Re: Fighters and FlatTop Carriers

On the topic of usless fighters:

>Wasn't a similar arguement made in our own history about the
>usefulness of Aircraft in naval warfare.
>As I recal most Naval experts couldn't see the point in aircraft.

Beth wrote:
>The argument was made about aircraft in warfare full stop.
<Snippage>

Except the navy failed to learn from the ground command and fledgeling
Air
Forces. Their excuse was that they didn't have the "ground space" to
have an
airfield, besides we could just mount a bigger gun there. The problem
being
that naval gun rounds don't report back about what they saw on their
trip
over the horizon.

In the Tuffleyverse fighters have certain advantages that larger ships
just
don't have.
First : (Brian Bell wrote:)

>  2 - Cost. Because of the power of today's fighter launched weapons,
>carriers are more powerful than an equivalent cost of other surface
ships.
>  3 - Flexibility. Today, carriers can attack ships and land targets.
They
>can also send recon patrols.Second is that fighters are too small to be
shot at with big naval guns.

Then add:

4 - The simple fact that fighters exist forces the big capital ships to
divide their mass between anti-ship and anti-fighter weapons.

Think about it this way: A capital ship that had only large-bore ship to
ship guns would have truely impressive firepower, and become a challenge
for
military tacticians to find it's weaknesses. Someone would make the
coment:
"You know if only we had some of those 20th century fighters refitted
for
space combat, one could get in close and drop a proton torpedo down that
vent shaft." (flashbacks of Star Wars episode 4 anyone?) Such an attack
would become common against capitals, designs would begin to include
anti-fighter defenses.... And we end up with fighters as we have them in
FT.

5 - Reaction Speed: Everyone who has taken driver's ed has seen the
video
about how far a vehicle moves in the time it takes for the eye to send a
signal to the brain, and the brain to send a signal to the foot to apply
brakes. In any massively crewed ship this effect is multiplied by the
number
of command levels between the captan and whoever is actually steering,
running the engine, targeting the weapons, ect. plus the time it takes
to
actually speak the commands.

Modern ships don't have a big problem with this because there is only so
fast that they can turn, accellerate, decellerate ect. so the
difficulties
in cumulative reaction speed aren't a factor. In space, assuming that a
ship
has sufficient thrust to have the manuverability of a fighter, AND that
is
has the structural integrity to withstand that thrust applied laterally
to
the hull, you still have to deal with giving orders to up to two levels
of
inferiors (Usually in engineering: Picard gives the order to Geordi,
Geordi
gives orders to various faceless underlings, ect.). Fighters only have
one
pilot, you only have to go through the "sense,brain,action" cycle once.

As far as flat top carriers in space:

One obvious use of a flight deck has been overlooked in the discussion:
If
you look at the "Tubes" in Battlestar Galactica, they are pretty form
fitting. Even the bay doors in Babylon 5 don't leave much room for
error. It
is concieveable that a fighter bay become "Bent" rather than "Broken" or
have a wing half shot off and dangling from a number of cables or fuel
lines. A fighter in such a condition could not be recovered by a "Tube"
recovery system, you would need a deck to land on and recieve basic hull
repairs before being transported to the fighter's cradle.
    If the deck was large enough (one for a supercarrier) it could be
used
to assist in repairs for other ships in the fleet. Having a "mobile ship
engineering platform" in the form of a fleet's fighter carrier would aid
in
long-range repairs for patrol, reconnissance or "exploratory" fleets. In
fact my patrol carriers have disproportionatly large decks because they
ARE
the "drydock" for their light cruisers and escorts on long missions.

okay that's my $0.02 plus tax and intrest

Jim