Posted on 05/23/2019 4:10:54 PM PDT by Rummyfan
"Where are our carriers?" is, at least apocryphally, the first question any U.S. president asks when a crisis erupts almost anywhere in the world. As tensions mounted with Iran last week as the mullahs' regime upped its attacks around the Middle East, President Trump apparently asked that question and immediately ordered the massive USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and its escort ships to the region. And as the Associated Press correctly noted, the dispatch of the Lincoln is an accurate "barometer of tensions" between Washington and Tehran.
According to some, however, the aircraft carrier is or is about to become obsolete. National Interest felt the need last month to re-publish a lengthy 2015 piece by David W. Wise headlined: "As Obsolete as a Battleship: Why Is the U.S. Navy Still Building Aircraft Carriers?" Back in March, Thomas Knapp advocated that we "Give obsolete aircraft carriers burial at sea." And last fall, D.M. McCauley asked, "Has China Made Aircraft Carriers Obsolete?"
All three articles address a growing danger which didn't exist when the U.S. Navy's Essex-class carriers* ruled the Pacific during the last half of World War II: Land-based anti-ship missiles. If the Navy still believes, the thinking goes, that in a future war they can park an aircraft carrier off the coast of China and fight from there with impunity, then we're going to start losing ships and men in a big, bad way. And ever-more dangerous missiles are proliferating to terror-sponsoring nations like Iran. Surely, then the carrier's days must be numbered.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) docked in Hong Kong on Wednesday (21 November 2018), less than two months after China denied a similar visit by a US warship. (Imaginechina via AP Images)
Depsite shortcomings pointed out here, there is nothing like a carrier for projecting power.
OTOH, there is no way to hide them today. Yes we have the layered defense system, but protecting the big boy is harder and harder.
They need a long range F14 style aircraft and new gen Phoenix missiles to make them viable.
Right now they are grabbing at straws to extend the defense zone with UAv refuelers but the concept is not out nor proven
The problem is that anti-ship missles have gotten cheaper and their ranges are much longer. They outrange the aircraft that carriers launch.
Robotic aircraft stand to change this but the one really good carrier robot plane has been converted into a tanker.
Strangely, that conversion process (the fuel boom) negates its former stealth so....we’ll see how that project ends up.
How else can you deploy and maintain fighters and bombers halfway across the world?
Yeah I think there was. Wow.
Anyway, a war with a Russia or china is dangerous because Russia has said if they are losing the nukes come out.
How do you ever declare complete victory if the moment you attack your enemy’s homeland, no one’s morning paper will be coming.
Isn’t China building new carriers?
Sorry but in the modern technological era virtually all surface capital ships are obsolete against a technologically sophisticated opponent. Today’s “battleship admirals” will never admit the new reality. They will continue to send young American sailors far from home to die fiery deaths or drown in alien seas.
I don’t think that either Russia or China want a war with us.
Chinese carriers are mission specific. Their purpose is to protect outbound shipping lanes from Muslim piracy. American carriers are to support global policing efforts for banking concerns.
I would qualify that as “there is nothing like a carrier for projecting power as long as it’s against a non-peer or non-near-peer adversary” - and possibly against a well-equipped proxy of the aforementioned two.
In the modern battlespace against peer adversaries, you radiate, you die.
Well, they are always preparing to fight the last war. It's what they have as experience. However, if you take out your enemies naval capacity - surface, subsurface, and naval aviation - you would have freedom to go where you please.
The strike package has the shortest legs it has ever had in Navy history. The 35 will make it even worse. And killing the tankers was nuts.
Just about nobody’s morning paper is coming *now*. Though to be fair, that’s because only old people subscribe to physical paper delivery these days - and because of the decline of delivery personnel quality. :P
Yes, which is one of the points of the article.
We don’t know? Its the usa. Or haven’t you been keeping up with the news.
Gotta whole lot of escorting defense to shoot through first.
In a battle against peer or near-peer, the escort wouldn’t be nearly as light as is current practice.
Combined carrier fleets with combined fleet escorts and constant CAP.
I remember many years back when some of the old battleships were re-commissioned. There was an article about their armor.
It said there was not a single non nuclear weapon which would sink one with a single hit.
I wonder if it would be possible to build a Yamato style battleship using new armor technology. Replacing those huge guns with missiles etc.
Don’t really even have to do that all that much. He who controls the orbitals controls the planet - *everything* can be seen from orbit these days, including subs, and with 1960s technology (let alone modern) if you can see it from orbit, you can hit it from orbit.
China is not a roll over easy third world banana republic. They are not afraid to use nukes. So I say this to anyone who even contemplates a war with China...
It will immediately go offensive nuclear against American cities. So once drones are off sowing plagues over the glassed ruins of American cities. Then will the chinese initiate conventional defensive actions.
China is not what anyone thinks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.