Do you know Quora, a Questions-with-Answers website with a voting system attached to make visible only the best answers, that which eliminates all or most of the junk? The Quora site has attracted experts from many fields so the answers to the questions may very well be from those at the top of their respective fields.
One of this week’s questions was:
While we do spend a bit more on our own military than all the other countries of the world combined spend on theirs we do forget sometimes just how powerful we are. And it may be that there is no enemy out there against whom we would ever use these weapons. But our just having in our possession the biggest stick, and waving it around a bit, probably does put off any would be attackers.
Anyway, here’s one answer to the question, from Chris Everett at Quora, in the form of a list of a few of our unbelievably effective and powerful weapons systems.
1. The Gerald R. Ford Class supercarrier. A fourth generation supercarrier, more efficient than it’s predecessors, and unmatched anywhere in the world. These carriers and their battle groups allow the US to project power nearly anywhere in the world. No other nation has the capability, but it’s not just about the carrier. It’s about the 70 years of carrier operational history and experience. We have this down to a science.
[For your information: The United States has 10 aircraft carrier groups. Russia has one. China also has one, and experts have said that it will take decades for the Chinese to catch up to the “far superior” American carriers, “if ever.” Russia and China’s aircraft carriers are aging dinosaurs and pose no significant threat to the United States.]
2.The Zumwalt class destroyer. It’s going to be equipped with a railgun, a first in the world, and is the first large, deployed stealth ship.
3.
The F-22 Raptor. The first true stealth fighter, still unmatched anywhere in the world.
4.
The B-2 stealth bomber. Again, the only deployed stealth bomber in the world.
Then there are: 5. The Arleigh Burke class destroyer and 6. The USS San Diego, just one of an unmatched fleet of amphibious assault ships.
The Quora answer goes on to point out that all of this fancy hardware gives the US the capability to deploy it’s forces around the world, whereas few other nations are able to reach very far from their own borders. Take Russia’s incursions into neighboring Georgia, Moldavia, and the Ukraine. That they were able to do with traditional armament, mostly tanks, artillery, and boots on the ground. There’s not much chance of their going much further, of, say, ever reaching Poland, let alone Europe with their actual weapons systems.
But again, in regard to the United States, here’s “the big one,” their biggest weapons system — A professional, well trained military, whereas most militaries in the world are neither. They are either job programs, or political ‘favors’, or maybe internal security forces who can only keep local dissidents in line.
OK, We get it. We’re pretty powerful, and wouldn’t it seem that we have nothing to worry about. Without a doubt we’re the biggest guy by far on the block. Yet just yesterday the Republicans on the far right, were attacking our President for being weak.
the ISIS series of beheadings, and, perhaps the most frightening of all, the home grown Jihadists crossing our borders and returning as chickens coming home to roost, even into our President’s White House garden.
A Quora question, not yet as far as I know, asked. Are we in fact now faced with unstoppable enemies? Or are the Obama critics, of which I’m not one, right, and we’re not doing enough of what we could be doing to stop them, not necessarily by sending our carrier groups to the Middle East, but simply doing more to quarantine the viruses and Jihadists before they get to our backdoors?
And here also Chris Everett has provided us with a fascinating answer.
How Daunting? He says, extremely.
Problem one: Finding it. Carriers move. And they really move pretty quickly. The supposed easy method of sinking a carrier is use a satellite to locate it, and send a ballistic missile with a nuke on it to that location. But during the time of that missile flight, the carrier will move to another location, and your canned sunshine will go off far in its wake. Which means you just started a nuclear war by killing some fish. This is not an advisable strategy. This same problem also makes it difficult to sink a carrier with a diesel submarine. Diesel submarines are very quiet as long as they aren’t moving. But unless you know where a carrier is going, you can’t exactly set a trap for it. And where a carrier is going (in an exact sense) is a closely guarded secret.
Problem two: The carrier is protected by guys like Tim Hibbetts who fly some of the most sophisticated aircraft on the planet in defense of those carriers. Anything that’s within a VERY long distance of a carrier is known to the battle group. Anything that acts aggressive is going to get shot down or blown up a LONG way from the carrier. Getting through a carrier’s fighter cover is far from trivial. A carrier has more fighter aircraft aboard than most nations have total. And in battles between planes and ships (in case you were thinking of killing a carrier with torpedo boats) planes win. Dramatically. See the Pacific theater for details.
Problem three: The carrier is protected by a bunch of ships with AEGIS defense systems. So even if you manage to fight through the fighter wing of the carrier, you are now faced with some of the most sophisticated SAM missiles in the world coming at you. How sophisticated? We’ve used them to shoot down ballistic missiles. They are guided by the most sophisticated radar arrays in the world. Things will not go well for you. Even if you just launch stand off cruise missiles, things won’t go well for them. Or you. Cruise missiles are like shooting fish in a barrel compared to downing ballistic missiles.
Problem four: Carriers have their own defensive systems, based on Gatling guns that fire a hundred rounds a second, and use two radars… One tracks the target, one tracks the outgoing bullets. A computer just moves the gun until those lines meet. Then you die. Those systems are fully automatic, and incredibly devastating. The carriers also have their own local defensive missiles, just in case you weren’t being pounded enough by the carriers’ air wing, the AEGIS missiles, and the Gatling guns.
Problem five: Even if you land ordinance on target, carriers are big, tough, targets that won’t be trivial to even significantly damage, let alone sink. US crews are EXTREMELY well trained in firefighting and damage control. You will not only need big explosives, but lots of them, to sink a carrier. And that makes getting through steps one to four really hard.
Problem six. Carriers are almost certainly escorted by one or more attack submarines. So if your plan is just to stay out of the air or water surface, you don’t get a break. US subs are among the best in the world, and have absurdly good active and passive sonar. And you won’t know where they are.
Individually, many of these capabilities are closely guarded secrets in terms of details. But it’s easy enough to examine the raw capabilities of a carrier battle group. They carry a LOT of defensive armaments. Sinking a carrier would likely involve a very large force that could overwhelm those tremendous defenses, and quite a bit of luck to go along with it. Outside of a handful of major powers, it’s doubtful anyone really has this capability in the best of circumstances. And on the open ocean, a carrier is pretty much unsinkable if the commander and crew are doing their job right.
Are you still there? still with me? If so, I have a last question. And maybe I’ll send it to Quora for an answer.
How daunting would be the task of the Putin and Ebola viruses as well as that of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS Jihadists, of actually reaching the center of our coastal cities let alone Chicago and the country’s heartland?
Could we also say Extremely Daunting? Are we as well protected as the Carrier Group?
