Previous Message
I was recalling snippets of my earlier postings on this subject, then decided to just find what I already wrote.
I posted this in a thread on another related topic back on April 12th:
https://members.boardhost.com/Warship/msg/1744472275.html
My view has not changed. "Fading" is the correct word. Carriers will not "vanish overnight." For the future which I can forsee, nothing else that is currently launchable and recoverable from small surface combatants packs anything like the punch of a manned carrier strike aircraft. They will still be needed in the near term to provide that heavy strike ability.
However, light strikes, and nearly all other advantages and functions of airpower at sea are pretty much available, or rapidly becoming available, from smaller drones which can be deployed and recovered by smaller, more affordable, therefore more numerous, vessels. In addition to aerial drones, the near future will see these same smaller vessels also able to deploy and recover multifunction drones on and under the surface of the sea, as well as control fleets of larger surface and subsurface drones which would surround them.
The US Navy is already actively working towards making this an operational reality. (It is already a reality in prototypical, experimental form.)
I then completely agree with the Admiral. Previous Message
The interesting part to me is comments by former Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Sergey Avakyants called the decision to stop repair work 'absolutely correct'.
He said today: 'The aircraft carrier is already a fading era. It is a very expensive and inefficient naval weapon. The future belongs to carriers of robotic complexes and unmanned aviation.'
What do you folk think about that?
Responses