Corsair1963 wrote:
Your missing the point....land based tactical fighter support was not available.
utterly false
Corsair1963 wrote:
No, CVNs/CVWs often provide air cover under conditions that land based fighters can't deliver.
such as?
Even when supported by large USAF Tankers. (KC-10s, KC-46s, KC-135s, etc.) With a good example being Afghanistan at the opening stages of the conflict. Without Naval Air much of the country would have no air support at all. (history is full of such examples)
Without USAF tankers there would be no support at all. what a fun game!
If for some reason every USAF tanker was grounded the US Navy would do nothing more than aggressively fly hundreds of miles from target, before returning to the ship for more exciting landing practice. (Oh how they love to land!!! only silly aviators think "combat aviation" should be judged on more than the ability to land. )
Moreover, we already had big bombers working targets.
Let's also not forget we have a very modest number of bombers available at any given time.
unlike the hundreds of carriers.
Which, usually fly from vast distances. These are not "quick" reaction forces.
I've never seen a carrier move at 500 knots. B-2s can be combat launched from within CONUS. There was nothing quick about CVN aviation in Iraq, nor Afghanistan. They often flew from further away, they often left sooner, and were more limited in their capability. They're not quick in that sense.
Moreover, Afghanistan air war didn't kick off until october 7th nearly a full month after the towers fell. with weeks of preparedness, the USAF was just as ready to kill things as the USN's CVNs. in fact it killed more.
Nor, can they stay on station indefinitely or quickly deploy from one region to another.
define "quickly" because as the above, that really depends.
The Air Force's record-breaking B-1 deployment
2 Aug 2012
The airmen of the 7th kept a bomber in the air over Afghanistan every moment of their deployment, according to an Air Force announcement, in the largest B-1 overseas deployment in 10 years.
That translates to nine bombers, 400 airmen, and a whole litany of fun facts as broken out here by the Air Force:
The airmen of the 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron and 9th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Unit provided more than 25 percent of the total fixed-wing close-air support coverage for coalition ground forces in Afghanistan every day by launching the most B-1 sorties executed on a single deployment in more than 10 years of sustained conflict.
Over the course of the six-plus month deployment, the squadron flew more than 770 combat sorties, encompassing over 9,500 hours, to provide 24 hours of coverage every day.
They also responded to more than 500 troops-in-contact situations, with the enemy as close as 300 meters from friendly forces, and another 700 priority air requests, delivering more than 400 weapons on target.
"We were able to achieve these great stats through pure hard work," said Lt. Col. Matthew Brooks, 9th Bomb Squadron commander. "Our squadron flew 130 more sorties than any B-1 squadron had flown in any other six month deployment.
do the math on what you think it would take for a CVN(s) to fly its fighters to land locked Afghanistan and maintain 9500 hours straight 24/7 coverage with dozens and dozens of bombs ready to drop for 6 months straight with coverage across the whole country. Imagine Diego Garcia is a carrier, but launches "fighters" that provide 24/7 coverages with bomb loads measured in the 80s as opposed to 2-4 bombs dropped from individual fighters.
think of our precious sortie generation, think how many bombs an F-18 can carry, then mulitiply how many you need to do what a single B-1 does, then take into account making room for fuel and such and then the multiple tanker tracks.
Carriers can't stay on indefinitely either, they take months of work ups and predeployment before they sortie out as well.
On the other hand naval fighters can often be stationed near by and even make multiple sorties on a given day. Which, is why sorties rates are very important to carrier operations.
youre right about that apples to oranges thing here, because they weren't making "multiple sorties" in the A-stan example you mention. Being that A-stan is landlocked, Distance was the number 1 problem.
Why do I care if 12 hornets sortie 4 times in a single day when a single B-1 does that with 1 sortie, and with longer time on station?
Of course with the advent of the MQ-25A Stingray. The requirement for USAF Tanker Support will be much less....Especially, as the F-35C and Super Hornet Block III come online.
sure thing! one look at that bad boy, and I just know it can carry what KC-46, 135, or -10 can carry. How many dozens of strike fighters do you think that MQ-25 will be topping off per day?
again we see the USN trying to "catch up" to capabilities the USAF has long had.
Also, as long as you bring up Tankers and Bombers. Their survival rates aren't going to be very high. Without substantial fighter protection. At least against a serious near peer threat!
if only the air force had fighters, and not just fighters, but fighters that were even superior to what the navy has and in the hundreds too. Well we can dream right?
wait wait I'm confused. Is this a thread about how the Navy could try to get something like the F-22 or the USAF? because I'm pretty sure I know who has what, and who has dream threads on the internet.
Honestly, such comparisons are really apples and oranges. As Carriers and Naval Strike Fighters have their niche. Just like Heavy Bombers do....
and my point is that niche is increasingly limited. I'm not trying to be curt. I just don't know why I'm supposed to be impressed with a SH that takes off, tanks twice to target (from a big wing tanker) hits the target or loiters briefly in comparison to other fighters, tanks twice on the way back and then crash lands on a ship. vs an F-15E (USAF had F-15Es operating from Kuwait within weeks) or F-15 or F-22 that does the exact same damn thing, but takes off from a conventional runway. Somehow the USAF is incapable of replicating what the USN does? no that's precisely backward.
This idea that the USN is some unique uber tip of the spear door kicker is getting increasingly absurd. This is like old joke the engineers and sappers used to tell us "we cleared the area. tell the infantry its safe enough to be the tip of the spear now"
A lot of the stuff we say is so critical that the CVN does is retreaded propaganda that hasn't actually happened in decades. Has there been a time, honestly in the last 50 years where the USAF couldn't reach what the USN could? The world is covered in a constellation of US military bases. What happened the last 20 years, is the US has basically taken an "all of the above approach to everything"
We need close bases.
we need tankers.
we need strategic bombers
we need CVNs
we need thousands of strike fighters
We need all of these things, lest we be stuck with just 4 of them!! We need carriers in case we withdraw from all the bases, and then all the Tankers won't start, and then all the strategic bombers break half way to target. Then, then you'll see the ciritcal importance of the CVN, providing the target isn't too far away of course! and all the other fighters forget how to bomb.
The irony that the CVNs were critical to fighting a landlocked country, made only possible by the same USAF we are saying can't reach what they can, as quickly or as far is a level of cool aide I have yet to be able to consume fully. if we are using Afghanistan as the reason for CVNs, I've got some terrible news. Korea and Syria at least have shores where rapid sortie generation matters since the distance is actually cut (not ADDED!) with being land locked
So we need the CVN for strike fighters, that can't carry as much as far. we need them for sortie generation, which is irrelevant when it comes to Heavy bombers, and nothing special compared to land based strike fighters. We need CVNs so we can be closer to the shore, even when there is no shore, and/or they can't get close. We need them for the unique class of fighters they don't yet have. What would we do without them? probably the same thing with other assets like we do now.
I would have great liked it if the USN had done some land based CVW's but I know that would never happen. (they do the occasion det on the beach I know) but not the whole CVW. That would be downright logical (imagine flying to strike targets in Iraq while taking off in Iraq. Or targets in Afghanistan while flying from bases in Afghanistan. But if that happened the light bulb would go on, not just for the navy but for their budget and their future carrier allocation. Besides, those CVN/CVW schedules are made years in advance, we can't interrupt that because of something so small as a war.