Have you looked at the price of a barrel of oil lately?

Or the state of the Russian stock market.

I could say the same of you,

No you could not.

In war you fight to win, and if you put your forces at a disadvantage compared to your opponents, then you have as good as lost before the fighting starts. In Naval Warfare, a Navy with carriers has always historically prevailled over one that has none. To go into battle without organic air cover is suicidal. Yet you seem to imly air cover is an optional extravagence, and anything short of a Nimitz not worth bothering with? And yet… history says otherwise. The best is always the enemy of good enough, and good enough is infinitely preferrable to nothing at all.

This is the root of your ignorance. You believe that war, and thus navies are a constant. But they are not. They are always the unique product of unique circumstance. You have no understanding of this and this why you think aircraft carriers are a vital component of every fleet. Should Finland have a carrier? Should Sweden? Is the German navy a waste of space because it does not have a carrier? Chile must be heart broken that its potent fleet of frigates and submarines is useless without a carrier. And I suppose China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea should just scrap their fleets too?:rolleyes: You will actually find that surface ships, if correctly designed and equipped and not disproportionally subject to clausewitzian friction, are perfectly capable of defending themselves. Indeed Royal Navy cold war studies found the Sea Dart system to be more effective than the Phantom. The addition of aircraft simply provides an extended air defence or attack capability. The limited A2A capability of a skyhawk rather suggests that it was not a good choice for a fleet defence fighter.

Airpower is an optional extravagance unless it can be doctrinally justified and that doctrine is the product of foreign policy objectives. The point being perfectly made by the evolution of the Invincible class since its commissioning. The class start as sea control assets whose purpose is to provide a platform for ASW helicopters and a limited compliment of fleet defence fighters in an environment that will be dense with ocean going opposing assets armed with missiles. It has now evolved into a class of dedicated attack carriers at the sacrifice of the previous capabilities. USN carriers have made a similar transition although to different approaches (brought about by different economic circumstances) the change is most pronounced in the air wings rather than the actual ships. Now the UK is building the CVF’s with exactly the same role in mind.

Australia, as with all countries is a unique case. It faces no conventional opponent, either directly to its homeland or indirectly to its shipping. Thus at the moment it has not need to a carrier fleet. However much as the UK has it it has decided to pursue a policy of liberal interventionism and is thus building a fleet for power projection operations. Due to its geographical location Australia’s doctrine and foreign policy requirements were not that different during the cold war although its decision to cooperate with the western powers did produce some focus on conventional operations in the pacific.

You criticize the idea of a single Essex taking the place of Melbourne and Sydney because the number of platforms is halved, but the Australian Government had already decided to reduce the number of platforms to just one in the 70s,

So now you plan to procure a much more expensive to maintain and man carrier than the existing one platform, make up your mind. Which ever way one looks at it the procurement of an essex class for Australia is a bad idea, which is why it never happened.

so exchanging Melbourne for the notional Essex allows the capability Sydney brought to be retained within the fleet. Fixed wing carriers often re roled to transport status when required without specialist facilities. An Essex in RAN service with a small air group would have plenty of space aboard to devote to the troop facilities Sydney had, and such a ship would be demonstrably much more valuable from a political POV. This could have strengthened the case for aquiring a replacement vessel, akin to the Canberra class vessels on the table now.

Except as you have already pointed out one of those platforms has already been sacrificed, so where is the money and manpower going to come from for an Essex.

If you wish to send personal abuse please do so by PM, if you wish to rebutt arguments then please do so by presenting a coherent counter argument.

No personal abuse at all, it is just apparent that you are remarkably lacking in understanding on this subject. To help you I would advise that you read

The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by Alfred Thayer Mahan

and

Some Principles of Maritime Strategy by Julian S Corbett

They are the key texts for anybody wishing to understand military sea power.

So, why does the USN operate a huge amphibious fleets thats main purpose is to operate within the littorals??? Sorry, with all do respect……….you lost me here???:o

USMC and Sea based transport.

[QUOTE=StevoJH;1331847][QUOTE=sealordlawrence;1331719]

An essex is a much larger ship then a Majestic class carrier and would give a much greater capability. In the 1960’s Sydney was basicly operating as a commando carrier transporting troops back and forth from Vietnam.

Not if you only buy one of them to replace two platforms as the poster suggested.

Not more then a PAIR of Majestics, each of which had over 1000 crew before you even count the people attached to the air group.

But two Majestics will provide far greater availability than one Essex.

The amazing thing is the USN has effectively turned their remaining Perry class in to colonial policing vessels.

Without their missile armament they are not really suitable for fleet opps any more.

The thing about the LCS program is they could have REALLY gone with an off the shelf foreign design that offers much the same performance at a much reduced cost.

They really wanted the speed, at the time there was nothing off the shelf that offered that.

The OHP changes are cost related.

but I am talkin about the cost of doing this to 2-4 hulls(only considering the thought if the UK had done it as well) and you must take into account the 400 from the OHP’s- because if you examine the numbers after the melbourne left, they were 1300 down on the numbers before it was retired- alot of people left due to air wing being disbanded, assests moved to air force, lose of prestige from no flagship, specialist jobs no longer needed etc etc. melbornes replacement would have been a massive outlay- only if a CTOL carrier was bought could anything be salvaged from the Melbourne- the A-4G becoming dedicated attack aircraft and a possible refurbishment of the S-2G’s. please dont mistake my logic as thinking this enterprise being carried out by australia alone.

It does not make any difference whether the UK is involved or not. Australia could not afford to man and run an Essex class. And stop creating people, you can not add the 400 men from the extra OHPs to the Melbourne crew. Your limit is the Melbourne crew and that would have been insufficient to run an Essex.

again you only pay attention to things said that can be used for your benefit. I said that if you take into condieration that if you take into the account the cost that was allocated to melbournes replacement, and the cost of two OHP’s, vs capability, makes it a possibility? who say that the ship would have kept her old boilers? if you add 1400 (melbornes crew) and the OHPs 400,
you have a respectable number. and our airwings were always modest.

Except your maths is flawed, the OHP’s were instead of the Melbourne, not with the Melbourne thus you can not add them together. The same applies to the replacement cost.

And what would the boilers have been replaced with? Do you have any idea how complex and expensive it is to install an entire new machinery architecture in an aging hull?

Your logic is fundamentally flawed and is revealed as such by the fact that the Essex class was rejected on the grounds of manpower requirements and maintenance costs alone on multiple occasions.