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The Era of the Aircraft Carrier Is About to End
National Security Journal ^ | 8/23/2025 | Harry Kazianis

Posted on 08/25/2025 5:25:00 AM PDT by whyilovetexas111

A single DF-21D warhead striking a carrier’s flight deck would be a mission-kill. It wouldn’t sink the ship, but it would crack the deck, making it impossible to launch or recover aircraft. The carrier, for all intents and purposes, would be out of the fight. Several successful hits could very well sink the vessel, resulting in the tragic loss of over 5,000 American sailors and a $13 billion national asset. It would be a Pearl Harbor-level catastrophe, a blow from which American prestige might never recover.

(Excerpt) Read more at nationalsecurityjournal.org ...


TOPICS: Government; History; Military/Veterans; Politics
KEYWORDS: defense; military; navy; usnavy; whyiloveblogpimps111

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To: protoconservative

“…unlike a sea skimming missile that just covers 12 miles.”

Anything approaching a carrier battle group must be killed well outside of that range.


81 posted on 08/25/2025 9:12:26 AM PDT by JimRed (TERM LIMITS, NOW! Finish the damned WALL! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH! )
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To: Carry_Okie

All aboriginal people would need to take out woolly mammoths would be to poke a sharp stick in the guts.

Dead of peritonitis in three days. Just follow it.


I am not so certain. The same would apply to elephants in Africa. But the natives of Africa did not use the strategy you suggest. They have/had iron tipped spears and axes.

There strategy was: Use an axe to hamstring the elephant, then spears to worry and kill it.

Use snares to make it drag a heavy log, then follow, harry, and kill it.

Set a trap with a heavy iron tipped spear above a trail, to drive into the elephants back.

Use fire in the dry season to kill elephants which are not able to escape the fire.

I have read a fair amount about African natives means of killing elephants. A poke in the guts with a spear has never been mentioned.

I am not saying it could not work, but it may be considerably more difficult in practice than in theory.

Poisoned arrows have been used in Africa for a long time, but I have not read of them being used on elephants.

It might be difficult to deliver the amount of poison necessary.


82 posted on 08/25/2025 9:15:29 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: philman_36
Ummm...it has to first hit the ship. Just saying.

Ummm...they have to find the ship first.

And keep immediate live updates on it's exact position and somehow tell the missile that.
83 posted on 08/25/2025 9:17:30 AM PDT by Svartalfiar (-)
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To: Svartalfiar
Ummm...they have to find the ship first.

Ah, an aficionado of stating the obvious.

...it's exact position...

And thus we're back to my original comment.

84 posted on 08/25/2025 9:30:36 AM PDT by philman_36 (Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty and supped with infamy. Benjamin Franklin)
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To: nathanbedford

“You pick the label but tell me what is the policy of estrangement from NATO?”

The recent policy of the US vis a vis NATO has been the opposite of that. NATO, as currently comprised, is not really an alliance. Having an alliance means having multiple members with the means TODAY to defend themselves. Knit together, those multiple credible defenses are much more powerful than separately.

Other than it’s geopolitical location, Europe contributes little to the NATO alliance (excluding a few members that punch above their weight, Sweden, Finland, and Poland).

Japan and South Korea are good examples of responsible and capable members of an alliance with the US.

Trump’s policy, if successful, will push Europe into becoming a responsible and capable member of an alliance. That is not isolationist. It is extraordinarily smart foreign policy.

If Europe, nevertheless, continues to dither and refuse to pay for having a credible defense against Russia, then NATO is just an anvil around our neck, sucking up our resources and preventing us from deterring war in the Pacific.


85 posted on 08/25/2025 9:31:04 AM PDT by ModelBreaker
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To: Retain Mike

Quite true. In the event of a war with China, the US Navy would use aircraft carriers to sweep up China’s merchant shipping and assure that almost all of their lines of sea commerce were shut down.


86 posted on 08/25/2025 9:31:28 AM PDT by Rockingham
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To: marktwain
The same would apply to elephants in Africa. But the natives of Africa did not use the strategy you suggest. They have/had iron tipped spears and axes.

First, what I said is on authority of Dr. Charles Kay, who has hunted extensively in Africa. He is also a student of archaeology. Here's his central point: When humans first invaded this continent, mammoths wouldn't recognize us as a threat. I said "sharp stick" partly as a joke on the ol' aphorism "poke him with a sharp stick." Clearly, early invaders had stone points, the point being it wouldn't take a modern weapon like a 1911.

87 posted on 08/25/2025 9:41:31 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (The tree of liberty needs a rope.)
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To: whyilovetexas111

I don’t know why they’ve never considered under sea type carriers with hovering take off and landing jets. Sure they can be tracked but are still harder to hit and you’d still have forward projection capability. Yeah yeah sure technical issues and all that jazz...I’m sure there’s lots of reasons why such tech is not feasible. I’m not suggesting that the subs have to be “air craft carrier sized” but even if they each carried 5-10 such jets, they could be an asset especially if you have groupings of such subs stationed at different points but working to attack a distant target.


88 posted on 08/25/2025 9:44:21 AM PDT by mdmathis6 (A horrible historic indictment: Biden Democrats plunging the world into war to hide their crimes!)
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To: protoconservative
Here is the deal, for a missile returning from space, targeting an object moving its length every 27 seconds with a kenetic ICBM warhead at anywhere between mach 3 and mach 6 means at 60 miles up one has to pick a ship and pull up to 30Gs to hit a flight deck in a time frame of 20 seconds, unlike a sea skimming missile that just covers 12 miles.

Also, how is that missile actually seeing the ship? Local sensors are unreliable to useless at those speeds, hypersonic has ionization and supersonic is still massive heat and shock layer. Sensors can have trouble looking through that, and remote downlink is difficult, as well as working on slightly to decently out-of-date location data (as you mentioned).
89 posted on 08/25/2025 9:54:37 AM PDT by Svartalfiar (-)
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To: Owen

“Electric trucks? They just don’t have the muscle to move food and the refrigeration of the food at the same time. Not without recharge every couple of hours requiring 12 hours to do so.”

Tesla:

Range: Up to 500 miles on a single charge, with 70% range recoverable in 30 minutes using Tesla’s Megachargers.


90 posted on 08/25/2025 9:55:28 AM PDT by TexasGator (750 hp Florida Gnat)
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To: Hoboto

That kind of complacency and prejudice is how countries lose their edge and then the war.


91 posted on 08/25/2025 10:09:22 AM PDT by EnderWiggin1970
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To: nathanbedford
“As the isolationists in America render us more and more vulnerable...”

No, the globalists who treat America the same way slave masters treat the slaves on their plantation are the ones making us more vulnerable as they lash out violently over and over again around the world, breeding enemies and giving justification to their grievances against the US.

How was America "vulnerable" because of George Washington's "isolationist" foreign policy as it was the overwhelming norm prior to 1941? It wasn't.

92 posted on 08/25/2025 10:17:56 AM PDT by EnderWiggin1970
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To: Carry_Okie

Yes, I agree with the idea the megafauna in North America would not know how to deal with humans. It would take a good bit for them to learn.


Wolves, grizzly bears, and humans all arrived in the area of North America south of Canada about the same time. Humans and wolves probably got there a bit ahead of the grizzly bears. Wolves and grizzly bears had developed together for tens of thousands of years in Europe and Asia before migrating to North America south of Canada.

Animals which did not know how to handle humans did not do very well.


93 posted on 08/25/2025 10:20:12 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: marktwain
Animals which did not know how to handle humans did not do very well.

Witness the dire wolf. I suspect the gray wolf followed bison when people drove them across the Bering land bridge.

I'm going to recommend Dr. Kay's book: Wilderness and Political Ecology: Aboriginal Influences & the Original State of Nature. It describes that very scenario.

94 posted on 08/25/2025 10:27:53 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (The tree of liberty needs a rope.)
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To: TexasGator

No refrigeration


95 posted on 08/25/2025 10:30:17 AM PDT by Owen
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To: Owen
"No refrigeration"

The e1000 all-electric truck reefer


96 posted on 08/25/2025 10:41:22 AM PDT by TexasGator (The 150 hp Florida Gnat)
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To: whyilovetexas111

Maybe we should sink all CVNs now just to be safe: /sarc


97 posted on 08/25/2025 10:46:08 AM PDT by central_va ( I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: Drew68

Amateurs think drones and missiles are the biggest threat to surface vessels . They are not. Sailers fear the sub threat the most.


98 posted on 08/25/2025 10:51:00 AM PDT by central_va ( I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: ClearCase_guy
>To: whyilovetexas111

>If America wants to expand and build an empire by occupying foreign lands and stealing their resources, then we need boots on the ground and a lot of power projection.

Not if the ground in question has been reduced to nothing but rubble.

>But we don’t want that, do we?

Yeah we kinda do.

>We know we aren’t going to be invaded. Our citizens have too many guns.

That's true if we can keep the leftards from gutting the 2nd amendment and disarming us.

>So, we’re not afraid of invasion are we?

Once we get rid of the 20 or 30 million men of military age who have already invaded us.

MORE ICE PLEASE!

>How about bad guys far away and we want them to stop doing bad things. How can we convince them to knock it off? I say: Rods From God are about all we need at this point. Heavy deterrence, non-nuclear. No boots on the ground. I think we need to approach military matters very differently.

Gain air superiority then carpet bomb them in to ruble and bulldoze what's left in to the river and the sea....

You know the drill....Yada yada ... and let GOD sort them out.

99 posted on 08/25/2025 10:54:24 AM PDT by BFW (loss of signal)
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To: whyilovetexas111

Years ago, the US Navy took the USS America out to see to perform a SINK-EX. The US Navy poured everything they could at it for days. Finally had to load a bunch of EOD folks aboard and blow it up from the inside, they just could not sink it otherwise.


100 posted on 08/25/2025 11:06:50 AM PDT by ro_dreaming (Who knew "Idiocracy", "1984", "Enemy of the State", and "Person of Interest" would be non-fiction?)
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