Surge Capability

The Navy's new policy of not routinely keeping carrier battle groups forward deployed and instead preparing for a surge policy to get six carriers into a fight in a matter of a few months always had a glaring hole in it--our carriers are based on opposite sides of the country and massing them would be difficult. The reason is that our carriers cannot transit the Panama Canal because the locks are too small.

In 2004 we had the Summer Pulse exercise that a lot of people mistakenly believed put six carriers off of Taiwan as a show of force to warn Peking off. In fact, the exercise surged carriers near their home ports and was only intended to show that we could put six carriers off of Taiwan if we really wanted to. The matter of how we would quickly mass them anywhere quickly was not really answered to my satisfaction.

But Strategypage notes that the Panama Canal is due for an upgrade and the $8 billion upgrade will make it suitable for our big decks:

The U.S. has a major interest in an expanded canal, as it will accommodate the Navy’s current fleet of aircraft carriers, as well as any foreseeable future one well into mid-century.

The canal opened in 1914 and immediately made our ability to concentrate our battle fleet quite easy. It effectively increased our fleet size since ships could rapidly swing between the Atlantic and Pacific as needed. The new and improved Panama Canal will have a similar impact, making our surge capacity much more of a threat to potential enemies.