Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Is Landing a Plane on Concrete Really Such an Odd Thing?

After decades of promoting inter-service "purple" thinking, is our ability to solve an air power gap really restricted to one platform within one service?

I find it fascinating that in all the discussion of fixing "carrier gaps" in our deployments overseas to make sure we have air power forward deployed, the concept of our Air Force which operates from land bases forward never comes up. Why does forward air power in either the western Pacific or Middle East have to be based on carriers?

And if we must have Navy planes forward, why can't Navy planes be based on land during those gaps in carrier battlegroups?

Well, the lack of readiness in our Navy's planes is one reason we can't, I suppose.

So what about that Air Force option? Or the Marines who also have planes?

Do we worry about a gap in airplanes or a gap in large floating air fields?