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Old 19th Aug 2018, 18:05
  #5180 (permalink)  
LowObservable
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Far West Wessex
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Land bases are susceptible to damage or harassment, but short of a BoS are almost impossible to destroy, or disable for weeks or months. The reverse applies to carriers at sea.

JP233, by the way, dates from well before the Falklands. It was mentioned in Flight in 1977. It was expected to shut down airfields for a considerable time and the Sovs were expected to come up with something similar, hence the desire to retain some STOVL and STOL capability in the force. This resulted in the GR5 and some features of the Typhoon. You'll recall that, around the same time, the USAF set a 1,500-foot STOL target for the ATF.

Land-based aircraft can be protected by GBAD, CCD and dispersal, all of which present Red with a cost-imposition problem that gets less favorable with standoff range, and by built-in resilience.

Carriers, by contrast, present a location problem - but one that gets easier the more imaging satellites there are in the sky.
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