Best Of: Aircraft Carriers: Bigger is Better

By Admiral James 'Sandy' Winnefeld

Admiral Winnefeld served for 37 years in the United States Navy. He retired in 2015 after serving four years as the ninth Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the United States' number two ranking military officer. As a flag officer, he commanded the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, NATO Joint Command Lisbon, Striking and Support Forces NATO, the United States Sixth Fleet, United States Northern Command, and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD.  Admiral Winnefeld is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Editor’s Note: For this year’s Memorial Day feature, The Cipher Brief revisits its coverage examining the future of U.S. aircraft carriers. 

As I write, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is steaming toward the Korean Peninsula—finally.  It does so at a time—as happens about once or twice per decade—when some in the policy world are questioning once again the efficacy of large-deck, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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