Fighting 50 Years Hence
Most naval experts warn that it is entirely too soon to write the epitaph for the most dominant warship of the century.
The Ford, designed so it won’t require the kind of extensive refueling necessary for Nimitz-class carriers, will be a central player in naval warfare for 50 years, launching stealthy F-35Joint Strike Fighters as well as other aircraft from its four-and-a-half-acre flight deck.
Nonetheless, other nations are investing heavily in technologies such as anti-ship missiles, air defense systems and undersea weapons that are designed specifically to drive aircraft carriers farther from shore and put their fighters out of range. No nation has done more on this front than China, which, along with its thousands of anti-ship missile batteries extending from the South China Sea to the East China Sea, has developed and tested the Dong Feng-21 anti-ship ballistic missile. With a range of 900 miles, the conventionally armed, hypersonic Dong Feng is capable of being guided to hit a carrier strike group from hard-to-find mobile launchers.
Given that mobility, the speed of the re-entry vehicles, and the Chinese military’s ability to launch such missiles in barrages, it would be difficult to stop, Greenert acknowledges. However, Greenert and Rubel say the Dong Feng has a long sequence of steps — called a “kill chain” — that it must follow before striking a target, and any of the steps might be disrupted.
Greenert explains that first a carrier must be detected long enough to target it. Then the enemy must be sure it is in fact a carrier. Following launch, the missile seeker must detect the carrier, contend with efforts to confuse it, follow the ship and then strike the target.
“There is nothing that doesn’t have vulnerabilities,” Greenert says, adding that the Navy is “working quite feverishly on that, and I am pretty comfortable about where we can operate our carriers.”
Nonetheless, for carriers to contend with layered defenses in the future, they will need jammers and missile interceptors in addition to stealthy fighters like the F-35. Greenert says the Navy will need to invest billions of dollars in carrier-launched unmanned aircraft with far greater ranges and payloads than the F-35; electromagnetic rail guns that cost pennies per shot, as opposed to millions per missile today; and lasers.
Further, it will require ships that can generate the electrical power to employ lasers and electromagnetic weapons. It also will require long-range ship-to-shore and air-to-ground weapons, all of which would extend the viability of carriers into the latter part of this century.
“It is about understanding that spectrum and being able to maneuver in it and manipulate it and suppress sensors as necessary to gain access,” Greenert says. “I’m not talking about knocking down every single item of anti-access. What do I need to get in where I need to get in, for a period of time that I need to get there and get out? That is what our focus is, and that is what the carrier air group needs in the future.”
This increasingly sophisticated technology and the weapons that go with it will require large sums, though, further stretching the defense budget and requiring the kind of trade-offs Congress is now considering. For instance, Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, says the United States should not reduce its carrier fleet.
“Not if we could possibly avoid it,” he says. However, “there are a lot of things that should not happen that may be unavoidable.”