Not to jump down your throat, but the common analogy to a WWII escort carrier does not seem very apt to me. WWII escort carriers were small ships built or based on merchant hulls, and their express purpose was to provide air cover in conditions a fleet carrier was not necessary (ASW, convoy escort, etc.). There are…

I would have liked to have seen a little more discussion here of the very long history of of this question in the Pentagon, Congress, think-tanks, and academia over the past five or six decades. My grandmother, when they laid down the Forestall, remarked to my school-age father that it was “just a great big target for…