US, China Build Carriers While Drones Render Them Obsolete
The Guardian celebrates China's new £5.4bn Fujian carrier as a monument to rising power, placing it second only to the US's 11-carrier fleet. All this, while in the same breath, admitting that Ukraine's success against Russia's Black Sea fleet relied on 'swarms' of cheap, targeted sea drones. It's a tale as old as time: generals always prepare to fight the last war, or, in this case, the one
before that. One might wonder if the architects of these multi-billion-dollar floating airfields bothered to check the daily news. How many more aircraft carriers will be built before Washington and Beijing acknowledge that the vanguard of naval power might just be a remote-controlled jet ski with a bomb attached? The irony, it seems, can be measured in naval tonnage.