Anti-ship missiles have increased in range.
Now, even some poor countries can afford the type of hypersonic missiles that can reach aircraft carriers —this is new.
To remain defensible, carriers must have longer range aircraft.
Following the cancellation of the UCLASS three weeks ago, this exciting new weapons simply went away.
Our carriers will have to sail KNOWING that in many cases they can come under attack by the type of missiles that the USA does not yet have.
We need to get lasers in a REAL HURRY.
We have lasers already...problem is they are line-of-sight weapons. By the time you would be able to see a hypersonic weapon, it would almost be to late to shoot it down.
“The decision to cancel the so-called Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike is reflected in the Defense Department’s 2017 budget proposal, released on Feb. 9. The proposal shows a combined $818 million in funding for the UCLASS killer drone program in 2015 and 2016 and, abruptly, no money at all in 2017.”
Carriers are not defensible. Pilots are also not sustainable nowadays.
Much more effective to pack weapons loads and sensors on aircraft than it is to carry a pilot.
F-35s come before anything - UCLASS, new subs, lasers, rail - everything. Why because they are super expensive, short ranged, slow, sort of stealthy, almost unable to defend themselves - but they have the latest gadgets and flashing bells and whistles; even if the pilots neck snaps on bail out, or the all important helmet does not work right (its only 40 year old tech, so it takes time) among many many other problems that may not get solved.
While lasers help this problem, they are not the total solution. The detection of these relatively small missiles will require improvements in the detection equipment as well as the ability to calculate incoming vectors and then activate responses.
Ever the offense vs defense model.