The U.S. Navy’s Big Mistake — Building Tons of Supercarriers — War Is Boring

The U.S. Navy’s Big Mistake — Building Tons of Supercarriers — War Is Boring
Dinosaurs. "In 2002, the U.S. Navy held a large simulated war game, the Millennium Challenge, to test scenarios of attacks on the fleet by a hypothetical Gulf state — Iraq or possibly Iran. The leader of the red team employed brilliant asymmetric tactics resulting in 16 U.S. ships, including two supercarriers, going to the bottom in a very short span of time. The Navy stopped the war game, prohibited the red team from using these tactics and then reran the exercise declaring victory on the second day. As with Billy Mitchell and the Ostfriesland, according to the Navy the sinkings never happened. But, as Robert Gates noted in his memoirs, “the enemy always gets a vote.” Ballistic missiles are just the most recent challenge to carrier vulnerability. “I would argue that you can put a ship out of action faster by putting a hole in the bottom [with a torpedo] than by putting a hole in the top [with a weapon like the DF-21],” former U.S. Naval Operations chief Gary Roughhead said. This extends to diesel submarines. Although the number of simulated “sinkings” by ships of the Navy is officially unacknowledged, there are reports of around a dozen U.S. aircraft carriers being “sunk” in exercises with friendly countries including Canada, Denmark and Chile."