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Sidewinder wrote:

Isolder74 wrote:The moment that aircraft advanced to the point of being able to carry weapons that could destroy a battleship they made the battleship obsolete.

That is NOT the reason battleships are considered obsolete. Weather conditions can still prevent a carrier from launching aircraft, denying friendly forces air support. A battleship remains a useful bombardment platform in these conditions, and can lob shells at significantly lower cost than launching a fighter-bomber loaded with air-to-surface munitions. But if all you want is a mobile gun platform to provide artillery support to marines and amphibious forces, a destroyer w/ a 5-inch gun will suffice in most situations, w/ significantly lower operating costs than a battleship.

So other then bad weather, where the Battleship's fighting ability is also severely limited, the Carrier still wins. In almost every condition that the Carriers can't fight the Battleships won't be either, other then fog. The Carrier outpacing the Battleship is because it now gives the fleets that have them a massive strategic advantage, range. Even in the age of WWII with the dive bombers the carrier can do shore bombardment too. Nearly every job the Battleship can do the Carrier can too.

The only main drawback, the Carrier is only as good as the pilots. Conversely the Battleship is only as good as the gunners.

Isolder74 wrote:So other then bad weather, where the Battleship's fighting ability is also severely limited, the Carrier still wins. In almost every condition that the Carriers can't fight the Battleships won't be either, other then fog.

I doubt fog is a problem for modern carriers; they all have an ILS/autoland system for low visibility and rough seas. It was undoubtadly more of a limitation in the early days. However even on a Nimitz, aircraft launch and recovery is only practical up to about 5m wave height; smaller carriers would be less stable. Stabilised battleship guns can fire with almost full accuracy in these conditions, and accuracy degrades gradually at higher sea states. Of course wave heights above 5m are fairly rare, and the range of the aircraft may give the carrier the option to just stand off outside the worst of the weather system.

A carrier's projection abilities are the real killer: in almost any situation, the CVBG will detect first and dictate terms of the engagement against a surface action group without carriers of their own.

I got my hands on "Jane's Fleet Command" recently. 10 years old but nonetheless entertaining.

Relevant point being, Carrier battlegroups dominate surface combat by, apart from the Recon aspect, being able to bring along aircraft capable of firing anti-ship missiles. One thing that surprised me in "Fleet Command" is that the only aircraft firing Harpoons are the S-3 Vikings, whereas I read elsewhere that they can be carried by F-18s. Then again, the game was set in the nineties.

If each F-18 can carry at least two Harpoons, with seven suitable hard points (4 under wings, 3 under Fuselage), and said carrier is carrying a complement of 48 Hornets (assuming 12x aircraft per squadron, 2x squadrons of Hornets, 2x of Superhornets), that makes 96 Harpoons. That's a significant amount of anti-ship firepower, for a very conservative estimate. How many more depends on loadout. Confirmation (or correction) of these numbers from someone more familiar with USN doctrine and procedures would be welcome.

PeZook wrote:A carrier's projection abilities are the real killer: in almost any situation, the CVBG will detect first and dictate terms of the engagement against a surface action group without carriers of their own.

In theory, I would expect satellite-based surveillance radar (e.g. RORSAT in the cold war era, maybe Lacrosse today) to make detection range of enemy battlegroups a moot point. In practice, I don't think any country deployed enough coverage to make this reliable.

Juubi Karakuchi wrote:I got my hands on "Jane's Fleet Command" recently. 10 years old but nonetheless entertaining.

Relevant point being, Carrier battlegroups dominate surface combat by, apart from the Recon aspect, being able to bring along aircraft capable of firing anti-ship missiles. One thing that surprised me in "Fleet Command" is that the only aircraft firing Harpoons are the S-3 Vikings, whereas I read elsewhere that they can be carried by F-18s. Then again, the game was set in the nineties.

The F/A-18, A-6 and S-3 could carry Harpoon at the time. Just as importantly the F/A-18, A-6 and EA-6 can all fire HARM anti radar missiles at ships too. F-14 could never carry Harpoon, but IIRC it could use the SLAM missile which is a land attack version of Harpoon (IR rather then radar guidance, wings for longer range in some versions) you could also still shoot at a ship if you really wanted. Also if the enemy doesn't have really long range SAMs (most ships can't shoot more then 25-50 miles) then other precision guided weapons could also be used against ships.

If each F-18 can carry at least two Harpoons, with seven suitable hard points (4 under wings, 3 under Fuselage), and said carrier is carrying a complement of 48 Hornets (assuming 12x aircraft per squadron, 2x squadrons of Hornets, 2x of Superhornets), that makes 96 Harpoons. That's a significant amount of anti-ship firepower, for a very conservative estimate. How many more depends on loadout. Confirmation (or correction) of these numbers from someone more familiar with USN doctrine and procedures would be welcome.

An F/A-18 (any model including the bigger E/F) on paper can haul four Harpoons, one on each of the inner four wing hard points. In practice though the need to carry drop tanks will mean a load of more then two is very unlikely. The A-6 could haul four of them easily, and had enough range that it didn’t always need wing tanks, but it’s gone from service now. S-3 is limited to two missiles but its gone now too. HARM capability for F/A-18 is the same story, you could have four but two is far more realistic. EA-6 could carry four, but that’d mean it was only carrying one jamming pod, unlikely, two jamming pods, two HARMs are much more likely, with a drop tank on the centerline.

The USN is also now getting the EF-18G electronic warfare version of Hornet. It has no internal gun, but otherwise retains all the weapons capabilities of a normal F/A-18E/F model. Dedicated jamming planes on the carrier will make life hell for an enemy surface force that can't send out fighters to drive them off or shoot them down.

Gary Brecher has a funny thing about F/A-18 as well, likely because it is "tainted" in his mind because of its integral association to those dreaded Nimitz-class carriers.

Sea Skimmer wrote:

Juubi Karakuchi wrote:I got my hands on "Jane's Fleet Command" recently. 10 years old but nonetheless entertaining.

Relevant point being, Carrier battlegroups dominate surface combat by, apart from the Recon aspect, being able to bring along aircraft capable of firing anti-ship missiles. One thing that surprised me in "Fleet Command" is that the only aircraft firing Harpoons are the S-3 Vikings, whereas I read elsewhere that they can be carried by F-18s. Then again, the game was set in the nineties.

The F/A-18, A-6 and S-3 could carry Harpoon at the time. Just as importantly the F/A-18, A-6 and EA-6 can all fire HARM anti radar missiles at ships too. F-14 could never carry Harpoon, but IIRC it could use the SLAM missile which is a land attack version of Harpoon (IR rather then radar guidance, wings for longer range in some versions) you could also still shoot at a ship if you really wanted. Also if the enemy doesn't have really long range SAMs (most ships can't shoot more then 25-50 miles) then other precision guided weapons could also be used against ships.

Yes, the Tomcat could carry and use the SLAM (although I don't think it could use SLAM-ER). I can't think of any physical reason why it couldn't carry Harpoon, which suggests it was a programming decision (i.e. "we won't use it to attack ships, so why pay the programmers to code it in?"). Tomcat could also carry HARM missiles (along with Sidewinder, AMRAAM, and/or Phoenix) in an "escort" role for Harpoon-equipped aircraft.

The Dark wrote:
The F/A-18, A-6 and S-3 could carry Harpoon at the time. Just as importantly the F/A-18, A-6 and EA-6 can all fire HARM anti radar missiles at ships too. F-14 could never carry Harpoon, but IIRC it could use the SLAM missile which is a land attack version of Harpoon (IR rather then radar guidance, wings for longer range in some versions) you could also still shoot at a ship if you really wanted. Also if the enemy doesn't have really long range SAMs (most ships can't shoot more then 25-50 miles) then other precision guided weapons could also be used against ships.

Yes, the Tomcat could carry and use the SLAM (although I don't think it could use SLAM-ER). I can't think of any physical reason why it couldn't carry Harpoon, which suggests it was a programming decision (i.e. "we won't use it to attack ships, so why pay the programmers to code it in?"). Tomcat could also carry HARM missiles (along with Sidewinder, AMRAAM, and/or Phoenix) in an "escort" role for Harpoon-equipped aircraft.[/quote]

Well it’s more then code to integrate a weapon, you’ve also got to fly a bunch of stores separation tests and ideally fire at least one or two them to make sure the weapon isn’t going to hit the plane when used. Tests like that can turn up serious problems, like the F-35 can’t use normal drop tanks under its wings. I also just remembered that AIM-7 can be used against ships, which is very nice given its high speed and small size. This is a large part of the reason why the USN didn't have any dedicated anti ship missiles before Harpoon (the other part was the mighty AGM-12 Bullpup)