A Gerald Ford is sailing down the Suez canal on active patrol and expecting some sort of attack, but is protected by four abrams tanks when suddenly a blue police box flies over the tanks and lands behind a massive tree. The tank crew were having a barbeque outside because there were drones and infantry covering the area, but somehow dozens of Soviet infantry appear from behind the tree and murder the tank crew and commandeer the tanks.
Could the Ford protect itself in any meaningful way?
Everything an aircraft carrier does, it does via its aircraft. So it would launch planes, and the planes would do whatever they normally do to ground forces (bombs, missiles, guns, whatever).
Also, this, on a theoretical:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system
Most systems will kill anything short of an armored personnel carrier or tank within a couple or miles.
It should make the dozens of soviet infantry very concerned very quickly.
The soviets in the hypothetical who can’t fit in or behind the tanks are very vulnerable to this.
I’ll submit that the carrier might not be capable of launching aircraft while taking fire from main battle tanks.
That being said, there is no way that the carrier or tanks would be out of range of a frigate or destroyer. Either of those would be quite capable of hitting the armor in question very, very hard.
The tank vs. warship topic just won’t die, will it? 
Anything that is long-range, and not undersea: Carrier deals with by sending aircraft after it. F-35s, Super Hornets, maybe E-2Ds to command them, etc.
Things that are intermediate range: Maybe a job for Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM.)
Things that are close range: Phalanx CIWS and Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM.)
This doesn’t take the carrier’s escorts into account. The Aegis destroyers, etc., have their own armament which differs from the carrier.
Is there many massive trees in the Suez region? For some reason I’m ok with a tardis full of Soviets time travelling to the future, but the local fauna of that geography bothers me.
Would a carrier use the Suez canal? Can it?
Apart from irrelevant details about trees, blue boxes, barbecues and magical Soviets, isn’t this just the same question as your other tank-vs-ship thread?
Well, the first few pictures of the Suez Canal that come up on Google are pictures of aircraft carriers swimming in the canal, plus there are also plenty of videos about them moving through it, such as this here, and another, so I guess they can? And as you can see in the first video, there are indeed plenty of massive trees present, perfect for magical little blue boxes to hide behind.
I think that a Nimitz aircraft carrier is different and behaves at the very least moderately differently than a Burke destroyer. I think they might also have different roles and purposes as well, though I’m not an expert on these things, so I might be wrong on that. They might exactly the same after all…
But no, they are two different ships, therefore one should have distinct advantages and disadvantages, and have unalike odds against the enemies.
Well, why not throw Klingon Battle Cruisers into the mix?
Watch while the untrained personnel struggle to put anything other than the loader’s M240 into effective operation. Laugh when the Soviet infantry take their first casualty at the hands of the turret monster. Continue to transit the canal unhindered.
Granted, but does that make the two questions truly different topics? IMO, not really.
I’m guessing that the carrier would already have at least a few birds airborn while it’s doing something vulnerable like traversing a canal.
It would not because of the safety issue of recovering the a/c with the carrier at low speed and unable to turn into the wind. The official result* for the F/A-18E/F is a requirement for 19 kts ‘wind over deck’ to launch at full gross weight using C13 mod 1 catapult, 8 kts to recover with a ‘bring back’ payload of around 9,000#. The launch can be done at reduced takeoff weight making zero WOD launch at least technically possible, but the landing restriction despite the apparently lower WOD required is more difficult to get around, again considering the wind could be coming from the wrong direction.
At least in the F-4 and F-14 era there were cases of practicing launches in port. I haven’t heard of it in the post F-14 era but maybe somebody with direct knowledge can comment. However the assumption was an available airfield if the carrier couldn’t sortie from port within the a/c’s endurance, not zero or negative WOD recoveries. It would really be a matter of detaching a portion of the air wing to Egyptian or Israeli bases to protect the carrier. But that’s got obvious issues with permission and rules of engagement for actual combat, and in Egyptian case why you’d be comfortable with a/c on the ground at their bases if you were worried about them not being able/willing to prevent a large scale attack on the ship. The obvious solution to such suspicion would be to avoid the canal.
As with a DDG, the carrier’s helicopters could more readily help identify and defend against lesser threats, again assuming Egyptian cooperation.
*see pg 10
I was picturing the carrier launching planes in the open Mediterranean, where it could make its normal appropriate maneuvers, traversing the Canal, and then recovering the planes in the open Red Sea, again with normal appropriate maneuvers. Or is the time to traverse the canal too long compared to the aircraft’s endurance?
Against just infantry? I’d say the CIWS would do a pretty good job, and at least on the older carriers, they had a few .50 cal machine guns too. Even against tanks, I’d guess the CIWS would be a nasty shock. I think the Sea Hawk helicopters have door guns as well. And, of course, there are all those attack aircraft thingies as well. They should be able to do something about some Soviet ground troops I expect.
Plus, there is the 1920’s style death ray…
Is there some reason Dr Who keeps sending his Tardis to arrange very odd scenarios?
Yes it’s much too long. Recent improvements were supposed to cut transit from 18 to 11 hours, which isn’t counting any time waiting at anchor at the starting end.
Red Phone booth teleports in and provides the carrier an accompaniment of 27 battleships, complete with 16" guns.
How fast can magical russians find reverse in an M1 Abrams?
Yikes! But I suppose that when your alternative is to spend weeks sailing around Africa, 11 hours doesn’t sound so bad any more.
Please don’t start another similar thread in General Questions. Closed.
samclem, moderator.