No. The USN and RN have led the world in anti-mine countermeasures since World War II. Carriers do have defense against mines. They have dedicated helicopter mine sweeping squadrons as well as traditional minesweeping ships. Carriers do not operate alone, they operate as part of carrier strike group, and their defense lies in the embarked airwing and the other ships and submarines which screen the carrier. The carrier has one job - launch and recover aircraft. Everything beyond close-in air defense is handled by the airwing and ships of the strike group.
Your post completely ignores what is arguably the one single national interest the US has consistently held since it’s birth, and the very reason for being of the US Navy: to keep the sea lanes open.
You assume that the only naval threat we face is seaborne invasion. Global trade depends on the sea, and in order to protect the freedom of seas, we have to have a blue water force capable of closing with, and destroying an enemy navy far from our shores and without relying on tenuous alliances.
A stretch? Really? The Japanese landed troops in Alaska. They took Wake and the Philippines. Hardly a stretch.
Super carriers are hardly confined to an “unlimited war” scenario. They are, in fact, one of the best tools we’ve ever had when big-stick diplomacy is called for, and the sight of a carrier strike group sailing off the coast has given more than a few two-bit dictators reason for pause.
Carriers, and the treat of their use, prevent “unlimited wars”.
Note my post said after WWII. After WWII I don’t think any of our oversea territories were in danger of a sea-borne invasion.
As to the rest of your post. You make some good points. Still I think the costs of a carrier outweigh its benefits. Since that is a gut feeling I won’t try to argue it.
Not trying to be snarky, but the idea that post-WWII, we weren’t at risk of seaborne invasion, is Monday morning quarterbacking, and you really have to put yourself in the shoes of our leaders at the time. The Warsaw Pact and China were very real threats, shrouded in secrecy and a great deal of misperception. The USSR was undergoing one of the greatest naval expansions since Nelsonian England, and developing a very serious amphibious assault capability. We had to err on the assumption that they were building a blue water Navy so that they could threaten the US. Russia’s geography and history gave us no reason to assume otherwise, as their self-defense has never relied on naval power.
In a 21st century global economy, our need to keep the sea lanes open is greater than ever. Whether or not a supercarrier is the most cost effective tool or not is clearly debatable, but I think a lot of the discussion in this thread is too focused on it’s tactical strengths and weaknesses, and ignores the strategic. And, unfortunately, we have many entangling alliances, so the seaborne invasion that we have to defend against tomorrow, won’t be in California, it’ll be in Taiwan.
When I was a carrier sailor, we used the term “Max Flex”. A carrier offers maximum flexibility for the mission, that no other naval component, or service can equal. Our strike group could do the mission of “just being there and looking mean” to a tactical nuclear strike, and everything in between, and we could do it anywhere in the world, without the permission or consent of a foreign host government. If the POTUS wants to bomb whatthefuckistan, he has to call the heads of three other countries to arrange overflights, aerial refueling, emergency permission to divert, etc… Not so with a carrier.
What I do envision, when we’re at the point where we have a very capable and robust RPV capability, are much lighter and cheaper carriers. They won’t have to have the level of survivability built in, and they won’t need to house as many aircraft. RPV’s will give us smaller aircraft, and precision munitions will mean those a/c have to carry a smaller loadout. Sort of like the escort carriers of WWII.
If you look at military history, practically every time a new technology comes online, someone says ok, now we can get rid of the old stuff. Then we fight a war and learn that we shouldn’t have acted so hastily. The perfect example of this is when the USAF and USN stopped designing fighters with guns, because the air-to-air missile made the gun obsolete. Viet Nam quickly proved that idea wrong. :smack:
Seriously, what gives you this impression? It was less than a decade after WWII that we pretty much needed the carriers again (a little dust up called The Korean War), and they have been heavily used since. As has already been pointed out to you, protecting territory from sea-borne invasion is not the main use of a modern carrier.
But since you think that protection from sea-borne invasion is a primary duty (when it isn’t), I’d have to question what you consider a benefit and how you would even weigh the question. In order to make a reasoned cost to benefits analysis you’d have to first understand what the actual benefits are, and THEN weigh the costs.
-XT
Exactly. For point of comparison, submarines are great for sinking ships. Unlike the old WWII diesel-electric boats, modern nuclear submarines have unlimited range and are far faster and stealthier than any surface ship out there. In a shooting war, the first indication that a typical surface vessel would have that a hostile submarine was out there would be the large explosions ripping their hull open.
However, submarines are lousy at “showing the flag.” They’re not all that impressive to look at, and if someone is looking at them, then they’ve given up their biggest advantage of stealth. You can’t really use submarines to interdict shipping or to board vessels, as all they can really do is to sink them. (On the other hand, if sinking enemy vessels is needed, submarines excel at this. Submarines are also the most effective counter there is against enemy submarines.)
In some ways, submarines are similar to nuclear weapons. All sledgehammer; no finesse. Carriers on the other hand, are much more flexible. In particular, carriers excel at power projection.
OccamsTaser You don’t seem snarky to me at all. I see this as just a friendly discussion. I hope you and others do too.
My thinking was that post WWII we had the A-bomb so any major surface action, was just an invitation to have your fleet nuked. Of course looking at it a little closer I can see that that raises brinkmanship to a very dangerous level. So maybe I did write off the carrier too soon in history. Like you said Monday morning QB. If we did not have the carriers as deterrents. We might have needed the carriers as deterrents.
As too the cost benefit, the costs and benefits are hard to define so that issue is to some extent opinion and the discussion of that could go on forever.
I, for one, am appalled that you so blithely disregard the ongoing Latvian threat to Nantucket.