After 2001, carriers could move firepower where it was needed without depending on allied basing rights. Consolidation around the F/A-18 was adequate for opponents with little air threat and reduced the cost of maintaining high flying hours compared with keeping the F-14. Repeated sorties sharpened pilots, maintainers, and deck crews, much as repeated gunnery drill once trained a ship’s company. The experience was real but specialized: counterinsurgency operations did not rehearse the full demands of peer air and naval warfare.
Chapter · 1:34:01-1:40:13
The war on terror validates mobility but narrows combat experience
Carriers supplied strike power without foreign basing permission and generated valuable flying hours, though not peer-war air combat experience.