The French have a fighter that competes in the same space as the Eurofighter, the Dassault Rafale. They can't even be good Europeans, why would we expect them to join in a multilateral effort with us?

Great, the Euros are building an airplane in 2004 that could almost take on the F-15 in a fair fight.

The F-15 went operational in 1978.

I'm trying to imagine all of these Euro nations agreeing to and actually sustaining a military campaign against any nation in this world. No can do.

Well, the Eurofighter does have "supercruise", which allows them to fly supersonically without afterburner, and for that reason I'd say that it's superior to the F-15.

The world's only other supercruise fighter, the F-22 Raptor, is believed by the US Air Force to be roughly three times as effective in combat as the Eurofighter... In theory, anyway.

Orrin:

The answer to your question about aircraft carriers is that your conjecture isn't wrong, just mistimed.
Yes, eventually, most of the missions that we use crewed aircraft for will be taken over by US based cruise missiles and drones, but that won't happen for at least a couple of decades, possibly many decades.
The primary sticking point is target acquisition and intelligence, and for that we need much better sensors and whompin' big computer brains, as well as brilliant software.

Also, when we get those tools, it won't be just aircraft carriers that become obsolete; crewed tanks, mobile artillery, and half of the infantry's tasks will go away, among many other things.

Michael:

We don't need them and we need to get rid of them or we'll use them.

OJ:

You aren't thinking about the other side of the problem: the adversary's brain.

A wall of gray steel offshore has a fantastic way of concentrating the attention of those who haven't fully inhabited the 21st century.

If all you think about with respect to warfare is dropping loud things on slow learners, then you are completely missing the phsychological dimension.

Think the Ba'athists even know we have a navy?

OJ:

Actually, I was thinking the Chinese. They are keenly aware of the fact.

But if you are content to play in the Little Leagues, by all means go ahead.

The Chinese have no doubt we'd nuke them--they're Asian.

Pure nonsense.

The Chinese aren't the least bit sure we would nuke them over Taiwan.

But with a wall of grey steel in the straits, they know we have a lot in the quiver besides useless nukes.

Wall of gray steel? or Enola Gay? wich is scarier? Which prevented an all out war between us and the Soviets?

OJ:

You just don't get it. The problem with nukes is there are all kinds of wars insufficiently threatening to us to warrant their use.

The Chinese invasion of Taiwan--just that little bit different from all out war--is one such exigency for which the threat of nuclear retaliation is useless, making it the antithesis of scary: irrelevant.

A wall of very employable gray steel, with its counterpart lurking below the surface, however, is an entirely different matter.

You have failed to learn from history. One of the reasons we were set back on our heels during the Korean War--something nuclear weapons did nothing to prevent---was our (well, Gen LeMay) being in thrall to nuclear weapons, and our adversaries understood there were things they wanted that we weren't willing to use nukes to keep.

Our force structure and training were so distorted by reliance on nuclear weapons we were woefully unprepared to prevent, or fight, the war those weapons were useless to stop or fight.

Why shouldn't we nuke any state that violates a neighbor's borders? Guarantee it would cut down on such incidences. But if that isn't your goal then by all means use grossly less efficient means to achieve yours.