Posted on 10/02/2013 3:00:10 PM PDT by ken5050
A long, in-depth, and superb article on the importance of naval carrier aviation, going back to the mistakes made in the Ford and Carter administrations, and why today the Navy needs 15 carriers. A must read. Link below...
They are good for projecting power against tinpot dictators, but I'll bet the Chinese would take care of them quickly if we ever got into a shooting match against them.
Because they are freaking cool.
Does anyone know if there will be an Enterprise D?
I know it was impossible to salvage the current one when she was decommissioned due to the integration of the nuclear engines to the ship structure.
And OUR Carriers don’t have that clinton-ramp...
The Chinese have deployed brilliant mines. They get up and move periodically. They’re designed to stay dormant for decades. Once activated they can deny access to huge areas. The Navy really has little mine defense, but these things are generations beyond even the existing mines that we already can’t effectively counter. If we build more carriers they will build more mines. In a real shooting war our carriers would be as impotent as the Argentine Navy was against one British submarine.
The reason we need carriers is that to become an admiral you must first command a carrier.
I need one! I could open a shopping mall on one!!!
I can remember being surprised when Argentina used an exocet to destroy a British warship.
I am sure we have all kinds of defenses but it seems it would be easier to manufacture a bunch of anti carrier missiles than to make a carrier.
I remember when they brought back the battleships for a short time. I read a report which said there was not a weapon on earth which could sink them with a single hit of course not counting nuclear weapons. That is probably no longer true with the deep penetrating bombs.
The Chinese Navy has the CJ-1 “Long-Arrow” 2-Ton Torpedo which is capable of Mach 2.5 airspeed.
I love aircraft carriers. There’s nothing like being on one.
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You bet. They are awesome.
No argument here. But good luck getting funding from Obama and the Democrats.
The US Military is increasingly being used as a tool of the New World Order and are only interested in US Military power when it can be used to further that agenda.
The interests of the United States, per se, are secondary.
I hate to say it, but after I read that, the first thing that came to my mind was the famous quote from Frederick the Great.
"He who defends everything defends nothing."
I think we are in the same position as Britain economically and militarily after being exhausted in WWI. At that time, I’m sure that the admiralty believed that they needed more warships too.
The US is a spent force economically and the military will soon follow.
Nobody deploys a carrier unless they are sure that the sub threat is at least under control. Remember a carrier strike can be from over 500 miles away. As for missiles, unless they’re nukes on or two missile may knock a carrier OOC for awhile but not sink it.
“Nobody deploys a carrier unless they are sure that the sub threat is at least under control.”
My understanding of these mines is that they are like gigantic “intelligent” torpedoes. They have a very long lifespan. They’re probably activated by long wave radio. We don’t know where they are and probably don’t know how to detect them. I read that they have sonic images of all of our present ships. (Don’t know if they can be updated, but how many new ships do we expect?) They probably will be undetectable until they begin their terminal run at the carrier.
Carriers are what allow us to get into wars too quickly to let our better judgment catch up.
Aircraft carriers = giant floating targets
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