cf_dallas
Posts: 303
Joined: 4/13/2006 From: Grapevine, TX Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SeaQueen Okay... let's think about this: A CSG has 5 DDGs. Each of those DDGs carries 96 surface to air missiles, for a total of 480. If each of your 140 F-16s (or similar fighter-bombers) carries 2 ASCMs, that's 280 missiles. Depending on what your Phit is for the surface to air missiles, you can potentially annihilate the entire raid without necessarily even emptying the magazines. That isn't even taking into account the effects of the surrounding defensive counter air assets. Those aircraft will most likely take some losses as they approach their target, reducing their salvo size. Who says that you're going to be able to put all of your 140 airplanes in the air anyhow? Maintenance requirements mean that only a fraction of them will be available on a given day, that means your sortie size (and the salvo size that results from it) will be even smaller. On top of that, air bases are subject to attack from aircraft and ballistic missiles. You might not even be able to get those aircraft up at all if the airfield is closed. On the other hand, a relatively small salvo of torpedoes from a single SSN is almost certainly going to hit something. Furthermore it might continue on and sink other things over the course of time as well. They remain on station for months at a time, and aren't constrained by the ability of air bases to operate. Even if the SSN doesn't necessarily always make the attack, their onboard sensors make attack by other platforms possible so that other platforms (like aircraft) can make the attack at some point in the future. This isn't to say I favor aircraft over submarines, because I don't. Rather, each of these systems represents multiple methods of attack against a given target. All of those methods might fail. In combination, however, locating a target with an SSN, attacking it with aircraft and torpedoes, draws down the enemy forces much more quickly. quote:
ORIGINAL: Hurricane144 SeaQueen, The qestion of cost-effectiveness is definitely not cut and dry. Not always. Sometimes though, it is. A Virginia class submarine costs as much as 139 F-16's. If I have the option of adding 140 aircraft to an attack or one submarine, the sub better be WAAAY better at the job. And in addition to all that, the Virginia SSN IS $2.6B, in 2015. Modern fighters go for $100M+ (see the Brazil Gripen buy, the Iraq F-16 buy, etc). There hasn't been a modern western fighter selling for $20M for a long time. So you're not looking at 140 fighters, equal money gets you 20-30 fighters today. A lot less if your target is defended (you need jammers) or more than 400 miles away (you need tankers).
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Formerly cwemyss
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