Big Carriers and Fighting Submarines

Our favorite person to disagree with, Mike Burleson, has written an editorial this week that highlights the conflict between the conventional wisdom and operational reality the US Navy faces when communicating with the public at large. Mike, indeed millions of other Americans, actually believes this stuff.

Unable then to adapt to changing conditions of warfare, stuck in a untransformative rut, unable to reduce its size and hence its great cost, non-stealthy and increasingly unaffordable, we can only conclude that the days of the flattop aircraft carrier are numbered.

Thanks then to unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles, already tested and deployed on submarines and surface ship, every warship has become an aircraft carrier, just in time to take hold of the new warfare.

Mike may or may not be aware, but there is a school of thought in Surface Warfare that truly believes the massively armed surface combatant can replace the aircraft carrier. That school of thought is absolutely inaccurate. Mike's article is a comprehensive look at aircraft carriers, told from the perspective of the Air Force, suggesting that just about every possible alternative has replaced the necessity for large aircraft carriers, and the future is in fact small aircraft carriers.

Here is the problem though, we are willing to bet Mike, and others who believe precision guided cruise missiles are ready to replace aircraft carriers, have never actually participated in a real war game where these theories are tested. In these war games a single truth is learned about the US Navy's surface combatants, all those precision cruise missiles are usually gone by day 2 of the war, meaning the Navy would be left with this massive fleet that has to turn around for port to reload if it wants to stay on offense. Logistics, logistics, logistics... nothing can sustain itself at sea like the aircraft carrier, and the technology to reload a cruise missile in a MK41 while underway in blue water does not exist.

The days of the large deck aviation ship are far from numbered, indeed with the USS George H. W. Bush (CVN 77) and the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), both paid for and neither in the fleet yet, means large deck aircraft carriers will serve in the Navy until at least 2060. Mike mentions, then apparently ignores that study after study continues to highlight the large deck aircraft carrier is the most "efficient way to deploy naval aircraft by sea."

We also completely disagree with the suggestion that it would somehow be cheaper to build many small aircraft carriers as opposed to fewer large aircraft carriers. Section 122 of the FY2007 defense authorization act [H.R. 5122/P.L. 109-364 of October 17, 2024]) establishes a cost cap for the Ford class CVNs to be $8.1 billion in FY2006 dollars. The cap is actually higher than the expected cost of CVN-79, which last we heard is still estimated at $7.4 billion in FY06 dollars.

The aircraft carrier is not simply the symbol of naval power from the cold war era, it is the foundation of forward deployed national military power in the 21st century, and represents a national investment towards the strategic interest of the United States. We reject the suggestion that there is a way to put precision weapons in a position to be used in war more cost effectively than the large deck aircraft carrier. We believe it would require some creative arithmetic to suggest some number of smaller aviation ships would be capable of bringing that much capability to the fight for the same cost. The Ford class, which will have 2000 fewer sailors over a 50 year lifetime and does not require a mid-life overhaul to its nuclear power plant, even with a higher up front cost is ultimately a less expensive national investment than the current Nimitz class CVN. In other words, big deck aviation is getting less expensive than in the past, not "increasingly unaffordable" as is suggested.

Mike is no ones fool, particularly in regards to naval power under the sea, and he does make an important point that we want to discuss.

At the same time the nuclear attack submarine and new AIP (air-independent propulsion) boats have become awesome weapons of war. Invulnerable as they are to most of the new precision arms, they are the ultimate stealth platforms.

Nothing is Invulnerable. In those same war games revealing surface combatants end up shooting off all available cruise missiles in the first few days of war, should escalation to nuclear war occur, everything on the surface is destroyed in those scenarios, and nothing is left but submarines.

The AIP submarine is not a trivial threat, submarines dominate the maritime domain like no other platform built for war. The anti-access/area denial capability of conventional submarines is the single most difficult conventional weapon challenge facing the US Navy in the 21st century. While guided ballistic missiles and super sonic cruise missiles get a lot of attention in the media, in conventional war, enemy submarines rank higher than anything in the air or on the surface. Submariners like to remind anyone who will listen, there are only 2 types of ships: submarines and targets.

But the Navy is well aware of the problem.

Iran and China operate lethally quiet diesel-electric submarines, carrier cripplers and the scourge of the surface fleet. Thankfully, so do navies from such South American nations as Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Chile. And under a seven-year-old agreement with the U.S. Navy, their diesel-electric subs regularly train in fleet exercises as opposing forces...

The Arica will be the 17th sub from South America to take part in fleet exercises under the DESI program.

Scourge of the surface fleet? Absolutely, however our favorite phrase describing submarines is one Mike has previously used: Submarines are The Insurgent at Sea.

We have previously discussed the Diesel Electric Submarine Initiative (DESI). The US leased HMS Gotland for two years to practice against conventional submarines, but gave up that lease because the Navy is getting world class training against conventional submarines in various multinational exercises and with the DESI program. Why lease cooperation when you can build it?

It is worth noting that right now, in both the Pacific and the Atlantic, there are a half dozen foreign submarines involved in multinational exercises with the US Navy. The Navy is building proficiency against world class submariners from foreign Navies, who themselves are constantly in exercises with Navies around the world in real world training exercises. In the Pacific, JDS Narushio (SS 595), HMAS Waller (SSG 75), and ROKS Lee Sunsin (SS 068) are participating in RIMPAC 2008, while off the East Coast BAP Arica (SS 36), ITS Todaro (S 526), and the nuclear powered FS Amethyste (S 605) are participating in "Operation Brimstone."

The US Navy is not taking the submarine threat lightly. We are on the verge of seeing the US Navy deploy the ASW module for the LCS, and while the LCS itself may have flaws, the payload package of the ASW module is an entirely new tool set for the ASW fight. Mike and I both agree on one thing, unmanned systems are the future of war at sea in the 21st Century, and we see the ASW module as a second step towards that future in dealing with conventional submarines. The unmanned payloads for ASW developed for the SSGN represent the first step.

The Navy is working hard, despite the legal issues involving sonar, to insure sailors are well trained, well tooled, and very much prepared to meet the challenges of conventional submarines in the 21st century. While it is common to see editorials highlight the increasing number of conventional submarines entering service around the world and cry threat, it is less common to see equal time given to discussing the mitigation strategies at work in the Navy to address the challenges of underwater warfare in the 21st century.

And we haven't even mentioned the US Navy's own nuclear attack submarine force... on purpose.