"Where are the carriers?" is still among the first questions asked when a crisis arises somewhere on the globe. To date, no one has invented anything that even comes close to their wide-ranging capabilities.
In the wake of the Cold War, for both economic and geopolitical reasons, the United States has reduced the extensive network of overseas bases and troop units that it once had, and concentrated resources within the nation's borders.
We are saving money, but response time has suffered. Recall the months it took to deliver the troops and equipment needed for Operation Desert Storm under ideal conditions. There was no threat to the supply lines, and the U.S.-led Coalition had access to unlimited fuel oil supplies, modern airfields, and modern port facilities in the combat zone. Similarly, in Bosnia and Kosovo, although the United States and its partners were able to conduct the air war from nearby NATO bases, it took time to get set up for high-tempo operations.
In more remote trouble spots, the carrier battle groups will sometimes be our only avenue for diplomatic, military, or humanitarian response—especially at the beginning, prior to mobilization of complementary forces. With non-stop requirements for U.S. presence around the globe, the National Command Authority continues to rely heavily on the versatility and strike power of carrier battle groups. Using 12 carriers to cover commitments that unified commanders-in-chief believe requires 15 exacts a heavy toll on equipment and personnel.
Although designed for 30-year service lives, the Nimitz (CVN-68)-class aircraft carriers will be operating for 50—service lives that their successors will be designed to meet from the outset. This means that the Navy must build one carrier every four to five years just to sustain the approved 12-ship carrier force level. This building rate also will support the highly specialized industrial base required for U.S. aircraft carrier construction—but just barely and at only one shipyard.
Some may wonder why we need a new design. The Nimitz-class carriers, after all, are very capable ships that have performed with distinction, and no matter what we do today, the U.S. fleet will continue to depend on these excellent carriers through the middle of this century. The reason for a new design boils down to economics. We need less-expensive ships that can provide the capability we need in the future. Budget considerations tend to focus attention on research-and-development costs and on ship-acquisition costs because of their near-term impact, but about 80% of ship life-cycle cost goes for annual operating and support expenses. Of this amount, personnel costs comprise about 50%—and this is the area with the greatest cost-reduction potential. The most recent Nimitz-class ships incorporate significant improvements over the original design. The Navy, however, needs to reduce manpower and support requirements even more.
Although the goal is to reduce total ownership costs, near-term budget requirements must fit within prescribed ceilings. To lessen the front-end budget impact of the new-design carrier, the Navy has proposed and the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology has approved phasing in improvements over several ships. As a result, the last of the Nimitz class, CVN-77, will incorporate a new, integrated combat system. The next ship, CVNX-1, will incorporate into the Nimitz-class hull a new nuclear propulsion plant that requires about 50% fewer operators, a new electrical generation and distribution system, and electromagnetic catapults. CVNX-2 will incorporate additional technology and design changes as warranted to improve the flight deck, survivability, and service-life allowances—and to further reduce manpower requirements and total ownership costs.
This evolutionary approach spreads the budget impact over time and reduces considerably the development risks involved in trying to include all new features in the first ship. Moreover, this approach allows for maximum backfit of technology into existing Nimitz-class carriers.
In March 1996, the Pentagon granted the Navy Milestone 0 approval to conduct concept studies for a new-design aircraft carrier. The objectives were to maintain the capabilities of naval aviation, to improve the affordability of the carrier force, and to incorporate architecture for change.
The Navy established integrated project teams that drew on industry and government experts, including fleet operators, to assess fleet experience and needs, to conduct wide-ranging technology surveys, and to identify in much greater detail than ever before the priority cost-drivers. The Navy and industry have been developing and refining cost-estimating models that provide ship system designers, technologists, and manning experts unprecedented ability to assess the potential impact of design and process alternatives on ship life cycle cost.
The analysis of alternatives has been the forum for high-level cost and performance evaluations of critical ship characteristics. To help maintain objectivity, the Center for Naval Analyses, a federally funded research-and-development center, acts as study director. Center personnel conduct the analyses, drawing input from Navy and industry engineering, operational, and cost experts. Navy and Department of Defense officials consider these results before making final program decisions.
The study gave priority attention to analyzing alternatives for aircraft capacity and type of propulsion, which are the built-in ship characteristics that dictate overall ship design. The cost to change the type of propulsion later in ship life, for example, would be prohibitive.
For two years, based on one of the most extensive cost-analysis efforts the Navy has ever undertaken, the study team evaluated more than 60 conceptual ship designs in terms of potential cost, operational benefit, and risk. Based on these analyses and Navy recommendations, the Undersecretary of Defense in September 1999 agreed with the Navy that the new-design carriers must accommodate 75 aircraft and that they must be nuclear-powered.
The alternatives analysis considered whether it would be better, as some budget analysts have suggested, to build smaller, less capable ships—and perhaps more of them. The answer clearly was "No," because the large-deck alternative is significantly more cost effective. As compared to a 55-aircraft capacity ship, one with 75 aircraft can deliver 100% more strike sorties for only 8% more cost. Of course, any carrier that can accommodate 75 aircraft always can deploy with fewer—but there is no way to beef up capacity on a smaller carrier. A larger carrier translates into fewer ships required on station to do a job.
Nuclear propulsion proved to be a far better choice than three fossil-fuel alternatives (oil-fired steam, diesel, and gas turbine).
The analysis showed that, even with optimum tanker availability, the nuclear-powered carrier allows the carrier battle group to arrive on scene, ready to fight, much earlier. Moreover, it can remain on station and continue to be effective as long as operational needs dictate.
In a separate, independent analysis, Science Applications International Corporation considered the uncertainty in oil supplies. The analysis shows that, in a dynamic, combat environment, nuclear power is clearly superior tactically, and that nuclear-powered carriers enhance the military effectiveness of the rest of the fleet by reducing demand on the capability and quantity of available refueling resources.
In a joint report, the Chief of Naval Operations' Director, Air Warfare Division; the Commander, Naval Sea Systems Command; and the Program Executive Officer (Carriers) added their technical and operational perspectives, which strongly favor nuclear power. They emphasized that:
- With nuclear power, carrier propulsion endurance never limits tactical options. In contrast, oil-dependence for ship propulsion is a day-to-day liability.
- Fuel supplies remain attractive, high priority targets.
- Hostile oil-producing nations may be able to deny, or at least frustrate, resupply. There is no reason to expose carrier propulsion to these risks.
- a Propulsion endurance remains critically important for carriers, especially if ammunition and aviation fuel happen to be in short supply.
- Nuclear power results in a safer, more damage-resistant ship. It needs neither air intakes nor exhausts. The nuclear- powered ship can make full power while sealed from atomic, biological, or chemical attack. It is less vulnerable to missile strikes.
- Nuclear propulsion involves substantially less technical, schedule, and cost risk than attempting to develop for carrier application a gas turbine propulsion plant, which is the most attractive of the non-nuclear propulsion options.
- The unified commanders-in-chief and the Navy's fleet commanders unanimously have recognized the added capability, mobility, survivability, and flexibility that nuclear power provides for our carriers.
- Uncertainty in the future cost of oil adds an additional risk to the fossil-fueled alternative. (Over the last year, the Navy has seen a doubling in fuel oil price.)
In approving the large-deck, nuclear-propulsion option, the Under Secretary of Defense also approved a new electrical power generating and distribution system with substantially more generating capacity and the ability to support new, cost-saving electric technologies available now and expected in the years to come.
Electromagnetic catapults, for example, which the Under Secretary of Defense also has approved for CVNX-1, hold great promise as a replacement for steam catapults. Steam catapults, although exceptionally reliable, are manpower-intensive and more costly to operate and maintain.
The added electrical-generating capacity and improved electrical distribution system also will facilitate transition of other shipboard equipment and systems from steam to electrical power, a transition that has many potential long-term advantages in terms of design flexibility, maintenance, damage control, and ease of upgrade. A Nimitz-class plant electrical-generating and distribution capacity would not be able to support these cost-saving initiatives.
The Nimitz-class propulsion plant was designed 35 years ago. In the interim, the Navy has developed advanced submarine propulsion plant designs for the Trident nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs), Seawolf (SSN-21)-class nuclear-powered attack submarines, and the New Attack Submarine classes. Applying this knowledge to a new carrier propulsion plant design will reduce manpower requirements by about half in one of the largest departments on the ship.
Designed for a Nimitz-class hull, the new propulsion plant will fit easily in any subsequent hull form that will accommodate the prescribed air wing. It delivers immediate life-cycle cost savings, provides added ruggedness, operational simplification, and flexibility. It is the critical enabler for future improvements.
The Department of Defense has approved the basic Nimitz-class design for the non-propulsion aspects of CVNX-1, which has enabled the Navy to focus its efforts on those aspects during the design phase. Detailed engineering and cost estimates will determine which laborsaving technologies and detail design features can and should be incorporated in this ship, in future ships, and backfitted into the Nimitz class. The objectives are to:
- Exploit the flexibility provided by open systems architecture, as is the practice in the computer software industry, to facilitate equipment modernization and system replacement and make the Navy less dependent on sole source contractors.
- Simplify processes and automate, where it makes sense, in order to reduce sailor workload in areas that significantly drive manning requirements.
- Reduce maintenance demands through better material and equipment condition monitoring systems and through improved protection systems against corrosion.
- Reduce watchstanding and damage control manning requirements.
- Facilitate more efficient material and data flow throughout the ship.
For CVNX-1, the Navy will continue to develop and refine the tools and information that will help ship designers and program managers evaluate alternatives at the systems, component, and procedures level— all in the context of a balanced ship design.
In proceeding with CVNX-1 development, engineers, cost estimators, and planners must know whether CVNX-2 will be a completely new design, a modified repeat CVNX-1, or somewhere in between. Not surprisingly, a completely new ship design that incorporates the CVNX-1 improvements offers the best overall value in terms of both total life cycle cost and military capability. It also puts the greatest strain on near-term Navy budgets. Here are examples of improvements possible. Enlarging the flight deck slightly will:
- Permit all four catapults to launch loaded aircraft without some of today's restrictions
- Reduce flight-deck workload by decreasing the need to reposition aircraft on the flight deck between landing and re-launch
- Enable aircraft to refuel, rearm, and undergo servicing at a single pit stop spot
- Permit higher sortie rates, which current and future aircraft can generate
In addition, the modified deck will permit:
- Redesigned elevators and flight deck servicing facilities for greater efficiency
- Redesigned spaces above and below decks to improve weapons transfer and loading rates and to reduce workload
- Fully restored ship service-life margins that have been used to incorporate improvements in the Nimitz class
- Improved hull protection against air and underwater attack
- Best internal ship arrangements for efficiency and manpower savings
- Improved habitability—up to present Navy standards for new-design ships
- Reduced maintenance workload through use of improved materials and better compartment arrangements
If the Navy cannot now afford the near-term investment required for a CVNX-2 clean-sheet design, the alternatives analysis shows that some of these improvements could be incorporated reasonably through more modest enhancements to the CVNX-1 design. The Navy is attempting to resolve these difficult choices in light of budget constraints.
As the result of what may have been the most exhaustive analysis in the history of Navy shipbuilding, the Navy had enough information for its Milestone I review to seek Defense Acquisition Board approval on which option to pursue for CVNX-2. This decision will balance the availability of near-term funding versus the warfighting and life-cycle-cost benefits of the various options.
A timely decision will avoid unnecessary cost and risk. Rather than waste scarce personnel and financial resources on multiple paths, the Navy now needs to focus clearly on a particular end product. It is time to make the decision and get on with the job.
Captain Manvel, an Engineering Duty Officer with three carrier tours, is the Program Manager for Future Aircraft Carriers at the Naval Sea Systems Command.