Much as the battleship was the byproduct of a bygone era when World War II erupted in the Pacific, the modern aircraft carrier is a symbol of a long-gone age.
The article critiques the United States' continued investment in aircraft carriers, likening them to obsolete battleships of the past due to their vulnerability to modern missile technologies. It highlights the shift in naval warfare, emphasizing that countries like China and non-state actors like the Houthi Rebels have developed cost-effective anti-ship missiles capable of challenging US naval supremacy, particularly in regions like the Indo-Pacific and the Red Sea. The author advocates for a strategic pivot towards submarines and more agile surface ships, alongside investment in hypersonic and space weapons, to maintain the US military's global effectiveness against evolving threats.
Most countries tend to fight--and prepare to fight--the previous war. This fact is seen in Washington's obsessive commitment to building and maintaining expensive aircraft carriers. While works of technological marvels, America's aircraft carriers are holdovers from a bygone era. They have become much like the battleships of yore that they replaced. In fact, the entire history of the flat top is one of accidental greatness. For the Americans, the reason that the US Navy relied on these technological marvels to beat the Japanese in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War, was simply because they had no choice.
Aircraft Carriers: A Legacy System That's Not Worth the Cost
America’s preferred warship of the day, the battleship, had been denied to the Americans in the Pacific at Pearl Harbor, where the Pacific Fleet’s flotilla of battleships had been sunk. Having to respond quickly to Japan’s attack, the Navy was forced to become innovative, as their carriers had been untouched by the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, so the US strategy had to place the aircraft carriers at the epicenter of Washington’s war winning strategy for defeating Japan. The US had made it work.
And the Pacific Theater showed the effectiveness of having mobile warplane launchers at sea. The age of battleships died an unceremonious death in the opening of World War II. After the war, America recognized the prestige and power projection that aircraft carriers provided them.
So, the age of aircraft carriers was extended for many decades beyond WWII.
Today, the average cost for building a nuclear-powered, aircraft carrier—a supercarrier, such as America’s new Gerald R. Ford-class is upwards of $13.3 billion. It costs an additional hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain. Previous models are only slightly less expensive. The United States has 11 aircraft carriers. These warships are the largest carriers in the world, with twice the amount of deck space for takeoffs and landings than any other carrier fleet in the world.
Yet, their complexity and exorbitant cost make them not only tempting targets for rivals, but if they were to be destroyed or seriously damaged in combat, it would effectively make them a wasting asset. Billions of dollars would be lost and the US Navy’s power projection abilities would be seriously degraded.