<story><title>US Navy destroyer shoots down an ICBM in milestone test</title><url>https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/11/17/us-navy-destroyer-shoots-down-an-icbm-in-milestone-test/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Iv</author><text>The one trillion dollar question (actually possibly even more than that) is the cost of sinking an aircraft carrier in a symmetrical conflict.&lt;p&gt;Aircraft carriers are great if you need to project force into a territory occupied by groups over which you have superiority. Against an enemy with state of the art anti-ship missiles deployed along the coast, modern radar and satellite capabilities, all bets are foo.&lt;p&gt;Some people think in such a conflict, aircraft carriers are overpriced targets that can be disabled or even sunk in the first hours of a conflict for the cost of a few missiles and a few light ships to launch them. IIRC a red team managed to disable most of the US Navy in that fashion in an exercise a few years ago.&lt;p&gt;There are countermeasures deployed, several layers of them, and missiles have counter-counter measures. Only very few are actually deployed and really tested on the field.&lt;p&gt;We know in good conditions, they work, on some missiles. In a real conflict, how many will they stop? 100%? 99%? 50%? 20%? How well can missile decoys fool countermeasures? What hidden tricks have different sides kept in their sleeves in preparation?&lt;p&gt;We will learn it on a very fateful day that could either see the record on tonnage sunk on a single day or a very fast conflict deescalation from the attacking side (assuming US would be the defending one, credible in the case of China)</text></item><item><author>DenverCode</author><text>During my time in the Navy, there was a paper being passed around the officers concerning removing aircraft carriers from the fleet. Reason being that a single shot to the flight deck would render them useless in the aspect of air warfare and defense.</text></item><item><author>herendin2</author><text>Context: China very recently claimed to have struck a ship at sea over a thousand miles away with an ICBM fired from the interior of China. That&amp;#x27;s an obvious threat to US carrier group-based force projection&lt;p&gt;So this demonstration looks likely a response to that, not specifically about WMD threats this time&lt;p&gt;Probably both these tests were under ideal conditions, as usual, but they&amp;#x27;re about sending a message as much as anything practical</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ixacto</author><text>We already saw the US navy get dominated by unconventional warfare in the Millennium Challenge&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;After the war game was restarted, its participants were forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory. Among other rules imposed by this script, Red Force was ordered to turn on their anti-aircraft radar in order for them to be destroyed, and was not allowed to shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue Force troops ashore.&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Millennium_Challenge_2002&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Millennium_Challenge_2002&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;So yeah lots of the big ships might not be that useful in a present-day conflict if they can get destroyed by suicide-attack boats. Of course that puts the whole need for the amount of military funding&amp;#x2F;pork into question and that makes the military-industrial-congressional complex very nervous.</text></comment>
<story><title>US Navy destroyer shoots down an ICBM in milestone test</title><url>https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/11/17/us-navy-destroyer-shoots-down-an-icbm-in-milestone-test/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Iv</author><text>The one trillion dollar question (actually possibly even more than that) is the cost of sinking an aircraft carrier in a symmetrical conflict.&lt;p&gt;Aircraft carriers are great if you need to project force into a territory occupied by groups over which you have superiority. Against an enemy with state of the art anti-ship missiles deployed along the coast, modern radar and satellite capabilities, all bets are foo.&lt;p&gt;Some people think in such a conflict, aircraft carriers are overpriced targets that can be disabled or even sunk in the first hours of a conflict for the cost of a few missiles and a few light ships to launch them. IIRC a red team managed to disable most of the US Navy in that fashion in an exercise a few years ago.&lt;p&gt;There are countermeasures deployed, several layers of them, and missiles have counter-counter measures. Only very few are actually deployed and really tested on the field.&lt;p&gt;We know in good conditions, they work, on some missiles. In a real conflict, how many will they stop? 100%? 99%? 50%? 20%? How well can missile decoys fool countermeasures? What hidden tricks have different sides kept in their sleeves in preparation?&lt;p&gt;We will learn it on a very fateful day that could either see the record on tonnage sunk on a single day or a very fast conflict deescalation from the attacking side (assuming US would be the defending one, credible in the case of China)</text></item><item><author>DenverCode</author><text>During my time in the Navy, there was a paper being passed around the officers concerning removing aircraft carriers from the fleet. Reason being that a single shot to the flight deck would render them useless in the aspect of air warfare and defense.</text></item><item><author>herendin2</author><text>Context: China very recently claimed to have struck a ship at sea over a thousand miles away with an ICBM fired from the interior of China. That&amp;#x27;s an obvious threat to US carrier group-based force projection&lt;p&gt;So this demonstration looks likely a response to that, not specifically about WMD threats this time&lt;p&gt;Probably both these tests were under ideal conditions, as usual, but they&amp;#x27;re about sending a message as much as anything practical</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dirtyid</author><text>I think USN confidence of current abilities is reflected by the fact the Pompeo, as much of aChina hawk he is, no longer sends US carriers through the Taiwan strait. Clinton sent two during the third strait crisis. My understanding is USN is 5+ years out from having credible counters to Chinese AShM right now.</text></comment>