Despite growing controversy about the cost and relevance of aircraft carriers, navies around the world are adding new ones to their inventories at a pace unseen since World War II.
The U.S. — with more carriers than all other nations combined — and established naval powers such as Britain, France and Russia are doing it. So are Brazil, India and China — which with Russia form the BRIC grouping of emerging economic giants.
Why are carriers gaining in value?
"The whole idea is about being able to project power," said Rear Adm. Philippe Coindreau, commander of the French navy task force that has led the air strikes on Libya since March 22.
"An aircraft carrier is perfectly suited to these kinds of conflicts, and this ship demonstrates it every day," he said in an interview aboard the French carrier Charles de Gaulle, which has been launching daily raids against Moammar Gadhafi's forces since the international intervention in the Libyan conflict began March 22.
Yes, against an opponent like Libya, carriers are very useful. Projecting power ashore from a floating air base us very useful in these types of conflict. Even I, critic of continuing to build these large ships in the future, recognize this utility:
Our next carrier will be the giant CVN-21. Aircraft carriers are wonderful weapons for fighting small nations without significant air or naval power. Afghanistan and Iraq are good examples of how this has worked well for us. North Korea would be another. Any little brush fire around the world would, too. The problem comes with fighting a country with significant air and naval power.
Ah, but what if you face an opponent that isn't helpless to strike? Back to the article:
Some critics say the entire concept of the seagoing air base is now antiquated. They contend that advances in anti-ship weapons have turned the carriers into white elephants that are just too expensive to risk losing in a war.
While the mammoth floating airports bristling with jets and missiles appear invincible, the reality is that since World War II they have mostly been used in conflicts with far weaker opponents. They have yet to face off against modern navies with their array of carrier-killing ballistic missiles, super-torpedos, and supersonic cruise missiles.
In a couple decades, it is reported in the article, carriers could be out of business. I'd guess that is too pessimistic if the question is how long big carriers will retain a role in increasingly niche markets against helpless enemies without the means to find or attack targets at sea. Back to my post:
Right now, our carriers with manned aircraft are still a tremendous asset. But as the years go by, cheap precision missiles will erode their value. Several decades in the future, carriers may be too big and expensive to risk entering an enemy's array of sensors that can detect and guide missiles to overwhelm a carrier's defensive systems. Since carriers last five decades or more, the carriers we have now could last through the period of their fighting value and phase out as their vulnerability becomes too great. Should we build large carriers anymore?
I link to a number of other posts exploring this issue in that post related to the concept of network-centric warfare at sea. This is one of the earliest, building on work I'd done for an article the United States Naval Institute purchased from me in 1999 but never published. In that post, I ended it:
I almost feel sorry for our potential enemies who try to match our carriers (at great expense) just as we supplant them.
But we don't seem to be supplanting these pinnacles of the platform-centric era in favor of more numerous ships and submarines (and land-based aircraft) suited for fighting and surviving (and being affordable when lost) in a network-centric environment.
Large carriers are doomed given the trends. I'd hate to be the last navy relying on big deck carriers. Remember, just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it right.
