[Daigo]

Originally Posted by dahak

Sorry. An Aircraft Carrier like any major combatant is first and foremost an instrument of government policy, domestic and foreign. If you want to rationalize its use, you have to do it in the context of the tools available to the government that owns it.

I forgive you. You can say that about any weapon. We are discussing its utility from a combat point of view. And I'm not trying to rationalize its use. That's what you are trying to do if you think carriers are going to be useful in the future.

Much of the time all it has to do to fulfill any military component of its role is exist. Politicians tend to think that is wasteful [especially when looking at the most expensive single item on the military budget], so they find other things it is useful for in between attacking another nations military to help justify the cost.

And if its primary role is no longer useful, then its existence doesn't justify its cost.

No. But an Aircraft Carrier is one of the most efficient multipurpose tool currently available to the US Government for those purposes.

Sufficient purpose built ships would cost a significant fraction of the carriers cost to build and man in sufficient quantities to get the same response times and wouldn't be as useful for other purposes like hunting pirates or attacking third world nations.

Hiring Civilian vessels won't get you the disciplined crew or command and control facilities and due to the lesser nead for surviving damage won't have all of the capabilities in a single hull.

Essentially you are trying to justify the role of the carrier by delegating it to a logistical ship. To which I say, just use a logistical ship then. You're wrong about other ships being more expensive. They aren't. An aircraft carrier is by far the most expensive ship in the navy, and that's not even counting its fighter compliment. A standard logistal ship can accomplish logistics at a tiny fraction of the cost that an aircraft carrier can.

An aircraft carrier is a big target asking to be blown up. Putting all your eggs in one basket needs to be justified in meaningful ways. Currently, there is justification because they dominate the seas. They do logistics because they can, with relative safety.

In the future, this is not the case. So yes, for the time being, they are useful tools for logistics, because they are, for most purposes, the most dominant force. Therefore they can afford to be multipurpose. But in the future, they are just big targets, therefore any other roles they can serve are now meaningless because their primary role, a warship, is now obsolete.

Basically I could use your same logic and apply it to a battleship. Just make it larger so it can carry more people and cargo, and put a lot of useless guns on it. Well what's the point of the guns? The battleship is obsolete in combat, it makes more sense to free up space for more people and cargo, and then you just have a logistical ship. You are taking the battleship and replacing the guns with aircraft. But if its primary purpose is now just logistics, what's the point of the aircraft? They just take up space and weight.

As for attacking pirates or 3rd world countries, ethical issues aside, that's what the orbital weapons are for. That's what we've been discussing this whole time. An orbital weapon is more precise (yes it is potentially), deadlier, faster, has greater range, can travel over land or water, and is in a place where the enemy can't reach it.



ReddyRedWolf, I don't appreciate being accused of trolling. We were having a discussion until you rudely interrupted. Therefore, I won't dignify the points you made. If you want to have a discussion, phrase your post in a more civil manner.