An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations. They have evolved from wooden vessels used to deploy balloons into nuclear-powered warships that carry dozens of fixed wing and rotary-wing aircraft.
Aircraft carriers are typically the capital ship of a fleet, and are extremely expensive to build and important to protect. Of the ten nations that possess an aircraft carrier, seven possess only one. Twenty-one aircraft carriers are currently active throughout the world with the U.S. Navy operating 11 as of June 2011.
Read more about Aircraft Carrier: History, Modern Significance, Flight Deck, Aircraft Carriers in Service, Future Aircraft Carriers
Famous quotes containing the word carrier:
“We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives. Today the priests say we lie, but we know better.”
—native American belief, quoted by D. Jenness in “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” Bulletin no. 133, Bureau of American Ethnology (1943)