In 2003, Navy Vice Admiral Charles W. Moore and Marine Corps Lieutenant General Edward Hanlon Jr. launched a novel concept as Part IV of the Sea Power 21 strategy: "Twenty-first century Sea Basing will be our nation's asymmetric military advantage, contributing immeasurably to global peace, international stability, and warfighting effectiveness. It is the key to operational independence in the dangerous decades before us."1
Most discussions of the future of carrier aviation consider one of two extremes: deterrence through presence or rapid response to major conflict. Few discuss the role of naval air power in irregular warfare (IW), a nascent, amorphous term that describes the scope of operations focused on maintaining the stability and cooperation of a given population through legitimate political authority.2 The limited, remote, and protracted nature of IW requires continuous and persistent reconnaissance, mobility, and fire support for dispersed ground forces, a capability that aircraft carriers cannot currently provide. Carrier aviation must make significant changes to remain relevant in this sphere.
In traditional warfare, the carrier overcomes its inability to conduct continuous flight operations by surging its sorties for a few days or sharing duties with a second carrier. Surge operations work effectively for conflicts that require overwhelming force over short periods of time. But they fall short when major combat subsides and the United States devotes only one carrier to support irregular operations.
For too long, the standard response has been that the aircraft carrier and its air wing were never meant to support continuous, long-term air operations; the U.S. Air Force manages such requirements. The limitations of both services came into sharp focus during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, however, when the combatant commander requested airborne electronic warfare support that the Air Force inventory did not maintain and the Navy could not provide effectively from the carrier, forcing the Navy to send some of its aircraft ashore.
Potential IW scenarios require sea-based air support, thus dictating a developed capability for U.S. aircraft carriers to conduct around-the-clock flight operations for extended periods. Despite this demonstrated need, the Navy has yet to establish this as a formal requirement.3 Although naval aircraft have evolved radically since the commissioning of the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) in 1975, the design of the "modern" carrier has not been altered in 40 years.4
Aside from IW, any effort toward carrier innovation must not diminish the ability to conduct traditional air operations in conventional warfare. The United States will continue to rely on its carrier fleet because of its strategic flexibility. Navy carriers provide the nation with sea-based deterrence and global power projection. With global commitments and responsibilities, the U.S. military cannot risk losing the large war in an effort to win the small ones.
The solution to carrier limitations in IW will not come solely from scientific innovation. The Navy must make changes in mindset and organization that are aided by technological improvements. Without such changes, the vision of Sea Basing as "the key to operational independence in the dangerous decades before us," as the original authors of the concept wrote, will not be realized.5
Air Support Requirements for Irregular Warfare
Irregular warfare is a new term but not a new idea. The concept describes types of conflict defined previously as small wars, low-intensity conflicts, and operations other-than-war.6 IW provides a useful framework to discuss the challenges posed by protracted and asymmetric conflicts that are distinct from traditional, conventional warfare.
From the air power perspective, several distinguishing features become salient. First, IW operations focus more on influencing civilian populations than destroying enemy personnel and equipment.7 Second, any belligerent forces that must be targeted will fight from within the population and therefore be difficult to discern.8 Third, the enemy will most likely seek a protracted conflict with an unpredictable tempo.
Air power provides an asymmetric advantage in mobility and adaptability for ground forces engaged in IW.9 But this advantage is often offset by the challenges of rapidly detecting and identifying the enemy during a protracted conflict that includes significant lulls in the rhythm of violence.10 To provide freedom of action for dispersed ground forces, air assets must be constantly available to react swiftly to unpredictable demands.11
Carrier Limitations
Despite incremental improvements in aircraft capabilities, aircrew training, and coordination measures to better support IW, current methods of carrier operation continue to impede the Navy's ability to provide the required continuous and persistent airborne presence. For operations that last longer than a week, a carrier can conduct flight operations only for a limited number of hours per day and a limited number of days per month.12
The U.S. Navy designed and organized its aircraft carriers' flight decks to conduct operations for 12 to 14 hours per day. The limited flight operations window is driven mostly by manning; a Nimitz-class carrier has one flight deck crew, by definition capable of working only a single shift.13 The timing of the limited flight operations window in any given day also has constraints. Squadrons schedule each pilot for two to three night sorties per week to ensure night currency. This means that the carrier usually schedules at least half of its cycles between sunset and the last recovery of the fly day.14
Limiting the availability of carrier air wing (CVW) aircraft to a portion of the day reduces naval aviation's flexibility to respond to IW requirements that have no such bounds. Conventional forces conduct patrols and convoys both day and night. Special Forces typically execute direct-action missions at night between midnight and sunrise. Ground units may request surveillance, electronic warfare, and psychological operations for specific times of day to synchronize with their scheme of maneuver.
Beyond the inability to cover an entire day of flying for any significant length of time, the aircraft carrier typically does not conduct flight operations every day of the month. During her most recent deployment, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) averaged six no-fly days per month, and an additional two fly days not in support of ground operations.15 No-fly days may occur as a result of a scheduled port call or in the event of underway replenishment.
The Navy recognizes the various limitations imposed on sea-based aviation by flight deck constraints, port calls, and the realities of distance. Shore-basing has become the obvious and expedient answer. Although this has been an adequate solution in Afghanistan and Iraq, land-based airfields have limitations of their own.
An Incomplete Solution
In these recent conflicts, aircraft designed for carrier operations have operated from shore to fill gaps in Air Force capabilities. But the Department of Defense eventually realized that the continued demand for electronic support on the irregular warfare battlefield outpaced the ability of carrier-based EA-6B Prowler aircraft to provide that capacity. By 2003, the three expeditionary Prowler squadrons began to rotate to Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base for six-month deployments. From 2005 to 2007, every carrier that deployed to support Operation Iraqi Freedom detached part of her EA-6B squadron ashore to Al Asad Air Base.16
In the context of recent and current operations, flying from an air base in-country results in a much shorter transit time. Airfields have a greater potential to provide around-the-clock operations every day of the week. Yet despite the demonstrated benefits of staging carrier aircraft ashore, such deployments involve substantial risks. A carrier strike group without an air wing does not pose a credible threat as a means of deterrence and lacks a substantial portion of its defensive capability. Conversely, without the carrier, the air wing loses much of its mobility and flexibility and ceases to exist as a theater reserve for contingency operations.
Operating from shore also presents two significant challenges to the air wing. First, carrier aircrews lose proficiency in sea-based operations. Pilots must maintain carrier qualification if they are going to operate from the carrier at any point later in the deployment, which has direct impact on the air wing's mobility. Second, the Navy neither trains nor equips its carrier squadrons for expeditionary operations.17
All personnel must be trained in small-arms proficiency and the use of bio-chemical protective gear, as well as provided the necessary uniforms, body armor, weapons, and ammunition. No capability exists to equip squadrons on short notice for shore-basing once on deployment.
Although the benefits of land-basing carrier aircraft may outweigh any of the risks and challenges at the tactical and operational levels, the reliance on the existence of suitable and proximate airfields remains a strategic risk. The periodic and transitory partnerships that define post-Cold War U.S. diplomacy manifest themselves in similarly unpredictable agreements for basing forces in allied countries.18 Therefore, irregular warfare environments must be considered in which U.S. presence on the ground is limited or non-existent. Many countries welcome assistance and support yet balk at any overt presence that may fuel anti-Western sentiment. For example, disaster relief provided to Indonesia by the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) ran into such restrictions. Despite providing 5 million pounds of supplies over 35 days, CVW-2 helicopters did not remain on the ground in Indonesia overnight.19
The United States currently assists the Philippines government counterterrorism operations by providing monetary assistance and a small footprint of advisors.20 Should the conflict escalate to a point at which U.S. tactical air support is required, the Philippines may not welcome a large American presence at its airfields.21 Such overt U.S. involvement may impact government legitimacy, as it has the potential to fuel insurgency and provide valuable propaganda. The aircraft carrier provides sea-based air support that is far less intrusive than an air base, which requires significant force-protection and logistics footprints.22
Since the nearest allied countries in which the United States could realistically base air assets are all more than 1,000 miles away, the only available land-based offensive air support would be the occasional heavy bomber. Such an aircraft can drop all of its ordnance at one location—which is rarely a requirement in IW—or smaller amounts at different consecutive locations.23 Only multiple sea-based strike fighters could simultaneously support several dispersed ground units in the described scenario.24 In this situation, the shorter distance and faster re-fueling and re-arming turnaround time make sea-based air support the better option.
Improving Sea-Based Irregular Warfare Support
According to a Center for Naval Analyses study examining carrier sorties and firepower, manning is the biggest limitation to expanding flight-deck capacity.25 The second flight-deck shift required for long-term 24-hour operations requires additional personnel assigned to the ship's company as well as extra maintenance personnel in the CVW squadrons. As an additional complication, a number of principals must be present during all flight operations that have little or no redundancy in the current system: the commanding officer, the air boss and mini boss, and the flight deck handler.26
The new Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers will be manned with 1,200 fewer personnel than the Nimitz class.27 Modernized systems requiring less maintenance and upkeep, improvements in weapons/material movement processes, and flight-deck configuration changes make these cutbacks possible. Unfortunately, the planned personnel savings cannot be redistributed to provide a second flight deck shift. The CVN-78 design reduces the number of racks and living space by 1,100 Sailors, making the anticipated reduction of 1,200 a de facto requirement.28
As a result, further personnel cuts would be necessary to make room for the additional manpower needed for continuous flight operations. The Office of Naval Research is assessing the potential of reducing carrier manning to a mere 1,000 billets through process automations and ergonomic designs collectively known as human systems integration.29 Such an examination, although theoretical, suggests that the manpower challenges to aircraft carrier support of IW may be overcome.
Significant incentive exists for manning reductions, which greatly decrease the overall life-cycle cost of a ship. According to an MIT study, "manpower represents the most expensive single element in the operation of a carrier."30 Analysts estimate that each enlisted billet costs the Navy $100,000 per year or $5 million during a carrier's lifetime.31
Life-cycle costs should not be the only metric applied to manning decisions, however. An aircraft carrier with the additional manning of a second flight-deck shift would still cost less than the second carrier required to operate alongside to provide continuous air support. Beyond these expenses lies the cost of tying up that additional carrier. The four carriers required at the start of Operation Enduring Freedom resulted in no carrier presence available for the Pacific or European Commands.32 On average, the geographic combatant commanders' collective demand for carriers each year outpaces the Fleet's supply by five ships.33
Many analysts consider Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAV) to be the solution to increasing naval persistence.34 Unmanned technology should be embraced cautiously, however. The lack of on-site human presence, vital in situations with troops engaged with the enemy in which an aircrew must make rapid decisions based on experience and gathered situational awareness, makes the UCAV a poor IW platform in all but the most elementary intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions.
Neither a second flight-deck crew nor unmanned vehicles will solve the limitations presented by underway replenishment and port calls. The CVN-78 will still require replenishment under way, but those operations will be faster because of better elevators and conveyors and less frequent, thanks to larger tanks to store aviation fuel and recent food storage innovations.35 Adding the MV-22 Osprey to the carrier air wing would increase the capability to conduct vertical replenishment for most supplies except fuel. Port calls, because of their diplomatic benefits, should not be eliminated altogether but scheduled only for the beginning and end of deployments, with the understanding that three to five months will be spent on-station without break. The impact on morale should not be understated, but Navy land-based squadrons (not to mention Army and Marine ground forces) face far more rigorous deployments.
Setting Objectives
Every irregular warfare conflict exists in a unique geopolitical context and requires distinctive methods of military operation. Stating that one approach trumps another in all cases becomes a fool's errand. As such, naval aviation must set short-term and long-term objectives for enhancing its ability to support irregular warfare with carrier-based aircraft.
In the short term, the Navy must fully embrace the prospect of sending aircraft ashore when the benefits outweigh the risks, as they did in recent operations. Making carrier air power available every hour of the day will not conquer the limitations imposed by distance. Certain operations may allow aircraft to be land-based much closer to the fight than an aircraft carrier in the littorals. Because of misplaced fears of jeopardizing the relevancy of the aircraft carrier, the Navy has land-based only small numbers of carrier aircraft and personnel. All carrier squadrons should be properly trained and equipped for potential expeditionary operations on every deployment.
Land-basing is not a panacea, however. Airfields ashore take time to build or adequately renovate and are subject to tenuous agreements with host nations. They also provide large and vulnerable targets for insurgent forces. Furthermore, reliance on shore-basing as a preferred solution risks raising a generation of naval aviators with limited experience operating from a ship and conducting missions in a maritime environment.
In the long term, the Navy should examine five methods to change the nature of carrier operations:
- Adjust mindset and doctrine. The primary metric for maximizing air power in IW should not be the number of sorties launched and recovered per cycle but rather the number of cycles available for flight operations per day. Many cycles may only launch a handful of aircraft, but those few sorties are vital to maintaining persistent and continuous air support for ground forces.
- Second flight-deck shift. Manning levels must be re-distributed appropriately by taking advantage of systems technologies and process improvements.
- Pre-deployment training and certification. The requirement and capability of long-term continuous flight operations will not become reality without established training metrics.
- Streamline underway replenishment evolutions. Minimize impact on flight operations through design enhancements.
- Re-evaluate port calls. Place a higher priority on supporting ground forces and delay shore liberty in combat areas of responsibility until relieved by the next carrier.
Ultimately, the Navy must assess each situation through careful analysis of the risks and benefits and decide the most appropriate course of action: sea-basing or land-basing. The ability to adapt to the realities of a conflict and capitalize on available strengths must be the overriding factor in such decisions. Thus, the Navy must prepare for future irregular operations by fully investing for both contingencies not only with dollars but also with personnel, training, and doctrine.
1. VADM Charles W. Moore, USN, and LGEN Edward Hanlon, USMC, "Sea Basing: Operational Independence for a New Century," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 2003, pp. 80-85. http://web.ebscohost.com.
2. U.S. Department of Defense, Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept Version 1.0, (Arlington, VA: Department of Defense, 11 September 2007), p. 7.
3. CAPT Ed McNamee, USN, OPNAV N885E (Future Aircraft Carrier Requirements- CVN-21), phone interview with author, 13 December 2007.
4. Defense Science Board Task Force, Future of the Aircraft Carrier (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, October 2002), http://www.policyfile.com, p. 5.
5. Moore and Hanlon, "Sea Basing."
6. C. E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, 3rd ed. (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1906; Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), p. 21. Citation is to the Nebraska edition; U.S. Departments of the Army and Air Force, Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict, FM 100-20/AFP 3-20 (Washington, DC: Departments of the Army and Air Force, 1990), 1-1.
7. Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept, p. 8.
8. Ibid., p. 17.
9. James S. Corum and Wray R. Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars: Fighting Insurgents and Terrorists (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2003), pp. 434-36. Air power "provides the flexibility and initiative that is normally the advantage of the guerilla."
10. U.S. Department of the Air Force, Irregular Warfare, AFDD 2-3 (Washington, DC: Department of the Air Force, August 1, 2007), p. 1.
11. Irregular Warfare Joint Operating Concept, C-6.
12. Angelyn Jewell, Sortie Generation Capacity of Embarked Airwings (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, December 1998), pp. 28-29, 100.
13. Angelyn Jewell, Timothy Roberts and Kevin DeBisschop, Manning to Maximize Carrier Firepower and a New Structure for the Carrier Reserve Units (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, February 2002), p. 4.
14. LCDR Christopher Sullivan, USN, CVW-7 Assistant Operations Officer, email message to author, 18 March 2008.
15. Sullivan, e-mail message to author, 12 December 2007.
16. Curtis A. Utz, Mark L. Evans, and Dale J. Gordon, "The Year in Review 2005," Naval Aviation News, July-August 2006, p. 26, and "The Year in Review 2006," Naval Aviation News, July-August 2007, p. 18, http://www.proquest.umi.com.
17. Frank N. Latt, "Carrier Strike Group TACAIR Expeditionary Operations Ashore: Every Sailor A Rifleman," (Master's Thesis, Marine Corps University, 2005), pp. 37-39, http://12.1.239.226/isyspeq.html.
18. Owen R. Cote, Jr. The Future of Naval Aviation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Security Studies Program, February 2006), p. 15.
19. Mark S. Leavitt, Jeffery M. Vorce and Michael M. Hsu, "For Compassion and Country-Unified Assistance," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, April 2005, pp. __ http://proquest.umi.com.
20. Robert Kaplan, Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 147.
21. Dr. Timothy Roberts, Director Aviation Systems and Technology Team, Center for Naval Analyses, interview with author, 21 December 2007.
22. Leavitt, Vorce and Hsu, Proceedings.
23. Roberts interview.
24. Roberts interview.
25. Jewell, Sortie Generation Capacity of Embarked Airwings, p. 101.
26. Roberts and McNamee interviews.
27. "CVN-21 Program Readiness Review," OPNAV N885E PowerPoint brief, provided on 17 December 2007 by CAPT Ed McNamee, USN.
28. McNamee interview.
29. Andrew Scutro, "Downsizing on the Decks," Navy Times, 22 October 2007, p. 12.
30. Reuven Leopold, Sea-Based Aviation and the Next US Aircraft Carrier Design: The CVX (Cambridge, MA: MIT Security Studies Program, 1998), p. 13.
31. Adam Siegel and Robert M. Schatzel, "CVN-21 HSI" Wings of Gold, Spring 2004, p. 30.
32. Benjamin S. Lambeth, Air Power Against Terror: America's Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2005), p. 332.
33. McNamee interview.
34. Quadrennial Defense Review Report, p. 46, and McNamee interview.
35. McNamee interview; and Gidget Fuentes, "Getting Fresh: Carrier Tests Promising Produce Packaging," Navy Times, 25 February 2008.