Behold the mighty supercarrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. I will explain why she is likely to be among the last of the warship species we may call dreadnaughts. Strictly speaking, the term dreadnaught applies to the largest battleships. The first big gun battleship carrying this name was launched by the British navy in 1906, and it revolutionized naval warfare, leading to an arms race in which the great powers sought to build many ships of this type. The word literally means fearing nothing. Today, our greatest capital ship, the supercarrier, of which the U.S. Navy has 11, has a great deal to fear.
The Death of the Battleship
The aircraft carrier eclipsed the battleship in WWII. The Pearl Harbor attack on December 7,1941 provided an early demonstration of the potency of air attacks against capital ships at anchor. The decisive encounters of aircraft against battleships at sea began three days later with the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales, and ended with the sinking of Yamato in 1945. Prince of Wales and the accompanying battle cruiser Repulse were sunk on December 10, 1941 by a force of 88 Japanese bomber and torpedo bomber aircraft. Yamato, the largest battleship in the world, was sunk on Apri l7, 1945 by 280 U.S. bomber and torpedo bomber aircraft. All of the most important naval battles of WWII in the Pacific were fought by carrier-based aircraft, with battleships mainly relegated to shore bombardment and convoy escort duty. The aircraft carrier became the dominant weapon of naval warfare.
Sinking of HMS Prince of Wales
Enter the Supercarrier
With the advent of nuclear propulsion, the U.S. navy built the most powerful aircraft carriers in the world. Starting with the USS Enterprise in 1961, and culminating with the current Gerald Ford class, these enormous ships gave the navy a dominant global reach, effectively delivering a large air force to fight in any war zone in the world. No other nation has a comparable carrier fleet. Because of the importance of the supercarrier, it is guarded by an escort flotilla of frigates and cruisers armed with missiles that provide protection from enemy aircraft, missiles, and submarines. The carrier air wing includes early warning radar aircraft capable of detecting threats hundreds of miles away, and the carrier’s fighter aircraft can create a protective shield over a vast area. Attack missions are conducted by carrier planes armed with a wide variety of bombs and missiles, potentially including nuclear weapons.
Carriers Are Vulnerable
Although supercarriers are stoutly constructed, you don’t need to sink a carrier to achieve what is called a mission kill. If the catapults are damaged, aircraft cannot be launched. If the elevators are stuck, planes cannot be lifted from the hangar deck to the flight deck. If the ammunition hoists are disabled, weapons cannot be moved from the magazines to arm aircraft. If the carrier’s Hawkeye radar reconnaissance aircraft are shot down, the carrier loses its long-range defensive vision. In short, just a few missile hits can render the carrier combat-ineffective, largely nullifying the offensive potential of the entire carrier battle group. In addition to missiles, the carrier is vulnerable to submarines and flying and undersea drones. Even a swarm of fast suicide boats can threaten a carrier.
The Missile Attack Numbers Game
It is not widely understood that the Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells from which missiles are fired from U.S. frigates and cruisers are not reloadable at sea. Once its missiles have been expended, a ship must return to port to reload missiles. (The navy is experimenting with doing this at sea, but the problem of lowering a large and fragile missile into a narrow container on a vessel subject to wave and wind action is a serious obstacle.) Thus, the outcome of a missile exchange between an attacking force and the carrier’s escorts is a numbers game. A saturation attack that empties the VLS cells of the escorts puts the defenders out of action. Note that standard anti-missile doctrine dictates two interceptors must be fired against every incoming missile to achieve a kill probability above 90%.
Missile launch from VLS
Only the long-range U.S. Navy SM-6 missile is theoretically capable of intercepting hypersonic missiles, the greatest threat to the carrier. The typical U.S. carrier battle group has roughly 200 SM-6 missiles distributed across the escorting cruisers and frigates. Thus, a saturation hypersonic missile attack of 100 missiles would likely exhaust the defensive missile armament of the escorts. This would be an optimistic outcome for the defenders, assuming no technical superiority of the incoming missiles and no malfunctions of the defending missiles. A more realistic scenario would include electronic jamming, decoy missiles, terminal maneuvering of incoming warheads, and multiple attack waves, further increasing the odds against the defenders.
The Reckoning
If we calculate the cost of 100 hypersonic missiles at $25 million per round, totaling $2.5 billion, against the cost of the supercarrier at $11 billion, plus the embarked aircraft at $4 billion, plus $5 billion for the escort ships, totaling $20 billion, we get an economically favorable ratio of 1 to 8 for the attacker. Even four waves of 100 missiles each would be a favorable trade. And, of course, replacement attack missiles can be manufactured faster than supercarriers. These are crude estimates based on publicly available data, but the asymmetry is clear. War games simulating outcomes of a naval war against China in the Pacific support this pessimistic assessment.
Diminishing Potency
If supercarriers are endangered by the arsenals of major powers, what about their utility in punishing smaller nations that have offended the U.S. hegemon? In the last few days the USS Harry S Truman has launched air strikes against Houthi sites in Yemen. The Houthis have responded with drone and missile attacks against the carrier force. So far, the carrier escorts have been able to fend off such attacks, but If the Houthis obtain more advanced missiles, they are likely to inflict damage on the U.S. ships. With the proliferation of relatively inexpensive anti-ship missiles, the ability of U.S. carrier forces to strike small nations with impunity will be increasingly doubtful.
Floating Pork Barrels
Building supercarriers is a profitable franchise for Newport News Shipbuilding, the sole builder of U.S. nuclear powered aircraft carriers. That’s right, this division of Huntington Ingalls Industries is the monopoly producer of a very expensive weapons system with tremendous political and military backing. Over the last 10 years, HII’s revenues have increased from $7 billion to $11 billion, with net income rising from $400 million to $550 million, most of which comes from the construction and maintenance of navy warships. Clearly the magic of the marketplace is not working in favor of U.S. taxpayers when it comes to supercarriers.
The Fate of Naval Aviators
Apart from the dubious prospects of the ships of carrier battle groups, the cultural status of naval aviators is at risk. Celebrated as military champions by films like “Top Gun,” future navy pilots may be defeated by unmanned drone combat aircraft not subject to the physiological limitations of human pilots. The superb piloting skills required to achieve carrier landings will be rendered moot by drone aircraft that can routinely land faultlessly. Thus, carrier pilots may lose not only the ships from which they fly but the basis for their high status.
How much longer?
What Succeeds the Supercarrier?
A pragmatic naval strategy for the USN would be to retire the costly supercarrier battle groups and replace them with many smaller, lightly-crewed vessels armed with drone aircraft and missiles. Expeditionary forces could continue to use existing amphibious assault ships with a modest aircraft and drone launch capability. Advances in automation would permit very small crews to operate future vessels, and widespread deployment of such ships would sustain the global reach of the USN. The expansion of submarine capability to include the launching of a variety of drones would add an important element of stealth to the projection of naval power. The savings resulting from such a force transformation could amount to hundreds of billions annually.
Funeral Expenses
The cost burden of the U.S. supercarriers will not end with their retirement. Decommissioning these ships will be much more expensive than scrapping their conventionally powered predecessors. The cost of decommissioning each of the 10 Nimitz class carriers is estimated to be between $750 to $900 million, compared to about $50 million for a conventional carrier. Removal of the spent fuel and disposal of the radioactive remnants of the reactor is a complex and costly process. The final resting place of naval reactors is Trench 94 at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State.
Trench 94
Conclusion
Like the physical inertia of a massive ship, the cultural inertia of the supercarrier as a symbol of U.S. military power is enormous. Evidence indicates that the supercarrier is no longer a cost-effective naval weapon system, and it will likely go the way of the battleship. It should be replaced by more numerous, smaller, and highly-automated warships. This change is likely to be resisted by a naval and political establishment deeply invested in carrier battle groups. Unfortunately, to borrow a term from accounting, the future of USN supercarriers may well be a sunk cost.
Great post. I’ve been reading this since kind of analysis since the df-21 came out from the Chinese, at least in 2014 if not earlier. I think there’s going to have to be a public carrier loss to force a change. Amazing that decommissioning is so expensive.
Aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines are only useful for invading other countries. They should be forbidden by naval treaties for all countries to possess.
Aye. I got stuck here: “Expeditionary forces could continue to use existing amphibious assault ships with a modest aircraft and drone launch capability. ”
Maybe the USN could use amphibious assault ships to launch “an expeditionary force” against the Gulf of America, but longer-range operations would seem to require much more tonnage, delivered through ports and airports that are just as vulnerable to cheap drones and missiles.
Trump is a very stable genius, but a very stupid one.
Or schizophrenic, as I think Carolinian has suggested: on the one hand he withdraws to the Gulf, on the other he threatens to rain down hell on Iran. Like many schizos only trying to save his own ass in an armed madhouse.
I semi watched the Dwayne Johnson movie Red One and it rather disgustingly has Santa Claus escorted by a pair of USA fighter planes. To a Dwayne Johnson hammer even the birth of Jesus looks like an action movie nail?
So clearly Tom Cruise needs those carriers even if we don’t. Priorities.
When I was a kid, every Christmas Eve NORAD would announce that they had Santa’s sleigh on their radar. Probably the movie was riffing on that.
Johnson plays Santa’s bodyguard to protect him from the evil dwarf shape shifter. Need I say more?
Given the US track record for the early days peer wars (the US gets at least one shellacking before adjusting a new paradigm and finally winning only because of the industrial deluge of stuff that followed eventual American mobilization), I would not want to be serving on a carrier strike group in the first week of WW3.
(I would count a showdown over Taiwan as WW3, even if it isn’t a literal world war involving a European theatre)
Fun fact….the US Navy has fired more air-to-air missiles around Yemen in the past 1.5 years than the Navy has used since the end of the Cold War. (probably can go back all the way to the Vietnam War, too)
surface-to-air
Thanks. I can’t for the life of me think how even the Ford class carriers will work against 21st century cheap efficient opponents like swarms of drones.
Especially when there are big issues concerning the F35.
History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes. The battleship died (apart from some useful role as cruise missile launcher during Iraq war 1) not long after WW2. The aircraft carrier looks like a glass cannon.
It will still take a large weapon to finish them off. Look how hard the Yorktown died in WW2 and these are much bigger. Subs with large torpedo’s or the bigger cruise missiles will be the go, blowing holes in them won’t be enough.
That link to the rise of the Dreadnought is by Big Serge, and it is very well done. the comment at the time was that once Dreadnought was launched, every other surface warship was obsolete. True. The result of new tech spearheaded by a very far seeing Navy Lord, Jackie Fisher.
Japan in 1940’s built the two largest battleships.
With 18 inch guns they could blast US’ ships with 14 or 16 inch guns at longer range.
As stated aircraft did both of them in. Never got to do what they were made to do.
The third Yamato was finished as a carrier (as big as early Cold War US supercarriers (although, not as well laid out bc it wasn’t designed as a carrier from.scratch) and was done in by a sub. Another sign of things to come?
One thing worth mentioning (Not sure if Big Serge mentions in further below–I’m not a paying subscriber) is that, while the Dreadnought was the first to be comissioned, it wasn’t the first ship launched that encompassed the concept: USS South Carolina (BB-26) was the first to be ordered and designed (although she lacked the turbines of Dreadnought–whether the turbines were the most useful powerplant for USN’s needs was a debate that went on for another decade plus, though (USS Oklahoma, laid down in 1912, was still powered by a triple expansion engine although she took a long time for completion, due to budget issues); Japanese Satsuma and Aki were likewise ordered and designed as all big-gun, turbine-powered ships before the Dreadnought, although they were completed as “semi-dreadnoughts” because of budget problems. In one sense, the amazing thing about the Dreadnought, more than the fast all big-gun ship concept was how quickly the ship went from design to completion (all in about a year).
Correction: “Launched” should have been “designed.”
Good article!
In Aviation Week magazine around 1991, after Saddaam grabbed Kuwait, a young AF officer observed that a land based squadron could generate several times the number of strike sorties of a super carrier. Later, USAF general wrote a weak rebuttal. Super carriers are core of the Airedale navy.
A hard to find report yesterday attributed most of the Houthi drones attacking USS Truman were shot down by USAF fighters. I suspect the carrier is too burdened getting off bombers to defend itself.
Drones and cheap unmanned combat systems are a big problem. Not safe without USAF nearby.
One addition. The air and missile defense fleet protecting super carriers missile ships have SPY-1 radar sets and intricate battle management to complement the Hawkeye radar aircraft. Newest picket ships are getting new SPY-6 radars, souped battle management and are same class but larger for more electrical power.
The picket ships can have attack cruise missiles in the verticals cells.
A new comment from Stephen Bryen (have no idea about the details and this is brand new news…)
https://weapons.substack.com/p/limited-ceasefire-agreed-at-least
It seems to me that both parties are playing a sort of one-upsmanship, by “accepting” deals with conditions that they are betting that the other side will find questionable and/or are likely to violate soon. So, if Macron and Stamer bite this and send in their troops (where will they find them?), Ukraine breaks the ceasefire (assuming they actually accept it in the first place–in which case, will UK and France still try to sneak their baits in?), and Russia bombs the UK/French troops who happen to be “standing too close to Ukrainian military targets,” what will happen? I’d almost suspect that Trump is trying to set things up so that the Brits and French do get bombed (or humiliated, if they don’t follow up on their huffy puffy boasts.) and US has legit excuse to let them hang out to dry.
“limited ceasefire” seems quite euphemistic, to me. It sounds like a re-visit of a prior proposal of modest de-escalation in which both sides would refrain from certain kinds of deep strikes. The land war will continue unabated. To me, it sounds like a bigger concession from RF than from Ukraine, inasmuch as RF deep strikes generally hit their targets and Ukrainian deep strikes generally are intercepted. Perhaps this is a carrot to get the Ukrainian leadership to start talking to RF leadership.
We took a trip to Houston once. And at that time, in the Houston Ship Channel, right next to the San Jacinto Battlefield where Texas won its independence, was moored the USS Texas. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember them saying this was the very last dreadnought left from WWI. It had been remodeled during WWII, and somehow did not end up stationed in Pearl Harbor on December 7th. However, they did say that Hollywood films about Pearl Harbor have been filmed on its decks. I was just looking this all up online just now and have learned that they have moved the USS Texas to Galveston, where it appears it will remain permanently. I do not get the feeling it is open to the public at this time.
But that is just the point. It is undergoing a massive restoration. The maintenance of the USS Texas is funded by donor groups but I get the idea that it is a never-ending job and that they are always behind.
The ship itself was impressive. You really do not get the idea of just how big these things are and how big the guns are until you are onboard. But you also immediately noticed something else……the entire thing was turning into a rust bucket. It made a believer out of me of how much our tax dollars go just to maintain these gigantic ships that are in active duty. The cost must be enormous.
I remember being told this was the last of the WWI dreadnoughts still around. When they reopen it for touring after the restoration, it really is something to see.
One funny thing about USS Texas is that she is powered by a triple expansion engine, something that the Dreadnought supposedly made obsolete. But USN spent another decade arguing whether the turbine offered much advantage over the triple expansion engine and US dreadnought continued to be built around the old engine until WW1….
What’s that quote supposedly by Churchill about Americans? ;-)
The USS North Carolina from WW2 can be toured at Wilmington, NC. Down the coast at Chareston is one of the WW2 era carriers but updated for later use.
Would’t be the first time *cough*Eden*cough*. And I am not necessarily critical of the US for doing this. I want my country out of Eastern Europe.
I don’t think Eisenhower intentionally set up the French and the British to be mousketeers instead of musketeers ( Operation Musketeer, get it?). I get the hunch that Trump is actively setting them up this time, though.
hehe gotcha. But maybe result still the same? Dunno.
Time for lots of re-organisation of country alliances, none the same.
Yeah the activiely setting them up bit worries me……
I have friends who are UK born and bred of Chinese ethcicity who I went to uni with and certainly were no friends of Chinese CCP……..now I hear them say “UK is familyblogged and we’d do better sucking up to CCP”.
Kinda makes you think since these are not dunces. Consultants in medicine who read stuff I’ve recommended to them along with a lot of other stuff they read independently, and not “pro Chinese slanted”, so, e.g. Pettis criticisms etc. Makes you think.
Journalist Cecil Brown was on board the Repulse when it sank, his eyewitness account…
(CBS, December II, 1941. By permission of Cecil Brown.)
I was aboard the Repulse and with hundreds of others escaped. Then, swimming in thick oil, I saw the Prince of Wales lay over on her side like a tired war horse and slide beneath the waters. I kept a diary from the time the first Japanese high level bombing started at 11:15 until 12:31 when Captain William Tennant, skipper of the Repulse and Senior British Captain afloat, shouted through the ship’s communications system, ‘‘All hands on deck, prepare to abandon ship. May God be with you.”
I jumped twenty feet to the water from the up end of the side of the Repulse and smashed my stop watch at thirty-five and a half minutes after twelve. The sinking of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales was carried out by a combination of high level bombing and torpedo attacks with consummate skill and the greatest daring. I was standing on the flag deck slightly forward amidships when nine Jap bombers approached at ten thousand feet strung in a line, clearly visible in the brilliant sunlit sky. They flew directly over our ship and our anti-aircraft guns were screaming constantly.
Just when the planes were passing over, one bomb hit the water beside where I was standing, so close to the ship that we were drenched from the water spout. Simultaneously another struck the Repulse on the catapult deck, penetrating the ship and exploding below in a marine’s mess and hangar. Our planes were subsequently unable to take off. At 11:27 fire is raging below, and most strenuous efforts are under way to control it. All gun crews are replenishing their ammunition and are very cool and cracking jokes. There are a couple of jagged holes in the funnel near where I am standing.
https://medium.com/@tenormail26/cecil-brown-sinking-of-the-prince-of-wales-and-repulse-1b3fbe31a4bc
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nobody believed ships like these could be sunk from the air by Japanese forces, until a new paradigm hit them…
Proof-reading comment to the author: HMS Dreadnought is very definitely spelled with an “ou” whereas at several points both the ship and the class are interchangeably spelled “au”…..
Otherwise, a good summary of the issues with carriers!
A few weeks ago I finished reading Seymour Melman’s “After Capitalism: from Managerialism to Workplace Democracy”. It’s an older book ( (c) 2001) and I’m not confident that Melman’s optimistic “take”, that worker reaction to pro-alienation managerial initiatives would continue to make progress toward disalienation, would hold up well in light of the past 25 years. I mention it here because early in the book Melman discusses the nature of post-war US industrial policy, which is intimately connected with the present industrial conditions, which underlie the US armed madhouse.
Basically, IIRC, as Melman describes it, there was a conscious decision on the part of US policy-makers to privilege weapons research over state investment in or encouragement of improvements in basic industrial infrastructure (especially the machine tools industry). US gradually lost its industrial technology leadership while retaining pre-eminence in military technologies. The seeds of the present problem of costly but not especially effective weapons systems were planted in an early decision to employ “cost-plus” approach to weapons development and procurement.
One gets the sense that US ought to get out of the war business, at least in terms of waging (I suppose we could continue to produce weapons for export as a domestic jobs program. The arsenal of oligarchy.). We aren’t that good at it.
I’m not sure the battleship examples are well chosen. The point about Pearl Harbour is precisely that the ships were at anchor, and not expecting an attack. Moreover, they were sunk by torpedoes, and at the time nobody realised that the Japanese had developed, just a few months before, a torpedo that could arm itself in such shallow water. And there was no air cover either. I don’t think anyone was surprised that torpedoes could easily sink a stationary unprepared battleship under such conditions. The Prince of Wales and Repulse were actually intended to be accompanied by a carrier, but it broke down. In any event the ships were intended as a deterrent signal, they were not expecting to be attacked. And the Yamato was an acknowledged suicide mission from the beginning.
But as regards the main subject, I have been saying for years that the geek approach–strengths and weaknesses of individual technologies–is beside the point. What matters is the capability you want to have, whatever equipment you then decide you need to provide it. Here, the carrier has taken over from the battleship the role of force projection. What that means is simply the ability to project force anywhere reasonably close to the shore, which is most of the world. A carrier gives you perhaps 3-4 squadrons of aircraft, including Airborne Early Warning, several squadrons of helicopters, up to a battalion-size ground force including engineers, ground motor transport, small boats capable of beaching, a hospital, a command and control HQ, strategic communications with the home country and a considerable intelligence gathering capability. So the question is not whether you want carriers, but whether you want this set of capabilities, because you might need to do certain things in the future. More and more countries around the world are deciding that they do, but it’s a choice. It’s just that you can’t unmake that choice easily, so you are stuck with it.
You could theoretically supply some of the same capability with a series of vessels: troop-carrying and landing vessels (essentially small carriers with helicopters), a large command ship (a cruiser perhaps), lots of air defence ships, a hospital ship, lots of ships carrying drones with workshops and some means of gathering targeting intelligence, and so on. The combined cost would probably be greater than a carrier and less effective. Modern aircraft are too expensive and complex to forward-base just anywhere these days, and would have to fly long distances, probably from home territory and refuel, as the French did in Mali.
So it’s not about technology, it’s about what you want to do. At the end of last year, during the Israeli attacks on Beirut, the airpower, very close to the town, was almost closed. Only MEA were still flying, and the Israelis could have, but didn’t, put the airport out of action. If the situation had got worse, as it threatened to, tens of thousands of people would have had to be evacuated through the port, protected by the military and transported to safety.
Sorry, not buying it. First off, if the CV concept is dead, why is China working so hard to achieve it?
The naval history is a bit weak. The dreadnaught era ended with the post WW1 naval limitations treaties. This resulted in a stunted shipbuilding program until nations decided to blow out the treaty limits in the 30s. The resulting North Carolinas and following weren’t available until 1942 and later. Partly I think due to teething problems resulting from new designs. The same could be said about CV design; wasn’t until the Essex design which came on line in 1943 that the USN had an ideal design.
While it’s correct that the WWII strategic naval battles we mostly read of were carrier duels, that tends to ignore the operationally vital surface battles that were fought. The contribution of capital ships to anti-air defense also tends to be minimized in popular history.
I get the idea that swarm attack tactics could theoretically overload defenses; I’m not sure that’s a given in practice.
As far as the cultural importance of naval aviators, I’ll just say “what-evs” as a former black shoe destroyerman.
Note there are no “frigates” in the USN these days. The building Constellation (FFG-62) class will change that.
Also a significant fraction of those WWII capital ships were built in the public yards, with Newport News having to compete. IMO eliminating the USN Construction Corps and forcing the Naval Constructors into the line was a mistake.
Arthur Marder, that prince amongst US naval historians, and a profound student of the late Victorian and early 20th century Royal Navy, made these observations of the double tragedy of December 1941:
“The destruction of the two capital ships marked the end of the period of sea power epitomised by Nelson and the teachings of Mahan. The battleship had been toppled from the lordly position it had retained for three centuries. More, it was patently clear that henceforth surface combat could take place only where aircraft were absent, out of range, or at night.”
And yet:
“The sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse was a disaster for the Royal Navy, one of the greatest it had ever suffered, and its prestige in consequence tumbled – but not in the Imperial [Japanese] Navy, in the Operations Division at any rate, where the high evaluation of the Royal Navy was not much affected. It was natural, it was thought, for the two British ships to be sunk, because they had advanced without air cover. But they had displayed ‘bravery’ in taking the offensive against the Japanese, whereas the US Asiatic Fleet had run away from the Philippines, to Java and Australia. Once the initial shock had worn off in the Royal Navy, there was an implacable determination to pay the enemy back in kind…What also came back into play then was a facet of the British temperament to which Mahan had called attention [in v. 2 of ‘The Influence of Sea Power’]: ‘But the English temper, when once aroused, was marked by a tenacity of purpose, a constancy of endurance, which strongly supported the conservative tendencies of the race…’.”
(Arthur J. Marder, ‘Old Friends, New Enemies: The Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy: Strategic Illusions, 1936-1941’, 1981, at 514 and 520-21). However, I am not certain that Mahan’s or Marder’s confidence in British temperament can now still be relied upon.