@taiwan_girl said in Kewl military pic of the day:
@Jolly I dont know. Just counted from this article
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/aircraft-carriers-by-country
There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics. The Russians couldn't get their carrier to work, if they towed it out of the dockyards with a tugboat. The two Chinese carriers are propaganda pieces, with their pilots routinely having to land and take-off from land-based fields. Plus, the Chinese have no carrier based plane analogous to the Hawkeye, leaving their carrier deaf, dumb and blind. Consensus is that the Chinese won't have a fully operational carrier for 5-10 years. The Italian carriers only operate S/TVOL aircraft, formerly Harriers, now F-35B on the newest and still only Harriers on the Garibaldi. Interestingly enough, the older Italian carrier was built as a fly-through carrier and could operate non-S/TVOL aircraft, but that's a different skill set.
Your list leaves out the two Queen Elizabeth type carriers fielded by the UK. Those carriers were built as fly-through designs, but the initial projected aircraft (F-35C) need a catapult system and that was deemed too expensive. Therefore, the UK carriers field only F-35B variants.
France operates the only nuclear-powered, Catabar system carrier outside of the U.S. As such, the Charles de Gaulle is the only foreign carrier to ever have F-18 Super Hornets operate off of her deck.
The U.S, operates 11 fly-though carriers, which can handle the full complement of U.S. Navy aircraft. In fact, the Navy even experimented at one time, launching C-130's off of a carrier deck (successfully).
The U.S. Navy also is building the new Lightning class of carriers, amphibious assault ships designed for the Marine Corps. They will operate all elements of Marine aviation. The U.S.S. Tripoli:
[image: 7134390.jpg]
So in essence, two countries have fully operational catapult or rocket assisted (Russian system) carriers - the Americans (11) and the French (1). While the S/TVOL carriers ain't chicken feed, they cannot sustain the operational capability the fly-though carriers can. The Gerald R. Ford can surge 270 sorties/day with 90 aircraft and sustain 160 sorties/day for 30+ days.
