A few subjects down I was trying to compare TIE-Defenders and E-Wings and the subject of B-Wings and attacking Capitalcraft came up. The point was made that there's no way a fighter could damage a fully shielded capital ship. I was quick to dismiss this, but do we ever see it?
The point being that Star Destroyers and similar craft have immensely powerful shields, and it doesn't seem likely that even a Nebulon-B would have shields so flimsy that a Fighter could scuttle it easily. The question is then, how do they do it? And, moreover, do they do it?
I did a search here for information related to B-Wings, but never being a reader of EU materials, I have no books or quotes to draw upon. So I'm wondering, what evidence--if any--is there to support the claim that a wing of B-Wings or Y-Wings or any other Fighter/Bomber could assault a capital craft? A direct passage would be best, something from one of the X-Wing books perhaps. I personally believe they can, but I'm having trouble remembering any instances of a fully shielded capital vessel suffering from fighter attacks.
-Edit-
Okay, maybe not from X-Wing then, seems to be some debate about the validity of Stackpole's fiction based on him using game mechanics.
Fightercraft versus Capitalcraft
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Four modified TIE fighters were sent in to execute Operation Earplug in Marvel SW 61. They had enough power for six ordinary shots, after which their fighters could only fire one gigantic blast to penetrate shields and hull of a huge battleship (killing the creature inside, which would have been used for Imperial purposes). The ship is damaged, but communications still work on the bridge and the Admiral orders the fighter destroyed. Gun batteries across the side-trench also work and open fire.
That's one extraordinary example.
That's one extraordinary example.
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Darth Raptor
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That's the critical question, isn't it? If fighters are so useless, why are they so ubiquitous? Why does the Alliance center its entire guerilla warfare strategy around them? From the way people talk around here, it seems like the only function of starfighters is to engage other fighters, which makes no sense. Why have them at all?
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Fingolfin_Noldor
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It was the point of Ackbar's strategy after all. Fighters complement starships.
Imperials never held fighters as a key cornerstone in anti-capital ship strategy. Afterall, only the TIE Bomber and the Assault Gunboat carrier torpedoes, whereas practically the entire Alliance Starfighter force, except the A-wings, carried proton torpedoes. The only drawback was the Alliance had to constantly scour for torpedoes to arm their fighters.
I would suspect the Battle of Turkana was won in that fashion. Do we ever have solid information from that battle?
Imperials never held fighters as a key cornerstone in anti-capital ship strategy. Afterall, only the TIE Bomber and the Assault Gunboat carrier torpedoes, whereas practically the entire Alliance Starfighter force, except the A-wings, carried proton torpedoes. The only drawback was the Alliance had to constantly scour for torpedoes to arm their fighters.
I would suspect the Battle of Turkana was won in that fashion. Do we ever have solid information from that battle?
Darth Raptor wrote:
Forward Observation
Fighters can be used to relay targeting data to a parent vessel from a forward position, in a heavy ECM battlefield.
Reconnaissance
The original use of aircraft on warships was to provided reconnaciance beyond the range parent vessels sensors. Hyperdrive equipped fighters can quickly search vast areas of space, while the parent vessel coordinates the search. This mission has been taken over in part by hyperspace capable probe droid. However the droids are not reusable, while fighters are. Additionally it can be useful to have a sentient present to interpret the intelligence.
Harassment
Fighters force starships to maintain full shields along all vectors. Without the danger of enemy starfighters swarming around them armed with very high-yield warheads vessels can divert all their shield strength along the vector facing an enemy capital ship. By forcing vessels to maintain uniform shield coverage, starfighter make those vessels more vulnerable to capital ship fire. Canon evidence shows that fighters can't destroy capital ships, but they can irritate them. To pose a credible threat, they must be equipped with very powerful anti-ship weaponry, and engage in squadron or wing sized mass fires. The Battle of Endor proves this point. While rebel fighters were dog-fighting with TIEs over Mon Cal Cruisers. Several shots miss and impact on capital ships, with no effect.
Combat Support
A less powerful ship armed with more fighters can defeat a more powerful ship. If the capital ship can manage to collapse a section of the enemy's shields, they will most likly take some damage, but their fighters/bombers can even the odds by disabling the enemy’s systems and weapons emplacements in the collapsed area. So even without employing heavy anti-ship missile weapons, starfighters can still positively effect the outcome a capital ships duel.
Circumventing Enemy CIWS
In ANH, the rebel base tracked Imperial fighters launching, and warned their own fighters of this, despite the DS being on the far side of the gas-giant. FTL sensors can easily track capital ships and fighters. But when limited to the use of sub-light sensors or LS weapons targeting computers must 'project' the target's position, if the target is flying in a straight and line it is relatively simple. However fighters jink, and vary their acceleration all the time, so computers can only 'guess' where they might be, but will have little chance of actually hitting any. Even at distances as near as 10,000 km any track for a fighter will already be several dozen meters inaccurate because of the speed differentials. And that doesn't even take into account things like jamming and ECM, which all SW ships (even fighters) making extensive use of. In the face of severe ECM subluminal sensors aren't very accurate at targeting capital ships at distances beyond 12 light seconds, let alone tiny fighters. Still, SW fire control computers are nothing short of amazing. From distances of at least 20 km away and firing at a rate of roughly 10 shots per second the Federation starships in TPM was able to accurately bracket the Naboo Queen's private vessel on all sides without scoring a direct hit; indicating that the gunners identified the Queen's personal vessel and were shooting to disable rather than destroy it. Furthermore, when repair droids appeared on its surface, the ship was able to accurately target and destroy the droids, still in an attempt to disable the Queen's ship. They were able to repeatedly hit tiny 1-meter tall droids while merely buffeting the starship itself with flak, in spite of the enormous difference in size.
In conclusion is is clear that it is the random nature of fighter movement that makes them survivable in the face of CIWS and fire control computers that are capable of hit 1-meter targets at distances greater than 20 km, and that are so effective at point defense that capital ship mounted missiles can not be effectively employed in combat. Finally, the reason why capital ships can not easily lock on to enemy fighters in battle; is simple fighters have local jamming and are capable of random maneuvers, torpedoes do not have local jamming and are capable of only limited evasive maneuvers; in general they just home to the target.
Pin-Point Attacks
Fighters are intended to hammer point targets on capital ships and to exploit shield failures. In such a situation they can be deadly, and they can very quickly de-claw and blind a capital ship independent of its own fighter support. Official material claims that an ISD's rear end / engines / reactors are too heavily shielded or armored for viable attack. Thus, attacks are generally conducted against external devices such as comm. equipment, sensors, weapons points, etc, blinding and castrating the ship, until it can be destroyed. Starfighters can get in and make pinpoint strikes with physical impactor warheads once the shields go down, as we saw in ROTJ. A heavy ship's light guns aren't as powerful as the biggest fighter warheads, its shots don't generate the same kind of reaction forces as a physical impactor, and heavy guns are too ponderous to hit pinpoint targets. While a beam of energy can always be diverted, and in general energy shields can counter energy weapons any number of ways which do nott require lots of energy, i.e., reflecting the beam, or 'bending' the beam. Deflect solid matter however, takes a lot of energy, as does the absorption of the energy of a collision. Basically, you cannot get around Conservation of Energy. Therefore, the best defense against particle weapons (missiles) is a good point-defense system rather than some type of energy-siphoning deflector shield. For this reason Star Wars ships literally bristle with point-defense cannons designed to shoot down enemy missiles, rendering a ranged missile attack all but useless, unless a massive volley of missiles is unleashed. To get around this, protagonists make use of tiny highly maneuverable and difficult to track fighters designed to be able to get in close and launch their missiles from point-blank range. The missiles themselves, proton torpedoes, have a comparatively small warhead, somewhere between 1-10 gigatons, but with one very important enhancement. The warhead is designed to focus the entire detonation in a tight cone (between 1-2 degrees) towards the target, making it extremely powerful.
The hardest part of a fighter destroying a capital ship is overloading the vessels shields. Capital ship shielding is orders of magnitude higher than starfighter weapons yield. Clearly insufficient to overload the shields of larger capital ships. Virtually all instances of fighters killing capital ships they accomplish it: with friendly capital ships support, are merely finishing off un-shielded or heavily damaged vessels, or manage to get inside the vessels interior or under it shields.
In TPM again, an N-1 strafes a part of the unshielded TFB’s bridge tower while being chased by droid fighters, and blows off a significant portion of it. In this case the N-1 fighter did do some damage to the enemy vessel that was not simply superficial, and it was accomplished solely with its laser cannons, not proton torpedoes. However the fighter, would have all been destroyed long before it could have done similar damage to any critical systems. The resulting damage however, was far too small to have any huge effect on the battles outcome. If there had been more than 2-3 wings of fighters putting out similar damage they would have had a good chance of defeating the vessel. The ROTJ novelization describes several B-wings bombing an ISD and destroying it, since this occurs well into the battle we can safely assume that the ISD had suffered a shield failure already. Anakin destroyed the Trade Federation ship by flying in the hangar while the shields were down. Immune to fighter attack, only means immune from the outside. In the Bacta War several squadrons of fighters and dozens of armed freighters had to fire on the command ship Lusankya with more than 80 heavy capitals ship torpedoes at the same time to take down the vessels shields.
Fighters are far from useless, even if they can't take down capital ships alone the original mission of combat "pursuit" aircraft was reconaciance after all. Here a list of missions:That's the critical question, isn't it? If fighters are so useless, why are they so ubiquitous?
Forward Observation
Fighters can be used to relay targeting data to a parent vessel from a forward position, in a heavy ECM battlefield.
Reconnaissance
The original use of aircraft on warships was to provided reconnaciance beyond the range parent vessels sensors. Hyperdrive equipped fighters can quickly search vast areas of space, while the parent vessel coordinates the search. This mission has been taken over in part by hyperspace capable probe droid. However the droids are not reusable, while fighters are. Additionally it can be useful to have a sentient present to interpret the intelligence.
Harassment
Fighters force starships to maintain full shields along all vectors. Without the danger of enemy starfighters swarming around them armed with very high-yield warheads vessels can divert all their shield strength along the vector facing an enemy capital ship. By forcing vessels to maintain uniform shield coverage, starfighter make those vessels more vulnerable to capital ship fire. Canon evidence shows that fighters can't destroy capital ships, but they can irritate them. To pose a credible threat, they must be equipped with very powerful anti-ship weaponry, and engage in squadron or wing sized mass fires. The Battle of Endor proves this point. While rebel fighters were dog-fighting with TIEs over Mon Cal Cruisers. Several shots miss and impact on capital ships, with no effect.
Combat Support
A less powerful ship armed with more fighters can defeat a more powerful ship. If the capital ship can manage to collapse a section of the enemy's shields, they will most likly take some damage, but their fighters/bombers can even the odds by disabling the enemy’s systems and weapons emplacements in the collapsed area. So even without employing heavy anti-ship missile weapons, starfighters can still positively effect the outcome a capital ships duel.
Circumventing Enemy CIWS
In ANH, the rebel base tracked Imperial fighters launching, and warned their own fighters of this, despite the DS being on the far side of the gas-giant. FTL sensors can easily track capital ships and fighters. But when limited to the use of sub-light sensors or LS weapons targeting computers must 'project' the target's position, if the target is flying in a straight and line it is relatively simple. However fighters jink, and vary their acceleration all the time, so computers can only 'guess' where they might be, but will have little chance of actually hitting any. Even at distances as near as 10,000 km any track for a fighter will already be several dozen meters inaccurate because of the speed differentials. And that doesn't even take into account things like jamming and ECM, which all SW ships (even fighters) making extensive use of. In the face of severe ECM subluminal sensors aren't very accurate at targeting capital ships at distances beyond 12 light seconds, let alone tiny fighters. Still, SW fire control computers are nothing short of amazing. From distances of at least 20 km away and firing at a rate of roughly 10 shots per second the Federation starships in TPM was able to accurately bracket the Naboo Queen's private vessel on all sides without scoring a direct hit; indicating that the gunners identified the Queen's personal vessel and were shooting to disable rather than destroy it. Furthermore, when repair droids appeared on its surface, the ship was able to accurately target and destroy the droids, still in an attempt to disable the Queen's ship. They were able to repeatedly hit tiny 1-meter tall droids while merely buffeting the starship itself with flak, in spite of the enormous difference in size.
In conclusion is is clear that it is the random nature of fighter movement that makes them survivable in the face of CIWS and fire control computers that are capable of hit 1-meter targets at distances greater than 20 km, and that are so effective at point defense that capital ship mounted missiles can not be effectively employed in combat. Finally, the reason why capital ships can not easily lock on to enemy fighters in battle; is simple fighters have local jamming and are capable of random maneuvers, torpedoes do not have local jamming and are capable of only limited evasive maneuvers; in general they just home to the target.
Pin-Point Attacks
Fighters are intended to hammer point targets on capital ships and to exploit shield failures. In such a situation they can be deadly, and they can very quickly de-claw and blind a capital ship independent of its own fighter support. Official material claims that an ISD's rear end / engines / reactors are too heavily shielded or armored for viable attack. Thus, attacks are generally conducted against external devices such as comm. equipment, sensors, weapons points, etc, blinding and castrating the ship, until it can be destroyed. Starfighters can get in and make pinpoint strikes with physical impactor warheads once the shields go down, as we saw in ROTJ. A heavy ship's light guns aren't as powerful as the biggest fighter warheads, its shots don't generate the same kind of reaction forces as a physical impactor, and heavy guns are too ponderous to hit pinpoint targets. While a beam of energy can always be diverted, and in general energy shields can counter energy weapons any number of ways which do nott require lots of energy, i.e., reflecting the beam, or 'bending' the beam. Deflect solid matter however, takes a lot of energy, as does the absorption of the energy of a collision. Basically, you cannot get around Conservation of Energy. Therefore, the best defense against particle weapons (missiles) is a good point-defense system rather than some type of energy-siphoning deflector shield. For this reason Star Wars ships literally bristle with point-defense cannons designed to shoot down enemy missiles, rendering a ranged missile attack all but useless, unless a massive volley of missiles is unleashed. To get around this, protagonists make use of tiny highly maneuverable and difficult to track fighters designed to be able to get in close and launch their missiles from point-blank range. The missiles themselves, proton torpedoes, have a comparatively small warhead, somewhere between 1-10 gigatons, but with one very important enhancement. The warhead is designed to focus the entire detonation in a tight cone (between 1-2 degrees) towards the target, making it extremely powerful.
The hardest part of a fighter destroying a capital ship is overloading the vessels shields. Capital ship shielding is orders of magnitude higher than starfighter weapons yield. Clearly insufficient to overload the shields of larger capital ships. Virtually all instances of fighters killing capital ships they accomplish it: with friendly capital ships support, are merely finishing off un-shielded or heavily damaged vessels, or manage to get inside the vessels interior or under it shields.
In TPM again, an N-1 strafes a part of the unshielded TFB’s bridge tower while being chased by droid fighters, and blows off a significant portion of it. In this case the N-1 fighter did do some damage to the enemy vessel that was not simply superficial, and it was accomplished solely with its laser cannons, not proton torpedoes. However the fighter, would have all been destroyed long before it could have done similar damage to any critical systems. The resulting damage however, was far too small to have any huge effect on the battles outcome. If there had been more than 2-3 wings of fighters putting out similar damage they would have had a good chance of defeating the vessel. The ROTJ novelization describes several B-wings bombing an ISD and destroying it, since this occurs well into the battle we can safely assume that the ISD had suffered a shield failure already. Anakin destroyed the Trade Federation ship by flying in the hangar while the shields were down. Immune to fighter attack, only means immune from the outside. In the Bacta War several squadrons of fighters and dozens of armed freighters had to fire on the command ship Lusankya with more than 80 heavy capitals ship torpedoes at the same time to take down the vessels shields.
The Rebel Alliance has very few capital ships to begin with, they have a hard time even procuring fighters so it should come as know surprise that they rely on them so much. More importantly look at the missions that the Rebels tend to engage in. In the X-wing games and novels the Rebels always engage in hit and fade attack on weakly defended convoys and imperial bases of little importance. They are not really hurting the Empire at all, they're more of an annoyance and that's the best they can do in the begining. While fighter scale weapons are ineffective against true combat starships. Merchant ships have only weak particle shielding and no ray shields in most cases. They're easy marks, as are the insignificant vessels used to escort them.
Why does the Alliance center its entire guerilla warfare strategy around them?
Fighters are indeed worthless in direct attacks against true warships if they are unsupported. But again thats not what fighters were originally intended for. They were used for recon first and only latter mounted weapons to deny oponents from getting the same recon advantage. The same principles apply in space, only more so due to the vast volume which must be covered.
From the way people talk around here, it seems like the only function of starfighters is to engage other fighters, which makes no sense. Why have them at all?
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Lord Pounder
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Fighters are faster and seem to be more accurate. Point on question the Battle Of Endor. Several Mon Cal Cruisers battered down the bridge shields of the Executor temporarily. However before the shields could be brought back up an A-Wing was able to speed in and destroy the generator perminantly. Fighters can also act as spotters and scouts for fleets, Ref X-Wing - Iron Fist and Solo Command.
As to why the Rebellion based their early campain arround fighters, well 12 X-Wings are easier to maintain then a capital ship and a lot easier to hide, plus on a hit and fade mission, which most of their early mission where, fighters are more effective.
As to why the Rebellion based their early campain arround fighters, well 12 X-Wings are easier to maintain then a capital ship and a lot easier to hide, plus on a hit and fade mission, which most of their early mission where, fighters are more effective.
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Lord Revan
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it should also noted that ISDs need supplies (alot of supplies) and freighters might not have (actually probably won't have) capital ship grade shields and you don't need loose that many resupply shipments before it starts to feel especially when the Empire tries to maintain that the rebellion is insignifigant and not a real threat.
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thejester
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What exactly is the advantage of this? Why can't the ship that collapsed the shields deliver the coup de grace? The only example I can think of, as Lord Pounder pointed out, is that fighters can inflict damage when there is a temporary shield collapse, but this would seem an extremely rare event - and how much evidence is there to suggest Executor would have got her shields back up before the Mon Cals delivered another salvo?VT-16 wrote:They are meant to strike at capital ships when other capital ships bring their shields down, either completely or temporarily.
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Jim Raynor
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Besides all the fleet roles that Spartan pointed out, starfighters can make a lone capital ship far more versatile. Fighters are generally faster than the capital ship, so they can be used to chase down fleeing fighters and other small ships that would otherwise get away. Official sources also say that TIEs are used to herd enemy ships into a capital ship's tractor beams. TIE bombers are also much more surgical than turbolasers, allowing you to attack targets on the surface of a planet when a lot collateral damage is ruled out. Ships that are intended purely for fleet combat like the Tector don't always need to have fighters, although fighters still have a place in the fleet, as Spartan explained.
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Well, if ship A disables the shields of ship B, and the fighters from ship A deliver the killing blow to B, then this leaves A free to disable C, which can then be taken down by the fighters, and so on...thejester wrote:What exactly is the advantage of this? Why can't the ship that collapsed the shields deliver the coup de grace? The only example I can think of, as Lord Pounder pointed out, is that fighters can inflict damage when there is a temporary shield collapse, but this would seem an extremely rare event - and how much evidence is there to suggest Executor would have got her shields back up before the Mon Cals delivered another salvo?VT-16 wrote:They are meant to strike at capital ships when other capital ships bring their shields down, either completely or temporarily.
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It can be a lot harder for a capital ship to finish off another capital ship. Tractor beams can hold you in place while all the remaining shields are redirected in your direction. Other ships can be tractor beamed in to shield the damaged parts of a ship (yes this is a canon tactic). A ship can turn or roll so that its damaged components are facing away from the enemy. Or, by the time an enemy capital ship is heavily damaged, your own capital ship might be as well. This things don't really affect starfighters.
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The main use for starfighters against any large vessel, at least as I see it would be to weaken, and not destroy a captialship. And in as several examples have shown, you don't always have to wait for a friendly cap ship to force down the shields for you(TPM, ROTS). Fighters have in at least one example passed through a rather shield of this class, although we never saw a repeat of the Death Star raid breakthrough. Once hugging the various geometries of the hull, the point defense systems have a hard time tracking fighters, and they can declaw a ship as large as a star destroyer more or less at will. At that point, the enemy's only option is to deploy counter forces of fighters or jump away from the fight to shed the gnats.
And against anything the size of a Corvette or a Carrack the mass fire tactics espoused in the X-wing novels might just work. The power on point of the proton torpedo makes it seem like the HEAT round of Star Wars combat, capable of puching holes in the hull and inflicting secondary damage that way. This provides a viable alternate answer for why the Alliance was able to capture so many Nebulon-Bs and other light ships; the captains of these vessels were afraid of the possibility sudden fighter raids could kill them and surrendered on sight.
>.> Well it could have happened.
And against anything the size of a Corvette or a Carrack the mass fire tactics espoused in the X-wing novels might just work. The power on point of the proton torpedo makes it seem like the HEAT round of Star Wars combat, capable of puching holes in the hull and inflicting secondary damage that way. This provides a viable alternate answer for why the Alliance was able to capture so many Nebulon-Bs and other light ships; the captains of these vessels were afraid of the possibility sudden fighter raids could kill them and surrendered on sight.
>.> Well it could have happened.
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All it takes is for a capship to open a hole at the 'back' of a ship while concentrating failing shield systems on the capital ship battle. Then fighters can fly round the back, fire into the unshielded or weakly shielded area, and be effective.
Of course, they have to penetrate the enemy fighter cover first. However, one or two such strikes by fighters into the enemies' flanks should be decisive.
Of course, they have to penetrate the enemy fighter cover first. However, one or two such strikes by fighters into the enemies' flanks should be decisive.
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nightmare
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There's no indication that the special cage add-on on Admiral Giel's battleship was shielded. In fact, since the Teezl was able to blanket jam all channels, it would suggest that it was not energy shielded.VT-16 wrote:Four modified TIE fighters were sent in to execute Operation Earplug in Marvel SW 61. They had enough power for six ordinary shots, after which their fighters could only fire one gigantic blast to penetrate shields and hull of a huge battleship (killing the creature inside, which would have been used for Imperial purposes). The ship is damaged, but communications still work on the bridge and the Admiral orders the fighter destroyed. Gun batteries across the side-trench also work and open fire.
That's one extraordinary example.
thejester wrote:
Say for instance you have fighter superiority, you can double up your shield along the vector to the enemy. While they have to maintain full shielding to ward off your fighters. This is a huge advantage especially if you are otherwise outnumbered.
Well the obvious tactic would be to just collapse the shields, and move on to the next capital ships, leaving the wounded vessel to the fighters to finish off. Such a tactic would be very usedful if you have fighter superiority, but are out numbered in terms of capitalships.What exactly is the advantage of this? Why can't the ship that collapsed the shields deliver the coup de grace? The only example I can think of, as Lord Pounder pointed out, is that fighters can inflict damage when there is a temporary shield collapse, but this would seem an extremely rare event - and how much evidence is there to suggest Executor would have got her shields back up before the Mon Cals delivered another salvo?
Say for instance you have fighter superiority, you can double up your shield along the vector to the enemy. While they have to maintain full shielding to ward off your fighters. This is a huge advantage especially if you are otherwise outnumbered.
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NRS Guardian
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As has been implied one of the reasons the Rebels used fighters is in addition to their lower cost and being easily hideable, they are excellent convoy raiders. Transports don't carry military grade shields unless modified and as the MF shows even TIEs can be a threat to illegally modified light freighters. With Gigaton-firepower torpedoes against civilian-grade shields fighters can probably disable large transports for capture or destroy several in a convoy raid espacially considering they're fast enough to get around the escorts, which can put a real crimp on Imperial supply lines.
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...and in the beginning, the Alliance was all about raiding Imperial convoys, getting supplies, etc. They designed the Lancer frigate specifically to counter starfighters, which shows how much of a threat they are.
Plus of course, the only ship that can destroy the gigantic super-battlestation is the one-man fighter.
Fighter<small capship<big capship<battle station<fighter
Plus of course, the only ship that can destroy the gigantic super-battlestation is the one-man fighter.
Fighter<small capship<big capship<battle station<fighter
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thejester
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Which assumes that the fighters have enough firepower to finish the job. Say an ISD collapses the shields of an opponent. IIRC they carry about 12 TIE Bombers, and the fighter complement usually flies 'clean'. Now, if the opponent is of similar size, it might take the warheads of hall of those bombers to cripple it - at which point they have to go reload, not to mention any losses sustained from enemy fighters/AAA.Spartan wrote: Well the obvious tactic would be to just collapse the shields, and move on to the next capital ships, leaving the wounded vessel to the fighters to finish off.
And how often is that going to occur?Such a tactic would be very usedful if you have fighter superiority, but are out numbered in terms of capitalships.
On the other hand, your fighter superiority might stem from the fact they've traded hangar space for a much larger reactor and more turbolasers, meaning they can batter down your shields faster.*shrug* I just think that in the context of a battle fleet it would make more sense to use Tectors rather than ISDs as your main ship and have dedicated carriers which could be used as a primarily offensive/defensive weapon.Say for instance you have fighter superiority, you can double up your shield along the vector to the enemy. While they have to maintain full shielding to ward off your fighters. This is a huge advantage especially if you are otherwise outnumbered.
Dynamic. When [Kuznetsov] decided he was going to make a difference, he did it...Like Ovechkin...then you find out - he's with Washington too? You're kidding. - Ron Wilson