The F-14 Tomcat was correctly dubbed the MiG killer in it's time, it was big and could host six large long range supersonic AIM-54 missiles that would kill any nimble MiG before it could even get close to any US position, built to defend aircraft carriers in the high seas the F-14 armed with the AIM-54 could hit airborne targets dead on 100 miles away, targets including fighter jets, supersonic bombers and even cruise missiles!
However this system was expensive, and apart from selling 79 F-14's and 285 AIM-54 Phoenix missiles to the Shah's Iran, following the revolution of 1979 it was rumored throughout the west that these missile systems were disabled by the Americans before they left, neither way it was an extremely expensive loss for the United States military.
The US Navy however throughout the 1980's made no use of the deadly system, the AIM-54 wasn't mass produced at all, as it had been during the late 1970's, instead during both incidents above the Gulf of Sidra against Libyan MiG's and Sukhoi's Navy Tomcats used short range AIM-7's and AIM-9's, which meant close quarter dogfights which misses the whole point in the missiles role in the long range defense for naval aircraft carriers.
However during the 1980's the Iranians did manage to press at least 55 of their F-14's into the newly founded Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, only around six AIM-54's had been disabled by the Americans, the Iranians put the Phoenix missile into increased use throughout the first five years of the war against Iraq, in one instance in 1982 downing two Iraqi MiG-23's with just one AIM-54!
However the Iranian Tomcats had a problem with their faulty TF30 engines, although this didn't stop the IRIAF F-14's scoring over 100 air to air victories against Saddam's air force.
The US Navy in 2006 had the Tomcat fleet destroyed, the deadly AIM-54 system never got it's chance to prove its worth in the west.
A proposed invasion of Australia was considered by the IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy) before they instead opted to attack the much smaller Midway Island in the Pacific was actually bought about in the early short days of Japans victories against the Allies.
But could it have worked?
When you think about the size difference and the distance it seems very far fetched, even though the Imperial Japanese Navy was one of the most advanced in the world and one of the very few with aircraft carriers.
Japan had a way bigger military and was more industrialized at the time than Australia but the sheer size of Australia would have been a major factor.
The height of the Japanese actions against Australia was the bombing of Darwin in 1942, another notable incident was the sinking of a midget submarine in Sydney Harbour, however following the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway the US Navy had the strategic advantage over the IJN in the South Pacific and was able to fight a massive war against Japan away from the home front.
However apart from bombing and promoting general terrorism and hitting key strategic military and economic targets in an attempt to cripple the Australian war effort could have been catastrophic it would have been of huge military effort on the behalf of the Japanese to try and bring the Australians to their knees, after all if the IJN had diverted their main muscle to striking Australian cities they would have given the United States Navy the upper hand in preparing a long hand offensive war against Japanese held territory in the Far East, unfortunately (for them) the IJN using their best ships were unable to capture the tiny island of Midway let alone bring the whole of Australia to its knees!
Admiral Yamamoto once said that "you cannot invade the United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
This rings through to be entirely true today, America has a military bigger than any of their Allies or their enemies and could take on a rather large war economy and fight multiple wars at any one time,
Following discussions on IMdB and one or two on my own posts, the scenarios most people paint are ones of which would be a sea borne invasion by the Peoples Republic of China, a Red Dawn type large troop invasion right across the Pacific, the writer of this comment put in a lot of thought into this scenario, but the truth is since the end of World War II the United States has managed to triumph a military buffer far beyond it's border against other potential superpowers, for example the United States Navy has controlled most of the Pacific Ocean for nearly half a century now.
It is the most modern in the world with a variety of attack submarines, ballistic missile submarines, a single one of their 11 Nimitz class aircraft carriers can hold 90 fixed wing aircraft, are about a mile in a length and have a 20 storey infrastructure and a crew of 6,000, and has more air power than most aggressor states have in their entire inventory!
So with these giant machines 'o war patrolling far beyond the American coastlines in the oceans of the world I doubt a force large enough would manage to breach these defences, and even if they did the United States Air Force is big enough to deter any threat that would in turn fighting a war far from home, and apart from that even if the front line F-15's, F-16's, F-18's and F-22's (* sigh) fighters were outmatched there are hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of older fighters lying in the hot air of the Nevada Desert which could be readied and flyable once again in as little as eight days in case the United States come under such an unlikely threat.
I know I have been focusing mostly up to this stage on air and sea power, the United States Army has some 1,473,900 active troops along with some 200,000 Marines, plenty to defend it's ground when organized properly and very well up there with the largest standing armies in the world.
Infiltration is probably the most plausible thing that could bring down or cripple the United States, the failure to respond to a natural disaster in New Orleans in 2005 and responding by sending in armed soldiers to take peoples guns could in one sense show a serious flaw in the way things between the government and the people are run in America, but this is one eventuality the government is surprisingly well prepared for:
There are some 600 FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) camps spread all across the United States, they are guarded 24/7, but are currently are empty of prisoners, yet fully staffed and ready to receive prisoners if martial law is ordered from the high command, another reason for their existence is in case of some mass exodus of illegal aliens crossing the Mexican/US border, which would be quickly rounded up and detained in detention in these camps.
Other related Executive Orders worth noting (from past and present) I have listed below:
Executive Order 10990 Allows the government to take control over all modes of transportation, highways, and seaports.
Executive Order 10995 Allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
Executive Order 10997 Allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels, and minerals.
Executive Order 10998 Allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
Executive Order 10999 Allows the government to take over all modes of transportation.
Executive Order 11000 Allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
Executive Order 11003 Allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
Executive Order 11005 Allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways (notable pieces of infrastructure that could help defend against an invading force) and public storage facilities.
Executive Order 11051 Specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
Executive Order 11310 Grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.
They seem to be prepared for it all, however the precision and carrying out of what they are unlawfully authorized to do could have it's initial human error, that being said it is almost impossible in today's militaristic climate to invade North America!
So the new Red Dawn in my mind is going to be a bit of a stretch if they go down the Chinese east invades west in a mass troop deployment manner like in the 1984 original which I also had problems with but nevertheless enjoyed!
* The American super carriers (particularly the Nimitz class) are most definitely an offensive weapon, the geography of the US ensures that a smaller more strategically based Navy could defend their territory (including Hawaii) instead of their current Navy that protects all of their global interests and are also used as a show of power against America's enemies and potential enemies!
In the weeks and months before the Six Day War the Soviet Union was spreading its influence into the Middle East, it backed radical governments in Egypt and Syria such as Nessar who had become the Arab worlds chief spokesman for the Arab world on the Israeli problem.
When the Six Day War begun Israel became victorious in the early hours of the war (it had begun) destroying most of the Egyptian air force in air strikes in Sinai, they were completely caught by surprise and over 80% of their air force was destroyed in a matter of hours.
During this time the Soviet navy had increased their presence near the war moving 20 war ships into the eastern Mediterranean, the US responded by sending in the US SIxth Fleet to be within one hundred miles of the Israeli coast, except for the USS Liberty which came near the Sinai coast. They were in international waters flying the American flag, what need would they have for an armed escort?
On Thursday the 8th of June it had reached its destination, what was on shore was a nearly complete Israeli victory, they had seized the West Bank and were pushing forward to capturing Jerusalem itself!
On at least nine different occasions Israeli aircraft buzzed the Liberty, Israel was Americas allies, and it was obvious they knew just that, it was a clear summers day, what could go wrong?
That was when Israeli Mirages begun attacking the Liberty crippling it after firing rockets and machine guns at its deck, in this horrific incident 34 Americans were killed! The Liberty had been crippled but was still able to send out a distress call to the American Sixth Fleet.
Knowing full well that the Liberty had been attacked the aircraft carrier USS America went into condition November, nuclear armed A-4 bombers and their fighter F-4 escorts were launched, the US had been prepared to retaliate against Egypt since they presumed it was them that had attacked the Liberty.
Ready aircraft had been launched (the ready meaning nuclear armed aircraft).
The US embassy in Cairo was warned that an attack was coming, the US had been ready to nuke that city and possibly kill thousands of people instantly and have hundreds more die slowly from radiation poisoning!
The aircraft were already on their way when Defence Sectary Robert McNamara gave the order for the aircraft to turn back not wanting to see a mushroom cloud over Cairo, McNamara wasn't the perfect defence sectary but he was right about what he said about going all the way with nuclear weapons, and that was essentially the complete destruction of nations!
Apart from widely accepted fact that Israel had attacked an American ship and killed 34 of its crew is bad enough, but imagine if the Sixth Fleet had gone all the day and incinerated Cario and killed thousands of people that lived there!
This clearly was a narrowly averted catastrophe that would have ever lasting effects to this day!
The F-14 Tomcats era came to it's end in 2006, drastically as the US Navy had a good 95% of the fleet destroyed instantly as so none would end up in the hands of the Iranians to be used on their aging Tomcat fleet.
But at a time when it didn't completely thrive the worlds waters was the time when the F-14 flew high, designed to protect carriers they could each carry AIM-54 Phoenix missiles, equipped with AWG-9 radar they could each track 24 targets from over 100 miles away and send engage six of those with AIM-54's from 100 miles away also.
The AIM-54 could reach Mach 3 in speed before hitting its target dead on, that target being a Russian MiG, supersonic bomber or even a cruise missile.
Even though the bombcat enabled the F-14 to drop bombs on ground targets it's air superiority weren't proven in 1991 against Iraq and in 2003 the Iraqi Air Force didn't put up much of a resistance, this being realized it was replaced by the F/A-18 Hornet, as the title suggests its a fighter and also an attack aircraft in one, which could carry a hefty amount of bombs to engage ground targets.
Meaning that yesterday's war is over and now today's war (taking on smaller nations with limited air power) make the F/A-18 Hornet more practical.
The French Exocet missile is lethal; as proved by the six of so Argentina possessed in the Falklands War, and to the crew of the USS Stark, (an Iraqi Mirage F-1 fired an Exocet at it killing 37 of the crew and crippling the ship in a matter of seconds).
The fighters-jets on the French carrier (the Charles de Gaulle) can all carry this meaning that no enemy destroyer or frigate will mess with them.
Now to the Russians, possessing only a single aircraft carrier in service (the Admiral Kuznetsov) they seem to depend more on defending rather than attacking, using neither the Su-27k or the Su-33 which has folding wings and six air to air missiles (and has the same role as the F-14 Tomcat had).
Boris Yeltsin' time in office really ruined the old Russian Navy, and Putin recently begun to commission new ships to be built and the Admiral Kuznetsov will soon be hitting the high seas reminiscent to the USS Enterprise in the 1970's, (except in an entirely defensive posture).
The above famous picture of one of the D-day landings on June 6th, 1944 shows the massive American/British/Canadian amphibious assault in Northern France spearheading the liberation of Nazi occupied Europe (or Fortress Europe), it was the largest amphibious landing in all of history.
Just over a year later two atomic bombs where detonated no Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan bringing the Pacific War and World War II to an end, conventional war was to continue throughout the cold war and up to this day, so even today with all these super weapons conventional warfare, including amphibious warfare is still important.
Your standard amphibious assault ship today can hold around 12 helicopters or 10 AV-8B Harrier II's or a mix of the two along with smaller boats for amphibious landings (stored in the well, see image above).
Its punch on shorelines would include strafing runs from marine Harriers backed by Marines in RH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters, to me the ship is more of a transport fleet to land in troops after the major punch is given, the Gulf War against Iraq in 1991 is all the evidence I need for this theory.
Built the same year as the Normandy invasion the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) with its 16 inch guns served along with other battleships in World War II on coastal bombard of islands in Japan such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa, it also served in the Korean War in the 1950's helping amphibious landings there.
But in the 1980's under under Ronald Reagans 600-ship Navy it was restored replacing its old World War II era flak guns with the latest in AA defences along with Tomahawk cruise missiles.
It's shells could hit and destroy solid concrete dug in positions from 26 miles away on the coast of its target, even the 2,000 pound bombs dropped from B-52's can't do this, and I'm pretty sure a strafing run from a Harrier couldn't neither, this was proven in 1991 when engaging Iraqi targets in Kuwait; its Tomahawk cruise missiles could also engage reinforcing convoys to the besieged ground forces outflanking them while troops get a chance to land;
So while World War II era battleships could still do some major damage in today's conventional warfare not much has really changed with amphibious warfare.
The Soviet Union focused a lot on this type of warfare in the 1970's, an example above (the Polnochny) shows that they carried helicopter gunships rather than Marine transports and Harriers, the above example being the Mil Mi-24 'Hind' gunship, which could ferry troops while engaging ground targets; however very few examples of these are seen in Russia today!
I had wrote a thesis before about how basic conventional warfare has been phased out, this couldn't be further than the truth during Ronald Reagan's second term as president of the United States in the mid to late 1980's.
He had planned to be stronger than the bear in the woods (the USSR) and really meant it for what he had started.
He had planned for a 600 ship Navy, this included:
Recommissioning older Iowa class battleships from World War II
Building more of the new aegis cruisers
Keeping older ships in service longer
Building several more Nimitz class carriers
To understand the scope of things one Nimitz carrier requires 6,000 crew members to function properly and carries over 90 fixed wing aircraft, during the 1980's these were a mix between F-14 Tomcats to defend the carrier, (one of which could shoot down 6 Soviet aircraft from up to 100 miles away), more new F/A-18 Hornets which could engage air and ground targets along with A6 Intruders and EA-6 Prowlers which could be escorted on bombing runs.
About four more of these were commissioned before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, by that time the US Navy was the largest in the world with 15 carrier battle groups, 4 battleship surface action groups, a handful of Aegis cruisers and over 100 attack submarines.
But did quality also fit in with this, well the truth was even though with the size of it being bigger then the Soviets the fleet also had more quality in it, for instance at the time the old Iowa class battleships, (commissioned in the 1940's during the Pacific War against the Japanese, these were refitted with RGM-84 Harpoon, BGM-109 Tomahawk, and Phalanx CIWS system capabilities, plus their armor plating would be more resilient against anti-ship missiles, this was perfect for attacking positions on shore and in shore in a coastal target, its 16 inch guns able to haul something as heavy as a small car nearly 20 miles! While its Tomahawk missiles could hit targets around 2,500km away!
This configuration on the USS Missouri (BB-63) during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991 proved it to be perfect for the war.
But when the wall came down in '89 the Soviets were gone and Russia wasn't seen as much as a threat, Congress cut funds decommissioning the older ships that made up the 600 ships Navy.
Today though the US Navy still has a hefty 11 Nimitz class aircraft carriers and a few dozen missile destroyers, its small than it ever was but is still hi-tech, but in the case of a conventional war in the future will we see the return of older ships to help fill the void?
At the end of the day unlike the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II the US Navy managed to cleverly combine quality and quantity.
I'm sick of hearing these pirate stories on the news, what good is more warships being sent to the Gulf of Aden anyway?
Seriously I'm sick of heroic crewmembers having to defend themselves against these assholes!
I would have suspected the United States of doing something about this instead of having every major country (even as of two days ago Iran!) in the world sending their Navy far from home to patrol the waters off East Africa, why hasn't the US done anything yet, why not attack the pirates from their bases of operations, kill half of them and disband and destroy their order of hijacking ships and killing innocent sailors.
The ship I would recommend:
Any of the Wasp class amphibious assault ships (see above) would do the job, these things are the Swiss Army knives of warships, they have an air group of helicopters that are used to ferry Marines and equipment to the shore from the ships. These helicopters are supplemented by a squadron of up to eight AV-8B Harrier II V/STOL ground-attack aircraft.
So strafe the shore based pirate harbors with low flying Harriers, instead of using your standard helicopter drop in Special Forces using high flying V-22 Ospreys where and when needed, have your amphib ship parked off the coast for a week or two along with a hospital ship and eventually the wannabe pirates will witness the fast retaliation attacks and not want to be part of the style.
The problem will be solved in a matter of days and maybe the "fireworks" show put on will take our minds off of domestic issues.
Okay the name of this article is just a little sarcastic, I hadn't had time to blog about it and decided that I pretty much had to, the US Navy was harrased last Sunday by five Iranian boat as they entered the Perisan Gulf, but the question is what really happened, their are two sides to the story.
Strait of Hormuz Incident
American Point of View
Three US Navy destroyers the USS Hopper (DDG-70), USS Port Royale (CG-73) and USS Ingraham (FFG-61) were sailing through the Strait of Hormuz towards the Persian Gulf when three Iranian boats coming towards them and a radio message broadcast to the US stating ""I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes."
Fearing what they heard the US ships prepared to arm up and stop the threat and literally when they began to do so the Iranian boats turned around and fled.
The Iranian boats had belonged to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and often behave a alot more hostile than the regular Iranian navy.
Iranian Point of View
Iranian officials denied that the boats acted provocatively and offered varied descriptions of the events, with one official saying the American ships approached and threatened the Iranian boats, but the Iranian department of defence later stated that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Persian Gulf Incident
Not exactly an incident but we were told that it was an accident, two F/A-18 Superhornets an F/A-18E and two-seater F/A-18F took off from the supercarrier USS Harry S. Truman and later crashed in the Gulf, both planes had collided in mid-air but all three pilots were rescued from the water by the Truman. The fighters were operating from Carrier Air Wing Three from the Truman strike force and were providing "close air support from Iraq when they crashed."
There was no hostile fire when the fighters crashed and it was reported to be an accident.
