During the war, the Imperial Navy's mentality towards supercarriers was actually very complex and full of contradictions.

There is no doubt that before the outbreak of the Great War, the supercarrier had a higher position in the Imperial Navy than any other kind of warship, and it can be said that it was the favorite of the Imperial Navy. Even if the new military doctrine has already questioned the military value of supercarriers, it has not changed the imperial navy's fondness for supercarriers. To a large extent, supporting a supercarrier has become a political choice, and no question or criticism is tolerated.

However, this has nothing to do with the military to a large extent.

In the words of Ding Zhennan, the Imperial Navy is keen to build supercarriers, mainly to ensure the hegemony of the military branches and consolidate its position in the imperial military system.

To put it mildly, the supercarrier has become a totem symbolizing the great power of the navy.

Feelings, without a supercarrier, the Imperial Navy becomes useless and loses its existential value.

From another point of view, this is perfectly understandable.

The key point is that in the Navy's arsenal, there is no weapon that can completely replace the supercarrier in terms of combat effectiveness, strategic deterrence, and military image. At any given time, sending a task force mainly supercarriers to hot spots can have an immediate effect. Replaced with other weapons and equipment, even a few hundred strategic bombers, it cannot be compared.

In the decades after the war, and especially in the last decade, supercarriers are simply the ideal interpretation of imperial hegemony.

It's just that young officers like Bai Huawei have long had a clear understanding of the value of supercarriers in the global war.

Directly speaking, with the advancement of technology, supercarriers are no longer the most powerful maritime combat platform that integrates offensive and defensive capabilities. Among them, the most critical thing is that in the modern combat system, the strike capability of carrier-based aviation has been surpassed by other weapons and equipment.

The most representative, that is, long-range anti-ship missiles.

As mentioned earlier, before the outbreak of the Great War, the Nuland Navy spent a lot of energy to develop warships with missiles as the main weapon, which is often referred to as arsenal ships, and hoped to make up for the shortcomings of aircraft carriers with the help of this brand-new warship, so as to achieve the strategic goal of surpassing the Liangxia Navy.

If the development of the "arsenal ships" goes smoothly, then by around 160 years of the new calendar at the latest, the Nuland Navy will be able to build a missile fleet with dozens of "arsenal ships" as the core, so as to challenge the imperial navy and seize the hegemony of the global seas.

It's just that, due to technical limitations, the project will certainly not be smooth sailing.

The result of the efforts of the Nuland Navy for more than ten years is the well-known cruise missile submarine.

Actually, the Imperial Navy had a similar project.

The difference is that the "Arsenal Ship" project of the Imperial Navy remained at the stage of theoretical research and was never announced to the public.

If I had to say, secrecy was very well done.

This is understandable, after all, the top brass of the Navy does not want the outside world to know, and there are people within the Navy who are beginning to question the military value of aircraft carriers.

In addition, the Imperial Navy never treated submarines as platforms for carrying missiles.

The point is that in the understanding of the Imperial Navy, if the "Arsenal Ship" project can bear fruit, it will definitely replace the aircraft carrier and act as the main warship of the Imperial Navy, which also needs to have the ability to show muscles, and submarines are born with the ability to do so.

Hidden below the surface of the sea, even if it is loaded with hundreds of cruise missiles, it will only be known to the enemy after they are used.

Obviously, in many cases, there is no need to make a move, and the great sense of oppression generated by the fleet can make the enemy surrender, or at least abandon the idea of adventure.

It is precisely for this reason that the Imperial Navy's "Arsenal Ships" project is mainly based on surface warships, and at most some extreme designs are adopted in order to enhance survivability, such as increasing the draft and using a double-layer shell, and even using a semi-submersible structure, which can dive to avoid when attacked.

That is, poor survivability, which led to the fact that the "arsenal ship" project has never been taken seriously.

Compared with traditional warships, the "arsenal ship" is simply an ammunition depot for sailing!

For traditional warships, the proportion of ammunition in the total tonnage is often about 10%, and even the ships of the Western Continent Group that attach great importance to armament rarely exceed 15%, and large warships are within 10%, such as the ammunition carried by the "Xue Yuanzheng" class supercarrier is only equivalent to 2.7% of the total tonnage.

Obviously, this ratio is not intentional on the part of the designer, but the result of practice.

Relatively speaking, the proportion of ammunition carried by the "arsenal ships" reached 25%!

If the proportion is high, it means that the survivability of the "arsenal ship" is extremely poor, and even minor damage can lead to catastrophic consequences.

The key is that in order to obtain the strongest striking power in a limited tonnage, the "arsenal ships" have eliminated many of the equipment that warships must have, such as the radar-based fire control system, and on this basis, the number of officers and men has been greatly reduced through the use of automated equipment.

These measures will certainly reduce the cost of building "arsenal ships".

But the problem is that it also reduces the ability to manage damage.

The ability of a warship to manage damage is directly proportional to the number of officers and men.

Although advanced equipment can improve the efficiency of damage management, at all times, the damage management work is mainly man-oriented, and sufficient officers and soldiers are needed.

With fewer officers and men, the efficiency of damage management will inevitably decrease.

According to the tests conducted by the Imperial Navy, if the "arsenal ship" is successfully developed, its survivability will be very bad, even if it adopts the standards of warships.

As for the attack capability of the "arsenal ships", on the contrary, no one questioned it.

Purely based on the decisive battle of the fleet, the attack capability of the "arsenal ships" exceeds that of the aircraft carriers.

According to the last design plan before the war, a "arsenal ship" with a full load displacement of 45,000 tons can carry 256 heavy anti-ship missiles with a range of more than 1,500 kilometers, and launch all these missiles in a single battle to launch a super-saturation attack on the enemy fleet.

Under the same circumstances, a carrier-based attack aircraft carried by a single supercarrier can only deliver more than 200 light anti-ship missiles with a range of 250 kilometers. Due to the limitation of the combat radius of carrier-based aircraft, only a few heavy attack aircraft can launch an attack on the enemy fleet at a distance of 1,500 kilometers.

Obviously, the striking capabilities of the two are not at the same level at all.

As for the combat effectiveness ratio advocated by the Navy, in a global war, especially in a decisive battle of the fleet, which determines sea supremacy and strategic initiative, it is not a problem at all, at least not a major factor affecting the outcome, and it is still less likely to become a major problem for fleet commanders.

The series of naval battles between the Imperial Navy and the Nuland Navy over the Howaii Islands is the best proof of this.

In several naval battles, the attack power displayed by the large aircraft carriers and supercarriers of the two warring sides can be said to be unsatisfactory. Even the battle against Task Force 52 was closely related to luck, otherwise the assault might not have been successful.

In addition, there are problems with the defense capabilities of the task force.

To put it simply, the offensive capability of aircraft carriers is much worse than before, and the survivability of various re-submarine weapons is also very worrisome.

From this point of view, the Imperial Navy began to develop "alternative aircraft carriers" and "enhanced aircraft carriers" in order to solve the problem of insufficient survivability of aircraft carriers.

To put it simply, use more baskets for eggs.

It is a pity that the "alternative aircraft carrier" is too weak in performance to replace the supercarrier, and the "enhanced aircraft carrier" has not entered the construction stage due to other factors, and the Imperial Navy can only continue to build the supercarrier.

If you want to say, the most representative is the "Xue Yuanzheng" level.

Although according to the outside world's opinion, the Imperial Navy built a total of 3 types of supercarriers during the Third Global War, in addition to the "Xue Yuanzheng" class, the other two are the "Shiwu" class and the "Bai Zhizhan" class, but strictly speaking, the latter two are actually improved versions of the "Xue Yuanzheng" class.

As mentioned earlier, the "Xue Yuanzheng" class is a fairly advanced, and very successful supercarrier.

Thanks to the excellent basic design, the performance of the "Xue Yuanzheng" class on the battlefield made the Imperial Navy very satisfied.

As a result, 3 batches were built for the base model alone, for a total of 12 ships.

To be said, there is still a clear difference between the three batches of the "Xue Yuanzheng" class. For example, the number of comprehensive supply stations has been increased since the second batch, and the last three ships of the second batch have also replaced the original air warning radar with a "three-sided array", and the third batch has reduced one interceptor cable, but these changes are not very obvious, and the previous batch also took advantage of the opportunity of overhaul to make corresponding advances.

In addition, the basic performance indicators of these 12 "Xue Yuanzheng" class ships are all the same, and 95% of the parts and components are common.

The first major overhaul of the "Xue Yuanzheng" class actually started from the fourth batch. Because the changes are so great, the outside world listed it separately and named it after the lead ship "Shiwu". In fact, the adoption of the name of the founding emperor of the empire to name the aircraft carrier is enough to prove the importance of the aircraft carrier.

Compared with the "Xue Yuanzheng" class, the most conspicuous change in the "Shiwu" class is that the ship island has been moved to the starboard and stern side, the No. 3 elevator originally located behind the ship island has been canceled, the separation distance between the No. 1 elevator and the No. 2 elevator has been expanded, two comprehensive supply stations have been added between the two elevators, and the functions of the ship island have also been simplified, and the aviation combat command center and other departments have been arranged inside the hull of the ship, thus greatly reducing the area of the ship island.

Obviously, all of these changes were aimed at expanding the size of the flight deck and enhancing the efficiency of aviation operations.

As for the results, there is no need to say much.

Although the number of sorties of carrier-based aircraft in 24 hours has not increased significantly due to the limitation of catapults, the short-term sortie capability has been increased by about 50 percent by optimizing the operational efficiency of the flight deck, and the number of sorties in the all-deck attack state has increased from 42 to 54 in the "Xue Yuanzheng" class. This means that the combat effectiveness of the "Shiwu" class in the decisive battle of the fleet is 30% higher than that of the "Xue Yuanzheng" class.

It can be seen that the "Shiwu" level is actually an enhanced version of the "Xue Yuanzheng" level.

Of course, the price of construction has also risen.

The main thing is that compared with the "Xue Yuanzheng" class, the support equipment of the "Shiwu" class has increased by about 3 percent, and a large number of advanced electronic equipment has been used, and in the construction cost of an aircraft carrier, the proportion of support equipment and electronic equipment is about a quarter.

Unfortunately, the reliability of many advanced equipment is not high, resulting in a sharp increase in daily maintenance, making the cost of use and maintenance far higher than originally envisaged.

Obviously, the high construction price is the biggest problem of the "Shiwu" class.

Affected by this, the Imperial Navy also purchased 6 ships.

In contrast, the "White Stop" class is a genuine "cheap version".

That is, because the "Shiwu" class was too expensive, so after ordering 6 ships, the Imperial Navy began to look for cheaper supercarriers.

Because it was in wartime, the basic design of the "Xue Yuanzheng" class was still used.

To be precise, the "White Stop" level is a subtraction on the basis of the "Shiwu" level.

For example, the integrated supply station between the No. 1 and No. 2 elevators, as well as the No. 3 catapult installed on the inside of the forward end of the beveled deck, were eliminated, and the expensive three-sided phased array radar was replaced with an anti-aircraft warning radar that had been replaced from the previous "Xue Yuanzheng" class.

As a result of this, the combat capability of the "White Stop" class, especially the efficiency of operating carrier-based aircraft, is only three-quarters that of the "Shiwu" class. Even if it has comprehensive combat capabilities, it is slightly weaker than the "Xue Yuanzheng" class, and it can be said that it is the worst supercarrier in the war.

Interestingly, the hull design of the "White Stop" class has not changed much.

In other words, when needed, all the equipment that has been eliminated or replaced can be replaced.

This reflects the fact that the Imperial Navy looks down on this simplified version of a supercarrier.

It's just that the success of the "White Stop War" class is that the construction cost is effectively controlled.

As a result, the White Stop class became the most supercarrier built by the Imperial Navy in a major war. By the end of the war, the Imperial Navy had ordered 24 ships in three installments, of which 14 were built before the end of the war, and another four were built after the war.

It is a pity that not a single ship of the "White Stop" class has been upgraded to enhance combat effectiveness.

In the Great War, more than 30 supercarriers of these three classes have been the pillars of the Imperial Navy and have made great contributions to the final victory.

However, this has also become the swan song of the supercarrier.

As already mentioned, supercarriers exposed a large number of flaws in battle, and all of them were inherent problems that could not be solved by technical means.

These problems directly led to the decline of the supercarrier after the war.

It's just that during the Great War, the Imperial Navy did not choose to give up, or at that time there were no combat platforms capable of replacing supercarriers.

In order to continue the vitality of the "aircraft carrier", the Imperial Navy chose the simplest and most brutal method.

Keep increasing the tonnage!

While continuing to build a supercarrier, the Imperial Navy launched work on an "advanced maritime multi-purpose combat platform" codenamed "Future Star".

The core of the project is to enhance combat capabilities by expanding the size and carrying more advanced carrier-based aircraft.

If anything, this is not a bad solution.

With the situation at that time, if the war lasted for another 1 year, at most 2 years, it might be possible for the "future aircraft carrier" to turn from a drawing paper into a reality.

After all, war is the main driving force for the development of weapons and equipment.

As for the "aircraft carrier of the future", which exists only on the drawings, it is true that it is ahead of its time and has combat capabilities that far exceed those of supercarriers.

It's just that it's obviously not that simple to turn from a drawing into a reality.