Are you guys picturing a military invasion as a bunch of men armed with muskets sailing across the sea on a boat and storming the shores of the defending country? Or maybe your idea of national defense is just having some guys stand on the border of their country with really big shields trying to stop the missiles? If a country is attacked by a distant country, it may well be necessary that the defending country attach launch sites, weapons factories, etc. anywhere in the world.
Just because they changed the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense in 1949 doesn't redefine what defense means. Invading another country is not defensive. It may preempt the need to defend yourself in some cases, but it's still an aggressive move.
Giuseppe Garibaldi (C 550) and Cavour (C 551) are V/STOVL carriers. The Garibaldi is going to be phased out in the next years, while a new LHD (Trieste, L 9890) is entering service. It will be able to carry F-35B airplanes, but I am unsure if it will count as a "carrier" for this quiz.
Italy has always had a pretty strong navy, I mean, they're surrounded by water on most of their land. It's not that surprising, considering their geographical location on the medditerranian.
UK decommissioned its last one (two?) fairly recently. The 'Queen Elizabeth' class carrier is under production. The first is due for deployment in 2021 the second 1 1/2 years later. The quiz was made in between us decommisioning old ones and building new ones. That is the only reason why the UK isn't here
The US has almost as many as the rest combined. There shouldn't be much doubt about where the world's military power is concentrated. Interesting to note India's lead on its trans-Himalayan rival.
The answers here are out-of-date and the question is vague. The list is much longer if you define a carrier as: "a warship with a full-length flight deck, hangar and facilities for arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft" and mean that to include ships classed as amphibious assault ships and helicopter carriers, whose primary purpose is to carry, arm, deploy, and recover aircraft, and the list would include the UK, Egypt, Japan, South Korea and Australia. The list will also soon include Turkey. Also, the US numbers would go up to 19. Japan calls their carriers "destroyers" for legal reasons, but their three Hyuga-class DDH ships meet the above definition. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_service
It looks like the numbers have changed a little since July but the list of countries remains the same. If you're an expert, I'd recommend getting the Wikipedia article changed, and then I'll edit the quiz. I'm not an expert so I'm not going to try to make decisions about what qualifies.
...and ICBM's. And their less advanced artillery is probably still able to rain fire on Seoul. And they've probably got biological and chemical weapons. And of course they'll probably have some kind of nuclear capability in the near future. They won't win a war with those, but they do have more than mere manpower.
If you believe their propaganda (and really, why wouldn't you?), they have at least 100, maybe closer to 200 aircraft carriers. And Thanos is fighting for them as well.
if you look up pictures of Thailands carrier on Google(HTMS Chakri Naruebet) and Wikipedia there are pictures of it containing or launching Harrier Fighter Jets in some instances. While they might not use it for that purpose it's still a class of near full size Aircraft Carrier that is capabale of launching jets. Also they bought it from the Spanish who used it as a full swing all purpose Aircraft Carrier as well prior to its sale.
I'm curious what the update was for December 2017. Did USA's number increase because of the USS Gerald Ford making its debut this summer? Or did another country change?
While I don't necessarily think we need to be spending as much, and certainly not more, on the US military... I gotta disagree with this one comment. Aircraft carriers are extremely valuable in a lot of different situations, whether it's destroying the armored divisions of an insane warlord as they are en route to massacre a city from a safe distance, or delivering vital emergency aid to disaster-struck archipelagos nobody else can get to, this is money well-spent. Only thing the military spends money on that might be more cost-effective is predator drones. Or possibly sniper rifles.
The U.S. actually has 21 when counting the 5 LHD and 5 LHA which are designed to carry the F-35 and all the USMC helos. They are bigger and carry more aircraft then most of these other countries carriers.
the spanish one only supports vertical take off aircrafts like Harrier and such. and helicopters. It is defined as an Amphibious Assault Ship, not as an aircratf carrier. but who cares... it is big and expensive.
Germany only has a handful of helicopters that can actually fly and guns that stop working when its too hot. Still surprised about the none existent aircraft carriers?
Russia should be removed from this list, their only carrier caught fire in december 2019 and is currently under reconstruction, so not usable at the moment
The Russian carrier will probably not be replaced as the large crane needed to fix it is inoperable. I think it fell into the superstructure of the carrier after the fire. What a mess.
Once you start adding ships that carry VTOL aircraft, like the F-35B, or the Harrier, then you have to add every LHA/LHD in the US fleet along with the CVNs (catapult launched). You have to even add the large destroyer (helicopter) that Japan has. China is delivering or building new carriers that will have catapult launch for take off and arresting gear for landing. Also keep in mind that the American total of CVNs went down recently with the retirement of the Enterprise, the the LHD total went down with the accidental fire that gutted the Bon Homme Richard.
They look impressive, but these days they're mostly for show; they're big, slow, expensive targets that would be extremely vulnerable anywhere near an actual battle zone.
Still very handy for keeping military spending bloated, though.
It never occurred to me that aircraft carriers weren't common. It's presence in Battleship made me assume they were a common enough vessel (although, considering the size of them, I'm not surprised there aren't a whole lot of them out there)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_country
It looks like the numbers have changed a little since July but the list of countries remains the same. If you're an expert, I'd recommend getting the Wikipedia article changed, and then I'll edit the quiz. I'm not an expert so I'm not going to try to make decisions about what qualifies.
Still very handy for keeping military spending bloated, though.