Echonine,

The brief given of the performance Midway put in above was written by a USN Lt Cdr who was aboard the Midway and flew with that vessels E-2 detachment. His name is Andy Pico and, last I heard, he was working at NORAD.

In otherwords what you read isnt some contrived exercise like ‘Millenium Challenge’ it was a real world operational evolution that put two full CVBG’s in ‘opfor’ waters, conducting flight ops, within the sensor envelope of search and track systems intended to detect precisely those units.

Ex Millenium Challenge was intended to investigate the threat level posed to a CV group by assymetric threats in the naval environment. For those threats to materialise the group was deliberately placed further inshore than it ever would be in a non threat-reduced environment. It has utterly no similarity to the kind of anticarrier tactics discussed here.

A merchant ship, at most, would be allowed to see one of the carriers escort screen. Shepherding innocent and ‘not-so-innocent’ vessels away from carrier groups is nothing new. A smart task group commander might also decide to have a screen vessel ‘escort away’ merchant vessels that arent even on the task groups course track. Good way of getting some conflicting ‘helpful’ reports from merchies wouldnt you say?.

It was also mentioned in further interviews, that an enemy armed with missiles better than the Styx would have been able to do the same thing, even if the CVBG was farther away. Considering the range on the F-18E/F is hardly unlimited, quite the contrary rather, I find it hard to believe the CVBG would be very far.

Assuming a situation would break out, the enemy navy, not one with 1960s era weaponry like in that exercise, would use its own recon assets to patrol the likely areas where the CVBG would be. A mid-pacific ocean scenario is just childish to imagine.

Also, most countries to have some form of intelligence service that could help immensely in predicting where the carrier group would be, through field agents, etc.

How do you figure? Aegis and the Hawkeyes will have their eyes wide open.

From the locked topic “Ability of RuAF and Russian Navy to destroy US CVBG”

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-031.htm

“…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 E2 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 NORPAC 82 these mirror image strikes within range of Petroplavask and the SSBN bastion in the Sea of O are 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. “

If the debate involves any kind of near coastal of littoral warfare, chances are the US CVBG would have been long found in any real conflict, so whether is was emitting is irrelevant.

Millennium Challenge 2002 exercises sort of showed how limited the power of a CVBG is once anywhere near land.

A merchant ship could spot a CVBG for all you know.