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NATO is making a show of force this month with five aircraft carriers operating in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, one month after the alliance and Russia held rival nuclear exercises amid the latter’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Two U.S. carriers are involved: the USS George H.W. Bush and the USS Gerald R. Ford, according to a U.S. Navy press release. The other three carriers are the U.K.’s HMS Queen Elizabeth and the flagships of the French and Italian navies: the Charles De Gaulle and Cavour. The exercise allows NATO forces to practice working together. It’s also another beat...

In the last couple of years, there has been a lot of attention on the build-up of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). It has undergone a major modernization effort and is now the largest naval force in the world. Just last month, the PLAN launched its third aircraft carrier – the second to be entirely indigenously built. This will allow China to flex its muscles in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. Likewise, there has been great speculation regarding China’s efforts to develop a capable fifth-generation fighter aircraft and a medium- to long-range stealth bomber. In very short order, Beijing...

Reflecting the Pentagon’s new focus on China, US aircraft carrier strike groups almost doubled deployments to the South China Sea in 2021 compared to the year before. According to the Beijing-based South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI), US carrier strike groups entered the South China Sea 10 times in 2021, compared with six times in 2020, and five in 2019. “The US military have drastically reinforced their military deployment in the South China Sea since last year, in terms of training scales, sorties and scenarios,” SCSPI director Hu Bo said Friday, according to The South China Morning Post. Hu said...

While armed services often crave “gold-plated” weapon systems, Kaiser’s cheap jeep carriers showed how simple, affordable and numerous platforms well-suited to operational requirements can prove to be of greater value. The Casablanca class’ finest hour came in the Battle of Samar, when sixteen CVEs and their escorts covering the amphibious landing at Leyte Gulf single-handedly took on a Japanese battlefleet consisting of four battleships and nineteen cruisers and destroyers. In a frantic few hours, the carriers’ combined air wings and self-sacrificing destroyer escorts managed to sink three cruisers and persuade Admiral Takeo Kurita to withdraw. “Mass-production” isn’t a term one...

The US Navy sold two old aircraft carriers for a cent each to a ship-breaking firm.The USS Kitty Hawk and USS John F. Kennedy had been decommissioned for years.They are due to be broken up by a firm in Texas, who can make money from the scrap metal.The US Navy sold two aircraft carriers to a ship-breaking company for 1 cent each after decades of service.The cut-price fee reflects the fact the company will profit from selling the ship metal for scrap, officials said.Naval Sea Systems Command, a US Navy sub-organization, said it had agreed to sell USS Kitty Hawk...

Japan is back in the business of operating a fixed-wing aircraft carrier, with the first embarkation of short takeoff and vertical-landing F-35B stealth jets from the U.S. Marine Corps on the modified helicopter carrier Izumo. It is the first instance of the country operating fixed-wing aircraft from ships since the end of World War II. The trials are set to kickstart a new era for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, or JMSDF, which has long harbored ambitions to adapt its two 24,000-ton Izumo class helicopter carriers for fixed-wing operations. The Japanese Ministry of Defense announced today that the Marine Corps...

Don’t we have enough pots boiling on the military front at this point? We’re already dealing with a madman in North Korea with nuclear weapons, Russia and Turkey talking about “taking over” the conflict in northern Syria, counter-terror operations in Yemen and a minor conflict in Afghanistan that’s been dragging on since before some of the people who will be voting in 2020 were even born. Do we really need to get into a shooting war with the Chinese on top of all that?That seems to be the thinking of at least one Chinese “admiral” who delivered some rather...

In its 10-year Defense Program Guidelines, Tokyo said it will buy 42 of the stealthy F-35Bs, which are designed for short-run take offs and vertical landings. Those planes will be available for deployment aboard two flat-top ships, the JS Izumo and JS Kaga, which at more than 800 feet long and displacing 27,000 tons are the largest ships in the Japanese fleet. The Izumo and Kaga have been carrying helicopters designed for anti-submarine warfare since entering service over the past three years. They will need to have their decks reinforced to accommodate the heavier F-35Bs, as well as the heat...

The Chinese are rapidly building a world-class navy that, by 2022, could include as many as four aircraft carriers, according to current estimates. Already, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has fielded a pair of carriers: The Liaoning, a Soviet-era vessel that the Chinese spent many years refurbishing and which now serves primarily as a training ship; and the Type 002, which is currently undergoing sea trials and has yet to be named. There is a third carrier, the Type 003, under construction at the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, and there are “credible reports of a fourth ship of the...

US Navy leaders have announced that the first-of-its kind carrier-launched F-35C stealth fighter will deploy for its first operational deployment on the USS Carl Vinson -- in 2021. The anticipated historical deployment could be accelerated by the 2019 budget proposal which supports a transition of the F-35C program from a developmental phase to more formal test and evaluation before being declared operational later this year, Rear. Adm. S.D. Conn, Director, Air Warfare Chief of Naval Operations, told Congress. “Stealth technology and advanced integrated systems enable the F-35C to counter rapidly evolving air-to-air and surface-to-air threats. Whether the mission requires the...

The US has simultaneously deployed 7 of the 11 U.S. nuclear aircraft carriers for the first time in over a decade according to the US Naval Institute. The three aircraft carriers with full air wings and strike groups positioned in the Western Pacific are the following: USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76); USS Nimitz (CVN-68); USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71). Another four are conducting “short training missions as part of training operations or workups ahead of deployment”. Two out of four are operating in Eastern Pacific – USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) and USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) – and the remaining two are...

Everything about the aircraft carrier is analyzed these days. How vulnerable they are. How vulnerable they aren’t. How easy it is to sink one with a French attack submarine. How big they should be. How small they should be. Should we even have them at all? Yet most of these arguments have lost sight of the fact that the only reason a carrier exists is to take its air wing into battle. The air wing—the actual aircraft on the aircraft carrier, naturally—is the true measurement of a carrier’s worth. Without the air wing we wouldn’t need these ships at all....

Zero Hedge reports: While details are scarce, and we would urge confirmation from US-based sources, Yonhap also reports that according to the government source the operation of three aircraft carriers in the same location is unusual, and demonstrates the US commitment to North Korea. Other sources said the Trump administration is demonstrating deterrence by acting on its behalf. “We expect it to be completely different from the previous administration.” The U.S. and South Korea, according to a South Korean government official, are discussing joint drills that would ultimately include the three U.S. aircraft carriers and other vessels.

According to a report by South Korea’s primary news outlet, Yonhap, the Pentagon has directed a total of three US aircraft carriers toward the Korean Peninsula, citing a South Korean government source. Yonhap reports that in addition to the CVN-70 Carl Vinson, which is expected to arrive off the South Korean coast on April 25, the CVN-76 Ronald Reagan – currently in home port in Yokosuka, Japan – and the CVN-68 Nimitz carrier group – currently undergoing final pre-deployment assessment, Composite Training Unit Exercise off Oregon – will enter the Sea of Japan next week. According to the senior government...

Pentagon budget battles inevitably bring out the long knives. But in the age of sequestration absolute lunacy has taken over. Left-leaning and libertarian think tanks as well as pundits of various stripes have declared open season on our Navy's fleet of aircraft carriers and the carrier strike group (CSG) concept, calling them outdated and obsolete in light of current threats. Some politicians agree with them. These pols see the high cost of building and operating carriers as a pot of gold to be raided to pay for everything else they can think of, and they can think of a lot...

Going back to the Battle of Midway and beyond, the United States aircraft carrier task forces have been the dominant power on the seas, and for good reason. When properly deployed and flanked by smaller, versatile warships, they provide the equivalent of a massive air base and marine troop deployment station which can be parked on the doorstep of any enemy. Unfortunately, their days of supremacy may be numbered, at least according to one recent report. (Washington Post) A report published Monday by the Center for a New American Security, a D.C.-based think tank that focuses on national security, claims...

The Obama administration plans to close the last remaining American-owned uranium enrichment facility in the United States, even as it moves forward on a controversial nuclear deal with Iran that permits the Islamic Republic to conduct ongoing and significant uranium enrichment. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has informed Centrus Energy it will end the American Centrifuge project in Piketon, Ohio, on Sept. 30. Notices have been issued to some 235 workers that their jobs are in jeopardy. ... This is beyond belief," Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, responded in a statement. "While this administration is greenlighting uranium enrichment in Iran...

<p>"History," it has been written, "does not repeat itself, but it rhymes." Today it's rhyming with Gen. Billy Mitchell. In the 1920s, Mitchell challenged conventional thinking by advocating air power at sea in the face of a naval establishment dominated by battleship proponents.</p>

n the not-too-distant future, drivers in Washington state could cross the Sinclair Inlet on a bridge made of two or three decommissioned aircraft carriers. ... No aircraft carrier is available for the project—not yet, at least. Currently, the backers of the project have their eyes on the USS Independence, which was commissioned in the 1960s and could go to the salvage yard later this year, and the USS Kitty Hawk, a carrier that sailed in the Vietnam War after its 1958 commission.

Jeremy Bender March 10, 2015Chinese officials have confirmed that the country is currently building a second aircraft carrier, according to a number of Chinese and Taiwanese media sources. The former political commissar of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy Liu Xioajiang told the Hong Kong Commercial Daily that a second aircraft carrier's construction is now in the hands of governmental agencies, according to news translations by Focus Taiwan. Liu also hinted that Beijing's second carrier, which would be China's first indigenously produced carrier, was only the start of the nation's maritime ambitions.(snip)