How unbuilt carrier programs could reshape rival planning

The unbuilt British and Soviet projects show that procurement decisions affect more than the navy ordering the ships. Completing the three suspended Admiral-class hulls as very large carriers would have given Britain an early strike-carrier force and created unusual questions under later treaty rules for experimental ships. A Soviet carrier program in the mid-1930s would have introduced another major carrier power outside the Washington and London treaty systems. Japan, France, Britain, and the United States would then have had to account for Soviet aviation at sea in their own strategy and construction. Even an unrealized design can expose the international reactions that planners risked provoking.