Not So Super Carriers

While we're waiting to hear from the President tonight on the final draft of his final decision on ending the Afghan surge by the end of 2012, supposedly 10k this year and 20k the next... so says the rumor mill...

Carriers! Super carriers!

We got 'em. We've dominated the seas and lands within range with them.

Unfortunately the defense systems to prevent these massive floating airbases from falling to increasingly effective anti-ship weapons just aren't keeping pace. As a Danger Room article on the subject today points out, our dependence on these broadside-of-a-barn sized targets, that would severely cripple our capabilities in the area if taken out, is making less cost-to-benefit sense over time:

Instead of today’s small number of gigantic carriers, the Navy of the future should operate a larger number of smaller flattops, Capt. Jerry Hendrix asserts in the pages of Proceedings magazine. “Moving away from highly expensive and vulnerable supercarriers toward smaller, light carriers would bring the additional benefit of increasing our nation’s engagement potential.”

It would also spread out U.S. naval air power instead of concentrating it in just a few places, where it can be more easily knocked out.

...

Even Gates was forced to backtrack after his speech last year criticizing the Navy’s over-reliance on huge flattops. “I am not going to cut a carrier. Okay?” Gates said. “But people ought to start thinking about how they are going to use carriers in a time when you have highly accurate cruise and ballistic missiles that can take out a carrier.”

To Hendrix, that means having more carriers. And that means they need to be smaller.

As with any military resource shift, this would be controversial and involve a lot of fights between vested interests and partisan gamesmanship. The article and the supporting links make strong points about why we should adopt a hybrid carrier strategy, with a mix of modern carriers and some super carriers. The hybrid strategy would allow stronger adaptability for the offensive in conflicts we currently face with al Qaeda related groups and likely military scenarios of the future. On the defensive end it would not only keep us a step ahead of advanced powers, but mitigate potential mass disasters should other enemies obtain and use newer effective weapons against our naval forces. Taking out a single super carrier could immediately add thousands of deaths to the war tally in addition to the strategic and monetary slam.

Given these issues it may be necessary to upgrade from the AEGIS and other defense systems available even in a hybrid mix for the remaining super carriers. When the mission relies upon them, we better not be caught with our pants down.