IMHO, we should have 14 large carrier battle groups and 12-14 jeep carriers...in addition to our Phibron groups with the large Amphibious Assault vessels. And, of course all of the DDGs FFGs SSNs and AOR vessels to support them.
A smaller carrier with 30-40 aircraft, flying JSF and using AEW and ASW versions of the Opsrey would be an awesome vessel for escort of the amphibs, sea control, large ASW operations, etc., freeing up the large "fleet" carriers for the heavy pounding needed against land targets and to chase down and destroy other nations carriers.
All of that would be necessary in a large scale war...and unless we do something to halt the PLAN juggernaut that it is building, sooner or later we will be facing one.
Just my opinion, and one reeason why I wrote the Dragon's Fury Series novels. They are filled with a lot of naval engagements, as well as all the rest associated with a World War III. If you are interested, it is available in free download form---> HERE.
Conventional forces are very expensive and burdensome.
Nuclear weapons are cheap and terrifying.
Missile defense is very high tech, and American fingers are just beginning to clutch something that's effective. The Chinese are not there.
We have to be practical. Our economy is now only 20% of the world's, down from something like 60% at the end of World War II.
We CAN'T provide the conventional forces to take on all threats everywhere, not without doing to our own economy and people what the Soviets did to theirs.
But we CAN protect countries from being invaded, and they can protect themselves too, quite cheaply, the same way we really protected Western Europe from the USSR for decades. We never matched the Russians tank for tank and plane for plane, and we would have been insane to try. It would have dragged our whole economy and progress down into the mire.
What we did, was deploy nuclear weapons, and so did the English and French, and made it CLEAR to the Soviets that if they invaded Western Europe, it was nuclear war and the end of the world.
That is the cheap and effective way to defend against massive threats that it doesn't make sense to try and match ship-for-ship, tank-for-tank. The question is one of credibility. Did the Russians REALLY BELIEVE that the Americans would go to nuclear war to save Western Europe? The French didn't. So they built their own nuclear force. The actual probability that America would commit collective suicide with the Soviets in response to an invasion of Western Europe is unknown and unknowable, but one thing is certain, that the French (who are on the Continent and thus touchable by the Soviet Shock Armies in a way the English were not) were probably likely to lose nukes if the Russians were crossing the Rhine and surging in against France. Multiple nuclear forces in the hands of allies complicated the Soviet planning.
We should not by any means embark on a massive military buildup to try and face down the Chinese AND a renascent Russia. We don't have the economy to do it, and it's not our responsibility anyway.
No, we should be ensuring that Japan and Taiwan swiftly develop and deploy nuclear weapons and make sure that our missile defense umbrella, to the extent we can extend it, covers them, and that they are onboard with deploying their own. China can create the largest conventional navy in the world, but if it is perfectly clear that Taiwan herself will nuke China in the event of an invasion, all of that expense is for naught. If WE alone have the nuclear monopoly among allied nations, there's the REAL RISK we WON'T have a nuclear war with China over Taiwan. But Taiwan will.
The answer is to proliferate into allied countries: Japan and Taiwan should be nuclear powers in their own right, and Taiwan should make it clear that a Chinese CONVENTIONAL invasion of Taiwan will provoke the immediate response of a Taiwanese NUCLEAR war on China. That is how you eucher massive militaries.
If the Chinese want to go ahead and spend their treasure on armed forces they can't use, let them. Matching them man-for-man is impossible for anyone but India anyway, and we don't have to. Taiwan needs nuclear weapons under its own control. THAT will keep China out.
Things going from Bad to worse...
If there is anyway this can be posted or you all can read the article it is worth taking the time to sign up and reading it. But don't expect to be happy when you do.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/04/AR2007030401049.html
Washington Post
March 5, 2007
Pg. 15
Going Down With The Ships
Over the past six years, 79 condemned Navy ships have been towed out to sea and destroyed by Air Force bombs, submarine-launched torpedoes or hails of gunfire. These exercises, long considered the most cost-effective way to dispose of unwanted naval vessels, have eaten away at America's inventory of still-useful retired warships. Soon every vessel capable of serving in America's reserve combat fleet could vanish, leaving an overextended Navy with no viable backup forces. This unwise drawdown goes against Navy tradition
I like the idea of STOAL. It's a Russian invention, but so were a lot of things.
I wouldn't venture to guess about the numbers, but you'd probably be able to build two or three such carriers for the price of one new CVN -- and having that many flight decks available would be a heck of a force-multiplier and also allow us to reduce our CVN exposure.