Behold the mighty supercarrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. I will explain why she is likely to be among the last of the warship species we may call dreadnoughts. Strictly speaking, the term dreadnought applies to the largest battleships. The first big gun battleship carrying this name was launched by the British navy in 1906, and it revolutionized naval warfare, leading to an arms race in which the great powers sought to build many ships of this type. The word literally means fearing nothing. Today, our greatest capital ship, the supercarrier, of which the U.S. Navy has 11, has a great deal to fear.
The Death of the Battleship
The aircraft carrier eclipsed the battleship in WWII. The Pearl Harbor attack on December 7,1941 provided an early demonstration of the potency of air attacks against capital ships at anchor. The decisive encounters of aircraft against battleships at sea began three days later with the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales, and ended with the sinking of Yamato in 1945. Prince of Wales and the accompanying battle cruiser Repulse were sunk on December 10, 1941 by a force of 88 Japanese bomber and torpedo bomber aircraft. Yamato, the largest battleship in the world, was sunk on Apri l7, 1945 by 280 U.S. bomber and torpedo bomber aircraft. All of the most important naval battles of WWII in the Pacific were fought by carrier-based aircraft, with battleships mainly relegated to shore bombardment and convoy escort duty. The aircraft carrier became the dominant weapon of naval warfare.
Sinking of HMS Prince of Wales
Enter the Supercarrier
With the advent of nuclear propulsion, the U.S. navy built the most powerful aircraft carriers in the world. Starting with the USS Enterprise in 1961, and culminating with the current Gerald Ford class, these enormous ships gave the navy a dominant global reach, effectively delivering a large air force to fight in any war zone in the world. No other nation has a comparable carrier fleet. Because of the importance of the supercarrier, it is guarded by an escort flotilla of frigates and cruisers armed with missiles that provide protection from enemy aircraft, missiles, and submarines. The carrier air wing includes early warning radar aircraft capable of detecting threats hundreds of miles away, and the carrier’s fighter aircraft can create a protective shield over a vast area. Attack missions are conducted by carrier planes armed with a wide variety of bombs and missiles, potentially including nuclear weapons.
Carriers Are Vulnerable
Although supercarriers are stoutly constructed, you don’t need to sink a carrier to achieve what is called a mission kill. If the catapults are damaged, aircraft cannot be launched. If the elevators are stuck, planes cannot be lifted from the hangar deck to the flight deck. If the ammunition hoists are disabled, weapons cannot be moved from the magazines to arm aircraft. If the carrier’s Hawkeye radar reconnaissance aircraft are shot down, the carrier loses its long-range defensive vision. In short, just a few missile hits can render the carrier combat-ineffective, largely nullifying the offensive potential of the entire carrier battle group. In addition to missiles, the carrier is vulnerable to submarines and flying and undersea drones. Even a swarm of fast suicide boats can threaten a carrier.
The Missile Attack Numbers Game
It is not widely understood that the Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells from which missiles are fired from U.S. frigates and cruisers are not reloadable at sea. Once its missiles have been expended, a ship must return to port to reload missiles. (The navy is experimenting with doing this at sea, but the problem of lowering a large and fragile missile into a narrow container on a vessel subject to wave and wind action is a serious obstacle.) Thus, the outcome of a missile exchange between an attacking force and the carrier’s escorts is a numbers game. A saturation attack that empties the VLS cells of the escorts puts the defenders out of action. Note that standard anti-missile doctrine dictates two interceptors must be fired against every incoming missile to achieve a kill probability above 90%.
Missile launch from VLS
Only the long-range U.S. Navy SM-6 missile is theoretically capable of intercepting hypersonic missiles, the greatest threat to the carrier. The typical U.S. carrier battle group has roughly 200 SM-6 missiles distributed across the escorting cruisers and frigates. Thus, a saturation hypersonic missile attack of 100 missiles would likely exhaust the defensive missile armament of the escorts. This would be an optimistic outcome for the defenders, assuming no technical superiority of the incoming missiles and no malfunctions of the defending missiles. A more realistic scenario would include electronic jamming, decoy missiles, terminal maneuvering of incoming warheads, and multiple attack waves, further increasing the odds against the defenders.
The Reckoning
If we calculate the cost of 100 hypersonic missiles at $25 million per round, totaling $2.5 billion, against the cost of the supercarrier at $11 billion, plus the embarked aircraft at $4 billion, plus $5 billion for the escort ships, totaling $20 billion, we get an economically favorable ratio of 1 to 8 for the attacker. Even four waves of 100 missiles each would be a favorable trade. And, of course, replacement attack missiles can be manufactured faster than supercarriers. These are crude estimates based on publicly available data, but the asymmetry is clear. War games simulating outcomes of a naval war against China in the Pacific support this pessimistic assessment.
[embedded content]
Diminishing Potency
If supercarriers are endangered by the arsenals of major powers, what about their utility in punishing smaller nations that have offended the U.S. hegemon? In the last few days the USS Harry S Truman has launched air strikes against Houthi sites in Yemen. The Houthis have responded with drone and missile attacks against the carrier force. So far, the carrier escorts have been able to fend off such attacks, but If the Houthis obtain more advanced missiles, they are likely to inflict damage on the U.S. ships. With the proliferation of relatively inexpensive anti-ship missiles, the ability of U.S. carrier forces to strike small nations with impunity will be increasingly doubtful.
Floating Pork Barrels
Building supercarriers is a profitable franchise for Newport News Shipbuilding, the sole builder of U.S. nuclear powered aircraft carriers. That’s right, this division of Huntington Ingalls Industries is the monopoly producer of a very expensive weapons system with tremendous political and military backing. Over the last 10 years, HII’s revenues have increased from $7 billion to $11 billion, with net income rising from $400 million to $550 million, most of which comes from the construction and maintenance of navy warships. Clearly the magic of the marketplace is not working in favor of U.S. taxpayers when it comes to supercarriers.
The Fate of Naval Aviators
Apart from the dubious prospects of the ships of carrier battle groups, the cultural status of naval aviators is at risk. Celebrated as military champions by films like “Top Gun,” future navy pilots may be defeated by unmanned drone combat aircraft not subject to the physiological limitations of human pilots. The superb piloting skills required to achieve carrier landings will be rendered moot by drone aircraft that can routinely land faultlessly. Thus, carrier pilots may lose not only the ships from which they fly but the basis for their high status.
How much longer?
[embedded content]What Succeeds the Supercarrier?
A pragmatic naval strategy for the USN would be to retire the costly supercarrier battle groups and replace them with many smaller, lightly-crewed vessels armed with drone aircraft and missiles. Expeditionary forces could continue to use existing amphibious assault ships with a modest aircraft and drone launch capability. Advances in automation would permit very small crews to operate future vessels, and widespread deployment of such ships would sustain the global reach of the USN. The expansion of submarine capability to include the launching of a variety of drones would add an important element of stealth to the projection of naval power. The savings resulting from such a force transformation could amount to hundreds of billions annually.
Funeral Expenses
The cost burden of the U.S. supercarriers will not end with their retirement. Decommissioning these ships will be much more expensive than scrapping their conventionally powered predecessors. The cost of decommissioning each of the 10 Nimitz class carriers is estimated to be between $750 to $900 million, compared to about $50 million for a conventional carrier. Removal of the spent fuel and disposal of the radioactive remnants of the reactor is a complex and costly process. The final resting place of naval reactors is Trench 94 at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State.
Trench 94
Conclusion
Like the physical inertia of a massive ship, the cultural inertia of the supercarrier as a symbol of U.S. military power is enormous. Evidence indicates that the supercarrier is no longer a cost-effective naval weapon system, and it will likely go the way of the battleship. It should be replaced by more numerous, smaller, and highly-automated warships. This change is likely to be resisted by a naval and political establishment deeply invested in carrier battle groups. Unfortunately, to borrow a term from accounting, the future of USN supercarriers may well be a sunk cost.
