10. That's all we have, not twelve, and definitely not the 15 we had at the height of the Cold War. The problem is that we don't have twelve carriers that can f

10. That's all we have, not twelve, and definitely not the 15 we had at the height of the Cold War. The problem is that we don't have twelve carriers that can function all at once. Some are being refueled, some are returning from a deployment, some are doing training workups prior to deployment, and there's a lot of ocean out there. That's why talk of cutting the # of CVNs to under the current totals is extremely dangerous. The way to look at it is for each carrier you have deployed, you need two more. So we currently have four carriers deployed, for ready to surge if needed, and three unavailable for maintenance reasons. And it's not as if a carrier can transit from its homeport to the far side of the ocean quickly...