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Comment by AWildC182 | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a good case for why congress needs less influence on military line items (distinct from the budget as a whole). They'll complain that it makes the US less safe but in reality they just want the jobs at the expense of defense capabilities. They know x carrier part will be built in their district as opposed to the billions used on other more relevant priorities as determined by people who are trained and paid to develop strategies. I don't think the people complaining are experts in military strategy and defense technology.

Now, all this said, to spite what most news outlets are babbling about, the carriers are very much still relevant and important and will remain so for at least a few decades. They just need to be balanced with developing future systems and demanding that we always have 11 carriers doesn't really provide the flexibility to handle emerging threats.

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While Truman was still a Senator, he was head of what's today known as the 'Truman Committee'[0]. During WWII, there were tons of instances of budget bloat and shoddy manufacturing that were both too expensive to taxpayers and put Americans' lives in danger overseas. This saved tens of millions of 1940s dollars, and gained Truman the widespread political appeal that helped him eventually win his Vice Presidency.

I think a general point is, the military needs oversight, and we are a democratic country. For now, it might seem reasonable to you that Congress might not make the best decisions about military readiness, but removing the ability from Congress to decide that they should have the ability to investigate and shrink military budgets is un-democratic. I can easily imagine a world where we remove line-item oversight from Congress, and in 50 years, military spend is like it was multiple times in the history of other empires: not up to date, bloated, profitable to those in bureaucratic control, and an unpleasant surprise when we need it most.

I think you're totally right, the carriers are still important, particularly if we're not in a hot war. Carriers are second-to-none for establishing land/air/sea superiority. But if the military believes that, it should make that case to Congress, and Congress should do what they do with a recognition that they are beholden to the American public for their decisions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Committee

Yea, I agree it's a touchy balance. I was careful to say 'less' rather than 'none' as it's important that the budget stays under control. I think it's a matter of finding a budgetary structure that doesn't immediately lead to conflicts of interest and corruption in a nation that admittedly loves it's military industrial complex.

I think it bears mentioning that at the moment the pendulum is somewhat on the side of congressional over-spending. There has been the ongoing issue of congress forcing the pentagon to buy more Abrams tanks to spite their strategic irrelevance (we have more than enough to satisfy our needs) because they want to keep the manufacturing lines running.

It's definitely principal agent problem all over. During WWII I think it was clearer politically because the military grew over 10x from the 30s to the peak of the war effort, and the massive budget windfalls there were extremely tempting to take advantage of and extremely egregious when called out.

Now we're in a society of permanent volunteer military readiness, and we have to deal with endemic problems. The corruption and solutions both look different, and solutions have to have sustainability in mind.

I think you might be right, that Congress right now does spur on overspending rather than underspending. It's just about impossible to close a base anywhere, from what I hear. Still, in the long run, I do think it's better that Congress keep control of this and have continual oversight. I think it might be better suited to the Senate, and I think it's better suited to committees, but there does need to be a accountability there that is entirely outside of the military.

Pentagon must be audited, audits made public we should constantly point out how incompetent Pentagon is.

Are they? It seems like a billion dollar asset that can be destroyed with a few million dollar missile is a little outdated?

In Vietnam conflict, tons and tons of iron bombs were dropped by expensive jets piloted by pilots whose training was very expensive, all to kill a few enemy with ak47 rifles with not much ammunition.

Pretty much our conflicts or wars since Vietnam.

they are very useful outside of a full-on war with a major power.

Of course, in those scenarios a much smaller, less expensive carrier would be just as useful. The difference between a full-on supercarrier and something more modest, like the America-class assault ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America-class_amphibious_assau...), is kind of moot when the OPFOR is a bunch of guys in Toyota trucks.

And a smaller carrier would allow the Navy to field more of them at the same cost, which would mean being able to "show the flag" in more places simultaneously without having to run a few ships ragged trying to cover them all at once.

> The difference between a full-on supercarrier and something more modest, like the America-class assault ships..., is kind of moot when the OPFOR is a bunch of guys in Toyota trucks.

I'm not so sure when the more modest carrier is only seems capable of fielding VTOL aircraft:

> The America-class amphibious assault ships...are designed to put ashore a Marine Expeditionary Unit using helicopters and MV-22B Osprey V/STOL transport aircraft, supported by AV-8B Harrier II or F-35 Lightning II V/STOL aircraft and various attack helicopters.

Sure, they can maybe be sunk if we start a shooting war with China. That leaves all the rest of the potential conflicts where having a mobile base might be nice.

They’re great to muscle little countries around.

How many of our carriers have actually been destroyed? Until we have some real-world data, your assumption doesn't hold water. Missiles and missile defense are incredibly complex beasts that almost never work quite as well operationally as expected.

In fairness, waiting for carriers to get sunk to generate some empirical data might not be the best route. Everything kind of has to be sorted out in simulation to get the best chance of success

The point is that we do that, and the problem space is just too complex to produce clear answers. We don't know what would happen if someone launched a missile at one of our aircraft carriers. With that in mind, nick is clearly begging the question.

China has developed an entire missile class devoted to destroyong aircraft carriers.

I gander that there's a reason that we're the only country with more than one aircraft carrier.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21

We can all argue till we're blue in the face over how vulnerable aircraft carriers are, but the reason that we're the only country with multiple super carriers (there are countries with multiple smaller carriers) is that they're expensive as hell and only the US's outsized military spending can support them.

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