The Heritage Foundation hosted an excellent panel discussion this week involving top experts on the U.S. Navy. It was focused on the utility of aircraft carriers in the present day and the evolving future.
Moderated by the Heritage Foundation’s Thomas Callender, the panel involved Bryan Clark from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Jerry Hendrix from the Telemus Group, and Bryan McGrath from the Hudson Institute. While I think they missed one critical issue (more on that later), each of the panelists made excellent points reflective of their specialized knowledge. They were also willing to challenge each other and conventional wisdom. I want to highlight a few takeaways which have a good basis for adoption by naval leaders.
Bryan Clark began by arguing that the Navy needs to recognize that its carrier air wings are out of kilter with being able to defeat a high-capability adversary – namely, China. The current carrier strike group challenge is that China’s increasingly capable submarine and surface warfare fleet is now joined to a superb long-range missile strike force. That means the U.S. cannot risk-tolerably operate its carriers within 1,000 miles of Chinese strongholds. But our carrier air wings also lack the range to fly at necessary distances. This effectively leaves us with a very problematic duality: we cannot operate carrier groups close-in to the high-end enemy, and we cannot get air wings close-in to that enemy.
In response, Clark suggests air wings have a much greater reliance on unmanned aerial combat aerial vehicles. The vehicles can travel further and tolerate greater risk (no humans). Clark also suggests the Navy focus far more on exploiting the sensor and electronic warfare domains. For one, in utilizing new platforms to operate as sensor cutouts. Using a manned military asset to develop primary sensor data risks its own counter-detection and destruction by the enemy.
That we do not already do this is amazing. The U.S. has a high technology advantage here that we should be utilizing.
Jerry Hendrix had his own ideas. He wants carrier air wings that rely on super-ranged (1,500 – 2,000 nautical miles), high-stealth UCAVs. Crucially, Hendrix believes these UCAVs should also be modifiable to operate as refueling aircraft. And Hendrix highlights something that the U.S. military has only recently woken up to (and not sufficiently): the need for better, varied, and higher number missile platforms with which to kill advanced enemy forces. As Hendrix put it, “the Tomahawk [cruise missile system] predates me, and I’m retired [from the Navy].”
Bryan McGrath came next. He outlined a greater-variable integrated data platform to allow naval commanders to take advantage of evolving opportunities in a rapidly developing conflict. In terms of military theory, this is about mitigating friction, the fog of war, and the enemy’s strong points. McGrath and the other panelists compared this to how submarine commanders monitor water temperatures, salinity, etc., in deciding where and how to operate. But McGrath defended aircraft carriers on the basis that, via their symbolism of American might, they deter adversarial aggression.
I disagree with McGrath here. I think the Chinese and Russians would be happy to kill a carrier if they thought they could get away with it. I think there are a range of credible scenarios in which they would think that.
What of my own conclusions? Well, the panel was great. But as I say, I think the panelists missed one key point that underpins the contemporary weakness of aircraft carriers. It’s not the carriers’ vulnerability per se, but the strategic vulnerability that losing a carrier would pose to U.S. war-fighting resolve. Yes, the carriers are too vulnerable to Chinese stand-off weapons in particular. This vulnerability reflects a profound failure of strategic vision on the Navy’s part. Put simply, admirals have kept buying aircraft carriers while not mitigating their weaknesses.
But what both the Navy and the Heritage panel miss most is how American civilian resolve to fight would likely perish in the event of a carrier being lost.
Consider that the most likely scenario in which the U.S. would lose a carrier is now a conflict with China – specifically, a U.S. military contest with Chinese efforts to dominate the South China Sea. Seeing as those waters are responsible for trillions of dollars in trade flows, and that China intends to dominate those waters so as to dictate political choices from Vietnam to India to Australia, it is crucial that the U.S. not yield to China’s aggression here. Yet when we recognize that Nimitz-class carriers have more than 6,000 personnel aboard (including the carrier air wing) and Ford-class carriers have more than 5,000 Americans, one destroyed aircraft carrier, or even seriously damaged carrier, would mean possible Sept. 11-style casualty levels.
It’s nice to think that the American public would tolerate these losses in understanding of the nature of war. However, absent an imminent, easily understood threat to a U.S. territory, or in defense of a keystone U.S. interest organization such as NATO, I doubt it. But I especially doubt our society would tolerate these casualties for another reason. Namely, that you can bet that the Chinese would offer an immediate, and seemingly tolerable (although it wouldn’t be) ceasefire in the aftermath of a carrier kill. The key here is that the Chinese recognize our strategic vulnerabilities, but our Navy apparently does not. This long term failure reflects the fact that military culture, like any great bureaucracy, too often fosters an aversion to rocking the boat with hard realities.
So what do we do?
Well, I think we need to embrace each of the panel’s ideas as above. We must rapidly re-design carrier groups on Clark’s strategic baseline of offensive power at range, bound to durability in defense. We must invest far more on standoff weapons, long-range stealth bombers, and a potent submarine fleet. We also need to think more innovatively at playing the Chinese and Russians are their own area denial games. But we can’t escape a basic truth: at least against top adversaries, our carrier strike groups are of less utility than once before. We must adapt our procurement and strategy in turn.
Carriers are prestigious, but prestige does not win wars.
You can watch the panel below.
CORRECTION: A previous version stated that Jerry Hendrix was with the Center for a New American Security. He has since left to work with the Telemus Group, a consultancy specializing in national security issues; the article has been fixed accordingly. The Washington Examiner regrets the error.
