This article takes a tour of past anti-ship threats that we've developed counters for in order to continue operating at sea. It is a good piece of context, although I'd like to add that we haven't had to test our defensive efforts in 68 years (true, Japanese kamikaze planes were like cruise missiles--with human instead of computer pilots--but we had so many carriers that we could afford losses), so how good are our defenses against the more recent threats?
That said, this is a good point:
The U.S. must stop flinching before the threat of the DF-21D and get on with the time-honored business of countering its capability.
I took a stab at thinking about countering the DF-21 by looking at the missile's kill chain that begins with locating our carrier and then hitting it successfully. Work the problem, as I often say.
And I echoed that context of not thinking of the DF-21 as a silver bullet that defeats us before having been used even once:
My basic point is that the DF-21 is not invincible. We must learn to cope with it, but it can be defeated.
Yet just saying that the DF-21 can be defeated like other weapons can be defeated, and that it is just one of many weapons that can sink our carriers doesn't end the debate about our carriers.
Our Navy's job is to control the seas. Aircraft carriers are a weapon system to achieve that goal. I know I'm saying the obvious here, but our carriers are not our Navy. Let's not restrict our thinking to how our carriers react to the DF-21 when we should be thinking about how our Navy reacts to achieve the objective of sea control:
But remember, too, that the DF-21 anti-ship missile is just one of many anti-ship weapons that can target our super carriers. My more fundamental point despite this essay on defeating the DF-21 is that I still believe the proliferation of surveillance systems and precision, long-range missiles make the end of the reign of big-deck super carrier within sight. We can cope to protect our big carriers in the short run, but in the long run our best bet is to reduce our reliance on big-deck carriers by distributing our offensive power on a larger number of smaller and cheaper (and more expendable) hulls, which would include smaller aviation-capable ships.
The DF-21 is no reason for America to retreat from the western Pacific. But it is another reason for adapting what we use to fight in the western Pacific.
The problem as I see it is that our carriers are identified as being synonymous with our fleet rather than one weapons system in a Navy that has and should continue to evolve. I'd rather think of how our Navy operates within range of anti-ship weapons than focus on our carriers. If we want naval aviation to be part of that, think of how we deploy naval aviation on survivable platforms.
A closely related problem is that we don't have a useful debate about our carriers because we forget that they have two different roles to be debated: sea control and power projection.
Sea control is fighting other navies in order to control the sea (duh). Critics of the carrier tend to focus on this aspect of the carrier's missions because it is in this mission that the carriers have their toughest survival conditions.
Power projection is striking targets on land as we've done since World War II and continuing to today with carriers providing air support to ground forces fighting insurgents and terrorists. Defenders of the carrier focus on this mission because it involves attacking enemies without the ability to target our carriers and this has been extremely useful to America for nearly 70 years.
So the two sides in the carrier debate talk past one another without accepting that we should be having two carrier debates about sea control and power projection--and have those debates in the context of how our Navy achieves both missions.
I'll state my position clearly from that sea control versus power projection post:
I wouldn't mothball our existing carriers. But I'd phase them out over decades and use the money saved for other naval platforms. They are platform-centric kings in an increasingly network-centric world. And look to alternatives to providing sea-based air power.
Defeating the DF-21 is the most narrow technical debate we are having. It isn't enough when we lack the overwhelming financial power to build enough naval assets to endure mistakes (and simple vulnerabilities) and still achieve our Navy's missions.
