For U.S. power projection needs, there is still no substitute for the aircraft carrier.
Get the carriers! That was the famous order written on ready room blackboards as the carrier pilots of Task Force 58 attacked the Japanese fleet during the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944.
Over the last few years, it's seemed that plenty of influential thinkers in Washington want to "get the carriers," too, and replace them with Tomahawk land-attack missiles (TLAMs), smaller carriers, or remotely-piloted vehicles.
"Superfluous," retired Admiral Stansfield Turner said of carriers in a much-quoted July 2006 Proceedings article. Turner argued there was "less need for large carriers with large numbers of aircraft and large amount of ammunition."1
Proceedings columnist Norman Polmar took aim at carrier missions from antisubmarine warfare to air defense and made the case that 130 other ships with TLAMs were a better value than ten carrier air wings. Scrutinizers of the shipbuilding budget on Capitol Hill and elsewhere continue to point to the price-tag for the new Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78)-class carriers, sometimes using the right cost numbers, sometimes not.
Across the nation the sense is that America needs to prepare for a long-term deterrent strategy and a maritime posture that looks at challenges beyond Iraq. Certainly, plenty of technology trends are opening up great new opportunities for carriers and their air wings.
The critics are right about one thing: It's time to evaluate what the nation should expect from its 2020 carrier force.
Demand for Air Power
Carrier decisions are big commitments. These are 50-year design-life platforms and the most expensive ships in the Navy budget, and that's before the cost of the air wing is included. The next carrier, the CVN-78, will culminate nearly 20 years of design effort when she enters service in 2015.
Just what should carriers provide?
According to the critics, not much. There's a misconceived belief among them that the need for air power is on the wane. One basic line of argument is that surface ships with missiles can replace carriers in littoral attack. Branching out, critics contend that since the revolution in strike warfare increased precision strike capacity by an order of magnitude, then micro-air wings on small carriers can do the job. It's all framed in lurking suspicions about the vulnerability of carriers and a vague desire not to put all the eggs in one basket.
The trends in air warfare paint a different picture. Demand for air power is up, and the range of tasks is growing. Consider the recent slate of tasks for Navy carrier aircraft in Afghanistan and Iraq. They've done everything from providing early air support in Afghanistan in 2001 to flying more than 5,500 sorties in a little over six weeks as major combat operations began in Iraq in 2003.2 In the years that followed, they've learned to hunt insurgents, watch over convoy routes, and supply non-traditional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) from on-board systems. NATO patrols in Afghanistan do not move without air power available.
Naval aviation leadership made much of the revolution in strike warfare carried out in the late 1990s. While that was a landmark achievement, joint demand for air power didn't stop with precision.
Effective joint air operations can't be measured just by aim points struck anymore. The air component also wages a "persistence" fight in an environment rife with ungenerated aim points. Everything from convoy movement to special operations forces to signals intelligence may fuse to generate the targets. When that happens, the strike aircraft must be on hand instantly to kill the target. The net effect may be small in terms of aggregate aim points struck, but the demands on sortie generation and persistent fighter coverage are intense.
Interdiction and close air support for friendly ground forces necessitate a broad array of weapon effects. Volume of aircraft sorties and the variety of weapons available are critical for what Soldiers and Marines call "air-delivered indirect fires."
Sometimes forces want something much bigger than a Hellfire; other times they want a small weapon with a low collateral-damage footprint, or even just jet noise for a show of force. Whatever the need, aircraft carriers in the air component must be ready to do their part.
Are these operational patterns peculiar to Iraq and Afghanistan? Most don't think so. Many tactical situations demand "eyes on target" before weapon release—a fine-tuned level of control that joint force commanders have come to expect.
Fighting on a dispersed battlefield with no rear areas and few mutually supporting lines of operation is now at the core of future joint plans for maneuver in the noncontiguous battlespace. See the newest Joint Pub 3-0, or any capstone Army or Marine doctrine for details.
Overselling Missiles
Counter to what the carrier critics say, the Navy is not on the verge of swapping aircraft carriers for some other form of firepower from the sea.
Cruise missiles such as TLAMs (or conventional ballistic missiles) may have a role in certain campaigns, but it's likely to be a niche role. TLAMs are expensive when fired in quantity and also vulnerable. With a top speed of about .75 Mach, a cruise missile can be tracked by radar. Analyst Norman Friedman found that at least two, and perhaps as many as six, TLAMs flying a hasty, single-mission profile were shot down in the 1991 Gulf War.3
Even a surviving inbound missile faces a tough problem. In the time it takes to fly its course, a mobile target such as a surface-to-air missile or antisatellite launcher can rev engines and move several hundred yards—enough to negate the missile's effects.
Effective future destruction of enemy air defenses really can't be done with a missile barrage. That campaign will rely on air-launched weapons that gain survivability through velocity—ideally, weapons that can achieve low-hypersonic speeds.
Besides, how do you achieve a show of force with a TLAM?
Carriers have value beyond their kinetic effects. Their shaping influence has been a major mission with deployments off Iran this year, and will continue to be an important American tool of power and diplomacy.
Underselling the Air Wing
While air wing commanders see the demand first-hand, the higher reaches of the active-duty Navy may actually be underselling the future air wing.
America's aircraft carrier fleet in 2020 will most likely be a blend of Nimitz-class ships and Fords. The carrier air wing will include the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, the F-35C Lightning II, air-refuelable E-2Ds, cyberwar-capable EA-18Gs, and later, a Navy unmanned combat air system (N-UCAS). Also on the decks will be upgraded SH-60 helicopters, and perhaps even MV-22 Osprey tiltrotors.
From one perspective, the Navy is in an enviable position. Tough decisions to retire the A-6, the S-3, and the F-14 freed up money in aviation accounts to quickly complete the Super Hornet buy. Navy fixed-wing aircraft are a relatively young and effective force. However, the carrier air wings still face a serious challenge. They need to regain their lost advantage in range and persistence, and they must add stealth.
The F-35C brings many advantages. Its stealth will allow a carrier air wing to operate on day one in an advanced air defense environment. Forget the old debates on maintaining stealth materials at sea. The coatings on the F-35 are the best of fifth-generation stealth. They are far more durable to begin with, and the F-35 was designed without the need for intrusive inspection and extensive recoating after accessing maintenance panels. (For those who must worry, a more relevant issue to watch is the timing and configuration for communications and datalinks and how they fit with the overall DoD architecture.)
The F-35 needs to be on the deck in significant numbers, but alone it will not give the carrier all the long range and persistence it needs. A Navy unmanned combat air system could add extra punch soon after the Ford's projected 2015 launch.
Recapturing Long Range Strike
What's surprising is that the Navy is taking a cautious attitude toward the potential for unmanned, long-range strike from carrier decks. Maybe Admiral Turner was right. It's hard for military organizations to abandon familiar weapon systems—and to take on new ones.
Currently the Navy lags on unmanned planes. In 2004, the Defense Science Board concluded that there was "no longer any question of the technical viability and operational utility" of unmanned systems. Just one Global Hawk operating in Iraq in 2003 located 13 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), 50 SAM launchers, more than 70 SAM transport vehicles, and 300 tanks, the board found.4
Air operations centers rave about the value of unmanned reconnaissance and strike. The services are tussling over operational control and executive agency. Those are the earmarks of a mature operational capability.
The Naval Aviation Vision 2020 pictured a Navy ISR unmanned air system ready in about 2015, with a strike variant scheduled for initial operational capability in 2020.5 This Navy UCAS will be a stealthy, tailless vehicle about the size of a strike fighter. Over the next few years, the systems for carrier suitability (such as launch and landing) and for aerial refueling will mature. The Navy's UCAS demonstration program is exploring aspects of that technology now.
While it's still early, the Navy seems hesitant to make the logical connection between UCAS and the return of a long-range strike role for carriers. That's unfortunate, because unmanned systems should be a big part of the next revolution in strike warfare.
Here's a chance for the Navy to do something it hasn't done for some time: take the lead in development of a highly innovative air weapon system.
CVN-78 has already been designed to include unmanned systems in its air wing. Unmanned aircraft with an unrefueled range of 1,500 nautical miles could add a long-range, persistent strike capability that carriers have never had before.
UCAS is not just an ISR platform. With a notional 4,000-pound internal payload, a Navy unmanned plane could carry several types of advanced weapons, from today's 500-pound JDAM to the Small Diameter Bomb to a future evolution of AMRAAM dual-roled to strike surface-to-air missiles.
Specifically, a complement of about 12-18 UCAS on CVN-78 could sustain two or three orbits 1,000 miles from the carrier. Those orbits could carry out maritime missions or project ahead to hunt and strike targets.
A stealthy, unmanned strike aircraft has the potential to give carriers "something long missing in the carrier air wing: a capable unmanned surveillance-strike aircraft," found analysts Robert Work and Tom Ehrhard in a 2007 study for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.6
Why not leave that role to the Air Force? When carriers are the first or only responders, they will need long-range surveillance and strike as a tool for shaping the battlespace.
Granted, even a very stealthy UCAS might face trouble against masses of Chinese fighters. One role for armed UCAS in a China peer competitor scenario could be covering flanks around carrier strike groups positioned east of the Taiwan Strait. With long range, the carriers can send UCAS to keep watch over North Korea or the South China Sea.
That won't be the only mission. The combination of F-35 and UCAS provides a very attractive air power asset for other scenarios, too.
The recent creation of an Africa Command signaled that the federal government, both its military and civilian components, intends to take a more vigorous role on that continent. Given the geography of Africa (and other hotspots) there is a strong potential for missions such as hunting high-value targets, supporting special operations forces, or securing specific areas hundreds of miles inland. A carrier strike group with F-35 and UCAS might be called on to sustain both surveillance and on-call strike orbits from the sea.
Volume of support is important in such missions. For strike fighters, the joint force commander's requirement might begin with two combat air patrol stations for close air support and non-traditional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in widely separated locations. Also, there might be a need for a third deep-strike combat air patrol over a critical area.
To make a difference in this type of scenario, the aircraft carrier needs to sustain about 60 strike/ISR sorties per day for the three CAPs. That will be robust tasking for the future air wing but that's just what the nation should expect.
The CVN-78
Integrating long-range unmanned suppression of enemy air defenses, strike, and surveillance is a powerful argument for large-deck carriers with the autonomy to host their own complete air wings.
Not just any ship can support 21st-century requirements. Just a few years from now, the Navy will christen the first new carrier class the nation has seen in more than 40 years. While the Nimitz-class carriers will remain in the Fleet for some time, getting the most from carrier air power also calls for a new carrier.
With the CVN-78, the Navy has a lead ship tailored to expanding demand and diverse missions. True, the Navy made a conservative decision to stick with the Nimitz hull. That decision kept costs down, speeded up development timelines, and freed the Navy to concentrate on some big moves to gain maximum capability for the new class.
Among them are:
- Eliminating the 1950s-style steam-driven catapults and replacing them with an electromagnetic system
- Moving the island farther back, opening up more deck space
- Tripling electric generating capacity with a new electrical power-generation and distribution system
- Constructing new high-density nuclear reactors
- Redesigning "smart" spaces within the hull for net-centric warfare
- Installing equipment in modules so computer and combat systems can be upgraded or swapped out over the ship's life cycle
- Leaving room for future advances, such as directed energy weapons.
All told, CVN-78 will deliver 25 percent more sortie generation capacity and a crew that is smaller by several hundred spaces. It will also have more than 375,000 cubic feet of ammunition storage—a big boost.
It's hard to imagine a "small" carrier—even if one existed—successfully carrying out the full range of air wing missions.
Not much value is delivered to the joint force from a micro-carrier displacing 13,000 tons with only 8-12 aircraft aboard. Even the larger "small" carrier concepts at 50,000 to 60,000 tons displacement cannot embark with the full complement of aircraft needed to execute a variety of missions or sustain 24-hour flight operations.
The sea-keeping characteristics of small carriers are also a big problem. In potential hotspots such as the North Arabian Gulf or the South China Sea, it's common to experience rough seas above Sea State 5 (wave heights at 8-13 feet) during the worst months of the year. No combined forces air component commander wants to hear that excuse for sortie cancellation.
Other nations have figured out that more size equals more capability. While no international ships will be as big as the CVN-78, most new carriers are bigger than the ones they are replacing. Italy has nearly doubled the displacement tonnage from the 1980s-era Giuseppe Garibaldi at 13,850 tons to the 27,100 tons of the Conte di Cavour, due for commissioning in 2008. Britain's pair of planned new carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, will be three times bigger than its current carriers when they enter the Royal Navy around 2012 to 2015.
Focusing on Cost
Then there is cost. Carriers do have the biggest per-ship price tags in the U.S. Navy, so the cost argument is worth examining.
Research looking 30 years back and 30 years ahead shows that carrier costs haven't grown nearly as much as costs for other ships.
Rising shipbuilding costs have been a big concern for Navy future planning. In 2006, the RAND Corporation released a sobering report on how average annual costs for Navy ships grew between 7 and 11 percent per year from 1950 to 2000. That was far in excess of typical inflation rates.
RAND's analysis ultimately found that economic factors such as labor and material costs accounted for part of the cost rise, while building bigger, better and heavier ships explained the rest. As the RAND team put it, "most of the growth beyond inflation is due to changes in the customer-driven factors."7
More intriguing, RAND found that costs rose much less steeply for aircraft carriers than they did for surface combatants, nuclear-powered submarines, and amphibious ships.
Looking forward at the shipbuilding accounts, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that shipbuilding costs could exceed Navy estimates by as much as 72 percent over a 30-year period. However, on aircraft carriers, there was good news. The CBO found carriers were least likely to experience unexpected cost growth, pegging the number at just 11 percent.8
Carrier costs are remarkably stable, transparent, and in the final analysis, well worth the capability they bring.
Of course, the price-tag for the CVN is still much higher than for other ships. Yet this is balanced by the fact that the Navy is buying only a few. Over the next 30 years, the Navy projects it may buy 7 aircraft carriers. Contrast that with plans for 66 surface combatants, perhaps 88 littoral combat ships, and more than 50 attack submarines. The Navy may buy 289 ships between now and 2037 and only 7 will be carriers. In the current Navy plan, aircraft carriers account for just 12 percent (in Fiscal Year 2007) of the total cost outlay in ship construction.
Affording the 313-ship Navy will remain a challenge. But even eliminating CVN-78 altogether would do little to change the situation. Most of all, the credible power of the U.S. Navy comes from the tactical air power of its carriers. Want value to the nation? The American flattops with their mass and versatility offer more than any other military system in the history of naval warfare.
Dr. Grant is President of IRIS Independent Research, a defense consulting firm in Washington, DC.
Admiral Nathman, a naval aviator, recently retired after 37 years on active duty in the U.S. Navy including service as Vice Chief of Naval Operations and Commander, Fleet Forces Command.
Dr. Thompson is chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public-policy research organization focused on national security and other areas of federal policy.
1. Admiral Stansfield Turner, "Aircraft Carriers Are On Their Way Out," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, July 2006. back to article
2. Navy fighter sortie numbers cited in Commander, Ninth Air Force, "Operation Iraqi Freedom: By the Numbers," 30 April 2003. back to article
3. See Norman Friedman, Desert Victory - The War for Kuwait (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991). back to article
4. Defense Science Board, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles, February 2004, pp. iii-iv. back to article
5. Naval Aviation Vision 2020, p. 42. back to article
6. Thomas P. Ehrhard and Robert O. Work, The Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration Program: A New Dawn for Naval Aviation? CSBA Backgrounder, 10 May 2007, p. 29. back to article
7. Mark V. Arena, Irv Blickstein, Obaid Younossi, Clifford A. Grammich, Why Has the Cost of Navy Ships Risen? (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 2006). back to article
8. Congressional Budget Office, Resource Implications of the Navy's 313-Ship Plan, December 2005. back to article