[Llarry]

I've spent my whole life fascinated by aircraft carriers and their aircraft, but nowadays they represent an investment by the taxpayers of perhaps $20 billion dollars for the ship and the aircraft that it carries. With the advent of modern anti-ship weapons -- potential ballistic missile threats or hypersonic missile threats -- is the time of the aircraft carrier, at least as presently manifested, passing? I don't know, but I can scarcely imagine the impact of the loss of an aircraft carrier and the 5,000 sailors on it. The country would be traumatized.

Carrier strike groups -- the carrier, the aircraft and the surface combatants and submarines that accompany it -- are a very formidable weapon. I do worry about the vulnerability, though. The Navy's position is that aircraft carriers are a tough target -- they move and they have escorts with good armament. I still worry; the battleship admirals of the 1920s thought that battleships would last forever; they didn't. Nothing lasts forever.