Bloated.

This is coolbert:

Sounds way too easy and way too good to be true!!

"One option is to design carriers without complex systems"

 From https://www.isegoria.net       June 11th, 2023.

"The US Navy is complacent, Austin Vernon suggests, after lacking a competitor for so long"

"Modern carrier design reflects that. Thankfully physics has little to say about how much a carrier needs to cost. The new USS Ford weighs 100,000 tons. Steel costs ~$700/ton, so the basic materials are only $70 million. Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) are roughly the same size. They cost ~$90 million, barely more than steel and engines. Crew quarters for 5000 sailors, nuclear reactors, radars, catapults, flag accommodations, specialized systems, and general government bloat get you to a $10+ billion ship."

The minimum requirements for a carrier are:

* "Launch full-size aircraft"

* "Have space for bombs, fuel, and crew"

Devoted readers to the blog are strongly encouraged to read the entire isegoria.net article for themselves.

Frankly a warship based on a design of a VLCC converted for military use sounds familiar to the arsenal ship concept. A lot traditional naval aviation firepower at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time is a do-able idea? State of art technology to be eschewed? Go with you got and what is familiar and dependable. Survivability not guaranteed but enhanced by simpler-is-better bare bone?

To be honest, whatever in warfare is guaranteed survivable? Cheaper, simpler, easier? As I said, sounds to good to be true.

coolbert.