Are Aircraft Carriers Becoming Obsolete? - The Red Line Podcast

The aircraft carrier has been the crown jewel of national fleets for nearly 80 years, with these steel giants being the decisive factor in many of the last centuries' pivotal battles. With their growth in importance though, came a growth in ship size, and the new supercarrier class has become such a monolith that the production of just one unit costs more than the entire military budget of most of the US's adversaries combined. Is this a wise move, to build the greatest mobile fortress to every head to sea? Or will this new generation of Chinese submarines, stealth bombers and hypersonic missiles destroy decades of US progress in a single afternoon, for less than 1% of the price?
On the panel this week:
- Drachinifel (Naval Historian)
- Sam Roggeveen (Lowy Inst)
- Robert Farley (Patterson School)
Follow the show on @TheRedLinePod
Follow Michael on @MikeHilliardAus
For more info please visit - www.theredlinepodcast.com

[@shadyberger5695]

It is mindblowing how heavily underviewed this channel is relatively to the content and the quality of guest invited ! Thank you for the amazing channel

[@nooonanoonung6237]

Ikr, the host has some interesting connections to pull off this kind of in-depth interview.

[@alexanderryan8263]

Let’s go Drach

[@SkywalkerWroc]

I smiled when I heard him :) Nice to hear someone familiar on the show.

[@philiphockenbury6563]

An aircraft carrier is far more mobile than an island. But an island is harder to sink.
Quote of the year.

[@johnnymatias3027]

Haven't started yet, curious to see the arguments for and against. I will mention the role of AWACS and how much sooner a fleet with AWACS can engage and maneuver than one without.

[@MrChickster12]

I love the aircraft carrier subject, so this is going to be fascinating

[@warofalliances8220]

a great subject matter, I look forward to listening to this one.

[@specialted1]

Can’t wait to listen to the podcast!

[@aaaarrrr]

One non-state fishing boat with a shipping container of drones can sweep the planes and radars of a CVN or entire battle group, leaving it blind and burning, with it's own ordnance being the warheads forcing the ships to surrender.

[@halo3soap114]

Would you ever consider collaborating or having Perun on? I know he's quite busy but his depth of knowledge is huge.

[@bostorminator]

Mach 27, thats way more than orbital speed... in atmosphere. I think theres a mistake there.

[@TheRedLinePod]

Incredibly it is actually is true. I cant post links here, but have a google of the new Russian Avangard Hypersonic Missile, it reprotedly has a top speed of mach-27.

[@ianshaver8954]

And the Russian state would never ever exaggerate the technical specifications of what they produce.

[@hochentis]

Are you kidding by saying Chinese missles need drones to guide anti ship missles to hit target ‘ China also have its own Satellites. Ballistic missiles can be guided by satellite . Many speculations are pull out of this guy’s rear

[@ianshaver8954]

If you look at the ongoing Russo Ukrainian war, both sides are jamming the other’s satellite communications.

[@anon4214]

Hi, just to say I really enjoy your show and I'm a big fan but I'm afraid to say most of this (at least the first two thirds) is completely off the mark and not up to your usual research standards, it sounds like you started with the premise that carriers are obsolete and then tried to find evidence to prove it.
When it comes to the Falklands I think you took the exact opposite conclusion you should have. You look at the vulnerability of the carriers (which in the Falklands were not major aircraft carriers like the US would have but were anti-submarine warfare ships designed to carry helicopters and 6x Sea Harriers (that's 10 times fewer jets than a US carrier) for harassing Soviet maritime patrol aircraft, they lacked airborne early warning aircraft which are one of strengths of a real carrier and had a small complement of fairly low range, low end jets.
But even given these constraints the carriers were absolutely crucial to winning the Falklands War, to the point that the admiral in charge admitted that without the Sea Harrier the operation would not have been possible. Sea Harriers flew thousands of sorties shooting down 21 enemy aircraft and causing dozens or hundreds more to break off their attacks, thereby defending the fleet, an amphibious fleet without carriers is a sitting duck to enemy air attack.
You also bring up the classic 'Swedish/Australian/other sub sank US supercarrier in exercise' point. I think what's important to understand here is that these exercises are constructed to make it difficult for the carrier to provide useful training. A carrier's best defence from a diesel sub is to simply steam away at 30 knots which a diesel sub just can't keep up with. In these exercises they put both in a very small box so they can test each other's ASW capabilities, it would be a very realistic but not very valuable exercises if a carrier and sub spent 2 weeks in the deep ocean never coming within 200 miles of each other because the carrier has speed and freedom of manoeuvre. Another point to consider is that during a lot of these exercises the carrier strike group is not able to use the full range of its capabilities (whales and sealife generally don't take well to ships blasting active sonar in search of a submarine)
Carriers have always been vulnerable, the question is does the capability they bring outweigh the risk of their loss and what would you replace them with?
Let's say you want to replace carriers with more destroyers, a carrier air wing can launch 2-4 squadrons of jets carrying 2-4 cruise missiles each, that's a total of 24-96 missiles in one mission which they can launch once maybe twice a day at full surge. A US destroyer with 96x VLS cells assuming they are all dedicated to offensive weapons can deliver 96 Tomahawks but then has to spend weeks getting back to port, rearming and returning to station whereas a carrier can be replenished with munitions and a wider variety of munitions at sea. Over the course of a campaign a carrier has a huge advantage in providing a constant and heavy volume of fire compared to other assets.
I'd break down part of what makes carriers so effective into a few parts:
1. Mobility, unlike a land base it can be repositioned and provide a harder target to locate for the enemy. Even if you locate a carrier, within a few hours the area of uncertainty has grown so great it's not of much use for targeting.
2. Scouting ability, because of the curvature of the earth even a ship with the most powerful radar physically cannot see a target at low altitude beyond the ~20 mile radar horizon, a carrier's E-2D Hawkeye Airborne Early Warning aircraft can fly up and provide coverage of a radius of over 300 miles and with the US Navy's co-operative engagement capability can actually guide missiles from ships that don't have sensor coverage of a particular target
3. Versatility: A carrier air wing of multi-role jets can bring a large degree of weapons and capabilities to the battle. Whereas a destroyer or submarine may have one type of offensive missile a Super Hornet can launch anti-ship missiles, air-to-air missiles, anti-radiation missiles, glide bombs, bunker busters, laser guided bombs, decoys etc. This allows them to prosecute the full range of targets that you may want to hit and do so more economically than firing a $1 million tomahawk at an ammo truck
4. Electronic warfare: US Navy carriers contain a squadron of EA/18G Growlers that degrade enemy radars and make attacks with other weapons far more effective
5. Air superiority: Ships will have air defences but these are not mobile and are of limited range. If you want to sink a destroyer simply launch a squadron of aircraft to deliver stand-off anti-ship missiles from outside the range of its SAMs. A carrier can put a number of fighters on a combat air patrol or interception mission and 'shoot the archers before they fire their arrows', so to speak, being capable of this at much greater range than any shipboard SAM in existence and being able to rearm with anti-air weaponry unlike a warship that once it has expended its SAMs has to travel back to port to rearm them because it's not possible at sea
When it comes to aircraft carrier size this is a very old debate and the US Navy is pretty much asked by congress to make a study of whether small carriers are viable every few years and the analysis has always said larger carriers are more effective because they are genuinely more cost efficient, carry more ordnance, can carry out defensive and offensive operations at the same time etc. Smaller carriers such as the ones that operate the STOVL F-35B can't operate very effective AWACS aircraft and due to not having catapults puts big limits on range and payload (bear in mind an America class amphibious carrier has a magazine *23 times smaller* than that on the Ford). There's a very good lecture by the designer of the Ford class on TH-cam explaining the outcome of one of these studies