The Navy’s public relations team (which, for what it’s worth, I’ve found to be the military’s most helpful) has done itself proud with its video of a rather large explosion off Florida’s coast.
Specifically, its video of a test involving the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier. Carried out this weekend, the explosion measured 3.9 on the Richter Scale. The U.S. Naval Institute notes that the last time a carrier underwent a full ship shock test was 34 years ago. The test is a final element of the Ford’s work up to become fully operational.
Unfortunately, while the video might be cool, it should not be taken as evidence that the Ford is ready for battle with China or Russia. Indeed, the only relevance this test has toward China is its deleterious effect on marine wildlife.
Do not misunderstand me. U.S. Navy aircraft carrier crews and embarked air wings are the finest in the world. They train, work, and challenge each other harder than those of any other naval service. Their competence is not in question. What is in question is the Navy’s continuing reliance on aircraft carriers as the centerpiece of its operational planning.
Putting aside the Ford’s disastrous development history, we cannot ignore the fact that the Navy’s carrier fleet faces rapidly advancing Chinese and Russian hypersonic missile platforms. Stand-out examples include Russia’s Zircon and Avangard hypersonic systems and China’s DF-ZF system. Some of these platforms are explicitly designed to target aircraft carriers as they move across the Oceans. And to do so as the carriers take all available evasive actions. These weapons are designed to disable or sink the carriers, forcing the Navy to suspend combat operations in favor of relief action. In war, China might also judge a carrier strike as a means to shake the confidence of U.S. civilian society and political leadership, thus inducing them to a Beijing-favorable ceasefire.
The Navy claims it has developed countermeasures to defeat anti-ship ballistic missiles, such as China’s DF-21D platform. I’m unconvinced that those countermeasures could stand up to dozens of independent missiles, each with independent targeting systems. Regardless, hypersonic developments add a whole other dimension to this challenge. Addressing these vehicles’ high maneuverability and extreme speed, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency recently noted their serious threat to U.S. aircraft carriers. Current U.S. defenses against hypersonic vehicle attacks on U.S. carriers would appear to rest on deceiving and/or disrupting the vehicles-targeting datalink, or destroying their launch platforms (aircraft, missile launchers, etc.). Top line: Defensive options are poor and likely to become even poorer.
The most sensible way for the Navy to address this challenge would be to move away from aircraft carriers entirely. The saved resources would be far better invested in a scaled-up array of undersea, unmanned, and more mobile assets.
The alternative is a growing risk, far greater than commonly assumed, that we might one day soon see a far less enjoyable video of the Ford. This time, a video of its flight deck aflame, 6,000 Americans in great peril, and wartime defeat a real possibility.
