The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) transits up the Elizabeth River as it passes the downtown Norfolk waterfront after completing a successful and on-time six-month Planned Incremental Availability at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, VA. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Tyler Folnsbee/Released)
The U.S. Military's Ultimate Fear: Are Aircraft Carriers Too Big To Fail? -- Henry Holst, National Interest
Various defense pundits, scholars, and journalists have spent a considerable amount of digital ink debating the various threats to America’s carrier fleet while avoiding a more central question. In the cliché phrase of our time: Are carriers too big to fail? Clausewitz tells us, “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” Is there any political situation of such gravity that losing a carrier would be deemed an acceptable risk? In other words, how expendable are carriers? The answer to this question has large implications for the tactical and strategic options available to U.S. policymakers.
Total security from all risk is impossible. The aircraft carrier is not invulnerable to attack. The new U.S. Ford-class aircraft carrier will be a floating home to over 4,000 sailors and comes in at the hefty price tag of around $12 billion dollars. In light of the development and proliferation of anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) weaponry, does this enormous investment of human resources narrow U.S. tactical and strategic options? What are the implications of the sinking of a U.S. carrier?
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My Comment: In a hypothetical major war against China .... my prediction is that U.S. carriers will stay far away from China's shores .... or they may actually stay in port. Everyone knows too well that the sinking of a U.S. carrier would be a terrible blow .... both to the country's morale and to the perception of the U.S. in the eyes of the rest of the world. Keeping them far away from the conflict zone and/or having them stay in U.S. waters will decrease the possibility of a successful attack against a carrier strike group .... but it will also raise other questions .... like why did we spend all of this money to have a carrier groups .... but we are too afraid to use them.
4 comments:
Some of the concern over the vulnerability of carriers is on point, and some is exaggerated.
1. The original primary mission of carriers was,and is, control of the sea. Control of the air is a decisive advantage against surface ships. In my view, this reality has not changed.
2. Suppose China builds carrier battle groups, and those groups sail into the open ocean to challenge the U.S. Navy for control of the Pacific. In that hypothetical, we would have, in effect, a repeat of World War II's confrontation between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Navy. We could have battles not unlike Coral Sea or Midway. The U.S. Navy would not necessarily defeat a peer challenger, but it would be a battle of equals, or near equals. Personally, I think that the Chinese are many years away from developing such a power, i.e. projection naval power deep into the Pacific Ocean.
3. The secondary mission of carrier has been to project air power ashore. The United States has used carriers repeatedly for this mission in almost every conflict since World War II. All those conflicts have two things in common. First, the United States did not fight a nation with a navy that was the peer, or near peer, of the U. S. Navy. Second, the U.S. did not fight a nation with a sophisticated defense system specifically designed to keep the carriers away.
4. China has expended considerable GDP to create a defense system intended to negate the U.S. carriers' ability to project air power over China and over the ocean close to China. This defense may work, or may not.
5. The Soviet Union also spent vast GDP to construct a defense against carriers similar to China's. The Soviets intended to use the same tactic to sink carriers that the Chinese are adopting: saturation. They will launch so many missiles at the carrier that, even if the U.S. shoots down 95% of the incoming weapons, the 5% that get through will do the job.
6. The U.S. never tested the Soviet defenses in combat, but we know enough to establish that the Soviet defenses had at least three defects:
a. The inability to obtain the location of the carrier accurate enough to use for your defense weapons. It is not enough to know approximately where the carrier is. You must know pretty much exactly where it is. The Soviets never solved this problem.
b. The inability to deliver targeting information to one's defenses. Suppose the Chinese obtain information accurate enough to target a carrier. They must convey that information from their sensor to their command center, evaluate it, decide to order a strike, and convey the strike order to the missile batteries and aircraft who will attack the carrier. That process does not happen instantly or without errors. Moreover, communications can be jammed, and communications nodes can be attacked. The Soviet system concentrated authority at the top, which complicated this process further. The Soviets never were able to solve these problems. The Soviet system was always sluggish and behind actual events.
c. Efficiency of the defense weapons. In my experience, complex weapons rarely work exactly as the specifications say they ought. Weapons sort of work. Some of the doomsayers seem to assume that Chinese weapons will work 100% perfectly as designed, 100% of the time. That perfection is not the Soviet, nor the American, experience.
7. Carriers are not invulnerable. The U.S. Navy needs to evaluate, honestly and without hubris, whether carriers can be used to project power into China or into the sea near China with manageable risk. We should neither exaggerate nor minimize the threat China's defenses are creating.
I think number one has been largely forgotten by most US politicians and some military.
Number 2 reminds me of the story a friend told of a British Naval officer giving a lecture. At the Q & A afterwards an American officer asked the speaker to compare American and British naval traditions. His reply: "Britain has traditions, America has habits."
This holds true with the US and China, but it does not mean they can't catch up.
In an actual contest for sea domination, it'll be those who are the most competent at the onset, the luckiest, and learn the quickest from mistakes and failure who should come out on top.
I once read a book about wargames wherein they claimed the US Navy refused to model the loss of carriers during the early 80s for precisely those reasons you identify, WNU. A wargame held in '02 indicated certain weaknesses in our naval system, as well. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/washington/12navy.html?_r=0
That said, WNU, I think you underestimate the pride and confidence of the US Navy in its carriers. Our carrier tradition was forged in battle against Japan, and I cannot see the Navy shrinking from it in a future conflict.
I have no problem in acknowledging the pride, confidence, ability, and commitment of the U.S. Navy to conduct a full blown naval campaign .... even against a hypothetical and formidable foe like China. The weakness are the politicians .... they are the ones who have always held back what the U.S. military is capable of .... and will do so in any future war. The admirals may want to rush their aircraft carrier battle groups in a dangerous confrontation .... but I am willing to bet it will be the White House who will tell them to fall back.
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