Airfields are the quintessential sitting ducks: high value targets with have a fixed position that could have coordinates recorded long in advance of any action.

An carrier on the other hand is a thousand foot runway that can move at 56 km/hr.

true and well said

however, airfields are also vastly cheaper to build and maintain, and if they do get "destroyed" they can be rebuilt or replaced (possibly elsewhere) pretty quickly. in comparison to hitting a multi-billion dollar carrier so hard it's destroyed or taken out of service. In a hot war between China and the US, I'd bet China could rebuild/replace airfields faster than the US can rebuild/replace their carriers.

On a related note, I submit that this very issue is why the US and its allies are so against the Chinese trying to build up those little artificial islands, harbors and airfields, in those disputed waters. Not only does it allow China to project force out to greater ranges, with more overlap, and gives them more options in a shooting war, it also gives them more experience in building them up, and learning how to do it better and faster.

And it sends a signal to all the nations in the region, at least as an implied threat. It tells all the nearby nations, and the US, to think very very carefully about whether they want to get in a shooting war with China, whether over Taiwan or Korea, etc. Because while the US might have some very powerful toys in the theater, very modern and sophisticated, they are also very very expensive, and far from home, unlike the Chinese forces, and can easily be outnumbered. They can be attacked from increasingly shorter ranges, and whatever losses the Chinese do take, their losses will be cheaper and faster to replace than the American losses in theater.

Moving is not a major defense if your easy to find, in modern warfare satellites for example are sitting ducks. As the article points out aircraft carriers are like battleships right before WWII. They have been drastically improved, but are untested vs modern weapons.

So sure, if the enemy can't easily sink all your aircraft carriers then they are a great option. Sadly, I don't think that's anywhere close to proven.

> Moving is not a major defense if your easy to find

Based on practitioners and experts I've read, finding ships is very difficult. The ocean is a huge place; remember there's far more ocean than land area. Imagine if you were told that somewhere in North America there's an object the size of an aircraft carrier, and it's moving around. How hard would it be to find it? The Pacific is much larger (though if there's a war over a contested location, the search area becomes much smaller).

Also, there are not nearly enough resources to watch the whole ocean at once. The U.S. military can't even monitor all of Afghanistan, or even all of contested regions in Afghanistan.

Aircraft carriers use active radar which makes them really easy to find. It's much closer to locating Iowa in the middle of the ocean than a boat. And once you locate one they can't really hide very well.

In-air refueling for intercontinental missions really only works for bombers. Having a fighter jock in-cockpit from the mainland US to Afghanistan is a complete non-starter, in terms of time, fuel cost, and amount of force projected over time or fuel-cost.

Much of the flight cost is inspections, and that is based on flight hours.

There is also having a sore butt, sore back, and no place to poo.

Other than that, a "drone mode" would mostly work. Sleep would be pretty uncomfortable, but might work OK enough.

The plane:payload ratio for a fighter is deplorably small, relative to a bomber. And you'd be dealing with a pilot that's probably slept like crap en-route, and suffering the consequences of that in terms of reaction speed and cognitive deficits when he gets on-station. Just no.

Yep. I'm saying it's mostly a bad idea, and that we really should have carriers.

That said, the capability ought to exist. Even if never used in war, the mere threat of the capability is beneficial. It's also usable to move aircraft around, for aircraft sales and to move aircraft closer to an expected future battle.

"drone mode" sounds interesting, are there already systems that let planes that otherwise require humans be flown on autopilot to the next airbase? I imagine that would make deployments much easier.

The other issue is tactical air support. Bombers make sense if you are talking about a preplanned target up to 12 hours, or whatever, in advance. If you have to plan an airstrike 12 hours ahead, and you're on the ground getting beat up right now it turns into a big problem.

> Aircraft carriers are cheaper but that assumes they are not sitting ducks and we can't find a friendly airfield somewhere.

This is probably incredibly naïve but wouldn't it help us get a "friendly" airfield if we could say something like "you can allow us to use your airfield or we will move in our ships in N hours anyway". Am I missing something here?

It's not naive at all. The stakes might have to be high before the U.S. engages in that kind of coercion, but even that's not necessarily true and it's hardly unprecedented for the U.S. to throw its weight around. And the U.S. has other means of persuasion such as aid, access to the largest market in the world, the power to facilitate or stop other diplomatic, economic or political priorities, etc. etc.

One announced U.S. strategy in the Pacific is to spread forces widely rather than concentrate them, and to utilize bases of friendly nations (who don't need U.S. coercion these days with the Chinese government coercing them right into America's arms). The U.S. recently made such agreements with Australia, The Philippines, Vietnam, and Singapore, and of course has long-standing bases in Japan and South Korea. Indonesia is almost the only major nation left in the region who isn't on board.

Are you suggesting that it is acceptable to force neutral parties into a war? Or are you trying to negotiate with your enemies for the right to bomb them? I'm not sure I say any reasonable interpretation of that proposal.

It's been done many times. The UK grabbed Iceland in WWII, providing a base for transfer of US aircraft. Germany took a trip through Belgium and got the Swiss to allow trains through.

When things get serious, thoughts like "I would never do such a thing!" are quickly cast aside.

Belgium tried to uphold its neutrality in WWI - Germany invaded and ransacked the country anyway.

I definitely feel that played a part in allowing Germany in WW2

Sort of - the Danish Government in exile was in London and at that time Iceland was still controlled by Denmark. But yes, "Needs Must" as the saying goes.

Air refueling tankers are likely really easy targets to hit and don't scale for large bombing fleets, close air support, or other applications for naval aviation.

Yes, that friendly airfield assumption is one main point of the aircraft carrier.