this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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(My point exactly. And, since I lack even a shred of self awareness, here have six more paragraphs! I really tried to keep them on just one topic, at least)
Disclaimer
I've had to rewrite this a couple times, because I keep veering into being excessively sarcastic and you really don't deserve that. So, and with my complete and honest sincerity, I say this: I need you to know that your understanding here is very flawed. It's that flaw that's keeping you from being as abjectly terrified as every non-fascist US natsec dickhead is right now (this very much includes me). There's a serious danger here, and it's not that you're going to personally kick off a war with the US, nor that I might not win an argument on lemmy, but that the imperialist powers currently salivating at the idea of extending their influence over EU countries (and this includes the USA) are eagerly attempting to exploit your ignorance of this subject to their own ends. As someone living through the hell of what that technique can do, I want you to be as prepared as possible to spot this kind of misinformation in the future. So please, please hear me out.
First, let me say that you are correct on several points - you cannot have a land invasion or launch an occupation with air and naval assets alone. You're also 100% correct that the US Navy does not have 1,100 F-35 Lightning II Cs, that was not what I meant to imply (afaik there are only ~105 F35Cs). Now obviously, to occupy conquered ground, you have to... occupy, the ground. This is very simple thing which, unfortunately, boats are famously ill suited to. Planes are, also, just garbage at it. I will make no attempt to deny these patently obvious facts, which I happily will cede to you without contest. Admittedly, this is a serious problem for my hypothetical invading army to overcome. Because unfortunately, the easiest way to transport large numbers of that really cool military stuff we all love, like tanks and rockets and red-blooded American heroes with red bandanas on their heads and plot armor a mile thick, is inside big planes or on big boats.
So lets just... ignore that problem. It's inconvenient.
A nuclear supercarrier is a massive strategic asset, both physically and metaphorically. It lets you project force over a huge area that your mainland based assets simply do not have and that is absolutely invaluable in the geopolitical world. It lets you power small cities for disaster relief. And they are the most densely packed logistical hubs ever conceived. That last thing is why they're valuable, really. Obviously they can service, fuel, coordinate and re-arm their compliment of aircraft and that alone is amazingly useful, but see, in this hypothetical invasion scenario, the most useful thing they could do would be to just...
Sit there.
No, really. Park a strike group out in the middle of the atlantic, run a tube over to an oiler, and you can keep a flight of air tankers circling overhead 24/7. Think about that, seriously, because this is what I think you've failed to understand the implications of. The US doesn't particularly have the hardest troops or some innate superiority at warfare, but they are so far beyond the logistical capacity of any other nation that it's genuinely scary.
Putting a carrier out there, a long long way away from harm, isn't glamorous. But by doing so it enables the mainland US air assets to launch directly on missions, without a need for a forward air base. We do this all the time, too - every mission flown by a B2 Spirit takes off and lands at Whiteman Airforce Base (ranked #1 for "airbases with the most mask-off names"). Any strategic bomber is the same. So with one carrier, suddenly all ~900 of those 5th generation stealth multirole aircraft can be deployed for anything from interdiction to close air support. The limit becomes how much meth the pilot can handle and how many bombs can be strapped to one of those damn things.
THAT is what makes the US military a threat. I had a bunch more, explaining how the IRF and CRG can set up an Expeditionary Airbase in 24hrs and then just drop in C5 galaxies and what are you gonna do from there? And a bit about how most of the EU member states still use Gulf War era anti-aircraft systems, and those got merc'd by the damn F117. And a reaaaally boring bit about how the US's Strategic Airlift capability is super duper astounding (seriously, a C5 can haul two abrams at once) which has been removed in editing, you're welcome.
But... I honestly don't think I need any of that. That the US can project it's mainland-based assets into any arbitrary theater is already unbelievable. That a LCAC can carry an abrams to shore, that 24hr expeditionary airbases include utilities and fast food restaurants, that there is no EU counter to the B52's standoff payload delivery, that the US has a damn paradrop conference table? Those are all a pale second to the reality that the US can bomb every last scrap of infrastructure you have, level your whole town, and the pilots that did it will be going home to their cliche Missouri family a few hours later. It's the refinement of banal evil to the point that combat becomes, you know, a job. There's nothing else like it, and it should terrify the fuck out of you because it sure as hell does me.
(I'm just ignoring everything about canada (because I'm just too tired) and what divestment means (because holy fuck nobody cares, not you, not me, nobody))
Your post boils down to US has insanely more logistics capacity than anybody else and is more advanced than anybody else. Which I never disputed.
However, logistics are not measured against your oppositions logistics, they are measured against the logistics requirements of your task. A significant advantage in logistics can be counteracted by having to operate across an ocean vs overland. EU still needs to improve logistics but it does not have the same hard requirements (when we are discussing strictly the defense of continental EU).
An actual air tanker fleet would help, mostly with time on airborne rather than range, EU aircraft but it is an absolute necessity for the USAF and USN. A C5 grade air transport would also help but it is not necessary.
I will also address the invest/divest issue because it's not a red herring. You have misrepresented USA's push for more EU military spending as being motivated by a desire for EU independence from the US, it was motivated by US commercial interests.
Then we have a lot of small inaccuracies that together paint a misleading overall picture.
Carriers are massive force multipliers, they allow you to project air power (and light land power) in areas where you could not at all (so they multiply by infinity in some cases). This obviously comes at a premium and drawbacks.
The same amount of money spent on a land based airforce will yield significant more air power. A Nimitz would cost about 11 billion 2023 USD, an F35C costs ~100 million so you get around a 100 extra modern planes for a carrier. Also the F35A that is not carrier capable costs ~83 million USD so you could get buy four get one free, or more realistically cover (easily) land based logistics the carrier would provide. The cost of the escorts accordingly should go to land based SAM systems.
And of course all that airpower being on a single ship makes them much more vulnerable than being based even on a single air base, which can have groups of aircraft physically separated from each other and/or the runway and/or the ammo depots etc.
They also do not have dedicated air tankers, they can use buddy transfer systems with fighters but this cuts down on the fighters they can use for fighter task. Usually it's the USAF that refuels navy and marines aircraft since they have the dedicated air tanker fleet.
It's theoretically possible for the USAF to refuel fighters operating from continental USA to strike at Europe, after all they conduct ferry missions often. Of course in combat missions tankers need to hold back from the combat zone. In any case the F-35 were never intended to fight over the atlantic. This leaves the B-2 which is both stealth and meant to operate over oceans. It also has a payload to do significant damage, though there are 21 of them. While it's certainly stealthier than F-117 it remains to be seen whether they can consistently penetrate inflict significant damage and get out to have coffee at Missouri.
The F-117's only interactions with SAM was getting shot down by 1970s Soviet SAM in Serbia. In Gulf war the F-117 did not have loses to SAM but was only operating at night, Iraqi air defenses failed to shot down any type or aircraft at night, even the A-10 that practically was banned from daytime operations. SAMs were actually dealt with by F4/F16 SEAD/DEAD packages (during daytime). Needless to say Gulf era Iraqi SAM systems (and practices) were not up to contemporary Soviet or European standards and of course even less comparable to today's EU SAM systems.
Yes, I am certain the IRF can build an expeditionary air base in hostile Europe, in 24 hours. One wonders why they would bother instead of conquering the rest of EU by themselves. It's obviously not happening when facing enemy resistance which will have heavier equipment than an airborne troop.
You might just as well try to take over an existing airfield and land planes there but it's also an impossible task. Anything from fighter jets, armor, artillery, mortars, manpads can spell disaster for your reinforcement and therefore you.
LCAC can carry an Abrams, thus USN can deliver 90 Abrams if all ships with LCACs were part of an assault. Impressive, but still not enough even if they all manage to land.
As for terror and evil and all that. Historically war has been a job, it's not something new or special to Americans, if anything there is more romanticizing with all that fighting for freedom or even with vile ideologically rationalizations (racism/nazism).
I'm not going to waste your time by expounding at length on this but dude:
Just... stop.
Looking stuff up on wikipedia (et al.) and drawing what are, to you, reasonable sounding conclusions works really well sometimes. But there's painfully fundamental errors in there, many that don't even make sense in context. This thread is old, and it's just the two of us here, and it is really clear you're learning this on the fly. Which, not to discourage you from doing that! Please do, it's super important to be versed in the subject given the slant of modern geopolitics.
Seriously, you've hit the point in the subject where you can't easily guess the right answer no matter how clever you may be. Your guesses are good, too! Like there are some reasonable extrapolations and a few that, for unreasonable reasons, just aren't correct. Really, with a bit more exposure I think you'll be very good at this. But I get that I'm annoying, and that you have sunk a whole bunch of your identity into this being an accurate representation, and that america does not have anything like monopoly on patriotism. I do.
From one idiot on the internet to another, blah blah blah heartfelt sentiment, patronizingly phrased in that uniquely american way, slightly smug tone, sincerity, blah.
...
(divestment is a three letter word)
ROFL kid, I will answer you properly later.