US Uses One-Way Attack Drones Against Iran

Among military websites, the headlines are all atwitter about the US’ use of the one-way, LUCAS, attack drone in the strikes against Iran. 
 
Here’s a Military Times website headline[1]:
 
US Confirms First Combat Use of LUCAS One-Way Attack Drone in Iran Strikes
 
This is a simply stunning development and marks a new chapter in strike warfare.  From the LUCAS performance specs, never before has any country had the ability to deliver a maximum 40 lb payload to a distance of 500 miles at a cruise speed of 85 mph (74 kts).  The closest the US has come to this in the past is the one-way Tomahawk attack drone (sometimes referred to as a cruise missile) with a 1000 lb warhead and a range of 1000 miles at a speed of Mach 0.74. (570 mph).
 
It’s embarrassing the way we’ve made a habit of proudly trumpeting “new” technologies that have actually existed for many decades.  That’s not to say that there isn’t a use for a small, very slow missile (which is what a one-way drone is) with very low end lethality but to brag that we’ve accomplished something remarkable is humiliating and deceptive (or ignorant).
 
Here’s an example of an embarrassing attempt at praise from Army Recognition website.
 

U.S. Central Command has moved Task Force Scorpion Strike into an operational posture, giving deployed forces a low-cost one-way attack drone capability designed to multiply strike capacity, absorb attrition, and overwhelm defenses through massed, distributed effects. Beyond adding another munition to the inventory, it effectively creates a new layer of “magazine depth” that can be launched quickly from dispersed sites, complicating enemy targeting and imposing unfavorable cost trades on air defenses. The shift matters less for a single drone’s performance than for what it signals: the U.S. military is now treating expendable systems as a scalable combat arm, not a niche experiment … [2]

“overwhelm defenses” ?  Isn’t that what we’ve done repeatedly when we’ve launched dozens of cruise missiles at targets over the years?
 
“massed, distributed effects” ?  Isn’t that a contradiction?
 
“expendable systems” ?  Haven’t missiles always been expendable?
 
“scalable” ?  Haven’t we always scaled operations as needed?
 
Well, sure, we’ve done all that for many decades but never before have assembled all the accolades into a single press release.  Now that’s an accomplishment!
 
Again, at $35,000 per unit, there may be a use for such a weapon but to believe it is something new is just ignorant and embarrassing.
 
 
Warning:  As usual, we are not going to discuss the politics of the US decision to strike Iran, only the military aspects. 

 

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[1]Military Times website, “US Confirms First Combat Use of LUCAS One-Way Attack Drone in Iran Strikes”, JD Simkins, 28-Feb-2026,
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/02/28/us-confirms-first-combat-use-of-lucas-one-way-attack-drone-in-iran-strikes/
 
[2]Army Recognition website, “U.S. Central Command Deploys First Operational LUCAS Drone Unit for Potential Iran Strikes”, 28-Feb-2026,
https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/aerospace-news/2026/u-s-central-command-deploys-first-operational-lucas-drone-unit-for-potential-iran-strikes#google_vignette

The Carrier Ascendant

WWII saw the twilight of the battleship and the ascendency of the carrier as the primary source of naval strike firepower.  Why?  What characteristics made carrier power superior?  No, this isn’t a trick question.  The answer is the simple and obvious one.  Carriers were able to deliver significant firepower but so could any surface ship so that’s not the answer.  What made the carrier so effective was that it could deliver that firepower
 

• from a great distance and,
• cheaply

 
Carriers could strike from well beyond the horizon and, possibly more importantly, it could do so cheaply in the sense that the firepower delivery unit, the individual aircraft, cold be easily and affordably replaced to mitigate the inevitable attrition.  Trained pilots, of course, were a separate issue.
 
Consider the import of the cost aspect.  Previously, in a clash of surface ships, the firepower delivery unit was the ship itself and multi-billion dollar ships (expressed in terms of today’s relative costs) were routinely lost in combat.  It took years and enormous costs to replace a lost ship.  Carriers, however, did not risk themselves in the delivery of their firepower – they just risked their aircraft and each aircraft represented only around 1/90^th (an air wing of 90 aircraft) of the carrier’s combat effectiveness.  Further, losing an aircraft was a nearly insignificant event (the pilots would, of course, vehemently disagree!) and the aircraft could be readily replaced.  In fact, carriers routinely carried spare aircraft, ‘boxed’ and ready to assemble.  Replacement aircraft were free, on a relative basis.
 

SBD Dauntless - Rise of the Carrier

 

Yes, carriers were at risk during the overall strike operations.  If a carrier was in range to strike, it was also in range to be struck.  We’re talking about the act of striking, not the overall operation.
 
So much for belaboring the obvious.  How is this relevant to us, now?
 
Consider the cruise missile.  What are its outstanding characteristics compared to the current primary strike unit of the Navy which is, of course, the carrier and its aircraft?  Cruise missiles have two major characteristics that distinguish them from aircraft:
 

• Greater range
• Much lower cost (nearly free on a relative basis compared to aircraft)

 
Does this sound familiar?  Are these not the exact characteristics which led to the ascent of the carrier over the battleship?
 
The cruise missile is now ascendant over the carrier for strike operations.  Indeed, ComNavOps has repeatedly stated that the carrier is in its twilight as a strike platform.  It is, of course, still dominant in the air superiority role.
 
We need to remember what led to the demise of the battleship and rise of the carrier and be wise enough to recognize those same characteristics in the cruise missile relative to the carrier.
 

LRASM - Demise of the Carrier

 

We also need to recognize that one of the characteristics that led to the rise of the carrier and now the cruise missile is affordability.  We need to keep that characteristic firmly in mind.  If the missile becomes too expensive, which is the path we’re on now, then it loses its ascendency.  Cruise missiles have tripled in price over the last decade or two as we add ever more sophisticated and complex functionality which serves no real combat purpose.  We need to keep the missiles as simple as possible which will keep them affordable and rapidly producible.
 
During WWII, we built an average of 80 F6F Hellcats per week.  Today, we’re doing well if we can build 80 missiles per year.  We’ve got to bring the missile cost and complexity down so that we can produce them at useful war rates.
 
Strike has moved on from the carrier and we need to adjust our fleet composition and air wings accordingly.

Reality or Fantasy?

Having largely failed to develop and field a new long range anti-ship cruise missile (LRASM), the Navy is now asking industry to develop yet another new missile with the capabilities of the LRASM for a small fraction of the price. 

The US Navy is seeking industry’s assistance to rapidly prototype and field a new air-launched, stand-off weapon inexpensive enough to manufacture en masse and perform on par with the service’s current anti-ship cruise missile.[1]

The Navy solicitation notice to industry states that the new missile “should be “complimentary” to the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile”.
 
In fact, the Navy’s notice suggests that the new missile should be even better than the LRASM. 

… the service posted a public notice earlier this month that it should have “increased range at lower costs” and “integrated a high-maturity propulsion system with proven payloads.”[1]

Note that it is not unambiguously clear from the notice that the ‘increased range’ refers to the LRASM although that is the Navy’s current air-launched anti-ship missile.
 
So, the Navy is asking for a better missile at a substantially lower price. 

Possible proposals from industry should aim for a cost no greater than $300,000 per all-up-round with a production capacity of at least 500 rounds per year, the notice states.[1]

For comparison, the LRASM costs around $3M per missile.  Thus, the Navy is asking for better performance at 1/10th the cost.  Does anything seem out of whack about this?  ComNavOps has long been calling for cheaper weapons that can be mass produced quickly and affordably but this goes well beyond the realm of reasonable and deep, deep into the world of pure fantasy.  Even allowing for some degree of profiteering by industry, if they had the technical capability to produce a missile with better performance than the LRASM for 1/10^th the cost, they’d already be doing it.
 
But wait … the fantasy grows!
 
The Navy is looking to field this new missile in 2027.[1]  For comparison, the LRASM began development in 2009 and production began eight years later in 2017.  Even today, 15 years after beginning development, we’ve only produced a grand total of 258 missiles, as shown in the table below, and the Lot 4,5 missiles are not expected to be delivered until 2026.

Let’s check the reality-fantasy ratio on this.  Ideally, you’d like a 100% reality to 0% fantasy, right?  Common sense and history tell us with absolute certainty that when you start subtracting from reality and adding fantasy, you fail.  So …
 
The Navy wants a better LRASM at 1/10^th the price.  Does that seem like reality or fantasy?
 
The Navy wants the new weapon fielded by 2027.  Even if you consider this year to be the start of development (and no development contract has yet been issued), that means the Navy is looking to field this weapon in just three years versus the eight years it took to field the LRASM.  Does that seem like reality or fantasy?
 
The Navy wants a production capacity of 500 missiles per year compared to the LRASM demonstrated production rate of 258 missile in 7 years which is a production rate of 37 missiles per year!  Does that seem like reality or fantasy?
 
We have to be a little bit fair, here, and note that the Navy is just exploring the concept. 

“The objective of this notice is to help the government determine if there are existing sources with the capability and experience to rapidly prototype, integrate, test and field a long-range, network-enabled weapon system capable of launch from a F/A-18E/F and F-35A/C,” according to the notice.[1]

They may find out that it’s utterly unrealistic and drop it but the point is that the stated desire is so far from reality that someone is wasting a lot of time and effort on something that should be patently obvious is impossible.
 
Now, as stated earlier, ComNavOps has long called for cheaper weapons.  However, hand in hand with that call is the call for simpler weapons … it’s the ‘simpler’ part that makes the ‘cheaper’ part a reality.  Could the Navy develop a cheaper and simpler anti-ship cruise missile?  Yes! 
 
How can we produce a simpler missile?  A good start would be to eliminate the network capability and all the mid-course handoff, pass back and forth, guidance by a Boy Scout in Utah capability that is total garbage and adds nothing to the combat capability.  Make a missile that flies to a spot, opens its sensor ‘eye’, looks for a target, and then attempts to fly into the target.  Eliminate the choosing a specific rivet to hit and just settle for a hit anywhere.  Modern ships aren’t armored.  A hit anywhere will be a mission kill or sinking (ask the Russians!).  Eliminate all the sensor imaging garbage that only increases the software complexity and cost and wrecks schedules.  You don’t need an image library on a missile.  In war, just let it hit anything that meets a few basic sensor criteria.  Anything you hit is going to hurt the enemy.
 
Let’s stick with reality and leave fantasy in the laboratory.
 
 
 
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[1]Breaking Defense, “Navy seeking to rapidly prototype new air-launched, stand-off missile”, Justin Katz, 27-Feb-2024,
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/02/navy-seeking-to-rapidly-prototype-new-air-launched-stand-off-missile/

Guns Or Missiles?

One of the lamentable tendencies exhibited by naval observers and commenters is to evaluate weapons in isolation.  I’ve preached about the dangers of this yet it still happens all too frequently.  For example, if one considers the use of offensive missiles versus large caliber naval guns, the discussion invariably becomes a one-versus-one comparison - a single missile’s properties versus those of a single shell.  People will cite range or speed or explosiveness or whatever supports their favored weapon.  However, that kind of comparison and evaluation is always incomplete and always wrong.  Consider the following example.
 
An enemy’s island base needs to be destroyed.  How do we do it?  The obvious answer is we stand off a thousand miles and launch cruise missiles at it.  The less obvious but likely more realistic answer is that we used up most of our cruise missile inventory in the first month of the war and we, essentially, have none left and our industry, which is geared towards a peacetime production of a hundred missiles per year, can’t even begin to supply replacements in any useful quantities and what few we get are reserved for only the very highest priority targets.  Now what do we do? 
 
We could place a carrier in harm’s way and try an air strike, however, the island base is heavily defended by SAM batteries so we’ll suffer aircraft losses that our industry can’t replace in any useful time frame.
 
We could have the Air Force try a bomber strike but the enemy destroyed our only base in the region on the first day of the war and our handful of flyable bombers are tasked with much higher priority missions.
 
Hmm …   Now what?
 
Well, if we had ships with large caliber naval guns we could just sail up to the island and erase it from existence.  Of course, the tactical situation would have to be appropriate but that’s always the case for any mission.
 
Thus, a missile might have more desirable properties but the correct answer is more likely large caliber naval guns when one considers the larger picture of the overall war, munitions inventory, and replacement cost and time frames.
 
This also illustrates another guiding principle and that is flexibility.  Again, so many people debate weapon systems as mutually exclusive, one or the other, instead of acknowledging that there is a need for multiple options instead of one, exclusive choice.  It’s better to have options and not need them then to need them and not have them.  Options give us flexibility.  When we lose our only useful base, when our industry can’t supply replacement munitions, when industry can’t replace aircraft losses, when the enemy upsets our plans, flexibility gives us the ability to stay in the fight.

USS Boston CAG-1
Guns or Missiles?  Both!
Note two forward triple 8" mounts and aft missile launcher.

Keep this in mind as your discuss (let’s be honest … as you argue) weapon systems.  The ‘correct’ answer is almost always ‘both’ and it’s quite likely that the less advanced system will turn out to be the preferred choice for reasons other than pure performance specifications.
 
Guns or missiles?  The Navy has unwisely selected only missiles when the correct answer is both! 

Carriers As Escorts - Evidence from Ukraine

ComNavOps has, on many occasions, opined that carrier aircraft strike is no longer viable against a peer defended target.  Instead, the strike weapon of the Navy is now the long range cruise missile and the role of the carrier and its air wing is to act as an escort for the cruise missile shooters (Tomahawk configured Burkes) (see, “Navy Strike Doctrine” and “Striking Power of the Fleet”) .  This role requires a long range, pure fighter aircraft instead of the Navy’s misguided strike/fighter Hornets and F-35s.  Needless to say, the concept has not been received with unanimous agreement among readers who still cling to the outmoded carrier strike concept.

 

Well, here’s some real world experience and lessons from the Ukraine-Russia war that directly support ComNavOps’ contention.  A Newsmax article discusses exactly this concept (applied to land based aircraft and missiles instead of carrier/naval assets, of course).

 

"What worries most is whether Ukraine is going to be able to keep the Russian air force out of the war," he [Norwegian Chief of Defence Eirik Kristoffersen] said, adding that they have been able to so far "thanks to Ukrainian anti-aircraft defences".

 

And now, here’s the million dollar prize statement:

 

The bulk of Russian strikes in recent months have been carried out by long-range missiles.[1]

 

There you have it.  Russia has found that aircraft have been unable to operate effectively and survivably against a peer defense.  Instead, they’ve switched to the use of missiles as their main long range strike weapon.

 

Of course, as I’ve repeatedly stated, any information coming from, or about, the Ukraine conflict must be viewed skeptically and any lessons need to be very carefully considered and evaluated because the conflict is so atypical.  That said, this information and conclusion seem to be supported by every source I’ve come across so I’m inclined to believe it.  Plus, the conclusion is simple logic regardless of the Ukraine setting.

 

Carriers are now escorts for the cruise missile shooters.

 

The Navy needs to adjust its thinking and its carrier/aircraft design requirements.

 

 

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[1]Newsmax website, “Russia Has 180,000 Dead or Wounded in Ukraine: Norwegian Army”, 23-Jan-2023

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/russia-180-000/2023/01/22/id/1105440/

Marine Iron Dome

The Marines are moving ahead with acquiring the Israeli Iron Dome system in a modified form.

 

… USMC officials have developed and tested an MRIC [Medium Range Intercept Capability] prototype that removes the Rafael-made Iron Dome launcher from its heavy base, mounts it on the back of a trailer to fire Tamir missiles, and integrates it with other service capabilities.[1]

 

Why are the Marines doing this?  A Breaking Defense article offers this,

 

Growing concerns about cruise missile threats have prompted US military leaders to hunt for innovative ways to quickly field new air defenses.[1]

 

Here’s a bit more,

 

Ultimately, the service wants to outfit three Marine Air Wings each with an MRIC battery by the end of 2028 … [1]

 

So, these anti-air units would, presumably, be used to defend Marine air bases?  Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO)?

 

The entire point of the Marine’s small unit, hidden base concept is that they’re hidden.  Clearly these units would not be suitable for that, given their size and large amount of required resources and support, as we see here,

 

… in addition to utilizing the truck-mounted Iron Dome launcher paired with the Tamir interceptors, it also uses the Common Aviation Command-and-Control System (CAC2S) and a mini battle management control (BMC) system for the Tamir missile, along with the AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR).[1]

 

That’s only suitable and viable for a large, well established base.  This could fit with the EABO concept if the EABO base is large.  That being the case, this is the Guadalcanal scenario where the base is well known to the enemy and we’re in a continuous, pitched battle for the base’s survival.

 

Marine Iron Dome Test

Of course, we next have to wonder if the system is even suitable and effective as an anti-missile system.  Remember that the Israeli Iron Dome was developed as an anti-rocket system, not an anti-missile system.  Can it actually intercept cruise missiles?  Supposedly the Marines tested the system, however, the description of the testing leaves much to be desired and engenders a lot of doubts.

 

… the USMC wrapped up its series of three MRIC live-fire tests in September 2022 when it used the more mobile, expeditionary launcher for the first time against several threats including a maneuvering target.[1]

 

It’s clear from the preceding that the Marine’s testing was mostly conducted under non-representative conditions as the mobile launcher and a maneuvering target were only used during the wrap up testing and the suggestion is that was a one-time event.  Did they test it against supersonic targets?  Targets with electronic warfare penetration aids?  Saturation attacks?  Targets with terminal evasive maneuver capability?  In bad weather?  Against sea-skimming targets?

 

Given the example of the fraudulent Marine testing and declaration of IOC for the F-35 (see, “Pencil Whipped”), one cannot help but be highly suspicious.

 

Is that the extent of the concerns?  No, there’s also cybersecurity issues.

 

Questions abound about the [cyber]security of weaving these capabilities together …  the Army has flagged it as a prime concern and said it does not plan to integrate the two Iron Dome batteries it currently has in its inventory into its larger air defense architecture.[1]

 

In fact, the Army has selected a different system instead of Iron Dome.

 

Does it make sense for the Army and Marines to have selected two different systems for the exact same application?  Isn’t that a bit like the Navy building both the Freedom and Independence variant LCS for the exact same application?  We see how that worked out.

 

One of the potential missions for both Army and the Marines is to defend Air Force bases.  Wouldn’t it make more sense if they each had the same equipment?

 

 

Summation

 

As with almost every decision the Marines have made over the last several years, I’m at a loss to understand exactly what the Marines are trying to accomplish.  I’m all for anti-air defense systems but is selecting a non-Army standard, unproven, large footprint, anti-rocket system really the best way to go about defending against potentially supersonic cruise missiles?  Does that really fit with the missile-shooting concept or the EABO concept?

 

 

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[1]Breaking Defense, “Marines greenlight mobile Iron Dome launcher development, seek 2025 prototype fielding”, Ashley Roque, 5-Jan-2023,

https://breakingdefense.com/2023/01/marines-greenlight-mobile-iron-dome-launcher-development-seek-2025-prototype-fielding/

Navy Strike Doctrine

We’ve had a lot of discussions about the role of the carrier.  ComNavOps has stated that strike (land attack) is no longer a carrier mission.  There remains, however, a substantial number of observers who still cling to the outdated concept of carrier strike operations.

 

Why is carrier strike – meaning, manned aircraft – no longer a mission?  Modern, peer defenses, consisting of both defending aircraft and land based surface to air (SAM) missiles along with extensive and sophisticated sensors have rendered aircraft strikes far too risky.

 

The preferred alternative is, of course, cruise missiles as suggested by the following missile characteristics.

 

Cost – Tomahawk cruise missiles cost around $2M compared to aircraft which cost $80M-$100M each.  In addition, aircraft operate on a daily basis and flight hour costs are on the order of $15K-$30K per flight hour, day after day.  That makes for an incredibly expensive weapon delivery system.  In contrast, a cruise missile has no operating or maintenance costs to speak of.  Finally, the cost of training and ‘maintaining’ a pilot is enormous whereas, again, the cruise missile has no pilot cost.

 

Expendability – Cruise missiles are, by design and by cost, expendable.  Aircraft, by design and cost, are not.  Modern peer defenses guarantee that strike aircraft will suffer significant attrition and the cost to replace the airframe and produce a new pilot is staggering.  Worse, the time required to produce new airframes and pilots is prohibitive during a war.

 

Stealth – The US Navy currently has no stealth strike aircraft.  That aside, cruise missiles have significantly greater stealth than even a stealth aircraft due to their much smaller size, smaller cross sectional area, smaller profile (regardless of angle), smaller engine exhaust (IR signature), and ability to fly a sea skimming terminal approach.  And, of course, new cruise missiles have stealth shaping.

 

Numbers – The current US Navy Tomahawk cruise missile inventory is somewhere in the vicinity of 3000-5000.  The Navy currently has 9 air wings with around 44 F-18 Hornets in each for a total of 396 potential strike aircraft.  Of course, in actual operations only a fraction of those would be available as aircraft are needed for carrier defense, various CAPs, tankers, and escorts.

 

Missiles can be massed in very large numbers against a target.  Strike aircraft are severely limited in number although each aircraft can carry 2-4 missiles or several bombs.  Weight limits, weight distributions, external fuel tanks, range considerations, self-defense requirements, etc. limit the number of missiles that can realistically be carried.

 

Weather – While carrier aircraft can operate in bad weather, to a degree, there are significant limits.  Missiles, in contrast are virtually unaffected by weather.

 

Range – Cruise missiles have a range of around 1000 miles.  Aircraft have an effective combat range of 200-300 miles although various types of standoff missiles would add to that range.  For example, the air launched Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) has a range of somewhere around 300 miles which, when added to the aircraft’s range, puts the total strike range at around 500-600 miles.  The extended range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM-ER) has a range of 500 miles or so which, combined with the aircraft’s range, gives a total strike range of 700-800 miles.  Other weapons such as the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) have much lesser ranges.  JSOW has a high altitude release range of 70 miles.

 

 

The benefit, such as it is, of air launched, standoff attack missiles is negated by very long range SAM defenses and enemy aircraft which can, and will, contest the launch points.  The effort required to conduct an airborne, standoff strike (aircraft, fighter escorts, tankers, EW escorts, BARCAP, etc. also negates the benefits.  In short, it requires a far more massive effort to conduct an airborne, standoff strike than to conduct a simple ship-launched, cruise missile strike and the benefits are few especially when weighed against the inevitable aircraft losses.

 

So, is ComNavOps alone in his assessment?  After all, a lot of people are still unwilling to give up their comforting paradigm of carrier strike.  Well, it would seem that the Navy has also concluded that cruise missiles are the preferred strike asset as evidenced by the strike history of the last few decades.  The table below is adapted from Wikipedia.(1)

 

 

 

Operation	Date	No. of Missiles
Gulf War	1991	288
Iraq disarmament	Jan 1993	46
Iraq disarmament	Jun 1993	23
Operation Deliberate Force	Sep 1995	13
Iraq disarmament	Sep 1996	44
Operation Infinite Reach	Aug 1998	79
Operation Desert Fox	Dec 1998	325
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia	1999	218
Operation Enduring Freedom	2001	50
Invasion of Iraq	2003	802
Dobley airstrike	Mar 2008	2
Al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen	Dec 2009	2
Libya	Mar 2011	124
Military intervention against ISIL	Sep 2014	47
Attack on suspected radar sites in Yemen	Oct 2016	5
Shayrat airbase strike	Apr 2017	59
Damascus/Homs chem weapons strike	Apr 2018	66

 

 

 

 

There have been manned aircraft strikes during that time but those have been relatively few and only in low threat scenarios such as the infamous ‘truck plinking’ during the ISIS campaign.

 

You might also recall that not too long ago, the Navy had stated that the F-35 would be last manned naval aircraft – further recognition that manned aircraft strikes were no longer viable – and, more recently, the Navy attempted, but failed, to develop unmanned strike UAVs (that eventually ‘devolved’ into the unmanned tanker).  Clearly, the Navy has moved on from carrier strikes.

 

The implication of the Navy’s recognition that cruise missiles are the preferred strike asset is that the carrier air wing should be shifting its composition from strike to air superiority.  We need to drop any aircraft that is a ‘strikefighter’ and switch to pure air superiority.  The immediate import of this line of reasoning is that the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) aircraft, which the Navy is working on now, needs to be a pure air superiority fighter and not a strikefighter.  Disturbingly, the Navy is already referring to the NGAD as the F/A-XX strikefighter so that train is already headed off the tracks.

 

Carrier aircraft strike has gone the way of the battleship in terms of being the primary strike method.  We need to complete the transition to carrier air superiority by modifying our doctrine and operational practices and adjust our air wing composition accordingly.  Carriers and their air wings remain just as vitally important as ever but their mission has changed.  Just as the battleship proponents clung to their outmoded paradigm, so too will the carrier strike proponents cling to theirs but the change is inevitable.

 

 

 

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(1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile)#United_States_Navy