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SeaQueen -> RE: CSG task group and task unit position and transiting (12/12/2020 2:06:16 PM)
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A bit of a deep question on strategy and tactics. In my attempts of scenario design, I'm running into what I believe is a problem for a large 21st century carrier strike group. If a CSG with as many as 20 vessels operating in a relatively confined area such as the South China Sea, how do military planners decide how close to keep each individual vessel?
The SCS isn't that confined. There's plenty of space to operate there. 20 vessels would be several CSGs, which in wartime wouldn't be unreasonable. As for the spacing of warships, it depends! Generally, you would cluster the HVUs (i.e. CVNs, LHD/LHAs, CLF) so that their own close in defenses have some overlap and they can benefit from mutual support. Next you want to develop a defense around the HVUs. In order to do that you need to understand what the enemy's capabilities are and how far out can the enemy can employ weapons against them. Then you'd draw a circle around the HVU cluster (clusters?) that is that range. If the bad guys can shoot 100NM then you want to engage and kill them before they get to within 100NM. That circle is called your vital area (VA). The name of the game is to keep stuff out of your vital area.
Next, you want to figure out how you can reasonably engage and destroy the enemy before he enters your VA and can shoot at you. That dictates where you put your fighter CAPs and Hawkeyes, and where you might also choose to detach some CRUDES, FFGs, or LCS and position them further out from the HVUs to expand both your sensing and shooting capability. That area where you can sense the enemy and make decisions about who to engage when is called the classification, identification and engagement area (CIEA). The CIEA is where the fighting should happen. It's also where you should start not just seeing unknown contacts, but identifying them, figuring out what's hostile and deciding who engages what. You want to make this area big, because that gives you time to make decisions and maintain awareness of what's happening. In CMANO/CMO terms, you might also want to start adjusting the firing ranges of some of your ships here, and say things like, "In this area I'm going to engage inbound contacts with missiles, but not fighters, but over here I'm going to engage them with fighters, but not missiles." Then you set up your doctrine settings so that you can make that happen.
Finally, way out there, is going to be the realm where you're just trying to maintain awareness of what's going on. That's your sensing area (SA). This is where you might put drones, or possibly submarines. Depending on the threat, you might also send out MPA. It's probably out on the edge of the capability of radars like Aegis or a APY-9 or APY-2 from a Hawkeye or AWACS and overlaps some. The goal out here is not so much to engage anything as to just maintain awareness so that if it enters the CIEA you have some SA about it and can cue appropriate assets to investigate.
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Secondly, a large group won't be all pulling into Phuket Thailand all at once for a liberty port call so is their a method to the madness in determining how many vessels to place in a restricted status while crew is ashore?
If they're at war, though, they wouldn't be tied up at the pier, they'd be out sailing where it's much harder for enterprising Chinese naval officers to plan strikes against them, specifically because in order to do it they've got to run a gauntlet of fighters, CRUDES, MPA, helicopters, and SAMs. The only ships that would be going back and forth to land in wartime would be the shuttle ships running out where ever they're unrepping and they would need to be protected. Also, submarines and ships who winchestered out would head back to port to be replenished because they can't be replenished at sea. That would be an issue if the conflict went on a long time.
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