Aircraft Carriers

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: Vikas
So, I was wrong about the year but didn't 7th fleet start moving once the war broke out and by the time it reached near the conflict zone, it was already over? OR you are saying that the war started because the fleet started moving? Would you agree that force projection did NOT work at least at that time?


I am saying "none of the above"

War broke out. The US decided not to respond until after several months.

7th fleet, coming from Japan (home port) would take less than two weeks if in a hurry to get there.

Force projection can only work IF you decide to act.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Astro14
Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: Bandito440

If you think that's the majority of officers, you've spent too much time on the Internet reading sensationalist headlines. Try interacting with some actual people. Our military is staffed with highly professional and intelligent leaders.

I do better than that. I speak to a special forces gentleman a couple times a week. He Wes in Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. He would certainly disagree with you. I have been to that facility many times doing research. So from nameless internet surfer to another. Have a great day


So, with no first hand knowledge, no military service of your own, you condemn the entire officer corps?

Ever occur to you that your one source of information, your "special forces gentleman" might be a blowhard? A fake? That his experience is anecdotal, or colored by bitterness?

From the ridiculous, bombastic, uninformed hyperbole that you've repeated here, I doubt his credibility.

I see your "gentleman" and I raise:

30 years commissioned service, active and reserve. Personal experience in the US Navy, with the USAF, the USMC, and with NATO. Two combat deployments as a fighter pilot. Several command and leadership positions. Overseas assignments.

I've seen outstanding, dedicated officers. Genuine, caring, intelligent and bold leaders. A few flakes here and there, as in any group, but far, far fewer than in civilian life.

You should stop putting so much credence in the opinion of your oddball "gentleman"...


+1, I daily interact with O-5 to O-8 billet officers, and it is absolutely the case that they are some of the finest and smartest people you'll ever encounter, anywhere. Interface with NR (Rickover's) folks and its another level too!

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: Bandito440
Eichmann was tried because of war crimes.
Try this question: Would he have been tried for war crimes if he was a Colonel in the Wehrmacht and didn't participate in executing civilians?
[/quote]
As others have said to your logic..."wow"!!!
Do you not understand the WINNERS tried these war criminals? Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.

 

[Jetronic]

the winners protected some war criminals from prosecution aswell

 

[Mr Nice]

JHZR2,

What did you do in the military (branch / career field) ?

 

[Bandito440]

Originally Posted By: Al
Do you not understand the WINNERS tried these war criminals? Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.

Do you want to read about Eichmann's trial before you continue?

Your understanding of history is on par with your understanding of logic, reasoning, and international law.

You've been spouting logical fallacies and moving the goalposts consistently throughout this conversation.

 

[Nickdfresh]

Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: Jarlaxle
Blanket every square inch of the country with nerve gas, while obliterating every large city and troop concentration with nuclear weapons.

That strategy would have saved 50,000 of our men in Nam. ...


We have a problem dealing with large pools of enemy manpower while maintaining deterrence in Europe at the same time. You think we should have nuked and used chems in Vietnam? Grow up! Our allies were the South Vietnamese and you think they wanted us to destroy their country to save them? Really? Some wanted to avoid the idiotic war-of-attrition that we fought there precisely because we could not kill our way out of the war. I don't think we should ever have committed ground troops, but murdering the country in a nuclear apocalypse would have led to the end of all...

As for carriers, it's not an easy question. They are certainly vulnerable to "Sunburn" hypersonic anti-ship missiles but the Navy has also stated recently that they have everything data-linked now so that the F-35 will be able to control cruise missiles and work in tandem with them as if they carried them to begin with. Carriers are not "white elephants". Not yet. But China's strategy of "area denial" may indeed be costly if we ever do go to war...

 

[Nickdfresh]

Originally Posted By: Jetronic
the winners protected some war criminals from prosecution aswell

Relatively few Nazis were actually executed or even prosecuted in relation to the staggering numbers of atrocities committed. Only a few junior officers were jailed or executed. Certainly the Western Allies were not innocent. But the main German planning for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, was essentially a premeditated war crime because it was predicated on not only killing captured Jews and communists, it meant systematically starving the country to death and killing nearly all POW's taken for it to work...

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: Bandito440


You've been spouting logical fallacies and moving the goalposts consistently throughout this conversation.

Germany lost..Eichman was tried in Israel.. Had Germany won. The Nazis would have been in control. Israel would not have existed. Eichman would not have fled Germany.
Do you believe the Nazis would have tried him (one of their own) in Germany (remembering..now this is a tough one) He still would have been one of them and the Nazi's won?

Remember history would have been different had the Nazis won. Perhaps someone else can straighten one of us out. Have a great weekend..I'm done. I'll let others carry on.

Originally Posted By: Nickdfresh
You think we should have nuked and used chems in Vietnam? Grow up! Our allies were the South Vietnamese and you think they wanted us to destroy their country to save them? Really? .

I actually said that? Wait..I didn't. I said we didn't fight to win. Many targets were off limits in NVietnam..perhaps you didn't know that?

Originally Posted By: Nickdfresh

The "winners" also tried their own war criminals. .

Duh..the subject was that losers (Nazis) didn't try their own. Perhaps you were not following that train of thought

 

[Nickdfresh]

Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: Bandito440
Eichmann was tried because of war crimes.
Try this question: Would he have been tried for war crimes if he was a Colonel in the Wehrmacht and didn't participate in executing civilians?

As others have said to your logic..."wow"!!!
Do you not understand the WINNERS tried these war criminals? Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.


The "winners" also tried their own war criminals. Not on a wide scale, but solders that murdered Italian and German POWs were tried (secretly) and were given lenient sentences. In any case, please tell us which Allied commanders should have been tried for "war crimes" like the Holocaust or the systematic reprisal murders conducted. Or the mass starvation of 4.5 million of six-million total Soviet POWs taken by the Germans. Where is the Allied equivalent of the Rape of Nanjing and of the Japanese atrocities in China?

Try reading a little before spouting off with school boy cliches...

 

[Nickdfresh]

Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: Bandito440


You've been spouting logical fallacies and moving the goalposts consistently throughout this conversation.

Germany lost..Eichman was tried in Israel.. Had Germany won. The Nazis would have been in control. Israel would not have existed. Eichman would not have fled Germany.
Do you believe the Nazis would have tried him (one of their own) in Germany (remembering..now this is a tough one) He still would have been one of them and the Nazi's won?

Remember history would have been different had the Nazis won. Perhaps someone else can straighten one of us out. Have a great weekend..I'm done. I'll let others carry on.

Originally Posted By: Nickdfresh
You think we should have nuked and used chems in Vietnam? Grow up! Our allies were the South Vietnamese and you think they wanted us to destroy their country to save them? Really? .

I actually said that? Wait..I didn't. I said we didn't fight to win. Many targets were off limits in NVietnam..perhaps you didn't know that?


You said something about saving 50,000 (58K actually) Americans in response affirmatively to using nukes.

Yes, I'm aware that some targets were off limits. Perhaps you're not aware that we dropped more bombs in Vietnam than we did in all of WWII. It's a bit silly to use industrialized weapons like bombers against an agrarian society and expect to win. There were alternatives, such as not sending in ground troops and making an accord. Or using the strategy of pacification and "clear-and-hold" after sending in infantry. But this isn't thread on Vietnam. Or WWII for that matter...

So I'll desist...

 

[Bandito440]

Al,

Eichmann was tried because of his war crimes. The outcome of the war allowed for the trial, but was not the cause of it. You don't seem to understand basic cause and effect, and your logic allows for monsters like him to avoid personal responsibility.

 

[dave1251]

Back to topic. Surface combatants have their place. There would be several limitations and liabilities not discussed to relying on only drone and tomahawk strikes.

One is high value targets especially mobile targets need to be neutralized quickly and near real time in relation to the intelligence gathered of where they are at. Because leaving your best offensive and defensive weapons(rather be human or mechanical) static for any extended period of time is very poor strategic policy and even enemies with very poor logistical support do not utilize.

Another even surface action groups have only a fraction of the power projection of carrier air strike wing. The ability to strike is also for a very finite period of time because from experience to rearm a DDG with a typical armament of TLAMS is a very long process in a combat situation and the process of actually providing them on station is even more resource and time consuming.

I remember invading Iraq and against a regional military power the thousands of TLAM strikes over a period of days was not nearly adequate to subdue their command and control structure. I remember looking up at the night sky in the Persian Gulf and you could not see a star because of all the "birds away" and this was not enough. Imagine what even a two fold strike against against a much larger emerging global power how ineffective this would be.

In short relying on only "remote" strike weapons would not be adequate and the capability just does not match up.

 

[HM12460]

Interesting thread. I don't know how anyone could have stated the need for Aircraft Carrier battle group's better than Astro 14 did. The time I spent on active duty onboard DD-963/CG-47 class platforms was very rewarding.

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: HM12460
Interesting thread. I don't know how anyone could have stated the need for Aircraft Carrier battle group's better than Astro 14 did. The time I spent on active duty onboard DD-963/CG-47 class platforms was very rewarding.

You need the battle group to protect and tend the white elephant

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: HM12460
Interesting thread. I don't know how anyone could have stated the need for Aircraft Carrier battle group's better than Astro 14 did. The time I spent on active duty onboard DD-963/CG-47 class platforms was very rewarding.

You need the battle group to protect and tend the white elephant

Right... Because thats all that destroyers and cruisers do...

 

[dave1251]

Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: HM12460
Interesting thread. I don't know how anyone could have stated the need for Aircraft Carrier battle group's better than Astro 14 did. The time I spent on active duty onboard DD-963/CG-47 class platforms was very rewarding.

You need the battle group to protect and tend the white elephant

Al it was given to you. Not one ship Navy's arsenal has the strike capability of a Aircraft carrier. Unless the people want to pay for another 150 Arleigh Burk/Zumwalt platforms. If people want to go this route this will cost a lot more than 10 aircraft carriers.

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: dave1251

Al it was given to you. Not one ship Navy's arsenal has the strike capability of a Aircraft carrier. Unless the people want to pay for another 150 Arleigh Burk/Zumwalt platforms. If people want to go this route this will cost a lot more than 10 aircraft carriers.

Anything that can carry a Tomahawk or Cruise Missile...Destroyers, Cruisers, B52s, Fast Attack Subs, can perform the role of attack aircraft.

 

[dave1251]

Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: dave1251

Al it was given to you. Not one ship Navy's arsenal has the strike capability of a Aircraft carrier. Unless the people want to pay for another 150 Arleigh Burk/Zumwalt platforms. If people want to go this route this will cost a lot more than 10 aircraft carriers.

Anything that can carry a Tomahawk or Cruise Missile...Destroyers, Cruisers, B52s, Fast Attack Subs, can perform the role of attack aircraft.


B52's are out. USAF has less than 300 conventional cruise missiles in inventory and they can not be on station 24/7 and even figuring outfitting them B-1's there is not enough aircraft. OKAY go the sub route. The US only needs about 200 more to equal 10 carrier strike wings and to rearm them it will only cost 200 million each boat after one complete sortie. Not to mention the downtime to rearm just one ship/boat. Ammo on-load's for birds is not a few hour evolution. Again higher cost less efficient and not nearly as effective.

The US has tried to render the Aircraft Carrier obsolete since the end of the Second World War. Commanders would love a cheaper and less manpower intensive alternative. The problem is there is not a cheaper combination or single alternative in either terms of money or manpower or ease to defend.

There are reports of about 3,800 conventional strike cruse missiles in the U.S. inventory. It would not take long to deplete this inventory if the US relied only on cruise missile strikes. This would take about a week against a prepared force like North Korea.

 

[Jarlaxle]

They go much further with the correct warheads.