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Current Events » in reply to Aircraft carriers as targets. "Sizzler" as a missile.

re: Aircraft carriers as targets. "Sizzler" as a missile.
ER — (archived)

Old ideas die hard, and the WWII concept of carrier fleets duking it out from several hundred miles apart dominated naval thinking for half a century. The US, with more carriers than the rest of the world combined, didn't really have a global naval enemy, so it it employed its carriers in a force projection role, almost as portable artillery to support the army and as floating airbases to assure air superiority over foreign battlefields near the ocean. Dealing with other fleets or with land-based aircraft was a job for naval aviation, and carrier tasks groups operated spread out over a million square miles of ocean.

This state of affairs worked great when beating up on troublesome third world countries, but the situation today, when we may be faced with regional powers like Iran and Korea, in tight quarters in littoral waters, and with disturbing new technologies like the sizzler, presents new challenges. We've known this thing was coming down the pike since 2001 and have done nothing to set up defenses or countermeasures for it (having one of our own makes little sense since other countries don't have a carrier fleet that can match ours). I suppose we were just too distracted elsewhere to see the problem coming and deal with it.

I don't like the name "sizzler" either, we should give it some code name more descriptive of its existence and threat and how it came to be one. I propose we call it the "Rumsfeld".

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