I thought it was because the younger sailors saw more promotion opportunities with 20 small carriers than 12 supercarriers. That said the problem with the small carrier argument is that each small carrier has to have anti air and anti submarine escorts just like each of the supercarriers do. Eventually the small carrier option just isn't that economical for a peacetime military.
Don't know much about Navy boats, but I'm very fond of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornets. It's a great aircraft and a very versatile strike fighter. I think the USS Ford can carry up to 90 aircraft. The only thing super about the F-35C so far is the price tag. Hopefully, when all the bugs are worked out, it might be worth it. I'm glad this boat is on our side, because I wouldn't want to go up against it as a bad guy.
Oh, we still have them, and they never went away. But their mission and designation has changed. That role for the last 50+ years has been done by the LPH Amphibious Assault Ship. The current version is the Wasp class. At 831 feet, they are only a little bit shorter then our interwar era Carriers. And in an Air Assault configuration, they can carry 20 AV8B or F-35B fighters. And at the current time we have 8 of these ships in active service, that is a capacity of 160 fighters to low level conflict areas if needed. And if needed, we still have 3 of the older Tarawa class ships being held in reserve. Each of these could also in an assault configuration carry 12-18 AV8B fighters. In short, the idea of a "pocket carrier" was rendered obsolete with the advances during WWII. In fact, our first 3 LPH (Landing Platform Helicopter) ships were unmodified Essex class aircraft carriers. And even looking at a modern version, it is easy to see their heritage from the old "straight deck" carrier design. But an LPH can do much more then just move aircraft from place to place. They can carry aircraft, helicopters, landing craft, and over a Regiment of Marines. These are indeed "pocket aircraft carriers", but are also much-much more. A true multi-function ship, that can take on many roles, depending on the need at the time.
Costs too much, especially as often as we move boats through the Suez toll booth. Government decision-making is dominated by economy of scale thinking.
Don't see a reason not to have a mix of both, no need to have it all one way or the other, plus it gives an opportunity for those juniors to 'train up' to the bigger carriers if they're intimidated.
Yes, they do indeed cost too much, but that is a political issue imo, and the fault of Congress's lack of oversight and to some degree the military's as well. The voters own some of the blame themselves, too, for not holding their Representatives' feet to the fire. It takes more than just running to the polls every two or four years for a democratic govt. to work, even if one is busy with other stuff. There is no other reason than a lack of will and money pouring in from lobbyists for not being able to reduce costs by some 50% to 60% and have the the same or more levels of materiel and forces. - - - Updated - - - We're giving the toll takers' govt. lots of subsidies; paying them tolls is just stupid policy and needs to be re-negotiated, hopefully by someone with some sense. They wouldn't even have their canal if Ike hadn't given it back to them in the first place.
It costs less then $500,000 to transit the Suez Canal. Much less then it costs to go around Africa. This has nothing to do with money, as it does time and risk. The same reason most ships spend the money to transit the Panama Canal instead of going around South America.
Why would we need to send 4 carriers through the canal? Round trip? We have our carriers placed where they are for a reason. They are spread out, so they can each operate in their own AO. So little need to make such transits, other then for operational purposes or reporting. Carrier Strike Group One: NAS North Island, California Carrier Strike Group Two: Norfolk, Virginia Carrier Strike Group Three: Kitsap, Washington Carrier Strike Group Five: Yokosuka, Japan Carrier Strike Group Eight: Norfolk, Virginia Carrier Strike Group Nine: San Diego, California Carrier Strike Group Ten: Norfolk, Virginia Carrier Strike Group Eleven: Everet, Washington Carrier Strike Group Twelve: Norfolk, Virginia There are generally only 2 reasons for a carrier to transit the canal. Either it is replacing a carrier that has been on station to long with no other available replacement, or it is going in for a major refit. There is also reporting, but that is very rare. We might actually have a carrier transit the Suez Canal three or four times in a decade. But please, why on Earth would we have 4 carriers transit the canal? Sending every Pacific group to the Atlantic? Or the reverse? Not bloody likely. And once again, why "round trip"? Your claims make no sense.
A $13 billion sitting duck. This is the XXIst century Yamatos. Like the battleships that once dominated the seas, the big carriers are on the decline, which is born on the wings of drones, hypersonic missiles and advanced detection technologies. Don't blame Obama - he is caught in an era of quick changes in warfare like the one which took place at the end of the XIXth century. His choices are to maintain the current leviathans or embark on something entirely new. I guess the admiralty pushed for the first, proven choice, but I, armchair admiral, don't agree with it. First, the 5th gen fighters aren't what they promised to be; they're detectable, defeatable in dogfights and most of all, costly beyond imagination both to produce and to operate. Dones, on the other hand, can sustain much more Gs than with a human operator, are faster and stealthier (because they don't carry all of this life support appartus) and, last but not least, expendable and easy to deploy. They can be deployed in advanced positions. In the face of this, a big, 60s-like "macho fleet" made for a quick nuclear exchange vs a likewise lumbering fleet is not only useless in the age of terror, but also a disaster waiting to happen. A new "jeune ecole" is coming out, and the USN must do with it if it wants to remain in charge on the seas, both by developping countermeasures against it and developping some of their own.
Yeah, you're right... with embarked aircrafts, it's much more than that. I was used to more substanciated posts from your part, MMC...
With Obama in the White House, eight of our ten carriers might be sitting ducks, tied up to the wharf unable to put to sea and fight. But Obama is about to get kicked out of public housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in nine months and if Americans don't go stupid again like back in 2008 and 2012 there might be a new CnC who's will be competent at the job. Carriers that are at sea aren't sitting ducks, they move. First the enemy has to find the carrier. Satellites ??? Go to Google Earth and find a U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group that's at sea. Let us know how many days it took you to find one if you ever do find one.
Defended by 2 Burkes and at least 1 Ticonderoga which gives the group close to 300 Standard II antimissile missiles it can put into the air. That's not counting anything the Carrier will be using either. Nor the planes, nor the Subs, Just where do you get its a 13 Billion dollar sitting duck?
Right here. A secret tight enough to guarantee a 13 billion+ carriers complete with air group and surface escorts - and the lives they carry? I would hate to be the administration in power when such a catastrophe happens. This would dwarf Pearl Harbour and 9-11. Prepare to change after that.
Oh, so you think because China has Hypersonic Missile and were able to achieve this after the US. That makes the carrier a sitting duck. I see.....that's your reason, huh? From your link. WU-14 WU-14 was The Pentagon's code name for a Chinese experimental hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), which is now called the DF-ZF.[1]. Analysts suspect that the WU-14 will first be used in shorter-range roles as an anti-ship missile and for other tactical purposes to address the problem of hitting a moving target with a ballistic missile....snip~ I'll bet you actually didn't think the US has anything to defend what they created first before others, Right? I am sure some of our Navy People can tell you about whats in store for the HGV other than that part about hitting a moving target.
Yeah, but you know what they say about horseshoes and nuclear explosions, right? And beside, ain't we are talking about a ship, anyway? A rather large, 13-billion bucks one? There's nothing in any arsenal that can intercept a mach-10 object.
Besides the problem of missing the moving target where there is a problem with just a short range HGV, Right? A 13 Billion bucks one that comes with defenses. Also, you need to read up on detection. Then there is Direct energy weapons. Lasers and energy wave weapons such as Plasma. Laser beams travel at the speed of light, so evading an accurately aimed laser after it has been fired is impossible. Consequently, there is no need to compensate for target movement. Lasers and particle beams can not be deflected or intercepted with point defense hard-kill countermeasures.
A carrier carries an air wing not just one air group. Over 1,000 Marines were killed during a three day battle on Tarawa during WW ll and 6,821 Marines and sailors were killed during the battle of Iwo Jima. It seems that soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen get killed during wars. The Ford class carrier is a huge ship, 100,000 tonnes !!! And if you ever been on a warship you would know that warships have water tight compartments. During WW ll most carrier losses were due to high octane aviation gas being onboard. Todays aircraft carriers no longer have avgas onboard but JP fuel. That's why the U.S. Navy stopped flying the A-1 Skyraider the best CAS weapons platform ever to fly, the Navy wanted avgas off all of their carriers. You mentioned the Yamato, the Yamato had design flaws and the Yamato was no Iowa class BB. The IJN never perfected damage control procedures and that's why it sank but it took between 11 to 15 torpedoes and 7 direct hits by 1,000 lb, armor piercing bombs to sink the Yamato.
Wrong. When they say "moving target", they're obviously meaning something faster than a ship, since, like your snippage said "that the WU-14 will first be used in shorter-range roles as an anti-ship missile and for other tactical purposes to address the problem of hitting a moving target with a ballistic missile". And the Ford is quite a large ship. As for range, "short" can still be considerably far, in military parlance. Useless versus a hypersonic object. Yes, it is said so in the article I linked. Right now, you Yanks have 2 problems: 1- You are behind the Russian and the Chinese (and maybe even India) in developping Hypersonic technology and 2- Your big fleets, upon which all of your military power is based, makes juicy targets. The situation isn't hopeless - but you guys have to react, fast. Microwaves, laser-interception, drones, now that's what I'm talking about - not past age leviathans like the USS Ford.
Do you have anything that can validate that the US is behind the Russian and Chinese in developing HGVs? Both the Russians and Chinese are 20 years behind us in Laser tech. Microwaves etc.
I was using "air group" as a catchall term for any number of aircrafts embarked on a single ship, not as a military formation designation. And yet, even with the grim standards of WWII era, Pearl Harbour had the American people into hysteria. Today, even a dozen returning bodybags makes that people riot in the streets; How many servicemen are there in one of those Carrier Groups? We're talking about a nuclear payload here. We humans are not made as strongly as a ship's bulkheads. No ship was well-designed enough to survive the aerial onslaught that Yamato has endured. The Iowas, as well as the Yamatos, were useless ships in the sense that there is nothing that they ever did that couldn't have been made by a cruiser or another, smaller unit. In fact, nearly all of WWII's Pacific theatre BBs were useless, except for the old Kongos, which were fast and long-ranged enough to be of actual use.
Yes - you quoted from my Wiki link, but deduced wrongly; so I quoted you quoting from my Wiki link, and corrected you. Read the article I posted above. You must have missed it. It tells you the state of things, development-wise, on these technologies. Come back a better-informed man. There's no hurry.
