Runways can still be bombed/missiled. Islands are a lot less stealthy and manueverable compared to a CVN. And the Marianas are long way from the fight. Tradeoffs.

Very true, but I'm reasonably sure if you did a statistical analysis of islands versus carriers sunk in WWII the islands would win. And rapid runway repair teams can do a pretty good job of getting it back operational quickly. And while the Navy FINALLY has a drydocks capable of holding a Ford class CVN the East Coast is a heck of a long ways from the Western Pacific.


I'll give you that one, but they are certainly less fragile and generally have a lot longer runways. Torpedos seldom do noticeable damage certainly.




Which is why we gave Boeing that contract for the KC-46 way back in 2011. DOD procurement, impossible to adequately revile.

Block 70 Vipers and Super Hornets come in at ~$65M each, while an EX and a Panther are about the same ~$85-90M each. I think your comments above are right on… we need quality and quantity, with a healthy mix of both 4th and 5th Gen to cover the full spectrum of warfare. The F-35 does a lot of things very well, and couldn’t agree more that CAS (at least low threat, COIN style CAS) isn’t one of them. I hope we buy a bunch of Block 70’s and EX’s personably… basically 5th Gen bells and whistles in 4th Gen body.

Yeah the best solution is probably a carefully balanced mix of several available options. The trick is getting the balance right (math).

Battle of Kasham had zero A-10's. Air dominance allowed B-1's, B-52's, C-130 gunships, etc, to provide CAS.

The last 30 years of conflict the U.S. has operated in a air superiority to air dominance arena. A near peer conflict will be nothing like that.

Ukraine war has showed the exploding value of drone warfare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham

one needs to keep SOME lower end stuff around if only for intercepting drones. Taking out a $15k - $20k drone lumbering along at 110 knots with pretty much any missile in the inventory is a seriously money losing proposition. Can an F-35 shoot them down? Sure. I think they finally have the gun on it working.

https://www.twz.com/air/f-35as-belea...ally-effective

Of course, you only have about three seconds worth of ammo so it probably won't take many drones out of a swarm unless you have a lot of wingmen.

A whole squadron of Super Tucanos with a couple of dedicated radar controllers to vector them in woukd be a whole lot cheaper and likely just as effective.