From: Terry Rooker <trooker%bombe@relay.nswc.navy.mil>
Subject: Re: Aircraft Carriers & In-flight refueling - what's so hard?
Organization: NCR Corporation - Law Department
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 15:06:56 GMT


From Terry Rooker <trooker%bombe@relay.nswc.navy.mil>

> From Mike.Hoffmann@sniap.mchp.sni.de (Mike Hoffmann)
> 

> Hi!
> 

> The recent thread on China acquiring the technology for in-flight refueling
> has left me a bit bewildered. Same goes for the remarks concerning Aircraft
> carriers.
> 

> So what makes in-flight refueling and AC's so special and difficult that
> the Soviets never really mastered the latter and China just now managed
> to get the former?
> 

I'll leave aerial refueling for others more knowledgeable.

There is more to carriers that simply flying planes off the roof.  It is also  
more than just the technical problems; arresting gear, catapults, reinforced  
undercarriage have been around since at least the 1930's.  The major problems  
are organizational, and doctrinal.  Running a carrier is complex.  An analogy  
I have heard is to take a busy commercial airport and cram the aircraft  
operations into an areas the size of a few football fields.  It is no simple  
matter to stage aircraft, launch them, recover them, and perform maintenance  
without bumping into each other.  Lest you think such problems are trivial, I  
refer you to an article in the Naval War College Review several years ago (I  
no longer have the exact citation).  In an attempt to standardize things, and  
reduce the pre-deployment training pipeline, the Navy hired some  
organizational specialists to study carrier operations.  The results were  
surprising.  There is no standard or common element between flight deck crews.   
Apparently there is considerable variation between the same crews on different  
deployment cycles (i.e. the same ship with replacement crewmembers working up  
for the next deployment).  The whole process is self-organinzing, and each  
arbitrary grouping of individuals comes up with slightly different procedures.   
The end result is the same, the Navy DOES have standard cyclical operations  
after all.  But how the crew does it, which planes are moved when, etc,  
involves variations between different crews.

Once you can safely conduct flight operations, you then have to figure out  
what you can do with the planes.  In the Soviet case this was a simpler  
problem.  It appears the the Soviets were truthful when they said their  
carriers were defensive.  The modified aircraft types did emphasize anti-air  
interception, with only a limited strike capability.  Again this is a  
non-trivial problem.  It goes beyond what types of aircraft, and what armament  
to carry.  Unless you are conducting a single type of operation (where the  
cycle times are similar), there is a complicated interaction in different  
aircraft types requiring the flight deck at different times.  There was an  
interesting article about this problem in the USNI Proceedings within the last  
year.  Over the last 30 years the USN has not solved the doctrine problem.   
There have been considerable shifts involving type and number of escorts, type  
and number of aircraft, and deciding just what is the primary mission.  At  
different times there have been emphasis on anti-air(AA)/strike,  
anti-submarine (ASW), ASW/AA, and power projection (some vague evolution of  
strike).  For that matter, the USN could never decide whether smaller  
specialized carriers, or large multi-role carriers were better.  This debate  
still continues, although budget pressures from 1960 on have forced a decision  
(we just don't know if it is the right decision:-).

Hope this helps (and sorry for the length).

Terry

QUIT
cision:-).

Hope this helps (and sorry for the length).

Terry

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