Why does the US need a large surface navy?

Aircraft carriers take aircraft away from the US where they might provide defense,
and somewhere far away where they are used for offense.
And aircraft carriers and other surface ships are useful for target practice.

Surface ships can be useful for rescuing passengers from burning liners,
and for stopping drugs shipments, but that should be done by the Coast Guard
part of Homeland Security.

 

Our defense is largely provided by two big bodies of water. We don't have to have as big of a Navy as we do, but primarily it is about the subs and the carriers and the vessels that support and protect them. In one sense, many of the other ships in the fleet are the body guards for the ones that matter. They are there to draw fire.

 

US military based abroad are strictly for offensive use.

 

The OP's Title Question has a different perspective now than it had when written 18 months ago.

Since then we have seen SUCCESSFUL attacks on naval surface ships using DRONES!

This is a whole new ballgame and I have no doubt whatsoever that the attack/defense capabilities of drones are going to be a major influence on the future of ALL surface navies.

 

Aircraft able to take off and land on carriers are uniquely different than land based aircraft.
So you would like to see New York burning when our Navy could have stopped aggressors at a distance?
Aircraft carriers have six layers of defense, from satellite imagery detecting long range missile launches, through radar and down to CIWS (Phalanx). You really should learn more about a subject before posting about it... just a suggestion.

While naval vessels can be used for rescues, that isn't their primary mission.

 

Absolutely right! The world has changed greatly in the past 20 years, and today a Navy consisting of so many surface vessels is little more than an expensive liability.

BUT, a different situation altogether exists with our SUBMARINES! "The U.S. Navy operates 14 ballistic missile submarines, each of which can carry as many as 24 Trident II missiles." Link: https://www.militaryaerospace.com/s...es-submarine-inertial-and-celestial-guidances . Each of these Trident II missiles can deliver multiple independently targeted warheads. It has a maximum range of about 6,500 nautical miles (12,000 km).

With 'bleeding-edge' stealth technology, our submarines can (and do) run "picket" along the coasts of countries all over the world, maintaining both attack and defense solutions at all times.

Ask any submariner how many different classes of vessels there are in the navy, and he'll tell you quickly, "There are submarines, and there are TARGETS...."

. Prime example of a "target": U.S.S. Gerald Ford, $13 Billion.

 

And when we did need our 'defense' on 9/11, absolutely nothing happened.

 

Defense shouldn't begin with enemy boots on our shores. Definitely better for our infrastructure if fighting takes place outside of our shores. Just ask Ukraine. But they don't have the buffer of huge oceans. We do not fully utilize that asset without a powerful navy. What that looks like can definitely change with technology. Aircraft carriers were a revolution over battleships. Then we had powerful submarines, and maybe soon drones.

 

Wrong. They're primarily for defense and enforcing international law.

 

it was to protect globalism and trade.

 

I don't quite get that, only 0.2% of the world's ships are US flagged.

 

When a flight of B-52s bombed a few square miles of rural Vietnam occupied by peasant farmers, that was defense.

Because among those peasant farmers almost certainly there were some peasant fighters with AK-47s and if we
didn't fight them there, soon they would be over in California and we would be fighting them here.

So Offense is Defense, and therefore defense can be offense and no words have any real meaning anymore.

 

Thank you, Yangforward.

 

It was global trade. We patrolled all routes.

 

For free? to protect our 2/10 of a percent of the ships? No wonder we're broke.

And we have 800 military bases all over the world, because we are sooo kind.

And now most of or all of Africa wants us to leave.

It's a good thing Cuba wants our military base to stay.

 

We were the only ones after WW2 who could do it. It fostered globalization and all Western nations prospered.

 

That is for a few different reasons. It usually comes down to avoiding regulations, taxes, or liability. It is why so many ships are flagged in the Bahamas--no taxes and very little regulation on them--even if they primarily operate elsewhere.

 

So you think using nuclear weapons should be used as a first reaction and not a last resort?

 

I would argue that means nobody dares attack it. It isn't just a target it is a weapon. What makes you think it won't defend itself? It isn't just a cruise ship that would be a target.

 

It is upon the navy, under the providence of god that the safety, welfare and future of the nation depend-Samuel Pepys.

 

Sounds like the demeanor of a scaredy-cat and that is the way the world sees the US so that fits.

 

I'm sure China would be very happy if the US withdrew its military presence from the South China sea.

 

No doubt any of our naval vessels would make every effort to defend themselves... nobody questions that or the advanced technology of our defensive measures. But at some point it gets to be a matter of simple probability and mathematics.

Say some adversary attacks one of our aircraft carriers with drones, surface-based missiles, airborne weapons, or something else. Say that such an attack employs 100 lethal missiles... and we knock down 99 of them... but one of them gets through. Now what? Even such backward countries as Iran and North Korea have missiles that are quite capable of sinking anything afloat, and they make lots of them, selling them to anyone who has the purchase price.

 

True-true. And their aim doesn't even need to be all that accurate. Some farmer in the Iranian desert shot down an American helicopter with his goat-herding single-shot rifle culminating in the downing of all 8 American helicopters and a C130, leaving scores of Americans dead.

 

It sure does that's why we're constantly getting attacked on our homeland or anywhere else for that matter.