Is the Ford Class Carrier a Bust?

Quite a disturbing article here, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/b...istake-building-new-ford-class-carrier-104037

 

Can't think of any implementations of new tech that didn't have bugs. We would still be flying copies of the Wright Brothers' aircraft if we stayed with the known and safe.

 

*shrug*

Myself, I see nothing special in the ship or the claims, other than my own issues with the EMALS system. I also agree that it is being put into service far to early, and we would have been better off instead retrofitting it onto say the USS Enterprise or Nimitz, then used as a test bed. Ordering them untested into a series of ships completely untested is foolish.

But like any other radical change in Naval architecture, I am sure they will eventually find a way to work with them. But we should never have built the JFK with the same system before all the bugs were worked out of the first ship. However, I am also old enough to remember similar claims of the USS Nimitz when it first entered service.

 

I'm not simply asking if it is a bust because of tech failures. We already have 10 Nimitz class carriers that are unrivaled on the whole ****ing planet. Did you read the whole article? The part about the war game simulations that predict not a single carrier survives a modern Exocet or better attack? And we now have three $15B ships in the pipe that can't even match the sorties of the Nimitz class. 13.6kv versus 4180v are two different worlds in the confines of a carrier. You wanna be around a damaged bulk head with a 13.6kv power feed swinging around? And don't even get me started on Bechtel engineered reactors featuring reduced mechanical safeties in favor of logic solver managed safeties.

 

I think we should be building pocket carriers. These things are just trophy targets. A fleet of little ones would be just as useful as one big one, far more versatile and far harder to kill. And probably a lot cheaper.

 

That was FDR's strategy in WW II, lots of smaller carriers versus a few giant ones. The big ones have a lot more versatility, though, and with auxiliaries would be the better choice in modern times; our wars are going to be short, and not much need over an enemy being able to knock one out. Pocket carriers are fine, we should have a few around as escorts, and equipped with drones, which are the future of air power, naval and land both, despite the harrumphing of many of the old timers. Pocket carriers would require nearly the same support forces as a big one would, and more expensive. There aren't enough navies around for us to worry much about, and our carrier divisions outnumber the two or three who might be dangerous by about 7 to one.

 

Frankly, I do not need to read it.

Not a single carrier survives an Exocet? Yea, that alone tells me it is going to be largely crap. We have had a frigate hit by one in the 1980s, and it survived. And no missiles are likely to hit a carrier, they have a ring of escorts including cruisers and destroyers to prevent it from being hit in the first place. And if a 4,000 ton frigate can survive such a hit, a 100,000 ton carrier will have much less of a problem.

And yes, but this ship is the one that is replacing the retired USS Enterprise after 55 years of service. And the next one (JFK) is the one that will replace the now 45 year old USS Nimitz. The next ship in the series will be the USS Enterprise, which is expected to replace the then 54 year old USS Eisenhower.

What, do you think that these ships can just keep on working forever? Those ships were designed with 50 year lifespans, and most of them are well into middle-aged now. I still remember marveling when the Roosevelt was commissioned, and getting a tour of it by one of the Marines stationed on board. Hard to believe now that was almost 35 years ago now.

Sorry bubba, but our military equipment does eventually grow old and needs to be replaced. And the hope is that we replace it before it completely fails.

 

It is not that at all.

Escort Carriers were cheap and easy conversions made from other ships. Primarily fuel and cargo ships, they essentially threw a deck on top and made them into small carriers that could travel and protect convoys, and leave the fleet carriers free to do fleet operations. Hence the very name, "Escort Carrier". They also had a secondary mission, of transporting fighters to Europe and other bases in the Pacific. They would sail close to the destination, their aircraft would fly to their new base and they would return to pick up more fighters. Another common name for them was "Jeep Carriers", as they were often used as little more than a transport for aircraft.

Then once the U-Boat threat was eliminated they started to free up more and more of them to the Pacific. There they still mostly operated protecting cargo ships, or other small convoys and task forces. However, they were pretty much all retired when the war ended, they were simply not needed.

And they will not be returning. Modern jets need much more room to operate than the old prop planes did, so unless you want to return to aviation of the early 1940's, they will not be back. And yes, the escort carriers were quick and dirty conversions. The USS Suwannee was originally a US Navy fueler, built in 1938. It was pulled into dock in February 1942, and in September 1942 left as a carrier. AO-33 to CVE-27 in just over 6 months. Just in time to sail for Morocco and operate in the Battle of Casablanca protecting the landing fleet from submarines. After which she sailed to the Pacific, and for the next year or so did escort duty, providing air cover for convoys to Guadalcanal, then participated in the battle at Tarawa. And for the next year and a half she alternated from protecting convoys, and assisting in landings on Japanese islands.

Until during the Battle of the Philippines, when as part of the Taffy convoys she was struck by a kamikaze. Two hours later she was back in service, then struck by another kamikaze. Back to the US, and 2 months of repairs and she was back in service. On to Okinawa, where she spent most of her time attacking Kamikaze bases to prevent them from taking off. Another convoy, then back to Okinawa to prepare to invade Japan when the war ended. Providing air cover while the Navy secured the port at Nagasaki, then as part of Operation Magic Carpet ferrying servicemembers back to the US. Then back around to Boston, where she was retired in 1946.

Escort carriers were cheap, and in reality were about as much of a carrier as that Russian-Chinese thing. Enough aircraft to provide air cover for itself and a small fleet, but that is about it. No way it can do any kind of strike operation, they could not carry that many fighters. The only times they did, was when they were thrown into huge combat operations (Tarawa, Okinawa), where they then generally resorted to secondary missions, suppressing enemy bases and doing ASW patrols.

But the Escort Carrier was never intended as a replacement for the Fleet Carrier. They were quick, dirty, and cheap solutions to the problem at the moment. And once the war was over, they were quickly flushed because by then we had enough fleet carriers that they were not needed anymore.

Oh, but the CVE-27 was pulled out of mothballs for 5 years in the early 1950's. Redesignated as the CVHE-27, she was the test ship in the new concept of making "Helicopter Carriers", an idea which eventually became the modern Landing Platform Helicopter (LPH). I myself served on the LPH-2 Iwo Jima. But it was not until a great many years later that I learned my grandfather served most of the war on the CVE-27. Joining the crew right after they transferred to the Pacific, and until her final call to San Diego before she went to Boston for mothballing.

And really, "navies around for us to worry about?" How about you look at the last 30 years, and think about that again. Carriers are our main tool for rapid deployment anywhere around the world. Be it helping after a tsunami in Indonesia and Japan, to being able to almost instantly put a lot of force in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. If you think that is all they are for, then you really need to look into the many various missions they actually do and have done over the decades.

 

I don't see anything in my post that contradicts any of that, unless you're just looking for a fight or something. Any pocket carriers we built these days would not be conversions, for one, and for two, there are few navies out there that are a threat to us re getting close enough to a big carrier to use an Exocet on, and we would have little problem establishing naval and air superiority in any war against any of them.

Pocket carriers would be excellent fleet escorts for a variety of missions, including carrying a large load of drones of all types, many of which don't need long runways, as well as useful for land operations. Small carriers would indeed be useful, and for many missions better than having fleet carriers tied up for smaller quick stuff.

 

We already have ships like that, the LPH.

And no, "small carriers" would be almost useless because they would not be able to carry enough aircraft to do much more than protect themselves. That is the very difference between an Escort Carrier and a Fleet Carrier. One carries only enough aircraft to protect itself against air threats, the other carries enough aircraft to actually be an air threat.

In case you are not aware of this, our entire Navy is based upon air power, and the use of that power as their primary offensive arm. Not patrol boats with missiles, a large Fleet Carrier with aircraft. All the other ships are just there to protect that carrier. Remove that offensive capability, and then you have a navy about as powerful as the Argentine Navy.

 

Big and too expensive is not the way to go in today's armed world. Small, numerous and lethal is the key. "Carriers" is WWII thinking.

 

We do not need massive carriers since we could achieve the same strike capability with long range stealth drones at a fraction of the cost.

Spending $22 billion on stealth strike drones would mean that crews can all be protected while on the drones themselves are at ricks and with enough of them they will overwhelm whatever defenses and some will get through to their targets.

Why waste money on technology that can be defeated by even small nations like North Korea?

Sounds to me like the Ford is a money pit and making us less safe.

 

Most of the expense of modern aircraft is in making them viable for pilots, life support, pressurization, etc. Remove those from the weight and space requirements beef up their weapons systems with the savings and big carrier are actually made much more effective, not less; larger drones, heavier payloads on the same decks. And again, they are very effective at many other missions, not just projections of power, more so than smaller carriers are. Both have a role to play, no good reason not to have both.

 

Yeah, I completely forgot I didn't know that and kept saying we need to reduce our task force sizes around carriers. You win yet another argument nobody was making.

 

We are in partial agreement. Easy enough to carry drones on smaller ships and that reduces their target size and makes it more relatively expensive and difficult to take them all out as opposed to a single successful sinking of a large carrier.

Downsizing makes a great deal of sense in terms of both effectiveness and cost savings. Smaller ships can be faster and more maneuverable and why not have 20 frigates carrying the same strike capability as a single large carrier?

 

If you find time to read the OP article I'd be interested to read you overall opinion of the piece. For example, I misstated the war game scenarios that the article asserts are likely to sink a carrier which are submarine attacks rather that surface cruise missiles; although the new Russian surface cruise missiles the article mentions are apparently a bit more of a threat than an Exocet.

Interestingly enough, the same publication/website has an another article that asserts Nimitz and Ford class carriers are nearly impossible to sink short of the enemy resorting to using a nuke, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/b...ers-arent-easy-attack-and-sink-here-why-87351

Excellent bit of Memorial Day history there.

Bit of a stretch in my opinion to classify the US strategic nuclear submarine fleet as air power, but I reckon there might be a bit of technically sound logic to do so, or were you simply for a moment forgetting its role in the US Navy?

I reckon Naval combat personnel like Marine Infantry and Seal Teams would take exception for sure though, dude.

 

Our Boomers are not really military weapons, they are political terror weapons, part of the MAD strategy. They are in no way part of our conventional military structure, nor are they considered in it in any way.

We did not use them in any conflict we have been involved in since they were created. They did not participate in Vietnam, the Gulf War, the War on Terror, Panama, Lebanon, Grenada, absolutely nowhere. They are not part of our conventional forces at all.

And land combat forces are ground power projection, not naval power projection. You do not send out a bunch of Marines to take out an enemy destroyer for example. However, one of the biggest uses of our conventional naval air power is supporting such forces. In fact, that is one of the main reasons why every single Carrier has at least one squadron of Marine Aviators on board. Once again a group with multiple tasks, but their main one is to support Marines on the ground, then support the rest of the fleet or conduct their own combat missions if their main role is not needed.

And when you first put Marines (or SEALs) on the ground, where is their air support going to come from? Why, a carrier naturally (unless they are on an LPH which might have some VSTOL aircraft on board - but might not have any). The general idea is that if such a landing is needed, the Marine Expeditionary Force will link up with a Carrier prior to landing. The Carrier then provides the surface task force with more protection, and the Marine aircraft go into a role directly supporting their landing.

There is a reason why Marines are getting both the F-35B (VSTOL) and the F-35C (CATOBAR) aircraft. The only branch getting 2 different models, because they have 2 different requirements, depending on what ships they are on.

Trust me, you are not going to teach me anything about how the Marine Corps operates in areas like this. One of the many courses I took was the "Long School" 6 week course in Amphibious Operations at Little Creek.

 

Yea, except that we already know that Russia has the capability of disrupting our drones. Hell, even Iran has the capability of disrupting our drones, they have even been able to hijack one.

And that is just one of many limitations of drones. Less ordinance, no person on board to see things for themselves, and the drones are not any smaller than conventional aircraft. Even if you decide to replace aircraft with drones, you are still going to need a carrier the same size to support just as many aircraft (and even larger if you want to support the equal amount of firepower).

Why people think drones are small, I have no idea. I have seen them in person, they are the same size as a conventional aircraft. Heck, here is an X-47 landing on a carrier, and it is shorter than the F-18 in the background, but the wingspan is even larger.

 

There is a great deal of "inside the box" thinking going on.
Enemies are not going to conform to our strengths. Every flaw and ***** in the armor will be picked at.

 

At one time, people thought the King Tiger was going to turn the tide in favor of Germany or something. Instead, some of our relatives got pictures of their GI's sitting on their smoking hulks. Patton , and a few others, weren't worried at all about them, he just thought of them as rolling pillboxes. Our main enemies capacity to exploit weaknesses is small, just as the numbers of King Tiger 'supertanks were. Flaws get corrected, tactics adapt, etc. We're more versatile than any of our main enemies of today, or for the foreseeable future.

 

A bit less than the entire Navy, then, thanks.

 

Underestimating the enemy has history proven results.

 

Absolutely, and our record in both World Wars and the Cold War, Iraq, and elsewhere make it obvious we're constantly being under-estimated by our enemies.

 

Quite glib. Hubris noted.

 

This caught my eye because of a parody article I saw a few weeks ago.

‘The Carrier is Vulnerable and Obsolete’ according to 100 years worth of military journals

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Defense Tropes Quarterly announced the publication of yet another article claiming the aircraft carrier is vulnerable, obsolete, and prohibitively expensive. The piece is the latest in a long series of articles in professional military journals questioning the utility of the carrier which literally dates back to the carrier’s very inception nearly a century ago.

Of course, the article was written strictly for laughs, but it does bring up a good point, that the death of the carrier has been predicted for years. I remember how the Falklands war "proved" that carriers were obsolete, and yet we've needed them since then. Eventually of course, the prediction will actually be true, but for now, we need the kind of force projection that the carrier gives. That need isn't going to be obsolete in my lifetime.