Quantity better than quality

I had wrote a thesis before about how basic conventional warfare has been phased out, this couldn't be further than the truth during Ronald Reagan's second term as president of the United States in the mid to late 1980's.

He had planned to be stronger than the bear in the woods (the USSR) and really meant it for what he had started.

He had planned for a 600 ship Navy, this included:

Recommissioning older Iowa class battleships from World War II

Building more of the new aegis cruisers

Keeping older ships in service longer

Building several more Nimitz class carriers

To understand the scope of things one Nimitz carrier requires 6,000 crew members to function properly and carries over 90 fixed wing aircraft, during the 1980's these were a mix between F-14 Tomcats to defend the carrier, (one of which could shoot down 6 Soviet aircraft from up to 100 miles away), more new F/A-18 Hornets which could engage air and ground targets along with A6 Intruders and EA-6 Prowlers which could be escorted on bombing runs.



About four more of these were commissioned before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, by that time the US Navy was the largest in the world with 15 carrier battle groups, 4 battleship surface action groups, a handful of Aegis cruisers and over 100 attack submarines.



But did quality also fit in with this, well the truth was even though with the size of it being bigger then the Soviets the fleet also had more quality in it, for instance at the time the old Iowa class battleships, (commissioned in the 1940's during the Pacific War against the Japanese, these were refitted with RGM-84 Harpoon, BGM-109 Tomahawk, and Phalanx CIWS system capabilities, plus their armor plating would be more resilient against anti-ship missiles, this was perfect for attacking positions on shore and in shore in a coastal target, its 16 inch guns able to haul something as heavy as a small car nearly 20 miles!
While its Tomahawk missiles could hit targets around 2,500km away!

This configuration on the USS Missouri (BB-63) during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991 proved it to be perfect for the war.

But when the wall came down in '89 the Soviets were gone and Russia wasn't seen as much as a threat, Congress cut funds decommissioning the older ships that made up the 600 ships Navy.

Today though the US Navy still has a hefty 11 Nimitz class aircraft carriers and a few dozen missile destroyers, its small than it ever was but is still hi-tech, but in the case of a conventional war in the future will we see the return of older ships to help fill the void?

At the end of the day unlike the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II the US Navy managed to cleverly combine quality and quantity.