Posted on 07/19/2019 3:41:40 PM PDT by Enlightened1
China is building a potent air launched anti-ship cruise missiles along with aircraft to carry those weapons. Meanwhile, the once-dormant Russian bomber force is back—though not in the numbers of the Soviet era. Moreover, with the emergence of new adversary stealth aircraft—some of which have the capability to fly very high and very fast—which are also armed with cruise missiles, the Navy will need the range and speed that the Tomcat offered to fend off those threats. The F/A-18E/F can do the job—but only to an extent.
The United States Navy retired the venerable Grumman F-14 Tomcat in 2006 after more than three decades in service. However, the Tomcat’s demise has left gaps in the carrier air wing that are only now being felt.
With the end of the Cold War and declining budgets, the Navy simply could not afford to keep the incredibly maintenance intensive and unreliable Tomcat on the carrier flight deck. Moreover, with the demise of the Soviet threat, the Tomcat’s primary mission of fleet defense has fallen by the wayside and the venerable jet was increasingly used in the strike role. But while the F-14 proved to be a competent strike aircraft, the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet was superior in most respects to the aging Tomcat as a strike fighter in the post-Cold War era. Particularly, the Super Hornet was far more reliable and cost effective—and with its much more modern avionics, it was mostly a more capable aircraft. However, there are still some gaps that the Super Hornet could not fill.
While the Super Hornet with its exceptional Raytheon AN/APG-79 active electronically scanned array radar, Harris AN/ALQ-214 Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures (IDECM) Block IV system...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
ok
The Chinese and Russians have A-A missiles with 200 mile range to knock out tankers and AWACs. We have nothing to counter that threat.
Heck, the -18 and -35 would barely have the range to go after the launching aircraft before launch, tangle it up, and make it back to the carrier. The AGM-54 was expensive, but it could do the job BVR.
That sounds like a lot of miles.
I know the term nautical miles but don’t know how it translates.
I will look that one up on my own later.
Don’t want to seem too lazy :)
Standard mile = 5280 feet
Nautical mile + 6076 feet
Carriers have Phalanx guns below the deck line, but mostly rely on their escorts for defense.
I read about American aircraft carriers in WWII especially the Enterprise. One thing which became clear tho I don’t think it was even mentioned was that every time one was in dry dock for repairs etc. or a newer model entered service, there was one big change.
They kept adding more and more guns especially anti aircraft guns. Same for battleships.
Just an fyi - the article is from July 2018.
The real capability the Navy needs in it’s aircraft is range.
Each new carrier fighter, fighter/bomber, or attack aircraft has had less range than the previous. This was all good until anti-ship missiles with 350-400+ nm range started popping up. With the F-35 it seems the Navy may be reversing this trend.
Example:
A-6 Intruder - combat range 878nm with full payload.
F/A-18E/F Super Hornet - 390nm for interdiction mission.
F-35 Lighting II - 669-760nm depending on configuration.
With the newer longer range anti-ship missiles the carrier has to stay so far off-shore that the aircraft they carry may not have the legs to make it to the beach.
A nautical mile is simply the arc length that you, a ship, or anything else travels along the surface of the Earth when moving an angular distance of 1 arcminute.
Using nautical miles slightly simplifies sextant navigation.
Travel north or south 60 nautical miles and you’ve covered a full degree of latitude.
I'm thinking the 737 MAX, reconfigured as a missile-carrying drone. :)
I sure miss it. What a beautiful, elegant, and powerful aircraft.
A bit difficult to carrier launch and retrieve.....
A decoy.
The F-35 will replace the aging Harriers for the Corps but with all the delays it may be a decade or more before the Corps can replace the F-18. The problem for us is that even if we have newer airframes on the drawing boards it will be decades before they are deployed because we killed off our aircraft industry.
It seems the quickest fix is upgrading the middle systems for increased range. That would allow the F-18 to stand-off at greater range but still be able to reach out and touch the enemy further from the fleet.
Yeah, they had to fight off the Kamikazes. Enemy planes don’t get that close anymore, the modern concern is anti-missile defense.
I miss F6F Hellcats and F4U Corsairs!
I remember seeing the tomcat on the flight deck when I was in the Navy....they had to make cut down 55 gallon barrel and put wheels on them to catch the hydraulic fluid that leaked out of them after flight...the f18 was in testing to replace it in the late 70’s..
For this old Phantom II Phixer, three words:
David
James
Elliott
In summation we are f——d. Russia and China don’t have the political and bureaucratic garbage to deal with that we do. Nor do they have democrats.
There’s no way to make an aircraft with variable geometry wings better, especially for naval aviation, than one with fixed wings using the same technology and similar cost. Oh sure the Tomcat has a great publicist, but those moveable wings weigh more, break more, cost more, and have to stay out of the air longer.
With drone and missile technology where it is, and where it is headed, there should be no reason the f22 and f35’s generation of aircraft have a pilot in the cockpit. But the people planning for the next wars think the reason we have an air Force and naval aviation is to wrap something shiny around a strong chinned pilot in a flight suit so he or she can win medals and get promoted.
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