Dear Radioman.
"In todays battlefields the best weapon that anyone has is the Aircraft Carrier ".
A CVA is excellent for projecting power where no suitable land base exists and to defend a TF/BG at sea in blue water operations - which is it's raison d'etre. But it cannot complete with land bases for sustained long range operations when available. It is vulnerable, expensive to repair, carries limited assets with restricted size/performance and needs a continuous chain of supply ships performing a continuous chain of rearm/refuel evolutions in order to sustain operations.
If I might make the examples of:
Desert Storm, where the USN relied heavily on land based RAF AAR support as the CVAs where considered to vulnerable to operate with the shallow waters of the the Gulf.
Afghanistan, where, due to range, the USN relied heavily on RAF/USAF AAR assets to reach and operate over the target area.
In any area involving targets deep inside a continental mass, such as China, Russia etc, the CVA cannot carry assets capable of reaching the target - including Tomahawk.
"Even though Amercia has an airforce the majority of overseas operations are carried out by carrier base aircraft".
No, the CVA launches a lot of small offensive assets to achieve the same task as a single strategic bomber within the same operation.
e.g. Afghanistan; A total of 21,500 sorties were flown through February, some 13,000 of which entered Afghan air space. Of these, over 6,500 were strike sorties, of which Navy flew about 75%.
However, the total number of weapons deliverd was 17,472. Out of this number, the Air Force delivered 74% of the total munitions. The strategic bomber force, B-1, B-2, and B-52,between them delivering 11,500 weapons, representing 66 percent of the total.
If you look at special forces the total tilts even further. Special Operations Command AC-130U "Spooky" gunships alone delivered over 3,271 105mm projectiles, 6,939 40mm projectiles, and 15,626 25mm projectiles through the end of December.
These total does not even mention Recce, Elint, AT, C3 etc; which represent the remaining 8,500 sorties out of which the USAF provided over 95%.
What, then, was the contribution of the CVAs?
As I started by saying, a CVA is excellent for projecting power where no suitable land base exists.
In the case of Afghanistan, the USAF could operate long range strategic bomber and support aircraft out of Diego Garcia and other bases. It did not, however, initially possess any bases suitable for operating tactical aircraft suitable for CAS flexible targeting against mobile targets (at least until it was able to base A-10s to the north).
The CVAs, however, were able to fiulfill this task utilising the AAR/C3/Recce support mentioned above. According to a senior Navy officer, 80 percent of Navy strikes took off from aircraft carriers without having a specific fixed target, proceeding to one of 30 kill boxes where they were assigned emerging targets, designated by SF or USAF FAC personnel.
The CVA concept has been proven based on it's own merits. Putting up patently untrue Aunt Sally's, runs the risk of the whole carrier concept being abandoned for the UK based on it not being able to perform unrealistic tasks or achieve the efficiencies only available operating a large aircraft from a long runway.
Last edited by ORAC; 14th Apr 2002 at 19:58.