Sure:
I came away from today’s well-informed and energetic discussion with confidence that aircraft carriers will continue to generate the offensive and defensive strength around which our Navy is organized to fight. ...
Fleet and combatant commanders are unequivocal and unrelenting in their requests for carrier strike group deployments.
No doubt carriers are requested a lot. They are a great power projection platform when nobody can shoot at them. Since we are at peace with those who can threaten the carriers, of course combatant commanders want them. But there is a significant difference in the value of carriers in that mission and in sea control against a major air-sea power.
No doubt the big carrier will continue to be the core of our fleet's offensive and defensive firepower. The real question is should they be. I've long thought that era is clearly ending (if not ended).
This argument from the admiral is not convincing in regard to that question:
Some have noted that our adversaries have improved their anti-ship weapons. This is nothing new, nor does it mean that our carriers are defenseless.
In World War II, America’s carriers faced a threat from torpedoes and dive bombers. During the Cold War, adversaries fielded air-launched, supersonic, nuclear-tipped missiles. Today’s missiles employ hypersonic speeds and ballistic trajectories.
Through it all, the U.S. Navy has developed and will continue to develop superior weapons and tactics to stay ahead of the threats. Carriers are mobile, defendable, and durable.
Let's look at those defenses of the carrier as the center of our efforts.
I concede that the ships are mobile. And unless sunk are surely durable as far as service life is concerned. The question is whether we can successfully defend them.
Yes it is nothing new that new weapons are developed. And of course our carriers aren't defenseless.
But our carriers haven't actually been attacked by those new and improved anti-ship weapons since World War II.
And in World War II we lost 4 big carriers and 7 smaller carriers when facing more primitive threats. We didn't stay ahead of the threats except by building so many carriers that we could afford the losses.
And do we even need to bring up what happened to Japan's carrier fleet? And even if our carriers are as relatively robust as Musashi was in 1944, 36 hits did sink that armored battleship. Defenses--even if active ones now supplement passive defenses--can be overwhelmed.
In a network-centric world, carrier costs (including the ships and effort needed to defend the carriers) outweigh their contributions in war. Good Lord, Ford isn't even debugged yet!
We have too few to lose any if they are the core of our naval power. It is wishful thinking to believe they are too big to sink.
And a burning hulk mission-killed is no more useful in the short run (months or even a year or two) than a carrier sent to the bottom of the ocean.
I hope we truly do have a seapower debate rather than a sterile exercise that validates the status quo by design.
