It looks like there are some very interesting air defense systems being brainstormed for future US aircraft carriers:
“The discussion about the CVN-21 has been around quite a bit, and again reminds you that the Navy was looking to start with what they call CVNX-1 in ’07, and then follow that with a second ship in FY ’11, that they call the CVNX-2. I think you are all familiar with sort of the general characteristics of it. And we had a long and very fruitful conversation with the Navy leadership on this, and they proposed — the Navy leadership proposed what we are now calling the CVN-21, which is a ship which will have roughly, give or take — don’t hold me to the number here — but roughly 80 percent of the kinds of new capability that as anticipated by the time we would have reached the CVNX-2. So that includes crew reductions, new flight decks, and maybe most importantly of all a new nuclear reactor power plant, which will provide upwards of three times the electrical output of the current power plant. And, that being so, it opens up the opportunity to begin experimenting with the kinds of weapons systems that heretofore were not possible with the kind of electrical power available. So whether those are electromagnetic rail guns, free electron lasers — I mean, there are all kinds of proposals that one has heard in the past which were impractical given the unavailability of power in large quantities that could be focused down for those kinds of purposes.”
The above item is from a DOD background briefing.
GO NAVY !!
So long as one is named Enterprise, once the current Big E is decommissioned in or near 2012, I’m happy.
I wonder, though, if perhaps the age of carriers is coming to a close. I have no doubt about the need for naval aviation, but lets face it, the current round of US combat aircraft, especially fighters and strike aircraft, are the last that will be manned. Anything that comes after the JSF and the F/A-18 E/F will probably be an UAV of some sort.
The pilot is a limit on the system. Were it not for the human payload, aircraft could be constructed that could easily exceed 9-Gs in maneuvering or accelerating, greatly enhancing combat capability. Human pilots will black out above 9Gs in sustained maneuvering, which puts them at a great disadvantage when dogfighting or evading missiles.
Human pilots are expensive to train, requiring hundreds of flight hours in jet trainers, simulators and classroom instruction. It seems to me that training a ship-bound UAV pilot would by much cheaper, and is at far less risk of being killed in either training or operations. Not to mention the fact that having a human pilot shot down and killed/captured tends to swing public opinion against further action.
There’s also the enormous expense and waste in recruiting human pilots, who generally are in the very top percentiles of the general population in terms of physical ability, intelligence, eyesight, etc. It’s hard to find suitable candidates, harder still to train them and pretty difficult to replace them quickly in the event of high losses. Some guy sitting as a desk, however, doesn’t need to be as physically adept. They would be far easier to recruit, train and, again, there is a much smaller chance that they will become a causalty. You can have a UAV shot down one day, and the controller is still perfectly capable of flying another one tomorrow.
The only real limitation is the lack of situational awareness a ship-bound operator suffers from. But who knows if that limit will still exist some 20 years from now? Computing power is improving constantly, as well as the capabilities of computers to operate and make decisions independently of human control. Back in the Vietnam War it took two F-4s, with a total crew of 4, to launch and guide a primitive laser-guided bomb down onto a bridge. In Afghanistan, a JDAM, using a complex inertial guidance system aided by GPS signals, could be lauched some distance from the target by a single-seat aircraft, and find it’s way largely on it’s own.
A fascinating Washington Post Magazine article a couple of weeks ago described the next generation of air to ground munitions. These so-called “brilliant bombs” could be launched well away from the target, find their way there in a manner least likely to be detected, orbit the area, search for and identify targets, classify targets in order of importance, select which warhead to use to engage the primary target, and then strike it. All of this, for merely $60,000 a pop, completely free of human intervention. You just have to fly it to within some distance of the target area.
Marrying this kind of muntions technology to air to air weapons would allow a remote human operator to overcome the limitations of situational awareness. Instead of having to intuitively know where all aircraft in the vicinity are at all times, the pilot could make do with a much less accurate SA. So long as his munitions were reliable and capable of detecting, identifying, classifying and engaging enemy aircraft once launched from a UAV, there wouldn’t be any significant disadvantage a remote operator would face when engaging a piltoed aircraft. All an remote operator would have to do is get within the vicinity, detect a hostile aircraft and launch the weapon.
Carriers are also a tremendously expensive system for such a large target. I have no clue what future models will cost, but a Nimitz-class CVN goes for something in the neighborhood of $4 billion, minus aircraft, and has a crew of approx. 5500 (including air wing). Yet with the proliferation of relatively cheap and effective Anti Shipping Missiles, such as the Mach 3 SS-N-22 Sunburn, they are more vulnerable than ever. Despite RAM, CIWS, decoys, etc. there is always the possibility that any defenses can be overwhelmed by simply lobbing enough weaponry at it. In a cost/benefit analysis, shooting $100 million worth of ex-Soviet ASMs at a carrier could very well result in the severe damage of loss of a multi-billion carrier, up to 80 aircraft, thousands of crew, as well as a blow to domestic morale. Watching footage of the USS John F. Kennedy slipping below the waves would probably make even most hawks weary of having a second go.
That’s a tremendous amount of taxpayers dollars and human life to be placing at risk. I suspect that future carriers might be far smaller, designed primarily to launch and recover UAVs and rotary-wing aircraft. They’d probably incorporate quite a bit of the lessons learned about how to reduce signature, including heavy use of composites, slab surfaces, electromagnetic catapults (shorter and lighter than steam models), making them shorter by having fewer decks, small or nonexistent superstructure, etc. To reduce the crew even further there would be heavy use of automation, or perhaps even building particularly small vessels which would work in battle groups of multiple vessels, instead of one carrier per battle group.
It just seems to me that carriers might be close to becoming what Battleships were to WWII. Impressive, terrifying, but largely obsolete for their intended purpose and monstrously expensive to build and operate.
Great comments by Gregory L.
He perhaps even understates the advantages of unmanned aircraft.
With no pilot aboard the craft becomes small = less signature to radar.
Perhaps most important, they can be much cheaper. Allows purchase of more, and using them in riskier situations. That’s a potent effectiveness multiplier.
On the other hand, comparatively “low tech” UAVs with easily trained operators might allow other players back in the air power game — ending the US dominance of the sky.
Every move changes the game!
Sitting ducks.
I am doubtful UCAV’s will completely take over. A more likely scenario is an air superiority fighter controlling screens of robotic craft around itself, with one on one air battles becoming chess games of screen vs screen.
The only reason the US hasn’t lost a carrier since WWII is that it has not faced another naval power since then. Ships sink. Thousands die. That is war. Either accept it as fact or don’t play at war.
In the last great battleship fight, in which the Hood and Bismarck went down, something like 4000 people died.
There is no such thing as war without the butcher’s bill, and I would become very much afraid for our society’s future if we come to a time when all our “warriors”(?) sit behind consoles and push buttons. Some day the barbarians will come. You win by holding territory, and ultimately that comes down to face to face killing. Again, anyone who hasn’t the stomach for this realization should not be contemplating war. If too many people think that way, perhaps mass suicide is called for… might as well get it over cleanly before someone else does it for you by rape and pillage.
I think the carrier still has a few decades left to it. It’s a valuable platform for small actions. In a big war they’d be targetted, but hey, *everything* is expendable in war. It depends on what it buys strategically or tactically in the process. Carriers aren’t intended to be invulnerable. You should read up on the strategies for them had “the big one” happened. It was a given that most of the carrier groups would go down. The numbers were high enough so they’d be around long enough to do what they had to do.
Let’s not go down the road of that Star Trek episode and ever forget what war is about, why it is the most terrible and horrendous of things… and why sometimes one must go out and pay the bill, in spite of that, to remain free.
Dale,
I don’t disagree with you regarding the need to accept that there will, inevitably, be casualties in any conflict. But I think that, at least in the States, the populace has become overly sensitive to the deaths of US soldiers. They simply will not accept the loss of large numbers of men, and the first time the NYT prints a photo of a US Airman being dragged through the streets of some 3rd world sh*thole, civilian morale will fold like a house of cards.
Case in point, the Battle of Mogadishu in ’93. The actual mission, to capture a handful of senior lieutenants in a warlord’s army, was a success. After the longest sustained firefight since Vietnam a total of 18 Rangers and Delta Force were KIA, and approx. 70 wounded. Compared with the bodycounts the Rangers suffered at Pt. Du Hoc during Operation Overloard, or while making a fighting withdrawl down the Korean Penninsula against hordes of Chinese riflemen, Mogadishu was a cakewalk. Yet the public demanded to know why we “lost”, we why were still over there, and why so many US soldiers were killed.
I think this is due to a variety of reasons. Among them the nature of the modern press to see itself as a transnational organization more devoted to scooping the other press organizations than working with the government. In WWII press officials worked closely with US military liasons, and were under strict censors. But there was also, if you read memoirs such as Rooney’s or Steinbeck’s war correspondence, a notion that you didn’t want to inadvertendly serve the enemy by harming homefront morale. Some stories didn’t get published, by the author’s choice.
Well, that’s gone forever. We let the press run loose in Vietnam, and public opinion turned decisively against the war after the Tet offensive, despite the fact that the Viet Cong was virtually anihilated. Stanley Karnow’s companion book to his PBS series (hardly a glowing testament to our involvement there) had several illuminating interviews with NVA generals. More than one remarked on how surprised they were that the US didn’t march up to Hanoi after Tet, given the tremendous expenditures of men and material made by the NVA to support the VC. We could have made a decisive blow to N. Vietnam, one that would have brought them to the negotiating table on our terms, but the public wouldn’t have stood for it.
Another problem was the overwhelming victory in Desert Storm. We lost some 300 US troops in what was the greatest military upset since the Battle of Agincourt. By some estimates, Iraq lost 150,000 men, several thousand armored fighting vehicles and most if not all of what pitifully small Air Force and Navy it had. We saw massed formations of M1A1 MBT’s, with M2A1 Bradleys, charging across open desert. And for so little loss, we slaughtered the enemy.
The Gulf became the new benchmark by which all other US wars will be compared. The American public knows that Afghanistan wasn’t a major action, in the sense that we didn’t committ hundreds of thousands of troops to a ground war. It was intensive in terms of air power and special operations, but without the sight of an Army corp of legs (non-Airborne, non-Special Operations soldier) on the ground, or a couple of heavy divisions, it just doesn’t resonate as a major conflict. It will probably be remembered as something in the scale of Panama. Many troops involved, but not a “real war.”
The pressure is on our commanders to produce victory at little to no cost. While that might be unrealistic, it will encourage the exploitation of technology in any way that could possibly give US troops and edge, and keep them out of harm’s way. Even the Army is looking into the mass use of robotic vehicles to do it’s dirty work, when possible.
It’s an unhealthy situation. Any commander knows that if he loses large numbers of troops, even if his mission is a success, his career is over. We’re fostering an attitude that human life is more important than victory, even if our defeat will, in the end, hurt far more. I have no idea how to stop it, either.
The end result of a distant robotic war and an army afraid of casualties will be an ever escalating dose of what we have seen on American soil the last two years.
I would really hate to see it come down to that: the American populace regaining a backbone by surviving the killing fields in their own back yards.
I’m not sure I really believe the media’s spin, their belief that Americans of today are yellow bellied cowards. I just don’t think that is true. Our military *is* all volunteer and has no shortage of people. Life went on despite the DC sniper. Airplane hijacking ended with the 4th aircraft on 9/11. Large numbers of Americans have armed themselves since.
I think people understand the trade offs. If it cost us thousands to take out Saddam, it is worth the price if it prevents a mushroom cloud or Smallpox, or Sarin or god only knows what from killing tens or hundreds of thousands of our people on our soil.
It is nonetheless a sane thing to do to minimize our own casualties while maximizing the enemies. The point is, as one pundit put it, “to let the other guy die for his country”.
This is not a bad thing so long as we keep it in perspective and understand that sometimes you do have to pay the price.
It might not happen in Iraq: but we had better be prepared for it. A pre-placed buried nuke could kill a lot of American soldiers. Sometimes things just SNAFU and the toll is high. You can hope but you can’t ever guarantee.
In my heart I believe the majority of Americans understand this. It’s only the media types who are cowards, not the ones they pretend to speak for.
PS: Being against a given war is not necessarily a cowardly act either: sometimes a principled stand can be a very brave thing. Not all wars are right.
Americans will be willing to accept high casualties when and if we feel directly threatened. It seems to me that our military is more susceptible to ‘body bag syndrome’ than the general population.
The American people will accept a body count far better than the screaming-meemies media and those dreadful Pols. Most of those ‘pull-backs’ were the direct result of political mis-thinking. Since each ship is carried ‘on the books’ at a value of $1.00, that has already been figured into the mix.
It is not that Americans are cowards and are unwilling to take risks, but you do have to present them with a worthy cause to fight for before the body bags start to roll in. Communism, for example, was worth fighting, but proxy battles are harder to grasp.
Oftentimes our military gets into scuffles which, if they are not totally disconnected with national interest, are at least so tertiary as to leave a bad impression on the public. It is hard to say this without sounding heartless, but I don’t believe the U.S. should be expected to spill the blood of its sons and daughters for starving Somolians. Sure, we’d love to help, but we know when we are not welcome, so to speak.
Although I would state it differently, my thesis is in line with Lumina: Americans don’t like dying for stupid causes, but when there is a Clear and Present danger as we face now… that is a different story.
It’s World War III. What else can you call it? Battles have happened so far in Bali, New York, Afghanistan, Moscow, Yemen, Pakistan, Kenya, Israel and many other places. We’re under threat of NBC attack. If this isn’t a WWIII, I’m not sure what to call it. “War on Terrorism” is a bit of a wimp out on the reality of it.
OF course by the time this is over, we might be calling it “The Second Thirty Years War”…
A few pointers to authors who have discussed these issues.
Jerry Pournelle, along with many others, discusses the need for something like the French Foreign Legion to fight “imperial” wars — where American interests are at stake, but not America itself. Many Americans do not see the need for American deaths in these brushfire conflicts.
For anyone in doubt over the outcome of the current conflict (WWIII?), I recommend Victor Davis Hanson’s “Carnage and Culture.”
He posits that there are no limits to what western democracies will do in self-defense against our enemies. Extermination works well, if they’re stupid enough to push us so far.
And if that happens, future American generations will feel guilty, but the threat will be gone.
Thinking Outside the Box about Aircraft Carriers
by Joel Steinke
Unmanned craft have made aircraft carriers obsolete. Some have said that new aircraft carriers can be shorter and lower due to the introduction of smaller, lighter unmanned craft. In actuality, unmanned craft have made aircraft carriers totally unnecessary, and anti-ship missiles and torpedoes have made aircraft carriers downright foolish.
The whole idea of aircraft carriers was to put pilots within an hour or two’s flight time from the enemy. This is no longer necessary because unmanned craft can make endurance flights with minimal or no human interaction!
In the near future, there will be no need for aircraft carriers. This is desirable because of the proliferation of anti-ship missiles and better torpedoes, and, don’t forget, fearless unmanned planes firing missiles! Current aircraft carriers are irresistible five-billion-dollar missile and torpedo magnets. Not only could a missile send a large aircraft carrier to the bottom of the sea, but also up to 90 aircraft and many sailors.
Aircraft carriers cost way more than the five-billion-dollars required to build each one. Aircraft carriers are so vulnerable they need a whole fleet to protect them, including cruisers, destroyers, submarines, etc. Not having an aircraft carrier would mean astounding savings to the US taxpayer, and would free up the Navy to break up fleets into wolf packs. Also, the next time we are in conflict with a real power, we won’t find all our aircraft carriers on the bottoms of the oceans within just a few days time.
Smaller groups of ships mean more territory could be simultaneously covered, and the Navy could better fend off terrorists, pirates, drug smugglers, etc., on the high seas. They, of course, threaten shipping especially at many choke points around the world—between Indonesia and Australia, for example.
The reason for the reduced need for aircraft carriers is unmanned craft can make long duration flights with little to no human intervention. This means no aircraft carrier need make a close approach to the country being attacked—a very risky proposition anyway! Already this kind of endurance flight thinking has led to long range bombing missions with B-52’s in places like Kosovo and Afghanistan. Similar best practices will soon be the stand for unmanned fighter aircraft.
To date, examples of long endurance, unmanned flight include the Global Hawk jet that crossed the Pacific from the US to Australia. Global Hawk can stay aloft for 36 hours at a time without midair refueling. Also, during the US War on Terror, unmanned propeller-driven Predator drones flew over Afghanistan and Yemen, but were controlled from the US mainland via satellite. Predators can stay aloft 24 hours a time.
In the near future, naval air power will take advantage of the unmanned airplane’s endurance flight capabilities. Everywhere in the world there are many islands or continents within an hour or ten hours’ striking distance of any perceivable enemy. So, the armed forces can set up hangers and a runway virtually anywhere where unmanned craft could be uncrated. Soldiers can then program the unmanned craft, fuel them up and load them with bombs, and let them go. Then they return like a boomerang.
Though the flight would be longer, unmanned planes would still be able to deliver sustained attacks. The reason is unmanned craft will be cheaper so many more can be built. That means many more craft can be aloft at any one time. A controller at a joystick would be able to control a whole flock of unmanned vehicles at once.
With so many less costly planes, there will be a less pressing need for each plane to make several sorties in one day. By the way, unmanned planes can be stored up to ten years in a crate. That mean it is financially possible to maintain many more planes than currently, and then use them during a future conflict. The crated airplanes can be taken anywhere via C-130 or C-5 aircraft, or trucks, or even cargo container ships!
If extending the range of unmanned craft was desirable, they could be refueled in the air. Also, an island hopping flight plan could be used. Islands, atolls or even refueling barges midway between the target and the home airfield could refuel the unmanned planes.
Refueling would be very easy to accomplish. For refueling in the air, the unmanned craft could home in on a laser or ultraviolet light emitter mounted on the nozzle. Island hopping refueling would be just as easy on atolls, islands or floating barges. Many planes are already programmed to land on their own by homing in on lasers or ultraviolet light emitters.
The special barges would be ocean going and would be topped by a runway strip. At the end of the runway one guy would gas the plane up as it turned around on a mechanical turntable (like the old train engines used to be turned around). The plane would then be sent on its way to complete its programmed mission. So, you could think of the barge as just being an artificial island with a runway strip.
At this point, someone critic might say that the barge is the next generation aircraft carrier. Well, a flat-topped oil barge with a few hands is rather expendable compared to super expensive aircraft carriers with 5,000 hands. I think of the flat-topped refueling barges as being artificial islands used for island hopping–or as expendable distributed aircraft carriers. Perhaps they could even be used commercially to pay for themselves. At least they could be used as emergency airstrips so pilots in trouble will not need to ditch at sea so often.
The flat-topped barge would not even need a fancy catapult system for stopping planes. The smaller craft should be able to take off and land on a barge. However, here is a simple way to stop a craft with a tail hook. No need for an expensive steam powered catapult system. Just have grates that line part of the deck (runway). The gap between each rail would be large enough to insert the tail hook, but the gaps would be narrow enough so the plane wheels stayed on the rails.
(See drawing at: http://www.geocities.com/jnsteinke/military/carriers.htm)
Now the question might come up, “What happens if the unmanned plane landed but could not take off from the barge?” Well, unmanned planes would only be dumped overboard in extreme emergencies. Usually there would be plenty of barges or other island or mainland that airborne unmanned planes could land and refuel or whatnot. There would be a small crane on each barge that could lift the disabled plane onto another boat or on to an inflatable raft that would be towed behind the barge.
I have watched the wars through history classes, personal study, and an inventive spirit and find that much of what passes as brilliance in war execution is really serendipitious luck and folly-filled planning on the part of our enemies.
Just because we are “the world’s super power does not make us invincible. 911 should have been anyone’s wake up call if they are called upon to defend America in any capacity. Our opponents are going to be less well armed in the sense of how we judge armaments yet more tenacious than enemies of the past because 911 demonstrated the presence of weaknesses in how we acted on available info that the homeland was being targeted again by “terrorist armies”.
In the pre-Iraqi 2 days my heart bled for the capability to able to move 3-5 air wings, light armored divisions, supplies for each, and air recon (including SR-71’s and armed helicopters) into the the area within a week or two’s time frame, more or less simultaneously!
This could be done in the future if we have the guts to think the problem through, do the research and development, AND FUND IT TO COMPLETION!
A COUPLE OF MARGINAL POSSIBILITIES WERE MODELED IN A RECENT ISSUE OF POPULAR MECHANICS MAG, (FLOATING ,MODULAR AIRFIELDS that would also serve as bases for some of the necessary defense shipping to protect the field itself.) My own thoughts, however, are predicated upon the US remaining a sovereign Nation that was willing to say through its three governing branches that anyone who attacks us will find their national base and point of origin a charred ruin within ten days of the attack- Please note, this should not be put into diplomatic language, but in the language of the families who lost loved ones in the 911 attack. Four mobile forces of 50- 60,000 troops each stationed in four parts of the world might give some of our “mouthy acquaintences” in other countries something to think about besides earning their virgins at our expense.
Does anyone remember the rhetoric of the eastern brothers just prior to the Korean whatchama callit? Well, if Gen Mac had had a MAK Unit, that time period may have been different. What is a MAK Unit ? Simply a Military Ass Kicking Unit . What do they do? Wait for someone to act foolishly and attack the homeland. Upon receipt of required orders from whatever stripe of Leadership that is in office they would launch all-out hits on the homeland and/or headquarters nation behind the attackers, yes, where ever they are!!!.
Expensive to build? Initially, yes. To maintain? No more than the combined cost now expended on support and maintenance a like number of troops right now(and projected similarily in the future).
Any savings? Yes, no hush or help money to semi-friends for basing rights, no embarrassement from pseudo-friends for overflight rights after we have spent precious blood freeing their cowardly butts.
Where woul they be based? In international waters of cours. Yes that does mean that the forces would submarine based rather than land based. No, I am not high on anything except the firm knowledge that Americans CAN DO once the decision is made!! We have everything needed to accomplish this change in our defense strategy right this minute-are there forward looking defense planners out there?!!