I disagree. This is exactly what I do at the CAOC, and they appreciate the sortie generation capabilities of the carrier from the O3 to O7 level. Day 1/ month 1/ year 1 of the war they want and need the carrier. The problem is, we cannot have a carrier in theater forever.
That having been said, my wingman and I were headed up the blvd when he had a battery failure……repeat gripe, something about the CB's in the gun bay popping, batts no longer getting charged, and you lose IFEI fuel indications (bad for the CV as you won't know how much gas you have left, nor will you know how much fuel is in the externals). Brought him back, with literally everyone, from the Boss, to the E-2, to AW, to probably the wardroom cooks trying to figure out our situation on all radios. They made a ready deck and we came back and trapped. I then sat there in a combat loaded jet for about an hour and a half on a hose while CAG and the CAOC deliberated about whether I would be allowed to launch again, "touch" Afghanistan for a combined In/Out Gas and then simply come home for sortie credit. At the end of the day, the CAOC said GTFO and I shot of the front end with said load to dump and immediately come back Tank+1 on the ball for a night currency trap. One of the more ludicrous flights/days of my career.
THAT having been said, I've also heard it is cheaper to fly a CVN jet in country and take airborne gas than it is to forward deploy similar assets and pay for the gas to get trucked over the Khyber, so maybe it did make sense for all those years…..who knows
