I wonder why the US doesn’t produce a bunch of WW2 style carriers with light aircraft or helicopters. I’m aware the US has several helicopter carriers, but I would imagine we could build dozens of the things for the price of a nuclear carrier. Obviously they wouldn’t stand up to a near peer competitor but they could be useful for small scale conflicts with far less advanced militaries, which seems to be the pattern lately.
Update: It looks like there are such things, called “amphibious assault ships”. Apparently there are 7 of this type https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp-class_amphibious_assaul... and 2 of a more recent type https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/America-class_amphibious_ass.... It seems they’re about the same length and overall size as a WW2 carrier.
So that’s interesting. So there are 11 large nuclear powered carriers and 9 of these smaller type. That’s already kind of a lot.