Tag Archive for: US Navy

Unlike China’s flotilla, the Great White Fleet came in friendship

When the US Navy’s Great White Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour in 1908, it was an unmistakeable signal of imperial might, a flexing of America’s newfound naval muscle. More than a century later, the Chinese navy has been executing its own form of gunboat diplomacy by circumnavigating Australia—but without a welcome. The similarities and differences between these episodes tell us a lot about the new age of empires in which Australia now finds itself.

Both were shows of force. The former expressed President Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy of speaking softly while carrying a big stick—the original version of peace through strength—while the latter aimed at disturbing the peace.

The Great White Fleet’s visit was a spectacle. Australians cheered as 16 gleaming battleships, painted white and with shiny trim, paraded into Sydney Harbour. A flight of steps, the Fleet Steps, was specially built in the Royal Botanic gardens to receive the American visitors.

The visit was a calculated diplomatic manoeuvre by Prime Minister Alfred Deakin in making the invitation and by US President Teddy Roosevelt in accepting it. Both Australia, a young federation deeply tied to the British Empire, and the United States, a rising but not yet super power, saw value in signalling US Pacific presence to Japan.

For Roosevelt, the fleet also presented his big-stick foreign policy to European nations: the US had arrived as a global power. Just as important, he saw the fleet’s world tour as helpful in explaining to the American people why they needed to spend money on defence, including ships, as their country opened up to global opportunities but also threats. Deterrence, preparation, social licence all strengthened national resilience.

Deakin saw the chance and didn’t just invite the fleet to Australia but engineered the visit. He wanted the visit to kindle the notion in Australia that it should have its own fleet. Irregular Royal Navy deployments to the Far East could not guarantee Australian security.

Also like Roosevelt, Deakin knew that a passive approach to defence policy would not keep the nation safe in an era of rising military powers, with a strategic shift to proactive engagement needed urgently, not only once a crisis had begun. He was especially concerned about Japan’s growing sea power but, again like Roosevelt, he also had an eye on Russian and (later) German sea power.

While Deakin wanted a national navy and was an empire man, he thought it prudent to start building a partnership with the US. Not yet replacing Britain as global leader, it had burst on to the strategic scene only a decade earlier. It had annexed the Philippines in 1898 in the Spanish-American War and, in the same year, the Hawaiian Islands. These made the US a Pacific power.

Both men in the early 1900s understood the connection between European and Pacific security and both set out to protect their national interests by working together against European and Asian powers seeking to create instability and spheres of influence.

As Russell Parkins well describes in Great White Fleet to Coral Sea, Deakin noted in one of his written invitations to the US that ‘No other Federation in the world possesses so many features of likeness to that of the United States as does the Commonwealth of Australia’. Roosevelt later acknowledged he had not originally planned for the fleet to visit Australia but that Deakin’s invitation had confirmed his ‘hearty admiration for, and fellow feeling with, Australia, and I believe that America should be ready to stand back of Australia in any serious emergency’.

This was naval might wielded with soft edges: immense firepower floating on the harbour, and friendly chats over tea ashore.

Today the strategic environment again involves European and Asian powers—Russia and China—seeking spheres of influence, only the dynamics of the naval visit couldn’t be more different. No time for afternoon tea, just the reality that Australia faces a security threat from Beijing that demands national preparedness and international friendships and alliances.

When Australia and China encounter each other at sea, the interactions are adversarial, accompanied by dangerous Chinese manoeuvres, high-powered lasers shining into cockpits, chaff dropped into Australian aircraft engines and sonar injuring Australian navy divers. These are not friendly port calls but dangerous military activities and displays of coercive statecraft.

The Great White Fleet sought goodwill and alliances. China’s naval behaviour is an assertion of dominance. If the Australian public were in any doubt about how Beijing intended to interact with the region, China’s behaviour in this most recent episode should be instructive. The lack of warning given to Australia was a warning itself of what is to come. Beijing wants us to heed it and submit.

We must not submit. We must learn from the incident and change Beijing’s behaviour.

When a Chinese naval flotilla last made a port call to Sydney, in 2019, it was met with some public unease, if not alarm. Australia had, after all, approved the visit. But through a combination of Canberra’s ignorance of history and Beijing’s aim of rewriting it, the visit was approved without recognising that it coincided with the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Not long after the negotiated port visit, China suspended ministerial-level engagement as part of coercion to bring Australia into line. Despite some warming in relations in recent years, Beijing chose not to give Australia advance notice of live-fire exercises. The same Beijing that only a few years ago gave notice of a visit now has the confidence to fire at will.

Australia must stop being surprised by every new Chinese military or hybrid warfare development. Beijing’s confidence is growing in all domains, including cyberspace. With intrusions known as Volt Typhoon, China’s intelligence agencies were outed in 2023 as having pre-positioned malware for disrupting and destroying our critical infrastructure. This should also be seen as a rehearsal for later cyber moves.

And now, for the first time in the modern era, we have seen a potential adversary rehearse its wartime kinetic strategy against Australia. Yes, the Japanese did surveillance and intelligence gathering before World War II, but this circumnavigation with live-fire exercises takes us well beyond intelligence collection. Beijing has been undertaking ‘intelligence preparation of the battlespace’ for some time with ships it frequently sends to Australian waters to observe our exercises or to conduct oceanographic studies (which improve submarine operations).

Just as the Great White Fleet helped to inspire the development of an Australian navy, the Chinese flotilla should warn us that our own fleet needs to be larger and ready to assure our security. The rhyme of history is that distant fleets operating in Australian waters matter and should spur our own thinking (and act as catalysts for action) regarding Australian sovereign capabilities.

After all, these episodes underscore an enduring truth about Australia’s geopolitical reality: we are a regional power situated between global hegemons and their very large navies. One could even say that we are girt by sea power. But this is not new territory; it is the blessing and burden of geography and history.

Whether it was navigating the transitions from British to American primacy in the Pacific or more recently adjusting to China’s challenge to the US-led order, Australia has always had to manage its strategic relationships with agility and nuance.

The key difference, of course, is that Australia welcomed the Great White Fleet in 1908 with open arms. Today, Australia finds itself on the receiving end of an unwelcome presence by ships that appear uninterested in friendly port visits. This demands a response that is not reckless but is firm enough to avoid being feckless.

Although the position is difficult, the Australian government should not think it must walk a tightrope in dealing with China. The strength of response to Beijing’s aggression should depend on the minimum needed to deter more aggression, not by a perceived maximum that will leave trade and diplomatic relations unharmed. European countries have made such mistakes in handling Russia—declining to hold it to account in the hope that Putin would keep selling gas to them and delay military action.

There’s no use in pretending or hoping there is nothing to see here except one-off instances of unpleasant behaviour. China’s aggression follows its concept of dealing with the rest of the world, and it won’t stop. Quiet diplomacy won’t deter Beijing from more dangerous behaviour but will embolden it to repeat its actions. Each instance will show Australia is incapable of doing anything about it until Beijing—mistakenly or intentionally—goes so far as to make conflict inevitable. Australia’s time to stand up cannot wait until a live fire drill becomes just live fire.

As Teddy Roosevelt put it, big-stick foreign policy involves ‘the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis’. Navigating the best response to aggression therefore requires clarity about what is at stake.

What Australia does in the South China Sea—where it operates in accordance with international law alongside allies—is not equivalent to China’s recent foray into the Tasman Sea. Beijing’s actions represent yet another demonstration of reckless behaviour, following its dangerous harassment of Australian forces. By making various attacks—with lasers, chaff or sonar—China shows an undeniable pattern of attempted intimidation. When Australia sails into international waters, we do so to maintain the rules-based order and promote regional stability, yet when China does the same it is often to undermine the rules and destabilise the region.

The intimidation is in fact regional; it’s not just about Australia. Just as the Great White Fleet demonstrated America’s arrival as a Pacific power, China’s naval activities signal Beijing’s intent to reshape the region’s strategic balance. Australia, as it has done before, must adapt. It must spend more on its own defence capabilities, deepen relationships with like-minded democracies and maintain the diplomatic dexterity that has long supported its survival in a world of rising and falling empires.

Most importantly, the government must bring the Australian public along for the voyage. The threat from China should surprise Australians no more than the threat from Putin should surprise Europeans.

Knowledge is power and the Australian public can be empowered, and therefore prepared, not to be shell-shocked by China’s aggression. It should instead be reassured that the Australian government has the situation in hand and that defence investment is a downpayment on our future security. It should be reassured that the spending makes conflict less likely.

Australia is not a major power, but we have the world’s 13th largest economy and are not without influence. We should stop seeing ourselves as a middling middle power. We definitely shouldn’t act as a small power. We should be confident as a regional power. Our voice, actions and choices matter at home and abroad. It’s why Washington wants us as an active partner and Beijing wants us to be a silent one. Australia’s global advocacy for a rules-based system, and its public calling out of Beijing’s wrongdoing have been highly valued in Europe, Asia and North America.

Smaller regional countries rely on us to stand up to Beijing where they feel unable, while Europe increasingly knows the fight against Russia is also a fight against Russia’s ‘no-limits’ partner, China. And an Australia that stands up for itself and our friends will again demonstrate the value of partnerships to our ally the US.

Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet epitomised show of force as a means to deter conflict as well as preparation should deterrence fail. (Its cruise was also an exercise in long-range deployment.) The time for deterrence and preparation is with us once again. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said this month that China was ready for war, ‘be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.’

We need to show, along with our ally the US and other partners, that war is not what we want but is something we are prepared for. If we cannot show that we have a capable stick, and the intention to use it if required, we will be defeated with or without a fight.

As Teddy Roosevelt said: ‘Peace is a great good; and doubly harmful, therefore, is the attitude of those who advocate it in terms that would make it synonymous with selfish and cowardly shrinking from warring against the existence of evil.’

The past tells us that navigating strategic competition requires a blend of strategic foresight and political agility. The echoes of 1908 should serve as both warning and guidepost for the uncertain waters ahead.

Will AUKUS policy penetrate defence bureaucracies?

Policy is a statement of intent or ambition. It is only effective to the extent that it penetrates the practices and mindset of the bureaucracy responsible for implementing it. Bureaucracies in general and defence bureaucracies in particular are famously resilient to policy. Australian defence policy has evolved considerably in the past three decades, but you wouldn’t guess it from the force structure. In the case of AUKUS, policy must penetrate three separate defence bureaucracies if it is to succeed. A recent story gives little cause for optimism.

When AUKUS was announced in September 2021, the US Department of Defense said that it would ‘promote deeper information sharing and technology sharing; and foster deeper integration of security and defense-related science, technology, industrial bases and supply chains’.

Australia and the UK made similar pronouncements. Twenty months later, on 17 May, the US Department of Defense released a request for information (RFI) for the design and construction of the US Navy’s mid-sized landing craft (the Landing Ship Medium (LSM); formerly the Light Amphibious Warship (LAW)). This program is an essential component of ‘expeditionary advanced base operations’ (EABO), the US Marine Corps’ concept for supporting the US Navy within the umbrella of the Chinese military’s anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities. The corps’ restructure to marine littoral regiments leaves it unbalanced until it gets its LSM fleet, up to 35 of them. They are needed in service urgently.

US policy documents about EABO are liberally sprinkled with pictures of the world’s only in-service, in-production stern landing vessel (SLV). It is attractive to the marines because it can operate in sea conditions that would halt operations with conventional landing craft, if not sink them, and has class-leading payload and range. It’s cheap and quick to build and has the highest damage stability index of any landing ship ever built, capable of exceeding even the US Navy’s warship requirements.

It is also effectively excluded from the LSM RFI. The SLV is Australian and the RFI pack is only accessible to US shipyards and US ship designers. The US defense bureaucracy does this from habit rather than regulations, rather like stamping Five Eyes–sourced documents NOFORN (‘no foreign nationals). Title X, US Code 8679 requires all vessels for the US armed services to be built by American companies. It does not require that those companies build US designs. US submarines use propulsors based on a British design. The US Marine Corps’ M777 and M119 howitzers and M252 mortars are British designs. The list goes on. The SLV designer made provisional arrangements with US shipyards for US construction as long ago as 2019, but that doesn’t help them if they’re not allowed to see the RFI.

A US-only RFI may or may not conflict with the spirit of AUKUS, but it definitely ignores the lessons of its failed predecessor, the LAW. In four years, that project produced little of value, other than proving that converting an offshore support vessel into a (sort of) SLV is not a good idea. In the current strategic environment, the LSM project doesn’t have another four years to waste, yet it appears to be plodding on with the same process-driven pedestrian approach that the LAW program suffered from.

As well as wasting time, this approach also appears to be at risk of wasting money. The US Navy’s fiscal year 2024 budget request seeks US$14.7 million for research and development, then US$187.9 million for procurement of the first LSM in 2025. Construction of the latest Australian-designed SLV is currently being completed in Asia. It’s likely to sell commercially for US$22–25 million, plus inflation, but there is much to add to that to get a military price. The cost of bringing it to US Navy survivability standards would be small, but weapons, sensors and command and control systems probably make up the bulk of the cost. There’s an administration overhead of at least 30% for meeting the Pentagon’s bureaucratic requirements. Finally, there’s a cost for requiring it to be built in the US. Notwithstanding all that, it’s difficult to see how a US$22–25 million commercial ‘sticker price’ could get up to US$187.9 million for LSM No 1.

The reason all in-service commercial SLVs are designed and built by one company isn’t that others haven’t tried. It’s because they haven’t succeeded. It is very difficult to design these vessels so they work properly, as the LAW project found out with its recent offshore support vessel conversion. There’s no logical reason to expect that a company that has never done it before will get it right the first time when no one else ever has, but that seems to be the premise of the LSM project strategy.

If Australia and the US can’t make use of each other’s simple but successful technologies, what chance is there for the more complex ones? More to the point, though, is whether the US bureaucracy is actually capable of evolving post-AUKUS to ‘promote deeper information sharing and technology sharing; and foster deeper integration of security and defense-related science, technology, industrial bases and supply chains’, or whether it will remain the same old creature of habit.

Can Australia get second-hand nuclear submarines? The US option

In my previous post, I looked at some of the issues involved in the Royal Australian Navy acquiring or leasing older nuclear-powered attack submarines from the UK to jump-start Australia’s own SSN program. In summary, a very small fleet of orphan vessels is a high-risk strategy.

In this article, I’ll look at the US option. Trying to get some of the US Navy’s older boats, the Los Angeles class, might seem like a better bet than the Royal Navy’s Trafalgar class, as there are more of them and, even though they’re progressively being retired, a few at least are probably going to stay in service with the USN for some time.

Unlike our system, the US government discloses a lot of data, so we have a reasonably good understanding of some key issues around the Los Angeles class. The US built 62 of them. The 31 Flight I boats used reactors that needed to be refuelled halfway through the submarines’ planned life. Some were refuelled, but as the USN reduced in size with the end of the Cold War, it chose to simply retire some rather than bear the cost of refuelling. All Flight I boats have been retired. The eight Flight II boats and 23 Flight III (aka ‘improved’) boats were built with reactors that were intended to serve for the entire life of the boats without refuelling. They are starting to be retired, but around 28 are still in service with ages ranging from 25 to 36 years.

To mitigate its SSN capability crunch in which numbers fall as older boats retire faster than new ones enter service, the USN is planning to refuel around five Los Angeles boats and keep them in service longer. The first ‘engineered refuelling overhaul’ is scheduled to start next year with USS Cheyenne. The US Department of Defense predicts that it will last three years and cost US$540 million.

But the USN’s submarine maintenance system is stretched. The Congressional Budget Office has reported that the USN’s submarine fleet size exceeds its maintenance capacity, causing systemic delays that are increasing. Similarly, the US Government Accountability Office found that, between 2015 and 2019, submarine deep maintenance was running an average of 225 days late. In fact, the refuel and overhaul of the Cheyenne has been deferred already. Defense Department budget data shows that deep maintenance activities consistently go over budget, sometimes by hundreds of millions of dollars. Considering that the Flight III Los Angeles boats weren’t designed to be refuelled and none ever have been, it’s reasonable to assume that the first will take longer and cost more than predicted.

We should also note that the Cheyenne is the youngest Los Angeles–class boat, commissioned in 1996. Certainly, it makes sense for the USN to choose the youngest boats for life extensions as they are likely to be in the best condition. But even it will be around 30 years old when it completes its refuel and overhaul and starts its second life. It’s reasonable to assume the USN will continue to pick the freshest boats for its own plans.

Granted we are in a very assumption-rich environment (including the fundamental question of whether the US would even sell Australia complete submarines), but if we assume that the USN keeps the five newest boats for itself, completes refuels on a one-year drumbeat (which is roughly what it achieved for refuels of its Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines) in a process lasting three years, and then turns its attention to providing Australia with submarines, the soonest we could get a boat would be around 2031. It would have been commissioned in around 1994, so it would be around 37 years old.

Of course, our countries’ political leaders could come to an agreement that could see Australia getting some of the initial five refuelled Los Angeles boats. Or the USN could provide some that haven’t been refuelled as loaners until they’re refuelled or retired. Either way, that would mean taking boats out of USN service. The hard truth is there are no USN boats simply sitting around doing nothing that are in fit shape to be handed over to the RAN.

Having spoken at length about the boats, it’s now time for the mandatory warning about focusing solely on the boats themselves. The Australian Department of Defence refers to nine fundamental inputs that are needed to generate an effective military capability. In addition to the equipment, there are factors such as personnel, supplies, facilities, training and industry. So even if the RAN could find some boats, that doesn’t come close to providing a military capability without these other elements—all of which Australia currently lacks.

But if we accept that developing an SSN capability with all those fundamental inputs in place will be a long journey, a refurbished Los Angeles–class boat could yet play a useful role in getting us there, potentially as part of the training system. You need boats to generate submariners.

In fact, the USN already uses older boats in this role by converting decommissioned nuclear submarines to ‘moored training ships’, or MTSs, so that personnel can train in the operation and maintenance of nuclear submarines. It has completed the conversion of a Flight I Los Angeles boat, USS La Jolla, into an MTS and is currently converting a second boat, USS San Francisco. Of course, as with everything in this space, the conversion of the La Jolla took longer (4.5 rather than 3 years) and cost a lot more (US$892 million rather US$583 million) than planned.

Acquiring a retired Los Angeles boat as an MTS could be a key element in the RAN’s submarine transition to help build Australia’s understanding of operating nuclear submarines in a relatively low-risk environment. A billion dollars is a lot for a training aid, but nobody said this was going to be an inexpensive ride.

The US Navy is chasing the impossible

Several months ago, US Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite said he believed the service was ‘at a turning point’ in its history. The navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan—projecting what it will look like and what vessels it needs—had just been rejected by the Pentagon.

The plan was reportedly considered too conservative and based on outdated assumptions, including optimistic funding projections. A new plan is being developed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Hudson Institute, with the navy largely sidelined.

A US Navy that is fiscally sustainable, and optimised for sea control, forward presence and distributed operations, will enable the reforms being undertaken by the other US military services to succeed.

Many analysts have taken heart from the reform and modernisation of the US Marine Corps, largely seen as an intensely positive sign of America’s continued commitment to the Indo-Pacific. The commandant’s 2019 force planning guidance and force design are bold and display an understanding of the operational challenges the US faces from China’s military modernisation and growing area-denial and power-projection capabilities.

More importantly, the documents begin to make the difficult decisions required to sustain an American military presence in the region in an era of flatlining defence budgets and constrained fiscal resources.

But overshadowing the marines’ efforts is the fact that the navy is struggling to do the same.

The marines’ risk-taking and drive for reform will not bring an effective US presence in the region if the navy is unable to equally transform. With at-sea collisions, pier-side fires, political scandals, rotating civilian leadership, criticism over the slow adoption of new technologies and an unbalanced fleet architecture, some analysts fear there are deeper systemic issues within the service.

The navy’s struggle to plan its future stems from interrelated structural problems.

First, the force is too small for what is being asked of it, and over the past decade it has wrestled with shrinking size and increasing operational tempo. The fleet has shrunk by 52%, from 594 ships in the late 1980s to 294 today—but has forward-deployed the same number of vessels, approximately 100 at any time. That’s placed increasing demands on a dwindling fleet.

The requirement for sustaining a persistent presence with fewer resources has taken its toll. It has also led to quick fixes, like extended deployments, instead of the Pentagon and Congress reassessing the fleet’s missions. This has meant less time for training and maintenance, particularly for forward-deployed forces where the demand is greatest. Tragically, this pressure caught up with the navy in 2017 when USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain were involved in separate collisions that killed 17 sailors. A review found longer deployments, inadequate training and reduced maintenance led to poor readiness.

Second, while there’s broad agreement that the fleet must grow, Congress and the navy have been unable to agree on a fiscally sustainable—and politically agreeable—shipbuilding plan.

In late 2016, the navy’s force structure assessment for the Obama administration and Congress found that a 355-ship fleet was the minimum needed to meet the Pentagon’s ‘strategic guidance’. The assessment was launched by navy secretary Ray Mabus in open defiance of the Obama administration, which wanted the navy to shift resources dedicated to building certain ship classes to other priority capability areas. Donald Trump’s election in 2016 further complicated matters. Besides touting the establishment of a US space force, Trump’s only other significant political commitment in terms of the US military was to increase the navy’s fleet size to 355.

His promise to grow the fleet and the navy’s call for more vessels based on existing classes resulted in the 355-ship goal being set in law by sea power advocates in Congress. While this was a victory for those arguing for a larger force, it has also distorted the debate among the navy, the Pentagon and Congress on the future fleet, leaving little political room for alternative models.

Last, it may not be possible to build the fleet to 350-plus vessels within resource constraints, without a radical change in force structure or in the way ships are counted. A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the 2020 shipbuilding plan—which aimed to achieve a 355-ship navy by 2034—estimated that it would cost on average US$31 billion per year in 2019 dollars, a third more than the navy judged its plan would cost.

That would almost double the navy’s average appropriation over the past 30 years.

The navy, and Congress, appear to be in denial about the structural and historical realities of naval construction. The navy’s estimates for a 355-ship fleet do not account for the faster growth in labour and materials costs in shipbuilding compared with the rest of the economy, which has led to above-inflation increases. The cost of staffing and maintaining the larger fleet would also be vast—the Congressional Budget Office estimated that support costs would reach US$90 billion a year by 2049, up from the average of US$60 billion.

To maintain fleet strength, defence budgets need to increase in real terms, and that isn’t going to happen. The Pentagon’s latest budget request reflects this reality, representing a 20% decrease for shipbuilding from the previous year, even though it didn’t match the White House directives.

The navy has attempted to shift resources and develop new concepts of operations—and to integrate new technologies—to overcome some of these structural challenges. The Marine Corps F-35B ‘Lightning Carrier’ concept is an example. It also demonstrates the benefits of further marine–navy integration. The award of a contract for the construction of 20 frigates based on Fincantieri’s FREMM design for a projected average hull cost of under US$1 billion is also positive. The current chief of naval operations, Michael M. Gilday, is conducting a ‘stem-to-stern review’ of the service in search of up to US$40 billion in savings for new platforms. But without significant cuts to operational tempo or overall size, that’s unlikely to yield the savings needed.

Similar efforts have also stagnated. In 2019, the navy proposed deactivating some large surface combatants, including 22 Ticonderoga-class cruisers and the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman to save money. Congress rejected both proposals. The service also has non-negotiable priorities, including construction of 12 Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, likely taking up to 25% of the shipbuilding budget over the next decade.

Pushing more aggressively into autonomous systems or vessels with fewer crew may answer the budgetary pressures and the need to grow the fleet. The navy has started experimenting with unmanned systems, recommending procurement of several large unmanned surface vessels last year. However, Congress also put the brakes on that plan, believing the navy hadn’t developed sufficient understanding of how they’d be used.

The US Navy’s evolution is a critical issue for allies like Australia as it will provide the backbone for any serious military intervention in the Indo-Pacific. However, for the past four years the navy appears to have been going in circles with its future plans, caught between growing operational demands and a fiscally and politically unachievable shipbuilding goal.

While the navy has the capacity to meet the challenges in the Indo-Pacific, its presence is globally orientated. Without reorientation of its forces from the Atlantic or the Middle East, it will be hard-pressed to provide the force it needs in the Indo-Pacific within resource constraints.

The US sea-based nuclear deterrent in a new era

The US undersea deterrent is the most survivable leg of America’s nuclear triad of ground-, air- and sea-based nuclear capabilities. The sea-based leg, however, is also the most brittle of the three. If an alert nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) is prevented from launching its missiles, is unable to communicate with commanders ashore, or is destroyed, all of its missiles become unavailable at once. If only one SSBN is on alert patrol, this could eliminate an entire leg of the triad.

With the return of great-power competition between the United States, China and Russia, the importance of the undersea deterrent has led to increased efforts by US adversaries to develop new ways to find and hold at-risk nuclear submarines.

Should improvements to anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities render future US SSBNs vulnerable, the strategic risks may be increasingly borne by allies in the Indo-Pacific that rely on US extended deterrence.

Although other nuclear states maintain arsenals primarily to deter attacks against their homelands, the US nuclear arsenal is also designed to extend US deterrence and defend America’s allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific from both nuclear and conventional security threats.

Due to extended deterrence, alliance politics have been more embedded in US nuclear decision-making than in that of any other nuclear state, both during the Cold War and in the current era. Consequently, the provision of extended deterrence requires the US to maintain a level of transparency about the size, scope and intended use of its nuclear arsenal that’s not required of either China or Russia.

The Trump administration’s nuclear posture review, released in early 2018, takes a mainstream position on the role and use of nuclear weapons as part of the US national strategy, and its continuities outweigh its departures from the strategic direction and policy of previous administrations. It also reflects a return to a traditional bipartisan consensus on the value of America’s nuclear arsenal by removing objectives for the eventual elimination of both US and global nuclear weapons.

What does this policy mean for undersea deterrence and the future US SSBN fleet?

The US is recapitalising its undersea deterrent by replacing its fleet of 14 ageing Ohio-class SSBNs with 12 Columbia-class SSBNs in cooperation with the UK Successor–class SSBN program. The two countries’ SSBNs will use a common missile compartment, similar fire control systems and the same Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles. If any of these components experience delays or technical failures, both programs will incur the associated risks.

In the 2030s, only one of the 12 US Columbia-class SSBNs will likely be on alert patrol at a time in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, with between one and two at sea as a backup. The brittleness of the undersea deterrent and its role as the survivable US second-strike option provide incentives for adversaries to develop ways to hold it at risk or suppress its effective operation.

The projected Columbia-class cost of US$6–7 billion per boat is more than twice that of the Ohio-class SSBN, when adjusted for inflation. It is also about one-third to one-quarter of the US Navy’s annual shipbuilding budget.

To increase the funding available for other programs and constrain defence spending, leaders in the US Congress argue the military should reconsider its plans for recapitalising the US nuclear deterrent, including reducing the number of SSBNs. Further reductions in the SSBN fleet, however, would lower the number of backup submarines at sea, increase the brittleness of the force, and further encourage adversaries to develop new ASW capabilities that could hold SSBNs at risk.

Most submarine designs, including that of the Ohio–class, are optimised for acoustic quieting to reduce their vulnerability to passive sonar, the predominant type of ASW sensor. The Columbia class will continue this focus, and will incorporate electric propulsion at great expense to further reduce its signature. New ASW technologies, however, are reducing the reliance on noise generated by a target submarine. These technologies include low-frequency active sonars, submarine wake detection and sonar sensors.

Detection of an SSBN doesn’t need to result in a successful attack for the submarine to be neutralised. The inherent limitations of submarines—lack of self-defence and slow speed—require an SSBN to evade even ineffective attacks, and if it continues to be pursued it may be unable to establish conditions for launch, which normally require slow speed and shallow depth.

An adversary could exploit these limitations by using a network of active sonars and simple, inexpensive torpedoes or depth bombs to find and suppress possible SSBNs over an area of hundreds of square miles. The range of the Trident enables SSBNs to patrol areas covering thousands of square miles, but they would still be vulnerable to detection when they left and returned to their US home bases.

New ASW threats would have a greater impact on the UK and France, which only have an undersea nuclear deterrent. They would likely increase their reliance on US extended deterrence, which would compound the risk created by new threats to SSBNs. These risks are mitigated by the US nuclear triad, which the US government is modernising at a cost of more than US$300 billion during the next two decades.

The cost of sustaining a nuclear triad is a concern for US leaders, but the risks created by moving to a dyad or a single undersea leg wouldn’t accrue only to the United States. Allies such as South Korea, Japan and Australia that depend on US security assurances would be affected as well. As a result, future vulnerabilities to SSBNs that could arise due to the improving Chinese navy may convey more risk to allies than to the United States.

This piece was produced as part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy: Undersea Deterrence Project, undertaken by the ANU National Security College. This article is a shortened version of Chapter 6, ‘The US sea-based deterrent in a new era’, as published in the 2020 edited volume The future of the undersea deterrent: a global survey. Support for this project was provided by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

How to do SEA 5000 with less risk and more capability

The ADF’s SEA 5000 ‘Future Frigate’ program faces two important but distinct challenges. The first concerns capability: the plan is to build a new class of warships to replace the Anzac class from the mid-2020s, with an emphasis on anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities. The second challenge is industrial: construction of the first of the new frigates is due to commence at the government-owned shipyard in South Australia in 2020. That’s a tight schedule, given that the basic ship design won’t be selected until 2018.

The two aspects of the program are in competition. Completing detailed design work on a platform that meets Australia’s capability requirements will take time, but industrial concerns, especially workforce continuity, have driven the program towards an aggressive start date. The most likely outcomes are a delay in beginning construction, concessions on capability, or both. None of those outcomes would be palatable for the government, but there may be a compromise with a net positive effect.

The best way forward for SEA 5000 may be to split the program into two classes, with an initial build of three vessels of one type before transitioning to a mature continuous production run of another. To maximise continuity and reduce project risk, the class of three could be based on the AWD. The follow-on class would be based on one of the SEA 5000 design contenders: either the BAE Global Combat Ship (Type 26) the Fincantieri ASW FREMM, or possibly a more highly modified Navantia F-5000, pending a decision from government. A decision on the second class of vessels could still be made in 2018, after which several years of risk reduction would begin. Or the decision could then be deferred until a later date when the risk landscape has changed.

For example, construction on the first of eight Type 26 frigates for the UK Royal Navy has just recently begun—deferring a decision until the first of class is delivered would reduce risk if it’s selected for the RAN. The Type 26 and the FREMM-IT are also being considered for the Canadian surface combatant program, and the FREMM is one of only a few foreign designs under consideration by the US Navy for its FFG(X) program. A deferred decision by Australia could provide opportunities for international collaboration on design work—and potentially even component exports during production.

Building more AWDs would give the RAN an option to field a sea-based ballistic missile defence (BMD) capability sooner than current plans would allow, and in greater numbers. Defence has the option of adding BMD capability to the AWDs during an upgrade in the second half of the 2020s. Even if the threat from North Korea subsides, the need for a naval BMD capability is likely to increase in the coming years as anti-ship ballistic missiles proliferate.

A second tranche of AWDs under the SEA 5000 program could bring BMD-capable vessels into service as soon as 2023–24. Installing newer systems into the third Hobart-class AWD, HMAS Sydney, during fit-out would introduce BMD capability even sooner, in 2019–20, but no plan exists to do so and the window of opportunity may have closed, depending on the availability of long lead-time components.

If the AWD design remains mostly unmodified for the follow-on three vessels, construction could begin as soon as the workforce capacity and materials are available, perhaps even in 2019—a year ahead of the currently planned start date of 2020. That would help avoid the ‘valley of death’ and remove the need for split OPV construction.

An unmodified design might be controversial when it comes to the choice of radar: while the Australian-made CEAFAR radar is reputedly superior to the AWD’s SPY-1D radar in performance, and is the radar of choice for SEA 5000, using the SPY-1D would allow us to reap the benefits of the US Navy’s integration testing regime. That’s particularly important for BMD capability: while it’s likely that the CEAFAR radar can be integrated with the SM-3 ballistic-missile interceptor, it would need to be developed and tested over a long period of time.

The only sacrifice would be a reduced ASW capability in that six of the RAN’s 12 surface vessels in service as of 2040 will be specialised for ASW instead of nine. But all of the RAN’s major surface combatants will continue to be general-purpose warships, designed to perform a broad range of missions, including ASW, to varying degrees of performance. The shortfall in ASW capability can be made up for with smaller platforms, including unmanned systems or ASW-specialised corvettes (not unlike the 1,800-ton OPVs), and more ASW aircraft (which are more likely to matter more than the ships themselves). Delivering additional naval BMD capability to the fleet later would be more difficult.

There are multiple emerging opportunities for international collaboration on designing and building surface combatants to mutual benefit. But even if Australia decides to produce a wholly orphan design, a ‘three then the rest’ build program would mean that detailed design work for the later SEA 5000 vessels wouldn’t need to be completed for several years. And rushing into a decision to accommodate industrial concerns wouldn’t be necessary; splitting SEA 5000 into two classes would be beneficial for both industrial and capability reasons.

US admiral and RAN chief: nuclear submarines require massive backup

For Australia to operate a fleet of nuclear submarines would require great resources and incur a huge expense, says United States Pacific Fleet commander Scott Swift. Any country pursuing nuclear-powered vessels, ships, aircraft carriers or submarines should go down that path with a full understanding of the costs involved, Admiral Swift said during a recent visit to Canberra.

‘It’s very, very expensive to sustain nuclear-powered vessels’, he said. ‘There’s a significant infrastructure requirement and a significant safety requirement.’ When it came to nuclear power, he said that safety was a ‘no fail’ mission. ‘We spend an extraordinary amount of resources ensuring the safety of nuclear power.’

Former prime minister Tony Abbott suggested recently that Australia should consider switching some of its planned fleet of 12 conventionally powered submarines to nuclear-powered boats to give them greater range and speed.

Swift said that because Australia and the US were very close allies, if Australia were to consider obtaining nuclear-powered submarines he imagined that the US would welcome the dialogue. ‘The outcome of that dialogue? I have no idea. But I’ll give you my opinion.’

He thought the path Australia pursued in selecting a fleet of advanced conventionally powered boats fitted well with the discussions the Australian and US navies had conducted on regional defence. As a key weapon in anti-submarine warfare, Australia’s new Shortfin Barracudas would be highly compatible with the nuclear-powered boats of the US Navy.

Swift said that Australia’s submarines were the equal of the nuclear-powered submarines in his fleet. ‘People think that diesel-electric is old technology? It is an incredible technology’, he said.

‘It’s an absolute peer with my capability. The power makes no difference. It’s the weapons system that’s within it. It’s the operators. It’s the sailors that operate the weapons system.’

Swift said Royal Australian Navy chief Vice Admiral Tim Barrett had shown great leadership in the choice of a fleet of diesel-electric submarines. ‘He’s been masterful in how he has threaded this needle.’ Australia is buying 12 Shortfin Barracudas, which are to be conventional versions of the French nuclear-powered Barracudas.

Speaking before Mr Abbott’s recent intervention, Barrett told The Strategist that the government had made it clear that it wanted conventionally powered rather than nuclear-powered submarines. ‘If I were to look to the US, they have within their regulatory framework which manages nuclear power and submarines a four-star admiral who’s responsible for reactors and they’ve had that position for a good many years’, he said.

‘That person carries responsibilities to Congress and to the president for the management of those reactors within the US submarines—with extraordinary authority and trust to be able to manage it.’

Translating that to Australia, Barrett said, would mean the government allowing a navy officer to have the absolute authority to, for instance, evacuate parts of Sydney or Perth in an emergency. ‘It doesn’t matter whether you build them or lease them, it’s that regulatory process that can’t be ignored. It’s all about the maturity of the system in which you operate.

‘I’m not saying I’m not an advocate for nuclear submarines’, Barrett said. ‘I’m saying we need to appreciate all that is required for the nation to manage this. When we think like that, when we’re willing to trust and manage that, then we’re mature enough. I think we’re a long way from there,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to get to that point you’ve got to start somewhere and it’s going to take time before that level of assurance, confidence and trust is embodied in a position which will allow us to do that.’

Barrett said that, however they were powered, submarines had enormous value because an enemy could not be certain where they were. ‘The effect we’re seeking to deliver is uncertainty. It’s hard to put a value or a price on that, but it messes with the minds of the adversary, in their strategic thinking about where they go and what they do.’

If an adversary were to try to prevent trade or, in a worse case, to make a landing, any submarine caused a disproportional impact on the preparations the enemy had to make. ‘An adversary also needs to consider that you might know where all of their submarines are’, Barrett said.

Twelve Australian submarines on their own might never be able to achieve that, but 12 submarines as part of a force with the boats of allied navies placed an extraordinary imposition on someone considering harming this nation.

‘The submarine force will always retain that level of strategic advantage for government’, he said.

It’s often argued that by the time the navy’s new submarines are operational, unmanned, remote controlled submarines will dominate the oceans in such numbers that crewed submarines will be unable to operate.

Barrett predicts there will be greater use of unmanned vehicles, including submersibles, surface craft and aircraft. Manned and unmanned submarines are likely to play complementary roles through the life spans of the new Australian boats, and unmanned craft are likely to be controlled from manned submarines, says the navy chief. ‘Their combat systems will need to be complemented to allow them to work with unmanned vessels as well.’

But unmanned submersibles aren’t likely to take over for decades. ‘I can see our submarines standing alongside unmanned submarines in that time, but I don’t see them being replaced by them in that period,’ he said.

The Coral Sea, 1942: a nation-saving battle

The Battle of the Coral Sea isn’t as iconic in our national consciousness as Gallipoli, Kokoda, or even El Alamein, Villers-Bretonneux, Amiens or Beersheba. Those battles and others in the two world wars played into our evolving sense of what we were, and are, as a people, and our national character.

Coral Sea stands to the side. It was a critical event stabilising what seemed to be a freefalling disaster in our strategic situation as the Japanese thrust south punctured every assumption we had of the decisive value of imperial defence. Our anxiety was magnified by the Japanese rolling up every island we’d defined as critical to our national fortress, and they were now dragging down the drawbridge in Papua New Guinea.

Coral Sea was nation-saving not nation-creating. It was a materialisation of the validity of the judgement on the need to shift our assumptions about allies Curtin enunciated in an article in the Melbourne Herald on the eve of our year of living dangerously: ‘Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links and kinship with the UK.’

That was hard calculation. The emotional dénouement is in Curtin’s spine-tingling speech to parliament on 8 May 1942, when the battle was in progress: ‘As I speak, those who are participating in the engagement are conforming to the sternest discipline and are subjecting themselves with all that they have—it may be for many of them the last full measure of their devotion—to accomplish the increased safety and security of this territory.’

Outside specialist historians and the US Navy, the battle doesn’t resonate for Americans like Pearl Harbor, Midway and the island campaigns to Japan, but they’ve come to understand that it looms large in our strategic consciousness.

Some strategic thinkers see the Coral Sea as imprisoning our imagination and they believe we need a strategic rethink as profound as Curtin’s. The region and globe are rebalancing. We need to rebalance regionally to account for new rising powers. Coral Sea is a narrative of a time with a very different regional power distribution that’s not relevant today. But it retains currency in how we assess our ally. Our view of the relationship has been formed in an era of massive US dominance. As power becomes more diffuse it feeds a perception of the diminishing value of the relationship, particularly whether or not it’s worth spending political capital sustaining it.

Assessments of Coral Sea need freshening up in this post–Cold War, Asia-rising era. Two lessons are very relevant today. The first is the type of ally the US might be in an era in which it’s not necessarily preeminent. The second is what the US default position in our region is when its saliency in our broader region’s under pressure.

It’s extraordinary that the battle was fought at all. It was a very high-risk undertaking by our very new ally when the prospect of the Japanese taking Hawaii was high. Were the Americans to lose the base, the fight-back would have been anchored in San Diego. At the outbreak of war the geopolitics of the Asia–Pacific were dominated by the European empires and rising Japan. US power would need some years to mobilise.

The US was aware it would have to fight a major battle at Midway within a month. That stepping stone had to be denied to Japan to prevent another strike at Hawaii. The Japanese were superior in carriers, battleships and shore-based air strength. They deployed eight fleet carriers and six light carriers, to the US Navy’s four fleet carriers. Cautious advice suggested the US should concentrate around Hawaii until construction caught up. American land-based air power on Hawaii had been much improved but still, to commit half your carrier strength knowing you faced a major battle a month hence, was risk-taking of a high order. The US put its territory at risk to support an ally.

We like to talk of 100 years of allied collaboration stretching back to World War I. But the two decades before 1942 had seen Australia devoted to European empire in Asia, and the US opposed to it. We were a newly minted friend on which to spend priceless capital. The lesson here is that the US will go a long way for a friend whether or not it’s the preeminent power.

The second lesson is one of geopolitical calculation. Coral Sea revealed the US default point in the Pacific, which involved much debate and disagreement in the Roosevelt administration. The strategic determination, agreed between Roosevelt and Churchill, was to ‘beat Hitler first’. The question was whether the US should fight back from the central Pacific or the south, given its inferior forces. Admiral Ernest King, an equal with General George Marshall as an adviser to Roosevelt, conceded that the Germany-first strategy allowed ‘very few lines’ of military endeavour in the Pacific.

King’s line anchored on defence of ‘Australasia’, securing the chain between Australia and Hawaii. ‘Such a line’, he said ‘would be offensive not passive’. He envisaged it for the Solomons but then soon Papua. Thus the American carriers turned up in the Coral Sea. Their reward was taking two fleet carriers the Japanese had assigned to that task out of the Midway battle. The US faced four, rather than six, carriers to its three. The advantage intelligence gave them, and luck on the day, meant that they won.

King’s default position remains the American default position. Currently they are forward in the northern Pacific, which conceals their default position. Were they to leave, or be pushed back from their northern commitments, the geostrategic factors that drove King’s calculation about us in the south would remain.

Unmanned naval aviation—bigger is better

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

It seems like everyone’s getting a drone these days. The latest kid on the block is the Navy, which is about to start experimenting with the capabilities of remotely piloted aircraft. Last week, Schiebel announced that its S-100 Camcopter has been selected by the RAN to fulfil a requirement for the Maritime Tactical UAS Interim Capability (MTUAS-IC) project.

We’re told that the interim capability is supposed to inform the acquisition of a more substantial operational capability at a later date. The 2016 Defence White Paper IIP includes a line item for ‘$500m-$750m’ to be spent on such a capability between 2018 and 2030. The Camcopter contract includes three years of support, during which time the RAN will evaluate the potential value of a permanent MTUAS to fleet operations.

We’re pleased to see RAN experimenting with unmanned systems, because there’s enormous potential for them to extend the range and effectiveness of surface vessels. But we’re also slightly puzzled and concerned. By all accounts the Camcopter’s an excellent small UAS that has a minimal physical footprint in a ship’s hangar. But it’s also a small, decade-old design, and it doesn’t represent the full suite of capabilities that a contemporary maritime UAV can offer. As a result, concepts of operation developed using the Camcopter could be outdated by the time the RAN acquires more capable platforms. Or it’s possible that the limited capabilities of the Camcopter will sour RAN on the idea of future investments in such platforms.

Let’s hope not. There are real advantages in having UASs of various sizes in the force mix. A smaller aircraft like the Camcopter can sit alongside the manned MH-60R Seahawk in a single hangar like that on the ANZAC frigate. It’ll be handy to be able to put an aircraft over the horizon to increase the ability of the ship to monitor its surrounds. And it offers some flexibility in payloads as well. The S-100 can carry a Leonardo ‘PicoSAR’ synthetic aperture radar, or various electronic intelligence and optical and infrared sensors.

Being able to sustain an aircraft hundreds of kilometres from the ship (or task group) for many hours, allows a ship to be able to surveil a much greater area than is possible from its horizon-limited vantage point on the surface. One of the great advantages of operating a UAS from a ship is that it isn’t limited by crew endurance, so mission duration is limited only by the vehicle’s capability to stay airborne. But with a payload of just 50 kg, the Camcopter doesn’t bring a lot of capability to the table. The mission systems are capable enough for their size, but better sensors with larger apertures and more available power would yield better results in surveillance missions.

The USN seems to appreciate the advantages of larger UASs. It was an early adopter, and acquired the MQ-8B (Bravo) Fire Scout to operate from its Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) from 2009. The Bravo model has a 250kg payload and six-plus hour endurance. Enthused by the possibilities offered by the technology, the USN has since developed the even larger and more capable MQ-8C (Charlie) Fire Scout, which boasts a more than 300kg payload and 10-plus hour endurance. Both versions are also equipped with maritime search radars: the Charlie will soon be equipped with the Osprey 30 AESA radar.

Given experience with a capable UAS, there’s little doubt that the RAN could have a similar roadside conversion. But there’s a question of timing. The naval shipbuilding projects are apparently full steam ahead, with steel to be cut on the offshore patrol vessels nominally next year, and the future frigates in 2020. So whatever their experience in operating the Camcopter tells the navy about the capabilities of UASs, they won’t have long to ponder the ramifications for the design of the new vessels. Substantially larger UASs provide substantially more capability, but they also impose substantially greater costs in terms of space and support requirements. They won’t be able to be easily retrofitted onto warships that were designed without them in mind.

We might reasonably expect some competition for hangar space on the navy’s future frigates. The 2016 Defence White Paper described the vessels as being ‘optimised for anti-submarine warfare’ (ASW), and that necessarily means that they’ll need the ability to deploy sensors and deliver effects well away from the vessel—modern submarine weapons are simply too effective for a surface combatant to risk getting too close. In order to be able to be gracefully retired as a dive wreck at the end of a long service life, a surface combatant vessel needs to be able to detect and prosecute a submarine from beyond the reach of the submarine’s weapons.

The ideal ASW vessel might actually be a “mothership” that can deploy a cloud of UASs to perform sustained surveillance and—in future iterations of the UAS—release weapons when a target is identified. That’s far removed from a surface combatant with a manned helicopter and all of its limitations augmented by a single small UAS. We hope the navy is thinking creatively enough about the full range of options.

That sinking feeling: is the flattop finished?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Defence Images

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier has been the ultimate symbol of American power and prestige for decades. These vessels are both incredibly capable and incredibly expensive. However, the combination of the proliferation of long range anti-access/area denial (A2AD) weapons systems and the decreased range of the US Navy Carrier Air Wings (CAW) has called into question the future utility of the US Navy’s carrier fleet, at least in a major war.

Power projection requires access to and control of the area of operations to be effective. A2AD strategies are designed to prevent or hinder access, and ensure that an adversary can’t assert control over the area of operations even if they gain access. The continuing development of accurate long range anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), anti-ship cruise missiles, and advanced surface-to-air missile systems is increasingly allowing major military powers to create A2AD ‘bubbles’ or ‘bastions’ that place surface ships and aircraft at significant risk should they enter the area. China’s two ‘carrier killer’ ASBMs, the DF-21D and DF-26, are good examples of this. The DF-21D has an estimated range of 900 nautical miles (1,700km) while the DF-26’s range is estimated to be between 1,800-2,500 nautical miles (3,000-4,000km).

It’s not just adversarial developments that have raised doubts about the future of the American aircraft carrier. The range and diversity of CAWS has steadily declined since end of the Cold War and USN’s deep strike capability along with it. The current CAW on the Nimitz-class contains 62 aircraft—centred on the F/A-18 Hornet and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet—with an average range of just 496 nautical miles (918km). The F-35C, the future centrepiece of CAWs, is only marginally better in the range department (630 nautical miles or 1,166km) but has a smaller payload.

Those numbers show that there’s an increasingly big mismatch between the range at which US carriers can strike their targets and the range at which the carriers themselves can be attacked. That mismatch makes the ‘airfield at sea’ role that US carriers have played for the past few decades much more dangerous.

An obvious answer for keeping carriers relevant in light of these developments is increasing the range of the CAW. Aircraft with the range necessary to do deep strike missions launched from beyond the range of the enemy’s A2AD capabilities is vital to the continued survival of the carrier. Outfitting the F-35C with external or conformal fuel tanks is one option, albeit an imperfect one—adding these tanks can alter the aircraft’s radar cross section and potentially make it more detectable. Adding long range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to the CAW is another option. The MQ-25A Stingray is just the tip of the iceberg in this regard, offering a long range aerial refuelling system that can refuel the F-35C in contested territory, expanding the F-35C’s deep strike potential. Developing a long range strike UAV is a logical next step in giving the aircraft carrier the reach and punch it needs to survive in this new threat environment.

But perhaps it’s time for the US Navy to rethink what aircraft carriers are used for. Given developments in missile technology, one potential role for an aircraft carrier is to launch long range stealthy ISR UAVs that provide real-time targeting data for cruise missile strikes from submarines, ships, or land-based aircraft. A2AD ‘bubbles’ require a vast network of maritime reconnaissance platforms—including satellites—to build the necessary ‘kill chains’ to be effective. By facilitating attacks on reconnaissance networks, a carrier strike group could help degrade an A2AD ‘bubble’ to a level where the risk of entering and conducting attacks using its own strike aircraft is deemed acceptable.

There’s also the opportunity cost; given the immense cost of one Ford-class aircraft carrier, some have argued that the money is better spent elsewhere in the fleet. Bryan McGrath has done some excellent work evaluating these proposals (pgs. 85-90) and his conclusions cast some doubt on their feasibility. He concludes that transitioning to a larger fleet of smaller nuclear-powered carriers would sacrifice significant capability but offer little in the way of savings.

A large fleet of smaller conventionally powered carriers would save a lot of money, but in exchange for a dramatic drop in capability. A no-carrier fleet would require sacrifices to one of the Navy’s three operational states: presence, deterrence, or warfighting. Those choices would have considerable impacts on the US’ ability to project power and its alliances. At some point decisions will have to made about whether the resources invested to allow carriers to operate at the long ranges dictated by enemy A2AD ‘bubbles’ is translated into tangible operational benefits.

The challenges threatening the future of the US Navy’s aircraft carriers may be insurmountable and they may cause the carrier to go the way of the battleship. Innovative thinking about traditional doctrinal roles is required if the carrier is to remain a viable warfighting tool. Given the new and rapidly advancing threats facing these carriers, the sooner the US Navy comes to grips with these challenges and adapts to them—or moves on from carriers entirely—the better.