Kevin Brooks wrote:

: Not necessarily. Given that the air threat to the CV's, or for that
: matter to their strike packages, is greatly reduced these days, the
: USN may be willing to place the major air defense/air superiority
: roles solely in the hands of the F-18's with their AIM-120's, and use

Well, it does not need to be a 'great' threat to do serious
damage: Look at the achievements of the Argentineans with
only five Exocet missiles. One of the lessons of the Falklands
war (now again conviently forgotten by the British) is that
a fleet really needs a strong BVR defense, capable of
intercepting low-flying aircraft at distances up to 100 km
away.

But AIM-54 is now a relatively old weapon (although upgraded
several times) and it was designed primarily to defend the
fleet against Soviet bombers attacking at high and medium
altitude, launching the very big Soviet cruise missiles of
the period. The threat has changed, the attack profile of
an enemy force would now probably bring them in just a few
feet above the waves, only poppping up to fire their missiles.

It is likely that AIM-120 has better performance against
low-flying targets, although AIM-54's range against
high-flying targets is still unrivalled. The F-18E/AIM-120
combination may actually provide a better fleet defense
than F-14/AIM-54.

Emmanuel Gustin
http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/