Lets look at the '"all your eggs in one basket" situation.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it means that if you can make someone drop the basket, most, if not all, of the eggs are destroyed (broken--Humpty Dumpty style).
So what I'm saying here is that the "basket" is worth almost any effort to take it out.
My nominations for this ignominious category are first, and most obvious, the aircraft carrier. How many planes and associated force structure is gone if you manage to sink or incapacitate an aircraft carrier? Include in that category a reactor breach from a non fatal hit that could possibly mean a meltdown, and then it becomes a fatal hit.
Next is the F-35. Only one type of plane for all three forces in the US military. Even the manufacture(s) have not been able to quickly and cheaply solve the continuing emerging problems with that plane. But they tell us this is normal in a new modern aircraft. Once a weakness is discovered it will be a race in any future conflict between the enemy trying to take advantage of the weakness, and F-35 operators trying to eradicate the problem. Remember the ME-262. Stealth is a fragile technology.
Tankers-- need to be protected, but also need to be very near, or even in the theater of operations. Take one or two out, and what becomes of the planes that are returning from or going to their missions?
AWACS-- also a target worth any effort to destroy.
By the term "any effort" I mean attacks with low tech swarms, or high tech kamikazes, or anything in between that will breach defenses and take the "basket" out.
Submarines--Although the American nuclear boats are supposedly super quiet, potential enemies have ultra quiet AIP boats that can lay in wait in virtually complete silence waiting for the slightest sound from the pumps and valves of a nuclear boat.
I'm sure I left some things out.
Please add to the list.
Shawn A.
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