[D13Fd]

There is also the question of whether ships even make sense right now, when a multi-billion-dollar ship full of sailors is at huge risk from a swarm of drones costing 1/1000th as much, and we have not yet mastered drone defenses.

[phil21]

I think ships make a lot of sense - particularly much cheaper ships built in larger quantities. Think WWII era destroyers and frigates that can be mass-deployed by the dozens for air and sea coverage. Obviously updated quite a lot with cheap point defense, and of course some more expensive ballistic missile defense systems. The fact we can't send 100+ warships out there to create an integrated air and sea defensive screen for not even drone swarms - just a few dozen drones at at time at best - is pretty embarrassing.

The question is if the US is even capable of building such a thing these days? My bets are on no, since we can't seem to build much of anything at an industrial scale for any cost. But that can turn relatively quickly so long as there is emergency of existential scale and time enough to do it.

[andriy_koval]

ships are carriers of cruise missiles they can launch from 2k miles distance out of range of swarm of drones.