Originally Posted by
BEagle
Surely by the time Tempest enters service the world will have realised that aircraft carriers are simply obsolete? Impossible to protect from highly accurate air launched hypersonic missiles...
How many times and for how many decades have we heard this same refrain: "they're obsolete because they're impossible to protect from (fill in the blank)." So far the blank has been filled with high altitude heavy bombers, torpedo bombers, dive bombers, kamikazes, land based jet aircraft, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, EMP weapons, nuclear submarines, air independent submarines, anti-ship cruise missiles, super sonic anti-ship cruise missiles, anti-ship ballistic missiles, etc etc etc. And yet somehow a land based airfield is magically NOT "impossible to protect" from any of those systems.