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Topic: Federal Debt and Deficit
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Gigem · « **Reply #406 on:** July 20, 2025, 11:45:23 AM »

Well, what I'm suggesting is a paradigm shift. Because if you think about it critically, the Battleship was considered the king of the ocean for ~50 years, until planes from carriers were easily able to defeat them in WWII. No new battleships have been built since WWII, and many were sunk during the war by planes. Navy planners, at least the smart ones, easily recognized that the battleship model was obsolete.

Imagine if you have a military asset worth 4-6 Billion. How many drones would you be willing to expend to knock it out? 100? 1,000? 10,000? There are even drones now that can launch other, smaller drones. Obviously you'll need a pretty large drone carrying a pretty large bomb to take out a USN Carrier, but drones are fairly cheap, on the range of maybe a few million each, especially for someone like China.

The truth of the matter is that just like Ukraine all wars will be fought differently in the future, just like WWI was different and WWII was and so forth and so on.

OrangeAfroMan · « **Reply #407 on:** July 20, 2025, 11:46:53 AM »

Yeah, the carriers make it so that the US could (foolishly) invade any country and the lack of carriers of the rest of the world prevents the ability to ever invade the U.S.

Of course, modern war doesn't really rely on invasion, but as a failsafe for a bleak future in which it's a thing again, we're immune.
Other countries may have more soldiers, more planes, more ships, etc.....but none of them can land an invasion force on our soil. I think that's a good thing to have in your back pocket, as irrelevant as it might be in the moment.

Cincydawg · « **Reply #408 on:** July 20, 2025, 12:25:03 PM »

Technically, the HMS Vanguard battleship was launched in 1946, which doesn't of course refute your primary point.

Cincydawg · « **Reply #409 on:** July 20, 2025, 12:29:50 PM »

The US military can "project force". No other country can do that beyond it's boundaries to any degree of note. The US can in theory ship and supply divisions to foreign soil, even landlocked countries like Afghanistan. This capability of course is enormously expensive, and one reason we have carriers. You can't conduct military operations without air cover.

In my opinion, we should have a top down strategic review of what we really need to defend, and how, and cut spending on stuff we really like but don't NEED.

A problem with carriers is that at any given time, two are in overhaul, usually, three or four are conducting training missions like carrier quals, and that leaves 5-6 to cover our routine needs in the Med, Indian, Pacific, etc. Another problem is that the other ships in the battlegroup run on oil except the attack sub, so you have a long logistical tail.

I don't "think" they are vulnerable to drones. The hypersonics and torpedoes are probably the main problem.

utee94 · « **Reply #410 on:** July 20, 2025, 12:34:56 PM »

Drones have changed the very nature of war and we're only seeing the infancy of that.

That said, as OAM and others point out above, the US is fortunate in its geography that no foreign power is ever really going to be able to send an occupying force to our soil.

Other types of attacks-- potentially crippling ones-- are still possible.

But as I've pointed out many times, the USA is under constant cyber attack from malicious hackers, bots, and foreign AI. Every single second of every single day we're under attack. There is no amount of our adversaries "redoubling their efforts" that's going to change the calculus of that, they're already trying as hard as they can. So far our defenses hold firm, and they improve every day. Which is good, because so do our adversaries.

Cincydawg · « **Reply #411 on:** July 20, 2025, 12:38:46 PM »

One of my fears is a massive cyber attack on our economic institutions.

Another is some sort of internal terrorist attack that causes us to completely overreact in response.

Another is self induced economic collapse.

Gigem · « **Reply #412 on:** July 20, 2025, 01:36:14 PM »

How can you not think they’ve vulnerable to drones ?

I’m not talking about the DJI phantom variety. I’m talking big warplane looking drones or smaller.

Cincydawg · « **Reply #413 on:** July 20, 2025, 01:43:21 PM »

I don't think any large subsonic enemy flying entity of any ilk could get near a carrier.

I can't fathom it anyway. Maybe if an enemy launched 5,000 at once, maybe.

My own notion on "how to sink a carrier" if to emplace high speed torpedoes on the ocean floor in some area where you need to deny carrier operations. They would activate and then "listen" for the carrier to come in range and then engage. One could consider them "drones" of course. A torpedo can carry a large explosive charge.

Let water in from underneath rather than let air in topside. Of course, if an enemy can take out the catapults, US carriers are useless.

Cincydawg · « **Reply #414 on:** July 20, 2025, 02:03:30 PM »

A thing interesting to me is part of human nature, we're impatient, we want something today even if we know we'll have to pay a lot more for it later. I'd guess everyone sentient worries about our debt. We got into it because "we" wanted government stuff NOW without paying for it. Families want to go to Disneyworld etc. so bad they put it on their credit card. We get lazy in midlife often as not and don't exercise enough, or eat things that taste good NOW knowing they aren't good for us.

Take the climate situation, it's cheaper to "burn coal" and not worry about air pollution much, or CO2. Doing something about it means taking money from something else, a LOT of money, for something that seems, well, off in the future maybe.

We don't fix that roof leak because it would take some effort, or money, until it gets much worse. And more expensive.

Gigem · « **Reply #415 on:** July 20, 2025, 04:54:11 PM »

Quote from: Cincydawg on July 20, 2025, 01:43:21 PM

I don't think any large subsonic enemy flying entity of any ilk could get near a carrier.

I can't fathom it anyway. Maybe if an enemy launched 5,000 at once, maybe.

My own notion on "how to sink a carrier" if to emplace high speed torpedoes on the ocean floor in some area where you need to deny carrier operations. They would activate and then "listen" for the carrier to come in range and then engage. One could consider them "drones" of course. A torpedo can carry a large explosive charge.

Let water in from underneath rather than let air in topside. Of course, if an enemy can take out the catapults, US carriers are useless.

Well, this is what I’ve been talking about. I never said the drones would be subsonic.

We need to substitute the word drone with Super AI Robots. And you maybe could launch 5,000 of them at a time. Because, why not? The concept seems so simple that it’s ridiculous but again we have to think about how war will be fought tomorrow.

Elon Musk has went on the record talking about how tomorrow’s battlefield will be won by drones and robots. He has said that the F-35 and other advanced fighters are obsolete and what they will be used for is controlling drones in a forward combat environment.

OrangeAfroMan · « **Reply #416 on:** July 20, 2025, 06:14:00 PM »

Hell, you could drop 100,000 little floating magnetic bombs in a shipping lane and enough would stick onto a hull to sink a ship.

The bad guys are limited only by their imaginations. And sometimes we're the bad guys.

Cincydawg · « **Reply #417 on:** July 20, 2025, 08:23:15 PM »

Magnetic mines don't operate by being attracted to a ship. The magnetic fields drop off quickly of course. Even 100,000 minds in an ocean or strait would be diffuse. Military ships get degaussed frequently and we have antimine detection and destruction capability. Mines did some damage in WW 2. One of the more effective types was moored on the sea bed and detected a ship coming by and released to become shallow.

The idea of sinking torpedoes on the sea bed would be harder to detect and have a range of several miles potentially. There nearly always is an attack sub with each CVBG to deal with underwater threats. The Taiwanese MAY have something like this deployed in the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese would need to spend time clearing them, if they exist. The Taiwan Navy also has some quiet diesel electric submarines that could be problematic.

The basic problem with mines is the oceans are vast, so their usage generally would be in straits and other confined waters.

OrangeAfroMan · « **Reply #418 on:** July 20, 2025, 11:48:31 PM »

I'm assuming you're thinking about the spikey floating mines from 80 years ago.
Consider something newer that we don't even know about yet.
The point is that we're never completely safe, and the goalpost is always moving.

Cincydawg · « **Reply #419 on:** **Today** at 05:42:52 AM »

You are correct, I cannot envision a defense against "something we don't know about yet".

I was merely explaining how older magnetic mines work, they don't operate by magnetic attraction to a ship. And, no spikey things on them.

The term "drone" usually refers to something flying, cheap, and slow. I wouldn't consider a hypersonic missile as being a drone, though it does operate on its own. The Russkis fielded what we call Kitchen missiles decades ago capable of Mach 4.6 and they home in on a target. I don't think of them as drones, and the US developed defenses against them (that were never tested in combat).

And carriers may indeed by obsolescent, our Navy doesn't think so, yet. China is trying to develop their carriers and could have a few in the coming years. It's a major undertaking. I saw an Indian carrier on our trip parked next to our ship, I think it was the Vikrant, and old Russki carrier with a lot of issues. This one was nowhere near ready for deployment.

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Topic: Federal Debt and Deficit

Gigem

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OrangeAfroMan

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Cincydawg

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Cincydawg

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utee94

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Cincydawg

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Gigem

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Cincydawg

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Gigem

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OrangeAfroMan

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Cincydawg

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OrangeAfroMan

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Cincydawg

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