Five Tests for Alternatives to the Large Deck Aircraft Carrier

What could an allegorical fence in the English countryside possibly have to do with a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier? If you’ll indulge me, I’ll explain.

I’ve written before that while there’s no one right way to think through and argue the complex questions in a policy debate, there is at least one wrong way. A famed parable written by early 20^th Century English theologian G.K. Chesterton makes the same case, only far more eloquently:

“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox.  There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road.  The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think.  Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there.  It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep.  It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody.  And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable.

It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served.  But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

Like Chesterton’s fence, the large-deck carrier did not just spontaneously materialize. It is the product of a century of human efforts that incrementally evolved and were evolved by the field of naval warfare. Every change in carrier design, air wing configuration, maritime aviation doctrine and operating concepts, and so on can be traced to one or more strategic, operational, tactical, organizational, or political purposes. Not all of these purposes were wise or enduring, but that’s where the methodology Chesterton proposed in his parable fits in.

If one seeks to reduce or remove the large-deck carrier from Navy force structure, one must articulate the purposes the carrier was designed to serve, judge whether any of those purposes remain relevant, and lastly propose some alternative (be it a new platform or a family of platforms) that fulfills the purposes judged to remain relevant—or otherwise acknowledge the consequent decline in the Joint force’s capacity and capabilities. I summarized the first two steps in my series on the large-deck carrier last fall. As for the third, I would suggest that any alternative to the large-deck nuclear-powered carrier must at minimum pass each of the following five tests:

1. Can the alternative perform both power projection and sea control tasks? Carriers are commonly thought of as platforms for hurling land-attack strikes at an adversary. This overlooks the fact that in major war they more typically have served to enable maritime forces to seize and sustain temporary localized sea control for specific operational purposes, one of which can be land-attack strike.
2. Does the alternative enable the timely and persistent employment of large tactical aircraft, whether manned or unmanned, over maritime areas far from friendly defensible airbases on land? An aircraft carrier’s ability to operate in relative proximity to objective maritime areas promotes faster responses and longer on-station persistence than may be possible from in-theater airbases. This is especially the case if the airbases nearest to such areas lie well within the adversary's offensive striking reach. Furthermore, a tactical aircraft must be relatively large if is to carry heavy payloads and fly long distances at a medium to high subsonic speed or otherwise remain aloft for long periods of time. Only a large-deck carrier can launch and recover these kinds of aircraft at sea. Particularly important are Airborne Early Warning aircraft with large-aperture radars, which I have previously noted serve as the keystone of sea control. Long-range/long-endurance fighters are similarly valuable to sea control, as they can enable interdiction of “archers” well before the latter can launch their “arrows” at defended aircraft and ships. A large-deck carrier can enable sizable proactive or responsive screening support to surface forces, and a dispersed multi-carrier battleforce can enable persistent screening support in mass of such forces.
3. Can the alternative achieve a high sustained strategic speed as well as protracted operational endurance? The nuclear-powered large-deck carrier can move between (or within) theaters faster than any other surface platform—and never requires refueling to do so. Only the air wing’s fuel and ammunition, plus the crew’s food and stores, require replenishment. And the carrier’s vast storage space allows it to operate for long periods of time between replenishments.
4. How extensible is the alternative to incorporating new aircraft and shipboard systems? The large-deck carrier’s size and facilities have proven highly capable over the decades of operating each successive generation of aircraft. Similarly, the carrier’s size—and the availability of vast electrical power from its nuclear reactors—have allowed it to take on each successive generation of shipboard warfare systems.
5. Would the alternative be able to take on an increasing share of the joint force’s strike tasks in a major modern protracted conflict as long-range missile inventories are depleted? History tells us that guided munitions will be expended in war at a rate well in excess of what peacetime planners expect. Long-range missiles are central to modern warfare, but their inventories will eventually be outstripped by demand in a protracted fight. This simple fact would not change if the budgetary resources used for large-deck carriers were instead reallocated towards long-range missile procurement; in a protracted war, these missiles would eventually run out. This phenomenon is not unique to naval forces or U.S. forces for that matter; adversaries will face the same constraints. A naval force will need a platform capable of delivering numerous and relatively wartime-producible weapons over long distances at opportune moments during a protracted maritime conflict. A large-deck carrier with a smartly configured and armed air wing can fulfill that role. If anything, longer-range missiles and other joint combined arms will be best used to open up temporary localized holes in an adversary’s defenses that can be exploited by reusable aircraft carrying more plentiful and readily wartime-producible shorter-range weapons. And let’s not forget that carrier aircraft can be reloaded each time they return to their ship, whereas shipboard launchers can only be reloaded upon retirement from the immediate combat area.

It is insufficient to simply declare the large-deck carrier is undesirable because it is expensive, or that it is obsolete because it can be threatened. Neither the carrier’s relative expense nor its exposure to dangerous wartime threats is particularly new in any event. If one is to advocate replacement of the large-deck carrier with something else, that something else must be able to assume the still-relevant purposes served by the large-deck carrier using ways that are superior to those of the large-deck carrier. The parable of Chesterton’s fence applies. 

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

Distributed Lethality is About Far More Than Just Ships Shooting Ships

Much of the public commentary on the Surface Navy’s distributed lethality concept focuses almost exclusively on the offensive anti-surface warfare aspects. It’s true that a large portion of the concept is dedicated towards providing as many surface combatants as possible with modern over-the-horizon anti-ship capabilities in order to increase the threats confronting an adversary's surface operations and correspondingly complicate his surveillance and reconnaissance problems. Indeed, last fall’s launch of a Naval Strike Missile from USS Fort Worth and this January’s demonstration of a Tomahawk Block IV missile in an anti-ship role have been the Navy’s most widely-referenced efforts to date in demonstrating aspects of distributed lethality.

But distributed lethality in the surface fleet is not solely about shooting other ships. Let’s revisit the January ‘15 Proceedings article by VADM Rowden, RADM Gumataotao, and RADM Fanta. In the hypothetical scenario they used to illustrate distributed lethality, a U.S. Surface Action Group (SAG) was assigned offensive anti-surface and anti-submarine tasks during the first phase of an operation to secure an unoccupied island for use as an austere forward airbase. The SAG was further tasked with defeating any adversary attempt to insert ground forces on the island in advance of the arrival of a U.S. Marine force; if any adversary ground forces did manage to get ashore the SAG would no doubt be tasked with pinning them down or destroying them via naval bombardment. Lastly, the SAG was tasked with providing Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) for the U.S. Marine lodgment once it was established. While the aforementioned scenario was likely intended by the authors to illustrate a broad spectrum of tasks a SAG might be assigned in a war, they consistently asserted throughout the article that expanded ASW and land-attack strike capabilities are just as central to distributed lethality as expanded anti-surface capabilities. I would add expanded offensive anti-air capabilities to their list, as a SAG would have to see to its own outer layer defense against an adversary's scout, standoff jammer, and missile-armed strike aircraft during periods of time (or entire operations) in which fighter support from carriers or land-based air forces was limited or unavailable. I would further add that the deeper a future SAG might operate within a contested zone, the more the SAG might need to contend with an adversary's ballistic missiles (whether they are of the land-attack or anti-ship variety).

Distributed lethality, in other words, is really about expanding the surface fleet’s capacity for offensive operations in general. Not every SAG operation would involve ships trying to shoot other ships.

It is conceivable that an adversary might curtail his surface forces’ operations within hotly contested waters outside some distance from his own coast after suffering some painful initial losses. It is also conceivable that the threats posed by both sides’ air, submarine, and land-based missile forces to each other’s surface forces might bound the locations, timing, and durations of where each side operates SAGs. This in turn might drastically reduce the frequency of SAG versus SAG engagements (or prevent them entirely, at least for a time).

U.S. SAGs might find themselves principally performing offensive anti-submarine, anti-air, or land-attack tasks for much of a campaign. U.S. SAGs might just as easily find themselves performing defensive tasks in these warfare areas, not to mention ballistic missile defense, in support of offensive (or even defensive) operations by other friendly forces. Cost-efficient offensive and defensive capability improvements that promote distributed lethality would be crucial for performing each of these tasks.

None of this should be interpreted to mean that providing our surface force with longer-range anti-ship cruise missiles (as well as the requisite over-the-horizon targeting capabilities) is unnecessary. Those specific improvements are desperately needed for restoring the surface Navy’s offensive anti-ship clout—and buttressing its conventional deterrence credibility in turn. They just aren’t the only improvements necessary to make distributed lethality viable across all the missions SAGs would probably be tasked with in a major maritime war.

It’s also worth noting VADM Rowden’s observations earlier this month regarding the two aspects of distributed lethality concept development that require the most analytical attention going forward: how SAG operations will be logistically supported, and how they will be commanded and controlled. CIMSEC has published some great pieces exploring these two critical topics, and I hope others in the naval commentary community will join in as well.

I’d also argue that more analysis needs to be done on the doctrinal relationships between SAGs and land and carrier-based aircraft. It must be understood that, contrary to some commentators’ opinions, SAG distributed lethality is not indicative of the large-deck aircraft carrier’s declining relevance or obsolescence. While there are many circumstances in which a well-outfitted SAG would be able to sustain the margins of temporary localized sea control needed to operate within opposed waters at a tolerable degree of risk without external air support, there are also plenty of circumstances in which even the most powerful SAGs would need help from ‘outer layer’ fighter screens, Airborne Early Warning aircraft, or long-range scout aircraft. Distributed lethality reflects a return to how the Navy envisioned carriers and SAGs working together at the end of the Cold War. What’s needed now is more thought regarding the specifics of how those relationships ought to be doctrinally structured under contemporary conditions, and what that ought to mean to U.S. Navy operating concepts.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

Revisiting ADM Stansfield Turner’s Classic “Missions of the Navy”

Admiral Stansfield Turner, 1983 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

“The fundamental element of a military service is its purpose or role in implementing national policy. The statement of this role may be called the strategic concept of the service. Basically, this concept is a description of how, when, and where the military service expects to protect the nation against some threat to its security. If a military service does not possess such a concept, it becomes purpose-less, it wallows about amid a variety of conflicting and confusing goals, and ultimately it suffers both physical and moral degeneration. A military service may at times, of course, perform functions unrelated to external security, such as internal policing, disaster relief, and citizenship training. These are, however, subordinate and collateral responsibilities. A military service does not exist to perform these functions; rather it performs these functions because it has already been called into existence to meet some threat to the national security. A service is many things; it is men, weapons, bases, equipment, traditions, organization. But none of these have meaning or usefulness unless there is a unifying purpose which shapes and directs their relations and activities towards the achievement of some goal of national policy.” -Samuel Huntington. “National Policy and the Trans-Oceanic Navy.” Naval Institute Proceedings Vol. 80, No. 5, May 1954.

An armed service must be able to provide solid justification for its requests to its political masters (and in a representative democracy, those who elect them to office) for a particular share of national resources. It cannot do this if it cannot clearly articulate its strategic purpose.

As Huntington alludes above, though, a service must also explain its strategic purpose to a second and equally important audience: its own rank and file. Its officers and enlisted, from the highest level staffs to the lowest level units, must understand and embrace their individual roles within the service’s corporate body. They must be informed as to which missions, tasks, and skillsets should receive the greatest share of their physical and intellectual energies, not to mention the service’s material and financial resources. A strategic purpose is essentially a form of mission command; it serves as executive guidance by which the service’s “little platoons” at all levels and in all of its organizational branches can self-organize in peace and in war for the betterment of the whole. Without this guidance, Huntington observes, the service will not be able to differentiate how the many things the nation asks it to do—or the many other things it sets forth to do by virtue of its own collective professional expertise—should be prioritized and balanced against each other. The end result of an absence of focused purpose: chaos, confusion, and “physical and moral degeneration” that percolates more-or-less out of view from outsiders until it reveals itself tragically in a moment of national need.

The U.S. Navy’s leadership of the early 1970s evidently feared exactly this kind of decay. A decade of power projection into North and South Vietnam from offshore sanctuaries had certainly educated the Navy as to the technical and tactical intricacies of conducting land-attack strikes in spite of opposition from modern air defense systems. But few of the Navy’s other missions during the Vietnam War paralleled the missions it would need to fulfill in a war against the Soviet Union. And on top of that, the Navy’s division into surface warfare, submarine, and aviation communities—and the subdivisions of each of those communities—made it difficult for the officer corps to view the service’s missions holistically.[1] The service needed a reassertion of its strategic purpose.

This was the role filled by then-VADM Stanfield Turner’s seminal article “Missions of the U.S. Navy” in the March-April 1974 Naval War College Review. His ideas and arguments regarding how the Navy should define its missions speak for themselves. I’m going to quote a few that I found particularly applicable to contemporary maritime strategic questions.

On the flowdown of operational and tactical objectives from a service’s strategic missions:

“Focusing on missions helps tactical commanders to keep objectives in mind. Anti-submarine warfare tacticians often overconcentrate on killing submarines when their ultimate objective is to ensure safe maritime operations. An example of a good sense of objectives was the Israeli achievement of air superiority in the 1967 war. Even though air superiority is traditionally thought of as a function of dogfight tactics, the Israelis recognized that shooting the enemy from the air was not the objective. Destroying Egyptian aircraft was. They employed deep surprise attacks on enemy airfields to successfully achieve this objective.”(Pg. 3)

On the necessary linkages between national strategy, a service’s definition of its missions and the allocation of resources to those missions:

“…an amorphous mass of men, ships, and weapons is difficult to manage because it is difficult for an individual to visualize. By subdividing these masses into their expected output, or missions, we are able to establish priorities for allocating resources—to know how much we are spending for different objectives and to judge their consonance with national strategy.” (Pg. 3)

On sea control as a principal mission of the Navy:

“The new term “Sea Control” is intended to connote more realistic control in limited areas and for limited periods of time. It is conceivable today to temporarily exert air, submarine, and surface control in an area while moving ships into position to project power ashore or to resupply overseas forces. It is no longer conceivable, except in the most limited sense, to totally control the seas for one’s own use or to totally deny them to an enemy.

…Four U.S. national objectives which call for asserting our use of the sea and, by the same token, denial of them to an opponent are:

·         To ensure industrial supplies

·         To reinforce/resupply military forces engaged overseas

·         To provide wartime economic/military supplies to allies

·         To provide safety for naval forces in the Projection of Power Ashore role” (Pg. 7-8)

On blockades as a method for achieving sea control objectives:

“As opposed to the 18^th and 19^th century tactic of forcing a major fleet engagement at sea, today’s blockade seeks destruction of individual units as they sortie. If we assume an opponent will be in control of the air near his ports, sortie control tactics must primarily depend upon submarines and mines.

If successful, sortie control is a most economical means of cutting off a nation’s use of the seas or ability to interfere. Nevertheless, such established techniques have their disadvantages. No blockade is 100 percent successful. Some units may be beyond the blockade when hostilities commence and will remain to haunt opposition forces. Against the enemy’s aircraft there is no static defense. Planes must be bombed at their bases. Thus we must conclude that blockades are weapons of attrition requiring time to be effective. But the lesson of history is perhaps the most instructive of all—ingenious man has usually found ways to circumvent blockades.” (Pg. 8)

On the use of deception to perform sea control tasks:

“Assertive Sea Control objectives do not necessarily demand destruction of the enemy’s force. If the enemy can be sufficiently deceived to frustrate his ability to press an attack, we will have achieved our Sea Control objective.” (Pg. 9)

On the relationship between sea control capabilities and deterrence:

“The perceptions of other nations of our Sea Control capability relative to that of other major powers can influence political and military decisions. What any nation says about its capabilities influences the challenges that are offered or accepted.” (Pg. 9)

On the operational-strategic relationship between sea control and power projection (underlined text is my emphasis):

“…we would note that only a fine distinction separates some aspects of the Sea Control and Projection of Power Ashore missions. Many weapons and platforms are used in both missions. Amphibious assaults on chokepoints or tactical airstrikes on enemy airbases can be employed as part of the Sea Control mission. Sea-based tactical aircraft are used in Sea Control missions for antiair warfare and against enemy surface combatants. The distinction in these cases is not in the type of forces nor the tactics which are employed, but in the purposes of the operation. Is the objective to secure/deny the use of the seas or is it to directly support the land campaign? For instance, much of the layman’s confusion over aircraft carriers stems from the impression that they are employed exclusively in the Projection of Power Ashore role. Actually, from the Battle of Cape Matapan through World War II, aircraft carriers were used almost exclusively to establish control of the ocean’s surface. Today they clearly have a vital role to play in both the Sea Control and Projection of Power missions.” (Pg. 12-13)

On the linkages between naval presence and conventional deterrence:

“In a preventative deployment our force capabilities should be relevant to the kind of problems which might arise and clearly cannot be markedly inferior to some other naval force in the neighborhood, but can rely to some extent on the implication that reinforcements can be made available if necessary. On the other hand, in a reactive deployment any force deployed needs to possess an immediately credible threat and be prepared to have its bluff called. If another seapower, such as the Soviet Union, is in the area, a comparison of forces will be inevitable.

…the Naval Presence mission is simultaneously as sophisticated and sensitive as any, but also probably the least understood of all Navy missions. A well orchestrated Naval Presence can be enormously useful in complementing diplomatic actions to achieve political objectives. Applied deftly but firmly, in precisely the proper force, Naval Presence can be a persuasive deterrent to war. If used ineptly, it can be disastrous. Thus, in determining presence objectives, scaling forces, and appraising perceptions, there will never be a weapon system as important as the human intellect.” (Pg. 14-15)

When reading Turner’s full discussion of the sea control mission, it’s important to keep in mind that he incorrectly asserted that “full regulation of the seas in wartime” was something that was sought after—and possible—until the advent of the submarine and airplane. As I’ve noted before, Corbettian theory makes clear that such a broad degree of control was never possible in the ancient world let alone in the years leading up to the First World War. Turner was therefore partially mistaken when he wrote that “it is no longer conceivable…to totally control the seas for one’s own use or to totally deny them to an enemy” as that kind of control never was conceivable.

I’m ashamed to admit that although I had read elsewhere how Turner’s article had influenced the Navy’s path towards the Maritime Strategy of the 1980s, until now I had never taken the time to read it (despite its 16 page length). Don’t make my mistake: download it today and read it yourself. Despite being four decades old and its Cold War-era context, there are few points in it that are not still fully relevant to maritime warfare in the 21^st Century.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

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[1] John B. Hattendorf. Newport Papers 30: U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970s—Selected Documents. (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2007), Pg. 31