Where will the money come from...

...."reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle (HCV) ... capable of
taking off from a conventional military runway and striking
targets 9,000 nautical miles distant in less than two
hours"....


And how long can this "HCV" loiter in the target area while
the White House makes it's go-to-war decision? Those
"ancient" aircraft carriers have been continuously
on-station all day, every day at multiple hot spots all over
the world for over HALF A CENTURY [almost half a million
hours at EACH hot spot]!

No, this latest engineering solution-in-search-of-a-problem
does not preclude the continuing need for aircraft carriers
and what only they can do!!! Incidentally such HCV concepts
have been repeatedly considered over many decades. About
every twenty years we revisit these old "new ideas".

By the way, just calculate the pay load fraction needed for
fuel to move that 12,000 pound HCV hypersonically over 9,000
miles.

"Get it right or just forget it!"

WDA

end


"s.p.i." wrote in message
om...
To pay for the envisioned force structure below? Well the
seemingly
inviolate 12 carrier hull money is most likely one place.
With what
is being proposed why would you need 12 carriers anyway?
Maybe its time to begin to transform Naval Aviation away
from being so
completely centered around a weapons system that hasn't
fundamentally
changed in 60 years-the Aircraft Carrier-before it becomes
completely
irrelevant...

Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday July 1, 2003
The Guardian

The Pentagon is planning a new generation of weapons,
including huge
hypersonic drones and bombs dropped from space, that will
allow the US
to strike its enemies at lightning speed from its own
territory.
Over the next 25 years, the new technology would free the
US from
dependence on forward bases and the cooperation of
regional allies,
part of the drive towards self-suffi ciency spurred by the
difficulties of gaining international cooperation for the
invasion of
Iraq.

The new weapons are being developed under a programme
codenamed Falcon
(Force Application and Launch from the Continental US).

A US defence website has invited bids from contractors to
develop the
technology and the current edition of Jane's Defence
Weekly reports
that the first flight tests are scheduled to take place
within three
years.

According to the website run by the Defence Advanced
Research Projects
Agency (Darpa) the programme is aimed at fulfilling "the
government's
vision of an ultimate prompt global reach capability
(circa 2025 and
beyond)".

The Falcon technology would "free the US military from
reliance on
forward basing to enable it to react promptly and
decisively to
destabilising or threatening actions by hostile countries
and
terrorist organisations", according to the Darpa
invitation for bids.
The ultimate goal would be a "reusable hypersonic cruise
vehicle (HCV)
... capable of taking off from a conventional military
runway and
striking targets 9,000 nautical miles distant in less than
two hours".

The unmanned HCV would carry a payload of up to 12,000 lbs
and could
ultimately fly at speeds of up to 10 times the speed of
sound,
according to Daniel Goure, a military analyst at the
Lexington
Institute in Washington.

Propelling a warhead of that size at those speeds poses
serious
technological challenges and Darpa estimates it will take
more than 20
years to develop.

Over the next seven years, meanwhile, the US air force and
Darpa will
develop a cheaper "global reach" weapons system relying on
expendable
rocket boosters, known as small launch vehicles (SLV) that
would take
a warhead into space and drop it over its target.

In US defence jargon, the warhead is known as a Com mon
Aero Vehicle
(Cav), an unpowered bomb which would be guided on to its
target as it
plummeted to earth at high and accelerating velocity.

The Cav could carry 1,000 lbs of explosives but at those
speeds
explosives may not be necessary. A simple titanium rod
would be able
to penetrate 70 feet of solid rock and the shock wave
would have
enormous destructive force. It could be used against
deeply buried
bunkers, the sort of target the air force is looking for
new ways to
attack.

Jane's Defence Weekly reported that the first Cav flight
demonstration
is provisionally scheduled by mid-2006, and the first SLV
flight
exercise would take place the next year. A test of the two
systems
combined would be carried out by late 2007.

A prototype demonstrating HCV technology would be tested
in 2009.

SLV rockets will also give the air force a cheap and
flexible means to
launch military satellites at short notice, within weeks,
days or even
hours of a crisis developing.

The SLV-Cav combination, according to the Darpa document,
"will
provide a near-term (approximately 2010) operational
capability for
prompt global strike from Consus (the continental US)
while also
enabling future development of a reusable HCV for the
far-term
(approximately 2025)". The range of this weapon is
unclear.

This is what I wrote in April and so far I'm half right...
"And I'll bet a paycheck the Air Force will argue just
that Real Soon
Now. Also the Space folks will likely chime in about the
operational
usefulness of the Common Aero Vehicle as well.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were only a six carrier
force by
2015."

"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.