"History Majors vs. Math Majors: The Problem of a Coherent Fleet Architecture"

Yooper

Yooper

Up. Identified. Lase. Fire. On the way.
CDR Salamander has a guest post. And it's a really good, relatively short one.

History Majors vs. Math Majors: The Problem of a Coherent Fleet Architecture

We are blessed to start another week with a guest post by our friend Bryan McGrath. Bryan explores a hard topic we have all had to deal wi...
cdrsalamander.blogspot.com cdrsalamander.blogspot.com

Here's the concluding paragraph:
Finally, we need to unabashedly embrace the notion that seapower is different than land and air power. Seapower serves a peacetime regulatory function in guaranteeing freedom of the seas that underpins both our security AND our prosperity. Air and land power are incredibly important aspects of national power, but they have little to do with peacetime prosperity and regulation of the security environment. One of the reasons history majors and math majors clash when devising fleet architectures is that we have ceased to make the strategic argument for seapower, and so seapower is treated within the Joint context solely as an instrument of war—and as an instrument of war, it can comfortably be considered within existing (and incomplete) analytical models. Seapower to a maritime nation is also strategy, national strategy, and we should not shy away from this.
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emphasis mine

--- End of line (MCP)
 
GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
With multiple air or land based weapon systems do we really need a huge target like a carrier task force ?
[enter hyper-sonic
missiles]
Scrappy little Argentina managed to best and sink several British Ships and that was in the 80's

What do we really expect the Chinese to do in a shooting war?

I'm a ground ponder so I am not up on Naval Tactics or capabilities EILI5
 
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Yooper

Yooper

Up. Identified. Lase. Fire. On the way.
GURPS said:
With multiple air or land based weapon systems do we really need a huge target like a carrier task force ?
[enter hyper-sonic
missiles]
Scrappy little Argentina managed to best and sink several British Ships and that was in the 80's

What do we really expect the Chinese to do in a shooting war?

I'm a ground ponder so I am not up on Naval Tactics or capabilities EILI5
Click to expand...
Thanks for the post. Good point, but....

Even though this is the argument the modeling math majors make..., even if one didn't/doesn't believe aircraft carriers were/are smart choices in wartime they are very smart choices in peacetime.

Sort of like my mission in Germany (way back when) or yours in Korea (on-going today). Nobody really expected either of our missions to be good wartime missions (in fact, my unit's life expectancy on the IGB (had the balloon gone up) was about 20 minutes); rather, our units' missions were to act as first deterrents then as trip wires for nuclear release (for Germany definitely, not sure what release is currently "in" these days in Korea).

So maybe aircraft carriers serve immensely useful purposes in peacetime but less so in wartime. But that's not the point. The author's point was that only one side of the equation was being considered in the Truman's early decommissioning (the wartime side). Modeling isn't perfect; modeling may show aircraft carriers to be vulnerable in wartime, but that is a) not set in stone and b) no reason then to ditch a great peacetime asset.

Have a GREAT Tuesday!

--- End of line (MCP)
 
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GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Yooper said:
my unit's life expectancy on the IGB (had the balloon gone up) was about 20 minutes);
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Yeah I was at Camp Greaves NORTH of the Imjin River ... we had points to deploy to in the event 'the balloon went up'

Were in range of several 1000 artillery pieces, [I think more like 10's of thousnads]

I figured the 1st notification of a NORK invasion we would recieved, would be a few 1000 155 mm shells dropping all over the camp or more specifically our barracks at 2am when everyone but a few guards were sleeping. Perhaps mixed in with chemical weapons.



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