Nobody's talked me down yet on why y'all need heavy carriers (or why we need so many, but I take the insanity of the Pentagon-driven US foreign policy as a given).
I see one of two possible options:
a) We don't, and are just building them because it makes the Pentagun go starry-eyed, and we really, really luv the Pentagun.
b) When the American hegemony comes to an end, we'll want to be prepared to make the most of it with a little smash-and-grab at some former US colonies. Think Panama, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and so on and so forth and etc. Kinda like the US-supported colour revolutions, except with CTFs...
Of course, the former could easily morph into the latter. In fact, I bet it will eventually do just that if we don't get our act together and develop an intelligent foreign policy doctrine.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Why would there be any more than this?
The one thing the military hardware types are reliably bad at is strategy. There's very little evidence that they have even basic strategic skills and plenty of evidence that they make bad, stupid and expensive decisions.
These carriers are being built primarily for symbolic and political reasons, not strategic ones.
The fact that other countries have fought differently in conflicts since hasnt altered strategy because they havent been "serious" opponents Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
The US navy is configured to fight a modern equivalent of the Japanese Soviet Navy, whereas European navies are mainly configured to fight Nazi Communist Submarine fleets.
But it was written as intended, no correction needed. "Re-fighting the last war" is often the last Great Power hot-war, and there wasn't anything in the Korean War or the Second Indochinese War to knock the Navy out of re-fight WWII mode. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
