Depends on your perspective. From an American perspective, our Fighters are half of the reason our carrier strike groups are so lethal, and our carrier strike groups are lethal enough to topple a small country.

They have to be lethal too. They're not just enforcing American law, they're enforcing International order by keeping shipping lanes open and international waters, well, international. Admittedly this capability is being challenged in the South China Sea right now, but it's important to keep the lifeblood of international trade flowing (shipping!) and America is pretty much the only player on this front.

I took badosu's comment to mean that farseer's comment of "Eagerly waiting for the first combat engagement of F-35 with current gen Russian/Chinese SAMS or fighters" is in bad taste, and that nobody should want for anyone to have to be engaged in (likely lethal) combat.

IMO it's pretty fucked up to be eagerly awaiting killing of others, regardless of reason. It may, in this world, be deemed "necessary" by politicians and generals etc, but to derive pleasure and eagerly wish for it to happen really doesn't sit at all well with me.

To the leadership class of the countries of the world, that kind of engagement is necessary for proving a point. The point being "mine is bigger, faster and stronger than yours".

Soldiers are a sacrifice they are willing to make to prove that point, particularly as war becomes less about the soldiers and more about the equipment the soldiers operate. Actually let me take that back, war has always been about the equipment that soldiers operate, from spears to guns, from trebuchets to tanks, and from ballistae to ICBMs.

The soldiers serve two important roles here: 1. to operate the piece of equipment they are charged with effectively to accomplish their roles within a mission environment and 2. to occupy a piece of dirt with their continued, loyal and obedient, presence until their CO tells them to move along to the next piece of dirt down the road.

Until war is obsolete, so until life comes to an end on Earth basically, there are going to continue to be people eagerly awaiting the next battlefield to prove their points.

>carrier strike groups are lethal enough to topple a small country.

The carriers are deterrents, not weapons. They will be among the first major casualties of any true, open warfare. Carrier-defeating tech has been out for years; therefore they're only ever useful for policing actions - not full, symmetric war.

It seems like maybe people are already forgetting the Cold War. Full, symmetric war between nuclear powers must be avoided at all costs. How to prevent escalation to a full intercontinental nuclear exchange is not clear. The Shilling point of not killing each others soldiers on purpose is very clear. Once countries are openly killing each others solders, you are at war, and the situation can change very quickly. This is why Syria is so dangerous and highly underrated as a problem by most people. All the foreign policy reporters and think tanks are distracted by the North Korea situation (not to say that is not a big problem), I would guess.

> The carriers are deterrents, not weapons. They will be among the first major casualties of any true, open warfare.

Any country powerful enough to challenge a US carrier strike group in true, open warfare, isn't a country that is fighting a full symmetric conventional war with the United States. They're fighting a nuclear war.

They are weapons, powerful, effective, government-toppling weapons, and that is what makes them such effective deterrents. For the non-Chinas and non-Russias in the world, a carrier strike group is probably sufficient. If one won't do, how would you like two?

>> Carrier-defeating tech has been out for years Just curious what kind of tech you are referring to?

Assuming there are no capable laser and railgun interceptors deployed and detection/jamming tolerance, probably ASBMs [0].

Or ASMs [1] if carrier air or seaspace is breached, carriers are heavily escorted though.

If nuclear deterrence (god forbid) is broken, then I guess aircraft carriers are pretty much sitting ducks.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ship_ballistic_missile

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ship_missile

Even without nuclear weapons, I've got to think that countermeasures are easily overwhelmed, and the cost of a few dozen long-range anti-carrier missiles must be negligible compared to the advantage of incapacitating a carrier (at least for a top-tier adversary like China or Russia), right?

I'm not sure. Throwing a few dozen missiles from long range against a carrier group, complete with airplanes, may not work very well. They'll have a few dozen fighters, multiple Phalanx guns, shipboard missiles, and a lot of electronic counter-attacks. I think they will only be "easily" overwhelmed if they've got an attack method that is hard for the carrier group to counterattack. That is harder than it looks.

I have no idea and I hope you're right, but airplanes and missiles aren't implicitly anti ballistic countermeasures. Certainly there are some anti ballistic missiles and fighters which are equipped with anti-ballistic tech, but I don't have any idea how effective they'd be in a barrage scenario.

> The carriers are deterrents, not weapons.

If its not a weapon, it can't work as a deterrent, either.

The carriers are only "not being attacked" because they are backed by a fuck-ton of nuclear weapons. MAD, 101.