Agree, and frankly for all their considerable utility and considerable protection…still.

Note; we also have about 13 Wasp/America class “Amphibious assault ships” that are about the size of WW2 carriers and can carry up 10 20 VTOL aircraft, Harrier or F35 VTOL.

Mix of weapons Goober et al: Agree.

Gavin, et al: Agree on Splendid isolation for USA. Put troops on the border, well yes. This would have to happen after we have a government that doesn’t hate 60% of the population, which is the government we’ve got.

We don’t need foreign wars, and soon enough I suspect we’ll have all the war we can handle and then some.

These alliances have gone on too long and moved past dangerous. The love of foreign wars moved the Pentagon out of the President’s column into the permanent government/post Republic American Empire column. No wonder no one ever tried to pull us out of war since Eisenhower. DOD stood by while the Republic fell in January, the Hell with them.

I’ve never figured out why historians always seem to almost lament previous isolationist phases of US history. They snootily describe them as short-sighted, selfish, provincial, and so forth.

However, I couldn’t help but notice, even as a boy in grade school, that these isolationist times of US history also seemed to be the most prosperous times for people inside the US. And really, shouldn’t that be the goal?

People act like the US was super selfish to want to avoid involvement in both World Wars, being dragged into both only after overt acts of aggression to us, directly, forced our hand.

I wonder: what’s so wrong with that?

I’d argue that an isolationist US would never have experienced 9/11, for instance. And if we had, our expedition to Afghanistan would have involved nothing more than going in, killing anyone that got in our way, searching every hidey-hole for Osama, and then telling whoever was left in charge to not give us reason to come back as we left. The whole thing would’ve taken 6 months, tops, and been far less destructive.

We’ve expended trillions of dollars, gallons upon gallons of blood, and for what? So the entire world can shit on us?

Screw that.

That being said, I don’t think that having the force projection of carriers necessarily precludes an Isolationist stance, and I’d argue that having that force projection capability could actually serve to protect our isolationist stance, if used correctly.

Essentially, “leave us alone, or we will bring the fight to your doorstep and you won’t like it”.

As for what you said about nukes, in a world where the consequences of going nuclear are so severe, I’d say that no rational country would ever use them until all other hopes are lost, and the Reds are at the gates of Berlin. Up to that point, carriers are useful. The message should be clear: If you nuke a US Navy fleet, you’ll be reduced to glass in seconds.

Definitely agree with you there. However –
“I would argue that they [aircraft carriers] are a key asset, period, even and especially against a peer opponent.”

Good for posturing against a peer opponent, yes. But a peer opponent is going to be a nuclear power, just like China and Russia. Even the old apartheid South Africa developed a nuclear capability despite UN sanctions. Heaven knows why Iran is taking so long to build a bomb — or are they just play-acting to hide an existing capability?

The point is that any conflict with a peer or near-peer would involve two nuclear-armed powers. That risks one side or the other going nuclear when it suffers a loss or a set-back. And then all bets would be off.

Recommended solution for the US — Stop playing world policeman. Tell Apple that if they choose to build their iPhones in China instead of the US, they are on their own — don’t come crying to FedGov if China screws them. Tell the Euros it is time for them to man up — or to prostrate themselves before Moscow; what they choose is not our business.

Put the US Army on the southern border, and rescind the No First Use policy for nuclear weapons. Mess with us and you die. I don’t know if there would be a place for aircraft carriers in that kind of world in which the US avoids foreign entanglements.

You make excellent points. Warfare, starting in the early 20th century, was punctuated by all sorts of “massive technological advances via Wunderwaffe” that would render the old ways obsolete.

Most of them panned out to be roughly equivalent to a flash in the pan. It’s the old folly of assuming a compliant enemy.

Torpedos were supposed to obsolete battleships. The French Juene Ecole was the natural response to this assumption, and it turned out to be complete folly.

Like you said, SAMS and ATGMs, likewise.

Magnetic mines, VT fuses, machine guns, and I could go on, were all touted to make warfare obsolete.

All they ever did was cause the enemy to develop countermeasures. You simply cannot assume a compliant enemy.

The author of this article is presuming that the US is a compliant enemy. This is folly.

I would argue that they are a key asset, period, even and especially against a peer opponent. It’s just that against a peer opponent, you need to go into the war prepared to lose a few of them, and therein lies my only issue with the US carrier strategy. Any ship that is “too valuable to lose” is a ship that cannot be used against a peer opponent, and our super carriers definitely fit that bill. I think that we should seriously consider building three smaller carriers instead of one big one, with the composite capability and air groups of all three adding up to one big one.

The US and Britain both lost several carriers in WWII. Each carrier loss resulted in the loss of 1000 men, including trained pilots, averaged out. Each hurt, badly.

Losing a super carrier would be roughly equivalent to losing 5 of those carriers. It’s too much “eggs in one basket”, and doesn’t seem to recognize the very real possibility that one might be sunk.

Very correct, there are a variety of defenses from CIWS to missiles to electronic.

Luttwak goes into this extensively in The Logic of Strategy, which I am reading. A great example is The Torpedo Boat, debut 1870s. That was supposed to be the end of the Behemoths…but given small guns to shoot the boats and anti-torpedo boats combined with small fast boats to chase the torpedo boats and later submarines.

The same story since 1870, and frankly since the advent of the technological age, the wonder weapons etc. A mix of weapons and forces will always be needed, any advantage of a wonder weapon — and it happens — is always transitory and countered.

On land: the anti-tank missile and the shoulder fired SAM mean THE END of armored warfare and close air support !! EEEKS!!

But OTOH just buy lots of these cheap solutions!

IF IF the enemy just sends tanks and planes [planes without countermeasures yet] and forgets artillery, mortars, supporting infantry…this being the story of 1973 Sinai until the Israeli reserves came up.

Now once there’s artillery prep and other support ground and air the advantage of the wonder weapons missiles magic evaporated.

Not that missiles aren’t very useful, you just can’t put all your eggs in one basket. The Marines are already missing their tanks…
…and already blaming the Army which has all the tanks…

The Marines are going all high tech now you see, I’m sure the War Nerd loves the new Commandant.

Who will I tell you now ruin their reputation for generations. It’s not his mistakes, it’s character.

That is the key point. If some identified enemy sinks a carrier (eg China in the Taiwan straits), the only choices for the US would be to Go Nuclear or Go Home. Even with sock puppet Biden* in the loop, China would have to think long & hard before taking that risk.

Aircraft carriers are certainly a key asset for any country which wants to act as the world policeman, and deal with non-peer adversaries who would not have the capability to sink a large naval vessel. But why would US citizens want to pay for being the world’s policeman?

The carrier still provides an important function that has yet to be replaced, and so carriers are still necessary.

Since WWII, the folly of moving a fleet around without at minimum a CAP to protect against air strikes has been clear. Look at what happened to Prince of Wales and Repulse during the Force Z mission, or, for that matter, the fates of both Yamato and Musashi. You absolutely must have at minimum air cover, but preferably at least local air superiority to move your fleet in hostile territory.

Anyone stating that carriers are obsolete is completely missing this, and is also acting as if the carrier is acting alone in a vacuum. While the carrier, as the largest ship in the fleet, is generally the flagship and seen as the base of the fleet’s strength, the Carrier is not the be-all end-all of naval strategy. It is just a brick in the wall, another aspect of the composite naval force.

They allow CAP, they allow force projection of air power that you cannot have if you don’t happen to have an air base nearby, and neither of those functions cannot be “replaced” by another technology, or disregarded as “obsolete”.

My one quibble with our current carriers was mentioned earlier, which is that we’re not prepared to lose them. Any war with an on-par opponent is going to result in carrier and ship losses. There is no avoiding that. With that in mind, I believe that we would be much better off with more, smaller carriers that we could afford to lose if need be. THese massive super carriers with 5000 man crews are seen as “unkillable” and honestly, that’s hubris. If we do join a war with a peer opponent ever, we need to be prepared to lose carriers, and I truly don’t see how we could possibly stomach the loss of one of these behemoths and her entire crew.

I also left out the second reason the Harpoon does its P trajectory, which is to make its flight path a bit more evasive to anti-missile defenses right at the last minute, to make it harder to track and hit — but not impossible, simply because it sort of tracks a ballistic arc. It’s more of a “shuck, juke and jive to avoid being tackled” than it is a “ships can’t hit missiles on a ballistic trajectory”.