Like the ones the Koreans and Japanese are building. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Take a capital ship that you don't like.
Then take a moderately modern spy satellite.
Then take four dozen submarines.
Launch five hundred cruise missiles over the horizon.
Watch as ten million man hours, five thousand sailors and pilots and a hundred thousand tons of high-grade steel sinks helplessly to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Dive, scatter and lose the counter-sub task force dispatched to hunt you down.
Repeat as necessary. They can get twenty of your subs for each capital ship you take out and you still come out ahead in terms of steel, man-hours and trained sailors.
Watch your capital be reduced to radioactive glass about forty-five minutes after the first capital ship gets an impromptu U-boat makeover.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Second, even if the subs win, you still don't control the SLOC's. You just deny them to the enemy.
If you don't believe me, send in your merchantmen and watch as land-based (and carrier-based) fighters, long-range bombers, missile armed fast attack crafts and enemy submarines close on them. Not pretty. You need your own ASW and AA (and ASh) bubble around your convoys of merchantmen. You only get that from capital ships, or a plentiful base network. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
