A weapon’s system that you are not prepared to risk losing is not useful in war.
I worry our multi-billion carriers would be like the Yamato or the German battleship fleet in WWI. Confined to port for the whole war because they were not expendable.
I was thinking along those same lines. In WW II the Germans had great tanks. But they were expensive, and complicated. The US and Soviet tanks were simpler and cheaper, and so were much easier to mass-produce. Allied quantity beat Axis quality.
It seems that the US has gone over to the old German model. Produce only a few high-quality, expensive toys. Better not lose even one of those toys.
“A weapon’s system that you are not prepared to risk losing is not useful in war.”
Precisely. I’d rather have 300 “good enough” aircraft carriers than 30 “perfect” ones. In 1944 Detroit was delivering over 1,000 tanks a month. They weren’t perfect. God knows the brave men who crewed them would testify to that. But sheer numbers overwhelmed the enemy.
Same thing with bomber planes, fighter planes, rifles, pistols, grenades, ammunition, food, medical supplies, socks, uniforms, boots, you name it. There’s something to be said for that.
As much as I hate quoting that monster Stalin he was right about this “Quantity has a quality all its own.”
We need to bring some of that mindset back to our military procurement.
L
Please stop. You don’t understand modern naval warfare.
Recommend that you read this Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_in_being
Regards,
Aircraft carriers have always been fragile things and if you push them too close to a coastline you risk losing them to land based aviation. This was true in WW2 as it is today. By 1945 the threat was the Kamikaze which tactically operated like a modern cruise missile.
What gets missed with all the attention on the glamorous aircraft carriers are the submarines. While US Carrier groups were making grand sweeps against Japanese held islands, individual US submarines were successfully blockading the Japanese Home Islands. That’s the kind of dirty blocking & tackling that doesn’t get much attention, but is vital to winning a war. In any modern war in the Westpac area US submarines will be carrying the load from Day one.