
A Renaissance for Small Aircraft Carriers? - protomyth
https://strategypage.com/on_point/20170215233616.aspx
======
nostrademons
Light carriers (CVLs) have had a very troubled history. They were the very
first aircraft carriers, from USS Langley & HMS Argus, and were frequently
built to use up extra treaty tonnage (USS Ranger, IJN Ryujo) or when fleet
carriers weren't ready yet (USS Independence class). But they almost always
exhibited poor seakeeping characteristics and could carry only small air
wings, which prevented them from being very useful in combat. Light carriers
haven't proven the decisive element in _any_ major sea battles, and major
naval powers usually relegated them to playing support roles for fleet
carriers or doing aircraft-ferrying or escort jobs.

I would bet against them being all that useful now, too.

Escort carriers (CVEs), however, don't get nearly enough praise. Aside from
one decisive strategic victory (the Battle of Samar) where U.S. escort
carriers beat back the main body of the Japanese navy under overwhelming odds,
they also were a major factor in winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Convoy
losses plummeted once escort carriers started being attached to convoys.

I'd bet that the future of carrier warfare lies in a "drone swarm in a box".
Outfit ordinary shipping containers to launch & retrieve a swarm of drones
with a combat radius of a few hundred miles, and then you could load these
onto ordinary freighters. They'd create an effective deterrent for any surface
or submarine warfare, and could be added to existing vessels without
modification.

~~~
aetherson
Wait a minute, how in the world do you outfit ordinary shipping containers to
"launch and retrieve a swarm of drones with a combat radius of a few hundred
miles"?

I mean, yeah, that sounds like it would be pretty effective. Assuming that you
could actually do it. But I'm not aware of any drone that might conceivably
have an operational radius of a few hundred miles that could launch, land, and
be serviced in an area of 8ft x 20ft or 8ft x 40ft. Much less a "swarm" of
them in the same area.

~~~
nostrademons
A Cessna Skyhawk has range of 640nm, height of 8ft, length of 27ft, wingspan
of 36ft, and payload of about 900lbs. Take the pilot out, streamline & shorten
the fuselage, and give it folding wings, and you're basically there for size,
range, and payload.

For landing: well, SpaceX can land a rocket vertically on a drone ship after
taking it to orbital velocity. You could do similar maneuvers with a drone.
Flip the plane so that its wings act like a parachute to slow its descent, and
then turn it around all the way to use the propeller to lower it onto the
deck, then fold the wings. Without a pilot, the only limits on G-forces is the
structural integrity of the airframe, and such planes are likely to land very
lightly after completing their mission. Computer control lets you do things
that would be totally impractical with a pilot, like maintain stability in a
stall.

Takeoff seems the biggest challenge. Ground roll on the Cessna is 960 ft, and
the drone will be at its heaviest on take-off. Maybe do an assisted take-off,
launching from a gun barrel or compressed air cylinder? Again, without a
pilot, you can be much more liberal with G-forces, and with computer control
you can do things like unfold the wings in the air. It wouldn't fit in a
single container then, but you could have a system of containerized components
all working together.

Also, the Russians reportedly have containerized cruise missiles, which meet
the requirements for range, payload, and take-off. They don't really have
multi-mission capability, but it may not be all that far from there to drones:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch2Rqte6XOs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch2Rqte6XOs)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7632...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7632543/A-cruise-
missile-in-a-shipping-box-on-sale-to-rogue-bidders.html)

~~~
aetherson
I think you meant "km," not "nm."

Cessna Skyhawks also do not, you know, carry munitions, and have a top speed
of about 180mph. I'm by no means an aerospace engineer, but I think a blithe
assumption that you can take a slow, light, un-durable civilian aircraft, turn
it VTOL, arm it, and launch it from a box essentially no larger than it is,
and have an even remotely effective combat aircraft, is unfounded.

And in any case, that's still not a "swarm."

~~~
nostrademons
It's 640 nautical miles according to Cessna's website.

And a lot of the assumptions about what makes an effective combat aircraft go
out the window when you take humans out of the loop. The #1 cost in a manned
airplane is the pilot - we do everything we can to bring them home, first of
all because human life is sacred and second of all because there's a massive
investment in training them which can't be replaced. Why do you need
durability when the drone is expendable? Why do you need performance? All you
need is to deliver a critical mass of ordinance accurately onto a target. If
your drones cost less than the missiles used to shoot them down, just have
more drones than missiles and you win.

A typical container ship has between 10,000-20,000 TEUs. Many of those are
stacked below decks and wouldn't be available for flight operations, but even
if you assume 500 containers on the top deck and pack 2 drones/container, you
could have an air wing of 1000 drones. Or put 50 containers each on 10 ships
in a convoy. I'd consider that a swarm.

~~~
aetherson
Oh, sorry, "nm" means "nanometer" to me, but of course nautical miles.

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gaius
I fear we will come to bitterly regret building the QE class without cats and
traps, or without nuclear power. I mean even more so than every sane taxpayer
in the UK does already.

A US carrier battlegroup contains the carrier itself, and a cruiser and two
destroyers to protect it. We will have two carriers and a grand total of 6
destroyers, no cruisers. So the choices are abandon all other commitments and
use the entire rest of the Royal Navy for force protection for the carriers,
or leave the carriers as sitting ducks. Yes I know only one carrier will be at
sea at a time. All six destroyers won't be at sea at the same time either!

Did I mention no cats and traps? That means we are forced to rely on rotary
wing for AEW - a decision that cost dearly in the Falklands. Helicopters
simply don't have the altitude or endurance for that mission. So we have a
fleet that can't see, can't fight, and can't stay at sea for very long. And
there's no money left.

~~~
M_Grey
I would guess that at this point, the notion is that in any serious conflict
the US would be involved. Those gaps could be easily filled in that context.

~~~
gydfi
One of the main goals of the RN's aircraft carrier program is presumably to
help out in any Falklands War II, and the US stayed out of it last time (for
reasons I've never understood -- wtf Ronnie?)

~~~
M_Grey
That's true, but do you really think we'd stay neutral again? The "Special
Relationship" has only been more emphasized over the last decades, and we
probably owe some for co-opting their PM and dragging them into Iraq.

~~~
gydfi
You're right, the major war prior to the Falklands was Vietnam, and the
British didn't help out in that one, so I guess there was no reason the US
felt obliged to help out a decade later in the Falklands.

I guess it really depends on US-Argentina relations, and also whether the UK
looks like they actually need any help.

The US could at least help out covertly. "Whoops, the entire Argentinian Navy
just exploded at once! I guess the British must have more submarines down
there than we thought!"

Realistically from what I've read, Argentina is so militarily depleted
nowadays, and the UK has learned so much from the previous war, that Argentina
couldn't even win a war against the British forces garrisoned in the
Falklands, let alone the reinforcements. There is no chance of a serious
war... although when I went to Argentina last year I found there's still
freaking road signs by the side of the road with a map of the Falklands and
proclaiming "Las Malvinas son Argentinas" (or whatever the correct Spanish is)

~~~
gaius
_You 're right, the major war prior to the Falklands was Vietnam, and the
British didn't help out in that one_

Guess you've forgotten the British contribution to the Korean war?

Then again I guess we forgot the US stabbing us in the back in Suez.

 _Argentina couldn 't even win a war against the British forces garrisoned in
the Falklands, let alone the reinforcements_

It does boggle the mind that 4 Typhoons and an Infantry company is enough
these days.

------
NikolaeVarius
I really wonder what the next 20-30 years might hold for the US Navy. This
entire Supercarrier business looks just like the Dreadnoughts pre-WW1 where in
the span of a decade, these ultra heavy ships became completely worthless and
unusable because they were so expensive that no one could ever justify
fielding them in combat.

Can you imagine the political repercussions of even losing a single Carrier?

~~~
remarkEon
>Can you imagine the political repercussions of even losing a single Carrier?

Yes. A Third World War.

~~~
bluedino
He's talking about taking one out of service, not being destroyed by an enemy
state.

~~~
purple-again
It doesn't read that way to me. I interpreted it as a combat loss as well.

------
sanjeetsuhag
The STOVL capability of the F-35B comes with a cost. According to the
Congressional Research Service, the projected flyway cost for the various
models are :

F-35A : 77.7 million USD

F-35B : 105.5 million USD

F-35C : 89.7 million USD

~~~
M_Grey
All to fight a nonexistent threat; a threat that will still be generations
behind when we start wasting trillions on the next pentagon boondoggle.

~~~
Shubley
Having visited China, I can assure that it does exist.

As for 'generations behind', this is the whole point and the linchpin of
global military stability.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_T._Allison#Thucydides_T...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_T._Allison#Thucydides_Trap)

------
Animats
The US Navy has already done this. They're called "amphibious assault ships",
and the US has 8 of the Wasp class.[1] The USMC operates helicopters and
Harriers from them. The plan was to use F-35s with VTOL capability, but they
cost too much. Now they're stuck with these mini-carriers that don't have
enough reach for inland targets.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp-
class_amphibious_assault_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp-
class_amphibious_assault_ship)

~~~
bb611
The F-35B is still being deployed on the Wasp class:
[https://www.f35.com/news/detail/f-35b-completes-first-sea-
tr...](https://www.f35.com/news/detail/f-35b-completes-first-sea-trials-on-
the-uss-wasp)

The problem is that without a catapult the takeoff weight and therefore range
and armament of any aircraft is greatly reduced. That's a problem fundamental
to the Wasp class.

~~~
Animats
The F-35 will be used on the Wasp class, but not in the numbers originally
planned. The F-35 just costs too much.

The Navy's problem is that, in recent decades, most of the US's enemies have
been far from a coast. They need range, more range than helicopters can
provide, to project power inland. Hence the Osprey and the F-35. But the price
of VTOL is very high in many directions - expensive, reduced payload, and
fragile.

Without sea-based long-reach air power, and without friendly territory in the
neighborhood, it's back to the old way - land Marines, establish a beachhead,
build an airfield, and invite the Air Force to come over with their big iron.
The US won WWII in the Pacific that way, but it was slow, bloody and
expensive.

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InTheArena
At one point in my (non-military) career, I spent a ton of time onboard a
LHA/LHD (the types of carriers mentioned above). They are impressively huge.
You had no way of knowing if the ship was at sea or not. Even at the time -
more then a decade ago - I remember thinking that with anything more competent
then a harrier - they could do damage.

That said, a carrier force is also a networked force. They have planes and
ships all aligned in a sensor network to project power over the horizon. I
don't see them doing that with LHDs.

------
fit2rule
Meh. I can hear the P-270 Moskit (SSN2 Sunburn) operators laughing form here
..

