Comment by epicureanideal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by epicureanideal | Hacker News Reader

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I wonder why the US doesn’t produce a bunch of WW2 style carriers with light aircraft or helicopters. I’m aware the US has several helicopter carriers, but I would imagine we could build dozens of the things for the price of a nuclear carrier. Obviously they wouldn’t stand up to a near peer competitor but they could be useful for small scale conflicts with far less advanced militaries, which seems to be the pattern lately.

Update: It looks like there are such things, called “amphibious assault ships”. Apparently there are 7 of this type https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp-class_amphibious_assaul... and 2 of a more recent type https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/America-class_amphibious_ass.... It seems they’re about the same length and overall size as a WW2 carrier.

So that’s interesting. So there are 11 large nuclear powered carriers and 9 of these smaller type. That’s already kind of a lot.

It's an idea that gets resurrected every so often too, and I want to say that it's been revisited lately as some articles on DefenceOne and TheWarZone have suggested.

There was the idea of the "Sea Control" ship in the 70s that would have built on this idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Control_Ship

For small-scale conflicts however, it's somewhat paradoxical that a large carrier is what you need. Putting airpower over land from a carrier requires throwing a lot of weight into the air to put an aircraft with both an effective warload and a useful loiter time. This is coupled with a large sortie rate, as the time it takes to get a warplane on station is long and needs to be replaced often. That adds up to a lot of launches.

All of that is to say then that you need a larger carrier, ideally with a catapult and the powerplant to fire it often. Skijumps and STOVL don't get you that kind of range except to the beach.

So for any kind of land strike mission, you really need a big fleet carrier. But for sea operations, smaller carriers are looking more feasable, so the idea is coming around again. The America class as you mentioned is likely going down this path, and Japan's Izumo-class is likely going to go down this route as well.

The USAF is the "light carrier" fleet. One B-52H can carry 20 air launched cruise missiles.

I think this is likely the most underappreciated comment on this thread.

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