Future Carrier (Including Costs)

[WE Branch Fanatic]

Here is an article from Navy Lookout with a message that needs to be pressed home:

Royal Navy aircraft carriers: more than strike platforms

Discussion of Britain’s two aircraft carriers is primarily framed around the terms ‘Carrier Strike’ and ‘Carrier Enabled Power Projection’ (CEPP). While both are valid descriptors, they risk giving the impression that the ships exist solely to deliver ordnance against land targets. In reality, this is only one of their roles, and they are core to a much broader set of naval missions.

Instruments of sea control

It is important to understand that aircraft carriers and warships don’t just put to sea with the sole purpose of defending themselves. This would imply they were merely a self-licking ice cream or some kind of showpiece. While a carrier can be used to launch strikes deep into hostile territory, ensuring sea control around vital maritime assets is just as important. For a nation like the UK, whose prosperity depends on secure sea lanes, this is arguably the most important contribution. It may seem almost old-fashioned, but large ships must continue to safely cross the oceans, whatever advances in technology there may be.

A carrier strike group offers a layered defensive screen, extending far beyond the reach of land-based aircraft. Without such coverage, both naval forces and merchant shipping would be acutely vulnerable to hostile air and missile attack.

There is a real danger that aircraft carriers are seen only as tools for power projection, a relic of Empire or the Tony Blair era, when foreign military interventions of choice were seen as a way to protect UK interests. For better or for worse, the political and public appetite for such action is much reduced, and the growing threat from Russia and China is now the key focus of UK defence anyway. Far from making the carrier irrelevant, the change in the strategic situation makes naval power of far greater importance even than it was in the age of counter-insurgency operations.

Without control of the sea, the UK economy would virtually collapse, unable to import or export food, materials and energy. More broadly, without sea control, Europe would struggle to defend itself from Russian attack. Without sea control, the US and its allies will not be able to deter Chinese military adventures. During the Second World War, escort carriers proved decisive in closing the mid-Atlantic air gap and defeating the U-boat threat. In a modern conflict, the same logic applies: the carriers would be essential to keeping open the Atlantic lifeline to the US and the rest of the world.

If circumstances are favourable, sea control may be partially achieved by containing threats at source with missile or air strikes on land, but this is very unlikely to be a panacea. High-value assets, supply convoys, amphibious groups and reinforcement shipping must be escorted and protected at sea. Aircraft from the carrier form an outer shield against missile salvos from submarines, bombers or surface ships, buying time for destroyers and frigates to deal with threats further in. Such missions may lack the glamour of strike operations, but they are at the heart of sea control.

Anti-submarine warfare as a carrier mission

The threat from hostile submarines remains one of the greatest risks to the survival of a fleet at sea. Carriers can play a central role in anti-submarine warfare (ASW). Merlin helicopters embarked with dipping sonar and Sting Ray torpedoes can patrol hundreds of miles from the task group, searching for and deterring enemy submarines. The carrier can carry the number of helicopters needed to maintain continuous coverage and can fly when a frigate’s flight deck might be unsafe in heavy weather. Carrier-launched UAVs also have great potential to decisively increase ASW mass in future.

The RN’s Invincible-class carriers were primarily ASW-focused, at least when conceived. Embarking up to 10 Sea King HAS.5 helicopters, they deployed dipping sonar and torpedoes against Soviet boats, providing convoy protection and extending the reach of NATO’s submarine barriers. British carriers were seen as highly mobile command platforms for ASW groups, integrating escorts, frigates and destroyers into ‘hunter-killer’ groups designed to hunt Soviet submarines before they reached the Atlantic shipping lanes. In this way, even as the UK’s carriers shrank in size and capability compared with their US counterparts, they retained a clear role within NATO’s layered anti-submarine defence.

The number of naval platforms on both sides is now much diminished compared with the Cold War period. However, the missile threat is more lethal and modern submarines are generally harder to detect. Modern doctrine still aims to contain Russian naval forces in the Barents Sea and High North and carriers would serve as both mobile strike bases and defensive nodes, integrated into wider NATO anti-submarine and air defence networks...

Fleet air defence

During Operation Pedestal in 1942, three RN carriers (one sunk, one damaged) endured ferocious air and submarine attacks to deliver vital supplies to Malta, effectively passing through what would now be called an area access denial bubble. Ensuring the arrival of this convoy was hugely costly but altered the balance in the Mediterranean and could not have succeeded without the air cover provided by the carriers. In a future conflict, the same logic applies; Britain’s carriers could be tasked to shepherd convoys across contested seas to reach theatres of operation. This escort role is both historically rooted and operationally indispensable.

Carriers are the only way to provide sustained air cover for convoys beyond the range of land-based fighters and the most immediate task is to defend its own group. In the Falklands conflict, Sea Harriers flying from the carriers did conduct air strikes, but by far their most important success was in preventing Argentine aircraft from inflicting decisive damage to the amphibious task force. Today, the F-35B can provide the same Combat Air Patrol (CAP) function.

In practice, the RN’s carriers give destroyers and frigates the protective cover they need to survive in a high-threat environment. Airborne early warning (primarily provided by the Crowsnest system and the F-35s’ advanced sensor fusion) ensures that threats are detected early, allowing the task group to respond in depth. Fleet defence is thus a primary warfighting role, not a secondary one.

Carriers are also central to the success of amphibious operations. The UK’s Littoral Response Groups are designed for operations on Europe’s northern and southern flanks, but their survivability depends on carrier air cover. F-35Bs can suppress enemy coastal defences, provide close air support to Royal Marines ashore, and control the sea and airspace around the amphibious force...

Also posted on the discussion about the Aircraft Carrier and Sea Control.