Quote:
Originally Posted by wavehawk
Likewise, aircraft carriers are starting to be less effective. While they carry a large number of aircraft and firepower, carriers are primarily very large and vulnerable without an accompanying fleet of destroyers, frigates, submarines and obviously it's own air wing. Without all the rest of the fleet a Carrier's an easy target.
|
The same can actually be said of battleships, who are significantly less effective at defending themselves against submarines, aircraft, and anti-ship weaponry. The only thing a battleship can do better than a carrier is tanking hits and providing direct fire support, however for most other combat roles the carrier is a vastly superior platform capable of attacking at longer ranges with more powerful weaponry with better accuracy, and unlike a battleship a carrier is capable of easily upgrading its combat capability by virtue of updating the aircraft it carries.
It's disingenuous to say that a carrier is useless without its accompanying air wing, since that's like saying that a battleship is useless without its ammunition: it's a statement of fact, but not really something encountered in a practical sense in a combat scenario. And a battleship also requires just as many escorts to handle the threats that it can't effectively fight itself such as aircraft and subs, which are handled by its escorts.
Carriers in fact are only going to become more effective as more advanced aircraft and missile systems are developed, hence why you see modern navies trying to catch up to the US in acquiring carriers of their own, rather than going back to building big-gun battleships.