Stu-- said:
Captain Jonah said:
SFB has escorts, they are stuck like glue to carriers due to outmoded ideas involving US battle groups where as these days half the frigates and destroyers out there seem to be air defence (and the other half are sub defence :lol: )
Seems a pretty reasonable mix.. is there something else the USN should be defending against?
With a carrier battle group floating off shore and being able to turn most any small country to rubble plus the fact that most countries cannot attack them except with those fanatics in bomb laden boats the carrier defence against the Soviet bombers is a bit old fashioned. Carrier groups need cover but in this day and age with widely available missiles and rockets every ship needs to be able to defend both its self and civilian traffic around it from incoming.
Fanatics in small craft with RPGs, any third world country with a few 2nd (or 3rd ) hand anti shipping launchers can interdict coastal waters. There will not be a carrier within 100 miles of the gulf if Iran decides to commit suicide and attacks shipping but there will be a lot of FF/DD sized stuff on air defence along with some mine sweepers.
In SFB carriers are generally sitting far enough back that only drones are going to reach them till PFs arrive or till the fleet in front of them breaks formation for some reason. The place you need the escorts is with the ships looking at the income drone waves from hell.
Imagine a convoy, vital supplies heading to a forward base, the enemy want to destroy them.
Captain of DD (escort commander) to commander of FF, incoming raider detected, we have Drones going for the convoy. I'll engage the raider, hold close to the convoy and cover them.
One minute later (and a crew check)
FF commander replies, love to sir but my gunnery crew are on strike because the union rep says they are not paid to defend any ship other than this one and my science officer is trying to fix the fire control software that just crashed because we asked it to target Drones that aren't coming directly at us. Give us a few minutes and we may be able to protect what is left of the convoy from the next attack :roll:
In terms of the Kzinti, well taking away the Drones and giving all of their ships another 4 Disruptors would be funny. Incoming Kzinti cruiser, 8 Disruptors at 24” :twisted: