What Form of Naval Aviation is Needed?

Escort carriers should replace super carriers in an age of aerial stealth and precision

I suspect that the future of sea-based aviation is the escort carrier (CVE). Persistent surveillance and cheap precision weapons make large, expensive aircraft carriers too vulnerable. And stealth aircraft with precision weapons reduce the need for large numbers of carrier aircraft to have significant effects.

This is an interesting statistical series about the increase in bombing accuracy from Strategypage:

Bombing accuracy has also made enormous gains. During World War II, you had to drop about nine thousand bombs, from an altitude of 10,000 feet, to guarantee a hit on an 18x30 meter target. You had to stay that high to avoid most of the anti-aircraft fire. Back then, CEP/Circular Error of Probability was one kilometer. That meant that half the bombs dropped would fall into the one kilometer circle. By the 1950-53 Korean war, CEP had improved to 330 meters, meaning it only took 1,100 bombs to hit the target. A decade later, during the Vietnam war, CEPs of about 120 meters were achieved. This meant only 176 bombs were needed. By the 1991 Gulf War, the average CEP was 60 meters, and 30 bombs were needed. In 2003, the CEP was less than ten meters, and one bomb, and one aircraft, was all it took. During World War II, it required over 500 aircraft to get the hit, which is why back then, most of the bombing was either with hundreds of bombers, or a much smaller number of bombers coming in very low and very likely to get shot down if the target was heavily defended.

Just as there is no need for thousand-bomber raids to get sufficient useful hits amidst the collateral damage because of bomb accuracy, there must be an effect on naval aviation requirements.

Multiple large carriers allowed mass attacks from naval aviation. In World War II, there weren’t enough for the high-flying operations over land at sea against moving targets. So torpedo bombers came in low despite anti-aircraft fire. And dive bombers flying through the flak used the pilot as the guidance system to drive the attached bomb toward the target until the last moment when the pilot released the bomb and attempted to escape.

Now the bombs and torpedoes themselves are precision. Add in missiles for even more range than the bombs and torpedoes have today. Plus the weapons are more affordable.

But our carriers get bigger and more expensive to carry a full wing to sea. I’ve long questioned the wisdom of going all in on Ford-class carriers when network-centric warfare is arriving. A persistent surveillance network linked to precision weapons (often called an integrated strike complex, ISC) allows effects (the exploding things) to be concentrated without massing platforms that launch the effects. Super carriers are the pinnacle of platform-centric warfare. While they can still survive against weaker states while pounding those states; a peer state with an ISC makes attacking that enemy with an expensive super carrier a serious risk. Especially when you could fire long-range missiles from a variety of platforms spread out over a wide area with your own ISC.

The problem in our carrier debates involves each side generally arguing apples and oranges about their value and vulnerability. Critics of super carriers highlight their vulnerability in sea control campaigns; and defenders of carriers highlight their value and survivability in power projection missions against small states that lack serious anti-ship capabilities. Both are right—in their own frame of reference.

And in that environment, I even wonder about how large non-carrier warships can survive. What will be the most cost effective surface warship size for lethality and fleet survival despite attrition?

But I digress.

What do you do when super carriers are vulnerable against an enemy ISC and powerful against an enemy without an ISC? I’ve raised the issue of escort carriers. But even I can see problems with that route. The question is whether the advantages will make up for that.

My understanding of the physics of carriers seems to indicate that big carriers are the most efficient way to create sea-based aviation. Which led me to argue that America should not be the model of sea-based aviation as an alternative to super carriers. Those significant deck platforms are useful as light carriers as a back-up role to their primary role of amphibious warfare landing Marines. Don’t build light carriers, but why waste the hulls already built?

And the Marine Corps’ Force Design, which has gutted the land combat capabilities of Marines in favor of questionable anti-ship capabilities, apparently gives those big-deck amphibious warfare ships spare time to host air squadrons for sea-based aviation. So we can use the big-deck amphibs for sea-based aviation.

The same can be said for super carriers. I wouldn’t scrap those already built. But their primary role—with fewer of them—should be for power projection and not sea control. At best, they can support the sea control mission with either additional strike missions to add to massed missile and drone barrages or a pure air defense role.

I know some will say the Integrated Combat System could allow networked air defenses to protect the super carrier. But why bother? Those escorts will need to load their VLS cells with air defense rather than strike missions. Without the need to protect a vulnerable but expensive target, those cells could be filled with more strike missiles.

Seriously, is the super carrier an apex predator, or not?

In my world, large warships would fade as they age out and are not replaced at a 1:1 rate, with the saved money going to smaller surface combatants. How small? I don’t know. Allies forward have small corvettes that almost literally go into combat when they leave port. America needs ships able to cross oceans and be combat ready once there. Does that require a minimum size that precludes corvettes? Or do we accept that the corvettes simply won’t last as long as our capital ship fleet (and yes, rather than having a high-low mix, even our “destroyers” are capital ships)?

But what about sea-based aviation in a sea control environment? If the Navy still needs carrier aviation, how can that be done without providing an enemy a video propaganda coup?

If missiles and land-based aviation can’t provide the firepower needed to control the seas in an ISC environment, sea-based aviation could be provided by cheap escort carriers. For many purposes—including peacetime power projection—the Navy could adapt container ships into these small carriers. Although anything intended to move with fast warships should be built from the hull up for higher speeds. Although these would be more costly to achieve that kind of speed. All CVEs can be equipped with a small numbers of F-35Bs, tilt-rotor aircraft, and helicopters, in different mixes depending on the mission. Indeed, they could also be equipped with strike and recon drones and missiles launched from standardized shipping containers, perhaps using a separate elevator big enough for containers only. At this point we’re reaching back to my 2006 thinking on this subject.

One problem even I can see is that CVEs are so small that they’d need to keep aircraft on the deck rather than in a covered hangar below the flight deck. The aircraft might need portable aircraft shelters of some sort to protect them. And means to secure the aircraft to the deck in heavy seas.

I’d suggest moving up to light carriers (CVLs) to get a hangar deck, but then you are talking about our big-deck amphibious warfare ships and so the costs probably go up so much that they won’t be affordable in sufficient numbers. Perhaps super carriers or those big deck amphibs held well out of range of enemy anti-ship assets could function as mother ships that distribute aircraft to CVEs for combat missions and after a certain number of sorties, recover the aircraft for secure storage and maintenanace.

In war we could make modularized aviation auxiliary cruisers by adapting civilian container ships.

We need a sea power debate about how the Navy achieves sea control and power projection objectives rather than another too-narrow carrier debate. The super carrier must not be excused from explaining what they do here, now, because of the glory fleet carriers achieved in the World War II Pacific War. Smaller carriers contributed, too, and we must figure out how sea-based aviation can contribute to sea power.

NOTE: CVE image from world-war-2.wikia.com.