Originally Posted by sharmine
You never know where a carrier might be needed next.
I agree. Surely a good argument to project air power by air - it's faster and more flexible and you don't have to spend days days having your teeth shaken out by a carrier travelling at max chat to get to where it's needed because it happened to be on the other side of the world, and then arrive too late.
Most of the ISTAR product and ordnance dropped in both the Afghanistan and the Iraq invasions came from platforms that took off and landed in mainland USA. It can be done.