And so it begins...the great LHD vs. Carrier war....

It has begun----the great LHD vs. Carrier war.

At its heart its a deception and pits two parts of the Dept of the Navy against each other....with one part of that Dept operating all the ships in the discussion!  How crazy is that!

Anyway, I digress.  Check out this post by Bill.  I'm going to dissect it a bit.  His words are in bold, my rebuttal will be in red....

The Marine propaganda offensive in support of the F-35B, carried on through events like last Friday’s media visit to Patuxent River, and through Marine-friendly websites, pounds relentlessly on the advantages of short take off and vertical landing.

It has to, because that’s the only respect in which the F-35B is not inferior to the F-35A and F-35C. Avionics are identical. The weapon load and range are less and it is (according to the UK) the most expensive of all the versions.

A complete misnomer.  The CMC went up to PaxRiver to brief the media on the progress of the F-35B.  Its not a propaganda war but more like an exercise in lessons learned.  The media and hence lawmakers weren't kept apprised of the progress being made with the EFV so when it came time to cut they looked at it as a prime target.  He's only trying to prevent that from happening with the F-35.  Nothing suspicious here.  Move along please.

The second point to remember is that most people, looking at an LHA or LHD class ship, will call it an aircraft carrier. Even people with some familiarity with defense issues may not be aware of just how many and big are the differences between these ships and a Nimitz.

The offensive power of an aircraft carrier resides in its air wing. A Wasp or Tarawa is mainly built to transport Marines, their weapons and equipment, and the landing craft and transport helicopters needed to put them ashore. The nominal air combat element onboard one of these ships includes six F-35Bs.

That number can be increased to up to 22 F-35Bs by disembarking helicopters. A paper on the Second Line of Defense website postulates that the JSF force could be increased on the fly, by ferrying more aircraft directly to the ship and dispersing rotorcraft to “lily pad” shore bases, but does not address obvious questions: how do you get JSF weapons, spares and maintainers to the ship? You fly them to the nearest cooperative and suitable port, transfer them to a logistics ship and use underway or vertical replenishment.

No one with even a passing familiarity with defense issues will mistake an LHD for an aircraft carrier.  But Bill ignores the fact that Sea Control Ships based on the LHD have been planned since the early 70's.  Using them this way in an extremis situation has been a part of the play book since then.  Its not hard to figure and the added punch of a normal detachment of STOVL aircraft was demonstrated during the Libya Conflict.  Yeah, land based fighters could get there but they had slow reaction times to targets of opportunity and the fact that land based aviation was used instead of at sea assets can probably be pointed to by historians as one of the failures of this conflict.

The future Carrier Strike Group air wing will include 44 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets or F-35Cs, all with greater range and weapon load than the F-35B. (The air wing size is a force-structure decision, not constrained by space on the carrier.) Reach is further extended by using Super Hornets as tankers. Crucially, the air wing also includes five EA-18G Growlers for electronic attack and E-2 Hawkeyes for early warning.  Increasingly, the CVN is the main base for the anti-submarine fight, with MH-60R/S helicopters.

44 airplanes on an aircraft carrier?  Don't make me laugh.  A carrier could typically carry 100 airplanes during the 80's and 90's so we have a surplus of aircraft carriers!  And that is with Marine Aviation attached to each carrier.

Long story short.  Carriers deserve to be reduced to possibly 8 but probably 6 in total.  We can't afford to man them fully and we can't afford to operate them.

Its time for carriers to become fully manned warships again.  That means cities at sea and a full deck of aircraft.  Read the whole post though and decide for yourself.