"s.p.i." wrote in message

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.

No, not really. Even with a carrier of the era (much less a BB) you had
to
get "up close and personal" with your potential target.

Sure they do. Not in any specific technical aspect, but in the tenor
and tone of, "Its the way its always been and there is no improving on
the status quo...These new systems are inferior or too
outlandish...etc."

I was not there 70 years ago, so I can only go by what I read. I don't read
it as you do.

But don't believe me. Check out what this USNA academic has to say on
the matter:
http://web.mit.edu/13a/100th/mit13a.pdf

I read it. Boiled down it says, "military organizations are conservative
and always tend to fight the last war." Again, no surprises here.

What the author does not seem to consider is that military technological
advance is not steady, linear progress but a series of leaps and lags. For
a 1921 admiral to have said, "we must abandon BBs and build just CVs" would
have been monumentally stupid as the aircraft technology of the day was not
up to the task. In 1931 the same situation existed. Indeed the BB retained
a military role as late as the early 90s (70 years after Jutland) and
probably could certainly fulfil a political role today (and even a limited
military one, particularly against unsophisticated adversaries). Yet for an
admiral in 2003 to build a strategy around them would be as dumb as the act
of his 1921 predecessor. Continuing the thought, for a "defense expert" to
suggest building a strategy around non-existant weapons systems is equally
dumb.

Further, note that when military thinking gets too advanced you can also
have problems. In the late '40s the pundits, as a result of tests at
Bikini, had written off Naval Aviation (and the Navy in general). "One
bomb, one fleet" was their war cry. Then Naval Aviation was saved by a
North Korean dictator. As was the USMC and large warfighting formations of
the USA.

Or, put another way, what peering too far over the horizon is a good way to
run aground.

Not being real current (and not being a Strike type) I won't comment on
this.
And you too, Mr. Kambic, have have studiously avoided these odious
facts.

Only in your mind's eye. I don't have the expertise to comment so I did
not. That does not mean that I don't have an opinion (I do) but I choose
not to share it as it is not backed by sufficient fact.

You are right about an AOE in for a brief port visit not being as
intrusive as air ops at Thumrait or some such. But the ship still must
make those visits and those visits are at the whim of a host country.

Agreed.

I know there are more components, but a disabled AOE represents at
least short term single point of failure for a CVBG. After three days
or so gas begins to get skosh in sustained ops even on the nukes...and
don't forget about the small boys.

Agreed. But if country A says no, there's always country B. Or C. The
idea that every AOE will have to stage out of CONUS is just wishful thinking
for those intent on setting up some sort of "CV airwing out of gas on a CV
filled with starving sailors" strawman.

You are simply wrong about that. Much of the ISR must live in nearby
host countries because there are not enough parts on the boat. No
ingress without that capability.

I say there is NO host country. I can't prove a negative; you have to prove
a positive. Please list the host country(ies) for the CVBGs currently
deployed.

Ditto for the big wing tankers that
CVWs now rely on to get the job done.

Last time I looked those were not CVBG assets. They belonged to somebody
else. They supported the airwing, but were part of it.

So, for a carrier to do its job,
its as dependent as an AEF on basing and overflight rights when it
comes time to head for the target in a great many scenarios because so
much of the essenttial support is landbased now.

Does not this depend on exactly what geographical area is involved? With
Afghanistan and Iraq you are looking at lots of complicated issues. With
Libya or Liberia it would seem the issues are much simpler.

The CV has always been a heavyweight boxer with a glass jaw. (Or maybe
just
a "bleeder.") That's the nature of the beast. Yet if you look at some
of
the catostrophic events of recent times (FORRESTAL fire comes to mind)
air
ops were underway within 24 hrs., IIRC. So, while that glass jaw is
still
there, it might be just a bit more tempered than you have indicated.

I think they may have gotten a cat or two to work so they could launch
aircraft to Cubi(hmmm...essential land base...?), but it took a year
to get the FID back to a state in which she could fight a war in any
realistic sense.

It was peacetime and there was no serious war pressure in 1969. USS
YORKTOWN had 90 days work done in 72 hours in 1942 because there was serious
war pressure.

The Enterprise was a better example because they learned from the FIDs
misfortune and the potential for disaster was astutely and heroically
avoided in many important ways. Even so, despite the official spin,
she still had to spend a significant amount of time at Pearl before
she was ready to go again.

See above.

Carriers are perhaps the most vulnerable Capital ships devised. They
overcame the problem in WWII by producing way more decks than the
enemy could disable. That ain't gonna happen anymore.

I admit the CV has vulnerabilites. I don't admit that they are
insurmountable.

And we have not yet talked about the vulterabilities of possible
replacements (which don't even exist; THAT'S a pretty big one to start
with!g).

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

I did not read this. After waiting two minutes for it to load I gave
up.
Its worth the wait. Its entitled "Future of the Aircraft Carrier" by
the Defense Science Board whose members include the likes of Stan
Arthur and Don Pilling. They may know a thing or two about carriers.
You really shoud try to open it up.

I will.

To quote Chairman Mao, "War is politics by other means." He didn't make
it
up, but he did say it well.

Far too many of the current incarnation of McNamara's Whiz Kids have
forgotten this. A threat 300 miles overhead is just not real. Neither
is
one 12,000 miles away. And we have not yet had to deal with the U.N.
and
possible treaty violations with "space based weapons." And none of this
will be on line for at least a couple of decades, if then.

How many Iraqis or Al Qaeda saw any carriers. Are carriers any more
real on CNN than the MOAB is?

MOAB is not in issue, here, as it is not, and for a long time won't, be a
CONUS launched weapon.

But to answer your question, yes, I think they are. They are regularly seen
on TV. The aircraft are seen by the populace. The space based stuff still
looks like it came from Dream Works. It will be a very long time before it
is real to a bunch of third worlders.

Time marches on.
As it does, NAVAIR can embrace these new technologies or be
marginalized into non existence.

As long as the first question asked by the C-in-C" is "where is the nearest
carrier" then "marginalization" is not on the horizon. That is the question
that will be asked for at least the next few decades.

Bill Kambic

If, by any act, error, or omission, I have, intentionally or
unintentionally, displayed any breedist, disciplinist, sexist, racist,
culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, localist, ageist, lookist, ableist,
sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist,
phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other violation of the rules of
political correctness, known or unknown, I am not sorry and I encourage you
to get over it.