"W. D. Allen Sr." wrote in message et...

All the arguments posited here about why DARPA's FALCON project will
never supplant aircraft carriers remind me so much of the "Gun Club"
arguments AGAINST carriers 70+ years ago.

Some facts have been studiously avoided:

1. Carriers CANNOT operate without landbased support IN THEATER today.
Sad but True. That ability, which never really existed fully but was
better 40 years ago than today, has been squandered to pay for a
series of obsolescent short legged fighters. Those big wing tankers
that made carrier strikes possible in recent times didn't come from
the ether. Niether did the essential ELINT/SIGINT support. They didn't
come from CONUS either. Nobody seems to want to talk about how carrier
air was forced to hot pit on ingress and stash their ordnance ashore
to get back to the boat in this last conflict.
That AOE gets its fuel(and FFV and various other sundries as well)
from where? A CVBGs enourmously expensive-and vulnerable-logistics
train is a dirty little secret.
Bottom line is a carrier is now just about as beholden to host nation
basing rights in order to remain viable as any AEF is.


2. Carriers are exceptionally vulnerable in littoral regions and will
become increasingly so. Thats a lesson from WWII-whenever carriers
ventured close to land they took significant losses;good thing they
had alot of decks to lose in those days- that was reinforced again in
last year's Millenium Challenge. Yet we are expecting them to be able
to ModLoc (or whatever its called nowadays) with impunity off hostile
shores for the next century...Yeah right. That notion is as full of
hubris as the notion that BBs were impervious to air attack.
In order to survive carriers will be forced back into blue water where
their shortlegged[non stealthy] airwings will not be capable of
projecting power ashore except in brief raids using expensive scarce
standoff weapons(assuming of course they have the tanker assets *IN
THEATER* available). So much for presence and persistence.

3. I'm not saying that carriers need to be scrapped today. I am saying
that carriers are not any more immune to evolution in warfare than any
other weapons system has been. Its evolve or die boys.
I'm not expecting you Learned Denizens of R.A.M.N. to give me any
credence but you should give these folks some of your consideration:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/acof.pdf

Space based quick reaction weapons systems are on their way like it or
not. Call me a troll if you wish but DARPA is offering to spend some
big money on this FALCON project for a reason and the resulting
progeny of the effort will inevitably encroach on the carrier's
mission....and budget.
Time marches on.