Navaleye, (RileyDove your answer is at the bottom)
Isn't bombing SAM defended airfields awfully dangerous?
This may come as a surprise but most warfare is dangerous. I'm confused, didn't you say you wanted to hit the SS-N-26 carrier at source? Or have you picked the niche area which is a.) the launch platform is an aircraft and b.) the aircraft is out of range of it's own defences (SAM/aircraft etc) but in range of ours. Sounds a bit like a blue water war from your favourite era of the chily 80's.
That's why we're buying (for the moment at least) an aircraft in the F-35 that can penetrate the kinds of defences aircraft such as Typhoon will never be capable of.
I guess we could fill the deck of a CVS with defensive aircraft (any comment on the amount of FA2 required to mount anything other than a short duration token CAP?) and just fly them purely to defend ourselves. Yet again, I say that this just adds fuel to the 'self licking lollipop' fire of the anti-CVS/CVF brigade.
You skillfully avoid, as always, the hard facts from my last few posts.
The AMRAAM brochure says it has a look down capability against aircraft and missiles.
I should hope so, that's why we bought it. Let's hope that the sub-sonic missile/aircraft is inbound in the first few days of the deployment when we have enough serviceable jets. Oh yes, and it's not in a part of the world where the temperature gets much above about 30 centigrade when the FA2 can't get back on board with any kind of useful load.
The SS-N-26 is just one of a family of weapons which post Shar render us less capable to deal with.
I still agree. As I always have.
RileyDove,
The reason we retired the FA2 early was to reduce the logistics and support footprint of two different airframes. Harrier II+ was considered as a stop gap and an "FA3" based on that was proposed a few years ago. Money, as always, was the issue. If the organic air defence issue was deemed that important, the compromise would have been to shoe-horn the big motor into FA2 and upgrade the avionics. This would still not have addressed the many issues you will find about the limitations of a 1960's airframe, multiple previous posts refer.
For all of the above, the way we use the aircraft today would mean that few, if any, jets would be available to purely sit on CAP above the task group. They're away knocking out the critical nodes that stop the SS-N-26 missile being launched.