinese torpedoes of the 2020s TBH. And airliners aren't survivable in battlefields anyway. There's plenty of historical evidence for that one. LAMPS is rapidly become as useless as ASROC. Where the USN can now actually detect submarines like it's 1960 again, it can't actually attack them, because it doesn't have a carrier based offensive sub killer like S-3 or S-2.

Since Common Support Aircraft died it might have to settle for SV-22s or something exceedingly mediocre/worthless.

Seahawk doesn't have the legs or the speed to do the offensive sub killing mission. It just defends the surface escort or HVU it's assigned to. Worthless for winning the undersea battle, which demands being able to kill subs from hundreds of km.

So while the USN can hear the sub, it can't actually kill the sub. It can just avoid it. Not really ideal, TBH. A carrier based ASW aircraft would have the benefit of cohabitating with similarly legged fighter-escorts, give the carrier the ability to lay sonobuoy barriers, and react faster to SURTASS LFA data than a shore-based aircraft like P-3 or P-8. All around a good investment, but curiously not being invested in by the USN for the Fords. It's just F-35Cs.

About the only thing that keeps surface fleets relevant is the inability of undersea and airborne systems to coordinate as well as a surface unit TBH. Which might change in the future if things like the laser communication demonstration from the '90s ever lead to anything practically useful, or the sonar transmission packet exchange. LFA packet switching network across the seafloor enables American sub fleet to talk to itself. Surface ships forever reduced to USVs and small coast guard vessels? Possibly.

/subsupremacy

Also F/A-18C/D and -E/F are functionally different aircraft. They just "look" similar. F/A-18E/F shares no real parts with F/A-18C/D, despite what Boeing sold SECDEF Cheney.

A Seahawk is not the most intimidating foe a submarine can encounter, but it is enough to make them try again later.
Problem is, with a Nimitz, that's not always a chance.

Step 1: Spot sub.
Step 2: All Ahead Flank.
Step 3: Either kill sub as it also goes All Ahead Flank to follow you to kill you, or you escape submarine.
Step 4: Success.
Having a nuclear reactor and four screws is pretty nice.

SH-60 can do enough for that. They still give submariners the hibbie-gibbies enough to don the gtfo. A near miss against a sub can still kill it. A near miss against a carrier, less so.
Considering our enemies are not as good with susmarin ops as we are, this is all the more true. You get a submarine gonig into full DC mode, you also make it that much more detectable.

Also, my emphasis was on the F/A-18 E/F and EA-18G being compatible. Not E/F and C/D. I saw them side-by-side enough talking through the hangar bay to the Seaside gym enough to get the gist of the fact that they were effectively different. Plenty of internals of E/Fs and Gs, when openned up, looked pretty similar, but I'm an ETN, not an AT, so I could be wrong.

This discussion reminded me of a fun factoid I picked up a few years back. As a lover of all things military in my teen years, I was rather surprised when every instructor I had wasn't a total-subject-matter-expert on the ships they operated. Sure, many of them knew quite a bit, as was required for them to get their warfare pins, but I knew more of the raw stats and theoretical implications of the tech. Stuff like what you'd talk about on NS. Not saying you guys are all wrong, but I've seen people put way too much stock the raw stats... when they really don't have as powerful of implications as everyone seems to think.

What I found is that there is very much the "I don't know what it's called, I just know the sound it makes when it takes a man's life," mentality in the military. Knowing every stat isn't important. Knowing how your equipment itself operates is important, and what it can really do. Armchair generals might be able to tell me all sorts of stats about a Nimitz-class carrier, but that doesn't really matter. For instance, I didn't know all the design criteria of the A4W, but I knew all the nuances of my baby in One Plant, what she liked, what she didn't, and those little spots in the core where I could expect her to be finicky.
"Well, a Nimitz can't really outrun a Mk48 and an SH-60 isn't going to kill a 688i."
"Well, I know that if I put on the go-fast juice, I can do just about whatever the hell I want, and if you tell me there's a torp following me, I'm going to make some goddamn miracles happen and you're going to see some carrier-drifting going on that would make the movie Battleship jealous, and meanwhile the susmarines are going to be running from our Seahawk."

Though the funny part is that the one field this really doesn't apply is mine, because A4W stats pretty much non-existant on the web.

[Gallia-]

-E/F and -G share the same assembly line. They're the same plane, one just has different electronics in the empty voids called "avionics bays". Also the USN holds its atomic cowboys in such high esteem to escape from obsolete Soviet-era wake homers that it's investing in anti-torpedo defenses instead of relying on the human factors to deal with modern/future Chinese torpedoes. Perhaps that's telling that there's something lacking in the modern carrier's ability to deal with submarines. Nothing to do with the carrier itself, but rather it's missing a few key pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, namely the ability to fly things out to 100 km and kill a sub.

Anyway if you just avoid a submarine you don't even need LAMPS, you just need to know where the sub is. Which is what SURTASS LFA, SOSUS, and P-3s do. The point is if you kill the submarine from 100 kilometers away when SURTASS or SOSUS guys tell you there's a sub lurking around, you don't have to do ridiculous turns or go full flank, you just launch one of your carrier's half a dozen ASW planes, which also double as refueling tankers or something instead of eating valuable strike fighters for the refueling mission. But to do that you need something that can go out 100 kilometers quickly, which SH-60 can't do.

So you have the ability to hear a sub from a couple hours away, but you can't attack it, and you can only avoid it. Why are Seahawks useful again?

Against something protected by a submarine or six, a US carrier is helpless besides trying to weave around them, because it can't muscle its way through a submarine force like it could when the S-3s were around.

US carrier admirals of the future will probably be ringing Cam Ranh Bay to send up a P-8 to accompany every CSG because they can't actually deal with the sub threat by themselves. Not because of something important like morals, but because they lack the physical hardware to go out and touch the sub at the same distance they can hear the thing. So the sub operates near something the USN needs to bomb, is mildly suicidal/bravely patriotic, and the USN has nothing but Seahawks. So all the PRC needs to do is kill a couple U.S. fixed bases in Guam, Vietnam (and possibly Palau), and the ability of the USN to operate in a sub infested area is so heavily reduced due to relying on "flee" as a first option that it'll be asking the Air Force to come bomb things with the B-2s, if any B-2s are left.

USN carrier force immediately dismantled due to lack of relevance, since this is the most efficient way of disposing of a force that only requires investment in a single system to make them exceedingly relevant again.

You could even give F/A-18E/F a sonobuoy package and air dropped torpedo and it would work.