What is old is old again.
The argument that our carriers are sitting ducks is not new, and it is good that it was brought up again by LT Vandenegel, USN in May’s Proceedings. It is are as old as carriers are themselves. The whole argument was first thrown at me when I was still a Midshipman back in the mid-1980s when some magazine cover, either “The Atlantic” or “The Nation” I think, had a USN ship formation as a bunch of yellow duckies. It was an old argument presented as new then, and it is now. That’s ok, as the conversation is a healthy exercise in seeing if we understand our critical vulnerabilities correctly.
First things first, of course carriers are vulnerable. Any enemy wants to sink carriers because they are such a threat to begin with. They are also big, and because they are maximized to take the most aircraft and ordnance as far as possible, they are also fairly fragile.
As a lot of things are trying to kill them, they need a lot of protection. As a result, they are also very expensive, as all navies are and have been – but you get what you pay for.
In peace or war, if you want to be able to project your national will globally, there is no better and more effective way to do it than with a carrier. Nothing says, “Hi there!” off your coast like an American CVN and her escorts. In times of conflict, nothing provides the ability to inflict damage almost anywhere within reach of shore better than a CVN.
The arguments are all well known. Add to that the vulnerabilities of her embarked airwing, and you can fill up libraries with books on the subject and take up a week’s worth of panel discussions going around and around the topic.
Let’s not plow that field again, but instead look at what history tells us.
What is a carrier’s expected survivability when the seas are contested by peer to near-peer adversaries over an extended period of time?
The last time that was seen was WWII, so let’s see what that tells us.
At the outbreak of WWII, the major aircraft carrier navies were the US Navy, Royal Navy, and the Imperial Japanese Navy. While the Royal Navy was contested at sea starting in 1939, the USA and Japanese navies did not face significant dangers at sea until 1941. We’ll use that as the start point for them. Let’s also just look at just the large “Fleet Carriers” that each navy started the war with and let’s see what their survival rates were.
The question isn’t if carriers will be sunk, but how many will be sunk. If you are wondering how many will be sunk in year-1 of the war, then let’s aggregate the three fleets together. Of the 21 CV, by the end of their first year of war, 11 were sunk. That is 52%.
What should we plan for today if the past provides a hint at what might be? The math is simple. If you have 10-11 CVN, you need to plan to only have 5 of them available after a year, assuming none were damaged or in overhaul.
What is our ability to produce replacement CV/CVN? Will we have a few years warning to ramp up construction before the next world war comes? Oh, it’s coming; next week or next decade or next century, it’s coming.
What is our backup plan to continue to fight when no or few carriers are available – like we had to do with our surface forces for most of the Guadalcanal Campaign? There are no training time outs in war, dontchaknow. There are no exercise resets.
What are our post-war plans for environmental impact mitigation for scores of nuclear reactors in varying states of damage everywhere from coastal waters, continental shelves to the abysmal plain? Just the CVN nuclear plants, we can cover the sunk SSN at a later date.
Oh, what? Really? Why yes, we will have some of our SSN sunk, but perhaps that is a different post for a different day.
In war, ships are sunk; it is known. It is only a problem if you don’t expect, plan, and adjust accordingly before war starts.
