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Aircraft carrier weapons inventory


Andrei

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Greetings,

 

I've diligently done some search on the web and here as well, however did not find anything close to the topic of interest, thus decided to ask here.

 

Question is: on a normal peace-time deployment, what does aviation weapons inventory of a Nimitz class carrier look like? I'm interested in rough numbers of weapons available, such as:

- Air to air missiles

- HARM

- AGM-65

 

Are we talking about tens? Few dozen? Hundred or so?

Thanks for any insights!

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NTTR | Normandy | Gulf | Syria | Supercarrier |

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I'd be very surprised if that info isn't classified .

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I would not be surprised it it was, especially since it's not easily googleable. But I thought it was worth a try.

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My guess would be that any aircraft carrier on cruise is required to be able to generate a certain amount of sorties without prior replenishment. These sorties could be broken down into offensive and defensive A2A and A2G tasks as well as all the necessary early warning, reconnaissance, EW, anti-submarine, refueling tasks and so on.

 

I'd be highly surprised if any carrier wasn't able to support several days of continuous combat operations for all the aircraft on board at any given time.

 

Given an approximate number of 50+ Hornets (C, D, E, F, G models), that alone would require something like several hundred Air-to-air missiles.

 

Not sure about Mavericks; there's a lot more A2G ordnance available, so the Mav count might not be quite as high.

 

HARMs, hard to say. I know way too little about this missile and its operational use to make even an educated guess. Probably less than Mavs, but that might be entirely wrong.

 

If you look at pictures of carts with Mk-82s or GBU-38s to be loaded, these seem to be available in large stocks, so probably several hundred of these types alone.

 

If you find a good public source, please do let us know, that's definitely an interesting topic!

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Thanks for the insights Yurgon. Yes, I've seen that bombs are certainly not in deficit. And your assumptions make sense as well.

 

I wonder if this the numbers can somehow be deduced indirectly. I recall that they've published somewhere numbers of ordinance expended during the Second Gulf War, at least for the air force. If those numbers are found for USN as well, perhaps some guesswork could be done based on that.

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NTTR | Normandy | Gulf | Syria | Supercarrier |

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If those numbers are found for USN as well, perhaps some guesswork could be done based on that.

 

Not a bad idea. On the other hand, ordnance expended doesn't have to correlate with ordnance stored; we'd really have to know how often they get replenished during wartime to come up with an approximation on how much ammo is stored on board, and even then replenishment might be primarily for jet fuel or food -- or it might be primarily for ordnance.

 

Maybe we get lucky and some Navy guys can chime in with some non-confidential information. :)

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HARMs, hard to say. I know way too little about this missile and its operational use to make even an educated guess. Probably less than Mavs, but that might be entirely wrong.

Thanks for the insights Yurgon. Yes, I've seen that bombs are certainly not in deficit. And your assumptions make sense as well.

 

I wonder if this the numbers can somehow be deduced indirectly. I recall that they've published somewhere numbers of ordinance expended during the Second Gulf War, at least for the air force. If those numbers are found for USN as well, perhaps some guesswork could be done based on that.

HARMs are a pretty common weapon, especially in the USN (apparently not so much in the USAF). Here's an excerpt on the initial strike on day 1 of Operation Desert Storm that, while not providing any really usable numbers, might at least give some ballpark numbers on HARM deployment in the USN:

Cruise missiles and F-117A Stealth Fighters struck at key C3 sites, while the first wave of 12 USAF F-4Gs and 60 USN/USMC F/A-18s, A-7s and EA-6Bs fired AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles into key air defence radar systems and strategically positioned SAM sites. The weight of the initial assault was overwhelming, with several hundred HARMs fired in the first few hours of the campaign. USAF Maj Gen Glosson, director of campaign planning, reportedly stated that at this point during the assault, no less than 200 HARMs were enroute to their chosen targets (a total close to 2,000 rounds were fired throughout the conflict).

 

This weight of numbers would not have been achievable without the US Navy, which had wired its F/A-18s, A-6Es, A-7Es and EA-6Bs for HARM, in the USAF inventory carried only by specialised F-4Gs and modified Weasel supporting F-16Cs; accordingly the Navy claim that no less than 80% of the HARMs fired in the initial attack came off USN launch rails.

From: http://www.ausairpower.net/Analysis-ODS-EW.html
Edited by QuiGon

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DCS Panavia Tornado (IDS) really needs to be a thing!

 

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Good one. Also worth a consideration that Desert storm staging took quite a while and took lots of planning. Knowing in advance that it's mostly USN that has HARM wired aircraft, I'm sure they've made sure that asset was available aplenty.

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NTTR | Normandy | Gulf | Syria | Supercarrier |

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Greetings,

 

I've diligently done some search on the web and here as well, however did not find anything close to the topic of interest, thus decided to ask here.

 

Question is: on a normal peace-time deployment, what does aviation weapons inventory of a Nimitz class carrier look like? I'm interested in rough numbers of weapons available, such as:

- Air to air missiles

- HARM

- AGM-65

 

Are we talking about tens? Few dozen? Hundred or so?

Thanks for any insights!

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https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/446419381799357325/

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Ok, by this time we can figure out two things:

- It's plenty

- It's plenty of bomb warheads

 

Completely out of real life topic. I recall that in Jane's F/A-18 (Wags worked on that as well) campaign you actually had limited weapon stock for the campaign duration. Wags worked in CIA in the past. Hmmm... :)

AMD R7 5800X3D | Aorus B550 Pro | 32GB DDR4-3600 | RTX 4080 | VKB MGC Pro Gunfighter Mk III + Thustmaster TWCS + VKB T-Rudder Mk4 | HP Reverb G2

FC3 | A-10C II | Ка-50 | P-51 | UH-1 | Ми-8 | F-86F | МиГ-21 | FW-190 | МиГ-15 | Л-39 | Bf 109 | M-2000C | F-5 | Spitfire | AJS-37 | AV-8B | F/A-18C | Як-52 | F-14 | F-16 | Ми-24 | AH-64

NTTR | Normandy | Gulf | Syria | Supercarrier |

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OPSEC is really what it's all about. You could easily guess that it's a butt load. Also, don't forget the real question... how many of the N weapons are aboard in the special red room with four locks and three of the locks are combinations and need the captain and xo with two other keys and three others.

 

 

 

you have to remember at any second something could happen and that whole carrier battle group needs to go into combat and take over a nation.

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