The Navy's work on hyper-velocity shells will be a great weapon for a networked fleet. It will doom the carrier for wartime roles short of having total naval dominance.
The navy is eager to use an accurate HVP on its ships because the 5-inch gun can fire up to 15 shells a minute. If the ship fire control system can find targets fast enough for the HVP this is a much cheaper ($90,000 per shell) way to defeat missile attacks. The existing ESSM missiles used for this cost a million dollars each.
I wrote about that missile defense options, which is awesome. And if the ships' defenses are networked, many fire control systems working together may be able to efficiently shoot down the incoming missiles.
Of course, as I wrote fifteen years ago, precision long-range shells will be a great improvement on missiles for offensive tasks in a networked fleet. The extended range of the rocket-assisted hyper-velocity rounds is an improvement but I'm still waiting for the ultimate gun--the rail gun--as I wrote in that post. The implications spell doom for the sea-control carrier:
In the long run, given networked and very long range cannons, large aircraft carriers will add little to most offensive missions and will absorb scarce resources and assets simply evading attack rather than striking the enemy and contributing to victory. The concentrated power of the carrier platform's air wing will simply be one element of the massed effect of dispersed attack platforms such as DD (X) achievable in network-centric warfare. An enemy will face massed firepower from all directions launched by U.S. forces wielding a plethora of weapons deployed on surface ships, submarines, and aircraft. This attack capability will be potent whether carriers are part of the network or not.
The DD(X)--the truncated Zumwalt-class of super destroyers--won't be the backbone of that fleet. But the implications of this trend will strike aircraft carriers hard:
To exploit the network, the capable surface ships we will build must be cut loose and dispersed in accordance with the logic of network-centric warfare. Aircraft carriers will not add a bang commensurate with the billions of bucks they cost. Writing just after the Kosovo War, I asked did the Theodore Roosevelt really help in Kosovo? In my opinion, no. A couple score of shooters was irrelevant in NATO's thousand-plane force.
The worst part of carriers, even if we accept that carrier-launched planes are not the most efficient or effective manner of attack in the future, is that they will grow increasingly vulnerable. Eventually, an enemy will develop a network even if it only covers their immediate area or is limited in scope. The problem of defending in a networked environment will be brutally apparent to the Navy if it fights an enemy possessing a similar attack network which will seek the high value target of an aircraft carrier. If the Navy's carriers enter an enemy grid to come within striking range, they will no longer have the safety of getting lost in the vastness of the oceans. Nor can large carriers be made stealthy enough to remain obscured within an enemy grid. They will need to dash to striking range, strike, and get out before being struck themselves.
When the Navy faces such an enemy, the carriers will be a tremendously important "something" to America, and the loss of even one will shock the American public and might well stop the war if fighting for anything short of a vital American interest. Setting a carrier afire will make excellent CNN footage.
A network does not need a high value asset. Certainly, it is true that network-centric warfare defenses can bring dispersed air defenses together to defend the carrier (if they have sufficiently long range) but why expend that effort? In a developed networked force, the aircraft carrier adds little that numerous smaller platforms cannot provide and only represents a potential loss of great propaganda value.
Heck, maybe a nuclear-powered carrier with a greatly reduced crew will simply have rail guns packed on its deck, leaving only a small deck space around an elevator for some VTOL aircraft. The ships will have a lot of life left in them, after all, even if they are too vulnerable to risk close to the fight.
FYI, in that post I noted an unpublished article that I regained the rights to and I published it as this post.
