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INAGOA (I'm not a general or admiral) but aren't aircraft carriers essentially obselete? Van Riper destroyed nearly the entire U.S. Fleet back in 2002 in one da

INAGOA (I'm not a general or admiral) but aren't aircraft carriers essentially obselete? Van Riper destroyed nearly the entire U.S. Fleet back in 2002 in one day with small boats and Cessnas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

EliRivers 9y ago
The short answer is "no". The ability to reach out and blow up things selectively anywhere in the world is a very serious power. That's what an aircraft carrier gives you. The number of powers in the world who can reach back and destroy a carrier plus defensive escorts can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Possibly less than that.
- count 9y ago
  It is like you didn't even read the link. There isn't a country in the world that couldn't reproduce Riper's results if they had the talent on hand.
  - EliRivers 9y ago
    "If they had.." They don't have. They don't have a massive salvo of cruise missiles. They don't have an armada of small red boats. If you're arguing "if they had" you might as well say "if they had magic". They don't have, barring few enough to count on the fingers of one hand.
  - crooked-v 9y ago
    I'm pretty sure there aren't, in fact, any countries that have teleporting speedboats and teleporting motorcycle messengers.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    Plenty of countries don't have large banks of conventionally armed cruise missiles, like Riper used. Pretty much just the US, Russia and Maybe China could assemble something like that quickly. Aircraft carriers are still useful, they just aren't invincible. They are supposed to stay out of harms way and project force with aircraft. That is something that Riper's enemies did not calculate well. They grossly overestimated themselves and underestimated him and his men. If we could get more honest exercises we could see what that actual limits are. Those limits probably don't make Aircraft carriers completely useless and probably don't leave the de facto platform to launch all war activity from.
pavpanchekha 9y ago
The Van Riper story is often told but not nearly as demonstrative as you might think. Much of what happened was just the simulator breaking in surprising ways that the participants didn't know about. A simple argument you might appreciate is that the UK, France, and China are all currently building aircraft carriers. They wouldn't be doing that if carriers were obsolete.
crooked-v 9y ago
Van Riper's handling of his side of that exercise had plenty of problems, mostly related to him abusing the parameters of the simulation to create obviously nonsensical situations. For example, his victory came in part from launching 5,700-pound anti-ship missiles from 5,200-lb-displacement speedboats.

EliRivers 9y ago

The short answer is "no". The ability to reach out and blow up things selectively anywhere in the world is a very serious power. That's what an aircraft carrier gives you. The number of powers in the world who can reach back and destroy a carrier plus defensive escorts can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Possibly less than that.

count 9y ago
It is like you didn't even read the link. There isn't a country in the world that couldn't reproduce Riper's results if they had the talent on hand.
- EliRivers 9y ago
  "If they had.." They don't have. They don't have a massive salvo of cruise missiles. They don't have an armada of small red boats. If you're arguing "if they had" you might as well say "if they had magic". They don't have, barring few enough to count on the fingers of one hand.
- crooked-v 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure there aren't, in fact, any countries that have teleporting speedboats and teleporting motorcycle messengers.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  Plenty of countries don't have large banks of conventionally armed cruise missiles, like Riper used. Pretty much just the US, Russia and Maybe China could assemble something like that quickly. Aircraft carriers are still useful, they just aren't invincible. They are supposed to stay out of harms way and project force with aircraft. That is something that Riper's enemies did not calculate well. They grossly overestimated themselves and underestimated him and his men. If we could get more honest exercises we could see what that actual limits are. Those limits probably don't make Aircraft carriers completely useless and probably don't leave the de facto platform to launch all war activity from.

pavpanchekha 9y ago

The Van Riper story is often told but not nearly as demonstrative as you might think. Much of what happened was just the simulator breaking in surprising ways that the participants didn't know about. A simple argument you might appreciate is that the UK, France, and China are all currently building aircraft carriers. They wouldn't be doing that if carriers were obsolete.

crooked-v 9y ago

Van Riper's handling of his side of that exercise had plenty of problems, mostly related to him abusing the parameters of the simulation to create obviously nonsensical situations. For example, his victory came in part from launching 5,700-pound anti-ship missiles from 5,200-lb-displacement speedboats.