The Influence of History

American and Japanese warships conducting exercises in the South China Sea The following is an inventory and ranking of every navy of note in the beginning of 2019. Unlike most rankings, which only consider combat power, this ranking attempts to consider the entire fleet of each nation. Ships not included in the following rankings include auxiliaries and landing ships of less than 100 meters, combatants without missiles of less than 75 meters, and missile boats and mine countermeasures vessels of less than 25 meters. Given the diverse sizes and capabilities of the various ships of the world and the lack of any globally accepted system of classification, I have have eschewed traditional labels (i.e. cruiser, destroyer, frigate) in favor of more general descriptions (i.e combatant). For the sake of easy comparison, I have also given each navy a points value. This value is purely based on how many ships of each type the navy possess, with different amounts of points given for dif...

This is the continuation of my overview of American amphibious warfare ships of the Cold War. Part I, which covered 1950-1960, can be found here . As mentioned in the previous part, 1960 marked an inflection point for the amphibious fleet. First, the slow decline in numbers that had begun with the end of the Korean war was halted and the fleet entered several years of rapid growth. Second, new types of large amphibious ships were beginning to be introduced, marking the end of the WWII fleet architecture that had relied on converted cargo ships. The most important of these new ships were the purpose-built Amphibious Assault Ships (LPH). Three WWII-era carriers had been converted to interim LPH's during the late 1950's, and a fourth - USS Valley Forge (LPH-8) - joined the fleet in 1961. However, these conversions were rather austere and only intended as stopgaps until a purpose-built ship could be designed. This took the form of USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2), a truly revolutionary v...