Important Strategic Input: "U.S. Navy Carriers: Strike Range Expansion Is Critical"

If you are going to influence shore based powers, you need to be able to reach out touch them if need be.

This is addressed by Jerry Hendrix in this National Review piece, U.S. Navy Carriers: Strike Range Expansion Is Critical

The United States Navy needs to make some hard choices if it wishes to remain relevant in the Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) security environment that lies ahead of it. It must begin to adjust its strategy as well as its accompanying shipbuilding and aircraft-procurement plans to enable it to fight and win within the emerging great-power competition. This new environment, at last recognized in President Trump’s National Security Strategy and the Secretary of Defense’s National Defense Strategy, requires the Navy to strike enemy capitals and other vital centers of gravity from range, but the Navy’s decision to bypass a carrier-based strike asset, and now even to push off its acquisition of an unmanned mission tanker, suggest that it is not taking A2AD great-power competition seriously. Its decisions place the future relevance of the entire maritime service, at least as it is presently composed, at risk.

We also discussed this on Midrats on 11 March 2018 - and Dr. Hendrix joined us - the discussion rolls through the show, but especially beginning around the 44 minute mark: