The problem with these arguments is that the large-deck carrier’s wartime value cannot be accurately assessed
outside a major maritime campaign’s holistic context. Doing so not only reveals
that large-deck carriers’ survivability can be quite high if the combined arms
doctrine governing their employment intelligently accounts for risk, but also
that the carrier air wing’s innate capabilities will be indispensable in
helping U.S. Navy forces obtain and then exercise localized sea control when and
where operationally necessary. Such an assessment also suggests that carriers
will play crucial roles supporting Joint power projection operations, and
should a war become protracted, carriers will likely have to assume a significant
share of the Joint force’s strike tasks if an American campaign’s operational
tempo is to be sustained.
Carriers and Sea Control
A naval force’s execution
of any task, power projection or otherwise, is predicated on it securing control
of the localized sea area from which the task must be performed. This localized control is not (and cannot practically be) permanent; it only must be maintained as long as necessary to complete the task.[i] Occasionally control must be obtained over a relatively fixed area, such as when a force is
supporting a major amphibious assault. A fixed area is also desirable when the
choice is made to maximize aircraft sortie-rate efficiency during routinized overland
operations, though this can only be done at low risk when the threats facing the force
are minimal. Most commonly, though, sea control occurs as a localized ‘moving
bubble’ of maritime superiority as a force maneuvers along its voyage route or
within a large operating area.
It is easy to take localized
sea control for granted, especially considering the U.S. Navy secured it practically
by default during each of its post-1945 combat operations. The Cold War-era U.S.
Navy harbored no illusions, however, regarding the sea control challenges it
would have faced in forward areas as well as along allies’ oceanic lines of
communication had there been a direct clash with the Soviet Union. In fact, the
1980s Maritime Strategy’s much-debated concept for surface operations within
the Soviet maritime periphery was explicitly conditioned on the margin of sea
control obtainable in any given area at any given time in a hypothetical major war.[ii] Similarly,
Second World War U.S. Navy power projection in the Pacific was overwhelmingly
tied to the fleet’s ability to attain localized sea control in support of each
individual sequential operation. As such, it is worth noting U.S. Navy battleforce
operations within Japanese home waters did not begin until February 1945, and
even then consisted primarily of hit-and-run land-attack raids due to residual
Japanese sea denial capabilities. In both these historical cases, large-deck carrier
air wings’ screening, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities figured
prominently in securing the localized sea control needed for power projection tasks.
It is true that from
December 1941 through the early 1980s, the large-deck carrier’s primary sea
control role supporting power projection was to protect itself from attack.
This was because carriers, by virtue of hosting the air wing’s strike aircraft,
represented the fleet’s core land-attack assets. The other warships within a
carrier group therefore served almost exclusively as defensive screens.
The U.S. Navy’s
fielding of the Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile altered this arrangement.
Launchable by submarines and surface combatants alike, Tomahawk permitted
striking power’s distribution throughout a dispersed battleforce. What did not
change, though, was surface combatants’ reliance on the carrier’s air wing for
outer layer screening support. This support was especially crucial when sufficiently
dense, timely, or persistent land-based air support for screening was
unavailable—a common condition within contested forward zones or mid-oceanic
areas. Only the air wing under such circumstances could intercept massed multi-axis
maritime aircraft raids hundreds of miles away from a battleforce, and thereby reduce the number of inbound anti-ship missiles that friendly surface combatants had to defend against. Likewise, only the air wing could rapidly respond
to a brief detection of an enemy submarine beyond a few tens of miles from a battleforce’s
warships when land-based anti-submarine support was excessively distant.
Perhaps most significantly, only the air wing could persistently seek out and
neutralize adversary surveillance/reconnaissance patrols far beyond the
latter’s maximum effective range for detecting and classifying a battleforce warships—or
for uncovering the battleforce’s deception and concealment efforts.
The air wing’s outer layer
screening role has not evaporated. Instead, it has been tacitly deemphasized
over the past two decades of relatively-unopposed U.S. Navy operations. Aegis
surface combatants, the middle layer of 1980s battleforce air defenses, largely
became the de facto post-Cold War outer
layer due to the vastly reduced threat. Carrier and surface combatant-based helicopters
likewise served as a battleforce’s sole anti-submarine ‘pouncers’ when land-based
fixed-wing maritime patrol aircraft were unavailable.
These assignments will
likely remain adequate for most contingencies involving lesser powers, though
U.S. Navy battleforces’ standoff distances from land during a crisis or a war’s
early phases may need to be situationally increased somewhat to complicate such
an adversary’s surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting tasks. In contrast,
the post-Cold War battleforce screening ‘status quo’ will not be adequate for
contingencies involving great powers who possess theater-wide sea denial
capabilities. Under such circumstances, and notwithstanding its continuing role
providing support to maritime ground force operations, the air wing will need
to reassert its historical doctrinal role as a battleforce’s primary outer
layer screen.
Tomorrow, the doctrinal relationships between carriers and surface combatants
[i]
Julian S. Corbett. Principles of Maritime
Strategy. (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2004), 100-102, 202, 268.
[ii]
John B. Hattendorf and Peter M. Swartz, eds. “Naval War College Newport Papers
33: U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980s.” (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press,
December 2008), 82, 85, 176, 178, 183, 185, 216, 219, 297, 320-321. Of
interest, early 1980s U.S. Navy war games conducted in support of the maritime
strategy’s development suggested carrier groups could exploit Soviet strategy
and doctrine by serving as an at-sea ‘force-in-being’ that tied down sizable
Soviet air forces during a major conflict. Carriers performing this role would
operate in forward North Atlantic areas firmly controlled by NATO. See John B.
Hattendorf. “Naval War College Newport Papers 19: Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s
Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986.” (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, December
2004), 35.
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