gunnut

In the spirit of the thread asking if the AF need more cheaper fighters, I want to ask if the USN need more but smaller carriers.

The current super carriers are great and have tremendous power projection capability. We only have 12 of them and it's like putting all our eggs in one basket should 1 get knocked out.

Should the navy replace them, gradually, with carriers like the new Royal Navy CVF, in the 60,000t range?

We can have more of these to spread them around the globe easier. It seems like the new type of conflict we see are more like police actions rather than all-out wars. It will be cheaper to stamp out the fire with smaller carriers and number of escorts than to send in a Nimitz. Of course in case of an all-out war we can mass these carriers to pool their power.

What do you all think?

rickusn

This has been studied a # of times since the mid- 1970's.

By the USN, CBO,GAO,CRS, CSBA, RAND etc etc.

The large carrier has always been deemed the best of all the alternatives.

A smaller carrier built in relatively larger #'s is not "cheaper" overall among other drawbacks.

The UK ships have many compromises that are much lamented by the RN.

They are just praying that the bean counters dont make it smaller yet.

Sandman

I think within the last few months Proceedings again addressed this question again, and came up with the same conclusion in the article.
The full sized carrier will remain the prefered naval weapon for the USN, and the CVN-21 program which will follow and ultimately replace the Nimitz class will be an amazing ship. (actually it will be the CVN-78 hull) Nothing can come close, and for the money spent it is the best value in capability.

gunnut

What are some of the drawbacks for a smaller carrier? I figure it is "cheaper" as in spreading the risk, not initial or operating cost. A super carrier knocked out of action. There goes 10% of the force. A smaller carrier knocked out of action might be 5% to 8% of the total force.

Blademaster

No it's not. It would still be 10%. Right now the carrier air wing is smaller than the air wing of the 80s or 70s. It's about 60 planes which is the most a smaller carrier can carry.

Building smaller carriers would not make any measurable savings because most of the costs come from manpower and maintenance, not the materials.

Right now, i think the USN is trying to reduce the logistical footprint of supporting the carrier air wing. Before it was 6000 men on a carrier. Now I believe they managed to cut it down to 5000.

It would be great if they could cut the crew down to 4000 men. It would save far more money than building smaller carriers.

-{SpoonmaN}-

The USN should probably start bumping their Air Wings back up, Congress will probably start thinking about cutting back on the numbers of planes the Navy gets if they think a lot of them aren't going to be based on Carriers.

Blademaster

No they won't. Ever since Congress passed a resolution ordering the Navy to keep 12 carriers, it means that the Congress will order enough planes to equip 12 carriers albeit in a smaller wing per carrier.

-{SpoonmaN}-

Yea but don't you want to have the planes spare to operate the good ol' Cold War Carrier wings, or does the US Military figure this won't be necessary anymore?

TopHatter

The good ol' Cold War Carrier wings kinda overstuffed the carriers.
It stands to reason that they are able to operate a tad more efficiently with fewer planes.

In addition, you are correct. It is not necessary to carry a full Cold War wing.
The massive size of Soviet Naval Aviation alone is gone. In addition, relatively cheap and accurate PGMs means that fewer planes are needed to hit a target.

Is it just a wonderful thing all around that the air wings have shrunk? No, but neither is it a 100% horrible catastrophe

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Sandman

UCVs will fill out many more strike platforms for carriers when they are deployed with them. Probably three times the strike aircraft because of size and weight and other reasons.

Sea Toby

Since one of the Nimitz class of super carriers will be in drydock with a long outage of nuclear refueling, the American navy has already been cut down to 11 carrier air wings. As soon as one refuels, another one replaces it for the forseeable future. When CVN-78 is built, America will have 12 nuclear powered super carriers, 11 Nimitz's and 1 Enterprise. But the Enterprise is old, and the first few Nimitz's are ageing, more new builds will be built to replace the older nuclear powered carriers.

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Defcon 6

Eliminating the SeaWolf's was a mistake. I mean...the R&D down the tubes because we decided to only build 3? I guess with the soviet navy gone who needs them. My point being, I think thats the way of the super carrier as well. Makes me cringe to watch the USN decay like it is. Maybe if the government wasn't busy spending 300 billion dollars in Iraq we'd be able to keep our super carriers and DD(X)'s.

Galrahn

I would disagree with the assumption that Carrier power is degrading.

The CVW strike component for a CVN beyond 2015 is expected to be:

24 F/A-18E/F
20 JSFs
5 EF-18G

6 CVNs surged to a conflict in 2015 with the above 49 planes on each Carrier will have the same strike capability based on sortie rate per day as 40 Cold War era Carriers of the 600-ship plan fleet of 1989.

At 12 Nimitz class carriers, it would be the equivilent of eighty (80!) CVNs/CVS of 1989. Considering that was only 17 years ago, I'd say Carrier Air Power is anything but degraded, and the impact of precision weapons has completely changed the game, so it makes sense it would change the requirement as well.

Personally, I don't know about a Medium CV, but I would support the Navy investing in 2 very large fixed wing aviation platforms of the Marine Corp designed to do two things:

1) Launch and recover 30-36 Marine Corp JSFs, 5-6 Marine Corp EA-6Bs or EF-18Gs, and 6-10 Marine Corp/Navy H-60 Varients. Additionally supporting CV-22s for SOCOM would be a bonus.

2) Have the capability to Launch, Load, Unload, and/or Recover C-130 (or even better C-17) aircraft in Sea State 4.

I have no idea how or even if that could be done, but if 2 platforms that could do the above could be fielded using commercial standards for around the same cost of 1 CVNs, I think the addition of 2 of those ships while reducing the number of carriers from 11 to 10 would improve the overall capability of the fleet.

I think that type of aviation support capability would outwiegh the advantages lost in a CVNs strike capability.

PubFather

In terms of the original thread question - stick with the big carriers. They dont cost that much more in absolute terms than the UK CVF will and simply give the USN much more flexibility in CAG terms (for example, with the smaller CAGs forseen in the future, it leaves more room for USMC aircraft to operate). This wouldnt be the case with a CVF.

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Anon

I've seen a lot of ramblings of late that the USN 'wants'(lol, yeah, right) to trim it's carrier force down to as low as 7 flight decks.

It seems to me that we are largely doing this to ourselves. Personnel costs are up 25% since 2000 due to pay raises, and that's one of the reasons that whole programs appear to be in jeopordy, and why capable system after capable system is being retired before it's capabilities warrant replacement.

Some of the new 'replacements' are wholly inferior to the systems they're replacing in their given role IMO.

The USN's insistence on pissing away vast sum of money so that it can play the BMD game also strikes me as counter-productive.