Can someone explain to me why carriers are still considered a good naval ship when planes can now go farther be refueled in air and you basically have infinite options to build air strips if that wasn’t enough in a week?
It’s basically a floating airbase that has the ability to move into (or recede) from combat zones. They don’t really fit our war ethos right now anyway, they are designed to be part of an overwhelming strike in the event of total nuclear war
There’s also ego and competition between the branches and the navy is quite addicted to being an air power and will never acquiesce to going back to “just boats” ever again, if they have their way
Edit: you are totally correct about their redundancy, so I want to clarify: one of the perks of the carrier group is that by moving it won’t be as vulnerable during nuclear war, the enemy has to know where it is, NORAD will always be at NORAD etc
Losing a carrier isn’t just a loss to their “global war on terror/narcos/guys we don’t like” capacity, it’s also a loss to their “oh shit actual peer actual nuclear oh my god war” capacity
In-air refueling has limits. Unless you want to be doing operation black buck shit where you have like 10 tankers refueling other tankers to get 1 bomber there, having a carrier dramatically reduces the range your jets need to fly.
Even though you can fly for 36 hours, it’s much nicer and easier to not do that. Imagine the strain on pilots if regular missions were to be long haul flights like the ones that were done to bomb Iran last time.
The whole thing about the battleship becoming less prominent and the carrier taking over goes back to WWII, and more to the point, Pearl Harbor effectively forcing the US Navy to rely on carriers to be the flagships of their fleets in the pacific.
Can someone explain to me why carriers are still considered a good naval ship when planes can now go farther be refueled in air and you basically have infinite options to build air strips if that wasn’t enough in a week?
It’s basically a floating airbase that has the ability to move into (or recede) from combat zones. They don’t really fit our war ethos right now anyway, they are designed to be part of an overwhelming strike in the event of total nuclear war
There’s also ego and competition between the branches and the navy is quite addicted to being an air power and will never acquiesce to going back to “just boats” ever again, if they have their way
Edit: you are totally correct about their redundancy, so I want to clarify: one of the perks of the carrier group is that by moving it won’t be as vulnerable during nuclear war, the enemy has to know where it is, NORAD will always be at NORAD etc
Losing a carrier isn’t just a loss to their “global war on terror/narcos/guys we don’t like” capacity, it’s also a loss to their “oh shit actual peer actual nuclear oh my god war” capacity
In-air refueling has limits. Unless you want to be doing operation black buck shit where you have like 10 tankers refueling other tankers to get 1 bomber there, having a carrier dramatically reduces the range your jets need to fly.
Even though you can fly for 36 hours, it’s much nicer and easier to not do that. Imagine the strain on pilots if regular missions were to be long haul flights like the ones that were done to bomb Iran last time.
The whole thing about the battleship becoming less prominent and the carrier taking over goes back to WWII, and more to the point, Pearl Harbor effectively forcing the US Navy to rely on carriers to be the flagships of their fleets in the pacific.