Thank you you for your thoughts! Appreciate the response.. A few more questions sir.hnair wrote:Cybaru, the main issues with helicopter AEW are:
1) power generation for sensors
2) transit to station and back
It is a good choice for fleet defense, but not for full on air war or land attack.
How much excess power is needed? I am curious, surely some sort of larger engine can be used to create a hybrid system which powers the electronics and drives the main+tail rotors. Much easier problem to solve as it our own platform vs designing and maintaining a nuke carrier along with designing and maintaining emals on the ship.
2. Transit issue, wouldn't it being able to refuel on the outskirts of the battle group like on a smaller picket ship/frigate and maintain higher on station time? those generally are 50-100 miles from the carrier. It may not need to be housed there, but just enough to land-refuel-maintain station, perhaps a spare crew may even stationed there. Anyways most CAP and E2D don't go further than 200 miles from the CBG as they lose on station time then.
Wouldn't there also be an advantage on storage on the carrier? 4/5 AEW based copters vs 2 E2D etc, allowing 2 to be deployed at all times improving the coverage
Future will be drone based AEW. It is probably 6-8 years away. Perhaps those could be stobar launched and arrested recovery. Much less risk to losing life.
If it is good enough for fleet defense, why not order those alteast and then worry about how to get better assets like C295 or A320 for war time.