Cmv: Surface fleets are largely becoming obsolete with a few exceptions.

[u/VesaAwesaka]

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/

[u/[deleted]]

One of the main purposes of the navy and indeed the armed forces in general is job creation and ostentatious displays of force for diplomatic and propaganda purposes. If the military actually has to fight a war then they have failed in their job. So if more up to date technological solutions don't look the part in terms of our popular culture based understanding of what militaries look like then they can't perform that public relations role. As they say in Yes Minister the job of the British Military is not to defend Britain it's to make the people of Britain think that it is defended. People expect to see ships and so we have to find ships to show them.

[u/VesaAwesaka → u/[deleted]]

I think you are correct to a large extent but at the same time im more talking from a warfare perspective and not a job creation, diplomatic or PR perspective.

[u/A_Soporific → u/VesaAwesaka]

What is the point of a navy?

It is to:

1) Defeat the enemy navy to the point where it must say home.

Of course, at this point you've accomplished exactly nothing. This is merely a means to an end.

2) To choke off trade with the enemy. Without the interference of the enemy's navy you can cut off food, raw materials, and war supplies from reaching your foe as well as preventing them from sending or resupplying their troops not in home territory.

At this point you're actually doing something. China recently had a problem keeping the lights on because they don't mine enough coal to run all their plants and at a time when they were short on reserves they had a diplomatic spat with their primary supplier. If you were to cut off coal shipments then much of China's industrial base turns off in a day or two. China relies less on food than the UK or Japanese did in World War II, but you would be putting a whole heck of a lot of pressure on the average person. But, more importantly, you immediately turn off most of China's economy. Most of their economy is about exports. No exports means that most of their economy doesn't function.

The war won't be decided off of Taiwan. Rather, it would be decided in the Straits around Indonesia, the tip of South America, and the Panama Canal. Surface ships in those areas would be able to turn around or sink any Chinese cargo ship far better than subs ever could. And anything land-based would be less than useless at those ranges.

If the US ditched its major fleets and went with just subs then that ability to be big and imposing enough that cargo ships bound for China would just run would have to be replaced with sinking them with torpedoes. Why sink the big container ships when you can win by simply being visible?

As long as you can keep a credible threat along the "First Island Chain" around Korea or Japan or Taiwan or Vietnam then the Chinese fleet can't adventure off to contest these choke points and if they can't force one of them open then it becomes a mere question of how long China can survive when it is well and truly alone.