So Navy twitter seized on yet something else Deptula said that, at face value seemed ludicrous but if you peeled it back had more than a veneer of truth (what he actually meant who knows)

It seems that there may be some lack of understanding on some airplane things, so a primer

What was seized on icymi was the statement he's made a few times that "one bomber can deliver as much firepower as one carrier" (he sometimes caveats it with "in some circumstances)

Ludicrous right? How can one overgrown fighter carry as much as dozens

First issue, all capacities are not created equal. Just because an aircraft has a "max capacity" of MGTOW - empty weight - fuel load doesn't mean that's what it can carry on every (or even most) sorties. Max usuable load is absolutely a thing

First at issue is carriage constraints. Hardpoints are only sized and stressed to accommodate certain types and numbers of munitions (you aren't hanging a GBU-38 from a fighter's wingtip rail). Additionally, sometimes there can be weirdness with carriage equipment

As an example that cuts against the bomber, the Bone has a payload capacity in the tens of thousands of lbs, but because of a quirk in how its carriage system was upgraded to handle smart weapons it can only carry 15 500 lbs GBU-38s

That's about as much as a 2-ship of Hornets

(Incidentally this is the sole reason the B-2 got the nod for the much mocked Libya strike; the weaponeering, number of JDPIs, and the need for them to be struck in one pass meant it was the only aircraft capable of doing the job effectively and simply)

Btw not just a combat aircraft constraint, "cube/bulk out before weight out" was absolutely a thing on the C-141, where the load would fill the available space before maxing out the weight

Drove the stretch version as well as some of the design parameters of the Moose

In addition to literal capacity there's practical capacity. While you may have seen pictures of fighters with a gorilla loadout of nothing but bombs, look at the typical loadout the last 20 years: you'll notice almost always a couple external fuel tanks

This is because, shockingly, fighters aren't super big and therefore can't carry a ton of fuel internally. While we could just have them hit a tanker every hour, that's suboptimal for several reasons. So the useful load includes stations with bags

Exacerbating things, these bags are usually pretty big and bulky, which means for operational effectiveness they take up a station that could otherwise be used for a big and bulky store

Which brings us back to Deptula's statement, which was in the context of the PRC/PLAN. That means standoff. 1 B-1 (the bomber he used) can carry 24 AGM-158s. A SHornet can carry a practical load of 2 (it's gonna have bags on the other 2 "heavy-weight" stations)

Especially in this scenario, where the carrier is trying to stand-off as far from the threat as possible while balancing limited tanking resources

Remember, stand-off in all instances is from the threat, not the target (if we could just drop a bomb on someone we happily would)

So, 1 B-1, 24 missiles, 1 SH 2 missiles, 12 fighters for 1 Bone

This isn't a parochial thing btw, AF fighters get the same treatment....*elephant walk of a Wing's worth of Vipers*

"You know what that was, right?"
"No?"
"A couple BUFFs"

Back to Deptula's statement, a carrier air wing has 4 squadrons at 12 each, so yes, even taking MC rates into account his statement is an exaggeration for stand-off...but not by a lot.

On the MC rate point, the demise of the AFGSC fleet has been greatly exaggerated. Things were pretty bad in Boneland for a while but the standdown was put to good use and as someone who has to hear about them on a regular basis I'd put our MC rates up against any fourth gen fleet

So next point of education, there seems to be an idea out there that anything inside the surface fires rings is a smoking hole 15 minutes into the war

A2/AD is not a magic forcefield

While yes, DPICM means it's easy (-ish) to hit aircraft on the ground, it's more difficult to substantially damage runways, and more difficult still to go after muns and (properly hardened) POL storage

When we talk about this ACE stuff it isn't just vaporware, this is real and we absolutely intend to be conducting ops while under episodic fire

Episodic is the key point, red doesn't have infinite missiles. More locations complicates the targeting problem and forces choices

Unloading at Andersen is one thing, simultaneously unloading at a half dozen locations in the 2IC is something else

Once splash occurs, rapid runway repair is a thing, as is the Integrated Combat Turn

To be clear, I'm not saying that for bombers, mass takes time to regenerate (we're working on that too), just that this idea that the US has to cede any form of land based airpower inside red's surface fires rings is absolutely not an accurate way of looking at things

We've recognized the threat, we've analyzed it, and we have and continue to take active measures to render it ineffective for accomplishing the purposes that red wants it to have

Last thing, tankers. I dunno where this idea got started that bombers take umpteen tankers to do anything (CAS wheels the last couple decades maybe?) but I can assure you that is not the case, even for CONUS to CONUS missions

Flying a 2-ship out and back great circle route to a shot container somewhere in the western pacific, assuming we're shooting and leaving and not hanging out for 10 hrs of CAS and tea, we'll only need a handful of tankers, MDS dependent

Less if they're strategically staged

So what's all this have to do with the Navy?

Bluntly, in that sort of peer fight your own folks (both black and brown shoe) have said you want long range land based strike to be the primary offensive air component of that fight

To be clear plenty the CSG can contribute, both from a VLS cell perspective as well as airplanes (Growlers + DCA fighters), but SHornets slinging SLAM-ERs or LRASMs 2 by 2 seems to be suboptimal

There's a reason why the Navy PMA folks running LRASM pushed for Bone EOC first, and why they're now searching for P-8 integration even after the SHornet is notionally EOC

M A G A Z I N E D E P T H

(It's got 3 of those and that's not even half full)

THAT SAID

As an AF guy my national priorities in a shooting fight w/the PRC would be the following (in order):

- SSNs absolutely fucking up the PLAN (you wanted an answer Ms Flournoy, asked and answered)
- VLS generating additional kabooms
- long range aviation strikes

This isn't parochial, it's based on multiple discussions I've had w/joint folks (FTR you can add Army and Marine long range fires to the "VLS" comment above, assuming they can find access) on this topic

At the end of the day it's a fires problem, regardless of exact theater

The adversary has pushed that out (again, stand off from the threat, not the target) but that doesn't mean there aren't options

Just means we need to be judicious with where we go and what we do from there

(Also none of this was intended as a subtweet, I said most of it in other folks threads, just consolidating for AF purposes, something about centralized control)

In summary, me in every wargame I've participated in

Oh, and one other thing......fighters make movies, bombers (and subs) make policy/history

CC @KeraRolsen @richganske