Technically aviation cruisers predate both aircraft carriers and guided missile destroyers so that's not really true, though you could say that of the Chinese Liaoning aircraft carrier which was based on the hull of a Kuznetsov-class aviation cruiser.
Well of the four ships we lost due to air strikes, one was taken out by an Exocet so having CATOBAR carriers would have made zero difference, two were lost to free fall bombs after their air defence systems malfunctioned, and the fourth was lost after damage control crews accidentally detonated a bomb they were trying to diffuse.
Now it can be argued (and I believe that's exactly what you are doing?) that the sky-hawks that dropped the bombs wouldn't have gotten close enough to drop them if there was a brand new Nimitz in the area and F-14's flying around and I don;t dispute that, however there were ~50 harriers in the theatre they just weren't able to hold off the entire Argentinian air force with the issues the RN and army were experiencing.
NB: One point that may be of interest, is that the larger/older of the two carriers sent to the Falklands was originally CATOBAR prior to it's conversion for Harrier use, and had played host to USN F-4Bs. Also that carrier (which began construction during WW2) was eventually sold to India where it served until it's decommissioning last month. What a life it had lol.
Defending an island halfway round the planet from invasion by a hostile force armed with high end French equipment without any assistance from the UN or NATO simply wasn't something the UK expected to be doing in the 1980's. We had (and actually still have) the mentality that we will either always be fighting alongside the USA or France or both, and as such it was woefully ill prepared for it.
To give a couple of examples, the bombers we sent were in a winding down phase ready for decommissioning and it took two days to find a vital part of their refuelling probes (being used as ashtrays), some of the ships were getting ready for decommissioning too (and were sold not long after the war), and due to time constraints some of the harriers/helicopters had to be sent out on a commercial container ship (which ironically worked quite well as a VTOL aircraft carrier) which the Argentinians then blew up (not that well :P).
No, it is true, an aviation cruiser cannot function as well as either a guided missile cruiser or an aircraft carrier unless one function or the other is implemented in a minimal manner.
Only the 28 Sea Harriers were equipped with radar, and they were limited to carrying short range Sidewinder missiles. The Sea Harrier, while far better than nothing, was significantly less able to provide fleet defense than the F-4Ks the Ark Royal carried (slower, shorter legged, and lacking BVR and look down/shoot down capacity over land and rough water) prior to her decom in 1978. A CATOBAR carrier would also have allowed fixed wing AEW coverage 24/7, preventing the Argentinians the ability to close to weapons range undetected or with insufficient warning to allow the slow Harriers to intercept reliably.
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The RN sold its soul to become an ASW destroyer/frigate force, sold the Argentinians copies of their primary fleet defense destroyer so all of the flaws of the Sea Dart were well known and easily exploited, only a couple of frigates had modern PDMS, the list goes on. Basically, the UK was very luck it wasnt defeated, and in many ways the saviour was HMS Conqueror.
why does it matter how they treat their own citizens? all countries who flex their military kill foreigners just the same. US, russia, israel, china, doesn't matter.
The only minor differences between them is a sliding scale in how much they wanna consider themselves the good guys/care about PR. But when nobody is watching, don't have the means or they otherwise have no choice? all the same.
That war could have gone much differently had the Argentinian bomb fuses worked properly. There were a number of British ships running around with unexploded bombs and missiles stuck in them. The British Admiral was close to calling off the invasion because of the air strikes as it was - another half dozen ships sunk could have made for a much different war. The land war was a given once the Marines made it ashore, but the naval battle could have turned into a mess had the Argentines spent more time on maintenance.
With every year that goes by, China closes the gap.
In this case, it very much is true if you follow the evolution of Soviet aviation cruisers from the Moskva to the Kiev to the Kuznetsov.
If it sucks as a cruiser, and it sucks as an aircraft carrier, and the merger is not greater than the sum or its parts, that is pretty much a failure. If the Burkes were supposed to function at an ASuW platform as a primary or secondary mission (its more like the 5th), that would actually be a viable complaint (though it is funny considering one of the complaints about modern US warships is the inadequate performance of the 5" M45 and the small number installed in light of the retirement of the Iowas).
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Yes, they are on foot closer. Only 5279 feet left to go to reach parity.....
I know nothing of aircraft carriers, but judging from the size of the people standing on it in the picture, this one seems a tad small in comparison to various U.S. ones that I have seen.
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No.
I think this is where you're making the mistake, it's not supposed to function as a missile cruiser or as an aircraft carrier, it's supposed to function as an aviation cruiser. It isn't a merger of the two, it's a separate design. With an aircraft carrier group you normally have one or more carriers and then other ships to protect it/them, an aviation cruiser is different, it isn't the centrepiece of a group it's just an escort ship. It's purpose is to provide air defence (via the deployment of armed air supremacy fighters instead of SAMs) for the ships/subs it's protecting as well as surface to surface missiles.
I don't know the reason why Russia chose to use aviation cruisers (or cruiser as they only have one left) instead of aircraft carriers like every other country, but I do know there is a big functional difference in the way the types of ship are designed to be operated and deployed.
Except Russia has, and continues to, use them as the center of a (usually totally pathetic) battle group. By putting SSMs (or ASW rockets in the case of the Moskvas) in them, they reduce the effectiveness of the ship to provide air defense via fighters. By allocating as much space to aviation they reduce its ability to carry SSMs and SAMs given its increased size. They do not provide good air defense, they do not provide good ASuW for their size, they are failures. There is a reason the Indians removed almost all the weapons on the Kiev they rebuilt and the Chinese didnt bother with ASuW weapons with the Varyag. As for the Japanese, they call their light carriers destroyers for political reasons. Its a failed, ridiculed, and wasteful merger of ship functions.