Lol, I was. I was military intel, so I was trained on SIGINT. One of those classes involve a joint training session with the Patriot Batteries guy on Radar.
Didn't have that during my time and that was more than 2 decades ago. Jesus Tu-95? But they are still flying yes? God I miss wearing the uniform. We did our time it's now just memories, which is more than I can say to those keyboard warriors here in PDF.
I mean and @jhungary Raised valid points, of course modern ships have better firepower, radars and coverage, than of course Satellite based intelligence comes into play, but if swarm (Boats) will not work than why world including US is investing in it ? Plus in a chaotic situation, wouldn't be reasonable to believe couple of ships might slip through the gaps in coverage (of course other factors will come in to play like Terrain etc) that could do a serious damage to small ships in a Carrier group.If the carrier is at port, then anything could happen. But if we are talking about attacking the carrier in battle, then the swarming tactic so often extolled by our Iranian members would not work.
For starter, there is something call the 'Douglas Sea State'...
Douglas sea scale - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
We would be looking at the boats going across open water in unknown sea condition. Can the boats survive long enough to make it to the carrier and coordinate their attacks? Not likely. Anyone who has ever been 10 kts in one foot swell know what a beating the ride can be.
Next, can they escape detection? They would be detected by the two SSNs that usually accompany the fleet long before they can make it even 1/4 of the way. The subs would contact the fleet and the game would be up.
Next, can they survive the inevitable air assault?
Next, how fast are the boats? The carrier is nuclear powered and can hit 30+ kts. How long can the boats keep up assuming they somehow managed to know the carrier's position in real time? What is the boat's bingo fuel, meaning the fuel quantity that is the point of no return?
Again you forgot to quote the rest of my statement and it wasn't me who said radar could do that hence my question in the first place . It was your boy wonder cheerleader Mr LNG who said radar could do that. Lololol.Here is your original comment...
With thousands of commercial vessels, how China controls the seas
I thought you were talking about the OP article, as for global sea blocade, no one will do this at least for now, globalization means no one can survive by themselves, espeically for manufacturing lacking US, so it's not really a worry. South China sea and Taiwan strait are the only two possible...defence.pk
Explain to me how a 'marine radar' can know which ship is which when the AIS is off.
Here is your stupidity -- the radar does not 'know' anything. All the radar does is report the electronic signatures of an object. It is the human that must 'know' and 'identify'. For example...
Can a fishing trawler be that close to a tanker? Yes, it can. But normally not. But then what kind of vessels are operationally allowed to be that close? A tug boat. Does simply observing give that kind of knowledge? No. Training and experience does. So can an experience captain reading the radar scope figure out which ship from which? Yes, he can. Shipping lanes have rules so an experienced captain reading the radar scope can figure out what kind of vessels based upon their paths. We have been doing this long before AIS came.
Traffic separation scheme - Wikipedia
But not all ships are AIS equipped, so that fall back on radars and the human experience at reading them. So of course you have to move the goalposts.
