I really enjoyed the book "The Undoing Project" by Michael Lewis, which is basically about how "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (by Daniel Kahneman) came to be written. I've read both and Lewis' book is much more disgestible than Kahneman's, and they both do great explorations of how people think, and how human thought processes break down.
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Europe under extreme duress
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
Will have to check that out, thanks!
Sometimes these defense articles are thought provoking, and sometimes they are of some interest and worth a bit more thought. This one isn’t. It is probably the dumbest thing I’ve read in ages.
nationalinterest.org
Why Aircraft Carriers Are Becoming Obsolete
When Russia’s Oreshnik missile delivered its multiple payloads to Ukraine’s PA Pivdenmash plant in Dnipro, the guardian angels of aircraft carriers around the world wept. While some defenders of the use of aircraft carriers will no doubt claim that the jury is still out on whether advanced...
nationalinterest.org
I mean, they keep recycling the same story over and over. There seems to be an appetite for drivel like this from the crowd who considers themselves "out of the box" thinkers, when in reality, they're just uninformed.Sometimes these defense articles are thought provoking, and sometimes they are of some interest and worth a bit more thought. This one isn’t. It is probably the dumbest thing I’ve read in ages.
Why Aircraft Carriers Are Becoming Obsolete
When Russia’s Oreshnik missile delivered its multiple payloads to Ukraine’s PA Pivdenmash plant in Dnipro, the guardian angels of aircraft carriers around the world wept. While some defenders of the use of aircraft carriers will no doubt claim that the jury is still out on whether advanced...
AI driven content - designed to be clickable - as a way of serving up ads from Outbrain. Its designed to be served up and trigger emotions and throw even more ads your way. The dark side of the interwebs.Sometimes these defense articles are thought provoking, and sometimes they are of some interest and worth a bit more thought. This one isn’t. It is probably the dumbest thing I’ve read in ages.
Why Aircraft Carriers Are Becoming Obsolete
When Russia’s Oreshnik missile delivered its multiple payloads to Ukraine’s PA Pivdenmash plant in Dnipro, the guardian angels of aircraft carriers around the world wept. While some defenders of the use of aircraft carriers will no doubt claim that the jury is still out on whether advanced...
We all recognize this, but the staffers on the Hill don’t. And they prep those that vote on the budget.Sometimes these defense articles are thought provoking, and sometimes they are of some interest and worth a bit more thought. This one isn’t. It is probably the dumbest thing I’ve read in ages.
Why Aircraft Carriers Are Becoming Obsolete
When Russia’s Oreshnik missile delivered its multiple payloads to Ukraine’s PA Pivdenmash plant in Dnipro, the guardian angels of aircraft carriers around the world wept. While some defenders of the use of aircraft carriers will no doubt claim that the jury is still out on whether advanced...
Makes more work for the NAE to defend.
Not sure why our answer is: if they are so obsolete, why does every GCC want one and extends them once they get their hands on one?
Eventually . . . . . every manned surface platform, including our CVN's, will fall to the vulnerabilities of hypersonic weapons and unmanned platforms. We are ALL going to have to face a future reality of a CVN being attacked, and maybe even sunk, because of rapidly evolving technologies employed by our adversaries. Yes, I realize the CVN, her escorts, and the attached air wing are the panacea of the day. But at what point do we get ahead of the power curve and start the inevitable transition to weapon systems that don't put 5K plus of live humans on a single platform?
Everything I’ve ever read on that site has been high school level analysis at best.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you @robav8r every platform has its time. I was more gob-smacked to read that the solution is copying a failed antique Soviet surface effect craft.
Without getting into the weeds, there are many ways that this risk is mitigated, but at the end of the day, it's a warship and a capital platform. It's going to be a target. Want to project power without risking any Navy ships? I recommend Minuteman III.
Not any expert, but if you watch some videos and read some stuff that's publicly available, aircraft carrier defense (and attacking of such) gets enormously complicated. It isn't just an issue of having a hypersonic missile to fire at the carrier, there's lot more to it. Also while the weapons to attack aircraft carriers advance, so does the tech to defend them.
Being a battle tank history enthusiast, you see this happen a lot in their history. Tech advances to destroy tanks, tech then advances to protect the tank. In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when the Israelis lost so many tanks to the Soviet weapons of the Arabs, some questioned whether the tank was now obsolete. The Army correctly concluded the answer was no, just a new tank was needed and tactics and other tech had to be upgraded.
I’d say what’s different in the latest challenge is that thanks to miniaturization, guidance system technology has gotten sophisticated enough (and it gets better every day) that you really can saturate any surface force within range of a WEZ with enough weapons to make defense non viable. As in, the payloads can be small enough that fitting them on a form factor that they can build, field, and operate in arge quantities is quite possible.
And the same somewhat applies to ISR systems as well…in theory the proliferation of satellites and micro sats allows enough coverage to make attempts to evade detection and tracking impractical.
To be clear this isn’t a statement of where things are today within national capabilities (or lack thereof)…I’m just saying the trends of technology is indicating things that favor the offense. Defense doesn’t sit still either, but the same sort of breakthroughs aren’t as apparent. High power lasers with enough range would be one, ditto things like perhaps railguns to tilt the magazine capacity equation in favor of defensive use. Or technology to make detection/tracking harder…but big grey things moving on the surface leave a signature no matter what…
Hell, even making defensive missiles cheaper and making afloat missile magazine capacity more economical to field than a big ass billion dollar ship would go a long way.
Until this most recent war.
I actually had meant to address that. Personally, I don't think this war undoes the importance of the tank, it just shows tactics and technology will have to adapt again. But also, a lot of the losses both sides have experienced are because their tanks are having to operate without the full combined arms machine they are meant to be a part of (for example a major lack of airpower on both sides). Early on, some in the media commented that the Ukrainians using hand-held weapons to destroy or disable Russian tanks shows they are obsolete, but hand-held weapons that can destroy or disable tanks have been around since World War II. They are nothing new. The problem is the Russians are inept in how they employ their tanks. Now the weapon some are using to call the tank into question are drones. The thing is again, aircraft capable of destroying tanks have been around since WWII. And the Russians suffer their biggest tank losses by constantly being inept. They try things like cavalry charges with their tanks, which then get annihilated by Ukrainian drones and they drive their tanks bunched close together, making it where a single good artillery shot can take out the whole group. There was also the issue of Russian tanks sitting and running their engines in the cold at night so the crews could keep warm, which made it very easy for Ukrainian drones to locate and target them.
Drones definitely present a new challenge, but tanks are not meant to fight by themselves, they are meant to fight as part of a combined arms machine, along with properly trained crews, and intelligence and reconnaissance, and proper use of the terrain, and all of that. Generally, before sending in tanks to sledgehammer an enemy, there are extensive deception operations to trick the enemy regarding where your forces even will be, so you attack the enemy at his weakest points, initially pounding the enemy with airpower and artillery, then sending in the tanks. In urban operations, tanks work closely with the infantry and both protect each other.
With drones, that just adds an additional element of complexity. One reason for the development of the Patriot missile system was to protect tanks because of the Soviet anti-tank missiles.
Sure…but if drones, constant overwatch, and inability to dominate the sky are freezing infantry and blinding artillery thereby negating the combined arms aspect of any attack then the tank has entered an era of obsolescence.