Eric Heginbotham and his colleagues at RAND should be commended for their recent report “The U.S.-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power, 1996–2017.” It is one of the very best publicly available assessments of aspects of a potential Sino-American war, and it makes a clear and compelling case of its central conclusion: “Over the next five to 15 years, if U.S. and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces remain on roughly current trajectories, Asia will witness a progressively receding frontier of U.S. dominance.”  However, one of its more talked about recommendations—that of harvesting Navy aircraft carrier force structure to generate savings for other capabilities—is unfortunately not supported by their analysis.

Read more: http://nationalinterest.org/feature/should-america-embrace-smaller-aircraft-carriers-14001