re: #378 sagehen

But you don’t need military missions all the time, you don’t need humanitarian missions all the time, so a dual-use vessel can keep busy for way less than the cost of building both kinds.

That’s about the best point. However, I didn’t bring up the dual role of nuclear powered aircraft carriers. The fact remains that the US defense budget is extremely high and has room for cuts. We don’t need anymore aircraft carriers for the time being and this obsession with being number one has to end. There are limits to maintaining this empire and one of them is a huge national debt. And we won’t cut this budget by just cutting “color copies” at the Pentagon.