The Future of the Aircraft Carrier and the Carrier Air Wing
By Michael E. O’Hanlon
What is the future of the aircraft carrier for the U.S. Navy?
Some would argue that the carrier is obsolete. Faced with threats ranging from China’s DF-21 and DF-26 ballistic missiles with homing warheads to the proliferation of quiet attack submarines to the spread of nuclear weapons, as well as the very cyber systems that not only make modern ships more efficient but also leave them vulnerable to hacking, this school of thought has predicted that the carrier will soon go the way of the battleship.
Others, including most of the existing Navy establishment, appear to hope that the carrier of tomorrow can continue virtually the same missions as carriers of the past. Indeed, the Navy still sizes the carrier fleet using similar criteria to what it employed in those earlier periods—and plans to keep doing so under its envisioned 355-ship fleet of the future. It would appear to envision a similar role for the carrier in any future wars to what transpired, say, in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and in any future high-end crisis diplomacy such as the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995 and 1996.
In my view, both these views are flawed. The Navy would do better to plan for fleets of 10 flat-deck aircraft carriers (and another 10 large-deck amphibious ships—its “small carriers”) rather than to aim for larger numbers. But it should more clearly prioritize, and accelerate, the development of long-range stealthy airpower, most likely in the form of unmanned aircraft, to operate off these carriers.
The article begins with a brief summary of today’s aircraft carrier fleets and air wings and then works through the taxonomy of missions for those U.S. military assets—today and tomorrow.
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