Right now the Navy has two remaining conventional carriers with others
in storage
JFK and Kitty Hawk

Now the refurbishment is not for open ocean drag-races, but for littoral
hang-arounds so the black oil burning makes sense
also, these ships could or should be home ported in theater - say the UK
and Japan and would also "command" each of the Marine Expeditionary
Battle Groups that they serve as a "Command Aviation Assault Ship" - the
funny thing is - and I worked the number in the last Congress, the
savings from the JSF (canx the "B" and extend the development 10 years
at $4 bill a year), killing the LHA(R) and adding back one LHA a year,
and fully refurbishing the JFK to include two less screws, two less
boilers, two less catapults and a crew reduction of 2500 with a one
Marine Battalion add back with another SOF --- you actually double (time
2) the total aviation resources in the MEBG - twice the fighters
(F/A-18E/F/G), twice the MV-22's and twice the remaining helicopter mix
which is really what the Marines want and need - more assault, while
owning their own deck means that they are not providing squadrons to
just beef-up naval airwings -
\
In fact with this arrangement the USN comes out with one excess air
wing - so the fighter (VF) squadron on the JFK could be a NAVY squadron
with all the Marines being VMFA types - it is a win-win-win and the Navy
gets high production F-18's at lower costs and the allies get F-18's in
the same big bag of about two years of 25 per month

So you save in home porting the big deck assault ships with the battle
group, and rotating the people



wrote in message
ups.com...
The "big deck" assault ship idea is all right, but it seems you forget
about one of the most important things: DEPLOYMENT CYCLES...

Having only one such a ship would not make much sense, because that
would be usauble through only 6-to-9-month period within every 27
months (plus extensive overhauls required for such a weary vessel).

Sure, that would be a great tool for showing off (I can see the
headlines: "The situation in Bla-Bla Gulf is so tense, that the
President decided to send there a special assault ship, USS Kitty
Hawk, with over 50 Marine strike aircraft on board..." But it could
mean much more deterrence if the carrier was stationed at Guam, or
Japan...

P.S. To correct the squadron info: this fiscal year Marine Corps is
deactivating not one, but two deployable F/A-18 units, namely
VMFA(AW)-332 and VMFA-212.