re: #249 lawhawk

Just because the Iranians got an UAV to take pictures of a carrier from a distance doesn’t mean that the Navy’s carriers are no longer useful (though if that’s indeed the case, then free up the tens of billions that are going to the next generation of carriers, and move to smaller surface combatants - but we all know that’s not going to happen).

There’s an adage popularly circulated by the US military to the effect “On a battlefield, if you can be seen you will be killed.” Carriers can’t be unseen, they’re giant radar-positive targets, billions of dollars and thousands of personnel requiring billions more dollars of escorts and thousands more personnel to (perhaps) keep them afloat in a real fight. However they’re also a rung on the promotion ladder the same way battleships were to a previous generation of flag officers so they’re not going to go away any time soon

There’s only been one real shooting war between navies with approximately equal capabilities since WWII, the Falklands War. The result was that virtually no surface ships engaged each other and the greatest single loss was down to a submarine, HMS Conqueror which had a shooting solution on the Belgrano for over 24 hours before permission to fire was given by the civilians in charge in London. After that the Royal Navy, probably the top experts in anti-submarine warfare on the planet at the time barely managed to keep a single obsolete diesel Argentinian submarine from successfully attacking RN ships and never managed to press home a successful attack on it on the few occasions the could find it.

The British through-deck cruisers (aka Harrier carriers) were forced to stand off well to the east of the islands meaning the Harriers had long over-water flights to reach their area of operations over the islands but even then the carriers came under attack from air-launched Exocet anti-shipping missiles. Those missiles have gotten even better since then, in range and effectiveness. The carriers haven’t improved their survivability. Maybe a camouflage net would help…