The fighters that flew from Japan had very little endurance on station and were limited to bomber escort. The fighters that flew from south korea did most of the MiGCAP duities, and even they had limited time on station.

Sea Control loadout is for convoy operations, think of it as an escort carrier. Also changes to the airwing have no effect to my knolage on the loadout of LCACs and LCUs a Wasp can carry so it still can support landing operations with the LSDs they sail with. This is perfict for the small scale wars the US is fighting where we don't need a supercarrier's 90 plane airwing.

The Reason for the LHA and LHDs are to allow the US to send troops anywhere it the world. With out them we would be limited to a handfull of LSDs which would need to sail with a carrier group for airdefense and the US Army Airborne. The Falklands showed that having a limited number of carriers is a very bad thing. The LHA and LHD's flight deck is a kind of "Safety net" if a CVN is sunk we still have fight decks at sea that can launch fighters otherwise if the CVN is sunk and there are no other flight decks in the AO losing the conflict before another carrier can enter the area becomes a very real possablity. If the SKYHOOK system whent in to production having no LHA/LHDs wouldn't be that much of a problem since any container ship could be turned in to a ~60 plane VTOL carrier in a few days.

The reason the USMC needs fixed wing? Because their training is diffrent from the USN. They are trained to be CAS pilots where the USN is trained to be Strike pilots.

That's only half true. They did do fighter bomber work, stopping in Taegu IIRC (can't recall if it was coming or going). And still, aerial refueling makes this an academic argument anyway.

As for the "small wars", anything other than a Somalia Black Hawk down type scenario is going to require a real airwing for any sort of respectable sortie rate. Which doesn't neccessarily mean a full on CVN, but 20 VTOL airframes ain't gonna cut it.

Understood, I wasn't knocking LHAs for their assault capabilities. I think that is the ONLY thing they should be used for. Putting all of 8 VTOL airframes aboard and pretending it accomplishes anything is silly.

We are well on our way to having a small amount of carriers, and I don't believe LHAs are worthy "substitute carriers". What do you mean by Skyhook, what I can find mentions C-130s trapping on carriers. Any links?

I don't buy this at all. The USAF does both. And the USN certainly did both in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the Marines do it so well, they can teach it.

PD

I'm not entirely surprised that it's been delayed. It's the most hi-tech and up-to-date aircraft that will soon be in military circulation. However, the downside of the delay and the use of "soon" by the military means more of our tax money being used up and "soon" being changed to "two years from now".

The USAF would rather be rid of its CAS responsibilities. Congress had to threaten allowing the Army to buy the A-10 to get them to purchase the aircraft.

The Marines, on the other hand, prefer to have air support under the same command umbrella as the troops requiring the support, and any examination of communication snafus from WWII onward will show you exactly why.

I doubt that. Key West in 1948 gave USAF a HUGE advantage funding wise. They may not think CAS is as **** hot fighter pilot worthy as shootin' down bandits, but they damn well understand that letting the Army do CAS with fixed wings would have put a serious dent in their R&D/procurement funding. And if there is one thing our military is good at, it is snagging funding.

As for the Marines preferring their own service aircraft to be doing their own CAS, tough cookies. The vast amount of CAS given to Marines in OIF/OEF just had to be USN/USAF due to sheer statistics.

PD

No not the "Fulton Skyhook" like in Thunderball. :lol: But the Skyhook in this case is just a crazy and looks like something out of a movie. Basicly you put a cargo container on a ship that has a crane and another with a launchpad and Harrier. The crane grabs the Harrier and hangs it over the side for vert launch (or uses a skijump for takeoff). Reverse it for landing- harrier hovers and is grabbed by the crane kind of like in USAF aerial refueling. The idea was that anything could be turned in to a carrier of some sort, from a frigate with 4 or so harriers to a container ship with 40 or more even a submarine! (Can you say Ohio SSGN with an couple of fighter squadrons?! :rock: ) There would even be dedicated Skyhook carriers with a dozen or so for convoy escort. The idea what real hot $h!t for a while in the late 80's but it quickly faded away.

http://home.planet.nl/~alder010/Future/Future.html
http://warships1discussionboards.yuk...r-Carrier.html

I agree with their rationale. We'll leave it at that.:)