Originally Posted by
WE Branch Fanatic
HH
Jabba
What about amphibious forces and the like? Will they be allowed near Air to Surface Missile range? Do you think a task group is better or worse defended with a carrier against air, submarine, and surface threats? Please explain you answer.
Different ball game, is it not? Amphibs are only capital ships if/when you have no carriers... such as the last 5-7 years after the naval heirarchy sold the farm in order to pay for/justify the carriers. Not that I see a huge amount of protest from most dark blue afficionados and former service colleagues about the swords of Damocles being swung by the Treasury over the heads of the amphibious community.
Rightly or wrongly, I see the BG or TG part of "Carrier Battle Group" or "Carrier Task Group" as being the parts that protect the key force multiplier in the package, specifically the Carrier itself. I have concerns, ill founded they may be, but concerns nonetheless, that the size of the current fleet over the next decade, maybe even slightly longer, will be such that a meaningful CBG or CTG that could, if necessary operate independently of its allies (ie, should another Corporate occur) and be able to be part of a viable solution. FF's DDGs, SSN's are all there to protect the key force multiplier from surface/sub-surface and air threats as best they can, particularly when operating at extreme range away from the kind of land based LRMPA/AEW resources that in the European or North Atlantic or near East environments may be taken relatively for granted.
One or two T45's that cant sail in warm water, that spend 80% of their year tied up alongside, Astute's that park themselves on sandbanks and a Future Frigate package that is still some way off does not exactly fill one full of confidence if the balloon goes up. I maintain my position that the carrier project has been politically successful in many respects and from an engineering/contractor/business/industrial/BAE perspective, as has the F35 project. Lots of other equally valuable projects and capabilities have been sacrificed on the altar to ensure that this project stayed alive and the same can be said of Typhoon as well, where numerous other capabilities were neglected in order to protect the pet-projects of TPTB.
Whether the carrier project has truly met the real strategic requirements of what the forces really need, is another matter and one that only time will tell. I just dont see the validity of indulging in the kind of flagwaving about how wonderful the kit is when there is no real job for it to do and a reticence at a political level to project power any other way than through either the implied threat of Trident or through the bounteous output of DFID....