Carriers

Hanson had a nice piece on our aircraft carriers. It is a stirring piece yet misses the impact of the changing environment. A few years ago, in '99 I believe, Naval Institute Proceedings purchased an article I wrote about the role of carriers in a network-centric environment. Basically, I wrote that as our network-centric navy is built, the value of carriers will decline; and as enemy networks are built, our carriers' value will decline. The very logic of the network will inevitably lead to their demise. Sadly, Proceedings has not actually published this article (or another one they bought earlier on Army-Marine Corps cross-attachment). On a personal note, for an author still trying to get my published works into double digits, having two bought but unpublished is frustrating. I've stopped even submitting to them (although part of that is my general focus on landpower issues).

Before carrier fans can write hate mail (and I actually count myself as a fan), I did not say they are obsolete. I did note that even as they became obsolete against networks, they would retain niche roles for use against enemies without networks (an Afghanistan scenario for example). In addition, since '99, the ability of Navy aviation to use precision weapons has leaped, making carriers more useful in the short run though they still are not immune to the logic of the network.

To explain, without rewriting the article here (and with some reflection looking back three years), network-centric warfare is a term that describes creating a sensor net that sees every enemy platform and instantly transmits their locations to the entire fleet's ships, submarines, and aircraft. The communications network allows this information sharing and allows the commander to allocate firepower distributed throughout the fleet to destroy targets. While firepower may be concentrated on a single target, their launch points are scattered. This is far different from the platform-centric fleet we have historically had. That is, to concentrate firepower, we needed to concentrate the firepower on a platform. Today that platform is the carrier and its battle group with its air wing, able to send massed missiles and aircraft against a target. It is the peak of the platform's development, surpassing the line of battleships that had dominated naval warfare for centuries.

The ramifications of fighting in a network-centric environment will kill the carrier. Most obviously, on the offense, with the ability to scatter launchers without diluting the ability to concentrate firepower, we no longer need the expensive platform of the large carrier. Yet operations like Afghanistan show that even in the missile age, carrier aviation is quite useful against an enemy without air and naval power. Indeed, even with a network-centric Navy, the usefulness of the carrier's air wing would have diminished little for this scenario. So what's my point, you may ask. If carriers remain potent concentrations of platform-centric power even in a network-centric force, why say they are obsolete?

The real challenge to carriers comes not from our network, where carriers become huge albeit needlessly expensive concentrations of power whose firepower is not diminished by the existence of the network; but on the defense against other networks. What happens when an enemy develops a network? The Taliban couldn't monitor their own airspace, but when an enemy builds a sensor and attack network that reaches out hundreds of miles, how will our Navy penetrate that grid, survive, and attack? Assuming we have scattered assets, losing some of them will not harm our fleet as a whole-other parts will fill in the gaps.

It may well be that a sensor/attack grid race will develop, with both sides (and this is hypothetical since no Navy appears able to challenge our Navy in the near future) engaged in a race to extend the range of their grids as we strive to be able to identify and attack the enemy before our own assets get hit. But if we cannot maintain such superiority and face a similar grid, any concentration of firepower becomes a priority target for the enemy. Our carriers will be hit and lost. The prestige value of losing them will offset the firepower that they carry on a single hull. The firepower can be distributed to smaller hulls and end the propaganda value to the enemy of killing carriers (egad, the Iraqis trumpeted their shooting down of an unmanned drone for heaven's sake).

Carrier defenders will counter that carriers have not been lost since World War II and that others sounded the death knell of the carrier when anti-ship missiles were deployed. They also note that airbases are subject to foreign government whims and regime changes while carriers can always be used.

But not losing any carriers in over 50 years is due to not fighting another navy, not from the invulnerability of carriers. Similarly, the advent of anti-ship missiles in a platform-centric environment limited the amount of firepower that the Soviets could mass against a single carrier had it come to war. Even with that limitation, our carriers were vulnerable though I would not have said missiles made carriers obsolete. But against a network-centric enemy, an enemy's ability to mass firepower against our carriers will not be a limiting factor that saves us. Unless defensive anti-missiles have the ability to defend a single target from all over the net, enemy offense will overwhelm a single platform's ability to defend itself. And even if we can use networked defenses to defend a carrier, why expend the huge sums of money to do it when such concentrated assets are not needed for offensive uses?

As to the sovereignty argument, how many times can we actually use that advantage of carriers--that they are sovereign assets and require no approval from host nations? First, except against coastal targets, we still need permission for overflight rights. Second, given the need for international support that even the obvious danger of addressing the Iraq problem imposes on us, how many times will we have just carriers? If we have allies, we will have Air Force bases. If we don't have enough support for the use of foreign air bases, will we really strike from the sea alone? And I'm talking about a sustained campaign, not a single retaliatory strike. If that is what we want to do, B-2s and Navy cruise missiles can handle those quick strikes. And if we do need a sustained campaign, carrier ammunition stowage isn't that great (although precision weapons do lessen this problem, aviation fuel is still a limiting factor). We'd need to rotate carriers to avoid stress accidents and to replenish carrier stores. Plus, even in Afghanistan where the Navy very impressively struck deep inland, the Navy strike aircraft relied on Air Force aerial refueling to carry out those missions--which required allies who let us use their air bases.

So, while the firepower that carriers have will not diminish as we build a network, the ability to have the same firepower on distributed hulls means that they are not crucial to generating offensive firepower. Against enemy networks, they will be tempting and irresistible targets. Although in such an environment we wouldn't build carriers, since we already have them it makes sense to keep them but to limit their use to environments that do not pose a threat to them. Like battleships before them, they will occupy a niche that will gradually narrow over the decades as our network and enemy networks develop and mature. Carrier defenders may not like to hear this, but the logic of networks spells their doom. Indeed, we will soon stop commissioning Nimitz-class behemoths, and the Navy is trying to figure out what the next carrier should look like.

Yet carrier defenders should not be disheartened. The Navy will always be crucial no matter what the main asset is. Navies have gone through ships of the line, pre-dreadnoughts, battleships, and carriers as the main platforms that defined a Navy's power. We do not mourn their passing. The new measure of power will be the network that joins scattered firepower from submarines, surface ships, land-based aircraft, and even Army and Marine Corps artillery (missile, rocket, and tube) and aviation assets into a seamless force. Nobody will care where the asset is located and what uniform is firing it-killing the target will be all that matters. Perhaps even small carriers will be part of the mix.

Large carriers will become part of the Navy's history. Keeping them beyond their usefulness will risk that glorious record and the lives of many sailors to hang on to legends. Our security is not well served by nostalgia.

[NOTE: This is from the former Defense Issues category from my original blog.]