An important way to improve the carrier’s future combat capability and urvivability in the emerging security environment is to develop and field a low-observable and air-refuelable carrier-capable unmanned combat air system (UCAS). The key national security challenges of the coming century are fighting the Long War against radical extremists, dealing with a world populated by a greater number of nuclear powers, and hedging against a rising China. These challenges will demand future air platforms with greater range (independent reach), greater persistence (ability to loiter over the target area), and improved stealth (ability to survive in contested airspace). Accordingly, in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the Department of Defense directed the Department of the Navy (DoN) to “develop an unmanned longer-range carrier-based aircraft capable of being air-refueled to provide greater standoff capability, to expand payload and launch options, and to increase naval reach and persistence.”
These are all great questions about the limitations of our carrier air power in a networked environment. I raised the problem of our carriers fighting in a networked environment eight years ago in a piece the Naval Institute purchased from me but never published. I addressed these same concerns in this post:
The emergence of network-centric warfare does not mean the near-term obsolescence of large aircraft carriers. They represent large investments and there is no need to simply retire them any time soon. The useful roles for these aircraft carriers will diminish in time, however, beginning with the forward presence role. As I noted, we've already altered our naval presence from rotating a couple carriers to forward location in favor of being able to surge a large number in a crisis. In a peacetime operating routine, aircraft carriers that sail in another nation's surveillance and strike network will be vulnerable to a bolt from the blue and may actually invite war rather than deter it. Only against enemies incapable of striking them--as was the case in both Afghanistan and Iraq--will carriers retain their power to inflict punishing destruction.
Our carriers may become the aging gunslingers relying on their reputation from the glory days. As strike platforms in the Navy's network, aircraft carriers will retain a role far decades to come, but even in this role they will face limits. The Navy will need to keep them far from the enemy, closing the range only to strike.
Carriers are the ultimate in platform-centric warfare--even with unmanned aerial combat vehicles. But network-centric warfare is our Navy's future. The gun-armed surface warship, dispersed physically but networked to mass effect at sea or against targets on land, will keep our Navy dominant as it has been for more than sixty years. I love our carriers and their historic exploits are thrilling. But we cannot hang on to them forever when new platforms for a new network are built.
Long range missiles can be included in this assessment (I was commenting specifically on Navy plans for long-range cannons).
I find it amazing that when the question of whether our carriers can successfully fight and survive in a networked environment, we assume the carrier must be the center piece of our Navy and so try to devise ways these behemoths can continue that role.
I have to ask why we have to adapt the carrier to this new environment? Why aren't we asking how we adapt the Navy to this new environment? And discussions centered on building smaller carriers half the tonnage of our current classes miss the point. Adding new-fangled UCAS to a platform with no business sailing in harm's way is not forward thinking. If carriers have a central role, it is probably better to build large carriers. But I don't think this is the proper assumption.
The real question isn't how do we make our huge carriers survivable, but how do we make our Navy the dominant naval force on the planet. We've had dominance in carrier warfare for so long that I fear we are confusing our carriers, a transient dominant weapon, with our Navy. Our Navy has evolved much over the last two-plus centuries and the important consideration is our Navy--not specific classes of ships.
I share the concerns that our carriers cannot survive in a networked environment. And my solution isn't to try to make a large square platform fit in a round networked hole with perhaps ingenious (but expensive) counter-measures, but to look at what weapons will dominate a network-centric environment.
Our carriers are living on borrowed time. As long as they face only enemies such as Iraq and Afghanistan which have no ability to strike our carriers, this won't be obvious.
Against an enemy capable of searching for, identifying, and striking our carriers, we will quickly lose a pair or so and for the rest of the war our carriers will spend their time avoiding contact and only occasionally contributing to the naval war. Meanwhile, our other naval assets--surface, sbumerged, and land-based--will carry the burden of the fight.
And with the example of large numbers of platforms operating in our own network massing firepower despite the diffusion of that firepower throughout the non-carrier fleet, we won't build any more carriers as strike platforms. I'd rather get to that decision before we lose several thousand sailors to learn the lesson.
