The Influence of History

All non-US carriers operating fixed-wing aircraft (click to enlarge) The aircraft carrier has been the ultimate expression of naval power since World War II. Able to engage air, surface, and subsurface targets from hundreds of miles away, the carrier is a highly versatile class of warship and even a small number of carriers can turn the tide of an entire war. However, these ships (and the aircraft that they carry) are extremely expensive and only a handful of navies have ever operated them. Since the end of World War II, only 14 nations have operated a carrier with fixed-wing aircraft and no more than 9 nations have done so simultaneously. The above chart covers all non-US aircraft carriers operating fixed-wing aircraft from 1951-2020. I have not only excluded helicopter carriers, but also attempted to avoid counting commissioned ships that did not have available aircraft (for instance, I did not count the Soviet Kiev-class ships after 1991, when their Yak-38 fighters were phased out)...

After having examined the incredible effectiveness of even an early guided missile ship in surface warfare  a few days ago, I became interested in creating a chart of the growth of the US Navy's guided missile force to compare with the decline of the US Navy's battleship and gun cruiser fleet that I made last month. The USN Guided Missile Fleet Before comparing the two, let's look at the missile chart as it has some interesting information. For some additional detail I broke the ships down by launcher - the Terrier and Tartar categories also include Standard ER and Standard MR, respectively, while the Standard category only covers VLS ships (which, it should be remembered, didn't have an ER missile until 1999). Unfortunately, I don't have good information on the exact dates the Perry's lost their Mk 13 launchers so the final 3 years of Tarter are merely a best guess based on available information. Chart of all commissioned US Navy guided missile ships (195...

Ships from five nations moored in Pearl Harbor for the July 2016 RIMPAC exercises The following is an inventory and ranking of every navy of significance at the end of 2017. Patrol boats, mini subs, and coastal auxiliaries are not listed in the inventory. The ranking system is based on the number of vessels in each of the classes (e.g. nuclear submarines are worth more than diesel submarines but all nuclear submarines are given the same number of points and doubling the number of submarines doubles the number of points). Because of the limitations of open source information, no attempt has been made to include aircraft or shore based equipment in the rankings. 1. United States - 862 points 11 fleet carriers, 87 air defense escorts, 21 escorts, 15 corvettes 14 ballistic missile submarines, 53 nuclear submarines 9 assault ships, 23 landing platforms, 3 landing ships 105 auxiliaries, 11 mine hunters 2. People's Republic of China - 470 points 1 fleet carrier, 46 air def...

Cannon were first used at sea sometime in the 15th century. While various siege engines had been employed by navies for thousands of years, they never had a profound effect on war at sea. Instead, naval combat was dominated by ramming and boarding actions. While these ancient tactics remain in use today, guns fundamentally transformed naval warfare as they allowed a ship to disable or even sink its enemies from a distance. Guns developed over time from the small manually aimed muzzle loaders of the early days to the massive computer controlled weapons of the World Wars. Range, rate of fire, throw weight, and accuracy all made tremendous strides but the basic principals remained the same for the five centuries when guns dominated naval combat. The 19th century saw this dominance shaken by the introduction of various forms of mines and torpedoes, but it was not until the introduction of aircraft in the 20th century that the gun was finally replaced as the primary naval weapon. Althou...