[Evoncalabbalo]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
You missing my point, Lonestar.

While carriers were nice to have vs. the Soviet thread and in Desert Storm, those are past situations. I'm looking into the future. And while I'm sure we will need some carriers in the future, IMHO we won't need as many.

I haven crunched the numbers, but I'll be we could cut the number of our carriers by 2/3 and still whip the bejesus out of any other navy in the world. So, did you actually read my post?

(2) When and If the United States(and France, and the UK) need to exert influence on a country that either [A] is relatively isolated or [b.] the neighbors are *******s and won't let us fly out of their country, carriers come into their own. There is also [c] strategic flexability.

For (2a) for the first month or so of operations in Afghanistan, it was a Carrier/longrange bomber show. If, say, Indonesia were to fall apart it would be a Carrier show. When the Tsunami hit it was the 2 American carriers and one LHD, as well as the French Helo Carrier that provided most of the immediate relief. We even stayed on station because there were not any facilities on shore for sufficient stuff to be airlift in. This was repeated when Pakistan had that big earthquake.

For (2b) it's very obvious, one only has to look at the kick off of OIF(or Desert Storm, for that matter), where you had half a dozen American CVNs and 2 CVs providing a huge amount of aerial firepower...otherwise most would have to be flown in from Qatar, the States, of Diego Garcia. This is not including the RN CVL on station, or the half a dozen LHDs/LHAs.

For (2c), a Carrier provides us with great flexibility. It allows us to pretty much wipe the florr with any navy out there. If, for some reason, we can't fly into a country following certain flightpaths(say, Greece blocks us bombing Serbia) a carrier or two can mitigate that. This isn't long ago stuff. During the run up to OIF we had 3/4 of our Carriers in CENTCOM. Do you think they were there "just because"? How about the 4 Carriers (not including the LHDs, the French CVN, and the Italian and RN CVLs) at the start of OEF? This isn't out of date tactics, they were there because their utility is such that they can provided direct, very tangible support to a campaign going on even in a landlocked country. A mobile airbase is extrmely valuable, the USAF having lost the argument against carriers rather spectacularly in Korea.

How about the carriers and LHDs that provided support post-tsunami in Sumatra? We were able to, easily, provide support because we had other CVNs that we could dispatch to the normal trouble spots. Cutting 2/3s would destroy that ability. Keeping double-digit carriers in service allow us to cover multiple trouble spots, it's what allows us to have 2 carriers in the Gulf of Oman while another is in Northeast Asia, and a fourth is out on an "exercise" off the coast of Venezuela.