Setting a Course for the 21st Century Carrier Force
Since its inception 75 years
ago—when the collier
Jupiter was converted to
the first U.S. aircraft carri-er,
Langley—the carrier force has
generated millions of sorties,
responded to hundreds of crises,
played central roles in WW II,
Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War,
and served as a centerpiece of the
maritime strategy that helped win
the cold war. The 20th century has
unfolded a great success story for
Naval Aviation and the carrier
force, and today’s Nimitz-class car-riers
with their multipurpose air
wings represent the culmination of
that success.
But ongoing changes in mis-sions,
threats, technology and
budgets are creating new chal-lenges
and opportunities for plan-ning
the carrier force of the 21st
century. How the Navy responds
to these challenges today will
shape the broad debate about the
future role of aircraft carriers
and affect the design of the next-
generation carrier, currently
called CVX.
The Role of Aircraft
Carriers in the 21st
Century
Long-term planning for major
force elements such as a new gen-eration
of aircraft carriers is com-plicated
by the uncertainty in
international affairs and by the
rapid change in military
technology. Predicting the
future is risky business, but
the Navy cannot ignore
ongoing changes in mis-sions,
threats, technology
and resources while decid-ing
on a next-generation
aircraft carrier that will
serve the nation throughout
much of the 21st century.
International Security
What will be the eco-nomic,
social, environmen-tal
and associated military
challenges of the 21st century?
What forms of military power
will be most relevant to solving
these problems? Who can we
count on to be our allies, and
who will be our potential adver-saries?
Who will give us access to
bases, and under what circum-stances?
These questions are central to
planning future U.S. military
forces, including the carrier force.
But coming up with detailed
answers now is simply not possi-ble.
By the time the first CVX
reaches the mid-point in its service
life (in about 2037), the details of
the international security environ-ment
will almost certainly look dif-ferent
from what we predict today.
What is predictable today:
- The United States will retain
worldwide economic, political and
military interests.
- Crises and conflict will contin-ue
to threaten those interests.
- The time and place of conflict
will often be beyond our control.
- Access to overseas bases will
not always be available when and
where needed.
These factors imply a continuing need for the capability to operate
from the sea—free from the need for
immediate access to facilities ashore,
free to act upon ambiguous indica-tions
and warnings, and ready to pro-vide
immediate and sustainable com-bat
power for an indefinite period
when and where needed.
The uncertainty in future events
emphasizes the need for a next-gen-eration
carrier that can adapt to mis-sions
and circumstances that cannot
be foreseen today. Aircraft carriers
have inherent flexibility because of
their large size, mobility and their
ability to operate a variety of aircraft.
However, we must ensure that the
next-generation aircraft carriers will
meet the challenge of an uncertain
future as well as take advantage of
new technologies and new types of
aviation systems that emerge in the
21st century.
Battlefield of the Future
The battlefield of 2037 will
almost certainly be different from
that of 1997. But one important trend
seems clear: weapons will be more
accurate and lethal; and advanced
intelligence, surveillance and recon-naissance
systems will make the bat-tlefield
more transparent and allow
operational commanders to employ
the greater firepower of new
weapons—including long-range
unmanned weapons like the
Tomahawk Land Attack Missile
(TLAM), Army Tactical Missile
System (ATACMS) and their
successors.
- Land attack missiles and sup-porting
intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance systems repre-sent
an important element of our
future strike capabilities. None-theless,
tactical aircraft will remain
a core element of our military pos-ture
for future decades for several
reasons:
- Aircraft are multimission.
TLAM is an effective strike weapon,
but aircraft can perform a wide range
of combat missions, including air
superiority, suppression of enemy air
defenses and close air support.
- Aircraft can strike a broader
range of targets. TLAM is an effec-tive
weapon against soft to moderate-ly
hard, fixed targets. Aircraft can
deliver a wide variety of weapons
against the full range of fixed and
moving targets.
- Man in the loop is an advantage.
Eventually, the guidance and sensor
systems on missiles may be able to
approach the perceptual and process-ing
capabilities of a cockpit crew.
But for now, the ability of a person
in the loop to gather and process
information and to react to unexpect-ed
circumstances provides a signifi-cant
operational advantage, particu-larly
against battlefield targets.
- Aircraft are more economical for
sustained strikes. Though expensive
to buy and operate, aircraft are more
cost effective for sustained strike
operations because they are reusable.
Current plans to invest many billions
of dollars to field the next gen-eration
of tactical aircraft—the F/A-18E/
F, F-22 and the Joint Strike
Fighter (JSF)—reflect the Department
of Defense’s belief in the continuing
centrality of tactical aviation.
At issue is not whether tactical aircraft
will be needed in the future, but
how the characteristics and force
structure of future tactical aircraft
should be shaped by the improved
technologies. For example, future
versions of TLAM could have
greater accuracy and deliver a wider
range of warheads, possibly includ-ing
terminally guided submunitions
and hard-target penetrators. Im-proved
surveillance and reconnais-sance
systems and associated com-mand,
control, communications and
intelligence support systems may
allow land attack missile systems to
attack a wider range of targets on the
battlefield.
How would such improvements
shape the employment of tactical air-craft?
The improving capabilities of
TLAM to strike fixed targets deep in
the theater would allow sea-based
aircraft to focus on air superiority
and battlefield targets and to operate
closer to the littoral. And improved
sea-based surveillance and recon-naissance
systems, such as satellites,
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
and long-range theater surveillance
aircraft, may affect the number of
surveillance aircraft needed aboard a
carrier. These considerations could
have implications for the design
requirements of the JSF or CVX, and
the planned next-generation support
aircraft, the Common Support
Aircraft (CSA).
The Next-Generation
Carrier Design
The design of CVX will be influ-enced
by a variety of factors, espe-cially
advances in subsystems tech-nologies
(see “On Track to
Tomorrow’s Carrier,” p. 24). Two of
the most significant aspects of the
new carrier will be how aircraft
launch and recover, and the overall
machinery concept of the ship.
Aircraft
Launching and recovering aircraft
is likely to remain the central
function of aircraft carriers and the one
that has the greatest influence on
their design. Operating today’s con-ventional
takeoff and landing
(CTOL) aircraft requires powerful
catapults and arresting gear, which
have a major impact on the overall
machinery concept of the ship and
also drive the size and layout of the
flight deck.
The JSF program provides an
opportunity to review the commit-ment
to CTOL aircraft for the carrier
force. The current official plan for
JSF is to develop separate aircraft
tailored to the specific needs of the
Navy and Marine
Corps. The Marines
would get a short
takeoff and vertical
landing (STOVL)
aircraft to support
Marine Air-Ground
Task Force
(MAGTF) opera-tions
from amphibi-ous
ships and expe-ditionary
airfields.
The Navy would get
a CTOL aircraft
with greater range
and payload, and
with increased
stealthiness to ensure survivability.
In view of the outstanding record
of CTOL aircraft and carriers, stick-ing
with CTOL would be a natural
choice. However, alternative paths
might result in a greater effectiveness
or lower cost for the overall ship/
aircraft system. Now is the time to
explore the alternatives, because the
next generation of fighter-attack and
support aircraft are in the early
stages of development. They will
enter the fleet at roughly the same
time as the first CVX, which creates
an opportunity to reevaluate how air-craft
are launched and recovered.
Once JSF, CSA and CVX are decid-ed,
it will be a long time before the
Navy will have another chance to
develop new fighter and support air-craft
and design a new aircraft
carrier.
One alternative is to develop a
common STOVL strike fighter in the
JSF program for both the Navy and
Marines. For compatibility, CSA
would probably need to be a STOVL
or STOL (short takeoff and landing)
design.
This path has several potential,
but unproven, advantages. A com-mon
JSF aircraft for the Navy and
Marines might save the Department
of the Navy (DON) money because
of lower development costs for a sin-gle
aircraft, larger production runs
and lower support costs. In addition,
a common STOVL aircraft should
give DON greater leverage in the
JSF program, and it might foster
greater synergism between Navy and
Marine Corps aviation planning and
operations.
A common DON STOVL aircraft
would open up a wider design arena
for CVX. It would also lead to
increased sortie rates under some
conditions and allow greater flexibil-ity
in the basing for naval aircraft.
The STOVL aircraft under con-sideration
in the JSF program are
much more capable than the origi-nal
AV-8 or even the current AV-8B
Harrier. Nonetheless, the STOVL
path raises serious issues about per-formance
and risk:
Can a DON STOVL aircraft meet
the requirements of both the Navy
and the Marines?
Marine aviation focuses on sup-port
of the MAGTF, which involves
battlefield support missions at fairly
close ranges. Support to Marine
forces is only part of the Navy’s
interests, which cover the full spec-trum
of theater air operations. To
support these missions, the Navy
requirements for JSF call for addi-tional
range, payload and stealth,
which raises the issue of whether a
common STOVL aircraft would be
good enough for the Navy.
For example, a STOVL aircraft
may not provide the same degree of
all-aspect stealth that is achievable in
a CTOL aircraft. Would such an air-craft
be suitable for strikes against a
range of targets on the first day of
the war when enemy air defenses are
at full strength?
Lethality is another concern. The
internal weapons bay of a CTOL
variant of JSF will
accommodate 2,000-
pound weapons,
whereas STOVL air-craft
may be able to
accommodate only
1,000-pound
weapons internally.
This might limit
their use against cer-tain
targets. How
serious is this limita-tion
in view of
STOVL’s ability to
carry 2,000-pound
weapons externally,
and possible
improvements in warhead technolo-gy
to increase the lethality of 1,000-
pound weapons against hard targets?
One idea that might help with the
range and payload tradeoffs would
be to operate STOVL aircraft in dif-ferent
modes, depending on the
operating base. When operating
from amphibious assault ships and
perhaps forward land-based operat-ing
sites, the aircraft would operate
in the basic STOVL mode. When
operating from carriers, the aircraft
would be catapulted (perhaps in
conjunction with a ski jump) and
arrested, but at lower energies than
existing CTOL aircraft—the “soft-cat,
soft-trap” concept.
The powered-lift features of
STOVL would reduce launch and
recovery speeds and the associated
catapult and arresting energies, so
that a STOVL aircraft would not
require the heavy structure of a
CTOL aircraft. At the same time,
the additional energy from the cata-pult
might be sufficient to increase
the range and payload of the
STOVL aircraft to meet Navy
requirements. Similarly, the soft
trap would enable the aircraft to
recover on carriers at
heavier weights (i.e.,
with additional fuel
and stores) than in
the vertical landing
mode.
How serious are
the technical risks of
STOVL?
Controlling weight
is a difficult task in
the design of high-performance
combat
aircraft. STOVL air-craft
are more sensitive to weight
growth than CTOL aircraft because
of their need to land vertically.
Achieving the type of capabilities
envisioned for a DON STOVL air-craft
would push the limits of
engine technology, creating a tech-nical
risk for the program.
Understanding the magnitude of
these risks and the consequences of
failing to achieve performance
goals is essential when evaluating
the costs and benefits of the STOVL
path.
Is there a reasonable transition
strategy to a new force if CVX could
not operate all existing aircraft?
A DON STOVL aircraft could
lead to a carrier without catapults,
or a new type of low-power cata-pult.
At the lower energies envi-sioned
for soft-cat operations, alter-native
catapult technologies might
be feasible, including hydraulic and
even flywheels. These technologies
would open up the options for the
machinery concept of a future carri-er.
However, a future carrier with
only low-power catapults would not
be able to launch certain current
aircraft, which raises the issue of
the transition strategy from today’s
all-CTOL force to a mixed force of
the future.
In short, the STOVL path has
exciting possibilities, but it also
entails significant risks. Now is the
time to address these issues if
STOVL is to influence the design
of CVX.
Machinery Concept
A second major issue affecting the
design of a future carrier is the overall
machinery concept for propulsion,
aviation launch and recovery equip-ment,
and other ship systems. There
are a variety of alternatives, but the
debate revolves around nuclear
power: Can the Navy afford nuclear
power for future carriers? Can it
afford not to have nuclear power?
The outstanding effectiveness of
nuclear power has been thoroughly
demonstrated in the Nimitz class; the
issue is not performance, but cost.
Previous cost estimates predict that
the additional cost of a nuclear plant
might be as large as 30 to 50 percent
in initial procurement cost and, at
today’s oil prices, 10 to 20 percent
in life-cycle cost. For this price, the
Navy gets unlimited high-speed
endurance, the ability to respond to
distant crises in minimum time, and
insurance against future increases in
the price of oil.
The leading candidate for a new
non-nuclear plant is an
integrated electric
propulsion system pow-ered
by gas turbines.
Electric drive is essential
to this concept because
the existing geared
mechanical drive
requires location of the
gas turbines deep within
the ship. But the tur-bines’
intake manifolds
and exhaust stacks
require a large amount of
shipboard space. Electric
drive permits placement
of the gas turbines closer
to the skin of the ship,
minimizing the intake/
exhaust problem.
Electric drive would also
enhance ship survivabili-ty
(because of redundant
routing of electricity),
and it would enable the
Navy to eliminate main-tenance-
intensive steam
auxiliaries.
Although gas-turbine
integrated electric drive is
an exciting concept, it
has not been proven for
the scale of an aircraft
carrier. Even more criti-cal
is the development of a new, non-steam
catapult because generating
sufficient steam for existing catapults
is not practical in a non-steam
propulsion system. Other options
include using an electromagnetic catapult
or liquid propellants instead of
steam. However, significant development would be required before either
concept is ready for a new carrier.
If the technology proves out, the
gas-turbine electric drive would offer
(compared with existing nuclear
plants) reduced manning and lower
procurement and maintenance costs.
Cost savings might also be achieved
in a new-design nuclear plant.
Integrated electric drive is possible
with a nuclear plant, and the Navy is
exploring ways to reduce manning
and improve maintainability of
nuclear systems.
Given the outstanding record of
nuclear power, the burden of proof
lies on new systems to demonstrate
equal reliability, acceptable
performance and significantly lower
cost. At this point, the argument is
that the Navy should thoroughly
examine non-nuclear alternatives.
Operations
Exploring innovative concepts of
operations should be an integral part
of the development process for a new
aircraft carrier.
At the level of individual plat-forms,
the central issue concerns
which functions should be performed
by the carrier and its air wing.
Improvements in the capabilities of
offboard and unmanned systems and
the increasing capacity and reliability
of communication links to the carrier
imply an opportunity to reexamine
whether some current functions
could be performed more efficiently
by offboard systems. Various intelli-gence,
surveillance and administra-tive
functions are candidates to move
off board.
A related change in concepts of
operations concerns the size of the
crew. Moving some functions off
board and automating others has
promise for major reductions in man-power,
which accounts for more than
one-third of the life-cycle costs of
existing carriers. Truly significant
reductions are feasible only by com-bining
new technology with new
concepts for operating the ship.
New technology and concepts of
operations may create opportunities
for sea-basing platforms to assume
new tasks that are important in the
joint littoral warfare environment of
the future. For example, perhaps
TLAMs and UAVs could be added
to the aviation systems of a future
carrier.
Changes in concepts of operations
could apply to the battle group or the
force as a whole, as well as to the
individual platforms. One possibility
is to rethink the assignment of func-tions
among platforms. The current
division of labor among carriers, sur-face
combatants and amphibious
ships is the product of long experi-
ence, and it has worked well. But
now is an appropriate time to consid-er
out-of-the-box ideas, because the
concurrent development of the 21st
century surface combatant (SC 21)
and CVX and the not-too-distant
replacement of amphibious assault
ships provides a once-in-a-generation
opportunity to consider a major
change of course.
One radical change would be to
incorporate certain functions of sur-face
combatants or amphibious ships
into the design of a new carrier. For
example, CVX could include a
multifunctional phased-array radar,
improved helicopter support for
Marines and special warfare forces,
and perhaps even some form of well
deck to support future surface craft.
Another area that deserves serious
thought concerns options for getting
increased forward-deployed time out
of the carrier force. Today’s carrier
force levels and deployment patterns
result in significant gaps in coverage
in key theaters. For example, the
Indian Ocean was gapped in October
1994 when Iraqi troops moved south
toward Kuwait. This resulted in a
one-week delay while George
Washington (CVN 73) responded
from the Mediterranean, leaving a
gap in carrier presence off Bosnia.
Increasing carrier force levels
could resolve the gap problem, but in
the present budgetary climate, force
levels are more likely to move in the
opposite direction. Thus, there is a
strong incentive to come up with
new concepts that can enable a
future carrier to spend more of its
time in crucial forward deployments,
including new schemes for rotating
ships, aircraft and crews.
Some of these ideas represent a
significant departure from current
systems and operational practices.
But the Navy is likely to improve
upon current capabilities within a
constrained budget only by combin-ing
new concepts of operations with
new technology and design.
Affordability
A major focus in the development
of the carrier of the future is the
need to reduce costs. The problem is
not that the cost of nuclear-powered
aircraft carriers has gone up. When
adjusted for inflation, the cost of
Nimitz-class carriers has remained
nearly constant. The problem is that
the Navy’s budget has declined sig-nificantly,
and the Navy will have
great difficulty affording as many
CVNs as needed at the current esti-mated
life-cycle cost of $18 billion
(in FY-96 dollars, not including the
aircraft). Unless the budget increases
or DON realizes huge savings in
infrastructure, the Navy must reduce
the cost of buying and operating new
carriers or face the inevitability of
smaller force levels.
Because an increase in budget is
unlikely, reducing the cost of the
next-generation carrier is absolutely
essential to preventing devastating
cuts in carrier force levels.
Putting affordability near the top
of the priority list would force the
Navy to contemplate significant
changes. To achieve a 20-percent
reduction in the life-cycle cost
(which is used here as a benchmark
for significant savings), there are
only three major options:
- Reduce the size of the ship and
the air wing.
- Give up nuclear propulsion.
- Reduce the crew by 50 percent.
Any one of these changes would rep-resent
a significant change in carrier
capabilities or in the concepts of
operations.
Reducing costs must be given high
priority. We must be willing to con-sider
selected tradeoffs in capabilities
and new ways of doing business to
reduce costs. Such changes will not
occur without some risk. But given
the continuing squeeze on resources,
either we will find new ways to per-form
the essential tasks more effi-ciently
or the fleet of the future will
be even smaller than we now imagine.
Conclusion
The 20th century has told a great
success story for Naval Aviation and
for aircraft carriers, and carriers will
continue to serve the nation well in
the 21st century. But this will
require anticipating and adapt-ing
to change and a willing-ness
to explore new ideas and
new ways of doing business.
Change is difficult and
risky. History shows that
most visionary ideas do not
pan out, and many are just
flat wrong. History also
shows that most successful
innovations, including Naval
Aviation itself, are initially
viewed as radical and risky
departures from the tried and
true and, thus, are often dis-missed
by those in power.
There is no simple solution
to this dilemma. The Naval
Aviation community must
encourage innovative ideas for
its next-generation aircraft
and aircraft carrier, including
ways to improve efficiency
and reduce costs. At the same time,
it must maintain core capabilities—
including mobility, survivability,
sustainability, flexibility and the
ability to generate high-volume fire-power—
all essential for an effective
sea-based aviation platform in the
21st century.
For over 20 years, Dr. Perin has worked at the
Center for Naval Analyses, where he is currently
director of the Roles, Missions and Forces
Team. He is also director of the Department of
the Navy’s Cost and Operational Effectiveness
Analysis for CVX.