Herman Cain Drops Out

[Simon_Jester]

I'll give him a certain amount of credit for being a decent man whose heart is, on a lot of issues, more or less in the right place. He's not just another corrupt asshole.

But yeah, the currency issue casts his ability to enact sane policy into doubt.

[Panzersharkcat]

After asking one of the moderators at the Facebook group, I Bet Ludwig von Mises Can Get More Fans Than John Maynard Keynes, he replied that it would basically be akin to switching from a MasterCard monopoly to a system where MasterCard, Discover, American Express, etc, have to compete for customers. He also pointed out the lack of sustained inflation prior to 1913. The credit card analogy could be better, though, since they all use the dollar.

[Zinegata]

That's still pretty nutball. Currency relies primarily on the confidence that it won't evaporate to keep it running. Having competing currencies on top of the international money market will just make the system even more crazy.

Moreover, there was a lack of sustained inflation in America prior to 1913 because the US government was PUNY back then. So puny that the Federal government didn't even bother charging income tax for a really long time (the Civil War was one of the few times it did). Not because people could print their own money.

In fact, some companies in the 1800-early 1900s America would screw over their employees by printing their own currency and pay their employees with these "tokens" - which they could only use in the company's own general store (which would charge insane prices). A system like that was almost slavery.

[Simon_Jester]

After asking one of the moderators at the Facebook group, I Bet Ludwig von Mises Can Get More Fans Than John Maynard Keynes, he replied that it would basically be akin to switching from a MasterCard monopoly to a system where MasterCard, Discover, American Express, etc, have to compete for customers. He also pointed out the lack of sustained inflation prior to 1913. The credit card analogy could be better, though, since they all use the dollar.

The problem is that currencies don't have customers. They're simply used, or not used; a currency doesn't become stronger by competing with other currencies. There are no hidden efficiencies that the currency can tap into by having to compete with other currencies.

Also, a system of competing currencies lends itself to all kinds of horrible gaming of the system. I mean, look at what the currency exchange traders are like now; do we want to subject our own internal domestic economy to the same kind of bullshit they pull on an international level? Do we want our economy to be constantly siphoned by a bizarre cross between the currency speculators and the high-frequency traders?

Your moderator isn't thinking this through- from the way you've got him sounding, he's just going "competition good!" and "inflation bad!" And that's not good enough for me. Economics doesn't reduce to things that ridiculously simple.

[Patrick Degan]

If you want an example of why allowing states to issue their own currencies would be a really bad idea, look no further than the Confederate States of America as object lesson. One of many, many bad decisions made by the Southerners on the way to losing the Civil War.

[Thanas]

Or, you know, just travel to a foreign country. Once you have gone through the hassle of converting everything in your mind for some weeks and having to go to a currency exchange everytime your local money runs out you will be cured of that insanity instantly.

[Hillary]

Or, you know, just travel to a foreign country. Once you have gone through the hassle of converting everything in your mind for some weeks and having to go to a currency exchange everytime your local money runs out you will be cured of that insanity instantly.

Absolutely. The sooner you lot convert to Sterling the better

It's quite interesting watching this. In the UK I have become accustomed to potential candidates doing their level best to play down their extremism. David Cameron, for example, does his whole "Compassionate Conservative" spiel so that he isn't seen as a toff who hates poor people. Ed Milliband, on the other hand, spends half his life protesting that he really does love business and capitalism and isn't in the pockets of the unions.

In the US, it appears that the Republican candidates try their best to appear as nutty as possible to appeal to their party base. Obama must be delighted.

[Panzersharkcat]

While I did get answers from those moderators, I'm still going to concede my argument, as I would prefer not to answer without a much firmer grasp of the material myself. That's not going to happen with my current schedule. I would still argue that liberals and libertarians should get together for the good doctor for one reason: dismantling the military-industrial complex. He's the one candidate who has been legitimately arguing for peace for decades. (I doubt some of his more radical economic policies would pass, anyway.) Plus, you can't tell me that the resources going to waste developing ways to kill people or sending people to kill or get killed wouldn't be better spent shoring up domestic programs or going back into the private economy.

[Simon_Jester]

Or, you know, just travel to a foreign country. Once you have gone through the hassle of converting everything in your mind for some weeks and having to go to a currency exchange everytime your local money runs out you will be cured of that insanity instantly.

It would be worse in an environment where you have multiple competing currencies in the same country. You might have individual stores going "I'm sorry, we have a deal with Bank of America, we only take Americadollars" when the exchange rate for Americadollars is such that they're about as valuable as Monopoly money outside the Americadollars network.

Now, there are potential problems with doing this- hopefully it wouldn't collapse utterly. But there are so many new risks and flaws and ways for a cynical person with a lot of money and a powerful computer to manipulate the system... I cannot for the life of me why anyone actively considers this a good thing.

That's not going to happen with my current schedule. I would still argue that liberals and libertarians should get together for the good doctor for one reason: dismantling the military-industrial complex. He's the one candidate who has been legitimately arguing for peace for decades.

Honestly, I think at this point the military-industrial complex matters less than economic issues and privacy/security/civil rights issues. There isn't really a connection between money spent on F-22s and the Patriot Act, or Congress's recent attempt to suspend habeas corpus for people accused of terrorism.

I respect Paul on privacy/security/civil rights, but I don't respect him on economics, and I'm largely indifferent to his stance on the military-industrial complex. So no, I'm not going to get behind Paul.

I suspect I would vote for Shep before I'd vote for Ron Paul.

(I doubt some of his more radical economic policies would pass, anyway.)

Not a snowball's chance in hell.

Plus, you can't tell me that the resources going to waste developing ways to kill people or sending people to kill or get killed wouldn't be better spent shoring up domestic programs or going back into the private economy.

It depends on how they're spent, and why- the nuclear deterrent is a good investment, ABM is a good investment if we ever expect anyone to lob a fusion-tipped missile our way, having an advanced military with the capability to do impressive things is arguably a good investment.

Deploying a hundred thousand riflemen to occupy Iraqistan in the name of democracy... not a good investment. Then again, that's already being wound down anyway, so President Paul probably wouldn't change it very much. We can't just pull everyone out in a day or two, the physical limits of transportation and the valuable goods we'd leave behind would be bad enough even ignoring the moral implications of a total pullout for the people we're abandoning. It has to be done gracefully over a limited rate.

[Zinegata]

The US military is honestly hugely bloated at this point. It does need cuts, and the military-industrial complex IS part of the problem.

And I'm very much a militarist sort of guy.

But a good militarist would also recognize that having 10 carriers is overkill when your biggest rivals AND allies can't field half of that combined. Reducing that by half would still allow the US to maintain a comfy lead, and save billions. But it wouln't make the defense contractors happy, nor would the admirals since carrier command is one of the few ways to go higher up the ladder and thus their promotion opprtunities would be cut in half...

[Mr Bean]

In before the rest of the Navy jumps on you Zinegata so I get to jump on you first.
In order to maintain four aircraft carriers year round you need ten aircraft carriers. We don't have ten aircraft carriers operating year round in fact our present for duty at the moment we have 11 on the list (USS Enterprise, Nimitz, Eisenhower, Vinson, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Washington, Stennis, Trueman, Reagan, Bush ) with three more planned as one for one replacements for existing active duty ships but to be fair the Enterprise and Nimitz are already due for decommissioning and already both have four decades apiece in active duty and the Carl Vinson is in the same boat but has no ship planned to replace her. Both the Ford and the Kennedy are not yet completed with the Kennedy not even due to begin construction until next year.

Point is when we build a fleet group we prefer to have two aircraft carriers with it, and in order to have two aircraft carrier groups we need two more who will be in dock while the first two are off being usable carriers. And the nature of the oceans being as such that there are two of them, Pacific which means China, India, North Korea and the dreaded Philippine islands along with the eastern end of Russia. We also have the Atlantic ocean which means Europe, the west end of Russia, the Middle East and Africa. In order to maintain a fleet on both sides of the world we need at least eight carriers with no room for any ships to be working up or being in commission. So to give us replacements we have ten, eleven only because we have one retiring and a one of one replacement going on at the same time.

The simple logistics of the naval situation demand a minimum of nine carriers to give us any flexibility with ten being the break point between being able to maintain two fleet groups and two in workup and have people coming on or off replacements.

If there is any place to cut the Navy budget it is our submarine arm and getting the Amphi situation under control again.

[open_sketchbook]

Because they need to be able to obliterate anyone that pisses them off at a moment's notice.

[Zinegata]

In before the rest of the Navy jumps on you Zinegata so I get to jump on you first.

I just found this very funny for some reason. Makes me think I'm about to be dogpiled by a couple of carriers

In order to maintain four aircraft carriers year round you need ten aircraft carriers. We don't have ten aircraft carriers operating year round in fact our present for duty at the moment we have 11 on the list (USS Enterprise, Nimitz, Eisenhower, Vinson, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Washington, Stennis, Trueman, Reagan, Bush ) with three more planned as one for one replacements for existing active duty ships but to be fair the Enterprise and Nimitz are already due for decommissioning and already both have four decades apiece in active duty and the Carl Vinson is in the same boat but has no ship planned to replace her. Both the Ford and the Kennedy are not yet completed with the Kennedy not even due to begin construction until next year.

Yes, but neither are any potential enemies of the USN operating their carriers year-round. Readiness is an issue afflicting all navies, and if you take this into account the USN is actually even better off as you do actually deploy regularly - especially compared to the Russians.

Point is when we build a fleet group we prefer to have two aircraft carriers with it, and in order to have two aircraft carrier groups we need two more who will be in dock while the first two are off being usable carriers. And the nature of the oceans being as such that there are two of them, Pacific which means China, India, North Korea and the dreaded Philippine islands along with the eastern end of Russia. We also have the Atlantic ocean which means Europe, the west end of Russia, the Middle East and Africa. In order to maintain a fleet on both sides of the world we need at least eight carriers with no room for any ships to be working up or being in commission. So to give us replacements we have ten, eleven only because we have one retiring and a one of one replacement going on at the same time.

That's the thing though. Twin carriers are what you need to obliterate a country's entire military, but that's not exactly something that's happened all that often in the past decade.

Moreover, even if you insist on keeping carriers twinned, there's really much less demand to keep a pair of carriers in the Atlantic.

If there is any place to cut the Navy budget it is our submarine arm and getting the Amphi situation under control again.

I'd actually aim for more of the Amphibs, as they can do relief work and peacekeeping ops. Again, you need carriers to obliterate an opposing country's military... but that's much less common than say providing relief work for the Japan Earthquake.

[Zinegata]

Because they need to be able to obliterate anyone that pisses them off at a moment's notice.

Nah, that's what the boomers are for.

[The Romulan Republic]

Why does America need to maintain a fleet on both sides of the world?

Given that the only nations with land borders are far weaker and fairly friendly, a strong navy is a great garuntee of US security. It also helps us act anywhere in the world, in a humanitarian or combat role, if needed.

[open_sketchbook]

Because they need to be able to obliterate anyone that pisses them off at a moment's notice.

Nah, that's what the boomers are for.

Sometimes you need to only incinerate a small number of the brown people so the rest learn to fear you.

[Mr Bean]

Yes, but neither are any potential enemies of the USN operating their carriers year-round. Readiness is an issue afflicting all navies, and if you take this into account the USN is actually even better off as you do actually deploy regularly - especially compared to the Russians.

Thing is without carriers on hand we lose a LOT of strategic flexibility as well as having large sections of the world shut off to us if the local nations deem it so. Without carriers the US becomes a Frigate and Destroyer Navy which is fine for fighting of low tech pirates but if China decides to blockade Taiwan without carriers sending a Frigate and Destroyer navy in would be suicidal. Likewise if Iran starts getting active in the "shutting the gulf" big panic possibility, without carriers they could do it and we'd not be able to stop them.

Or rather we would if not for the fact we currently have so much in Iraq and A-stan. But in five years when we hopefully just have embassy guards in both countries they can shut down the Gulf if they decided to do so with only a Frigate and Destroyer Navy

That's the thing though. Twin carriers are what you need to obliterate a country's entire military, but that's not exactly something that's happened all that often in the past decade.

Actually no, the Twin carriers are designed because carriers are kind of vulnerable to battle damage since it does not take much to put a carrier out of action. The twin carrier forces are in fact one carrier forces with the backup on standby. And what carriers let you do is our good friend Force Projection which is where we get the "Super" in "Superpower". Without the ability to project force (That does not just mean military force, Force is a synonyms with action in military parlance) our ability to affect things vanishes.

Moreover, even if you insist on keeping carriers twinned, there's really much less demand to keep a pair of carriers in the Atlantic.

The demand is called "The Middle East", we pretty much have a pair of carriers in the Mediterranean or the Gulf 24/7 365 days a year because of the region and it's not something the Pacific carriers can do since they have this thing called "The Pacific ocean" to take care of. As I mentioned, the Atlantic fleet means Africa/Middle East Ops, Pacific means China/Russia/North Korean and the Philippians, people forget how many shitty 3rd world dictatorship islands are in that area where the US is forever flying in aid because shit went down due to Natural Disaster/Political Instability/Sectarian Violence/Terrorist actions

I'd actually aim for more of the Amphibs, as they can do relief work and peacekeeping ops. Again, you need carriers to obliterate an opposing country's military... but that's much less common than say providing relief work for the Japan Earthquake.

Here is again where you run into the issue of lack of Naval knowledge. Again we fly something besides F/A-18's off of carrier decks. Carriers are the biggest ships in the sea and cost shows sometimes. For example the USS HW Bush cost us just over six billion to build, the newest LHD the Makin Island cost us just over two and a half billion dollars. So 40% of the cost of a Carrier gets us... What exactly? Well greatly reduced flexibility for one since smaller ship means smaller shorter and thinner flight deck.

And how about this rather vital factor, it carries three times the max number of planes in even a peacetime cruising configuration. By cost the carrier should be pull 2.5x at best not x3 to x5. Never mind the fact the carrier has that thing of having unlimited range being nuclear power something yanked from the Amphib fleet and it shows because Oil is expensive and getting more so every year making the Amphib fleet very costly to operate on a year to year biases.

[Simon_Jester]

Because they need to be able to obliterate anyone that pisses them off at a moment's notice.

Carriers are shitty for obliterating things at a moment's notice.

But to answer the question: the US has agreements with allies in Europe, and in the Pacific, to help protect them from aggression. If Europe suddenly faces a military crisis and wants US help (see Libya), that help will have to come from a carrier. If Taiwan is threatened with attack, they will want to know the US is in a position to help them. That help will have to come from a carrier.

This requires maintaining carrier battle fleets on both sides of the world. Doing it right, i.e. without fucking it up out of sheer cheapness, requires maintaining two carriers at a time in each of those two fleets. Two plus two is four carriers able to move around and do things at a time, at which point Bean's calculations kick in.

And frankly, despite the fact that this carrier force plus a fighter/bomber force gives the US about all the firepower it could ever need for interventions, as opposed to what an unhealthy person might fantasize about having... it's actually not all that expensive. What been expensive over the past decade was the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yes, but neither are any potential enemies of the USN operating their carriers year-round. Readiness is an issue afflicting all navies, and if you take this into account the USN is actually even better off as you do actually deploy regularly - especially compared to the Russians.

The US Navy does not exist purely for the purpose of canceling out other people's navies. It also exists to do things like, oh, flatten the Libyan air defense network so the rest of NATO can go in and fly airstrikes in support of the Libyan rebels. Or to keep a screen of fighter jets over the Strait of Hormuz so that the Iranians won't be able to enforce a sudden new claim to own those straits (which would screw over many other people in many other countries, not just us).


There's another problem, too. suppose the US Navy did scale back to a level where all it could do is cancel out other people's navies. What if someone else starts building more ships? Ships are long lead-time items. You cannot just order a mess of ships now and get them next week; building carriers takes years of planning and work. Unless you react very quickly, there will be a period of years when the carriers and other ships they laid down and finished are not matched by any ships on your own side.

So by skimping on carriers in the pipeline now, you either force the existing carriers to be kept in service longer until they start to fall apart, or you create a large dip in the strength of the carrier force ten to twenty years from now. Someone with actual money can take this into account, plan ahead, and exploit this.

I'd actually aim for more of the Amphibs, as they can do relief work and peacekeeping ops. Again, you need carriers to obliterate an opposing country's military... but that's much less common than say providing relief work for the Japan Earthquake.

The amphibious ships are expensive compared to their raw combat power, especially when you factor in their ground troop contingent, without which they're useless. As to the humanitarian side, they're not as good a choice as, say, dedicated relief ships.

If you want to do humanitarian work, you build humanitarian relief ships. You don't build three billion dollar amphibious ships which cost nearly as much as an aircraft carrier without being vastly better at humanitarian work. No, you build amphibious warfare ships if you plan to be sending in the Marines to beat people up... which is, I'd think, exactly the sort of thing I doubt you really want to do.

[Zinegata]

Thing is without carriers on hand we lose a LOT of strategic flexibility as well as having large sections of the world shut off to us if the local nations deem it so. Without carriers the US becomes a Frigate and Destroyer Navy which is fine for fighting of low tech pirates but if China decides to blockade Taiwan without carriers sending a Frigate and Destroyer navy in would be suicidal. Likewise if Iran starts getting active in the "shutting the gulf" big panic possibility, without carriers they could do it and we'd not be able to stop them.

Or rather we would if not for the fact we currently have so much in Iraq and A-stan. But in five years when we hopefully just have embassy guards in both countries they can shut down the Gulf if they decided to do so with only a Frigate and Destroyer Navy

Six carriers overall and three active at any time will not turn the US Navy into a frigate navy. You need to assume more than 3 major crisis suddenly show up all at the same time before some theater becomes a frigate navy.

Actually no, the Twin carriers are designed because carriers are kind of vulnerable to battle damage since it does not take much to put a carrier out of action. The twin carrier forces are in fact one carrier forces with the backup on standby. And what carriers let you do is our good friend Force Projection which is where we get the "Super" in "Superpower". Without the ability to project force (That does not just mean military force, Force is a synonyms with action in military parlance) our ability to affect things vanishes.

No American carrier has received battle damage since World War 2 unless you count accidents in a war zone.

The demand is called "The Middle East", we pretty much have a pair of carriers in the Mediterranean or the Gulf 24/7 365 days a year because of the region and it's not something the Pacific carriers can do since they have this thing called "The Pacific ocean" to take care of. As I mentioned, the Atlantic fleet means Africa/Middle East Ops, Pacific means China/Russia/North Korean and the Philippians, people forget how many shitty 3rd world dictatorship islands are in that area where the US is forever flying in aid because shit went down due to Natural Disaster/Political Instability/Sectarian Violence/Terrorist actions

Keep one in the Pac, one in the Mideast, and one either elsewhere or shoring up the Pacific or the Mideast as needed.

Again, the assumption is more than three major crisis happening at the same time AND carriers getting taken out. We haven't really seen that yet.

Here is again where you run into the issue of lack of Naval knowledge. Again we fly something besides F/A-18's off of carrier decks. Carriers are the biggest ships in the sea and cost shows sometimes. For example the USS HW Bush cost us just over six billion to build, the newest LHD the Makin Island cost us just over two and a half billion dollars. So 40% of the cost of a Carrier gets us... What exactly? Well greatly reduced flexibility for one since smaller ship means smaller shorter and thinner flight deck.

A carrier operates more than F-18s, but its helicopter wing isn't really bigger than an Amphib. And it doesn't have the ability to ship goods directly to shore via hovercraft.

The reality is that a carrier is really geared more towards shooting down enemy planes, sinking their fleets, and bombing their army to death. It's much better than an Amphib at this, but again, let's be honest here - there hasn't been a whole lot of the above happening at all.

If your perspective is purely about preparing for World War III, then yeah carrier-building makes sense. But the reality of the world is that peacekeeping / relief ops are far more common - and even the reduced air wing of the Amphibs is still sufficient for that. Not to mention it already carries troops to provide ground security if needed and can also ship goods directly ashore.

I'm not advocating Amphibs to replace carriers. I'm saying Amphibs are sufficient for the relief ops so you don't have to tie down a carrier for such a job.

Finally, carriers being nuclear-powered isn't really a great argument. Even cruisers could be nuke-powered if needed - and so could amhibs.

[Zinegata]

There's another problem, too. suppose the US Navy did scale back to a level where all it could do is cancel out other people's navies. What if someone else starts building more ships?

I'd take a look at other people's capability to build carriers first before using this argument. The US has an enormous lead in actual ships AND the capability to build more. There is no way that you'll suddenly find the US Navy outnumbered 2:1 tomorrow - other navies are even MORE constrained with how many ships they can build.

China for instance - which arguably has the strongest industry out of all your potential rivals - doesn't even have a yard that can properly build a carrier yet. They had to buy one from the Russians to even just start figuring it all out. Heck, the only ones who are really building any at the moment besides you are the Brits.

Ships are long lead-time items. You cannot just order a mess of ships now and get them next week; building carriers takes years of planning and work. Unless you react very quickly, there will be a period of years when the carriers and other ships they laid down and finished are not matched by any ships on your own side.

Yes, but the exact same constraints apply to anyone trying to catch up. If anyone is trying to outbuild the US Navy, you'll probably know about ten whole years in advance :p.

So by skimping on carriers in the pipeline now, you either force the existing carriers to be kept in service longer until they start to fall apart, or you create a large dip in the strength of the carrier force ten to twenty years from now. Someone with actual money can take this into account, plan ahead, and exploit this.

Replacing carriers is fine, I'm talking about the overall final number. Heck, the British navy at its peak maintained only a two-fleet standard (have a navy as big as the next two biggest rivals). The US Navy is maintaining a "stronger than everyone else combined multiply by two" standard, and the Brits also had very global responsibilities.

If you want to do humanitarian work, you build humanitarian relief ships. You don't build three billion dollar amphibious ships which cost nearly as much as an aircraft carrier without being vastly better at humanitarian work. No, you build amphibious warfare ships if you plan to be sending in the Marines to beat people up... which is, I'd think, exactly the sort of thing I doubt you really want to do.

Those work too, but I'm also anticipating an increase in peacekeeping work, which will need Marines.

[Mr Bean]

Six carriers overall and three active at any time will not turn the US Navy into a frigate navy. You need to assume more than 3 major crisis suddenly show up all at the same time before some theater becomes a frigate navy.

Again the difference in thinking. We assume two major crises because again two ships in two ships out, two oceans means eight ships. For every six months at see the simple act of cruising around without any battle damage requires six months in docks to run updates, to fix salt water corrosion, to replace the things that break from 3000+ people using them every day. Six ships means two fleets built around a single carrier each. And a single carrier is highly vulnerable to luck. Be it the modern equivalent of a PT boat attack, direct attack or the more mundane methods of a carrier being disabled like a fucked up landing or mishandling of ammo that results in a big enough boom. Carrier ops still kill people every year because it's on a basic level dangerous to strap guns and bombs on planes weighing several tons and throw them off the deck at 120 mph and have them land at roughly the same speed.

Shit goes south and without a second carrier on standby a single accident disables most of your fleets protection

No American carrier has received battle damage since World War 2 unless you count accidents in a war zone.

Not for lack of trying on the parts of our enemy and as mentioned accidents can be just as disabling as enemy attacks and the effect is identical, without a second carrier your fleet is instantly reduced to Frigate and destroyer.

Keep one in the Pac, one in the Mideast, and one either elsewhere or shoring up the Pacific or the Mideast as needed.
Again, the assumption is more than three major crisis happening at the same time AND carriers getting taken out. We haven't really seen that yet.

Again your missing the two out two in fleet thing. Two carriers in the ocean in the east, two in the west and four more in drydock working up for their deployment in six months to do the same thing while the four that were out come in. That's eight.

Again you assume nothing will ever go wrong
If you ever looked into the injury rates on a US Carrier you'd know that. The current average stands at roughly two fatalities a year with sixty or so non lethal injuries during flight ops on all carriers that were deployed in 2000-2010. You can simply search in the news for "US carrier" and "injury" or "accident" and you'll find dozens of examples this year of bomb hoist nearly crushing someone standing in the wrong place, engine failures causing fires or snapped cables nearly killing people.

A carrier operates more than F-18s, but its helicopter wing isn't really bigger than an Amphib. And it doesn't have the ability to ship goods directly to shore via hovercraft.

That's purely a loadout situation, peacetime or disaster relief means it carries just as many Helicopters as an Amphib plus the ability to land some cargo planes

The reality is that a carrier is really geared more towards shooting down enemy planes, sinking their fleets, and bombing their army to death. It's much better than an Amphib at this, but again, let's be honest here - there hasn't been a whole lot of the above happening at all.

There's also this thing called "bombing the land" Carriers do that wonderfully if Iraq was not a key example of that, even with the land build up most of the air support for the invasion was Naval based including the hundreds of cruise missiles we threw into the country to gut their command structure.

If your perspective is purely about preparing for World War III, then yeah carrier-building makes sense. But the reality of the world is that peacekeeping / relief ops are far more common - and even the reduced air wing of the Amphibs is still sufficient for that. Not to mention it already carries troops to provide ground security if needed and can also ship goods directly ashore.

I'm not advocating Amphibs to replace carriers. I'm saying Amphibs are sufficient for the relief ops so you don't have to tie down a carrier for such a job.

Amphibs are for support invasions not peacetime cruiseing. That's why they carry hundreds of marines unlike a carrier which again because of scale carries much more supply storage. Even your argument about humanitarian relief falls flat because a carrier is designed to act as a mobile airstrip meaning it has a full traffic control on hand to coordinate things like disaster relief which Amphibs lack because they are about attacking beaches and supporting the attack on beaches. Without amphibs we would not be able to land marines anywhere in the world they are great for that purpose. But shipping goods directly to shore is not exactly a selling point except in an invasion situation where you need to worry about AA because otherwise having three times the storage space for goods tells a lot more than simply being able to get one load there faster.

The hallmark of humanitarian situations is the fact you have misery all around you, there will be no nice handy distribution points for you to move supplies to and have them spread out from there. Ask any of our Naval people who help directly with the Tsunami in 2004 in the Indian ocean. Helicopters provided nearly all the supply delivery since anything near the shore was simply gone. Likewise the haiti earthquake where Helicopters were needed to reach the ravaged areas. In disaster relief you do that by helicopters. Something carriers do even better again because... again they have the space to do it in.

Finally, carriers being nuclear-powered isn't really a great argument. Even cruisers could be nuke-powered if needed - and so could amhibs.

Except again scale comes into play, they looked into making the new America class nuclear powered and it would have raised the cost to five billion dollars yet our Nimitz classes are six billion dollars and again 60%-140% bigger in every way.

[Alkaloid]

Thing is, Zin, that the US really does need the number of carriers it has to what it wants to do. If you want to scale back the number of carriers and associated costs that's fine, but you then need to scale back what you are doing with them as well. The US could cut the carrier fleet to five ships and decide it was going to worry about the Pacific and leave Europe/Africa to it's own devices but it's more or less decided that politically that's an unacceptable course, so it won't happen, and the Navy will continue to need 10 odd carriers.

If you want to argue a specific arm of the US military is unnecessary, you would be better off looking at the Army and Marines and finding out why they exist concurrently like they do.

[Simon_Jester]

Six carriers overall and three active at any time will not turn the US Navy into a frigate navy. You need to assume more than 3 major crisis suddenly show up all at the same time before some theater becomes a frigate navy.

No, because it's stupid to only send one carrier to deal with a major crisis.

No American carrier has received battle damage since World War 2 unless you count accidents in a war zone.

So we're supposed to build warships and use them in a way that assumes no one will ever, ever be clever or competent enough to do any harm to them? That strikes me as a really bad plan.

For that matter, the accidents that can happen are pretty damned significant too- remember the Forrestal?

If your military can only function until someone figures out a way to shoot back at it, you don't have much of a military. Assuming we're even going to bother having a navy capable of patrolling the world's seas at all, the marginal cost of building a few extra carriers as insurance is tiny. Remember- a few. You're still talking about needing three carriers on station (instead of four); at most this means that the carrier fleet can drop from 10-11 down to 7-8, and even that's cutting into our ability to do serious maintenance downtime on the ships.

The savings from letting three carriers expire are not large enough to matter when we're talking about hundred-billion-dollar range budget influences like "get out of Iraqistan" and "end the Bush tax cuts" and "enact means-testing for Social Security"

Again, the assumption is more than three major crisis happening at the same time AND carriers getting taken out. We haven't really seen that yet.

No, remember, the carriers take weeks to move from one theater to another- they only move at about forty miles an hour, tops. If a crisis arises and there is only one carrier within a ten thousand mile radius, that carrier is all there is. If someone gets lucky with an antiship missile, then there are no carriers to handle the problem.

A carrier operates more than F-18s, but its helicopter wing isn't really bigger than an Amphib. And it doesn't have the ability to ship goods directly to shore via hovercraft.

The reality is that a carrier is really geared more towards shooting down enemy planes, sinking their fleets, and bombing their army to death. It's much better than an Amphib at this, but again, let's be honest here - there hasn't been a whole lot of the above happening at all.

We did it in Korea, we did it in Vietnam, we did it in Desert Storm, we did it in Afghanistan and Iraq (again) and Libya... somehow it keeps coming up every few years.

Finally, carriers being nuclear-powered isn't really a great argument. Even cruisers could be nuke-powered if needed - and so could amhibs.

The existing ones aren't. We'd have to build new ones to replace the carriers in the 'nuclear ship' role... and those new ones would cost damn near as much as building whole new aircraft carriers, which is exactly what you said would be a waste of money.

I'd take a look at other people's capability to build carriers first before using this argument. The US has an enormous lead in actual ships AND the capability to build more. There is no way that you'll suddenly find the US Navy outnumbered 2:1 tomorrow - other navies are even MORE constrained with how many ships they can build.

China for instance - which arguably has the strongest industry out of all your potential rivals - doesn't even have a yard that can properly build a carrier yet. They had to buy one from the Russians to even just start figuring it all out. Heck, the only ones who are really building any at the moment besides you are the Brits.

Yes. Thing is, China can wait ten or twenty years (while building the infrastructure they need to do this) for the period when we're already committed to a downsized carrier fleet, then start building. Unless we react very fast (i.e. Congress listens to some navy guy saying "yeah, the Chinese will have three carriers in ten years, while we will only have one in place to deal with it" and authorize the building of new carriers right now, thus undoing all the savings we got from downsizing the carrier fleet), we wind up outmaneuvered.

If there's bickering and if opposition to the military-industrial complex remains in place, the sudden construction of new warships to deal with a new potential threat is likely to be delayed. We've seen this before- look at what happened to the British, especially regarding their battleship situation, during the Second World War.

Alternatively, the Chinese could just spam other types of warships they already build, and rely on the sheer number of units armed with surface to air missiles to overpower the one carrier we might actually be able to leave in the Pacific at any one time.

So by skimping on carriers in the pipeline now, you either force the existing carriers to be kept in service longer until they start to fall apart, or you create a large dip in the strength of the carrier force ten to twenty years from now. Someone with actual money can take this into account, plan ahead, and exploit this.

Replacing carriers is fine, I'm talking about the overall final number. Heck, the British navy at its peak maintained only a two-fleet standard (have a navy as big as the next two biggest rivals). The US Navy is maintaining a "stronger than everyone else combined multiply by two" standard, and the Brits also had very global responsibilities.

The Brits then had to use the majority of their fleet to guard their home waters against the German battleline during World War One. Indeed, if they'd been up against a second opponent with a serious navy at the same time, they'd have been woefully outgunned- just keeping the margin of superiority they needed to protect their home waters against one fleet ate up most of their two-fleet standard.

This is the problem with trying to have naval superiority- you do not have superiority if it's easy for the enemy to defeat you with a concentrated attack. Which means they will have the luxury of bringing all their ships, or most of their ships, up to full readiness and hitting you at any time they choose, while you cannot be sure of having all your ships available to fight back. Thus, having one more ship than your enemy, or only one ship on which all your strength depends, is not enough- it doesn't give you any margin of error for the risks of surprise or accident.

If you want to do humanitarian work, you build humanitarian relief ships. You don't build three billion dollar amphibious ships which cost nearly as much as an aircraft carrier without being vastly better at humanitarian work. No, you build amphibious warfare ships if you plan to be sending in the Marines to beat people up... which is, I'd think, exactly the sort of thing I doubt you really want to do.

Those work too, but I'm also anticipating an increase in peacekeeping work, which will need Marines.

So we're maintaining a navy nearly as costly as the one we have now, and significantly less effective in combat, for the sake of marginally increasing our humanitarian aid capability?

And... wait. More peacekeeping? As in "boots on the ground?" The cost of deploying Marines to foreign theaters will very quickly eat up any savings we can scrape up by downsizing the carrier fleet. Are you sure you've thought this through?

[Broken]

Another other thing about aircraft carriers and navies to remember is that major warships are a pretty specialized commodity. One of the reasons the US Navy tries to keep at least one aircraft carrier and one nuclear submarine under construction at all times is the civilian workforce in the shipyards. The personal skills and equipment needed for the construction of major fleet units are, from what I understand. not easily translated to the civilian ship-building industry. So while cutting warship construction now saves money, it causes a huge mess down the road when all the specialized workforce has been forced to move on to other jobs and your slips for building 100,000 ton aircraft carriers were sold off or broken up to be used in the construction of other ships. I imagine having to retrain an entire workforce to out-build a rival sounds like a bad idea to military planners.

[Simon_Jester]

True. The same thing applies to rocket engineering (ending the Constellation program has been criticized here for exactly that reason) and aircraft construction (which is why we can't just build more B-52s/A-10s/whatever; the machine tools and workforce to do it no longer exist).

If you want a military, or any other kind of large-scale long-term enterprise, to be productive and cost-effective, you have to give it consistent funding and the ability to do long term planning. If you whipsaw them back and forth, telling them they'll have tons of money this year but then taking away a lot of the money next year, they will be forced to do very foolish things to cut short-term costs, without saving much money in the long run.