A Lesser Future for Supercarriers? Why cutting the fleet might be quite reasonable.

If you are interested in aircraft carriers, read Robert C. Rubel’s article, “The Future of Aircraft Carriers,” in the latest issue of Naval War College Review. I will state up front that I have some quibbles with individual items. I notably don’t care for his assertion that ships like American America-class and the British Invincible-class are not “true aircraft carriers”—if the ship’s primary mission is to carry aircraft, then what else would we call it? But otherwise, it represents some very good thinking on the issue.

Particularly helpful is Rubel’s brief, high-level history of the evolution of aircraft carriers’ roles, particularly in American service:

1. Scouting for the fleet (back in the day, for the battleships)
2. Hit-and-run raids with aircraft
3. Capital ships meant for the destruction of the enemy battle fleet
4. Nuclear strike platforms (mostly in an interservice competition with the USAF)
5. Mobile, self-protecting airfields afloat

While even today, American supercarriers perform most of these roles, it is mostly the last that is their stock-in-trade today. For as a writer in Naval Institute Proceedings recently put it, in the past few decades, war at sea has largely been replaced by war from the sea. (And I think that I read some Navy Department white paper with that title once...) But the first trouble for the carrier enthusiasts, as Rubel tells it, is that not all these roles are equally important anymore. For example, the raiding role has largely been taken up with cruise missile-carrying submarines. For a short-duration strike, a $2 billion submarine with a crew of 100 is a lot more affordable than a $10 billion carrier with a crew of several thousand—and that whole air wing as well.

Even the mobile airfield role seems not as important as it once was. The entire air campaign against the Qaddafyists in Libya was usefully supported by aircraft carriers, at various times including the Kearsarge, Enterprise, Garibaldi, and Charles de Gaulle. But the entire campaign could have been run without any of them. For as the Air Chief Marshall Sir Stephen Dalton put it a few months ago, “on the periphery of Europe,” land-based fighter-bombers flying from secure NATO airfields can do the work of aircraft carriers considerably more cost-effectively.

The second trouble flows from improvements in the speed and accuracy of antiship missiles, whether ballistic or cruising, and the range and fidelity of electronic scouting systems. Counter-scouting is absolutely an option, but it’s not foolproof. As American fighter-bombers today have considerably shorter ranges than American carrier aircraft of the 1940s, the modern supercarriers wouldn’t be approaching the fight with a great deal of standoff—at least not without an airplane like the forthcoming X-47B attack drone.

The third trouble, if one that Rubel does not directly address, is that the American federal government is essentially out-of-money. This has put everything into play as a possible source of budgetary savings, including those heretofore sacrosanct supercarriers. But fortunately, the situation is not so grim if we can glom up to a few more-than-plausible hypotheses:

1. Supercarriers are not terribly useful anymore in the Atlantic
2. Supercarriers are still very important in the Pacific, even if all those Chinese missiles are pretty scary
3. All that deploying and “presence” is not as useful as the Navy pretends

Here’s how that all works. Hypothesis (A) has substantially been proven by that campaign in Libya: the Navy doesn’t really send carrier strike groups into the Mediterranean anymore, and this just hasn’t been a problem, Arab Spring or not. Besides, despite all the recent grousing about European commitment to military strength, the Mediterranean can more than adequately be patrolled and secured by the French, Italian, and Spanish navies. They have, if you haven’t noticed, more than a few ships.

Hypothesis (B) seems self-evident, though it should be noted that presence, such as it is, in the western Pacific is pretty adequately provided by that supercarrier permanently stationed in Japan.

That gets to hypothesis (C): single carrier air wings don’t really deter war. And with the assumption of the sudden-strike role by submarines, they’re not really needed for those much-beloved short-notice smack-downs. In short, it might be time to save a lot of money in steaming back-and-forth by keeping much more of the fleet closer to home.

Without the urge to deploy constantly to the far side of the world, and without the need to balance the fleet between the Atlantic and Pacific, the US Navy could adopt a very different approach to its carrier strike groups. If the six carriers assigned to the Pacific Fleet are today adequate to the job of deterring or defeating some future Chinese malfeasance, then they might be presumed to be all that’s needed on that side of the world. It’s the five carriers of the Atlantic Fleet, all homeported at the moment in Hampton Roads, that are less clearly needed. If two would do the job, so that one was always available in a pinch, then are three more excess to real needs?

At this moment, anyone from the Virginia congressional delegation reading this might be having a coronary attack. But that’s just the geopolitical reality laid bare by the campaign of the past several months. A fleet of eight supercarriers—would this be so problematic to American security?

For the details on how this could work, I will shortly have a study for clients on the sequencing, the rough cost savings involved for the government, and the implications for business—most notably, of course, Huntington Ingalls Industries.

Comments

[Antoinne Riggins]

This is a very bad idea. It only means longer deployments for the Carrier Force.

[James Hasik]

I cannot but agree that, ceteris paribus, the carrier battle group forces would face longer or more frequently deployments if the fleet were reduced to eight. I doubt that the resulting personnel tempo would be sustainable. But I'm not suggesting that it should even be attempted..

Rather, I'm proposing that the government stop deploying two battle groups at once, and instead just deploy at most one. I may not have been completely clear about that in the article above. Here's my proposal, quite specifically. To begin, there's no reason to routinely send American flotillas to the Mediterranean; indeed, there's not much reason for a robust Sixth Fleet. This hasn't been done for some time, and without ill effect, so it shouldn't be restarted.

For the time being, there is a perceived need to send one to the Arabian Sea, but that need will abate after American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan winds down.

In the long run, there may not be enough reason to routinely send American flotillas from San Diego or Puget Sound to the western Pacific. There's a carrier group in Japan to cover that area. There might be reason to send one occasionally, but the full deployment cycle may not be necessary.

But whatever the case, the suggests that a little operational discipline from the top will solve the problem. Just stop steaming back and forth. Given the infrequency with which the immediate presence of those groups has been critical, it's just not worth the money.

[Denny]

You are not watching carefully what China is doing, or Russia are you. We are rapidly loosing our capability to respond. Moth balling carriers, not till they can be replaced. Building will depend on the economy. My thoughts are, we need a very strong, military, with the latest tecnology to keep America safe. We have four main enemies, possibly five.

It is not only the Navy, but also the rest of the armed forces also. A strong military will mke aggressors think twice.

[James Hasik]

Thanks for your comments. By my count, the Chinese Navy has one carrier that isn't fully operational. The Russian Navy has one carrier, but I consider the Russians a rather implausible opponent, and one with which the navies of European NATO can deal quite effectively. Moreover, I'm suggesting that the US Atlantic Fleet be left with two operational supercarriers, which would have more than twice the aerial firepower of the Russian Northern Fleet's one. So, I'm arguing that outnumbering one's opponents two- or six-to-one is pretty adequate.