The U.S. Navy Actually Has 19 Aircraft Carriers In Service

Does The US Navy Have 10 Or 19 Aircraft Carriers? -- Robert Farley, The Diplomat

The U.S. Navy operates 19 ships that could be called aircraft carriers, but only considers 10 to be actual carriers.

Last week the U.S. Navy accepted USS America, first of the America-class amphibious assault ships, into service. Unlike most recent amphibious assault ships, USS America and her sister USS Tripoli lack well-decks, instead focusing on aviation facilities. When fully operational, America and Tripoli will operate as many as 20 F-35Bs, potentially playing a critical role in what the Navy projects as the future of air superiority.

Inevitably, the delivery of USS America rekindles the ongoing conversation over what, precisely, constitutes an aircraft carrier. In the United States, we endure the polite fiction that the USN’s 45,000 ton aircraft carriers are not aircraft carriers, but rather some other kind of creature. USS America is roughly the same size as the French Charles De Gaulle and the INS Vikramaditya, although a bit smaller than the RFS Admiral Kuzetsov or her Chinese sister, the Liaoning. America is considerably larger than recent aircraft-carrying ships constructed for the Korean, Japanese, and Australian navies.

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My Comment: If it walks and quacks like a duck ... it is a duck. These new U.S. big-deck amphibious assault ships (see above video) sure look like an aircraft carrier.