North America versus Europe - who would win in an all out war?

[mornelithe]

drkohler said:

Salnax said:

In total, the United States has 10 aircraft carriers. For context, that's more than the rest of the world COMBINED. America also has a majority of the world's cruisers and over a third of the world's destroyers. In terms of sheer tonnage, the USA alone dwarves the combined navies of Europe.

The problem is that we are not watching the movie "Battle of Midway" anymore. In those 1940ies times, a $1b carrier was essentially invisible to the ennemy and its aircrafts had the "right of first strike". Nowadays, I can sink your entirety of 10 carriers ($10bio) with roughly 200 missiles ($10million). While you try to rebuild your 10 ships ($10billion. 2 years if everybody is in the shipyards), I can take another 100 missiles $10mio, (1 week). In the end, the "power of a navy" has become a relative asset. The question is how do you resupply your troops and how do you distribute your troops if you want to conquer an entire continent?

Yeah but you're assuming that the first level of attack would be by ship here, aren't you?  I mean, the US has far far far more effective means of bringing a land mass to a point where you can move ships in w/ aircraft for those types of missions....don't you think?  As far as the question of troop support, that's up to the details of this conflict.  Who started it?  Was there a buildup of tensions?  Sneak attack Europe?  Sneak attack US?  These all have serious impacts upon the strategy especially with regards to the first moves.