During the Falklands War the British didn't have Aegis.mistermack wrote:It seems that the advantages of a carrier are still pretty enormous, but the disadvantage is that it makes a big target.
Obviously, you would think that an attack by planes should be possible to counter, but long-range missiles are the problem.
Can missiles be taken out these days? Can radar pick them up? And are there reliable counter measures so that you can be confident enough to actually send the carrier into action in the first place?
During the Falklands war, the British had no answer to the exocet. Surely they've come up with something now?
Missiles can be taken out in any number of ways. From passive defenses such as diminishing a ship's radar cross-section and chaff to NULKA rounds and other techniques, to active destruction of the missile by other missiles (the US Navy uses Standard Missiles, RAM and NATO Sea Sparrow) and if all that fails there are close-in systems like CIWS (Phalanx) and Goalkeeper (the Euro version of it) which will send a stream of bullets in the missile's direction before it hits the ship.
But... many antiship missiles being designed today are specifically designed to outdo the Aegis system, as well as other countermeasures. It's a perpetual game of technological one-upsmanship.
