We now win every time...we no longer have any carriers :doh:

Worse yet! as in a previous post on a Iranian 3/4 scale carrier: You don't even need submarines. http://www.cuttingedge.org/News/n2026.cfm "During the summer of 2002, in the run-up to President Bush's invasion of Iraq, the US military staged the most elaborate and expensive war games ever conceived. Operation Millennium Challenge, as it was called, cost some $250 million, and required two years of planning ... it was set in the Persian Gulf, and simulated a conflict with a hypothetical rogue state. The "war" involved heavy use of computers, and was also played out in the field by 13,500 US troops, at 17 different locations and 9 live-force training sites. All of the services participated under a single joint command, known as JOINTFOR. The US forces were designated as 'Force Blue', and the enemy as OPFOR, or 'Force Red'. The 'war' lasted three weeks and ended with the overthrow of the dictatorial regime on August 15."
"At any rate, that was the official outcome. What actually happened was quite different, and ought to serve up a warning about the grave peril the world will face if the US should become embroiled in a widening conflict in the region ..."
This is not the first time that the American high command has fudged the results of a war gaming exercise because the real results would be very embarrassing to all U.S. leadership, from the White House down to the Pentagon. In the early years of the Clinton Administration, America's top guns -- her elite fighter pilots -- engaged in an war gaming exercise with Israeli pilots. The American aces were humiliated, so much so that the Pentagon discreetly asked the Israeli government not to publicize the results! The story I read was very small and buried deeply in our local paper.
Now, let us return to this news story. The American officer leading the "enemy" -- the "Force Red" team -- was "the straight-talking Marine commander who had been brought out of retirement to lead Force Red. His name was Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, and he had played the role of the crazed but cunning leader of the hypothetical rogue state ... In the first days of the 'war', Van Riper's Force Red sent most of the US fleet to the bottom of the Persian Gulf."
The tactics adopted by this Marine Corps general were astounding and they produced "The Worst US Naval Disaster Since Pearl Harbor".
"The war game was described as 'free play', meaning that both sides were unconstrained, free to pursue any tactic in the book of war in the service of victory ... Much of the action was computer-generated. But representative military units in the field also acted out the various moves and countermoves. The comparison to a chess match is not inaccurate. The vastly superior US armada consisted of the standard carrier battle group with its full supporting cast of ships and planes. Van Riper had at his disposal a much weaker flotilla of smaller vessels, many of them civilian craft, and numerous assets typical of a Third World country."
"But Van Riper made the most of weakness. Instead of trying to compete directly with Force Blue, he utilized ingenious low-tech alternatives. Crucially, he prevented the stronger US force from eavesdropping on his communications by foregoing the use of radio transmissions. Van Riper relied on couriers instead to stay in touch with his field officers ... At every turn, the wily Van Riper did the unexpected. And in the process he managed to achieve an asymmetric advantage ... Astutely and very covertly, Van Riper armed his civilian marine craft and deployed them near the US fleet, which never expected an attack from small pleasure boats ... Force Red's prop-driven aircraft suddenly were swarming around the US warships, making Kamikaze dives. Some of the pleasure boats made suicide attacks. Others fired Silkworm cruise missiles from close range, and sunk a carrier, the largest ship in the US fleet, along with two helicopter-carriers loaded with marines ... the Navy was unprepared. When it was over, most of the US fleet had been destroyed. Sixteen US warships lay on the bottom, and the rest were in disarray. Thousands of American sailors were dead, dying, or wounded. We need new better plans not built around a standoff bluewater carrier oriented Navy nor resting on its out-dated WWII laurels.

We're about to aquire two so will begin to lose shortly.:D

TBH I'd rather we didn't try to kid ourselves by building the two currently on the blocks, we don't have the means for power projection these days. Stick with the nuclear deterrent and conventional equipment we currently have (subject to future improvements of course) for homeland defence purposes.