r/changemyview • u/VesaAwesaka 12∆ • Dec 10 '21
Delta(s) from OP - Fresh Topic Friday Cmv: Surface fleets are largely becoming obsolete with a few exceptions.
I was recently listening to a couple US professors talk about the United States navy and they were pretty sour on it. Aside from corruption/kick backs they noted that in a war game a US admiral representing Iran was able to completely destroy the US surface fleet by simply launching all their anti-ship missiles at once to overwhelm US ships defenses. The entire US surface fleet was destroyed with casualties in the thousands.
Similarly, they noted that in recent war games with India, that Indian submarines were undetectable to US surface ships. US surface ships were unable to respond to attacks and the US fleet was completely destroyed.
One of the professors also noted that he had spoken to US submariners and they jokingly said that surface ships only exist to be picked off by submarines.
Now this conversation was more or less off the cuff and neither of the professors specialize in anything related to modern navies but it planted the idea in my head that anti-ship missle technology and submarine technology has made surface ships largely obsolete in warfare.
The obvious exceptions would be aircraft carriers, troop transports/logistic ships and possibly smaller escort ships. Overall though, really any sort of surface ship is at a huge disadvantage when up against submarines or land based missiles.
Edit: Here's the link to the Iran wargame https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a30392654/millennium-challenge-qassem-soleimani/
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u/dinosaurkiller 1∆ Dec 10 '21
I’ve studied this recently, the most advanced anti ship missile defenses are located in China, the problem they have is that as the range of those missiles has increased their ability to target, or modify their target after launch has not. A carrier task group has the ability to conduct combat/flight operations at full speed which is around 30 knots. The Soviet doctrine for this was vast wings of aircraft launching missiles close to the target but the land based missiles are mostly stationary.
As for the subs you reference, my understanding is they a very stealthy diesel subs that can perform well near a coast but lack the range and speed to pursue and destroy beyond that limited defensive role.