EXPLAINER: How America's aircraft carrier crisis reveals a military decline
The General & The JournalistShow Notes
America has 11 aircraft carriers. So why is the US Navy struggling to deploy more than three at once?
In this bonus video explainer, The Sunday Times’s Mark Urban examines the growing strain on America’s carrier fleet. These 100,000-ton floating airfields have long been symbols of US military power, but delayed ships, lengthy repairs and overstretched crews are making it increasingly difficult to keep them at sea. If Washington cannot reliably deploy the fleet it already has, what does that mean for America’s ability to project power around the world – and are aircraft carriers becoming a symbol not of US strength, but of its limits?
00:00 – America’s aircraft carrier problem 00:53 – Delayed ships and ageing carriers 02:24 – Trump’s proposed carrier redesign 03:25 – Longer deployments, greater strain 04:50 – The carrier gap in the Pacific 06:09 – The $25 billion carrier group at risk 07:30 – The cost to the wider fleet 08:38 – Shipyard decline and military power
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