I don’t make this stuff up.

This phrase has been on the money in your wallet all your life, and you never noticed it? (It is on the Great Seal of the USA.) It means a new order for the ages. The founders of the USA claimed to be founding a new order of politics, a new kind of society. They were right.

Neptunus Lex is saying that we are entering a new age of naval power. I agree. I just say, the new age is not an age without a map. We have been here before. The past has lessons.

As to acquistions and lead time, you are right, but that is a condition to be lived with, not a problem with a solution.

re- ” can that “wee little boat,” with its lovely, lethal drone, be carried aboard one of our great big broad-shouldered carriers?”

Sure it can my Lady. Plenty of room in the hangar bays for 3-4 of ‘em. Davit ‘em right off’n the elevators. Lets get some DARPA $$ and give it a try!

Might as well. Maybe that boat can do ASW, too. Seeing how our own “Enterprise” (eyebrows up) got rid of all the Captains Gigs..Shhhhh- don’t tell….we only got 65 aircraft aboard nowadays so there’d be plenty o’room.

I ain’t being cynical about your question at all Marianne, just the whole dam enterprise I’ve been around all my adult life. I ask-would you rather have that boat in the hangar or another 20-30 jets in there?

b2

I ain’t shore what a “nervous order” is..must be Greek..or Latin. Snake could tell me I reckon.

As the “pendulum swings”. That’s it!

All I would add is that it swings faster today than ever, yet acquisition of ships or aircraft require decades of lead time…What we have today are warrior-businessmen (and women o’course).

Hence, my nervous contenance.

b2

Currently we are in an inter-bellum, with no true peer competitor on the horizon, though China may one day try to be.

So, we are in a kind of era well-known to our British and American Naval ancestors. It is an era of small wars on the periphery, police actions, anti-piracy operations, anti-smuggling operations, anti-slave trade patrols, that sort of thing. There is a book on my shelf listing 180 landings of the US Marines. They were conveyed to their landing sites by the Navy, not involving major combat between ships. There are many books about the “small” wars of the Victorian era. Those troops, British but often also Indian, were conveyed to their zones of operation by the Royal Navy. Same thing.

The pendulum swings. The needs of the day are met by the warriors of the day, and sometimes they are even given (some of) the tools needed to do those missions.

The range is about 500 nm. Delivery is usually via two USAF C5 planes, or aboard well deck-equipped ships or other ships with the appropriate cranes and space availability.