Something better than a carrier navy?

[LoBlo]

The article on the front page brings up a curious and interesting point: Is a "supercarrier" navy the most effective use of naval resources? Is there perhaps a better and more cost effective fleet strategy?

Discuss.

[Kapitan]

The soviet navy built submarines to combat the carriers, at the hieght there was over 500 in service, thats about 70 submarines to 1 carrier.

Soviets used SSGN's to great effect and attack submarines how ever they didnt realy depoy then sucsessfully.

[Takeda Shingen]

The Soviet Union relied heavily on their numbers. They had to because, frankly, the vast majority of their ships and weapons were, for lack of a better term, junk. Essentially, Soviet thought ran as follows: 'We have junk. But, we have lots of junk.' Their gamble was that at least some of the ships and weapons would survive long enough to make a sucessful attack. That's not a navy that I would want to serve in.

[Kapitan]

And you call the SS-N-22 and SS-N-19 a pile of junk? considering they can mission kill if not totaly wipe out a carrier single handed, and are classified as the most powerfullest anti-ship missile in the world not to mention are highly feared in the USN. hence why they dont like the oscars getting too close.

[Takeda Shingen]

You are quoting fleet strength from the late 1960's and weapons technology from the early 1980's. A submarine fleet of 500 and the missiles given above never did co-exist. Therefore, yes, the Soviet Navy relied heavily on the doctorine that I stated earlier in the heyday of the fleet.

[Kapitan]

Yes but im generalising the whole era not just 60's or 80's the lot, the heyday was the 1970's realy thats when the most submarines were in active service.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

The Soviet Union relied heavily on their numbers. They had to because, frankly, the vast majority of their ships and weapons were, for lack of a better term, junk. Essentially, Soviet thought ran as follows: 'We have junk. But, we have lots of junk.' Their gamble was that at least some of the ships and weapons would survive long enough to make a sucessful attack. That's not a navy that I would want to serve in.

At the time they used the most numbers, that may not have been a bad strategy, because of limitations of detection tech. The American equipment was better than the Soviet, but the circles were still pretty small. For example, Mackey was supposed to have trailed the first Yankees at 4000m. Yes, the story went that he didn't get counterdetected, but 4000m reliable tracking circle (and at only a certain angle) is pretty tiny when you got the whole ocean to worry about, or even if you are defending a battle group.

The time when people remember NATO having the most ridiculously large acoustic advantage is the 80s, when they already figured out the joke, but they still had a bunch of old subs. The Americans could now track the old subs in ridiculously large circles, and that became a generalization.

More later.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

At the time they used the most numbers, that may not have been a bad strategy, because of limitations of detection tech.

I never said that it was a bad strategy, as far as theoretical strategy goes. All I said was that it was not a particularly 'sailor friendly' strategy. Soviet doctrorine, whether naval, ground or air, held that in the event of war, the USSR could expect large numbers of casulties due to the superior detection, fire control, tracking and weapons technology of the west. They needed all of those units to 'clog the system', as it were. They certainly could have sunk the carrier at the center of the CVBG, but they would have lost many units in doing so. Therefore, if you are a Soviet sailor, you can expect to have a far greater chance of dying than the enemy.

Effective, but not efficeint. Of course, it was not intended to be efficient.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

I never said that it was a bad strategy, as far as theoretical strategy goes. All I said was that it was not a particularly 'sailor friendly' strategy. Soviet doctrorine, whether naval, ground or air, held that in the event of war, the USSR could expect large numbers of casulties due to the superior detection, fire control, tracking and weapons technology of the west. They needed all of those units to 'clog the system', as it were. They certainly could have sunk the carrier at the center of the CVBG, but they would have lost many units in doing so. Therefore, if you are a Soviet sailor, you can expect to have a far greater chance of dying than the enemy.

Effective, but not efficeint. Of course, it was not intended to be efficient.

I think that this not only has to do with an acknowledgment that overall they have the inferior technology (what they tell their troops in propaganda might be another matter), but also their operational emphasis as opposed to the tactical emphasis in doctrine.

Putting it very crudely, an operational emphasis you are out to win "campaigns", and thinks though of course at some point you have to win a battle, you can actually lose or tie most of your battles and still win. A tactical emphasis means that you are more out to win "battles", and hope that by winning as many battles as you can, you can win the campaign.

So NATO tries to build the best subs. The Soviets try to build lots of what they think are good enough subs. But if you assume the tactic is effective, it may actually be more efficient even in terms of sailor lives. For example, every time a Soviet sub gets killed trying to attack a CVBG, 80-100 lives goes. But when one sub succeeds, not only does it create an operational victory, but potentially several hundreds of Americans may die in the sinking, which will go a long way toward counterbalancing this.