PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Future Carrier (Including Costs)
View Single Post
Old 13th Mar 2013, 12:05
  #3372 (permalink)  
The Helpful Stacker
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Temporarily missing from the Joe Louis Arena
Posts: 2,132
Received 27 Likes on 16 Posts
.....As for carrier vulnerability, isn't it strange that no-one mentions what a DF21 - allegedly capable of being guided to a 300m x 70m moving target - might do to a fixed installation where runway intersections, fuel farms, bomb dumps etc would be far easier to target and when hit be just as easily damaged? One suspects a ballistic HE warhead travelling at several hundred metres per second is likely to cause damage far in excess of Durandal-type cratering munitions and way beyond your normal runway repair capabilities.
Yet in a carrier the 'fuel farm', 'bomb dump' and what 'runway intersections' a floating airfield with a single runway has may well end up sat at the bottom of the sea, completely overwhelming any semblance of 'normal runway repair capabilities'.

As an aside. Is there the option to tow carrier-based aircraft away from their damaged runway and perhaps operate them from a handy piece of road? What of the storage of such aircraft, how much dispersal can you manage inside a '300m x 70m' airfield?

Both have their advantages, both disadvantages, but I'd suggest the examples you throw up as being game changers if delivered against an airfield are a little more serious if delivered against a ship at sea.
The Helpful Stacker is online now