From the article...
Brose
explains a terrible truth about war with China: Our spy and communications satellites would immediately be disabled; our forward bases in Guam and Japan would be “inundated” by precise missiles; our aircraft carriers would have to sail away from China to escape attack; our F-35 fighter jets couldn’t reach their targets because the refueling tankers they need would be shot down.
Which told me all I need to know about whoever wrote it, they are an idiot.
So, the Chinese are going to "shoot down our tankers", eh? Does this idiot even know what the Navy uses as a "tanker"?
Here is a huge clue, it is not the KC-130. They use the F/A-18. Yep, that's right, our naval refueling aircraft are actual fighter jets, complete with air to air missiles. They simply have less of them, and carry 3 large fuel tanks instead. If a threat is coming at them, they simply dump those tanks and go into fighter mode.
And it has actually been this way for decades, before that we used the F-4 as a fueler, and before that the S-3 anti-submarine attack aircraft as a fueler. And prior to that the A-3.
The Navy simply never really had the space or the need for a "dedicated fueler" like the Air Force, so they simply adapted other aircraft so they could do more than one role. And each one of them (with the exception of the S-3, a sub hunter) had a secondary role of shooting down aircraft.
But if this idiot is not even aware of this when he wrote his article, I do not even need to read any more of it. And the very fact that the Washington Post did not even bother to fact check this nonsense before publishing it says a lot about them as well.
Navy refueling tankers indeed! I wonder if I should photoshop a KC-130 on the deck of a carrier and send it to him, asking if this is what he thinks the Chinese are going to shoot down.
breakingdefense.com
