The passenger Boeing soars into the gloomy sky of London, neat British mansions, green squares, streets with left-hand traffic float under the wing. Swaying gently in the Atlantic wind, the plane heads for the open ocean … “Ladies and gentlemen,” says captain Steve Jones. We thank you for choosing our airline … We are at an altitude of 30 thousand feet … our speed … oh shit! … the temperature overboard … here's the fuck! … Expected arrival in New York at 20:20, flight time will be 7 hours …"
Only seven hours … It once took Columbus two months to do this. What a Columbus! Back in the early twentieth century, the "Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic" was given for trying to cross the ocean in five days. And these are the most first-class liners of the time! And ordinary steamers could drag along for weeks in the middle of endless crests of waves.
The era of wireless communications and jet aircraft has shortened distances by shrinking the globe to the size of a tennis ball. Modern strategic bombers and long-range passenger airliners are able to easily fly between continents, dispensing with intermediate landings and "jump airfields". But even more significant changes awaited military tactical aviation.
On May 29, 1952, a very curious event took place: a strike group of F-84 fighter-bombers, taking off from airfields in Japan, struck military targets in North Korea. Long-range combat missions were provided by KB-29 air tankers - for the first time in combat conditions, the air refueling system was used.
Air tankers quickly changed the balance of power in the air: now the combat radius of tactical aviation was not limited by anything, except for some technical features of the aircraft and the endurance of the pilots. In reality, this meant completing missions at a distance of thousands of kilometers from home airfields!
But that's not all: the constant growth in the size, mass and speed of aircraft has led to the fact that the normal value of the combat radius for modern fighters and fighter-bombers has confidently "stepped over" the 1000 km mark. Suspended and conformal fuel tanks work wonders.
The high cruising speed of the jet aircraft allows it to quickly arrive at a given square and effectively carry out missions at ultra-long distances. During the bombing of Libya (1986), American F-111 tactical bombers operated from air bases in Great Britain. The situation repeated itself in 2011 - the F-15E multipurpose fighter-bombers were also based at Lakenheath AFB (Suffolk County). A modern fighter-bomber is so strong, fast and powerful that it is capable of covering thousands of kilometers over the English Channel, Europe and the Mediterranean Sea in one night - striking the territory of North Africa, and returning to its home airfield before dawn.
In connection with the above facts, the question inevitably arises about the adequacy of the use of nuclear aircraft carriers in the North Atlantic. What tasks can carrier-based aircraft perform in modern conditions? And in general, is the existence of aircraft carrier ships justified?
71% of the Earth's surface is covered with water. Who controls the oceans, he rules the whole world! A seemingly correct thought is fundamentally wrong. On closer examination, many difficult questions arise. What does “control of the oceans” mean? Human civilization has no surface or underwater cities built in the middle of the sea. By itself, the blue-green water surface is of no value, it is impossible to capture or destroy it. Consequently, we can only talk about control over sea communications: the protection of ships and vessels under the flag of their state, or, as an option, the destruction of enemy ships and vessels in wartime.
The trick is that modern land-based tactical aviation is capable of reaching almost ANY POINT of the ocean (we will not consider exotic air battles over the Antarctic Ross Sea or over the distant Easter Island). Why, then, are aircraft-carrying ships needed?
Even the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean, upon closer inspection, are dotted with many tropical islands and atolls. The significance of these pieces of land was appreciated during the Second World War - the Americans built a huge number of military facilities here - airfields, bases for torpedo boats, weather stations, points of material and technical supply (some of them, for example, an air base on the island of Guam, survived until so far). After the war, it took several years to dismantle the equipment and take the personnel from the atolls lost in the ocean to their homeland (Operation Magic Carpet). There are legends that not all of them were found, some of the Robinsons still live there.
But back to the North Atlantic. During the Cold War, the American fleet was faced with the urgent task of ensuring the safety of transoceanic convoys on the way from the New World to Europe. In the event of an armed conflict, submarines and missile-carrying aircraft of the USSR Navy could deliver a powerful blow and "cut" the transport artery in the Atlantic. To avoid such a situation, it was planned to use aircraft carriers and their carrier-based aircraft to cover the transatlantic routes. By that time, the US Navy's carrier-based aircraft had received many impressive systems, for example, the latest F-14 Tomcat interceptors equipped with Phoenix hypersonic missiles. The number of aircraft carriers was continuously increased, the atomic "Nimitz" went into series.
Question: WHY? In all respects, sea communications in the North Atlantic are effectively covered by coastal-based aviation. A passenger Boeing flies over the ocean in 7 hours. Could there be any problems with the E-3 Sentry early warning radar aircraft (AWACS), created on the basis of the passenger Boeing-707? If a convoy was to be escorted, he could hover over the Atlantic for hours, controlling the air situation for hundreds of miles around. And with the help of the E-3 Sentry link and a pair of air tankers, it is possible to organize a round-the-clock watch over any area of the Atlantic (as well as the entire World Ocean).
To solve such problems, you do not need a 100,000-ton aircraft carrier, you do not need to burn expensive uranium rods and feed 3,000 sailors of its crew (excluding the personnel of the air wing).
In addition, the capabilities of the E-3 Sentry, objectively, surpass the capabilities of the deck-based AWACS aircraft E-2 Hawkeye. On board the Sentry there are five times (!) More operators and combat control officers, and the number of computers and radio electronics exceeds the mass of the Hawkeye!
Finally, it is worth considering the natural factor. The sea is constantly stormy, but even a four-point storm is enough to severely impede (and sometimes make impossible) the work of a deck wing. The land-based heavy Sentry has far fewer operating restrictions in adverse weather conditions. Do not forget that the planes are scattered on both sides of the ocean, and if it is impossible to take off from the territory of the United States, a duty car from the British air base may rise.
The situation with the possibility of using heavy AWACS E-3 "Sentry" aircraft in sea battles is quite obvious, but the next moment may raise many questions. An AWACS aircraft hovering in the sky turns into a formidable combat system only if there is a nearby link of fighters capable of advancing in the indicated direction at the first signal and engaging in battle with the enemy (combat air patrol). In the presence of an aircraft carrier, this condition does not raise questions. But what about in the absence of carrier-based aircraft?
I think the answer is obvious. Soviet missile carriers could not just suddenly appear in the middle of the Atlantic - in order to launch an attack on NATO convoys, they had to overcome the Norwegian Sea and the Faro-Icelandic border - that was where they had to meet, and not rush with a dozen huge aircraft carriers across the Atlantic!
The Faroe-Icelandic border is a narrowing in the North Atlantic between the coast of Great Britain and Iceland. From west to east, this "strait" is partitioned off by Iceland (a NATO member since 1949), the Faroe and Shetland Islands (belonging to Denmark and Great Britain, respectively). Here, a key NATO anti-submarine defense line was organized (in which Soviet submariners immediately discovered "passages").
American shore-based aviation could provide a reliable barrier for the Soviet Navy aviation without the use of expensive and ineffective "Nimitz" - in Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe and Shetland Islands, there are enough places to deploy military airfields with quickly erected airstrips and shelters for aircraft.
Let us leave the frightened cries about the high vulnerability of stationary airfields to impressionable inhabitants - if the enemy managed to destroy a dozen "peacefully sleeping airfields", then it follows from this that:
a) The enemy had complete air superiority. Objectively, the aviation of the USSR Navy did not have such capabilities in the North Atlantic.
b) The tale of the destruction of "peacefully sleeping airfields", like all arguments about the protection of transoceanic communications, are purely philosophical in nature. In reality, one strike on a warship or a NATO airfield would mean the beginning of a world nuclear war.
It should be noted that a land-based aircraft is always preferable for air combat - any F-15 and F-16 have an advantage over the deck-based Hornet, surpassing it in absolutely all characteristics, both in long-range and close air combat. The reason is simple - folding planes and a reinforced (weighted!) Structure, designed for significant loads when operating from a short deck of a ship, are poorly combined with the principles of aerodynamics.
"Go forward where they are not expected; attack where they are not prepared."
The Americans could build up the power of their ground and carrier-based aviation as much as they wanted, but the main threat lurked them from under the water. Until now, there are no reliable methods for detecting nuclear submarines - with the appropriate level of crew training, modern "Shchuks" can wind the cable of a towed anti-submarine antenna on a screw (real case, 1983), steal a secret sonar station right from under the enemy's nose (real case, 1982), cut 40 meters of the bottom of the aircraft carrier "Kitty Hawk" (real case, 1984), surface in the middle of NATO anti-submarine exercises (real case, 1996). I would especially like to note the "roaring cow" K-10, which in 1968 mocked the nuclear aircraft carrier "Enterprise": Soviet sailors pranced under the bottom of the American supership for 13 hours, but remained unnoticed.
There is nothing to blame the American sailors for - they did everything possible, but it was extremely difficult to detect and track the nuclear submarine, and sometimes it was physically impossible. Extremely secretive, invulnerable and therefore even more dangerous weapon. If these "sea devils" went into battle - the enemy can safely buy brooms and order a coffin. As one of the American admirals said: "We have only two types of ships - submarines and targets."
Aircraft carriers have nothing to do with anti-submarine defense. Nuclear "Nimitz" are not able to provide security even for themselves - the escort aircraft carrier groups in the ocean are engaged in the basic patrol aircraft P-3 "Orion" or the new P-8 "Poseidon". The planes set up barriers from sonar buoys at the heading corners of the AUG and hover for hours in a given square, carefully listening to the cacophony of the sounds of the ocean.
The presence on aircraft carriers of a squadron of 6-8 Ocean Hawk anti-submarine helicopters does not make any difference - on every modern missile cruiser, destroyer or frigate of the US Navy, two of the same Ocean Hawk are based.
conclusions
1. Deck aviation has lost its former importance. Most of the world's oceans are easily covered by land-based aircraft. For monitoring the air situation and for issuing over-the-horizon target designation in any area of the World Ocean, it is easier and more efficient to use "land" AWACS aircraft. This statement is especially true for the US Air Force, which has about 800 air bases on all continents of the Earth.
2. For Russia, as for a "land" power, the situation looks even simpler - the main striking power of our Navy has always been represented by the submarine fleet.
3. In specific naval conflicts like the Falklands War, the use of light aircraft carriers is justified solely for defensive purposes. But, to solve this problem, an atomic super-aircraft carrier is not needed. Air cover in a local conflict does not require 60-70 aircraft and 150 sorties per day - this is redundant, ineffective and wasteful. It seems that the Americans are also beginning to understand this - at the end of February 2013, information was received about the upcoming reduction of the aircraft carrier component of the US Navy.
It is no coincidence that the British are building aircraft carriers of the Queen Elizabeth type (65 thousand tons, an air wing of 40 aircraft, a gas turbine power plant, a stroke of 25 knots) - "ugly ducklings" against the background of the super-powerful "Nimitz", nevertheless, such ships fully meet the conditions of modern naval wars like the Falklands. A pair of fighter squadrons, target designation - a ground-based AWACS or E-3 Sentry carrier-based helicopter. More from a modern aircraft carrier is not required.
