Former US Navy, aboard a variety of nuclear and non-nuclear carriers during carrier quals, boat detachments, and combat conditions sea duty, I have worked both flight deck and aircraft maintenance duties under all of the above.
First of all, when the ship is at General Quarters(GQ), the crew is stationed at their assigned battle stations. In the hanger deck, under GQ orders, EVERYTHING is tied down. There is no moving airplanes around, there is no loose tool boxes, tugs, or airplanes. There is no routine maintenance. All routine carrier life ceases at “GQ, GQ, GQ!… this is not a drill!” being loudly blasted and thru multiple internal ways of communication to make sure all personnel are at their assigned battle stations. This carrier would have been at battle station readiness under attack or imminent attack.
Yes,a nuke carrier at 30-40 knots can heel over 10-30 degrees in a hard 180 or evasive maneuver, sending anything not secure, from coffee cups to being rolled out of the sack, to losing airplanes and tugs off the flight deck, but pretty tough to have one go overboard from the hangar bay via the elevator. But at GQ, you have or are supposed to have everything secure both topside and below decks, with all personnel at battle stations. A 180 turn takes over 5 minutes to accomplish from 30 knots…more at 40 knots.
You are at GQ while under attack or imminent threat of attack. The carrier has no defensive weapons. The aircraft are both your only defensive and offensive weapons. The destroyers, cruisers, and fast frigates attempt to form a defensive shield in addition to the aircraft. But they carry little to no offensive weaponry. This means the entire task force is operating at GQ including flight operations. Launching and recovering airplanes is now or can be a 24/7 pace. This requires turning into the wind, maintaining a steady course, for both launching and recovery. Aircraft are overhead for surveillance, outbound for attack duties, and inbound after attack missions are complete. Carrier ops under these GQ requirements is a pace, scope, and organized chaos, that outside of experiencing it…is difficult to both comprehend and appreciate the tension sailors and airmen are under modern…not WWII…battle/combat conditions.
The enemy knows all it has to do is foul the deck to prevent launching and recovering birds, damage an elevator, damage “vulture’s row “ the air boss command center…to neuter a carrier, No need to sink it. You can neuter a carrier by forcing evasive maneuvers stopping all current launching and recovery efforts of its birds. You can neuter a carrier by forcing evasive maneuvering delaying recovering airplanes forcing losses due to bingo fuel status.
Can you recover or launch airplanes during hard evasive maneuvering st 30-40 knots forward speed with resulting crosswinds, quartering tailwinds, down wind at deck angles of 20-30 degrees and no steady course/trajectory? No! Can you move around the flight deck let alone reposition airplanes, equipment during these conditions? No! As outstanding a carrier crew can be, flight ops cannot operate 24/7 in combat conditions twisting and weaving at the same time, in always changing weather conditions.
Therefore, I believe the scenario being provided by the media outlets and the US Navy is pure propaganda Bravo Sierra! The reality is the US military has no hypersonic capability, little modern drone technology outside of Reaper MQ9 size of which we have already lost 20% of all of our reserves …22 shot down at 30-35 million taxpayer funded each…almost 2 per week now… by a country who has been under constant US attack since 2004. They have endured every US/NATO/ coalition of the willing attacking hardware, latest technology gee wiz weaponry, endured economic sanctions, including slaughtering of their civilian population for over 20 years. They have learned a few things during all this and not only endured, but developed tactics, weapons both offensive and defensive internally.
I am amazed at our government, military, and population’s ignorance of history, lack of respect for different cultures, and loss of any empathy, sympathy, and morality resulting in the slaughter, murder, ethic cleansing of various civilian populations since WWII… and think that there will be no pushback by these oppressed, exploited, and abused people. And we have justified our collective behavior by saying in God We Trust, democracy and freedom for all, the global defender of human rights, Seriously? Our actions, our fruit says otherwise and the planet see the Emperor has no clothes. Proof? We cannot defend the USS Truman, cannot prevent the loss of our airplanes and drones, and we are intentionally bombing civilians in an undeclared war,
