EPTwww.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=401121
A Brief Primer on Naval Warfare - Mark Morrin, CPT, USN Ret.
An earlier discussion raised the question of how a carrier task force could hide in the open ocean and questioned whether such an operation could be successful near land.
The following discussion will be split into several parts and will remain at a somewhat top level. The reasons should be obvious. Specific references will be made to a particular operation, KEEN SWORD 21, but details on tactics and modern systems will not be disclosed. These tactics are essentially the same as during WWII and the Cold War. The historical accounts of the German surface raiders, USN submarine actions, IJN surface and CVN operations, SNA anti-carrier SOP, and of course the USN surface and CVN operations during that conflict include many examples of the following basic tactics.
The main question is: How do you hide a task force at sea? The answer in very general terms is; by not telling the other guy where you are.
This is not as dumb as it sounds.
To illustrate take the following generic situation and think of the naval environment. One actually could extend this to other environments as well, but that's outside the scope of our analysis.
Put two football teams in a stadium at night each on their defended goal line. Each team will provide the backfield players with rifles and the linemen all have a pistol and carry a football. Each weapon is equipped with a flashlight fastened to the barrel, which can flash on and off as a signal light. The quarterback has a large supply of spare footballs that he hands off to linemen that 'land' on him. The objective of the game is to get a football into the other team's goal line without dying.
Now, turn off all the lights so it is absolutely dark. Who wants to turn on their light first?
Now to more accurately replicate the naval environment, we'll take half the fans in the stands, and more or less evenly distribute them across the field. We'll also put two blimps overhead, one for each team, equipped with flashing light and binoculars.
The light will replicate both communications and radar systems. Everybody's eyes replicate ESM, ELINT, COMINT, and radar receivers.
Obviously if you want to hide the best way is run silent and blend into the fans, AKA civilian shipping and air traffic.
There are several levels of hiding in naval warfare. First is undetected. In this condition the presence of the force is not known. For this to really work it should be coupled with a deception plan so that the opposition not only does not know the force is present, but does not know they don't know and for some reason believes the force to be elsewhere. I will say no more about deception. The second condition is that you have been detected, but not located. This can include the presence of the force is known, but no system has detected the force, or the force has been detected but not identified. And finally, the force has been detected and located which implies identification of the targets.
One's tactics will change based on the above.
If the force has not been detected one can run in to a launch point and hit the target with the first wave while operating completely silent until initial weapon impact. Once the survivors pick themselves out of the rubble they will deduce the presence of the carrier force from the initial wave. Think Pearl Harbor, but on a much bigger scale.
With a force underway the opposition for some reason believes it knows that the ships are elsewhere and has no information to the contrary. Such operations are most effective when coupled with a deception plan that keys the opposition to know for a certainty that you are somewhere else and is therefore not looking. This goes far beyond local efforts of the group.
Every man in the entire task force is kept informed of the tactical situation and what is going on. Full awareness, training, and discipline by all hands is essential.
The force transits to its objective area in complete electronic silence. Deceptive formations are used dispersed over a broad area to ensure any detection system does not see the classic "bullseye" formation made famous in countless propaganda shots and never used in operations. Broad surveillance systems are known so any detection method is countered either by denying sensor information, misleading, or providing expected results consistent with something else. For example, ESM systems rely on active emissions from radars or communication systems. So nothing is radiated. Satellite systems are in known orbits, are predictable, and their sensing capabilities known. So the track is varied, weather is sought out to hide in when vulnerable, blending into sea lanes (while staying out of visual detection range of ships) and such techniques. Deceptive lighting is used at night so that the obvious "blacked out warship" is instead thought to be a merchant or cruise liner. Surface search radar identical to commercial ones are used. Turn count masking is used by the ships. Aircraft maintenance on the CVN and other helo equipped ships is limited to prevent transmissions.
In KEEN SWORD 21 using these and other tactics the CVN force operated close enough to support each other, but far enough and randomly dispersed to avoid identification by anyone. One night in bad weather a man went overboard when the ship was within 200nm of a Chinese airfield in the Spratly Islands. Despite launch of helicopters and active search methods by several ships in the successful SAR, including clear voice UHF transmissions, the force was not detected because no Chinese asset was above the radar horizon. No satellite system was cued. The force continued on.
At the initial objective point the ships have managed to penetrate without the opposition having any clue that the force was within 2,000 miles. Limited air operations have been conducted to this point with no aircraft transmitting radio, radar, or any other detectable phenom. The aircraft launch "ziplip" and fly a mission without any transmission. Aircraft stay below the radar horizon of defense sites which are less than 200nm away. The E flies a passive mission in readiness, but silent unless called to go active.
At the objective "mirror image strikes" are flown. These are full strike missions by the airwing flown on a bearing 180 degrees out from the actual objective. Again, no active transmissions. The entire launch, strike, and recovery are flown without a key being touched. In KEEN SWORD 21 these mirror image strikes within range of Sanya and the SSBN bastion in the South China Sea were conducted for 4 days without being detected by the opposition. All day, every day, the E2 orbits on a passive profile. All of the ships operate in passive mode simply listening. In a real war our presence would have been deduced on the first strike as the survivors picked themselves out the rubble of their airfields. But for this operation we continued to train in silence.
One should not miss the implications of this feat. A strategic strike capable force operated with complete impunity for 4 days within range of strategic assets without being detected.
Since the end of the Cold War, the capability to operate in a passive mode while receiving the complete tactical picture from off-ship has been expanded and refined to an extraordinary degree. All of the vulnerabilities to detection of the force are also its strengths in tracking everyone else. The complete range of overhead and other sensors are downlinked to every ship and many aircraft. If one system in the USN or Space detects a contact, everyone receives it. One could, with training and discipline, sail a complete 6 month deployment and merely listen to all of the other sensors, and strike without warning if need be.
But enough is enough. After dodging People's Liberation Army Air Force strike regiments going out to "raid" the USS Ronald Reagan strike group the time came to tip our hand and enter the next phase. So out of the blue an H-10 group going out against Reagan and expecting F35s was intercepted some 500nm from Enterprise by F18s with "Washington" painted on the side. And all hell then broke lose!
Every Chinese asset that could fly, sail, submerge, or orbit was focused on the area in an attempt to locate the group.
Going back to our 'real war' hypothetical, the force has now successfully transited to the operation area and conducted the first flight operations which reveal its presence. In wartime, this would result in the survivors picking themselves out of the (possibly radioactive) rubble of their airfields and other key military facilities.
So the game is up. But is it? The key as before is to deny targeting information to the opposition, leave them confused about your precise location, and continue to operate.
The task force has as its advantage the element of long-range striking power which allows it to operate at considerable range, thus giving the opposition a very large area to search. Check a chart and draw a 500nm circle, cut it in half to represent the sea/land interface AKA beach, and see how many square miles have to be searched. If operating F18s cut the range by 1/3rd.
As before, much of the process of targeting is determining which of the many contacts detected is the one you are looking for. Most techniques rely on exploiting the Achilles Heel of Radar and Communication--signal bleed. For those to work, you have to transmit, and by transmitting you tell the opposition who and where you are. Don't transmit, stay silent, and he has to find you the hard way, by visual identification searching the vast ocean area 100sqnm at a time.
Recall the original parallel. The Football field with both teams equipped with flashlights and handguns, with half the fans also on the field and the lights turned out. Who wants to turn their flashlight on first? If the opposition is going to search with active sensors such as Radar, he is also telling you where he is and who he is. So our fighters can run out the ESM line of bearing and bag the recon J-20 or strike pathfinder--in essence, shoot the guy waving his flashlight up and down the field.
This is where a networked surveillance system is key. For example, the USN has such a system; if anyone in the US defense grid (including shore based facilities such as Naval Space Command, STRATCOM, or Cyber Command) has the contact, everyone has it. So one can stay silent, and receive all the data from other participants. This allows tactical deception, missile traps, decoys, etc. Of course, the Russians and the Chinese have global defense grids as well, but probably not nearly as good as ours. (The Chinese are closer than the Russians in this regard.)
A word about the opposition in KEEN SWORD 21. PLAAF strike regiments are structured and armed very well to go kill naval formations. The CJ-10As on an H-10 in regimental strength backed with a squadron of J-20Rs in the recon role are exceedingly formidable. They roughly have a regiment per carrier, with roughly thirty bombers per regiment, and six stealth-shaped missiles per bomber. Each of these flying telephone poles can carry over 400 pounds of high explosive across a distance of 1000 nm (1250 miles), and can cover that distance in a little under 40 minutes flying at an altitude of less than twenty feet above sea level. When the dumbed-down export variants were used against the Indians in 2019, the Indian carrier Vikramaditya had, on average, less than 52 seconds between locking onto a missile with their anti-aircraft radars and a deadly impact. In a straight-forward engagement, with over one hundred fifty of these hurtling at us at close to Mach 3, the issue would have been "in doubt" at best. If a strike regiment caught a CVN by surprise it would have been curtains for us. An alerted CVN would have a better than even chance of surviving, but probable losses would have been severe--a single anti-ship warhead can dig a hole sixty feet deep and eighteen feet wide in even a double-layered steel hull, and send burning rocket fuel one or two hundred feet further into the ship along its interior hallways.
But if you ran that regiment through fighter opposition to their launch points and then dragged them back out the same way, they would have taken crippling losses. They would have not been able to mount a second strike and would have been effectively destroyed if not annihilated. If a missile trap is set so that the regiment is climbing to launch altitude over a missile destroyer it doesn't know about until the radar comes up and missiles start impacting, the fight will be over before it barely starts, as a single missile destroyer has over . So it was critical for the target to be identified and located prior to the regiment being committed. This takes time and allows the CVN time to maneuver, set decoy groups, missile traps, fighter ambushes, etc.
With two hours warning for example, a CVN could dispatch a surface DDG missile trap 60nm down the threat axis (towards the enemy), station the CAP Outer Air Battle Grid, put a CG decoy group stationary where it originally was, and run another 60nm down range and off axis in a silent mode. Then the regiment locates a likely target at the expected point, runs into a missile trap, fighter grid, and a target that can defend itself without ever threatening the CVN.
The other threat--anti-ship ballistic missiles--was something the opposition never tested out. No mock raids of those--launch a ballistic missile, even if it's conventional, and it's generally an indication things are about to escalate beyond a naval war real fast.
Still, the trick versus those toys was the same: prevent identification and localization of the force. Decoys run out and radiate. Aircraft launch on missions running silent, fly out to a 'deception point' at low altitude, then climb and radiate as normal. The searchers locate the pop-up point but don't find the CVN. This is particularly effective if the first launch of the day locates a large, neutral oil tanker or cruise liner and everybody uses that as the reference deception point--in effect using the poor schmucks as a combination of bait or human shields. Then the searchers actually see a target at the point that the flight patterns indicate. The wartime hope is that the Chinese commit, they lose their regiment or their expensive ASBM, and also look like heartless idiots for sinking a bunch of civilians on top of that--giving us a free moral mandate, and military capability, to rain hell on their exposed coast.
We would also deliberately provide a false contact reference. If a searching aircraft is intercepted they can draw an operational radius of previously observed intercepts and conclude the CVN is in that area. That allows a concentrated search. Now if we had deliberately intercepted him at an extended range and then moved the carrier at high speed in the other direction the search effort is concentrated at the wrong point. I did that one day by refueling a Hornet, running him out a long range and bringing him into an intercept of two J-20Rs that were visually searching and identifying fishing boats and merchants trying to find us. I brought him in off-axis and took him back out off-axis (in other words not directly to or from the CVN). We then cranked up the 39.5 knots the George Washington could then do and went in the other direction. A few hours later we observed a "large number" of search aircraft vainly saturating that area of the ocean and giving all the fishing boats a great air show.
They could identify the E2's radar. They could then draw the normal circle around the E2's location and search that area. Trouble with that was that I, as the commander of the carrier air group, was particularly adept at running out long range while silent, and then running a distant patrol point and acting as if the CVN was close by. I used to routinely obtain contact at extended ranges. So by drawing their datum points based on my patrols they also looked in the wrong places, and at the same time I data-linked the complete tactical picture to all the silent participants.
We would also recover the returning aircraft by marshalling as normal but in the wrong place. Then, under E2 control, the returning aircraft would fly a recovery pattern to a deception point, and then run in at low altitude and silent to the CVN.
A sub vectored out to find us has to have some idea of where to look. If the CVN has freedom to operate it can avoid contact by "random and dynamic" movement. Only if the CVN locks itself to a set operational area and pattern (as in most structured exercises which lends itself to the prevailing myth of submarine superiority) does it become predictable and hence, vulnerable. If the CVN moves it forces the sub to move to catch it, thereby making the sub more detectable. Of course, one could run over the sub by accident in which case it falls to CVN group number two to take up the fight! Such is war.
We continued to operate in that manner during KEEN SWORD much as a boxer might in the ring, dodging and weaving for four days with everything in Southern China that could fly, sail or submerge looking for us. Our success can be measured by the fact that not once did any unit ever come close enough to identify us, and at no time was any strike group committed against us in a mock attack. During this time several regimental mock raids per day were flown against the Ronald Reagan which operated openly. And we continued to fly mirror-image strikes within strike range of key Chinese facilities several times per day with complete impunity.
At the conclusion of four such very interesting days it was determined that not only had we obtained all the needed training and experience we were looking for, but that we had also probably trained the Chinese more than we probably wanted to. So we then rendezvoused with the Ronald Reagan group during the night. The next morning, as scattered light filtered into the South China Sea, the initial Chinese strikers and shadows saw two carriers where there had been but one the day before. And then all Hell really broke lose!! But that is another story and a very conventional one.
Editor's note: Abbreviation Glossary
CJ-10A - Chinese Air-Launched Anti-Ship Missiles.
CAP – Combat Air Patrol
COMINT- Communications Intelligence
CVN – USA designation for a nuclear-powered Aircraft Carrier.
E2 – Electronic Surveillance and Radar aircraft, also used for Command and Control functions. An apt description that I wish I could claim credit for is that it looks like "an aircraft being terrorized by a flying saucer."
ELINT – Electronic Intelligence
ESM – Electronic Support Measures
F/A-18E/F – The main Fighter/Attack aircraft of the US Navy
F/A-35C – The
H-10 - The main heavy bomber of the Chinese air force, shaped like a B1-B Lancer, around 2/3rds the size but nearly twice as fast
J-20R - The J-20 is the main fighter platform of the Chinese air force. The 'R' denotes a Reconnaissance variant equipped with an Electro-Optical search pod
IJN – Imperial Japanese Navy
nm – Nautical Mile (1.151 statute miles or 1.852 km)
KEEN SWORD 21 – South China Sea 2021 exercise.
PLAAF - People's Liberation Army Air Force AKA the Chinese Air Force
SAR – Search And Rescue
SNA – Soviet Naval Aviation. Includes all of the commands, regiments and squadrons.
SOP - Standard Operating Procedure
sqnm – Square Nautical Mile
USN – United States Navy
Read Part 19 here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=403192
