Carrier numbers determine escort requirements as well as the number of flight decks. A navy that wants one carrier reliably available needs more than the minimum hull count and enough complete escort groups to cover maintenance cycles. Planning around ships that are 'fitted for but not with' assumes that missing weapons will appear during a crisis, although earlier Royal Navy experience showed no guarantee of that. Type 22 frigates without guns reveal how a narrow anti-submarine requirement could leave a ship short of flexible firepower. Zumwalt shows the opposite risk: building around immature technology and then shrinking the whole program when that technology is not ready. Fleet design has to cover likely conventional wars rather than assume every conflict will become nuclear before those gaps matter.
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Postwar fleets designed around missing capability
Modern force structures fail when too few capital ships lack enough escort groups or when ships are planned around equipment marked fitted for but not with.