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Originally Posted by oldpotatoe
Agree...the military pundits seem to have forgotten it's about protecting 'sea lines of communication' and power projection. Littoral combat ships to protect what? Norfolk and SanDiego..really dum but yup, they look good on the balance sheet. We need CVs, subs, and the ships that protect CVs but can project power(Tomahawk)...And altho expensive, in this day and age..why not a modern version of this? CGN
I know ya gotta feed the crew but w/o need for refueling, less need for USNS...Cancel aircraft that need 10,000 feet of concrete and lotsa of fixed base operations(USAF)..no red horde gonna be marching across the central plains of Europe anymore..
A 'squadron' of B-2s(6 aircraft+support)) cost roughly the same as a CV...BUT, the CV when deployed, does their mission everyday while the B-2s do flyovers for football games. Lessee...fly the B-2 From Whitman AFB..using how many tankers, to the straits of Taiwan..or park 2-3 CVs there for operations against China...hmmmm...
And before you talk about how juicy a target a CV is...when on CV-41(OLD tech)..we were lost by the Rooskies for about 2 weeks operating off the coast of Kamchatka peninsula..when operating with the Enterprise and Coral Sea..If the Badgers that were flying around looking for us hadn't noticed 'USS MIDWAY' on the side of our aircraft as we intercepted them, they might have not known the Midway was there at all..
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I did 5 CVN deployments, all them were in hostile/wartime areas. I know the Air Force was around and did some airstrikes, but during the Iraq invasion and in Afghanistan after 9/11, we primarily used them for tankers. A KC-135 holds a lot of gas, more than enough to keep Navy and USMC Hornets loitering over the target area waiting to do ground support. The Air Force mission of strategic bombing is outdated along with the aircraft. When we went into Afghanistan after 9/11, the AF was hitting targets with b-52's out of Diego Garcia (rock in the Indian Ocean), but after all the known targets were gone and the Taliban was scattered, their missions went down. The AF wants the next generation bomber but still rely on airframes built in the 50's and 60's. Warfare has changed but the folks approving the funding still get distracted by shiny objects. Meanwhile the job gets done with old equipment and we will complain about how much it breaks down.