Recently, the CCTV program "China Public Opinion Field" program high-profile discussion of a phenomenon found by the US media "as soon as the US aircraft carrier approaches, the Chinese bomber group will come to greet" and hung a poster in a prominent position on the official website of CCTV. On the one hand, this reflects the self-confidence of a great power, and on the other hand, it also echoes the recent movements of US aircraft carriers.
According to the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet, on September 8, the U.S. Navy's Carrier Strike Group (CSG), led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier CARL Vinson (CVN-70), began entering the South China Sea to conduct so-called "free navigation" and joint military exercises with "allies."
The U.S. Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson carrying the F-35C
It is reported that the "Carl Vinson" aircraft carrier strike group set two records in terms of troop strength and scale; first, the escort ships were the largest, and the whole strike group was organized into six "Burke" class destroyers and a "Tycon" class cruiser "Lake Chamberlain", which can be described as the strongest and strongest in recent years; second, for the first time, a squadron of combat attack aircraft equipped with F-35C fighters and a transport aircraft squadron equipped with MV-22B tilting rotorcraft were incorporated. This is the official start of the U.S. Navy's use of fifth-generation fighter jets to carry out aircraft carrier strike group combat deployment missions.
The hidden means of the aircraft carrier
Although the US Navy's entry into the South China Sea this time is inconclusive and menacing, the Chinese Navy, which is also in the South China Sea area, seems to have further increased its vigilance, according to the Central Radio and Television Corporation, quoting the US Navy as saying that the "Carl Vinson" aircraft carrier was repeatedly "watched" by China's naval and air force fleets in the process of sailing from Guam to Yokosuka and from Yokosuka to the West Pacific and the South China Sea. Of course, this kind of "onlookers" may not be similar to the "intimate contact" of the Russian Air and Space Force flying by the British Royal Navy destroyer, it should only maintain electromagnetic contact on the situational awareness system, and the two sides do not maintain visual contact, but even so, the US Navy can't help but ask, how did its own aircraft carrier move slightly, it was discovered?
After all, according to the operational laws of the US Navy's aircraft carrier strike group, when the CSG (aircraft carrier strike group) is really deployed to the sea, especially into the high-threat combat sea area, the US Navy generally needs to comprehensively take a variety of tricks and deceptive means to hide the whereabouts of its own large fleet and avoid being positioned by the imaginary enemy. In general, this method of manipulation and deception can be roughly divided into "action deception" and "electromagnetic deception".
Action deception
Among them, "action deception" is easier to understand: when the US aircraft carrier and escort ship are in action, they can deceive by approaching the international merchant ship route, mixing into the merchant ship fleet at night, and taking a speed similar to that of the merchant ship when crossing, so as to deceive the opponent that there are only one or several "merchant ships" here; and in the early days, when the sea search was mainly based on visual reconnaissance, the aircraft carrier could even hide the appearance characteristics of the aircraft carrier to the greatest extent by painting specific patterns on the hull. Thus avoiding being recognized as an aircraft carrier by the other party at a certain distance.
The deck camouflage of the Japanese aircraft carrier "Ruifeng" in World War II was painted in camouflage to confuse enemy aircraft and make him look like a battleship turning right.
Of course, after entering the Cold War, the traditional visual reconnaissance methods were used less and less, and the Soviet Red Navy increasingly relied on air-based radar and even space-based radar and passive direction finding equipment to search for sea surface targets.
Electromagnetic deception
On this basis, the U.S. Navy developed the concept of "electromagnetic radio frequency management" (EMCON), the predecessor of this concept is actually the Second World War used a lot of "keep electromagnetic silence", the entire fleet does not radiate electromagnetic waves outward, naturally it is difficult to be found by the passive direction finding equipment of the Soviet Red Navy.
Of course, it is impossible for the carrier strike group not to radiate electromagnetic waves outward, for example, after entering the war zone, the anti-aircraft cruisers in the fleet need to activate long-range warning radars, the early warning aircraft need to provide air combat control and interception guidance in the air, and even the precision approach system of the aircraft carrier is radiating electromagnetic waves outward. Therefore, the real EMCON (Electromagnetic Frequency Management) operation is a very complex and comprehensive process, which not only requires careful planning of the timing of the switch on and off of the RF equipment of each ship, the application of the LPI (low intercept probability) concept on the active RF system, and the comprehensive implementation of electromagnetic deception and even action deception.
For example, during the Cold War, the US military adopted the method of deploying the same sea search radar on the ships, so that the Soviet Red Navy could not figure out which ships were in the formation, and through the deceitful maneuvering of some ships, and even the feinting of some carrier-based aircraft, the US Navy's aircraft carrier battle group had repeatedly "led" the Soviet Red Navy's sea surveillance aircraft that came to reconnoiter in the wrong direction.
Why are U.S. aircraft carriers so easily spotted?
According to common sense, the US Navy has completely lost the upper hand in the confrontation with the Soviet Red Navy after the baptism of the Cold War, and has created many classic examples of aircraft carrier confrontation and bullying measures during the Cold War (such as the most classic NOR-82), and after so many years of development after the Cold War, it should be becoming more and more mature. Now the US aircraft carrier was discovered as soon as it arrived in the West Pacific Sea area, and as soon as it was discovered, it would have to make contact with the Chinese bomber on the radar.
In Ivan the Great's view, the current situation encountered by the US Navy is not difficult to understand, and it is also a comprehensive problem, with political, social and technical problems.
In fact, during the Cold War, the US Navy's voyage to the aircraft carrier battle group was relatively open for "openness" considerations, and anyone could learn through newspapers, magazines and television that the US Navy aircraft carrier arrived at a certain port at a certain time and then went to a certain port, and this openness has continued until now.
Recent trends of the U.S. Navy's USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group (Source: Weibo@TG Combat Power 5)
Even at present, we can also see how many aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships are currently at sea in the US Navy through the websites of the US Navy News Network, the US Navy Pacific Fleet Surface Ship Command and other units, and where the current approximate location is. Although the information published on this website may not be accurate, but at least it can reflect the approximate location of the US Navy's aircraft carrier and amphibious assault ship, although individuals cannot go to the US aircraft carrier according to tussoji, but the relevant countries can completely rely on the approximate position and concentrate the situational awareness force to search, in this case, it is still very simple to find the US aircraft carrier.
In terms of social factors, this may need to benefit from the huge progress of satellite networks after the Cold War, and now the merchant fleet and even the fishing fleet at sea have become "small experts in shooting ships". At that time, the Soviet Red Navy wanted to track the aircraft carriers of the US Navy, and also needed to develop a special 1824 type pelagic trawler to crouch near the gap in the GULK island chain and even the US Norfolk base, and found that the US fleet was manually reported to the fleet headquarters. Now where there is such a need for trouble, whether it is a merchant ship crew or a fishing boat crew, almost everyone has a smart phone, of course, there is no psychological pressure to shoot the aircraft carrier, and as long as the merchant ship and the fishing ship have the network and even telephone service provided by the maritime satellite, these people can directly upload to social media to become a hot spot when they photograph the aircraft carrier.
For example, recently, There are Indonesian fishermen in the south of the South China Sea to photograph the Australian naval fleet that is going south, which in the past may not be a troublesome thing, now by a mobile phone and maritime satellite network to get it done, the aircraft carrier is hiding in the merchant fleet as before, or relying on commercial routes to hide their whereabouts, I am afraid that it is not OK, I have not hidden, it has been transmitted to the Internet, becoming a stepping stone for Internet celebrities.
Finally, from the perspective of technical factors, the current search methods of major military powers for aircraft carriers are not comparable to those of the Soviet Red Navy. Ivan the Great remembered mentioning two situational awareness systems developed by the Red Navy of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, one was the "MPCЦ-1 (Success-1)" system that was put into use in the 60s, and the other was the famous "MКРЦ (Myth)" system that was put into use in the 70s.
Soviet Tu-16RM reconnaissance aircraft approached to reconnoiter the U.S. aircraft carrier CV-61 Ranger
But whether it is a "Success-1" or a "Myth" system, the former is at best a target indication system, that is, after the position of the aircraft carrier is roughly calibrated in the ocean wide area search, it is not feasible to carry out a wide-area search, that is, to find the approximate location of the aircraft carrier fleet;
Although the latter is a set of ocean wide-area search system, its main situational awareness unit is the УC-П passive electronic intelligence satellite, which is first completed by the passive intelligence satellite, and then confirmed by the УC-A satellite equipped with an active radar, and then the Tu-95RTS can be used for precision calibration.
In the end, these 2 systems are still full of loopholes, especially the УC-П satellite, which is not high in direction finding accuracy and is easy to be interfered with, and the US military has explored a set of electromagnetic radio frequency management operation processes based on the activity law of this satellite, and the Soviet Red Navy is simply tried and tested.
However, this is after all 2021 is not 1981, after more than 40 years of development, the current major military powers (such as Russia) of the sea surveillance system has been replaced by several generations: in the ocean wide-area search, the original passive direction finding electronic intelligence satellite still exists, but its detection accuracy has increased by several orders of magnitude, not to mention, the updated, similar to the US MILITARY NOSS system of the triangulation method passive electronic intelligence satellite constellation has become the mainstream;
Source: Weibo @ South China Sea Strategic Situational Awareness
And that's not to mention, there are a large number of synthetic aperture radars and even optical reconnaissance satellites, small radar reconnaissance satellites with rapid reissue capabilities composed of low-orbit constellations. Even in the specific detection method, artificial intelligence recognition and big data algorithms have been introduced, specifically in the vast ocean in the form of active detection to find something that "looks a bit like an aircraft carrier".
The Tu-95RTS flew over the U.S. aircraft carrier
After the preliminary calibration of the aircraft carrier in the ocean wide area search, the means of precision calibration have also slowly changed from the Tu-95RTS with the water search radar to a large number of low-speed, high-speed unmanned aerial vehicles; at the same time, the aircraft carrier also needs to face the onlookers of such as fishing boats and merchant ship crews, and needs to avoid the route of the merchant ship at all times, and the early warning aircraft in the air even need to inform the civil aviation passenger aircraft flying in the air to pay attention to avoidance. These "open guns and dark arrows" are put together, so that the set of hidden means that aircraft carriers proved to be effective during the Cold War become more and more ineffective, which is probably the political, social and technological factors that the US aircraft carriers have not yet exerted their fists and feet in the Indo-Pacific and West Pacific regions, and have always been jointly tracked by the naval and air forces of a certain major country.
Of course, the basic contradiction of military struggle is often the spiral of "spear" and "shield", in the Cold War period, the "shield" of the US aircraft carrier relied on the exquisite EMCON (electromagnetic radio frequency management) operation to occupy the opportunity, at present, the attacking side relies on a sufficiently strong ISR (intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance) capability to occupy the opportunity, how the "contradiction dispute" between the two will develop in the future, it is worth waiting to see.