The author says that the issue of carrier vulnerability is what mission can the wing achieve that is worth risking the carrier? Excellent framing.
I've been on the carrier vulnerability issue for a long time.
And his framing fits with my long-held argument that the carrier air wing is very useful for power projection missions because the carrier faces a low risk; but not as useful in the early stages of a sea control battle because enemy precision weapons with a persistent surveillance network place the carrier itself too much at risk for what could be gained with other, more numerous and less costly, assets.
Those are very different missions and each side in the carrier debate seems to mostly raise the one they like without addressing the other.
Maybe, the author writes, the carrier should be focused on sea-based air superiority missions for other assets rather than strike missions. To me, early in a battle to control the seas that might be the best mission until enemy strike assets are ground down a bit.
Let me add another angle to the framing of air wing missions versus risk to the carrier itself. If the mission to be achieved by the carrier air wing is not worth risking the carrier, are there situations where we can simply send the carrier air wing to a base ashore to carry out those missions without risking the carrier?
And as to the question of whether a carrier can be sunk or not, I don't care to enter that debate because a mission kill is as good as a sinking as far as taking a major asset off the board.
As that author, Robert C. Rubel, concludes:
More and more, missiles are becoming the principal strike weapon of all the world’s armed forces. Navy fleet design should pivot on that assumption, especially when hypersonics begin to proliferate. Once freed of the onus of being the Navy’s “main battery,” aircraft carriers could be put to more innovative uses and the actual number and type needed would be based on a different set of criteria, leading to different numbers. This, in turn, would allow the Navy to adopt a fleet design more compatible with projected technological, geopolitical, and budgetary conditions. In the final estimate, it should also obviate the futile controversy over whether aircraft carriers are vulnerable or not.
Let's have a seapower debate and not another sterile carrier debate.
