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:
“Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.”
—Louise Bogan (1897–1970)