The Ship Model Forum

China's military has US aircraft carriers in its sights, but those flattops aren't 'little teacups,' their captains say
Christopher Woody
Tue, April 12, 2022, 8:03 a.m.�7 min read


China's development of advanced anti-ship weapons has renewed debate on aircraft carriers' future.
US officials say carriers aren't invulnerable but are well defended and won't be easy to attack.
Anyone thinking they're "little teacups out there or something" is wrong, Capt. Paul Campagna said.
In March 1922, the US Navy's first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley, entered service. A century later, some are questioning whether carriers can survive in the wars of the future.
The development of increasingly sophisticated anti-ship weapons by capable adversaries, namely Russia and China, has raised doubts about those ships.
The captains of two of those carriers discounted the concern, saying the US Navy's 11 flattops would be tough to find and hard to stop.
Questions about whether carriers are "obsolete" have come up before, including when Congress was debating whether to build the USS Enterprise, the Navy's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, in the late 1950s, Capt. Paul Campagna, the commanding officer of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, said.
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Are aircraft carriers a source of national pride � or a ludicrous waste of money?


Patrick Bishop
Sat., February 5, 2022, 11:05 a.m.

Book review How to Build and Aircraft Carrier by Chris Terrill - Christopher Pledger
Aircraft carriers have been around since the First World War. If the usual laws of military Darwinism applied, they would be extinct by now, gone the way of the battleship which was eventually just too costly, resource-hungry and vulnerable to survive. But no. The carrier is flourishing. Fourteen navies operate them. The US has 11. They have become as much a national phallic symbol as Dreadnoughts were at the start of the last century � and they attract the same sort of controversy.
Britain�s membership of the carrier club is secured by HMS Queen Elizabeth, which completed her maiden operational voyage just before Christmas, returning to Portsmouth after 28 weeks and 26,000 miles at sea. Hot on her heels comes the second in the class, the Prince of Wales. Together, they earn us the respect of the Americans and put us up there with China and ahead of Russia, France and India. It�s about much more than military muscle. Boris Johnson, who inherited the building project from the Blair-Brown era, trumpets the new supercarriers as the embodiment of national prestige, flying the flag for Global Britain.
The ships are certainly impressive. Big Lizzie, as she is apparently nicknamed, is the largest and most powerful ship the Navy has ever built. She weighs 65,000 tonnes, is 280 metres long, and can carry up to 40 aircraft � notably the horrendously expensive American F-35 Lightning stealth fighter. The flight deck is the size of three and a half football fields. Her six engines generate enough energy to power a city the size of Swindon. And so on�
It adds up to an amazing feat of engineering, and it�s this aspect of the story and the human dynamics that go into making the whole enterprise work that fascinate film-maker Chris Terrill. He knows it inside out, having followed events since the first cut of steel in 2009 to last year�s deployment in the Far East, filming material for his BBC documentary Britain�s Biggest Warship. He�s an anthropologist and enthusiast who underwent the punishing training to qualify for the green beret of the Royal Marines at an impressively advanced age (he is 69).
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Expensive, massive and lethal: The future of the aircraft carrier
Brad Howard 2 hrs ago
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The importance of aircraft carriers in military history cannot be overstated.
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The future of the aircraft carrier

Aircraft carriers helped the United States win key naval battles in World War II, especially in the Pacific Theater. In the decades after World War II, aircraft carriers gave the United States the ability to project its military power across the globe. But advances in naval warfare could unseat the role of the aircraft carrier.
a close up of a boat next to a body of water: In this handout photo provided by the U.S. Navy, the future USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is seen underway on its own power for the first time on April 8, 2017 in Newport News, Virginia. The first-of-class ship - the first new U.S. aircraft carrier design in 40 years will spend several days conducting builder's sea trials, a comprehensive test of many of the ship's key systems and technologies. � Provided by CNBC In this handout photo provided by the U.S. Navy, the future USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is seen underway on its own power for the first time on April 8, 2017 in Newport News, Virginia. The first-of-class ship - the first new U.S. aircraft carrier design in 40 years will spend several days conducting builder's sea trials, a comprehensive test of many of the ship's key systems and technologies.

"If you want to operate aircraft carriers, you need a whole lot of high-end technology to be able to defend it," said David Larter, a naval warfare reporter for Defense News. "It's been the advancement in anti-ship cruise missiles that can be launched from land. It's been advancements in cruise missiles launched from bombers or fighters that just pose an enormous threat."

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Timmy C wrote:The idea behind smaller carriers isn't about cost - it's survivability. One big deck is great for dollars-per-sortie, but it becomes an all-or-nothing proposition. At least with multiple carriers, the loss or disabling of one still leaves you with another deck and its planes. It's one thing to try to maximize the amount of sorties to ensure constant coverage over a target area when your opponent has no real ability to strike your carrier (i.e. the last thirty years), and quite another thing when you're up against a potential enemy that does have such an ability and you're wanting to complicate their targeting as much as possible.

That being said, that's just the logic behind it - I'm not 100% on board with it, as there are other measures one might take to improve the carrier's survivability.

US Navy upgrades more ships for the F-35 as the future of carriers remains in flux
By: David B. Larter ? 1 day ago

An F-35B Lightning II fighter aircraft with Marine VMM-265 prepares to land on the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship America. The Navy has used its amphibious assault ships to test the notion of smaller carriers. (Lance Cpl. Kolby Leger/U.S. Marine Corps)
WASHINGTON � Former acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly hadn�t been out of the job more than a month before the Navy canceled an ongoing study he�d launched into the future of aircraft carriers � a review he optimistically termed �Future Carrier 2030.�
Modly and his predecessor, Richard Spencer, had been excited by the prospect of fielding smaller, more risk-worthy carriers that could reduce the chance of China or Russia landing a major punch in a conflict simply by sinking or disabling a single ship, such as a Nimitz- or Ford-class aircraft carrier with thousands of sailors and tens of billions of dollars of hardware aboard.
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With China gunning for aircraft carriers, US Navy says it must change how it fights
By: David B. Larter ? December 6
WASHINGTON � Just because China might be able to hit U.S. Navy aircraft carriers with long-range anti-ship missiles doesn�t mean carriers are worthless, the service�s top officer said Thursday.

The chorus of doom and gloom over China�s anti-access weapons is too simplistic, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said, but that doesn�t mean the Navy should refrain from adjusting the way it fights.

�Let�s look at this like a physics problem,� Gilday proposed. �[People will say]: �Hypersonics go really fast and they travel at long ranges. Carriers can only travel [�X� distance], so carriers are going to have to go away.� That�s a very simplistic way to look at the problem.


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New CONOPs

The discussion around making the carrier relevant in an anti-access environment is nothing new, but in the past several months the topic has gained traction because of a recent report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments that called for the Navy to build its capabilities to fight at extended ranges.

The study called for the carrier air wing of the future to be able to hunt submarines (serving as a replacement for the S-3 Viking aircraft), provide surveillance and targeting, and destroy ships and land targets with standoff weapons, all while fighting at nearly double the range of today�s air wing.

If the Navy wants to counter China�s anti-ship cruise missiles and increasing naval capabilities, it must resurrect the Cold War-era Outer Air Battle concept, which focused on longer-range aircraft to counter Russia�s bombers. However, instead of fighting at 200-plus nautical miles, the air wing will have to fight at 1,000 nautical miles, according to the study�s lead author, retired submarine officer and analyst Bryan Clark.

�The air wing of the future is going to have to be focused less on attacking terrorist training camps and huts in Syria, and more focused on killing ships and submarines at sea � dealing with naval capabilities and island-based littoral capabilities,� Clark said in a telephone interview earlier this year. �Those are the challenges: Range and the mission set is changing.�

In other words, the entire air wing, both the range at which it can fight and the missions it is set up to execute, must be completely overhauled.

Clark called for the effort to start with the Navy fully committing to the MQ-25 Stingray autonomous refueling drone, which when operational will be able to drag the current air wing out to the 1,000-nautical-mile range.

Boeing inked an $805 million contract award last year for the first four aircraft, and in September the company announced that the Stingray�s prototype had taken its first flight.

Will ground-based hypersonic missiles replace aircraft carriers in the defense budget?
By: David B. Larter ? 5 days ago
WASHINGTON � A debate on the future of aircraft carriers is roiling the U.S. Department of Defense, and it is increasingly spilling out into the open. While the debate over the efficacy of carriers in high-end conflict is nothing new, a general understanding that the DoD will not have unlimited funds with which to deter an increasingly potent China and Russia have made the questions particularly urgent.
At issue is a choice about continuing to invest in aircraft carriers and the associated air wing � the mainstay of U.S. global power projection since World War II � or to gradually reduce investment in those systems and increase investment in new capabilities such as long-range conventional hypersonic missiles.
It�s a question that Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin put bluntly in his remarks last month at the Defense News Conference.
�Let�s just propose a thought experiment,� Griffin said. �Which do you think the Chinese leadership would fear more: 2,000 conventional strike missiles possessed by the United States and its allies in the western Pacific capable of ranging Chinese targets, or one new carrier? Because those two things cost about the same amount of money. Those are the kinds of questions we need to be asking ourselves.�
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Role of aircraft carriers questioned
By: Jeff Martin ? 2 hours ago
Congress is taking a hard look at what role aircraft carriers could play in future war

(FULL REPORT AT VIDEO LINK ABOVE)

USS Truman's Early Retirement Could Present Questionable Future for Carriers
26 Mar 2019
Stars and Stripes | By Caitlin Doornbos
The USS Harry S. Truman will retire two decades early if Congress approves the Navy's 2020 proposed budget as-is, a move some say could indicate a questionable future for aircraft carriers.
The Navy's proposed budget -- published this month -- calls for dismantling the Truman in 2024 instead of funding the planned refueling of its nuclear reactor core that year.
Commissioned in 1998, the carrier is 20 years old, making it the fourth-youngest of the Navy's 11 active carriers, according to the service.
Canceling the Truman's refueling would open up funding for other capabilities, Rear Adm. Randy Crites, deputy assistant Secretary of the Navy for management and budget, said during a Pentagon presentation March 12.
In its 30-year shipbuilding plan submitted to Congress this month, the Navy said the change "is in concert with the Defense Department's pursuit of a more lethal balance of high-end, survivable platforms (e.g. CVNs) and complementary capabilities from emerging technologies." CVN is Navy shorthand for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
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