The Common Problem . . .

is that the only thing more expensive than preparing for war is losing one. As combat lethality grows, so do combat platforms.

Since WW2, aircraft carriers have become larger, more expensive, and more capable. So have pickup trucks. Pickups aren’t going obsolete anytime soon, and neither are carriers, largely for the same reason. No other automobile has the same flexibility as a pickup, and no other combat platform has the same flexibility as a carrier.

Especially in a degraded communications environment following any significant anti-satellite operations by a peer/near-peer adversary, having all the air combat roles filled from one launch site will be a major advantage. A Carrier Strike Group (CSG) is the only combat force capable of doing that from a mobile location, vastly less vulnerable to ballistic missiles, nuclear or conventional. Organically multirole, the CSG is already built to operate on its own high-bandwidth networks. The Air Force is just now getting comfortable with sensor fusion; the Navy has built every major surface combatant since the 1970s to take advantage of it. What do you think Aegis is? Now, the Navy is upgrading their AWACS and strike fighters to data-share with Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter-Air. If a Navy platform can see it, every other Navy platform in weapons range can shoot it.

A Carrier Air Wing can conduct: persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance; , anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare; suppression of enemy air defenses; precision strike; and electronic intelligence/electronic attack. Add in that the Navy basically invented beyond visual range anti-air warfare with the F-4 Phantom (originally a Navy fleet defense interceptor), then refined it into Outer Air Battle (air-based anti-access/area-denial) with the F-14/E-2 pairing, and you have the entire spectrum of tactical air warfare. Current proposals of “distributed lethality,” putting more anti-ship and land attack missiles on smaller ships, is an excellent way of putting combat power where a carrier isn’t. Air power has three key advantages over ship-launched missiles. What air power can do, that missiles cannot, is extend the engagement envelope along a given threat axis. Smart bombs, no matter how many sensors you strap on, are cheaper than cruise missiles. Air-launched missiles start higher and faster, so have far more capability in attacking maneuvering air targets.

Many critics of the big-deck carrier point to advances in anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities by several nations? Please. The entire point of a CSG is that it performs A2/AD. Everything but the flattop itself is there to stiff-arm the opposing force and keep it a certain distance from the carrier. Having trained to fight in that manner for 70 years, the Navy also has a good idea how to keep someone else from doing it to them. The Navy has been training against saturation missile strikes every day since sometime in the 70s. Navy ships have the powerplants to run kinetic-scale lasers or microwave emitters, as well as electromagnetic railguns. Large Air Force strike aircraft do not, much less fighters. Using bigger and more reliable versions of what is already built, no theoretical physics in play, US Navy ships are already being built to deploy laser-based close-in weapons systems, for missile defense. For a fight against a peer/near-peer adversary more than 5-8 years into the future, US navy platforms could reasonably use railguns to shoot down enemy maritime patrol aircraft from a hundred miles away, or sink fast, missile-armed ships from two hundred or more. Right now, US Navy warships carry Enhanced Sea Sparrow missiles, which allow 4 surface-to-air missile to be packed into one launch tube. An enemy might fire hundreds of missiles at a carrier. One escort could fire back hundreds of defensive missiles. No other combat platform, no other concept of operations, utilizes and counters A2/AD so thoroughly, so US policymakers should recognize A2/AD as a US strength.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Instead of seeing A2/AD as the death knell of the carrier, military planners ought to recognize it as an opportunity to use the carrier the way it was originally designed. US carriers may not have fought ship-to-ship since World War 2, but every carrier sailor has heard tales of the Battle of Midway, where carriers first proved themselves as the centerpiece of a battle fleet. Using the Carrier Strike Group’s own abilities in A2/AD, the carrier can be deployed against a section of ocean 200 miles by 200 miles, and remove all enemy combat power from that area. Then it can pick another area and do it again tomorrow, but 500 or 1,000 miles away. Vector an Air Force strike package through that area, using the carrier’s air power to protect the larger support planes, and you have a powerful synergy of combat capability.

Copyright 2018 by J.D. Lewis

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