Ten Reasons A U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier Is One Of The Safest Places To Be In A War

[XTQ1999]

LOL sure we believe you instantly. Now GTFO of this forum.

you can check my post history, and even ask in Turkish forum. considering you don't own the forum, I think I will stay.

 

[Hex0maniac]

And yet countries like China are building them. Go mock them.

relax old man I am just stating the facts here, carriers are like nuclear ballistic missile they are for power scale only.

 

[khail007]

People thought the Gulf War would by America's next Vietnam and the mother of all battles which would lead to hundreds of thousands of American deaths.

Sir, not agreed with what you have stated. For the part quoting here ... the reference you have given here of so called battle was for Iraq, lead by CIA puppet Saddam. Previously US formed the Arab coalition to support Iraq to go war with Iran and after that US persuaded Iraq for entries into Kuwait to fulfil your vested interests and again US formed world coalition to fight the mother of battle and then announced mission accomplished, which was never. I never saw US fought a war against match ... if she will ever do that it will be end to their so called super power status.
Oh ... why you always ignores Taliban? The handful 'bunch of miscreants' and your ex-terrorists, spanking US/world super power for the last 17 years.

 

[Tom M]

you know that Swedish sub locked on it multiple times in an exercise. carriers are becoming obsolete, there big structure is the biggest flaw.

Wonder why the competitive Chinese are still working on build a few of them ???

 

[Hex0maniac]

Wonder why the competitive Chinese are still working on build a few of them ???

simple to show military might, its as if having a battleship in 1800.we think its a pinnacle of technology of today's standards, but its Yamato of today what ever its gonna achieve it already did by creating bigger dosn't mean better.

 

[Solomon2]

Wonder why the competitive Chinese are still working on build a few of them ???

You are comparing WW-II era capabilities of USN to where it is at now?

VODKAPUNDIT
The (Almost) Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier

BY STEPHEN GREEN MAY 23, 2019

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) docked in Hong Kong on Wednesday (21 November 2018), less than two months after China denied a similar visit by a US warship. (Imaginechina via AP Images)​

"Where are our carriers?" is, at least apocryphally, the first question any US president asks when a crisis erupts almost anywhere in the world. As tensions mounted with Iran last week as the Mullahs Regime upped its attacks around the Middle East, President Trump apparently asked that question and immediately ordered the massive USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and its escort ships to the region. And as the Associated Press correctly noted, the dispatch of the Lincoln is an accurate "barometer of tensions" between Washington and Tehran.

According to some however, the aircraft carrier is or is about to become obsolete. National Interest felt the need last month to re-publish a lengthy 2015 piece by David W. Wise headlined: " "As Obsolete as a Battleship: Why Is the U.S. Navy Still Building Aircraft Carriers?" Back in March, Thomas Knapp advocated that we "Give obsolete aircraft carriers burial at sea." And last fall, D.M. Mccauley asked, "Has China Made Aircraft Carriers Obsolete?"

All three articles address a growing danger which didn't exist when the US Navy's Essex-class carriers* ruled the Pacific during the last half of World War II: Land-based anti-ship missiles. If the Navy still believes, the thinking goes, that in a future war they can park an aircraft carrier off the coast of China and fight from there with impunity, then we're going to start losing ships and men in a big, bad way. And ever-more dangerous missiles are proliferating to terror-sponsoring nations like Iran. Surely, then the carrier's days must be numbered.

ASIDE: There's also the threat of submarine-launched anti ship missiles, but until the Russians and Chinese start building much quieter subs, the threat probably remains more theoretical than real.​

I'm not convinced. Neither is the Navy. Because the one question all three gentlemen failed to address is the one so obvious I haven't once seen anyone ask it: If China has made the carrier obsolete, then why is China embarked on a huge carrier-building program? Beijing isn't just building smaller helicopter carriers akin to our amphibious assault ships or Japan's "helicopter destroyer" baby carriers, they're also operating two (and building more) 65,000-ton CVs.

It seems not even China is convinced that China has made carriers obsolete.

Loren Thompson wrote earlier this week, although I suspect he might have been engaging in a bit of hyperbole, that a "U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier Is One Of The Safest Places To Be In A War." I'd hate to have to put that to the test, but Thompson is spot-on when he notes that knowing there's an aircraft carrier out there somewhere, and actually sinking it, are two entirely different things. He writes:

Deployed carriers are always moving. And they are moving fast—fast enough, in fact, to outrun most submarines. Because they can sustain speeds of 35 miles per hour, the Nimitz-class carriers populating the current fleet can move to anywhere within a 700-square mile area within 30 minutes. After 90 minutes, that area grows to over 6,000 square miles. So finding a carrier isn’t the same thing for enemies as successfully targeting it. By the time their weapons arrive, it will likely be gone.​

Thompson also says that "nuclear power enables the carriers to execute deceptive maneuvers in any direction for any duration, far exceeding the range of most hostile forces struggling to find them."

Operationally it would be insane to send carriers close in to shore (and all those missiles) as Wise, Knapp, and Mccauley all noted. But why would we do that? As threats change, so do operations -- and maybe we can glean a bit of the future by peering at the past.

In WWII, Japan had a huge naval fortress on Truk island, strategically located in the heart of the Pacific. At Truk the Japanese could protect and repair warships, and control the skies with the island's multiple airstrips. Rather than try to take the island, Admiral Raymond Spruance conceived and commanded Operation Hailstone to neutralize it instead. With nine carriers at his service (five fleet-size, four light), Hailstone was in essence a drive-by shooting. Task Force 58's ships barely paused while 500+ carrier-based planes put the island fortress out of business for the rest of the war. TF58 was too mobile, too fast for the Japanese forces at Truk to do much more than suffer the blows.

China is building something similar to Truk out in the South China Sea. But instead of fortifying an existing island with big guns and such, China is building its own islands and fortifying them with missiles. But the more I read of China's SCS effort, the more I think of Spruance and Hailstone. Only instead of sending carriers to get sunk by all those deadly missiles, we'd flatten China's bases with submarine-launched missiles. Then, and only then, would our carriers seek to engage in the area.

Why have carriers at all if the subs are there to kick in the door, as it were? Because a 100,000-ton supercarrier can engage in something a submarine never could: Sustained operations. A sub shoots off its missiles, then must return to base for a reload. That can take days or even weeks -- time for the enemy to recover. A carrier replenishes at sea, and its air wings can rotate in and out to give crews and planes a chance to rest and repair.

As noted by the AP above, a carrier also indicates seriousness. Not just because of its inherent combat power, which is unmatched at sea, but because of its nature as a strategic asset. Nobody, not even Iran's mullahs, is crazy enough to seriously try and mess with one of those without risking the wrath of the entire US Navy and whatever else we could throw their way.

Finally, it's just damn useful to have 4.5 acres (times eleven!) of flattop at the nation's disposal. You can do a lot more than just launch and recover fighter jets with all that fast-moving real estate.

Yes, our carriers do face serious new threats. But with the kinks being worked out of the new Ford-class of CVNs (too slowly, but still), and the Navy's F-35C strike fighter becoming combat ready, our carrier force has never been more dangerous. And with the Marines starting to stack the decks of their nine amphibious assault ships with F-35Bs, we're gaining an unprecedented capability, as the the Navy calls it, for "distributed lethality." Armed with an ever-growing fleet of stealth fighters and the world's most advanced electronic warfare jets (the EA-18G "Growler"), and partnered with nearly-invisible attack subs able to eliminate land threats, the aircraft carrier has never been more dangerous, and perhaps never more survivable, either.
---

*We built an unprecedented (and to this day unparalleled) 24 Essex-class carriers during WWII. All two dozen fought hard against the Japanese, and not a single one was lost to enemy action. (The Franklin was put out of commission for the rest of the war in March of '45 by kamikaze attack, but would have been repaired and brought back into service had the war lasted into 1946.). To me, those things make the Essex-class the most successful capital ship of all time. Change my mind.

 

[Solomon2]

4 sams per battery I counted 50 batteries getting deployed personally from the roof of our house near air base so in fact, 200 is probably an understatement. So not exaggerating at all. Point is that against a well armed coastal defence with a long reach, a carrier fleet could find itself hard pressed for survival.

Near Dharan? Interesting. Though from your description I think you were counting what are officially designated launchers.

The order-of-battle would then be four sams per launcher, six launchers per battery, and 4-6 batteries per battalion. Each PAC-2 battalion thus had at least 24 launchers housing 96 missiles. (Wikipedia)

So I guess that what you witnessed, GumNaam, was the deployment of two Patriot missile battalions to protect the U.S. airbase at Dharan and Damman port nearby.

Did you also witness Saddam's missiles successfully attacking the airbase?

@Oldman1

 

[GumNaam]

Near Dharan? Interesting. Though from your description I think you were counting what are officially designated launchers.

The order-of-battle would then be four sams per launcher, six launchers per battery, and 4-6 batteries per battalion. Each PAC-2 battalion thus had at least 24 launchers housing 96 missiles. (Wikipedia)

So I'd guess that what you witnessed, GumNaam, was the deployment of two Patriot missile battalions to protect the U.S. airbase at Dharan and Damman port nearby.

Did you also witness Saddam's missiles successfully attacking the airbase?

All that I'm saying is that I counted 50 of those launchers that have 4 missile batteries, granted it was from the roof of our house, but I had binoculars...

 

[Solomon2]

All that I'm saying is that I counted 50 of those launchers that have 4 missile batteries, granted it was from the roof of our house, but I had binoculars...

You didn't see or hear them in battle?

 

[GumNaam]

You didn't see or hear them in battle?

LOL, oddly enough? remember that one scud that hit the marine barracks? where like, 30 or so marines were killed? I was sneaking outta my house and walked towards the base direction to a store there to buy cigarettes from a place where the shop keeper didn't know my family when the sirens went off ...I ran like crazy but in a matter of seconds, bam bam bam, everyone shut their doors and windows and I was stuck outside with a lit cigarette in my mouth, thought that was it man, I'm as good as DEAD, chemical or biological warhead, thought I was dead so might as well enjoy my last cig...BUT NOTHING HAPPENED!!!

 

[Solomon2]

LOL, oddly enough? remember that one scud that hit the marine barracks? where like, 30 or so marines were killed? I was sneaking outta my house and walked towards the base direction to a store there to buy cigarettes from a place where the shop keeper didn't know my family when the sirens went off ...I ran like crazy but in a matter of seconds, bam bam bam, everyone shut their doors and windows and I was stuck outside with a lit cigarette in my mouth, thought that was it man, I'm as good as DEAD, chemical or biological warhead, thought I was dead so might as well enjoy my last cig...BUT NOTHING HAPPENED!!!

So the Scud didn't kill you but that smoking that "last cig" might. Powerful as it is, the U.S. military can only do so much....

 

[GumNaam]

So the Scud didn't kill you but that smoking that "last cig" might. Powerful as it is, the U.S. military can only do so much....

it was an american cig man, MARLBOROS!

 

[WarKa DaNG]

heard of it. it won't work

Then you have also heard that they are nuclear tipped and and a thing called radiation can do lot more damage to the electronics when they are blasted in the vicinity

 

[nahtanbob]

Then you have also heard that they are nuclear tipped and and a thing called radiation can do lot more damage to the electronics when they are blasted in the vicinity

in other words it is a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile

 

[WarKa DaNG]

in other words it is a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile

Anti Ship BALLISTIC Missile, why would a country develop a ballistic missile for non nuke use