Carriers are such hugely expensive outdated pieces of technology too. I really don't know why the UK built them, especially since UK conservatives are the one conservative party in the world who hates spending money on the military.
The US and Britain are also trying to find the thing in 100s if not 1000s? of feet of water before the Russians do. Good spot for a crash
In a peer to peer conflict they're sitting ducks for hypersonic cruise missiles or hyper glide ballistic missiles and modern surveillance techniques mean that even with radio blackout they're very easy to locate. And modern coastal defense cruise missiles have longer ranges than carrier aircraft. So while nothing has "replaced" them, they're not all that useful against Russia or China Edit to add the UK ones make even less sense since they're conventionally powered and so not all that useful for global force projection like the UK likes to claim they are
Rambling rant incoming- I may be totally wrong about all of this but whatever The whole F-35 program is such a boondoggle. F-22 was too expensive so they made the F-35 as a cheaper, less capable but still pretty good, alternative. We pump tons of cash into the program and other nations jump in thinking this will be the 5th gen fighter for the people. Program hits a few snags and needs more cash. Hits more snags = more cash repeat repeat repeat. At some point the costs balloon way past F-22 costs but at this point we're all so time and pot committed that we can't/won't turn back. To help counter the sunk cost they expand the functions and battle field role of the F-35 and triple down on it. End product is a mutant piece of crap that is so expensive and fragile we can't do shit with it. Praying they get the F-35 figured out at some point because if it doesn't we are so screwed. Praying the B-21 is legit and they can hit the production timelines. Praying the advanced drone programs are real and producing viable products. Praying our hypersonic missile program stops having massive failures and can get in the game ASAP. Praying this 6th gen fighter program is as far along as reports are saying it is (already flown the first test aircraft). Really pessimistic about the arms race with China right now...
my understanding was that, yes, they are vulnerable and risky as you get closer to the Chinese mainland but that China in particular has no counter to our carriers in the rest of the world, which are their trade lifelines
True no one can compete in the open ocean but if we can’t get near the mainland that leaves Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and SE Asia on their own. Yeah we have stealth bombers but they aren’t as stealthy as they used to be. A fight with China would be a missiles and submarines war IMO.
Agree 100%. China has literally built models of US carriers in the desert on tracks to practice their missiles on. They know exactly what we'll send their way when it goes down and they are prepared for it. Even if we have near perfect missile defense for the carriers we can't defend against the number they will throw at them. Sadly carriers are cannon fodder in a war with China anywhere within the first island chain and likely the second as well. Nuclear powered carriers are perfect for almost every other type of conflict but near peer they have to hide.
Yea China's two current carriers are recycled russian junk....BUT their plans for domestic type 3 are basic copies of ford class and scheduled for 2022 launch. Going to be interesting to see how capable they are. Classic Chinese strategy of steal/copy vs innovate themselves. Their sub force is rapidly growing as well which is a legit threat. Just re-read my posts in this thread- can you tell I think war with China is likely in next 10-15 years?
I don’t think there will ever be a war but China is going to bully their way around SE Asia for the foreseeable future.
I posted this elsewhere but this is what happens when you spend 20 years rebuilding your force to use a 50 million dollar platform to drop a 10 thousand dollar bomb on a 500 dollar motorcycle and base any new tech on that goal, while your peers spend it closing the tech gap.
Yeah but this discounts some of the emerging air launched weapons we have that would be used in a naval battle. NAVAIR has a competition currently called OASuW to field the next anti ship weapon. Not carrier based, but USAF has a big program coming next year called Maritime Strike Weapon that will choose their replacement for LRASM and be their new anti-ship weapon. HAWC just had a successful flight test so maybe someday we’ll actually field a hypersonic weapon too. I don’t think DDGs lobbing tomahawks is the look the modern navy is going for.
Sailor arrested after F-35 aircraft carrier crash video leak By George Allison - December 7, 2021 4 Share EXCLUSIVE – A credible source, wishing to remain unnamed, has confirmed that an arrest has been made in connection with the leaked footage of an F-35 crashing on take off from HMS Queen Elizabeth. A male member of crew has been arrested and has now been flown back to the UK. “I have had it confirmed that the arrested male is a member of HMS Queen Elizabeth ships company.” I have contacted the Ministry of Defence for comment and will update this article if/when I get it. Earlier in the month, footage emerged showing an F-35 jet crashing into the sea on takeoff from aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. The video was, of course, recorded surreptitiously and disseminated outwith the ship without permission.
On a pure aesthetic level you can’t beat the old Soviet football-field sized early warning radars, but on a tech level it’s so neat that you can “turn” a radar without any moving parts.
When I was still in we had a group from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory go underway with us. I don't know anything about SPY 6 but in talking to them they were looking at a modular system for the arrays that you could customize for different missions and each array would have its own transmitter group.
There is no group in the medium sized dod contracting wolrd that sniffs their own farts more than APL. Maaaybe MIT Lincoln Labs.
Those are huge entities or a part of a huge entity at least. Different breed. You guys on the active duty side don’t see the APL’s of the world usually, unless you’re a flag officer at a PEO or something.
another f-35 crash https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...a-forces-pilot-to-eject-injures-seven-sailors
Sounds like they won’t have to pull this one off the sea bed this time luckily. Edit: seems it’s still unclear as to if we are going to have to recover it. Really not a great area to lose another F35
Looks like it went into the water. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...ring-f-35c-that-fell-into-the-south-china-sea
The plane being able to fill a bunch of roles was the idea from the start. Lockheed beat out Boeing in large part because theirs was better at vertical takeoff and landing
The Virginia Class is pretty good. And after 40 years the Bradley is pretty decent. But yeah the F35, LCS, Zumwalt, new aerial tanker, Global Hawk…..