According to foreign media reports, the aircraft carrier battle group with the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier "John Stannis" as the core has been deployed to the Western Pacific and is currently heading for the Korean Peninsula. Ten days after the United States conducted a nuclear test in North Korea, on June+10/October 65438+June 6, the United States ordered the USS Stannis to set off from the American home port of Bremerton for the Far East. The US Navy plans to deploy the Stannis aircraft carrier battle group in East Asia for seven months, and incorporate it into the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier battle group with the US military base in Yokosuga as its home port, thus forming the strike force of the dual aircraft carrier battle group.
The deployment of dual aircraft carriers by the United States in East Asia is related to the intensification of tension on the Korean Peninsula and the complexity of the situation in the South China Sea. In recent years, the United States has repeatedly sent additional aircraft carriers to East Asia. The biggest one was at the end of 20 10. At that time, because of the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, the DPRK and the ROK were in a state of explosive war, and the United States urgently dispatched nuclear-powered aircraft carriers Reagan, Washington and carl vinson to East Asian waters. These three aircraft carriers carry 270 various combat aircraft, and the main strike force is the F/A- 18E/F "Hornet" multi-role fighter.
Comrade Mao Zedong once said: "All imperialists and reactionaries are paper tigers", so many people think that the US dual-carrier fleet is also a paper tiger, which is nothing. But there is another sentence behind Chairman Mao: "On the other hand, they are real tigers and will eat people. Strategically, we treat them as paper tigers, but tactically, we should treat them as tigers.
So, how powerful is the US dual-carrier battle group? Let's look at this "real tiger" from a tactical point of view.
The United States has always attached great importance to the strike capability of aircraft carriers. The "John Stannis" and "Ronald Reagan" sent to East Asian waters this time are Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers with a full displacement of 97,000 tons. Each aircraft carrier is equipped with a carrier-based aircraft wing, which has four attack fighter squadrons, including 44 F/A- 18E/F Super Hornet fighters, 1 Shipborne Early Warning Aircraft Squadron and 5 E-2D Early Warning Aircraft. 1 electronic warfare attack squadron and five EF- 18G growler electronic warfare attack aircraft; 1 anti-submarine helicopter squadron, 1 1 SH-60F seahawk anti-submarine helicopter and MH-60H black hawk rescue helicopter.
Modern aircraft carriers generally adopt the mode of continuous dispatch. The aircraft carrier takes 1-2 hours as the operation cycle, and dispatches a wave of aircraft every cycle. After the second attack wave took off, the first attack wave began to land, realizing the cyclic operation of take-off-landing-deck positioning-maintenance-re-attack. In the continuous dispatch mode, Nimitz-class aircraft carrier can dispatch about 15 combat aircraft per wave. When carrying precision-guided weapons, each combat aircraft can accurately attack 2 ~ 3 predetermined targets, and the number of single-point targets that an attack wave can hit is 30~45.
When attacking opponents with weak air defense firepower and air power, the US Navy aircraft carrier battle group generally uses 8~ 12 relatively small-scale attack aircraft formations to complete combat tasks. The air raid fleet hardly needs to arrange all kinds of cover and suppression forces, and all the fleets can be put into attack operations.
At present, naval intelligence agencies all over the world have studied the strike force of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in the United States, mostly based on the data of the "climax" exercise of aircraft carrier strike held by the United States Navy in 1995~ 1997 for three consecutive years, especially the strike exercise of Carl Vinson at the peak arranged in 1997 United States Joint Military Exercise II(JTFEX97-2). The US Naval Analysis Center released a set of detailed reports on this exercise, and the intelligence agencies of various countries made great gains. During the actual combat training and scientific exploration of the Liaoning aircraft carrier in the past two years, China has also made a lot of reference to this report in terms of the mission capability of carrier-based aircraft dispatch rate.
In this exercise, Carl Vinson dispatched 975 fixed-wing carrier aircraft in four days, including 77 1 ground attack sorties, most of which were completed by F/A- 18, and * * * dropped 1336 training bombs. 75% of F- 14 fighters and 85% of F/A- 18E/F fighters are used for bombing operations, and the rest are used for electronic suppression and escort of enemy ground air defense systems. During the four-day exercise, the average daily attack frequency of US carrier aircraft reached 239 sorties/day.
The United States regards the attack rate of carrier aircraft as the most important indicator of aircraft carrier's strike capability, which is divided into two indicators: peak attack rate (4 days, 24 hours a day) and sustained attack rate (26 days, all day 12 hours a day). The peak attack rate set by the US Navy for the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is 230 sorties per day, but it can only last for 4 days, and then it will turn into a continuous attack. On this day, the attack frequency will drop to 120 sorties.
In 20 15, the U.S navy's carrier-based wing completely eliminated the F- 14 Tomcat fighter, and all of them were equipped with the F/A- 18E/F super hornet fighter with higher attack power. The peak attack rate may increase to 250 sorties per day, and the sustained attack rate will reach 150 sorties per day.
If the US dual-carrier battle groups "John Stannis" and "Ronald Reagan" sent to East Asia really fight on the Korean peninsula this time, they can make use of the peak attack in the first four days, with 250 sorties every day and night, and then reduce it to continuous attacks in the next three days, with 150 sorties every day and night. You can attack 1450 sorties a week. Assuming that 80% of them are ground attack missions, and each fighter carries precision-guided ammunition to attack 2-3 targets in each voyage, then each Nimitz-class aircraft carrier can attack 2,450-3,690 ground targets in a week, and two aircraft carriers can attack more than 7,000 targets at most in a week. This is a very terrible strike capability.
We must know that 32 fixed-wing fighters of the Russian Air Force bombed Syria for more than four months, and 6,000 sorties were dispatched in one battle, only destroying the ground targets of 10000 extremist organizations. 20 13 because Syria was accused of using chemical weapons in the civil war, the United States threatened to use force against Syria. Christopher Hammer, a senior researcher at the American War Institute, once claimed that the US Navy's aircraft "carrier strike group" in the Mediterranean was enough to eliminate the backward Syrian air force within an hour. At present, this clamor of Americans is well-founded.
Of course, it is only a wishful theoretical algorithm for the US dual-carrier battle group to attack 7000 ground targets a week. Because North Korea has the highest density air defense system in the world, which consists of a perfect early warning radar and command center, a surface-to-air missile with a combination of far, medium and short range, and thousands of anti-aircraft guns of various calibers, the US military needs to focus on suppressing ground air defense firepower at the beginning of the war, and will only carry out indiscriminate bombing after obtaining complete air superiority.
This dual-carrier strike capability of the United States can only bully small and medium-sized coastal countries. In the face of Russia or China, a powerful country with perfect air defense and coastal defense capabilities and various advanced weapons for attacking the sea, it is obviously suicidal to use aircraft carriers near its coast.