Seventy-six years ago, the United States faced an expansionist East Asian empire capable of projecting power across half the globe. Through conquest and technology, Imperial Japan built a vast maritime empire in an attempt to bring the Allies to their knees in the Pacific Ocean.
Recently China has begun a similar, though less obvious, push for control in the far western reaches of the Pacific, establishing hegemony over the region. Through trade measures like the “Belt and Road Initiative,” meant to tie China to greater Asia; territorial claims like the “Nine-Dash Line,” which contests that a large portion of the China Sea belongs by historical rights to China; and maritime expansion, China has pursued de facto control over the South China Sea with no sign of stopping.[1]
In this competition between the post–World War II international order and China’s assertive new look, conflict is not a foregone conclusion, but peace similarly is not guaranteed. Should hostilities commence between the United States and China, the United States once again would face a sea control dilemma on a hemispheric scale.
Revisiting the opening campaigns in the Pacific from December of 1941 through the spring of 1942 may help divine a blueprint for future wartime aircraft carrier (CV) operations. During the early days of the war, America’s CVs operated at the edge of their logistical tether, conducting long-range tactical raids to preserve a mobile striking force and effect strategic results.
A Mandate for Sea Control: Imperial Japan’s Long Reach
In late 1941, the United States’ situation was perilous. Japan’s capture and construction of strategic bases across the Pacific had extended the operating ranges of the Japanese fleet and air forces—effectively sequestering an empire across half of the Pacific Ocean. Japan’s well-trained pilots flew land-based and carrier aircraft as good as or better than their Allied counterparts, and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was a true “blue-water” fleet with a tradition of stunning seafaring victories, most notably during the Russo-Japanese War.[2]
Although predating the term by seven decades, Japan had constructed an “antiaccess / area denial” (A2/AD) umbrella over the Western Pacific, creating maneuvering space for Japanese forces and materiel, while denying that same freedom to Allied forces, particularly as Allied forces had scant material and manpower with which to counter them.[3]
Although this capacity was most spectacularly demonstrated during the surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines in December, 1941, these moves began long before the U.S. entry into World War II. Maritime acquisitions of Pacific islands at the turn of the 19th century continued into the 1930s, as Japan expanded westward across Korea, China, and Indochina, before the rapid kinetic action across the Pacific in 1941.
Japan aimed to secure sea lines of communication (SLOC) in and throughout the Western Pacific to protect the inflow of materials like oil and rubber, particularly from Malaya and Indonesia. This required aggressive territorial expansion and the neutralization of competing maritime power in the Pacific.
Building Hegemony: Chinese Maritime Expansion
Similar to Imperial Japan, China has pursued an expanded defensive “umbrella” across the Pacific. Ignoring the conventions of international law, China has reinforced territorial claims across the South and East China Seas through long-range strike power.[4]
Advanced aircraft and long-range “carrier killer” ballistic and cruise missiles expand China’s reach into the Western Pacific. China seeks to control the seas from ashore, even as its fleet, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), expands its blue-water capabilities. As Japan claimed islands and atolls from which it could base its own air power, China has artificially augmented strategic reefs and shoals, attaching military flexibility to its flaunting of international law.
Unlike the IJN in its prime, the PLAN currently lacks the power-projection capacity required to control the seas through sheer naval tonnage. China seems intent on correcting this deficiency; the PLAN continues work on its second indigenous CV and refines tactical naval aviation, in addition upgrading its surface and subsurface fleets.
The fortification of places like the Paracel Islands and Scarborough Shoals, protected by long-range missiles; air-to-air missiles designed to target command-and-control and tanker platforms; and improved shipborne weaponry indicate that China is establishing through combat systems what Japan created through territorial expansion.[5]
China does not (yet) have a string of overseas possessions like Imperial Japan’s, but it does exert an effective antinaval reach beyond the “second island chain” (i.e., from central Japan through the Marshall Islands to western New Guinea).[6] At the outset of major conflict, China would maintain a sea control footprint roughly equivalent to Japan’s, without territorial conquests or a corresponding fleet.
Sea Control at the Margins
The 7 December attack on Pearl Harbor all but crippled the Pacific Fleet; crucially, U.S. carrier and submarine forces survived. At the time, U.S. CVs in the Pacific constituted a modest but vital force of three ships; four others were a world away in the Atlantic.
The United States’ early goals were to maintain control of the SLOC from its west coast to the Panama Canal, and through Samoa to Australia, and to protect the approaches to Hawaii.[7] U.S. forces required time to reinforce remaining island outposts and to ferry men and materiel to Australia, which anxiously looked north as Japanese power crept closer.
To stem the tide of Japanese expansion while operating within and near their “umbrella” of power projection, the U.S. Navy relied on a “defensive-offensive” strategy. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J. King paraphrased this idea to Pacific Fleet Commander, Admiral Chester Nimitz, as, “Hold what you’ve got and hit them when you can.”[8]
Nimitz counseled his carrier skippers to avoid risking their flattops unless doing so would inflict outsized damage upon the enemy.[9] He avoided any force-on-force action for nearly five months, until opportunity presented itself at the Coral Sea in May and at Midway in early June.
U.S. carriers relied on speed, maneuverability, and the long reach of their air groups to penetrate Japan’s defensive umbrella, preserve the carrier force, and slowly push Japan from offense to defense as the IJN shifted forces across the Pacific in fruitless pursuit.[10]
U.S. carriers became gray ghosts, “[striking] fast and hard at the enemy, [fading] away into the broad Pacific, and [popping] up hundreds of miles away the next day to strike again.”[11] Sailors on board USS Yorktown (CV-5) called their ship “The Waltzing Matilda of the Pacific Fleet” as they maneuvered vast distances from Norfolk to San Diego to Samoa, followed by raid on Makin Island, all before a mid-February resupply at Pearl Harbor. Her sisters were similarly busy, and over the first six months of 1942 American CVs launched raids in a crescent from Marcus Island in the north to New Britain in the south.[12]
This cat-and-mouse game forced the Japanese to react to U.S. carrier movements and, when combined with U.S. submarine warfare against Japanese shipping, halted Japanese advances and probed their outer defenses. Carriers screened the movement of men and resources into theater, enabling the “island-hopping” campaign that would ultimately prove decisive. Simultaneously, U.S. industrial might allowed the building of a massive fleet of warships and logistics vessels, enough to compensate for losses that Japan could not weather in kind.
The Rhyme of History: Expansion, Isolation, Exclusion
Japan’s expansion created a security buffer for its SLOC and heartland. Chinese maritime strategy follows similar, if not necessarily identical, lines in the South China Sea. This body of water “is both a security buffer for South China and the vital commercial route for Chinese trade, including 80 percent of its oil imports.”[13] The South China Sea is China’s gateway to the Indian Ocean and the Middle East and Africa beyond. The potential oil and gas reserves lurking below the sea floor there only heighten the importance of maritime control.[14]
Wary of provoking the United States and her allies to military action, China has combined its steady expansion of isolated reefs and rocks with legal claims, airspace control measures, and increased political and economic ties across Asia. The Belt and Road Initiative represents the last of these, as China seeks a sort of “co-prosperity sphere” without Imperial Japan’s military conquests. China “continues to take small, incremental steps that are not likely to provoke a military response from any of the other claimants, but over time gradually change the status-quo regarding disputed claims in its favor.”[15]
Just as a relatively weak military presence in the Far East (due to Allied commitments in Europe) enabled Japanese expansion, China pursues a weakening of U.S. diplomatic and political clout in the region, complicating the preconditions for military action. U.S. options for a forward-deployed military response may be limited by a lack of political willingness, as regional allies face Chinese dominance as a fait accompli. Thus, America may find it necessary to respond from east of Guam if forward deployed forces are isolated politically, diplomatically, or militarily.
Although now characterized as a strategic blunder, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was an example of incredible power projection whose overreach was only clearly visible in hindsight. In an era before satellite communications, artificial intelligence, and network-centric capabilities, Japan controlled an expansive system of shore bases equipped with long range aviation and guarded by a powerful blue-water fleet. Japan’s massive maritime empire is a testament to the value of coordinated land- and sea-based forces.
China benefits from enhanced communications; land-, sea-, air-, and space-based surveillance technology; cyber and electromagnetic warfare capabilities; and the need to control and monitor a much smaller portion of the ocean: the South China Sea. With these advantages, China can quickly locate and strike targets throughout the theater.
In World War II, naval leaders feared for the security of the SLOC between Australia and the West. In the modern era, the greater Far East has become even more valuable in geopolitics. The majority of the human population resides in proximity to the South China Sea and Central Indian Ocean; manufacturing of goods ranging from textiles to smartphones occurs in East Asia; and incredible natural resources flow into, out of, and within the region, creating global wealth and underpinning the world economy. The rise of independent Asia makes maintaining control of those waters more important now than it was eighty years ago.[16]
The Return of the Raid
Although ballyhooed in the press, China’s grip on the South China Sea and the Western Pacific at large is not ironclad. The capability to strike anywhere in the South China Sea is not the same as the ability to strike anything at any time. Detecting, locating, and targeting U.S. forces across such a huge swath of territory will remain difficult, even with advanced sensors. As such, future U.S. CV skippers will enjoy some of their predecessors’ advantages, namely the ability to maneuver and hide within the A2/AD umbrella until the need to withdraw becomes essential. To counter this long-range capability, U.S. leaders should adopt a similar “defensive-offensive” approach to CV operations.
U.S. seapower was constrained after Pearl Harbor because of the surprise attack and by pre-war policies and construction limitations. The modern-day United States similarly will be limited as a result of the sheer cost of individual platforms and the industrial capacity required to build them. China will possess exceptional reach, but the PLAN will not control the sea to a degree that prohibits all U.S. and Allied operations. In this environment, the United States must pursue local sea control to force strategic reactions by the enemy while preserving a force of limited (and likely irreplaceable) assets.
The 18 April 1942 Doolittle Raid on mainland Japan is the most widely known example of this principle. Maneuvering close to mainland Japan, USS Hornet (CV-8) launched 16 Army bombers against the Home Islands. Although this raid accomplished little in terms of affecting Japanese material production, it forced the reallocation of land-based air and IJN forces towards the home islands, for fear of a similar attack.[17]
This tactical and symbolic action had strategic consequences, allowing U.S. forces more freedom to maneuver at the extremities of Japanese reach. The IJN’s movements away from their defensive perimeter enabled Allied support to Australia and the South Pacific and bought the United States time to recapitalize the Pacific Fleet.
Early World War II CV raids sought out myriad targets on the fringes of Japanese control, prioritized to alleviate the sea control problem. Aviators were briefed to attack warships, aircraft, and other ships foremost, with ground-based facilities as secondary targets.[18] This clear prioritization, combined with flexibility, allowed aircrew to hit what they could where they could, based on real-time observation.
In a conflict with China, the United States similarly must seek opportunities to collapse the A2/AD umbrella and increase the ability to maneuver at the margins. The precise nature of these actions depends on detailed operational planning beyond the scope of this essay, but it is worth noting that the Doolittle Raid was a successful fusion of Army and Naval air power. Strikes against the perimeter (or core) of Chinese power projection must also take advantage of joint power.[19]
Limited reconnaissance and intelligence drove Nimitz’s use of a flexible target set.[20] In a modern conflict wherein control of the electromagnetic spectrum cannot be assured, planners similarly would be wise to assign flexible targeting priorities and to allocate platforms that allow for real-time adjustments to strike targeting.[21]
21st Century Ghosts
Strategic gains through tactical maneuver will depend on the CV’s inherent mobility, and a renewed emphasis on long range strike.
U.S. carriers exercised incredible mobility in the face of Japanese sea control. The Yorktown’s surge from the Atlantic to the Pacific, for example, underscores the carrier’s mobility on a global scale. Carrier operations along the outer rim of Japanese waters prior to Midway highlight the efficacy of raids against fixed defenses. Japanese commanders faced “gray ghosts” [USS Enterprise’s (CV-6) sobriquet], as carriers dashed across the Pacific, impossible to catch.
Current Nimitz- and Ford-class carriers are similarly mobile, with greater speed and endurance than their ancestors thanks to nuclear propulsion. Although confronted by modern sensors, U.S. carriers will be able to exploit the edges of surveillance coverage when properly enabled by friendly intelligence.
In addition, modern aircraft possess incredible payload advantages over those of the Greatest Generation. Instead of measuring ordnance in “aircraft-per-target,” today’s strike-fighters operate in terms of “targets-per-aircraft,” i.e., one aircraft can attack multiple targets at sea, ashore, and in the air in a single sortie.
In one crucial area, however, today’s carriers of suffer in comparison to their ancestors. World War II carriers benefitted from the range of their air groups. During the raid on Kwajalein, for example, two hours elapsed between aircraft launch and weapons release. These aircraft then returned to the Enterprise after nearly two more hours aloft.[22] At Midway, the air groups of the Hornet, Yorktown, and Enterprise flew for a similar length of time before finding and engaging the Japanese fleet.[23]
Using time aloft as a comparison, today’s carrier air wing (CVW) is remarkably short legged. The Navy’s primary operational strike-fighter, the FA-18E/F Super Hornet, can sustain a two-hour flight on a maximum range profile, but after that time aloft a Super Hornet could not fight and then return to the carrier unrefueled. Translating that time into distance, on average the unrefueled radius of aircraft from Nimitz- and Ford-class carriers is approximately 500 nautical miles.[24]
The modern era’s most significant range multiplier is aerial refueling, which could double a strike-fighter’s range if refueling both en route to and on return from a mission is feasible. However, this capability solely resides with Air Force “big wing” tankers like the KC-135 and KC-10. The availability of these platforms relies on interservice cooperation, flyable airframes, a permissive environment (due to tankers’ lack of self-defense capability), and the ability to coordinate tanker availability in time and space well ahead of time. In a major conflict characterized by speed and maneuver, the aligning of all of these factors is a significant gamble.
The Navy must pursue improved “organic” (i.e., carrier-launched) tanking capability to stretch the CVW’s range. Furthermore, this tanker must be able to operate within the A2/AD to decrease the carrier’s exposure to antiship defenses. Every additional mile added to a strike-fighter’s range increases the carrier’s ability to penetrate the defensive umbrella and then withdraw while the CVW delivers its punch.
The current MQ-25 Stingray program holds promise for an organic, survivable, persistent tanker. However, naval aviation leadership must carefully consider ways to increase the MQ-25’s payload beyond the current specifications in order to maximize available fuel, and thus range, for carrier strike-fighters.[25]
Using the MQ-25 as a springboard, naval aviation may regain organic ranges of over 1,000 nm, a number untouched since the Cold War, thus buying the carrier precious time to maneuver undetected or to regain sanctuary. [26] Incremental growth in the in MQ-25’s mission profiles and capabilities may result in that platform’s evolution towards the surveillance or strike roles, further increasing the range of carrier aviation.
Beyond long-range aircraft, U.S. forces must capitalize on advances in weapons technology to extend the CVW’s striking power. The under-development AGM-158C Long Range AntiShip Missile, for use by airborne shooters, combined with the ability for CVW aircraft to retarget surface-launched antiship missiles like the BGM-109 Tomahawk, have the potential to give the CVW unparalleled reach. The key for continued relevance will be the marrying of long range aircraft with long range missiles, rather than defaulting to one or the other.
U.S. carriers in future conflict must leverage maneuver and long-range striking power to counter the enemy’s shore-based (and growing blue water) power projection. Practically speaking, this likely will mean operations in an environment in which U.S. forces can only achieve localized sea control for a period of time. The longer U.S. forces linger under the umbrella of shore-based power, the more vulnerable they are to detection and attack.
False Equivalencies
Despite the parallels between Imperial Japanese and Chinese sea control strategies, and despite the potential efficacy of raids as a form of localized sea control, drawing too many connections between past and present is unwise.
Thus far China has not pursued expansion through outright conquest, but by means of a web of diplomatic and geopolitical ties throughout East Asia, creating a difficult situation for the United States and its allies. This simultaneously decreases the prospect of open war, while increasing the likelihood of “gray zone” military actions ranging from cyberspace incursions to patrols of disputed territory by the Chinese Coast Guard.[27]
In this vein, China has sought sea control without that asset most associated with command of the oceans: a blue water combat fleet. However, China is aggressively building a fleet that focuses on “the combination of ‘offshore waters defense’ with ‘open seas protection,’” a shift “requiring enhanced power-projection capabilities.”[28] The construction of China’s first indigenous CV is only the highest-profile effort and follows years of maritime operations abroad and a comprehensive pursuit of improved seagoing platforms.
This naval expansion should not lull planers into believing that a maritime campaign of attrition and sea control will cripple China as the campaign against the IJN did to Japan. China’s Belt and Road Initiative includes significant landward investment across Asia into Europe, potentially lessening Chinese dependence on SLOC for materiel. This means that even a successful effort against the PLAN may not drive China to the negotiating table if U.S. naval victories are not coupled with diplomatic, economic, and informational efforts to rein in Chinese ambitions ashore.
During World War II, land-based aircraft were the equivalent of today’s long-range antiship missiles, boasting greater range and payloads than their carrier-based counterparts. During the raids on the Marshalls and Gilberts, for example, the Enterprise and Yorktown were damaged by land-based air attack while their air groups attacked targets ashore.[29]
Future carrier raids against shore-based facilities or enemy ships at sea will occur under the gaze of modern sensors and will be countertargeted by supersonic (or hypersonic, i.e., faster than five times the speed of sound) weapons. The carrier will have to remain mobile and utilize deception and stealth to employ its weapon system—the air wing. However, the CVW must rediscover a long reach in both endurance and range in order to enable the successful maneuver of the CV into, out of, and within an A2/AD envelope.
“Control of the sea has always been obtained by mounting the weapon of the day on a ship… The large ship with the long-range weapon was, and still is, the very basis upon which control of the sea is built.”[30] With proper investment, the large ship (the CV), with the large weapons (the CVW) will continue to control the seas in future conflicts. Despite a steady drum beat of paranoia regarding China’s land-based antiship reach, echoing arguments from the earliest days of aviation, America remains situated to capitalize on the CV’s mobility and striking power. Increasing the range and persistence of the CVW will create local sea control at the margins of the Western Pacific, building the time and space required for victory at sea.
[1] Note: The name has recently changed from the more prevalent “One Belt, One Road” program, see: Hong Kong Trade Development Council, “Belt and Road Basics,” accessed April 11, 2018, https://beltandroad.hktdc.com/en/belt-and-road-basics. Raul Pedrozo, China Versus Vietnam: An Analysis of the Competing Claims in the South China Sea, (Arlington, VA: CNA Corporation, 2014) 24, https://southeastasiansea.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/china-versus-vietnam-an-analysis-of-the-competing-claims-in-the-south-china-sea.pdf.
[2] John H. Bradley and Jack W. Dice, The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific, ed. Thomas E. Greiss (Garden City Park, NY: Square One Publishers, 2002), 13.
[3] Note: Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, has dismissed the term A2/AD as an oversimplification of various means of sea and air control in a contested environment. This is true and throughout this essay the term will be used sparingly. It remains; however, useful shorthand and the reader will forgive this periodic violation of orders. See: Hope Hodge Seck, “Here’s Why the Navy Won’t Talk About ‘A2/AD’ Anymore,” (Military.com, October 4, 2016), https://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/10/04/heres-why-the-navy-wont-talk-about-a2ad-anymore.html.
[4] Jane Perlez, “Tribunal Rejects Beijing’s Claims in South China Sea,” (New York Times, July 12, 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/world/asia/south-china-sea-hague-ruling-philippines.html.
[5] James Holmes, “Visualize Chinese Sea Power,” Proceedings 144, no. 6, (June 2018), https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018-06/visualize-chinese-sea-power.
[6] Patrick Cronin, Daniel Kliman, and Harry Krejsa, No Safe Harbor: Countering Aggression in the East China Sea, (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2018) 7, https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/CNASReport-NoSafeHarbor-Final.pdf?mtime=20180314121036.
[7] Bradley and Dice, The Second World War, 95.
[8] Stephen W. Sears, World War II: Carrier War (New World City, 2015).
[9] Bradley and Dice, The Second World War, 110.
[10] Ibid, 98.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Thomas E. Greiss, ed., The West Point Atlas for the Second World War: Asia and the Pacific, (Garden City Park, NY: Square One Publishers, 2002), map 13.
[13] Michael McDevitt, The South China Sea: Assessing US Policy and Options for the Future (Washington, DC: CNA Corporation, 2014), 31.
[14] Ibid, 32.
[15] Ibid, 33.
[16] Note: This is not to undercut the importance of trade with East Asia in the mid-20th Century, but to underscore how important post-colonial Asia has become in the post-War world.
[17] Bradley and Dice, The Second World War, 97.
[18] United States Navy Office of Naval Intelligence, “Early Raids in the Pacific Ocean: February 1 to March 10, 1942 – Marshall and Gilbert Islands, Rabaul, Wake and Marcus, Lae and Salamaua,” (Washington, DC: United States Navy, January 1943), 3, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/e/early-raids-pacific-ocean.html#raid
[19] For a discussion of joint defense of the South China Sea, see: Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, “Asymmetric Warfare: American Style,” Proceedings 138, no. 4 (April 2012), https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2012-04/asymmetric-warfare-american-style.
James R. Holmes, “Defend the First Island Chain,” Proceedings 140, no. 4 (April 2014), https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2014-04/defend-first-island-chain.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “How to Deter China: The Case for Archipelagic Defense,” Foreign Affairs 94, no. 2 (March/April 2015), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-02-16/how-deter-china.
[20] Office of Naval Intelligence, “Early Raids in the Pacific Ocean,” 2.
[21] Note: The most famous early-war example of this is the action of Torpedo Squadron Eight (VT-8) at Midway, whose commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron, diverted VT-8 from the air group’s course, located the Japanese task force, and delayed IJN forces long enough for following waves of American aircraft to win the pivotal battle of the Pacific War. See: Robert J. Mrazek, A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight (New York, NY: 2009).
[22] Office of Naval Intelligence, “Early Raids in the Pacific Ocean,” 9.
[23] Note: This represents operating at the ragged edge of endurance for these aircraft, many of which suffered fuel casualties. Regardless, their ability to transit, fight, and return to base on such a timeline, even in extremis, is beyond the capability of modern naval strike-fighters. See: Barrett Tillman, Enterprise (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 80.
[24] Jerry Hendrix, Retreat from Range: The Rise and Fall of Carrier Aviation (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2015), 47, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/retreat-from-range-the-rise-and-fall-of-carrier-aviation.
[25] Note: The MQ-25 is currently expected to deliver 15,000 pounds of fuel at a distance of 500nm from the carrier. This translates to an offload of about 7,000 pounds per aircraft in a section of two strike-fighters: roughly half of a full fuel load. A typical strike mission will consist of at least four strikers, and possibly fighter escorts, jamming aircraft, and other assets. At 8,000 pounds of fuel apiece, it will take five or more MQ-25s to refuel them all just once. Current plans outline a total of six MQ-25s per carrier air wing. See: Sam LaGrone, “Navy Releases Final MQ-25 Stingray RFP; General Atomics Bid Revealed” USNI News, October 10, 2017, https://news.usni.org/2017/10/10/navy-releases-final-mq-25-stingray-rfp-general-atomics-bid-revealed and Hendrix, Retreat from Range, 53.
[26] Hendrix, Retreat from Range, 27.
[27] Cronin, Kliman, and Krejsa, No Safe Harbor, 8. Lyle Morris, “China Welcomes its Newest Armed Force; the Coast Guard,” War on the Rocks, April 4, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/04/china-welcomes-its-newest-armed-force-the-coast-guard/.
[28] Jesse Barker Gale and Andrew Shearer, “The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the Maritime Silk Road Initiative” (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 2018), 2, https://www.csis.org/analysis/quadrilateral-security-dialogue-and-maritime-silk-road-initiative.
[29] Tillman, Enterprise, 50.
[30] Commander Laurence B. Green, “A Case for the Attack Carrier in the Missile Age,” Proceedings 87, no.7 (July 1958), https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1958-07/case-attack-carrier-missile-age.
