All of a sudden, six nations are building aircraft carriers (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, India and China.) For over half a century, most of the carrier building took place in the United States. Russia built some, without much success, towards the end of the Cold War. Britain and France built a few, and several other nations (like India and Brazil), bought second had British carriers so they could maintain one or two in service.
But now six nations are planning or building new carriers, most of them a bit smaller (about 60,000 tons) than the larger U.S. ones (100,000 tons).
Britain & France
India
Brazil
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Just why would France need an aircraft carrier ?
During the 1991 Gulf War, France sent an aircraft carrier, but had all the aircraft return to France after it left port .. rendering it pretty much useless, except as a decoy.
These navies are rather convinced that having a mere dozen warplanes at a critical spot is rather valuable. That is all that the smaller carriers — from the ex-Hermes on down — can offer. Looking back on WW2, where hundreds of aircraft at a time were launched at enemy fleets, I think that perhaps we’ve lost something here. The increased targeting quality, etc., of the modern fleet *had better* compensate for the lost quantity, because there is no fallback plan.
Note that each country theoretically needs two to three flattops, to cover for in-transit and out-of-service.
Also note that this list doesn’t include a variety of other nations, such as Spain and Thailand, that have Invincible-like carriers already. And even Japan is planning on building at least one Invincible-like carrier.
Thanks
I forgot about Spain, didn’t know about Thailand, and…didn’t Argentina have one (or has it finally been retired?).
I understand that there is a plan to change the UK ships name to HMS Mohammed.
Or, does an aircraft carrier count as an “image”? I can never keep that stuff straight…
Since the topic isn’t controversial, this Wikipedia entry is bound to be usefully accurate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_country
Note that the list must be read carefully. For instance, it has Germany at 23! But these were all seaplane tenders.
There are various other countries, such as Italy, that have ships that can usefully handle Harriers — or F35Bs.
And then, just when they thought they were in the “big leagues”, along comes CVN-78.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Gerald_R._Ford_(CVN-78)
It’s understandable that India would make an aircraft carrier. They do a lot of U.N. work and right now there are places in Africa where the U.N. needs aircover. A “small” aircraft carrier also makes a nice pirate hunter because it’s just so much easier chasing a speed boat in a jet than a warship.
I doubt Russia will complete its aircraft carrier. It tried to build a cruiser for itself and had to sell a partially built ship to China because of lack of funds.
China has been looking into building an aircraft carrier for years. Not only is a carrier a complicated thing (France spent years fixing electrical problems on one (only?) of its aircraft carriers), but landing on one takes some skill. I think one of the reasons why they haven’t made or bought one yet is that they don’t want the world to see Chinese pilots kamikaze their own aircraft carrier as they attempt to land.