Debating the Future of the Aircraft Carrier

“The US Navy has the most powerful fleet in all naval history. The large nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is the most powerful surface warship in that fleet and in all naval history. The United States should stop building them immediately.”

Thus does Vandenengel his book -- with a simple, strong statement of his thesis. But wait – haven’t we been here already?

In 1949, President Truman provoked the “Revolt of the Admirals” by coming down hard for the USAF’s vision of an American defense based on “Massive Retaliation” by nuclear bombers, cancelling carrier construction, and decimating the Navy’s leadership when they objected. A year later the US found itself in a “limited war”, unable to use nuclear weapons, where strategic bombing failed, but carriers worked hard in many roles, especially close ground support.

Since its first appearance in the 1920’s the carrier has been steadily attacked by its political and military opponents as vulnerable, expensive, and obsolete. Just one of many, many examples, in May 2005 political commentator Robert Kaplan wrote “Managing China” for The Atlantic Monthly, a prescient and well-received article, predicting China’s future development as a military power. In it he states the familiar argument that the submarine has made the carrier obsolete. He was unaware, however, that at this time China possessed four carriers, surreptitiously purchased mostly for study after being offered for scrap. These were the Australian Melbourne, and Russian Minsk, Kiev, and Varyag – the latter entered service as China’s first carrier Liaoning in 2012. Today, Russia, China, India, France, Great Britain, Spain, and Italy are emulating the US in building and operating carriers.

That said, it must be noted that this book is far more nuanced and analytical than his opening suggests. The author alternates between the debater’s voice arguing forcefully for his own views, and the voice of the critical analyst, thoughtfully considering the counter-arguments. Still, it is something of a flaw in his logic or style that he doesn’t clearly differentiate between these two voices and keep the debater and analyst clearly separate, instead of mixing them together, switching back and forth without warning the reader.

Indeed, his basic thesis is that the USN should continue to operate its existing super-carriers for their lifetime, but gradually replace them with a “Flex Fleet”, where the super-carrier would eventually be replaced by a combination of smaller carriers (CVL’s) and missile-carrying arsenal ships – both in larger numbers than the 12 Nimitz and Ford-class ships. Also Aegis destroyers would be reduced in number, supplemented by a large force of less capable and cheaper frigates. And a large force of technologically simpler and more robust corvettes would replace the Littoral Combat Ships.

Why? The answer is, basically, the Anti-Ship Cruise Missile (ASCM). Yes, the super-carrier has been the workhorse of American political-military strategy since WWII – the effectiveness of its large air group in limited war or quasi-war situations is undisputed. But in those years a dozen warships have been surprised, hit, and devastated by anti-ship missiles - the Eilat, Sheffield, Stark, Atlantic Conveyor - and the super-carriers have never faced the kind of massive, overwhelming missile attack the Russians have worked hard to create since the 1950’s, and the Chinese in the 2000’s. Or have they?

The author argues from past history that the inability to stop missiles, plus the fact that the carrier fleet has never faced a full-scale mass attack from a peer-equivalent navy in a total war situation, to the conclusion it will not survive the latter situation. But in all those decades, one of the prime concerns of the USN has been how to defeat such an attack. Our exercises have tested this ability, and our forces have confronted theirs, aggressively but peacefully, on a daily basis. And the author admits, first, the utility of manned tactical air in many situations and, second, the tremendous technological effort that has gone into making the carrier fleet defensible – maybe. But it comes down to the superiority of the missile in total war situations. The author’s view is that however good the carrier’s very costly defenses are, they can never be good enough to prevent the loss of carriers – which would be unacceptable, politically at least. The more decentralized “Flex-Fleet” with its more numerous units of individually lesser value, will be better able to bear the attrition of the initial missile exchange. Also, our missiles will be more effective than manned tactical air in attacking heavily defended enemy land and sea targets.

This is truly a critical issue for the navy’s future, and the author gives us a very persuasive scenario. His argument is nuanced, but his approach of switching back and forth between different historical periods with their different levels of technology is logically somewhat flawed – or at least misleading. It’s well worth comparing it to Friedman’s Fighters over the Fleet, which covers the development of Russian ASCM technology in thorough, logical chronological detail. Thus he shows us how the main Soviet anti-carrier force of the long-lived Tu-16 “Badger” bombers, advanced steadily as a danger to our fleet. First their big ASCM required beam guidance by the bomber all the way to their target, requiring the bomber to stay visible to the fleet’s radar, until the missile hit. But when the missile acquired its own radar-seeker, the bomber could drop below our radar horizon after locking the missile onto its target, then turn and flee. The ultimate goal was a true “fire-and-forget” capability. The less it was exposed to our radar and the quicker it could turn and flee, the more likely the bomber was to survive – so it could come back to make repeated attacks. But on the other hand, Friedman tells us that in the 1973 war, the Egyptians launched an attack on Israel with their 18 Badgers, launching a total of 25 KSR-2 and KSR-11 cruise missiles, of which 20 were shot down by Israeli fighters. So there have indeed been mass missile attacks; and perhaps the outcome still remains far from a foregone conclusion.

Meanwhile, the Navy felt it had found the solution for the ASCM threat in two very expensive systems appearing about 1980. First, the Aegis SAM system was able to track numerous targets and control numerous missiles in flight with its SPY-1 Phased array radar; it would handle the incoming missiles. Meanwhile the carrier’s F-14 fighters with their Phoenix missiles with their 100-mile range would pursue and destroy the fleeing bombers to prevent further attacks. But of course, this battle never occurred in the “real world”. Or did it? Prior to the 1980’s, the USN was in the rather hopeless position of being on the defensive, and considering ways to reduce the effect of attrition, like “Gary Hart” VSTOL small carriers, reminiscent of the “Flex Fleet”. But then the USN made the decision to adopt the offensive “Maritime Strategy” envisioning the penetration of Soviet White Sea and Arctic Ocean “Bastions” to attack their naval forces, bases, and ballistic missile submarines. Now it was the Soviets who were on the defensive with dispersed forces having to deal with an overwhelming concentration of strength, attacking at our initiative.

Could the Maritime Strategy have succeeded? This reviewer guesses it did in fact win us a substantial victory – that it, together with Desert Storm, went a long way to convincing the Soviet armed forces NOT to support the hard-liners’ coup against Gorbachev in 1991 and obey orders to shoot civilians. The Soviet armed forces were well aware of the total superiority of American military technology over theirs, and it was plain they could not compete with us, without the kind of intellectual reforms Gorbachev was urging. Meanwhile, we continued to offer proof of our confidence in the Maritime Strategy and our ingenuity in perfecting it.

Vandenengel points out that one unfortunate loss we would suffer in switching from the super-carrier to a light carrier would be the E-2 Airborne Early Warning aircraft. AEW permits detection and interception of attacking aircraft at great ranges, and its radius compared to surface permits the detection and interception of sea-skimming ASCM’s at much greater ranges. The E-2’s electronics permit it to track multiple targets and control intercepts. The E-2 is too large for the author’s CVL, but was so important to the super-carrier’s penetration of the White Sea that the Navy sought to increase its numbers by marrying the E-2 electronics suite to an airship. With an unrefueled endurance of a week or more, and the ability to resupply from surface ships, it could have greatly increased the number of AEW platforms over the fleet, without burdening the carriers. In fact, the USN had possessed such a ship, the ZPG-3W, in 1960, and began development of a very similar ship in 1987, the YEZ-2A or Sentinel 5000, to fly in 1991. (See “Airships for Early Warning”, Robert P. Largess, Warship 1989, p. 176) Since no ship of this size had flown for more than 20 years, the Navy built and flew a half-size trainer and prototype, the Sentinel 1000, first. Today, however, there is an airship prototype of large size already successfully flying, LTA Research’s “Pathfinder”, which could readily carry the E-2’s electronics suite.

The author brings up many important issues which he fails to answer adequately – but this reviewer certainly cannot answer either. One is the Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) developed by the Chinese. The author discusses our ability to intercept it in its ballistic phase of flight, but doesn’t it become an aerodynamic vehicle on reentry, and thus vulnerable to our anti air defenses? What about the Submarine threat? We built the fast Los Angeles-class nukes to (partly) provide direct ASW support to our carriers, and apparently depended on this for the Maritime Strategy White Sea penetration. And what about SOSUS, which once enabled us to track all the Soviet subs in the Atlantic – do we still retain any of this ability? What about finding the carriers at sea?

My brother, a naval officer in the ‘70’s, tells that Adm. Isaac Kidd jr., on taking the Atlantic fleet to sea, once tried the experiment of shutting down all electronic emissions – and promptly vanished, even from our own forces. The Tu-95 “Bears” out searching for him, unable to find him as usual by his radar emissions, were forced to turn on their own radars, revealing their own positions, where they were easily intercepted. And what about satellites? The Soviets tried to track the carriers with very costly nuclear reactor-powered radar satellites; their necessarily low orbits meant short lives and limited coverage. But how about today? And how vulnerable is the super-carrier actually? Didn’t we test weapons against the USS America for several weeks in 2005 before she sank? And what would the political effect of losing a carrier be? As bad as the author paints it in his imagined “Senkaku War” of 2028?

All of these issues are of vital importance for the US Navy, making this book required reading. The author makes a strong case for his stand – but not entirely successfully, in my view. I see the super carrier as possessing unique qualities of mobility, flexibility, and versatility which enable it to perform many roles, including concentrating to achieve overwhelming offensive power. I certainly don’t take the author on without trepidation; he is an experienced submariner and a frequent author. Perhaps it’s really a question of whose crystal ball is better. Well, who is mightier - the warrior or the bookworm?

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Our Reviewer: Robert P. Largess is the author of USS Albacore; Forerunner of the Future, and articles on the USS Triton, SS United States, the origin of the towed sonar array, and the history of Lighter-than-Air. He has contributed book reviews to ‘The Naval Historical Foundation’ (http://www.navyhistory.org) and The International Journal of Naval History (http://www.ijnhonline.org). His earlier reviews here include The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command, King Arthur’s Wars: The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of England, Clouds above the Hill: A Historical Novel of the Russo-Japanese War, Winning a Future War: War Gaming and Victory in the Pacific War, The Fate of Rome, "Tower of Skulls", A History of the Asia-Pacific War, Volume I: From the Marco Polo Bridge Incident to the Fall of Corregidor, July 1937-May 1942, Nathaniel Lyon’s River Campaign of 1861, Korea: War without End, Exterminating ISIS, Admiral Canaris, Armies Afloat: How the Development of Amphibious Operations in Europe Helped Win World War II, The Spy in the Archive, and Origins of the Cold War 1941–1949.

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Note: Questioning the Carrier is also available in e-editions.

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