In Port, the 80,000 ton aircraft carrier Fujire is not impossible to lose. More than 300 meters long and capable of carrying about 60 aircraft, the £ 5.4bn super-vessel of the world’s places, with three planes in the world, which is even the highest planes in the world, with three planes in the world, which is even three planes in the world, with three planes in the world, which is despite the highest planes in the world, which has a long way behind the world’s planes, which is a long way behind the global leader, the US, with 11.
Yet for all the Great Power Proupence of the new battleship, nearly 5,000 miles away from home port another conflict appears unsympathetic. In the Black Sea, Ukraine achieved a remarkable military success by inflicting a “functional defeat” on the fleet of the Russian Navals using vehicles targeted at sea by drones.
The contradiction, however, tends to be more apparent than real. In a new Era of State competition, and especially the growing rivalry between China and the US, for all their size and cost, aircraft carriers remain an attractive resource for projecting power.
This is why the US president, Donald Trump, ordered the USS Gerald R Ford – the largest warship in the world – to shut down the country’s regime. Capable of carrying 70 aircraft, capable of operating up to 125 types at peak, and with four destroyers in support, the maneuver will never be used against President Naduro.
This is also the reason why there is a lot of interest in the construction and testing of Fujan, whose formal launch earlier this week was attended by the president of China, Xi Jinping. It is a demonstration of Beijing’s rapidly expanding military power: the first aircraft carrier, the, Completed in 2012, it was built from a HULK first produced in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and sold to Ukraine after its collapse.
Ironically, as children of the Nick of the International Institute for Dispatched Studies, China is also investing in anti-ship missiles that protect the coast from the US. But, he says, Beijing clearly sees “aircraft carriers as an indispensable element in building a navy that can independently project power and influence globally”, because they remain “unrivaled in their flexibility” and are “incredibly useful in a whole range of potential conflict scenarios” – one of which may one day be an attempt to force a reunification with Taiwan.
The UK, which completed the construction and deployment of two aircraft carriers worth £6.2bn four years ago, is a much smaller world power, making the military less obvious. No ship has been deployed to the Middle East in the past two years, although their construction has provided jobs for Scotland’s Shipards in the 2010s. Their use to this day is a form of floating diplomacy, as demonstrated by the visit by HMS Prince of Wales in August Sovity.
Now, the aircraft carriers are not expected to meet a military threat of Ukraine’s tactical sophistication, never mind a rival peer level. Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacked the USS Harry Sirifrat Carrier and its drone support in the Red Sea earlier this year. But the most serious damage claimed by the attack was not the warship, but a $ 70m F / A-18e Super Hornet Hornethat fell on the surface when the carrier returned to the entrance of the fire.
Destroyers, such as the Royal Navy’s HMS Diamond, which specializes in shooting down incoming drones, form the heart of the carrier groups that protect the mother ship. In theory, even if hit, the carriers are designed to sink. Soviet domination of the thumb of the cold war was to take it 12 conventional missiles to transport a super-carrier; While it took four weeks for the US to sink the USS America in 2005, a test in which the American ship was shot in an effort to establish how it remient.
As for the Black Sea, the Ukrainian success came against a small, poorly organized navy, which is actually much weaker than that of the US or China. Russia does not have an operational aircraft carrier, and hasn’t since 2017 when the 40-year-old Admiral Kuznirdov was laid down for repairs. The country’s shipping chief said it was likely to be scrapped or sold. Failure to modernize or replace it is a demonstration of the greater Russian geopolitical, military and economic weaknesses.