yep, wait until dark, follow some freighter into the lock and then go check out the virgins.

good points. Yep, let's hope the planning is on target, so to speak.

and it's just going to be a matter of time before some jihadist figures out that you can probably drive a submersible, maybe even a semi-submersible, into a port and go bang.

Only thing that would worry me is that the in-bound target is moving at multiples of the speed of sound.

Bum, have to disagree with you. First, I don’t think that it has been proven, fairly well or otherwise, that the “...shield put up by a carrier group is unbreakable...” A war game exercise predicts what an enemy may do but doesn’t guarantee that the enemy will, in fact, act that way.

yep, and lets hope that the number of leakers is a single digit because they're going to have to ripple fire RAMs to kill some of the high-speed Russian anti-ship missiles.

Umrguy, your overriding presumption has to be that the Battle Group escorts will keep everything and everyone away from the CVN. I mean, we’ve built our entire naval war fighting strategy - aside from the subsea and Marines - around this premise. Not to be too pessimistic here, but its a premise that's never been…

Judging from the photos, the guns removed were 20mm or 40mm. When a leaker. got past the fleet defenses, they could put a ton of lead in a CWIS sort of way.

Interesting in the major refit that both Midway and Coral Sea went through in the late ‘50s, their armor and most of their guns were removed. I admit, I’m a gun bigot. It’s amazing that 50 years ago that the Navy thought that self-defense for a carrier was either the Air Group or the ships around it.

It looks like a Mig-29 and a B-70 had an illicit affair.

Probably the longest range AA missile is the K-100 which is a 200km range. India is co-producing this 2500 mph missile with Russia. The R-137 (AA-13 Arrow) has a range of 80 - 215nm. The 4300mph R-137M has a range of 160-220nm but its development seems to be a bit fuzzy. So the Russians have the long range hardware.…

if I’ve interpreted all of the notes and comments correctly, the (reasonably) current CVN status is:

Strategically, taking Keflavik makes a lot of sense for the reasons you gave. Could the Russians actually do it?

Joe, I'm going to speculate that the Russians have enough high speed missiles that they could launch a 12 or 24 missile salvo at any AWACS aircraft and stand a chance for a hit. Short of us having a Death Blossom move in our hip pocket, one missile is bound to get through.

Joe, huge assumption that the AWACS (and Global Hawks and satellites) survive the first 24 hours. I think the Russians would empty the magazine trying to take these assets out. Once you take the information advantage away from the West, the playing field gets a lot more level.

Right, the Chinese move will be to aggressively carry out their “island” strategy and consolidate their physical area of influence in the South China Sea. I think that the UN would punt this problem pretty quickly. The question is whether the SEA/ASEAN would want to get into an armed conflict with the Chinese. What…

Agree. Whether through agreement with Russia or just opportunistic tactics, I would think that China would use a worsening European situation (which has the US engaged) to make bold moves in Asia. If China did so, that would put the US in a three-front situation - Europe, Middle East and Asia.

Saigon, use Clancy’s Red Storm Rising as the initial premise.

Ramon, I think your concern is correct. Our airplanes and pilots are information junkies (I used this term earlier too) and if you take the AWACS out of the picture, then suddenly situational awareness becomes what you can produce on your own. The US has never had to engage in AWACS, or tanker, protection in the…

Joe, you’ve hit on what might the US’ weakest link. The US aircraft and pilots are information junkies. Take away the AWACS and you reduce our ability to see into the bad guys backyard. And, you can bet that the Russians or Chinese or whomever will be willing to sacrifice a squadron of airplanes to take out the AWACS.