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We don't need carriers to stop piracy. You would need - at most - amphibs and frigates.
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Nov 16, 2015 05:38
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Radar, surveillance and helicopters are rather important for anti piracy efforts.
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Nov 16, 2015 05:45
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I don't think anyone is going to seriously suggest that CBGs are an efficient or sustainable way to combat piracy.
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Nov 16, 2015 05:55
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People are getting side tracked with the piracy angle. People are right to say that the US Navy protect the ocean trade lanes, but its not pirates they protect it against (though that is a secondary priority). The role that the US Navy plays is the same role that the Royal Navy used to play: namely to prevent other states from loving with ocean trade lanes. It prevents countries with smaller fleets from exerting undesirable (from an international perspective) influence on nearby trade lanes. With no US Navy (or equivalent) there are several areas of the world where state actors would use their own local forces to create conditions that would disturb or prevent international trade. China in the South China Sea. Saudi Arabia or Iran in the Straits of Hormuz. Hell, any country surrounding the Straits of Malacca. Countries could (and have, historically) closed waterways to foreign ships to try and boost their own merchant marine or their own arbitrage trade. A large, dominant navy possessed by a country with a vested interest in the free flow of goods is what has allowed the international trade system as we know it to build over the last two hundred years.
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Nov 16, 2015 05:55
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Radar: Check (frigates) Surveillance: The USA doesn't use carriers for that Helicopters: Check (amphibs) edit: quote:People are getting side tracked with the piracy angle. People are right to say that the US Navy protect the ocean trade lanes, but its not pirates they protect it against (though that is a secondary priority). The role that the US Navy plays is the same role that the Royal Navy used to play: namely to prevent other states from loving with ocean trade lanes. It prevents countries with smaller fleets from exerting undesirable (from an international perspective) influence on nearby trade lanes. With no US Navy (or equivalent) there are several areas of the world where state actors would use their own local forces to create conditions that would disturb or prevent international trade. Fair point, but how many nations can stand off even one carrier? Even one amphib? TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 05:56
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Radar: Check (frigates) The point isn't being able to beat up an unruly country after spending two weeks rushing your carrier from the resupply to the other side of the world, it's the ability to beat up all unruly countries anywhere on the planet at the same time before they can present some mess as fait accompli. Having a third of 10+10 actual+baby carriers deployed suddenly doesn't seem to be overkill anymore.
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Nov 16, 2015 10:03
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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blowfish posted:The point isn't being able to beat up an unruly country after spending two weeks rushing your carrier from the resupply to the other side of the world, it's the ability to beat up all unruly countries anywhere on the planet at the same time before they can present some mess as fait accompli. Having a third of 10+10 actual+baby carriers deployed suddenly doesn't seem to be overkill anymore. The new Ford class carriers in contrast are designed to generate a sustained 160 sorties a day for 30 days with a surge capacity for 270 sorties a day. That is a frankly terrifying amount of whoopass. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 10:42
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:So you've abandoned even arguing that gimping the F-35 for naval operations and buying thousands to replace F-18s is a good use of money, and are basically resorting to saying that Congress is lovely so we might as well keep lighting money on fire? Maybe there's a difference between "the F-35 is a crappy plane for the price it costs" and "the US Navy shouldn't have any carrier at all" ?
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Nov 16, 2015 11:12
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Cat Mattress posted:Your basic assumption is that if the US were to suddenly decide to get rid of their Navy It would make more sense to get rid of every other arm except the Navy.
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Nov 16, 2015 11:18
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Amphibious assault ships aren't really baby carriers either. They serve logistical, medical, and limited fire support roles for troops ashore and can do ASW for a task force. They can't fly a CAP or really generate any significant number of sorties. The amphibs have Also having the ability to storm some beaches makes sense if you want to beat up any country on a moment's notice suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 11:34
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blowfish posted:The amphibs have blowfish posted:Also having the ability to storm some beaches makes sense if you want to beat up any country on a moment's notice
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Nov 16, 2015 11:58
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Throatwarbler posted:It would make more sense to get rid of every other arm except the Navy. Fold the marines into the navy for starters.
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Nov 16, 2015 12:46
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Riso posted:Fold the marines into the navy for starters. Could not agree with this more. Lots of other countries call it "Naval infantry". Doesn't have to be its own separate arm.
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Nov 16, 2015 12:57
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Cat Mattress posted:Maybe there's a difference between "the F-35 is a crappy plane for the price it costs" and "the US Navy shouldn't have any carrier at all" ? It's a good thing no one said that! My argument since the beginning is that the existing number of carriers, with their existing F-18s, are to more than sufficient for any foreign policy goals when taking into account the current naval potential of any adversaries. If the geopolitical situation starts changing, the US is capable of reassessing priorities and more importantly, ramping up production faster than anyone else. No one is capable of suddenly dropping a fully formed navy overnight out of some secret facility. AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 13:08
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You were the one arguing that carriers are costly and unneeded because the US already has land base all over the world.
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Nov 16, 2015 13:11
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Cat Mattress posted:You were the one arguing that carriers are costly and unneeded because the US already has land base all over the world. No, just that building more carriers and refitting the existing ones with F-35s is costly and unneeded because the US already has land bases (plural) all over the world. Especially now that unit costs are in the neighborhood of a far more capable F-22.
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Nov 16, 2015 14:01
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Carriers, like pretty much everything else in the universe, have a limited lifespan. There comes a point in a carrier's service life where just keeping it afloat becomes more expensive year after year. It gets cheaper to decommission it and procure a new one than to keep using it. The same can be said for planes. The older planes in the US armed forces, namely the older F-16 blocks, the F-15 that aren't Strike Eagles, the F-18 that are plain old Hornets instead of Super Hornets, and especially, especially the Harriers, are starting to break apart in flight. So you've to replace them. And since you're replacing them, why not replace them with new models that take advantage of new advances in technologies? Of course developing new models is expensive, so here comes the accountants who come up with creative ways to reduce the costs. For example, you have different projects to replace the F-15, F-16, F/A-18, and Harrier? Well, why not save some money by merging all these projects together? Make just one plane that can take off from a carrier, land vertically, be a stealthy bomb truck, can achieve air supremacy, can refuel other planes, can carry paratroopers, can fly to the moon, can fly underwater, and costs less than $10 million a pop? Sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? This is the point where you need to have your accountants be told about the laws of physics. When they aren't told how reality works, you get the F-35.
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Nov 16, 2015 14:32
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The original F18s are getting older, so you need to replace those at some point anyways, metal fatigue and carrier landings do not make a good combination. Arguably you could replace them with super hornets or whatever comes out of the x47 program, but it's not nearly as big a cost saving as people seem to think. Iirc Us carriers were already reduced recently and are built at replacement rates at best. Not building new ones is the same as cutting back. E;fb
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Nov 16, 2015 14:34
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Planes don't last forever, and 1980s technology won't be good forever. The F-18 will have to be replaced eventually. The problem here is not with building a new plane or with carriers in general, it's about the F-35 specifically and much of the design and procurement process for it.
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Nov 16, 2015 14:40
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I am really all for reusable parts between planes but I want to know who the evil genius was who decided to make it the air frame.
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Nov 16, 2015 14:41
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Riso posted:I am really all for reusable parts between planes but I want to know who the evil genius was who decided to make it the air frame. Beancounters. Beancounters never change.
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Nov 16, 2015 15:34
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Of course the air frame is actually rather different between the three so the parts commonality actually isn't as great as you might think.
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Nov 16, 2015 15:56
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Cat Mattress posted:Carriers, like pretty much everything else in the universe, have a limited lifespan. There comes a point in a carrier's service life where just keeping it afloat becomes more expensive year after year. It gets cheaper to decommission it and procure a new one than to keep using it. The terribleness specific to the F-35 aside, why is it such a terrible idea to scale back the carrier fleet and stick with the relatively new Super Hornets until they start approaching the end of their lifespan. We have 319 with 49 more coming - that's plenty to stock something like 6 carriers once you consider the non-fighter planes on there and still have some left over for training, etc. This still leaves the US something like an order of magnitude more naval aviation capability than the rest of the non-NATO world combined (referring to the single Russian carrier with it's air wing of like 30 planes). As the regular F-18s approach their end of life, the Super Hornets can be consolidated on the remaining carriers and the carrier fleet downsized by simply not building new ones. Assuming the remaining carriers are in dock for a third of their life, that still leaves the US with the ability to put a a carrier group in every ocean and one in reserve just in case. Some of the savings can be used to put a few extra F-22s in the land bases already surrounding Russia and China. If the rest of the world starts beefing up their navies (read: China actually does something more than using an old Soviet carrier for training), all of this can be changed. It's not like other countries have some magical industrial capacity that can outpace the United States, and certainly it's not possible to hide the construction of large ships and hundreds of aircraft in today's world. It would take decades for anyone else to even begin to approach the reduced capability described above (5-6 carriers with 350+ Super Hornets), I am confident that the US could identify this potential threat and build up its own forces in time if and when that became an issue.
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Nov 16, 2015 15:59
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6 Carriers means 2 at sea which means one to cover the entire Atlantic/Mediterranean and one to cover the entire Pacific/Indian ocean/Gulf.
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Nov 16, 2015 16:00
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hobbesmaster posted:6 Carriers means 2 at sea which means one to cover the entire Atlantic/Mediterranean and one to cover the entire Pacific/Indian ocean/Gulf. Tell Europe and Japan to step up their naval programs. Problem solved.
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Nov 16, 2015 16:40
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Riso posted:Tell Europe and Japan to step up their naval programs. Problem solved. Article 9.
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Nov 16, 2015 16:46
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The point of the carrier fleet isn't to compete with other navies, it's to provide America near-instant force projection to every corner of the empire at once by being able to place a floating airbase off basically any coastline in the world, and moreover, to be able to do that in multiple places at the same time so that it can threaten multiple regional rivals at once, and moreover to supply large amounts of money to the military-industrial complex, and moreover to satisfy the institutional interests and needs and desires of our military organizations for a couple of good reasons and a whole lot more bad ones. If you want to ask "why don't we just cut our carrier fleet in half", there are a lot of different applicable answers to that question.
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Nov 16, 2015 16:49
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Also the fact that both China and India are looking to posses and operate at least two or three large carriers within the next ten years means that the US might need more then a couple deployable aircraft carriers total. Edit: also wars are fought with the military you have, not the military you wish you had. Ford class carriers are taking 5-7 years to build. Even the midways at the height of the Second World War took two years the build. If you don't have the ship at the beginning of a modern war you're not going to have it period. Gorau fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 16:56
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ayn rand hand job posted:Article 9. Don't worry, Abe is working on that.
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Nov 16, 2015 16:59
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:The terribleness specific to the F-35 aside, why is it such a terrible idea to scale back the carrier fleet and stick with the relatively new Super Hornets until they start approaching the end of their lifespan. We have 319 with 49 more coming - that's plenty to stock something like 6 carriers once you consider the non-fighter planes on there and still have some left over for training, etc. This still leaves the US something like an order of magnitude more naval aviation capability than the rest of the non-NATO world combined (referring to the single Russian carrier with it's air wing of like 30 planes). As the regular F-18s approach their end of life, the Super Hornets can be consolidated on the remaining carriers and the carrier fleet downsized by simply not building new ones. Assuming the remaining carriers are in dock for a third of their life, that still leaves the US with the ability to put a a carrier group in every ocean and one in reserve just in case. Some of the savings can be used to put a few extra F-22s in the land bases already surrounding Russia and China. quote:If the rest of the world starts beefing up their navies (read: China actually does something more than using an old Soviet carrier for training), all of this can be changed. It's not like other countries have some magical industrial capacity that can outpace the United States, and certainly it's not possible to hide the construction of large ships and hundreds of aircraft in today's world. It would take decades for anyone else to even begin to approach the reduced capability described above (5-6 carriers with 350+ Super Hornets), I am confident that the US could identify this potential threat and build up its own forces in time if and when that became an issue. Carriers take a decade to design and then several years to build. The latest point for a global empire to begin a humongous carrier fleet programme is when rival nations are just starting to consider having their own. Did we mention China is going to start building one soon based on their experience with So here we have at least 2-3 deployed supercarriers (so 6-9 including the ones in dock/on training ) tied up just being a pain in the rear end of the other large powers. Ideally there'd also be a carrier hanging around to bomb brown people in the Middle East, another one to bomb brown people in Africa, and yet another one just to hang around the Americas because there's also Argentinian/Brazilian carrier aviation (defunct/lovely though they are currently) and something might slip away from one of the deployed carriers (so another 6-9) . Whoops, ten supercarriers actually means permanent carrier shortages across the world, better keep all those airbases in allied countries around just in case and outsource some bombing to the amphib fleet and/or underfunded allied militaries  The US faces similar issues with planes that also take decades to design (remember, the F-22 programme started during the Cold War and the F-35 is a 1990s programme) and then another decade till meaningful numbers are built, so basically whatever they are building now would probably be the main US air capability till 2050-ish even if new fighter development started right now. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 17:28
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blowfish posted:Beancounters. Beancounters never change. We really would be better off by hanging accountants and stock brokers from lamp posts every now and then.
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Nov 16, 2015 17:37
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:If the rest of the world starts beefing up their navies (read: China actually does something more than using an old Soviet carrier for training), all of this can be changed. It's not like other countries have some magical industrial capacity that can outpace the United States, You do know where most of the world's commercial shipping is constructed these days, right? I doubt they can churn out good, milspec carriers very fast, but if they put their mind to it they could very easily build a poo poo-ton of mediocre ones.
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Nov 16, 2015 18:07
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Yeah, no. Back in WWII, a nation could get away with building flat tops on obsolete battleships and merchant vessels, but these days ship systems are so thoroughly integrated into the hull and design that even ski-jump carriers need to start from the waterline up. Then there is the expense of carrier-capable aircraft and carrier-trained crews. Putting all your current gen planes on a Panamax is a great way to waste their capabilities or get them killed, and rolling out a container ship with a bunch of obsolete MiGs and half trained crews sitting on top is basically inviting the other navies to laugh at your tiny dick.
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Nov 16, 2015 18:28
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That and China doesn't want to spend boatloads of money making inefficient warships. They're progressing through their procurement in a very steady and careful manner; they aren't rushing it or aiming to spam carriers. They want the capability and the prestige maintaining a viable fleet of carriers gives them and to thoroughly contain Japan; they aren't aiming to seriously contest the US or take over their position.
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Nov 16, 2015 18:31
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Wasn't there a proposal to completely fill panamax with tomahawks and park it in the persian gulf in the 80s?
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Nov 16, 2015 18:33
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hobbesmaster posted:Wasn't there a proposal to completely fill panamax with tomahawks and park it in the persian gulf in the 80s? The arsenal ship, which gets resurrected every decade or so. For some reason two Seawolf class subs ended up being stuffed to the gills with Tomahawks instead so they can now also function as overpriced missile trucks, defeating the point of the exercise. I guess they are super hard to detect overpriced missile trucks or something.
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Nov 16, 2015 18:48
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IIRC it was ballistic missile subs who had their nuke payload removed anyways in the context of arms reduction treaties.
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Nov 16, 2015 18:54
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AlexanderCA posted:IIRC it was ballistic missile subs who had their nuke payload removed anyways in the context of arms reduction treaties. Yeah, 4 Ohios had 22 missile bays converted to carry 7 cruise missiles each and 2 bays were converted to carry mini subs for SEALs.
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Nov 16, 2015 19:29
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hobbesmaster posted:Wasn't there a proposal to completely fill panamax with tomahawks and park it in the persian gulf in the 80s? The idea behind arsenal ships is to have a slow, super cheap thing with a zillion missiles in it and no sensors. However, in practice, it turns out that having most of your task force's missiles aboard a single vessel with almost no damage control or capability to act on it's own is actually a dumb idea and it's better to spread it out across multiple ships. Also US ships already carry plenty of missiles to get poo poo done, we really don't need something that carries even more.
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Nov 17, 2015 00:04
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And considering we have a limited supply of said missiles. It's probably better to spread them out on more capable platforms than to take 10% of the the entire arsenal and put them on a floating death trap. It's not like we have a stockpile of 50 thousand TLAMs sitting around.
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Nov 17, 2015 13:17
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