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For what it's worth, the US would field F35s from CVNs, not air strips. And repairing a bombed out airstrip for mil use takes about 48-72 hours.

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Have you compared the range of the naval F35s to the stand off range needed to keep the CVNs floating? (it's not even close, & there aren't enough tankers to keep the F35s in the air as CAP. Single deep strike, maybe. But to hold off an invasion, you need to provide sustained air cover.)

The new aim-260 had a range of 120 miles. The combination of long range Air to Air missiles and stealth is very hard to defeat.

https://youtu.be/DRt2I39qU5U

Has an interesting simulation of a carrier battle between a Chinese naval group and an American naval group with expected 2025 equipment.

This is argument goes back at least 50 years. The F-14 and before that the F-111 didn’t need to be good dogfighters because the AIM 54 phoenix was a 100 mile missile and would kill anyhting before it got remotely close. That turned out to be false as we learned against Libyan fighters and as the Israelis could have told us (or anyone who served in Vietnam).

Fair, however modern sensor and control mechanics are much better than they were 50 years ago. If the media is to be believed, we're reaching the end of a fighters ability to defeat a missile through anything other than kinematics/stealth.

That's not really true. Have you considered stealth vs stealth engagements and BVR kinematics?

As an aside missiles have always been evaded through kinematics. The F-35 doesn't have great kinematics. Those include the ability to maneuver, to do so while maintaining kinetic energy, and the ability to accelerate as well as maintain high altitudes and high velocities. None of which the F-35 is especially great at.

Chaff and flares were the main defeat mechanism into the 90s. In a BVR fight range is the main goal, there is no reason for a stealth jet to close within 15 miles as they would lose stealth.

Even in a seemingly missmatched dogfight between an f-16 and f-22… it’s still plausible for the f-16 to win (sometimes). If we need a dogfighter, then we should build a drone for the task.

There's a lot of investment in directed energy weapons again and talk about deployment on 6th generation fighter platforms (which are planned to be optionally manned). Promising but also defeated by cloud cover.

Against Taiwan? Why? Wouldn't they operate out of Okinawa? Maybe you'd bring some carriers into the area, but the air base already exists. Also it seems like the Chinese would stand an excellent chance of sinking carriers. I think they're one of the more fanciful and unlikely assets in a war of peers. They only really work against non-technological enemies like the Libyans.

Carriers as weapons really are technology for the previous century's war.

Carriers as mobile military bases are still very useful for projecting power.

That does not seem at all obvious to me. It's a big, slow, easy target. Yes you can use them to project power into, say, Sierra Leone, but not against China. None of the expensive and fragile missile defense systems have a demonstrated history of doing anything useful.

You can project power hundreds to thousands of miles forward of a land mass or established base by using a carrier. Even operating it in a very cautious manner affords a great deal of tactical advantage you would not otherwise have available.

The top speed of a US nuclear-powered carrier is secret, but it is known to be able to do 40 knots easily, which is not slow for a ship.

It's not a boat race. State-of-the-art anti-ship missiles may hit mach 5 in their terminal phase. Also a carrier that outruns its escort is an even softer target, and no other craft in a carrier group can keep up with the carrier's max speed.

Projecting power is about bringing weapons to places where you want to blow stuff up, not about necessarily having a frontline fortress. That's why US military bases are everywhere (and nearly unfortified).

An actual war with China will be a global affair. The aircraft carriers don't need to get in range of the missiles to bring airplanes, food, and hospitals to somewhere there is fighting. Practically, the bases in Japan are going to be the main hubs for forces fighting near China, not aircraft carriers.

Air bases don't move at all. From a tactical standpoint they're much less useful than a carrier that can stay out of the range of all but the most expensive missiles.

> Also it seems like the Chinese would stand an excellent chance of sinking carriers.

Only if they can't hide.

If the US disables Chinese satellites, then China will have to rely on air- and marine-based sensors.

Satellites will be the first thing to go. The wars of the future will have a heavy space component.

The Chinese have multiple geostationary orbit satellites with enough resolution to target a carrier. Meaning that by the time the missile reaches the orbit of the satellite (around 5 hours), the Chinese would have had the time to track and sink a carrier about 14 times over.

On top of that they also have a fleet of unmanned submarines and an unmanned supersonic observation drone program as well as a sonarphone network.

Beyond this the carriers are so slow and the missiles so fast that assuming they fire the missiles within a few minutes of their satellites being shot down, the carrier is still unlikely to avoid the missiles target acquisition zone.

Even the idea that the U.S. could promptly launch a kinetic weapon into geostationary orbit is a bit fanciful.

the kinetic weapons are almost certainly already in geo

It's often less efficient and slower to hit a target in GEO from GEO than from the ground

There are presumably countermeasures already within striking distance from adversarial satellites. Kinetic, laser, radio jamming, clandestinely placed surface mines...

The DoD has been thinking of space warfare since the 60's. The space shuttle program was built for defense purposes. Now they have X planes to carry out these missions, and they're continually launching classified payloads.

Space warfare is hard. You can't easily hide anything, so keeping a weapon very close is not feasible. Lasers don't work very well either because if the heat is enough to overheat the other satellite it's probably enough to overheat yourself. Jamming doesn't work very well in the age of super directional communications (see: SpaceX in Ukraine, which is not even designed to withstand jamming).

Deemed not survivable. Hence US trying to get JP to do distributed basing across islands (ACE /agile combat employment), but for obvious reasons, JP is reluctant.

My understanding is that the US is getting kicked out of Okinawa because of sex crimes over a long period of time. Guam would be the next closest airfield the US is guaranteed to fly out of.

And what's to keep the other side from lobbing another dozen missiles every 47 hours?

finite inventory of missiles?

Each 300+ mile range missile runs around 1-3 million dollars. Stealthier variants will be more expensive.

Those loitering ammo things from Iran that Russia uses reportedly cost around 35k each, and they have that range. Very easy to shoot down, but an air defense missile costs a lot more than the drone does.

And it's China, they are the world's manufacturing capacity, so just send hundreds at a time.

That is with power tools available. Destruction of nearby medic tents, storehouse, petrol can prevent the repair to Japanese WW2 manual level. That cant fix within 72 hrs. China has huge productivity vs Russia and USA combined. They are the one written Sun Tzu that is used in Westpoint. Taiwan is so near, once carriers are taken out, Guam will be massive bomb with napalm. SK and Japan will seat out because China can nuke them without repercussions. They know USA dont dare to nuke back because of the Kabul flee incident showing how weak American is when their citizen is unhappy. Plus Russia and Iran is on their back. India and Asean will be neutral. USA is pretty much isolated when the war begin. Of yeah, dedollarisation will be in full swing so USA cant touch much China economy without Walmart store running empty. Oil? Russia unlimited. Taiwan? Checkmate. As Chinese there...historically they will surrendar exactly like Ming Taiwan to Qing China. The chess set pieces had USA setup for failure before the opening gambit by Chinese-Putin-Iranian. Think about it, American cant beat Talebans for 20 years with sheer air supremacy, the chances against superpower China+Russia with unlimited oil gas and rare mineral resources plus world gold reserve, USA as according to Ray Dahlio, is declining just like no so great... Great Britain.

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