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The US uses nuclear power for it's Nimitz and Ford class carriers, so there is no need for extensive exhaust.
by hackcasual 9y ago
The US uses nuclear power for it's Nimitz and Ford class carriers, so there is no need for extensive exhaust.
- akhatri_aus 9y agoThese ships can't use the Suez canal which can be problematic
- blackguardx 9y agoThe primary size constraint of US ships is the Panama canal.
- astrodust 9y agoThe US solution to this problem is to build a ridiculous number of carriers so there's coverage on both sides.
- gozur88 9y agoIt's only ridiculous if you assume we'll never lose one (or more) in a real shooting war. That's not an assumption US planners are prepared to make.
- jabl 9y agoWith a $1 trillion military budget the US can lose half of them and still have more left than the rest of the world combined.. :-/
- astrodust 9y agoIt's ridiculous because most countries have one or two at most and the US has eleven. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_s...
- anthonybsd 9y agoYes, but it gets even more ridiculous once you consider the fact that the last 60 years have been relatively peaceful for Naval warfare. During WW2 the U.S. had well over 100 aircraft carriers on active duty.
- sailfast 9y agoConsidering the cold war relatively peaceful at sea is interesting, firstly. Secondly, I would argue that the reason the seas have been free from "major conflict" over the last 60 years is in no small measure due to the preponderance of naval power wielded by the United States and Russia. If odds had not been overwhelming, do you think there would have been less conflict, or more?
- astrodust 9y agoRussia doesn't have much of a navy excluding nuclear submarines and the only reason those are a problem is because of the megaton-yield nuclear weapons they carry.
- gozur88 9y agoI doubt anything but nukes kept the US and Russia from going to war. Hell, aside from a few screwups, we almost went to war despite the nukes in 1963.
- dctoedt 9y agoIt was actually 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis) and 1983 (false alarm) [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
- metaphorm 9y agothese ships can't use the Suez canal in peace-time under the currently negotiated treaties. if they really truly must go through the canal, who's gonna stop them?
- isostatic 9y agoEgypt could scuttle a ship or two if they wanted - at both ends, trapping the fleet inside. Seems to me that canals make rather sitting targets for warships, at war time at least.
- djrogers 9y agoA carrier battle group is more than powerful enough to control both ends of the canal for the duration of the trip, and I seriously doubt that Egypt (or any other country) would want to cripple an economic engine as large as a canal unless they were directly involved in the war in question.
- gaius 9y agoReally? Multiple carrier groups, plus ground contingents from the Army and Marines, plus the Air Force are unable to "control" Iraq or Afghanistan...
- StudyAnimal 9y agoI am no military genius, but Iraq and Afghanistan sound larger, more complex, and not as commandable by sea as a typical canal.
- gaius 9y agoPerhaps you are unaware of the events of 1956 when the combined forces of Britain and France failed to hold the Suez Canal?
- 9y ago
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoThe way a carrier group works you shouldn't be cramming it all into a canal.
- dctoedt 9y agoThe new Suez canal has been transited by at least one U.S. nuclear-powered carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt [0]. [0] Speeded-up video of the transit: https://sploid.gizmodo.com/cool-video-of-a-us-aircraft-carrier-crossing-the-new-su-1723907545 https://sploid.gizmodo.com/cool-video-of-a-us-aircraft-carri...
- Shivetya 9y agoturn of the century, think 1900-1910 ships, suffered severely from lack of development in boiler technology. Four, five, and even six, in a row could be found. One or two even had parallel rows. For many ships, mostly battleships, which went under modernization programs after WW1 the most common noticeable change was reduction in the number of funnels as boiler count was halved or reduced by two thirds. It wasn't uncommon to take a battleship or even a cruiser apart as it was still cheaper to do let alone easier to get the budget for. with regards to this new carrier it probably was a good idea to not go nuclear when your experience with it at this scale is not sufficient plus just the inherent costs of doing that. one would think the age of CVs has passed similar to how the age of BBs passed even prior to WW2 but naval commands are very loathe to acknowledge a shift in tactics until half their fleet is sunk