We may be reaching the end of the dominance of US aircraft carriers

Hot Air.com ^ | February 23, 2016 | JAZZ SHAW

[SampleMan]

This crap again?

Aircraft carriers were attacked with bombers, torpedoes, Kamikazes and many were sunk. So?

Aircraft carriers have never enjoyed free reign and never been invulnerable, they go in harm’s way.

The question is, how are you going to control the seas and project power over land without them? Surface ships can’t do it and neither can submarines. And the USAF can’t deliver the goods. So what are you going to do without aircraft carriers?

Anti-ship missiles are no magic bullet. Deadly yes, but not magic.

[terycarl]

Cruise missiles and submarines could eliminate most if not all on Day One.

who's??

[SampleMan]

Cruise missiles and submarines could eliminate most if not all on Day One.

Really? I suppose that is true if they were anchored and awaiting destruction. Same comment has been true sense 1941, and yet, they are still the greatest offensive power on the waves.

[Mariner]

"Cruise missiles and submarines could eliminate most if not all on Day One"

Not likely.

You have to understand the role of the Carrier. They are not there for sea control and it's generally expected that hostile ships and subs have either been eliminated and/or driven out of the area they intend to operate.

Air supremacy is also necessary.

Carriers are designed for power projection only. As simple as a floating airfield.

They should be LAST to join the battle. And once there be able to sustain attacks for weeks and months.

They are not designed to fight other ships or aircraft. That work is supposed to be done before they get on station.

[SampleMan]

Sure. Brilliant mines that have unrestricted energy, last forever, cruise the entire Pacific, and apparently have better sonar capability than a U.S. SSN.

Is that alien technology that they captured from a UFO?

[MinorityRepublican]

Aircraft Carriers are vulnerable but we’re not going to war with Russia or China. We’re likely to continue fighting non-state actors in Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc.

[nathanbedford]

This is not a new subject for consideration, the eclipse of the Nimitz class aircraft carrier has been hull up over the horizon for some years. Here are two replies from 2015:

Here we have yet another article which over the years have come dribbling in which cumulatively raise the question whether the romantic age of the aircraft carrier, with whom the man in my tagline below is so intimately associated, is drawing to a close. Is the age in which the United States can resort at will to super carriers to project power around the world coming to a close, forcing us to other platforms, other tactics and other strategies?

We have previously been reading that the Chinese are developing missiles intended to strike carriers from a distance while the American Navy has been transitioning to planes with shorter range creating an obvious vulnerability to the skin of the carrier despite undoubted multiplicity of defensive weapons. It is the old problem of cost vs. gain and it will take an intrepid president indeed to send the carrier into harm's way where it can be taken out by the odd missile. It would be politically disastrous to lose a carrier and it would be disastrous to America's image as a superpower to do so.

One then begins to think that the application of carriers will resemble 19th century British gunboats patrolling colonial waters showing the flag and offering a whiff of grape if required to intimidate the native populations. It is one thing to send a super carrier against the Third World country and quite another to risk it against the missiles soon to be produced in staggering quantities by the world's second (or perhaps even first) economy.

So the first question is whether we need 13 carriers if within a reasonable timeframe they cannot be deployed except with extreme risk? Should we not be diverting precious defense funds to other platforms such as submarines or satellites? In any event, how do we maintain American power in places like the South China Sea if our carriers are in fact exposed?

The questions get worse: with the advent of this gunboat missile technology are we not in the foreseeable future facing an imbalance or asymmetrical naval battlescape in which we will be risking multibillion-dollar carriers against cheap but lethal and, more importantly, multiple missile capable gunboats? A retired naval captain once described the war in Korea to me as follows: we loaded a very expensive bomb onto a very expensive airplane whereupon a very expensively trained pilot flies it off the deck of an extremely expensive aircraft carrier and seeks a target in North Korea. They find an oxcart, fire the missile, consume expensive fuel and return to the carrier having a successfully completed mission. Two North Koreans climb out of the ditch observe their dead ox, gather the splinter wood from the cart with which to build a fire and eat the ox. Who won?

We have to run a cost-benefit analyses and we have to decide whether we have the right tools for the theater. We have to know this 30 years in advance. And we have to do it with defense in mind and not politics, with a concern only for the security of the nation and not the pork at home, with a scrupulous regard for the precious nature of our Armed Forces and a rigid indifference to the temptations of social engineering such a top-down organization as the American military represents to God playing leftists.

-------------------

We are turning into a new era and one might question whether it is wise to absorb the lessons of World War II for the 21st century. In warfare, technology is always overturning the conventional wisdom. Now it is the turn of aircraft carriers to face that fate which they had earlier imposed on battleships. We are now in an age of lasers, satellites, drones, missiles and, above all, nuclear weapons. The role of aircraft carriers is obviously going to be reduced to something similar to the role gunboats played for Victorian Britain, effective to maintain peace on the beat against Third World players but too vulnerable to risk against world-class antagonists like China.

So this brings the cost-benefit equation into play. And it brings it into play at a time when America is no longer the greatest economy on earth, our potential adversary now is, our string of alliances look more like tripwires than allies, our domestic economy might well be going into recession after seven years of muddle, and our politics, to put it generously, are in disarray. We have no obvious national security strategy, no effective implementation of policy anywhere, and no prospect of acquiring these things before January 2017 at the earliest.

Meanwhile China gets richer and we get poorer, more divided and more vulnerable. There is no national sense of urgency and no national sense of a need to reform our defense strategy or our budget sheet. These are the circumstances under which we have to rethink how our wars shall be fought, financed, and won. Whom can we trust to make these decisions, Barack Obama? John Boehner and Mitch McConnell? Who will decide if and when we are going to gradually abandon aircraft carrier technology for satellites, lasers and cyber attacks?

The question is when and whether we will have the right stuff?

[refermech]

Probably forward based drones are in the future. These big targets, while still useful are on their way out.

[central_va]

I have a feeling one day there will be a CVN named the USS Donald Trump.

[Gen.Blather]

While I have no idea what powers the Chinese mines, I can say that restrictions on energy for the US are political and Green agenda driven. The Chinese are not so restrained. (Incidentally, the accompanying graphic showed something like a torpedo.) But a mine powered by the technology at the link below should be good for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery

[nathanbedford]

I can well imagine USS Donald Trump, the biggest, glitzyist, most expensive aircraft carrier ever made equipped with gaming tables, titty bars, and the name TRUMP emblazoned everywhere - built by a nation just before it declared bankruptcy.

[Dartman]

re Post 31
Heh ...heh ...heh. Yer right.

[SampleMan]

Perhaps it’s powered by pixy dust.

Seriously, captor mines are nothing new, and neither is the idea of magic weapons.

[SampleMan]

Forward based drones? Well hell, if you can guarantee us forward bases within striking distance of the enemy and drones that can’t be jammed, then by all means retire those CVNs.

[encm(ss)]

There are only two kinds of ships.
Submarines and Targets.
Check my tagline.

[Scrambler Bob]

Especially if they go Kamakazi.

[grey_whiskers]

Islands cannot be sunk (except Guam, which is liable to capsize)...but neither can they run away or relocate.

[taxcontrol]

I am of the opinion that what is needed is a true missile defense boat. Laser or kinetic weapons, long range detection, identification, lock on and eliminate incoming missiles. I’m thinking nuke powered with range and speed to keep up with the carriers. Say 4 of these around the carrier group.

Something Aegis like but more for cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles.

[Smokin' Joe]

It shouldn’t take too much to build and deploy something which would alter the sonar signature of a vessel. That would be a countermeasure.

[Smokin' Joe]

Is that alien technology that they captured from a UFO?

Probably got the Clintons to throw it in with the missile tech and the NEST data...