I don’t agree on the vulnerability of carriers against real powers, not when they are employed sensibly.
Their ability to project power ashore against minor and regional powers is an obvious benefit. They provide us with a forward air force base, and no neighboring power has to take the risk of allowing us to operate from their land.
Against a major power, carriers have to stand further back, but their value is still tremendous. Either Russia or China would have to defend not only against known lines of attack from known bases but also against a carrier approaching within hundreds of miles on any open water with access to their coasts. That’s a big increase in uncertainty, and uncertainty makes war less likely. I agree that the newest carrier cost too much, but that is a result of corrupt contracting, crony capitalism, and other flaws with our government, not flaws with the carrier itself.
Supersonic, nuclear tipped cavitating torpedos.
When my father worked at Newport News Shipbuilding there were some weeks when the company received over one hundred change orders from the Navy on one contract (carrier or submarine). That’s expensive.
True but then carriers are VERY vulnerable approaching a heavily defended coastline. If things had gone a little differently for Doolitles Raid the USN would have had 1 or 2 carriers disabled far from the nearest support base. It was an audacious move that had strategic benefits all out of proportion to the size of the raid, but the risk was also huge.
Carriers are fragile. They can be put out of action (flight operations) rather easily.
I agree. It’s silly to act like a Carrier is some vulnerable dinosaur. They are not out there alone either. In the kind of war where a nation would think it was cool to try to sink a carrier, the screening force or USN subs will be aggressively killing anything that gets close.
Use a nuke on a fleet and that will be the last act of that nation.
A USN carrier task force really isn’t really such an easy thing to target, or it would have already been done.