Timmy C wrote:
The idea behind smaller carriers isn't about cost - it's survivability. One big deck is great for dollars-per-sortie, but it becomes an all-or-nothing proposition. At least with multiple carriers, the loss or disabling of one still leaves you with another deck and its planes. It's one thing to try to maximize the amount of sorties to ensure constant coverage over a target area when your opponent has no real ability to strike your carrier (i.e. the last thirty years), and quite another thing when you're up against a potential enemy that does have such an ability and you're wanting to complicate their targeting as much as possible.
That being said, that's just the logic behind it - I'm not 100% on board with it, as there are other measures one might take to improve the carrier's survivability.
Hi Timmy, I know that the idea is to distribute the airwings so that they are more survivable, but once the plan is implemented the usual squabbling about funding is likely to eventually reduce the number of these carriers so that they are of very limited utility.
For a start, are the vessels going to be big enough to operate Hawkeyes and the F-35C? If so, the cost saving is likely to be less than 2:1 in favour of the smaller carrier. Are they going to be nuclear powered? If not then either the vessels' operating range will be greatly reduced, or more oilers will need to be built and manned and provided with escorts to supply them.
The logistics of supplying more carriers with avgas, fuel oil, ordnance etc. is likely to lead to significantly greater costs than at present.
If the USN were able to secure the funding for a comprehensive enhancement of the carrier battlegroups, with escorts and logistics ships, including the cost of building at least twenty four carriers which are, at the bare minimum, 50 percent the size of a Nimitz, then this plan MGHT work.