Posted on 05/05/2005 6:10:55 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Carriers are not cheap...even small ones.
Right now, only the U.S., France, and Brazil possess real carriers (catapults and arresting gear). The Brazilian CV is the former French CV, Foch.
The Japanese could afford to build carriers. India can't, and I doubt it has the money to buy a new one from the Japanese.
The Indians just spent a lot of money in refursbishing the Soviet-era Admiral Gorshkov. It is being made into a "real" CV, with catapults and arresting gear.
The whole naval world is banking on the F-35 or a reasonable fascimile. Everyone wants small carriers that can fly a supersonic plane. The Russkies banked on the Yak Freestyle and couldn't make it work. The Forger was a POS. If we come up with a decent VSTOL/STOL airplane, the world will beat a path to our door.
Seems to me that the smart move is to add another carrier to the Pacific Fleet, base the carriers out of Pearl Harbor, and keep a carrier on the move off the coast of Japan. With the carrier escorts and support from a Japanese home fleet it would be a pretty good deterent.
"If we did this, the next naval shooting war would start with a nuke on top of these two bases."
And end with eight nukes (standard loadout for a Trident II) on Beijing. Game over, dude.
The Mk 25 adapter allows you to put 4 ESSMs in one launch tube. So even if you only load up 50 cells it gives you 200 ESSMs with plenty left for TacToms, SM-2s and SM-3s. Harpoons are no longer carried, and ASROC is carried only in limited quantity, the preference is to deliver torpedoes by helicopters. Much further range than an ASROC.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/weaps/mk-41-vls.htm
go to the bottom of the page, it's already in the fleet, the page is a bit old.
Yes, they have 4 Kongo Class Aegis ships (similar to our Arleigh Burke). Two of which are homeported out of of Sasebo. Hard to get data on what they are doing but they appear to be building 2 more and may buy a new one from us.
They do something clever. They have smaller ships that are teamed with their Kongos that don't have the SPY-1D radar which sames mega $$$s, but allows them to carry VLS tubes and missiles. see Murasame Class Large Frigate.
http://homepage.eircom.net/~steven/jmsdf.htm
"India can't, and I doubt it has the money to buy a new one from the Japanese"
India just began construction on the first of 3 home designed carriers. They are UK style carries but can use the JSF.
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/1999.asp
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=778786&C=asiapac
Atsugi has more room than Iwakuni.
And even there, while they may officially object, they could build a hearty arsenal of them so fast that it would be the shock of the century.
Jump jet carriers aren't REAL carriers. :-)
Understood, but it is one step up from no carrier. ;)
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