U.S. Loads Up On Expensive Battleships That Will Be Easy To Find And Sink

The second part of this article is cool, pointing out that we are building these giant ships that can easily be targeted by torpedoes and other advanced technology. Also they have been used to defeat "weak opponents." Not the same as saying they are useless, but close.

So it's investing a lot of money in a giant bathtub, and if they sink they'll take down all the planes piled up on the deck as well. That will be a good special effect when they make the movie though. The other part that's cool is even though the military experts know these tubs are a waste of money they are going to build them anyway. Knowledge and foresight have no place in military planning. If you clutter everything up with thinking you can't get anything done.

With the planes we're moving towards this advanced "stealth" thing where they can't see the planes with their radar and BOOM there we are blowing them up. With boats - we're not doing so great.

Despite growing controversy about the cost and relevance of aircraft carriers, navies around the world are adding new ones to their inventories at a pace unseen since World War II.

The U.S. — with more carriers than all other nations combined — and established naval powers such as Britain, France and Russia are doing it. So are Brazil, India and China — which with Russia form the BRIC grouping of emerging economic giants.

"The whole idea is about being able to project power," said Rear Adm. Philippe Coindreau, commander of the French navy task force that has led the air strikes on Libya since March 22.

"An aircraft carrier is perfectly suited to these kinds of conflicts, and this ship demonstrates it every day," he said in an interview aboard the French carrier Charles de Gaulle, which has been launching daily raids against Moammar Gadhafi's forces since the international intervention in the Libyan conflict began March 22.

The 42,000-ton nuclear-powered carrier has been joined in this task by another smaller ship, Italy's 14,000-ton Giuseppe Garibaldi. None of the U.S. Navy's supercarriers have been involved, despite American participation in the war's initial phase.

The U.S. Navy still operates 11 nuclear-powered carriers, mostly Nimitz-class vessels displacing up to 100,000 tons.

The floating fortresses became the backbone of U.S. sea power after WWII, projecting military might around the world in crises and in conflicts such as Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

The U.S. Navy is scheduled to induct the Gerald R. Ford, the lead ship of a new class three-ship class of supercarriers, in 2015. Each is expected to cost about $9 billion.

Military experts have long debated the relevance of aircraft carriers, which some have dismissed as relics of the Cold War.

"What many countries don't realize is that sustaining operations at sea is a very complex task," Hughes said. "The magnitude of the expense necessary to get to that sort of fixed wing capability that the U.S. and French navy have is difficult to overstate."

Some critics say the entire concept of the seagoing air base is now antiquated. They contend that advances in anti-ship weapons have turned the carriers into white elephants that are just too expensive to risk losing in a war.

While the mammoth floating airports bristling with jets and missiles appear invincible, the reality is that since World War II they have mostly been used in conflicts with far weaker opponents. They have yet to face off against modern navies with their array of carrier-killing ballistic missiles, super-torpedos, and supersonic cruise missiles.

"These new technologies make it easier to target carriers from much greater distances," said Benjamin Friedman, a research fellow with the Washington-based CATO Institute.

"Those technologies are set to advance faster than the ability to defend against them, meaning that in a couple of decades the carrier business may not be viable anymore."

[Associated Press]