[lepton]

Plus the ships barely carry enough planes to do more than a small strike while conducting CAP.

[Dark Knight]

Plus the ships barely carry enough planes to do more than a small strike while conducting CAP.<<

So call me an idiot, but aren't we going towards more UAVs and less pilots? Isn't this like building a better catapult, when the other side is pondering explosives?

DK

[USNBandit]

You are correct for a combination of reasons. It's not just the number of planes, but the setup of the flight deck. With only one or two cats and no angled deck, deck speed will be an issue.

110 flight ops in 24 hours is pretty slow. A low tempo day (hey, lets conduct cyclic flight ops) for a U.S. carrier would be 90+ in twelve hours

The combination of deck space, cats, angled deck, and personnel will determine the effective number of aircraft you can launch on a cycle. It doesn't do you any good to say you have 20 jets on the deck when it takes you an hour to launch them.