Despite the fact that the Russian Navy is absolutely not ready for a "big" war, this will not stop any of our opponents. Therefore, you will still have to fight against the enemy naval forces, just the main burden will fall on the aerospace forces, and not on the low-combatant fleet. In this regard, it is worth considering one fundamental question that will surely arise in a big war: is it really necessary to conduct anti-aircraft operations, as it was planned to do in the days of the USSR? Or does a new time require a new approach?
Everything described below will sound and read like science fiction against the background of idle Karakurt diesel engines and almost dead anti-submarine aircraft, but, nevertheless, this is a very urgent question - we have a videoconferencing system, and if anything, there will be attacks on surface targets entrusted to them.
First, a little history.
Since the Second World War, aircraft carriers have become what in the English-speaking world is called a capital ship - the main or main ship, the one that is the basis of the combat power of the fleet. The outbreak of the Cold War did not really change anything in this, except that it expanded the role of aircraft carriers to a strike against land.
The role of the main carrier of nuclear weapons of the US Navy from aircraft carriers was quickly taken away by submarines, but the role of the main means of fighting surface ships was not easy to take away from them. It is worth remembering that, for example, the A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft was created for a low-altitude attack on Soviet ships using a single nuclear bomb suspended under the fuselage. The anti-ship focus of the US Navy carrier-based aviation has never been reduced to zero, and any American commander has always kept in mind what damage his AUG and AUS are capable of inflicting on enemy warships.
And for coastal targets, ports, amphibious assault forces, airfields and other targets that are not so significant as to spend ballistic missiles on them, carrier-based aircraft could well work. And she worked.
For the USSR, which for a combination of reasons could not acquire an aircraft carrier fleet, the presence of a large number of such ships and trained carrier-based aircraft in the US Navy was a challenge, and, starting in the late fifties, the Union began to think over countermeasures that would neutralize American aircraft carriers … The best defense is an attack, and since the sixties in the USSR, the creation of anti-aircraft forces began, mainly from bomber formations, and missile-carrying submarines.
The evolution of these forces and their organization was long and complex, but the principle around which their training and technical equipment was built did not change. It was necessary to carry out a breakthrough of large forces of bombers armed with anti-ship cruise missiles to the AUG or AUS order, and synchronized in time to fire a salvo of missiles deployed on submarines and bombers. In this case, the aircraft would have to break through to the target in the presence of enemy interceptors in the air, supported by AWACS aircraft, while the opposition over the years became more and more sophisticated, and the enemy's equipment became more and more perfect.
The Soviet Union did not stand still either. One modification of the Tu-16 was replaced by another, the missiles carried by these machines were quickly updated, the supersonic Tu-22 appeared, then the multi-mode Tu-22M, the submarines were able to use cruise missiles from under the water, the level of interaction between the naval missile-carrying aircraft of the Navy and Long-Range Aviation The Air Force in general, with some shortcomings, was unprecedentedly high for different types of the Armed Forces. A little later, at the end of the Soviet era, the Kh-22 anti-ship missiles were registered on the Tu-95, giving rise to the most "long-range" aircraft in the MRA - Tu-95K-22.
However, work on the subject of an attack on US aircraft carrier formations did not stop there either.
This was the case until the very end of the USSR.
The same views are largely determined by the tactical schemes and techniques being developed now, despite the multiple reduction in long-range aviation and the elimination of the naval missile carrier.
But is this true in modern times?
For the sixties, seventies and early eighties - certainly true, because it was carrier-based aircraft that was the main striking force in the fight against surface ships, and almost the only means of striking the coast from a long distance. Damage the aircraft carrier, and the remaining brood of "Kuntsev", "Adams" and, sometimes one "Legi" or "Belknap" is unlikely to be able to do anything against targets on the territory of the USSR or the Warsaw Pact.
However, in the early eighties began the massive arming of ships and submarines of the US Navy with Tomahawk cruise missiles. Then, in the mid-eighties, a new revolution took place - installations for vertical missile launch - UVP began to be massively introduced. At the same time, the Americans "merged" two systems - the AEGIS collective defense system and the UVP. And from the end of the eighties they switched to the production of unified universal combat ships URO - destroyers of the Arlie Burke class. The latter became the main means of air defense AUG, and, in parallel, carriers of strike missile weapons - the Tomahawk CD. The tasks for these ships were and are being assigned the appropriate - air defense AUG, and strikes along the coast with the help of the CD. In theory, they should still be able to protect the warrant from submarines, and, from the point of view of technology, they are suitable for this, only the training of crews in the part of ASW in recent years, which is called "lame".
There is a contradiction.
Destroyers "Arleigh Burke" are both the "shield" of the AUG, and her … "sword"! Paradoxically, now the ships that are supposed to protect the aircraft carrier are also carriers of the most long-range and powerful AUG weapon that it can use against the coast - the Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Of course, in a really big war, escort destroyers will carry anti-aircraft missiles (SAMs) in their air defense units, and attack ships will carry SAMs in an amount sufficient for self-defense and Tomahawks. But, let's think again - the main strike weapon, which itself must be guarded, and the main "guard" whose task is to protect the aircraft carrier and other ships from an air strike is a ship of the same class, and in some cases, just one and the same ship.
And he is "exposed" to the blow of those forces that will have to attack the aircraft carrier, he must repel this blow!
The United States has sixty-six such destroyers, and eleven more Ticonderoga-class cruisers, about which the same can be said. A total of seventy-seven URO ships (ships with guided missile weapons), from which Tomahawks can launch, and which, if anything, will shoot down missiles and aircraft going to the aircraft carrier. The ships are so complex that it will take years to make up for the losses of several of them. Seventy-seven ships is too small a number to completely separate strike and air defense missions. This means that, at least sometimes, the same ships will carry out air defense and cruise missile strikes. Literally.
There is a paradox. The Americans plan to expose their ships, which they use as attack ships, and which cannot be quickly replaced, under attack. They are going to do this because they have nothing else to protect their aircraft carriers from an air or missile attack, and because the security of aircraft carriers without escort ships is in question. They have no choice.
And for striking purposes, they want to use the same ships, and also because they have no choice.
Let's remember this.
Now let's look at the situation from the other side.
Breaking through to an aircraft carrier has never been easy. In the USSR, such operations were deliberately “written off” as planned losses of very large aviation forces - up to and including a regiment of bombers. The situation was significantly aggravated with the advent of the AEGIS collective defense system. If a single "Arlie Burke" has the ability to simultaneously fire at three air targets and eighteen channels of missile defense correction, the AEGIS system manages the order of ships as a whole, as a result of which the parameters mentioned above are increased many times over. And this, alas, greatly increases the losses of the attacker, in the best case - leads to the consumption of anti-ship missiles without damaging the attacked object, in our case, the aircraft carrier. It should be understood that the depth of the AUG air defense can exceed hundreds of kilometers.
This is shown very well on the old, even from the Spruence times, AUS air defense scheme with two aircraft carriers.
Drawing with part of the combat formation AUG
I would like to note that quite recently, immediately after the last missile strike on Syria, the Americans "showed" us in the Mediterranean a real AUG, with a cruiser and a dozen destroyers in combat, and not a peacetime ersatz of their three ships, that is, they see their own modern battle formation.
Everything is further aggravated by the emergence of the new SM-6 SAM with active homing, and by the fact that there are more and more destroyers in the Navy, with the BIUS modernized "for it". This missile significantly increases the likelihood of interception, and, according to the Pentagon, has already been successfully used for over-the-horizon interception of a low-altitude supersonic target. We add here the factor of carrier-based aircraft, which will also contribute to air defense, and the hypothetical hacking of the AUG defense, followed by a breakthrough to the aircraft carrier, seems to be a very "expensive" event, and its price is not measured in money.
Now let's add two and two.
The main striking force of the AUG, which makes it possible to carry out a strike at the maximum range and at the same time arrange for any enemy that very modern aircraft-missile "alpha-strike", which is the "horse" of the Americans and their most destructive tactical technique, these are not airplanes. These are Tomahawk cruise missiles deployed on ships. This fact does not even negate the presence of the JASSM-ER missile in the arsenal of carrier-based aircraft, because the aircraft carrier simply does not have enough aircraft to provide a truly massive strike, but a bunch of Tomahawks and aircraft (even with JASSM, even without them) is the opportunity gives.
At the same time, "Tomahawks" are deployed on URO ships, the number of which is limited, and which, in some cases, will "combine" strike missions with AUG air defense missions. That is, to be in an obviously more vulnerable position than the guarded aircraft carrier.
A breakthrough to an aircraft carrier is associated with large, possibly gigantic, losses.
It should be assumed that a breakthrough to an aircraft carrier at the cost of heavy losses in order to disable it is no longer relevant. Or at least not always relevant. And what is much more relevant are concentrated attacks against URO ships that make up its defensive order. Some of them will be forced to be "substituted" - those who were put on radar patrol, those that form "anti-missile barriers", "fired off" ships that have used up the ammunition of the missile defense system and are withdrawn from the formation for rotation.
They should become the main target for air and, if the situation permits, underwater attacks. At the same time, after the very first missile launch, attacks against URO ships in the external defense circuit should proceed at the maximum pace, with the expectation that any combat mission of any strike group should lead, if not to the sinking of the URO ship, then to the loss of their combat capability from - for damage. Aviation breakthroughs to aircraft carriers should be postponed until the moment when ships capable of carrying out air defense AUG will have two or three units left, or even abandon this idea.
The advantage of this approach is a sharp decrease in losses - the choice of the course of attack and the concentration of fire on a single ship in the outer security will allow everything to be done very quickly and, apparently, with minimal possible losses. This is all the more relevant because now the main "caliber" of the VKS is not the mythical X-32 and it is not known what are capable of "Daggers", but the quite trivial X-31 and X-35, each of which can be called a very good missile, but with not very long range. In any case, letting them in from outside the zone in which the attacking aircraft can get the SM-6 missiles from the ship, as a rule, will not work. A typical attacking unit of the VKS will look like this, and not something else.
Under these conditions, a breakthrough in defense in depth looks even more problematic, while strikes on ships "from the edge" are much more logical.
After this, the enemy will have no choice but to "substitute" another URO ship instead of the damaged one. At the same time, a series of raids will lead to the fact that even those ships that were not attacked will significantly use up the ammunition of anti-aircraft missiles, the stock of which cannot be replenished at sea, outside the base.
Such "peeling off the skin" from the AUG will weaken its defensive capabilities at times during the first days of battles, force the commander to include in the external air defense order those URO ships that were planned to be used as shock ones, with the Tomahawk CD in terms of launchers, and then lose also theirs.
Also, the enemy command will have to accelerate the rotation of warships, which will make it possible to attack ships departing to the bases, devoid of air cover and with "near-zero" ammunition.
There are also downsides. First, the pace of attacks must be the highest. This requires the use of a very large number of aircraft and airfields, time synchronization of their group combat sorties to strike, very well-coordinated staff work, and any failure in the organization of this process will sharply reduce the effectiveness of the entire operation as a whole. The outfit of forces and the frequency of attacks should make it possible to finish everything as quickly as possible so that the enemy cannot adapt to new tactics and come up with countermeasures - and the Americans will do this very quickly.
In addition, it is necessary to attack targets very far from our shores. It will be necessary to inflict significant damage to URO ships before the AUG is at a distance that allows cruise missiles to attack targets on our coast. This implies that the first attack should be carried out approximately 2900-3000 kilometers from any significant target on our coast, far over the open sea. When attacking the AUG at such a distance, we will have about a couple of days to inflict unacceptable losses on the AUG, excluding the application of a massive missile and air strike to it from a distance of 1400-1500 kilometers (and they will start their attacks from this very distance). Technically, VKS aircraft, subject to the support of IL-78 tankers, can fly such distances. But hitting a mobile target at such a distance, and even reaching a target over a non-targeting surface, is a very non-trivial, difficult task, for which the Aerospace Forces are not ready right now. First of all, training will be required. Secondly, it will be necessary to ensure continuous target designation, which will result in a separate complex combat operation, also associated with the loss of reconnaissance aircraft.
It is also worth remembering that we have a shortage of tanker aircraft. This means that we will have to resort to the use of combat aircraft equipped with UPAZ units and acting as refuelers. This is again a significant increase in the order of forces, and again the complication of the organization of the operation.
The downside is that the aircraft carrier with such a course of action will either survive at all, or be damaged by one of the last, which will enable its air group to deliver several strikes along the coast from a long distance exceeding a thousand kilometers (combat radius F / A-18 with a pair of missiles JASSM-ER is about five hundred kilometers, and the missile range after launch is nine hundred kilometers in a straight line and in ideal conditions).
But on the other hand, anti-aircraft attacks are not much simpler in terms of organization, but the losses in their course promise to be many times higher, and it is worth thinking about such a method of conducting hostilities. Indeed, in fact, the enemy does not expect just such an option. He expects his aircraft carrier to be the main target. He himself will expose his URO ships to attack, he will expose himself to a false order with a supply tanker in the center - and this is what we need. In fact, minus the measures to evade attacks, in which the Americans, admittedly, are masters, we will for a short time get a giveaway game from the enemy's side and can really weaken his strike potential to acceptable values.
This tactic opens up other perspectives as well.
It is no secret that the AUG always includes multipurpose nuclear submarines. Obviously, the chances of our submarines in a battle with the American ones, to put it mildly, are small. But when the enemy will rotate their URO ships that have exhausted the ammunition of the missile defense system, or when a tanker rushes to it instead of the one that was previously put under attack instead of an aircraft carrier (and we really needed this - to sink a false order with destroyers and a tanker), our submarines will have a certain chance. Perhaps rather big.
According to a number of rumors, around 2005-2006 at the Naval Academy. N. G. Kuznetsov, theoretical substantiations were worked out precisely for such an approach. It is not known exactly how it all ended there, but since then the naval aviation has de facto ceased to exist as a serious force, and the tasks of defeating surface targets have gone to the Aerospace Forces. And in the VKS since the Soviet times it is the “anti-aircraft” mentality that has dominated. As far as the command and staff of the Aerospace Forces take into account the above realities, it is not known that up to naval officers, then many of them are definitely opponents of this approach and see the aircraft carrier as the main target. The author had the opportunity to verify this.
Are all of the above considerations true? At least in some cases, they are correct. It is possible that under some circumstances it will be necessary to attack the aircraft carrier. But with others, the tactics of sequential "cutting" of the layers of defense will be more appropriate. It is important that the Aerospace Forces and the Navy have worked out both concepts.
In the absence of information about what is happening, we can only hope that at the right time, the situation will be assessed correctly, and our pilots and submariners will receive exactly the orders that they should receive.
Of course, there is still the problem of American submarines, which can also attack with Tomahawks from a long distance, represent a huge danger, and with which something must be done, but this is a completely different question.
