There are numerous things people seem to forget whenever the ‘golly aren’t carriers easy to sink’ argument starts raging.
The first is that an army - which most countries have - is unlikely to hurt an aircraft carrier, but they could do a lot of damage to an airfield. I think the SAS or LRDG did it quite a lot.
Militia are much the same. I didn’t occur to me at the time but when we were under (half arsed) rocket attack at KAF - the CVNs weren’t. And for whatever reason we weren’t allowed to fly after IDF - I think due to FOD. Good drills.
I know that Black Buck effected Stanley in some way, the SF did over Pebble Island and had their bimble around Tierra Del Fuego - but I don’t think any of the three carriers involved in ‘82 were hit by anything. So I guess Air can attack airfields. That makes sense.
There’s terrorism - to the best of my knowledge there hasn’t been a single case of attempted kidnap of anyone doing flight deck phys.
Then there’s organic self protection. The aircraft carrier must have some but Akrotiri really doesn’t need it. Never really understood why.
Then there’s the main threat to any capital ship - Sub surface weaponry (when I say main - I mean the type that has accounted for most over the years); with which you don’t deal with organically - you take a SSN with you. The same sort of SSN that carries TLAM that seem to do over air fields regularly. (So you could say that airfield are vulnerable in three domains...I wonder if anyone’s got a space based JP233...that would make it four).
I guess the parallel is that that an airfield would have DCA. A carrier with DCA is a self licking lolly (odd phrase - never understood it); a DOB with DCA is just being sensible. Never understood that either.
I suppose we better talk about carrier killing missiles. Not that one’s ever killed a carrier but they work on the principle that you need specialist weaponry to attack a carrier. Unlike an airfield which can be attacked by a bloke with some wire cutters and a mallet. I suppose you could use your carrier killing weapons against carriers - leaving only your knives, guns, dumb bombs, PGMs, ALCMs etc for the airfields.
I’d very much like to see two RAF QWIs at work - one planning a strike on an airfield, the other scratching his head about attacking a carrier, wondering where the pickets would be, wondering what SURPIC was and who was going to feed it to him, wondering where to hide....the first one would probably get his done first.
Now that QNLZ has sailed any idea where she is. I know it’s somewhere in the Atlantic...I wonder if that counts as a JDAM grade coordinate these days?
All good fun. Best wishes to the boys and girls down range of whatever cloth who quite rightly get the job done and leave pointless arguments to school kids and has beens.