Posted on 05/28/2015 6:52:21 AM PDT by C19fan
“History,” it has been written, “does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Today it’s rhyming with Gen. Billy Mitchell. In the 1920s, Mitchell challenged conventional thinking by advocating air power at sea in the face of a naval establishment dominated by battleship proponents.
The hubris of the “battleship Navy” was such that just nine days before Pearl Harbor, the official program for the 1941 Army-Navy game displayed a full page photograph of the battleship USS Arizona with language virtually extolling its invincibility.
Of course, the reason that no one had yet sunk a battleship from the air — in combat — was that no one had yet tried.
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
no one is proposing scrapping them. they article says don’t sacrifice the rest of the navy to build new ones. you have to have the other ships that surround carriers for them to be effective deployed otherwise they are too valuable to risk.
I believe most of our carriers are equipped to defend themselves with electronics and other devices that are light years ahead of the competition. If the Chinese were so good at this military business, why do their newest aircraft look like American planes?
The weapon that will take us out is spiritual decline into primal decadence. All while our fleet is sitting sound and ready in the water.
I actually read part of the article until I got to:
“The influential U.S. Adm. Hyman Rickover shared this view.”
Thank you Hyman, for making sure we began the Viet Nam war with nothing but obsolete junk. I really can’t wait to hear your next idea (sarcasm OFF).
“That’s because the Marines would still be there to provide protection! GREAT PLAN! /sarc “
With no way to transport them... even better plan /Sarc
I hear ya man. I love love love carriers but what the navy is doing is not smart management. the force structure is dangerously out of balance. the best solution is to make more carriers and even more support ships to adequately protect them. make is to that the loss of a carrier wouldn’t cripple your capabilities in a particular theater. a carrier is more effective if it can be employed without fear of loss.
I don’t think an all nuclear carrier fleet is necessary. A conventional carrier gives you the same capability at 2/3rds the cost(over entire service life). The air wing could care less how the snipes boil water.
“what will it take and how quickly can we adapt to its loss?”
There are, or were plans to convert large container ships into axillary carriers. The Brits did this in the Falklands war.
These would be slower - obviously but a 70,000 ton merchant ship could be converted to carry 70 or planes in about 9 months by converting the main cargo deck into the hanger deck and building a flight deck above that
The US Navy did not buy the F-35B. The Marines did.
I could offer numerous reasons why this article is incorrect. However, I will offer this one salient point. If Supercarriers are such a drag on our Navy, why did the Chinese buy an aircraft carrier off of Russia to train on? And if they are so bad, why are the Chinese currently building aircraft carriers?
Now, you can make an argument that we don’t need super carriers like they are building now and perhaps build more smaller versions. I can see that as a discussion point, but to say carriers are obsolete is just plain ridiculous. When we can build planes that fly from America to anywhere in the world without in air refueling and be there in 1 hour to drop it’s payload, then perhaps we don’t need them. Until then, they are needed.
As for Lord Nelson’s quote about a ship attacking a fort, I wonder if he would change his mind if he had an aircraft carrier. They and submarines changed the whole character of naval warfare.
great point. if you could make more carriers for the same or less cost then that savings could be shifted to a more balanced fleet size. a lot of the “anti carrier” talk is based on just that.
“The weapon that will take us out is spiritual decline into primal decadence.”
Unavoidable essential truth playing out before our very eyes.
As Rome’s civilization declined, so did it’s military power.
From the article:
Rickover’s response? “Forty-eight hours,” he said.Soviet Adm. Sergei Gorchakov reportedly held the view that the U.S. had made a strategic miscalculation by relying on large and increasingly vulnerable aircraft carriers. The influential U.S. Adm. Hyman Rickover shared this view. In a 1982 congressional hearing, legislators asked him how long American carriers would survive in an actual war.
Rickover was no armchair Admiral. He was a real one. And he said this back in '82. Anti-carrier weaponry has improved since then. Our defenses? Not so much. It's no secret that Chinese subs have surfaced within torpedo range of carriers and that Russian subs have been able to match the speeds of our carriers. Recent war game exercises haven't been kind to carriers.
Read the whole article. The author is right on the money --as far as this carrier sailor sees it.
Don't field an asset you can't afford to lose. The loss of even one of our carriers would be such a staggering blow to the Navy that they'd never let the rest of them leave port.
I beg to differ!Repulse and Prince of Wales were lost because The Royal Navy was sailing too close to Japanese shore-bases.The”Mistake”wasn’t in the building of the Super Carriers;the”Mistake”is not using the proper tactics to employ their vast powers!!The bombing-campaign against The Nazis didn’t “Win The War”The war was won because we CRUSHED our enemy!!!If all we are going to do is”Pin-Pricks”against our enemies of today,we will (eventually)be”Bled-White”of treasure and RESOLVE!!!!We need to utterly VAPORIZE our enemies wherever(and whenever)they crawl out from under the rocks they invariably retreat to!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That, and the costs to defend them will increase massively. pickets of destroyers to ward off subs, air-defense platforms, anti-missile systems, etc....
And everyone seems to forget that we’re in the midst of deploying lasers and rails guns amongst the groups now...
Fictitious exercises where the “enemy” sub starts in perfect position. Wow. You know everything bubblehead.
Rickover = crazy
A 600 ship Navy perhaps? I heard that somewhere.
What people seem to be missing the point on is what an enemy must go through to get to an A/C. The satellite data, technology, logistics. Very few if any could put all of that together to successfully attack a carrier group, let alone the carrier in the middle of that group. Outside of a tactical nuke, it is nearly impossible.
First off, we will know about it before a launch even happens. Once there is a launch, we will be tracking it for hundreds of miles. The defensive perimeter will already be activated and weapons deployed to stop the attack.
Can some nation get a lucky shot off? Sure.
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