Assuming a basic level of competence in your forces, superior tactics should be happy to glad on the superior strategies and operational concepts.

I don’t remember Denver clearly, but that is hardly an indictment given most I remember I remember for being bad *cough LAX cough*.

It is impossible to get lost in Hartsfield. It’s possible to be hopelessly far from your gate, but you won’t be lost.

See kids, this is why you don’t jump into a thread in progress. He just hadn’t gotten there yet. bsky.app/profile/bafr...

Yes obviously tactics, CONOPS, objectives etc etc play into all of this. And the actual composition of the carrier air wing is the most key assumption of all. But for things as they stand, this is where we *all* are.

Is organic TACAIR to go either chase or kill the bombers. I’m not saying that part is easy, because it’s not. But even shadowboxing with the bomber raids can force suboptimal launches that are much easier to defeat.

In summary, the carrier isn’t a spear, but it’s a very good (and prickly) shield.

Second, to the aside in OP about land-based bombers, the simple fact of the matter is that modern antiship weapons fired by bombers can outrange defensive SAMs. (This isn’t actually a new balance but it is still shocking to some.)

The other thing a carrier can bring to bear with its aerial sensing…

“But what about land-based aerial sensors, or space-based sensing?” Assuming you have access to either of those is an assumption, period. In some cases and combinations it’s a valid assumption. In others it isn’t. But ships in company with a CVN will have it so long as the CVN is there.

Eg pure ORSAs are generally near the median. However, there are precious few pure ORSAs above GS-12, and those extra “duties as assigned” are going to burn out some of your high performers quickly if you aren’t careful.

As a rule of thumb, after GS-12 the odds of a DoD civil servant being able to leave government and get a raise is about 1 in 1, especially when you also account for the scale of “duties as assigned” managerial tasks that the GS scale and talent system straight up can’t handle.

I can’t speak to the broader federal service, but within DoD the problem is two headed. There are specialties within DoD that are compensated in line with private counterparts, especially after benefits. This is most true at the bottom and pockets of the middle of the ladder. It breaks at the top.

And for the career civilians who joined before Trump and are trying to do their best to serve their nation and its interests? Are they fascists, corrupt, both, or just good people trying to make their way in the world?

Unfortunately I like my stable job and don’t have a trust fund to offset that need.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

(Most of us just don’t play the politics game.)

Alternative stupid units of measure (all denominated by weight):
2,755.73 Nimitz class CVNs
7,812,500 B-52 sorties*
2,118,644,067,796 bananas

*includes zero allocation to hold the damn things, that’s just the coins.

It also seems to me to be suicide for fear of death. What exactly do we fear from China that’s worse than command-economy-ing ourselves into manufacturing and out of all the industries we’re world leaders in?

Friendshoring makes sense. Fantasies of autarky are just that.

It’s not my area of deep expertise from a policy POV but that seems as likely as anything else. But that also drives capital requirements at the outset through the roof

1701-E is much more likely, but by God 1701-F is drop dead gorgeous. Simultaneously refined elegance and the raw unadulterated power of the Federation.

Alternatively there’s the various iterations on “Angels tremble when good men go to war”, and Lord knows that leash is pulled taut if it’s still intact

Definitely room for that in the secondary hull, but the saucer is probably trickier, if well within the bounds of their powers.

As a model… meh? Get back to me when it’s either 1701 or 1701-F.