alloycowboy wrote:Okay, here is a stupid question? If you can get two networked F-35's for the price of one F-22, why would you buy F-22's? The two F-35's let you be in two places at once.
The one rational for quality over quality with a CVN is they have a more finite amount of airplanes to contribute. If they can only carry say 50 airplanes, they need to be quality. (theoretically anyway)
There are smarter carrier bubbas here than me, but the dirty little secret of CVNs is they aren't really the lynch pin people think. CVNs still rely on big wing USAF tankers. I don't think people (meaning other services) complain because its good to have more help rather than less, but a CVN is really expensive way of putting fighters into the air. its not that big bombers made CVN obsolete, its more big tankers in some ways. though the bombers really make an impression as all CVN stuff the last 50 years is primarily air to ground strike on land targets and not the fleet battles of old. Whats happened at the very least the last 30 years, is CVNs have been not much more than a redundant method of mud moving.
People can argue with me on this, and I'm happy to hear the points. this could indeed be grossly oversimplified. but from my perspective thats what it looks like. Thank god for the US Navy strike fighters, or we would have to rely only on thousands of other strike fighters and heavy bombers to do the same thing.
And I can't find it at the moment, but a big chart showing that something like 80 percent of bombs dropped in the GWOT are from heavy bombers. its insane, but again I can't find it.