Carriers Crucial In War With China – But Air Wing Is All Wrong: Hudson

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http://breakingdefense.com/2015/10/carriers-crucial-in-war-with-china-but-air-wing-is-all-wrong-hudson/



The new carrier USS Ford is afloat but still unfinished.

Carriers Crucial In War With China – But Air Wing Is All Wrong: Hudson
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on October 08, 2015 at 4:00 AM

UPDATE with Forbes statement WASHINGTON: At $4.7 billion over budget, Ford-class aircraft carriers have taken a beating in Congress. This morning, though, the House Seapower subcommittee chairman will roll out a report from the conservative Hudson Institute that’s a ringing defense of the carrier — but which also contains a stinging indictment of the aircraft that fly from it. The report calls for upgrading current multi-mission planes for longer range and building multiple new types of more specialized aircraft, potentially including two different models of UCLASS drone.

Nuclear-powered super-carriers are irreplaceable, co-author Bryan McGrath told me, and the Ford is a good design. But, he said, “the air wing will have to be completely rethought…to win and deter the war we cannot lose.”

That’s also the war we often dare not name: a war with China. “What bothered me was the degree to which there was a self-evident, high-end argument that was not getting made by the Navy,” McGrath said. “So I, with my partners at Hudson, said, ‘we’re going to have to do this for them.'”

Rep. Randy Forbes, the House Seapower chairman who’ll headline tomorrow’s roll-out, has frequently criticized the executive branch for pussyfooting around the Chinese threat. While a strongly partisan Republican, Forbes takes congressional oversight seriously and once hammered a Bush administration official for 22 minutes just to get him to admit Chinese espionage was a problem.