Posted on 03/21/2019 3:31:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
While great against savages and second-tier enemies, against China our carriers are as useless as the Prince of Wales and Repulse were against Japanese land-based bombers.
Our carriers cannot get close enough to China to launch land-attack missions without being sunk.
But our admirals are such PC-whipped cowards that they can’t even enforce high enough standards to keep our best warships from being rammed by tankers.
Good luck against salvos of hyper-sonic missiles.
Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_Prince_of_Wales_and_Repulse
So would you guys be in favor of sinking all of our navies carriers tomorrow(immediately), you know make artificial reefs out of them?
Gentlemen, that is a yes or no question.
So is, have you stopped beating your wife? But that does not make it a worthy question. Nevertheless, I will play along.
The answer is no because carriers still are effective against third world countries and they still project a great deal of power even against China as it exists today. So long as China has doubt carriers have great deterrent value. So we don't sink them all, we scrap them according to an intelligent schedule knowing that we should have some remnant of a carrier fleet for at least 40 years.
Rather than sink them we begin to compensate for their growing obsolescence with other platforms. We take the money that we would have devoted to building two (count them, two!) Carriers at the same time and spend it more effectively. As much as I admire a Bull Halsey and the men who served under him on Enterprise from Pearl Harbor through Okinawa, as much as I respect the first skipper of the nuclear powered Enterprise, we must let go of the romance of the flattop and move into the 21st century.
As the modification of old carriers progresses, it is quite possible to anticipate that as artificial intelligence continues to advance we will reach the point where new carriers which are 100% drones can be launched. Presumably they would be not just cheaper to operate but also cheaper to build. Certainly, their destruction would be much cheaper in human life and therefore not necessarily Casus Belli for nuclear war if the Chinese get frisky and sink one.
It may be that carriers will be abandoned altogether for submarines with missiles and satellites with lasers. Much of the change must come from evolution as well as technological revolution. God help us if we get it wrong.
It was a yes or no question.
I will take that as a no. You think, as do I, we still need carriers. Thanks for the input. Again I agree. I will ignore all of your other poppycock.
That remark was gratuitous and it characterizes your whole approach to this and other exchanges.
What Wardaddy said.
Reefs? No.
Useless targets when they are in range of China? Yes.
The next Prince of Wales and Repulse? Yes. Everybody knows it except the heirs of the “Battleships Forever!” crowd.
Billy Mitchell tried to warn the battleship dinosaurs. They refused to listen. Prince of Wales and Repulse proved Mitchell’s point.
I hope we don’t suffer an equally ignominious lesson with our dinosaur flattops. What a waste of treasure and lives that could have been better invested.
What’s so hard? A simple yes or no.
It was primarily Winston Churchill's fault.
He was, in many ways, fighting the last war.
We should be putting much more into the Space Force than into new Carriers.
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