Wow. So, out of 11 carriers, only 3 are at sea somewhere, and the rest are either being worked on or being tested after they had their run through the shop. One carrier is on standby but I bet the crew will be pretty mad if they have to deploy it.
Let’s see, you need 1 to saber rattle the middle east, 1 to threaten China, and I guess the last one has to go harass Russia?
Well, first of all, the strike aircraft on most (all?) carriers are F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, which are roughly comparable to F-16s as far as bombload is concerned, and halfway between the F-16 and the F-15E(Strike Eagle) as far as combat range is concerned, with a combat range of 449 nm. They’re not slouches, and that combat range gives them a range to hit 2/3 of Iran from the Persian Gulf.
Plus, it’s not like one carrier group would be doing all the work; you’d almost certainly have USAF planes flying out of Al Udeid in Qatar and probably out of Kuwait and possibly even out of some Central Asian country like Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan.
How many would be lost to SA-400 class missiles, though? That thing hits 4.8 kilometers/second. That’s 2/3 of orbital velocity.
I can’t say how good the Russian flight control firmware, sensors, and control servos are…but if you assume modest competence, it should hit a high percentage of the time. (well, get close enough to pepper the target aircraft with fragments).
You ain’t outrunning something with the delta-V of a ballistic missile. I’m not sure you can out-turn one, either, at that kind of closure rate you have almost no time to react at all. And the F-18 isn’t a stealth aircraft so it should show up as a big target.
Jammers exist but ultimately in the arms race of radar vs jammers, radar wins because it is detecting a real object and can filter off signals not coming from the portion of the sky it is currently searching.
[QUOTE=Habeed]
Ah…perhaps you are under the impression that a large percentage of the oil being exported from the region is going overland? Perhaps by camel or something? That isn’t the case…most of it travels on that water stuff.
If I seem sarcastic, it’s because it’s such a silly question to ask what role a navy would have in the Middle East. You seem to be under a lot of misapprehensions as to what, exactly, a navy (not even necessarily OUR Navy) does and where and how it is used. You also seem to be projecting from an already determined conception that a navy today is useless, has no real role, does nothing but suck up funds, and is simply there for show. This despite the fact that the US has successfully used it’s Navy to project power for decades, has used it effectively in pretty much every conflict we have ever engaged in, including those over the land and in the Middle East, and the fact that all of the emerging nations are in the process of trying to build up substantial navies of their own today…and while I’m sure they can all be stupid, they aren’t spending these kinds of money on useless things. Of course, you might have the impression that navies are useless because the Europeans aren’t building them (you’d have the same impression about any sort of military wrt that, however, since nearly all of the western European powers are vastly underfunding their military, well below what their NATO commitments are supposed to be in most cases), but, you see, they can get away with that because the US has the most dominant Navy on the planet, and they can ride our coat tails.
That’s simply because you don’t seem to grasp what it does or how the US uses it’s Navy. You also don’t seem to understand what the real threats are to trade if there wasn’t a US Navy protecting our interests. The US doesn’t extort money via high seas tariffs run as protection money…but if there was no USN and, say, China controlled the South China Sea (as they are attempting to do), that could very well change. Want to transit their area? Well, you gots to pay a fee for that. And this excludes access to the resources in the area or how some of their neighbors might not be too keen on China simply grabbing the territory by fiat. How does a shooting war in a trade transit area worth trillions sound? Doesn’t sound like a very fun thing to me. Know what keeps that from happening? Take a wild guess.
To be fair, I suspect what you are actually spouting is all mostly bullshit made up by conservative mouthpieces. Even if there is a need for a seaborne defense force to keep trade lanes open, the burden of doing that should be divided among the people who benefit from the trade. Also, you don’t need aircraft carriers to stop pirates. Dividing the burden is pretty easy - if the ship isn’t flying an American flag, let the pirates take it. Easy.
The whole nation defense architecture/cold war/last 70 years of U.S. policy has mostly been just a massive waste of money. We could probably have cured aging and cracked space travel by now if we weren’t idiots about our spending. This is like playing an RTS game and dumping all your money into tanks you never use.
For that matter, if the Navy is as necessary as you make it out to be, we shouldn’t be providing these services to other nations for free. Either they chip in or they build their own ships.
There are currently 5 active regiments for this system, 2 of which are outside of Moscow…somewhere it’s unlikely we will be sending F/A 18’s to any time soon. 
In addition, they haven’t been tested yet in combat as far as I know, and Russia simply doesn’t have the money to build the things in any sort of vast quantities that you’d need for an overlapping defense. The US also has HARM type weapons specifically designed to attack those batteries. Finally, assuming if you buy into stealth, the US has started the process of acceptance of the new F-35, of which the Navy’s version will be replacing the F/A 18’s over the next few years…and it’s anyone guess as to how effective the SA-400’s will be against the F-35’s stealth.
I don’t think that the few active regiments are going to be a major concern for the Navy, even if you assume there will be a shooting war between the US and Russia (or if Russia sells the things to China and there is a shooting war with China and the US). The whole purpose of the USN is to PREVENT shooting wars when coupled with the rest of our military. It’s like a loaded and visible gun when walking through a bad neighborhood where all the thugs basically have bats. They COULD go for you anyway, but they most likely won’t enjoy the experience of pitting their bat against our gun.
And yet, you don’t know because it’s simply your knee jerk reaction and you are fairly clueless wrt to even the basics of what the Navy even does or how it’s used. You don’t want to engage in a debate, you want to rant about what you ‘know’ and you want an echo chamber. And yet, even on this more left leaning board you are running into people telling you at most of your preconceptions are bullshit and you should check your premises. But you won’t, will you?
Use rational thought. How does the United States benefit if it spends a vast sum of money to build a warship, yet does not receive a share of the trade those ships are protecting? You are making it out that having the biggest weapons increases national prestige - which it does - but where’s the tangible benefits? You can’t steal from other nations because all the ones worth stealing from have nuclear defenses.
Using rational thought, it would not matter if everyone else on the planet disagrees : if the algorithm used to reach your conclusion is provably correct, and the facts fed into it are correct, the answer is correct. In this case, my algorithm is simple :
Benefits (in a competitive world) = net gain in wealth (money, technology, capital, human resources are all factors)
Powerful navies = huge loss in wealth.
USA Navy = minimal gain wealth (because we let the shipping companies dodge taxes completely and protect other nation’s trade for free)
USA Navy = huge net loss in wealth.
Individual nations who do things that = huge net loss in wealth = idiots.
Do it yourself. The US benefits because we rely, absolutely, on trade. Keeping the trade lanes open and free for all is a huge benefit to us. It’s also a huge benefit to our allies and other trading partners. SOMEONE has to keep the trade lanes open on a global scale, or regional powers will be able to exert their own influence regionally. Even with our supposedly vast Navy CHINA IS ALREADY TRYING TO DO THIS. And if China is trying to do it today, you can bet other powers will in the future. The only thing stopping them is the fact that every one of them know that the USN is out there and is absolutely dominant…at least so far, today. If that changes then the whole equation changes.
If you don’t want to believe that, well, that’s fine. If you want to think it’s all ‘right wing’ blather, again, that’s fine. It begs the question as to why you think that China, India and Russia are all spending vast amounts to try and build up their navies, and why Japan has recently started to do the same, why China is all upset by Obama’s proposed pivot to Asia thingy (which mostly involves the USN) and why many of the regional powers around China are pretty happy with the idea, if navies are so worthless. You MIGHT just want to try and educate yourself more and have a more open mind on the subject first, then if you find it’s still all blather you can always come back to your current position but at least from a position of knowing the first thing about it.
Possibly they fear loss of their own trade-lanes to the U.S. Navy. If this is correct, it’s a self-amplifying arms race like the one that created the worldwide nuclear arsenals, and another big waste of money.
Actually, the Reagan was just here in San Diego (where the George Washington is at the moment). They did a crew swap. Reagan will now be the carrier home ported in Japan, while the Washington will go get new reactor fuel.
Who? Who fears this?? :dubious: Answer…no one. Not even Iran, hell, not even North Korea fears this. Everyone knows that, evil as America is, we don’t use our Navy to coerce taxes or protection money out of anyone wrt trade. Good grief.
You’re going to suggest we use rational thought without providing any actual facts or cites to think about? That’s… guessing.
I think we’ve been lax in establishing enough new coaling stations, IMO.
Are you kidding me? What, you think the U.S. Navy is the arm of an American policy of mercantilism?
Just off the top of my head, here’s what the U.S. Navy does really, really well:
As far as the ship count thing goes, eh, so what? It’s a number. It helps explain something but isn’t comprehensive in its measure of capability. Sure, the number of ships doesn’t inform us very much about the qualitative aspects of those ships, but any measurement has its limitations. Let’s say some dude is 6’2" and 235 pounds. Is he a lazy fatass or an NFL linebacker? Those numbers aren’t going to tell you. If you measure the Navy by weight, you aren’t going to know how many crises the Navy can respond to at one time.
In other words, the size of the fleet is one number. It means something but doesn’t explain everything. If someone doesn’t understand that, they should just get over it.
In 2014 US exports were 2.35 trillion . Total imports were 2.41 trillion . That’s against a backdrop of 17.42 trillion $ total GDP. The health of our economy is very closely tied to trade on massive scales. The health of many of our major trading partner is also closely tied to trade (Japan being a great example as a major manufacturer that has to import most of it’s raw materials.) In a globally connected economy we’ve seen the ripple effects that can happen when a major economy falters. Sure it might not be the most fair method to have the US over-provide security while trading partners provide less. It’s a variant of the classic free rider problem. It does not mean it’s can’t be entirely rational to protect our own economy by paying more than our share when an option is nobody providing that security.
Carrier strike groups typically include destroyers (and cruisers and submarines).
The modern carrier air wing is a bit smaller than that, more like 70-75 aircraft:
[ul]
[li]20 F/A-18C[/li][li]24 F/A-18E/F[/li][li]5 EA-18G[/li][li]4 or 5 E-2C/D[/li][li]2 C-2A[/li][li]20(ish) MH-60R/S helicopters[/li][/ul]
We don’t really have 11 carrier groups. We have 10 (CVNs 68-77). And we only have 9 carrier air wings (which is what makes a carrier useful).
India has two carriers, the UK is building two, and China is building their second.
What exactly do you think China is going to do? They have just as much interest in keeping free trade flowing as the US does. Not to mention Japan, Korea etc also have such interests. If the US withdrew it’s fleets to coastal US waters it not going to cause the collapse of international shipping. There might be a small increase in opportunistic pirate attacks, thats all.
Exactly. And you can either stop pirate attacks with an aircraft carrier or you can put a squad of soldiers on the ship armed with rifles and maybe a portable guided missile launcher or 2. (I would assume a missile like the Javelin anti-tank missile would be capable of taking out a pirate ship’s engine in a single shot)
China might grab a bunch of disputed territory in the East China Sea, reclaim Taiwan, maybe even start a war with Japan. Impossible to know.