That retired Navy officer is preaching to the choir here at The Dignified Rant on issues of power projection versus sea control, surface warfare "distributed lethality" (and I was trying to catch the eye of the USNI back when it was "network-centric" warfare), carrier vulnerability, the price ("In the long run, given networked and very long range cannons, large aircraft carriers will add little to most offensive missions and will absorb scarce resources and assets simply evading attack rather than striking the enemy and contributing to victory.") of protecting carriers throughout the kill chain so we can send them into a kill sack, and seapower debates versus carrier debates--because carriers are the means and not the ends.
All he had to do was suggest using carrier air wings on land bases and he could be a contributor to this
Kudos to USNI for publishing Captain Rubel's article. I'm not bitter at all that they purchased but declined to publish my 1999 manuscript on this issue.
I should really email the USNI and see if I can get my old essay back and publish it here. If I still have the Word document and not just my copy of the paper version I submitted back then!
