Ability to place air defense and light armored vehicles on flight deck of carrier

[DmitriKozlowsky]

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Posted 4 hours ago

Ability to place air defense and light armored vehicles on flight deck of carrier , LHA, and helo flight deck. Not just static object for eye candy. Actual combat units.  Infantry on decks are marines, naval infantry, or security sailors, trained in ship based CQB. They patrol decks , and take tactical positions during flight operations.

This makeshift, but interesting , tactic, has come back into use in recent years. It never really went away.

For decades sailors with MANPADS were on surface combatants. Recently Marine and Navy place LAV-25 and Stinger MANPADS teams on LHA decks to supplement defense against small threat combatants. Vehicles are tethered to deck with chains.

It also turns merchant marine vessels, with flat, decks, into air defense Q-Ships. Precedent set during WWI and WWII. Invented by British as anti-submarine defense, in days when submarines had to surface to engage merchantmen with deck guns.

[Northstar98]

+1 I requested a similar thing here.