Correct. If You Skip the Key Question

Yes, building big deck aircraft carriers is superior to building medium carriers. But that's a secondary question that we can quantify, but which ignores the bigger question of why we have carriers.

Like I've said, size matters. Increased size of carriers provides benefits out of proportion to the increased cost.

But the key question is what role do the carriers play?

I contend that big carriers are losing their capacity to carry out a sea control role because of their cost and the proliferation of cheap precision long-range missiles operating in increasingly effective surveillance networks--both by enemies that can use that combination to sink our big expensive carriers and because we can use the same advances to sink enemy ships to control the seas without big expensive carriers.

But big carriers remain invaluable in a power projection role where they provide air power against less capable states that cannot shoot at our carriers. Think ongoing fights in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan where carriers play a major role in providing aerial ground support.

The problem is that people arguing for and against big carriers argue their strong point without recognizing the existence of the argument against their weak point. It's an apples and oranges debate.

The people advocating smaller carriers like to point to our amphibious vessels used that way. But that is a secondary capability for a ship justified by its primary amphibious warfare role and not by its secondary role.

What role do we want our Navy carriers to play? Then we can argue whether they can carry out the role, whether we can afford to pay for that role, whether we have alternatives to that role, and how many big carriers we need for that role.