The U.S. Navy Should Use Its Retired Carriers For Target Practice And Testing Anti-Missile Defense Systems

National Interest: The Navy Should Use Its Retired Carriers for Target Practice

This way, the Pentagon can test better anti-missile systems under more realistic conditions.

The U.S. Navy should convert USS Nimitz, the fleet’s oldest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, into a test ship once the flattop decommissions in the mid-2020s.

That’s the recommendation of Navy lieutenant Douglas Cantwell, who served aboard the 1,092-feet-long carrier.

His advice has precedent. The Navy recently formed an experimental “Surface Development Squadron” for Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers, Littoral Combat Ships and drone vessels.

“The Navy needs a platform dedicated to accomplishing for air warfare what the USS Zumwalt and the Surface Development Squadron aim to do for surface warfare,” Cantwell wrote in Proceedings, the professional journal of the U.S. Naval Institute.

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WNU Editor: This idea makes a lot of sense to me.