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The aircraft carrier gained ascendancy over the battleship in WWII, as signalized by the attack on Pearl Harbor, now almost 70 years ago. Although it maintains an impressive aspect, just as the battleship did at that time, its vulnerability to new weapons and capabilities is obvious. One can only hope that the proof of this will not be given in some vain display of imagined invulnerability.

We lost six carriers to enemy action {sank} in WW2. The Langley, Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, Hornet, and Princeton. The threat was always there and always will be. The more modern systems built by enemies to sink one the more modern system we should build to detect and counter. The Pentagon needs to get on the ball about defense programs. We played cat and mouse with Russia for years with carriers and subs. Of course we had helos and S-3 Vikings devoted as carrier based anti-submarine {detection} aircraft.

A carrier is still the fastest way to get a fully equipped/operational and supported multitask air response from one part of the word to another in the shortest time frame. When a carrier arrives the airbase is there and ready to go as is about 70 aircraft. The Air Force is great at getting long range bombers from here say to the Middle East in short order. We've made some huge strategic blunders Navy wise including fleet reductions. We are well below 300 ships the lowest since before WW2

. One mistake was ending the two carrier 24/7/365 presence in the MED SEA. Another is the decrease in available west coast carriers in the event Suez is blocked. Yet another was downgrading the Navy Fighter program by ending F-14 production. We had the perfect mouse trap. Now we have a compromise. BTW we went from 1967 to 1981 without a carrier transiting the Suez canal.

There is no such ship as an unsinkable ship or an undetectable one either for that matter. It is a matter of lack of national will to rebuild our defense forces. Try to design a new aircraft and 50 idiots in congress will hold it up a decade deciding who's state gets the contract.

I'll add another to this as being a downgrade. Going to an all nuke carrier and submarine propulsion system then downsizing was a mistake. IF in the event we went to war there is a serious issue of replacement crew training. You can take an average guy off the street and in 18 months or less have a competent and experienced conventional propulsion plant operator. The nuke will just be finishing up school in a few months after that and still have never done a day onboard ship or sub.

We need to turn out some diesel subs fast and train the crews. We need to expand the Nuke sub program afterward.

At a minimum we need two conventional carriers built on the knowledge obtained from SINKEX of CV 66 as a new class conventional. Again this is a matter of addressing mass causalities and training replacements fast.

Last thing and important. We need another carrier shipbuilder located somewhere besides Tidewater Ops area. Our current carriers also need to be dispersed to places like Mayport or build at least one berth in another city besides Norfolk, Virginia. Rosie Roads perhaps? Never place all your eggs in one basket and NEVER berth 4-5 carriers in a row at the same base.