I found it interesting that Truman will be retired at its half-way point rather than spend the money to refuel and update her:
Amidst rising anxiety over whether the US Navy’s thousand-foot-long flagships could evade Chinese missiles in a future war, the Pentagon has decided to cut the aircraft carrier fleet from 11 today to 10.
By retiring the Nimitz-class supercarrier USS Truman at least two decades early, rather than refueling its nuclear reactor core in 2024 as planned, the military would save tens of billions on overhaul and operations costs that it could invest in other priorities. But the proposal, part of the 2020-2024 budget plan due out mid-March, is sure to inspire outrage on Capitol Hill.
And then I read this article:
Last year, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis and his staff had a bitter argument with U.S. Navy leadership over an issue that cuts to the very core of America’s maritime force: the future of the aircraft carrier.
The bruising debate over the most tangible symbol of U.S. military dominance pitted die-hard carrier advocates—who believe the flattop and its tactical aircraft are key to projecting power —against those who, like Mattis, believe that the days of the carrier are over as Russia and China develop long-range missiles and sophisticated overhead satellites.
The problem is that the carrier is the key to projecting power. And Mattis was right that the days of the carrier are over with opponents like Russia and China with a surveillance-strike network.
I have long been in the "Mattis" camp on this--dating back to the late 1990s as I note in this post--despite the fact that I cherish the role the carriers played in World War II and what they have done in the decades since then.
The key is appreciating the often-overlooked distinction between "power projection" and "sea control"as I described here:
The debate over the survivability of our large aircraft carriers is not a simple debate over whether they are more useful than they are vulnerable and expensive. They are both--depending on the mission.
Against enemies without the anti-ship capabilities that states like China (and Russia to a much lesser extent) are building, the carrier is a vital asset. But the carrier's days are truly over if they have to face such capabilities. In that case it would be far better to have land-based air and missile power backing up dispersed surface- and submarine-carried anti-ship missiles (or rail guns).
If the Mattis position reflects wider thinking and leads to the phasing out of American carriers as the central asset in the sea control mission, I'm all for it, as I wrote in that apples and oranges 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.
If we still find we need sea-based aviation for power projection missions, the rise of precision weapons means that the smaller (than super carriers) Marine amphibious ships that carry F-35Bs will be able to handle the lower sortie rates that precision allows for destroying targets ashore.
