Aircraft Carrier - Modern Significance

Modern Significance

Today's aircraft carriers are so expensive that many nations risk significant political, economic, and military ramifications if one were lost, or even used in conflict. Observers have opined that modern anti-ship weapons systems, such as torpedoes and missiles, have made aircraft carriers obsolete as too vulnerable for modern combat. Nuclear weapons would threaten whole naval carrier groups in open generalised combat. On the other hand, the proven or threatening role of aircraft carriers has an undeniably modern place in asymmetric warfare, like the gunboat diplomacy of the past. Furthermore, aircraft carriers facilitate quick and precise projections of overwhelming military power into such local and regional conflicts.

Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, head of the Royal Navy, has said that "To put it simply, countries that aspire to strategic international influence have aircraft carriers".