A single multirole type offers maintenance, training, and force-generation efficiencies, especially for smaller fleets. Those savings can also produce a jack-of-all-trades air wing with weaker specialist performance. Because a carrier is fundamentally a mobile base for compatible aircraft, its combat value depends on the mix placed aboard it: electronic warfare, reconnaissance, airborne early warning, anti-submarine warfare, strike, and outer air defense all need to be supplied somehow. Criticism of carrier range or striking power should distinguish the ship's capacity from the capabilities of the aircraft procured for it.
Chapter · 48:01-55:27
Specialist aircraft versus one-airframe efficiency
The Tomcat's legacy becomes a force-structure argument: common aircraft simplify logistics, but a full carrier air wing still needs distinct reconnaissance, electronic-warfare, early-warning, strike, and defense capabilities.