PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - F-35 Cancelled, then what ?
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Old 6th Jul 2013, 12:33
  #2962 (permalink)  
Milo Minderbinder
 
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by the time the 'B' retires, and probably for a good period before that, carrier aviation as you know it will be impossible due to the rise of precision guided ballistic munitions.
All you need is for the Iranians (or someone else) to really mass produce the stuff they already have designed and you can wave your capital ships goodbye......they'll need to stand so far off the target that you may as well use land-based assets.
of course......pulsed beam weapons or better point defence ABM systems may reduce the risk.......but if there are enough ballistic warheads they are always eventually going to overwhelm the defence.
Give it a few years and the new carriers are going to be nothing but floating garages, too insecure to be allowed within 2000 miles of an enemy coast, except maybe when on a ferry mission. Whats the combat radius of a "B"?

of course maybe they could be used for peacekeeping purposes, or situations such as the Sierra Leone action, but using a ship and aircraft of that expense for that is rather overkill. A converted cargo ship with a flight of armed Tucanos would be a better solution
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