The U.S. Military's Ultimate Fear: Are Aircraft Carriers Too Big To Fail?

The threat of a full carrier-strike group anchoring offshore has always been a cornerstone of U.S. deterrence. The sinking of a U.S. aircraft carrier--possibly by A2/AD style weapons--would likely be the defining moment where the era ofperceived U.S. global military dominance would come to an end. Such an event--greatly magnified by a 24-hour global news cycle and the rise of social media--would alter the entire globe’s political and strategic balance. Any regime seeking to carve out local spheres of interest would scramble to seek the means to fend off the U.S. Navy. After all, the U.S. Navy is the single most important forceproviding security for the globalized economic system. Clearly American security assurances wouldn’t carry as much weight with a carrier sitting at the bottom of the sea.

If the Navy’s worst nightmare came true and U.S. adversaries strengthen their ability to threaten aircraft carriers, how does the Navy reorganize itself to project power?  The entire concept of a carrier strike group (CSG) is based on putting bombs on target by primarily carrier-based planes. This is a large part of the Navy’s new operational concept, Air-Sea Battle. Air-Sea Battle (ASB) integrates forces from all domains: space, air, land, sea, and cyber, in order to defeat “adversaries equipped with sophisticated anti-access and area denial capabilities.” An asymmetric weapon that can bypass a carrier’s layered defensesand have even a remote chance at hitting a carrier would throw a wrench in a plan that may be costing U.S. taxpayers around half a trillion dollars.

Too Many Eggs in One Basket?

While the chances of a U.S.-China conflict are remote, Beijing is investing heavily in A2/AD weapons. More importantly, in our current age of breaknecktechnological development and cyber espionage, nobody can predict what military technologies U.S. rivals may have in five or ten years. Those who believe in the invincibility of the U.S. carrier strike group are tempting fate. The U.S. Navy may be limiting its options by putting too many of its eggs--or shrinking defense dollars--in one basket.

Captain Henry Hendrix sums up this fear in a Center for New American Security paper, stating that aircraft carriers are:

“Big, expensive, vulnerable – and surprisingly irrelevant to the conflicts of the time…The national security establishment, the White House, the Department of Defense and Congress persist despite clear evidence that the carrier equipped with manned strike aircraft is an increasingly expensive way to deliver firepower and that carriers themselves may not be able to move close enough to targets to operate effectively or survive in an era of satellite imagery and long-range precision strike missiles.”

There is a considerable amount of inertia behind the carrier program in the United States. In a recent article about China’s DF-21D Time magazine quoted retired Navy Captain naval-strategist Bernard Cole explaining how our Navy, domestic industry, and politicians all have a deep-rooted interest in keeping carriers as the centerpiece of our naval strategy. Indeed, these behemoths have accompanied us during the entirety of our rise to military preeminence. However, our close relationship with the carrier has its drawbacks. Historically, one advantage that developing militaries have is that they get to base their doctrine and fighting methods on current technology in the relative absence of entrenched interests. Conversely, consider the damage that obsolete ideas of warfare wrought during the beginning of World War One. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died before the major European militaries were able to shed themselves of their dogmatic doctrine and antiquated leadership. If aircraft carriers are being eclipsed by various A2/AD weapons systems and asymmetric strategies, the military-industrial inertia behind the carrier program is a strategic disadvantage to the United States.

Carriers Have Been Threatened Before:

Despite very real dangers to U.S. carriers there are very legitimate arguments that caution against overstating potential threats.  According to Chairman of National Security at the U.S. Naval War College and Johns Hopkins SAIS professor Dr. Thomas Mahnken, China’s growing A2/AD abilities and precision munitions are causing the military balance to:

“Go back to a situation in terms of risk that much more resembles the Cold War than the past two decades. So risk will go up, but we’ve dealt with risk before. We are just unused to deal with that type of risk in recent experience. It will be a learning process on our side to develop the appropriate ways to respond.”

Conclusion:

Are carriers too big to fail? If so, U.S. policymakers need to break themselves from the assumption that carriers are the end product of the evolution of naval technology. The United States must maintain its leadership role in military innovation; not fall into the age-old trap of other great powers by absconding modernization and relying instead on time-tested dogma and tradition. In the future our carriers and Navy servicemen may pay the ultimate price due to our complacency and failure to innovate. 

Image: U.S. Navy Flickr.