Yes.

They need to lease or buy more of these…

BUY!!!!

That’s because you probably didn’t speak proper English.

More likely because half the USAF personnel don’t speak English as a first language. Green card anybody? :diablo: :diablo: :diablo:

No, the SSBNs have their place as a second strike capability. The ICBMs pretty much belong to the Air Force anyways so they can stay.

Carriers are dead, dead, dead against anyone that can up submarines in the littoral or large numbers of coastal aviation. No carrier or even combinations of carriers can take out the coastal defense of China or France for example without incurring the possibility of a single loss ending in national tragedy. Can you imagine losing 5000 men on one ship to a lucky torpedo strike? Air force aircraft based on landbases from the UK, South Korea or Taiwan would present a far better risk-reward scenario.

Why would you want to attack France? :confused:

Nuclear Warhead on torpedo required to sink a carrier with 5000 dead. The CVN have double hulls making a normal heavy weight torpedo not so effective. 😉

Sub has to get in range to fire torpedoes and Carrier does tow decoys. 😉

Sinking a CVN is not as easy as you think. 😀

Of course, if your protecting your homeland, any risk-reward goes out the window. You fight to the death, at in the Far East, that is the case. Again, the carrier is fighting far away from home and those who are going after it are fighting for their homeland and families. The carrier is nothing but a big target that a halfway potent nation fighting at home would try to sink as a way to end the war quickly.

Sinking a CVN is not as easy as you think. It has a lot of little friends around it like Aegis cruisers, Spurance destroyers, Perry frigates and the odd sub or two that the attackers have to get past, after they have survived the CVBG air assets . 😀

Of course, there is blue ocean warfare. The carrier would reign supreme, having a longer reach than any surface ship borne weapon/sensor combination.

But there is NO other blue water navy in the world that isn’t a NATO country. The carrier is a white elephant in search of a mouse to stomp. If it stomps too near the mudhuts of 300 angry natives, someone is going to throw a spear that might pierce an eye.

Its more likely to be doing a mercy mission than trying to stomp them (Indonesia anybody) how to make friends and influence people the easy way.

Hitler didn’t bother the US did he? Charles Lindhberg — and many other Americans beside — was rather peeved that Roosevelt decided to interfere in Germany’s war with the UK.

Roosevelt was supporting the democracy against the dictator, on the assumption that the British and French would hold the line and stop the US from having to jump in (plus make some cash for the USA out of it). French gave in, and he supported the British with Lend Lease (after bleeding us dry in gold reserves and basing rights on some of our islands)). Lend Lease we are still paying for till the end of this year if memory serves. 😮

In fact GERMANY DECLARED WAR ON THE USA, IN SUPPORT OF THE JAPS, not the other way around. :p

But without the carriers, the Japanese would never have bombed Pearl Harbor

No, they would have attacked the Philippines instead, (which happen to be a US protectorate, hence USA would have been in WWII anyway). :p

and the Germans would have taken care of the USSR and we would never have had the Cold War or godless commies.

Oh dear, not from the American mid west are we??? :rolleyes:

Actually, American speculators are gunho about Chinese carriers. I haven’t heard a word from China that they are gunho about carriers. If they are then they are doing the US a favor because a carrier is dead, dead, dead in the Taiwan Strait. By the way, the only Chinese carriers around are floating museums and casinos.

A carrier cowing people is pretty much a western conceit. Wow, we can scare these natives into behaving better with our big ships. Sorry, I don’t think world works that way. It actually causes anger and backlash. Think about it, if a Chinese or Russian carrier parks off New Jersey or New York would the locals be “cowed” into behaving better or they would be p1ssed off?

When was the last time an amphibious assault was actually necessary? The Air Force clears everything out of the way first. Take Gulf War I, the US Navy got lucky and shot down a couple of MiG-21s while two Hornets on a strike mission were enroute to target. Barely a sniff of opposing aircraft for the Navy and Marine airwings afterwards.

FALKLANDS 1982, and the USAF didn’t play (and in fact OUR carrier aircraft WON!!!! against a much larger land based air force) 😎 . US NAVY AND USMC aircraft were not allowed by the USAF ROE to engage anything in the Gulf due to identification system problems. 😮

A couple of USN Tomcats were denied an engagement so that a RSAF F-15 could get a kill or two (though the USAF say that is not so) . 😡

Remember the “Revolt of the Admirals in the 1950s?” The DoD came very close to taking away the carriers and reducing the Marines to ship police. Give it to the Air Force. They deserve it. What the heck are grunts doing with fighter jets anyways?

Revolt of the Admirals :diablo: , give them their due, stood up and told the congress and the Truman administration that the USAF were talking sh*t 😉 . That’s why the USN still has carriers after the Korean war proved that the Admirals were right. As for the grunts, had the US followed their war plans, You would have won Vietnam (THE USMC small wars manual was used by the British in Op Firedog and we won that one.) 🙂

Plus having met a few USMC, US Army and a lot of USAF guys on a certain operation that started in March 2003, I’d rate the USMC the best of the US forces by a long shot (they took the time to learn something about their allies (Every USMC guy on Force Protection duties called me by my correct rank and that I do appreciate :cool:, unlike all of the USAF muppets who called my sir, even when the guy out ranked me, One USAF Peasant even thought I was FRENCH!!!! 😡 (With a UJ on my desert combats??? :confused: )).

swedish airforce…
now as the bear is on severe hangover, they have (again!) discovered that we finns can do all the work for them…first they lured us to combinate our sea controll networks and talks allready begun about airdefence as well…so it wont take much brains to figure out what the direction would be :dev2:
(and to avoid anything to flame up, this is just joking)

Did the Swedes not help you in the 1940 winter war against the Soviets?

You can just make out the designator pod on the hardpoint between the engine pylons in this pic.

The between engines pylons on B-52 G/H were originally designed to carry pods fitted with forward firing Chaff dispensing rockets. Cannot remember the pod designation however. The AIM-120 fit would have been on the main pylons with Tacit Rainbow on a rotary launcher (layout is shown in a Detail and Scale book on the BUFF), much in line with Dale Brown’s ‘Old Dog’ Megafortress (I think its were he most likely got the idea from).

Wait, Ireland has an airforce??? :confused:

Its the Irish Air Corps actually and they do have aircraft that can shoot at things, abet piston powered light trainers and PC-9’s armed with machine guns and unguided rocket pods.

Well, apart from interdiction, CAS, interception, CAP, if you consider maritime surveillance, ASW, border control, fight against smuggling and terrorism as Air Force’s missions (some countries divide these missions along AF and Navy, but that is rather a political and a little bit military choice), even Ireland and NZ require Air Forces, I think.

[ignorant][superficial]But I think that Nepal is one of those countries which needs an Air Force least. Who would want to attack a country on the roof of mother earth from air anyway? :)[/superficial][/ignorant]

I think you will find that the Royal Nepal Army Air Wing is quite busy at the minute fighting Maoists insurgents.