Originally Posted by Dameon

America's Carriers are costing outrageous amounts of money now, one Nimitz Class can cost between like 4 billion and 6 billion.....like 8 are going to be in service. Thats 40 billion dollers on carriers if you assume they are all 5 billion.

The CVN-76 and 77 are actually just a bit over $4 bil a piece to produce, so the cost has been getting cheaper. The yearly operating costs of a carrier can be like $150 mil a year. But each carrier has a carrier group, which comes out to about $1.5 bil a year to maintain. So the cost for one of these ships to stay afloat is pretty high. Especially since they have a service life of 50 years. Most of it is being attributed to the costs of maintaining the crew (somewhere between 5500-6000 crew members). Which is why the newer carrier are going to have reduced crew numbers and will be of a smaller displacement than the Nimitz.

During the Cold War, if I remember correctly, the Nimitz carriers all had a compliment of nearly 100 aircraft onboard. They've reduced the number recently to keep the costs down. But that's still stronger than most of the worlds air forces.

Yeah i think it may be like 80 now. However I am not fully sure right now.

Russia was never able to develop a surface fleet to match the US's. This includes destroyers, cruisers, frigates, and carriers. They just aren't as good as USN ships.

The sub fleet is a different matter.

i dunno, towards the end of the cold war the russian and american subs were pretty close. then as soon as it ended the US subs took a huge leap forward with the Seawolf and Virginia Class. now if china were to go to war against us in the water, that'd be interesting....

with the new planes coming in having Vstol option, it would be better to have smaller and faster carriers

i don't think VTOL aircraft will ever be a primary aircraft for the navy. it's a nice option to have, but even now most AV-8s aren't using VTOL to leave the deck, it's normally STOL. but a smaller carrier with a more efficient arresting and catapult system would make the deck area smaller. i think the only limitation is the pilot's ability to handle G forces during TO or Landing.

Yup. VSTOL aircraft always have to sacrifice something to get to where it is. Now the place where this changes is probably with the arrival of the JSF. That, the VSTOL version and the fixed wing version seem more or less on par in capabilities.
However, the JSF then again lags behind the F-22.
The Russians don't have any VSTOL aircraft that's realistically going to hit the assembly lines that can get anywhere close to the performance of any half decent fixed wing jet.
The AV-8 Harriers lag behind standard combat jet aircraft and the Forger made by Yakolev is pure shite.
And again, a plane can carry more when it's taking off the standard way than vertically.
Believe me, when the Navy's JSF takes off through the catapult, it's maximum payload will be much higher than when the Marine Corps JSF will take off vertically off the USS Tarawa (etc.).

So in other words, the US's large aircraft carriers still own it. Russia's aircraft carrier doesn't even come close I'm afraid. Now if it managed to put some catapults on it....

now i'm curious, there are three votes for russian carriers and no defense to how they could be better. so what are the strong points of the russian carriers over the american ones? i honestly don't see any.

Anti-American bias probably.
I just don't see how the Kusnetsov class carriers (Russia's finest) could compete with the Nimitz class.

Originally Posted by egoz

now i'm curious, there are three votes for russian carriers and no defense to how they could be better. so what are the strong points of the russian carriers over the american ones? i honestly don't see any.

Originally Posted by egoz

now i'm curious, there are three votes for russian carriers and no defense to how they could be better. so what are the strong points of the russian carriers over the american ones? i honestly don't see any.

To the best of my knowledge their strategy was to choke US carrier air/ship defense with a combined strike from the Su's carrying Moskit missiles and carrier/ship launched missiles which would be the Sunburns if I remember correctly.

They sort of calculated that from around 40-60 missiles fired enough would penetrate the defenses, hit the carrier and sink it.