The creation of new capital ship concepts seems to historically stem from a combination of new technology, change in strategic situation, and changes in financial resources available for warship construction and maintenance over time. The best known such case is that of the development of the aircraft carrier from simple experiment in 1914 to master of Pacific theater warfare in 1941. The carrier’s evolution from experiment to capital is fairly well known, especially from books such as historians Allan Millet and Williamson Murray’s Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, Albert Nofi’s To Train the Fleet for War, and books on aircraft carrier development by the noted naval historians Norman Polmar and Norman Friedman.
The record of success in the process of creating a new capital ship is however mixed and forced attempts without the benefit of exercises and evaluation over time are not always successful. It is also useful to study less-than-successful capital ships. Consider the cases of the American Civil War ironclad monitor-type warship and the early twentieth century battlecruiser. Varying degrees of the three factors (technology, strategy, financial change) went into their concept development and active employment. These classes were overtaken by further perturbations in the same three categories that were responsible for their initial creation and their reign as “capital ships” was brief. A study of these less-than-successful capital ship entrants is useful in predicting the emergence of the “next” capital ship.
American Civil War Monitors
The American Civil War was the genesis of several ship types, including early versions of the submarine, and the torpedo/mine laying boat. Two potential capital ship entrants include the monitor-type turreted ship and the high-speed steam cruiser. Both later filled roles as capital ships in other navies. In the case of the turreted ship, a change in strategy as dictated by the need to batter through Confederate A2/AD defenses and advances in metallurgy needed for thick armor and rifled guns made possible a new class of capital ship superior to all previous U.S. capital ship types. The steam frigate; the early industrial age descendent of the sailing ship of the line, was no match for armored warships with large solid shot or shell gun weapons. The ineffectiveness of the USS Cumberland, USS Congress, and the new steam frigate USS Minnesota against the Confederate armored ship CSS Virginia attested to the superiority of the armored ship over previous “capital” ship classes. The addition of the revolving armored turret in the original USS Monitor only enhanced armored ship capabilities. In later battles with Confederate armored ships such as CSS Atlanta, and CSS Tennessee, the turret-mounted guns on U.S. Navy monitors made short work of Confederate warships that often could not bring their armament to bear on the more agile Federal warships or lacked the armor to withstand monitor weapons. By 1865 the monitor fleet included dozens of units, including the largest Dictator-class that approached 5000 tons displacement and 350 feet in length.
1862. On the James River in Virginia. “Effect of Confederate shot on Federal ironclad Galena.” Wet plate glass negative by James F. Gibson. (colorized)
A change in strategy and funding at the end of the war, however, and a failure for some aspects of armored ship technology to keep pace with political developments, ended the monitor’s brief reign as capital ship. The end of the rebel states’ coastal defenses and littoral armored ships left the monitors bereft of littoral missions. The U.S. returned to a strategy of forward-deployed squadrons on foreign stations for influence and limited combat missions. While two monitors made transoceanic voyages and were well-received by European audiences, their limited range, generally poor seakeeping and heavy coal consumption made them unfit for the new, financially austere strategic era in U.S. naval policy. On one such voyage it was discovered that while rated at 350 tons coal storage, the USS Miantonomoh actually carried only 264 tons and was towed by one of her escorts for a considerable part of her transoceanic voyage due to lack of coal.1 Nearly all were out of service by 1877. A few were briefly re-commissioned for the Spanish-American War against the threat of Spanish coastal attacks but were swiftly retired and scrapped soon after that conflict’s end. While initially successful in the limited terms of operational employment envisioned, the monitor was unable to become an enduring capital ship.
The High-Speed Steam Cruiser
The second Civil War contender for capital ship rank was the high-speed steam cruiser. While the monitor was one of the ancestors of the modern, dreadnought battleship of the early twentieth century, the Civil War steam cruiser was an early version of the armored cruiser that was also designed to prey on enemy trade in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The United States Navy was again a leader in the development of this type of ship based on its unsatisfactory experience with Confederate commerce raiders. These ships, while generally not the equivalent of Federal steam frigates, were fast on their coal burning engines and wide-ranging thanks to their sailing rigs. Over the course of the Civil War, Confederate commerce raiders, many constructed in British shipyards by Confederate-sympathizing Britons, in effect destroyed the American whaling industry at sea and inflicted severe damage on the U.S. merchant fleet as well. In the celebrated Alabama Claims arbitration case settled in 1872, the British government agreed to pay the U.S. $15.5 million dollars ($290m in 2017 dollars adjusted for inflation alone) in claims.2
This experience convinced some U.S. Navy engineers that a high-speed vessel capable of running down enemy cruisers or blockade runners would be a necessary component of the current and future U.S. Navy. To meet this mission need the navy undertook a plan to develop a steam warship fast enough to catch a blockade runner and well-armed enough to engage a Rebel cruiser. The product of this effort was the USS Wampanoag, a steam warship capable of the then- unheard of top speed of 17 knots as measured during her sea trials in 1868.3
The USS Florida, formerly the USS Wampanoag (Wikimedia Commons)
Unfortunately, the Wampanoag was completed too late for Civil War service and despite her advanced set of capabilities was quickly removed from active service. As with the monitors, the dawn of a new, post-Civil War strategic era made a high speed ship with large coal requirements. Wampanoag burned 136 tons of coal per day at high speed and 84 percent of her total weight was taken up by propulsion equipment.4 Navy leadership advised the Secretary of the Navy that, “The Navy no longer had a strategic or tactical requirement for a vessel with such high speed and long, (coal-fired) range.”5 Another group of Navy leaders believed that the eastern seaboard’s wood shipbuilding industry was threatened by iron, steam-powered ships and that the Navy should not damage an industry on which it so relied for the maintenance of such a large part of the existing, wooden fleet. Wampanoag’s speed and coal-fired endurance records were not equaled by any foreign vessel for nearly a decade and not superseded by any U.S. ship for almost 20 years.6
The Battlecruiser
Finally, there is the case of the battlecruiser which was British Admiral Sir John Fisher’s attempt to scientifically address advancing technology, high costs in warship construction, and meet the needs of a new strategic era in a purpose-designed capital ship. Early twentieth century British naval estimates had skyrocketed over the previous decade as Britain sough to maintain a “Two Power Standard” where the Royal Navy’s capital ship fleet was the equal of the next two largest naval powers. This effort, combined with the high costs of the recent Boer War and a desire on the part of many British lawmakers to increase the size and funding of the nascent British welfare state put great pressure on Britain’s naval leadership to cut costs whilst maintaining maritime superiority.
The capital ships charged with maintaining British maritime superiority were the standard battleship (later known as the predreadnought,) that was designed to combat similar vessels in pitched battle and the armored cruiser; a high-speed capital ship designed to protect British global commerce and to hunt down and sink enemy commerce raiding ships. Both ships were expensive, but both types were seen as essential to British maritime security. Fisher’s solution was to combine both of these classes into one new capital ship capable of meeting all of the previous requirements. Advanced fire control systems then under development that allowed all of the guns of a warship to be fired in concert against a single target were also incorporated into Fisher’s new capital ship concept, albeit with less attention to detail than that which went into the guns and speed of the ship.
This vessel was the battlecruiser, the first of which (HMS Invincible) was commissioned in 1908. The battlescruisers had the size and high speed of the armored cruiser, with the heavy guns of a battleship, at the expense of additional armor that Fisher thought superfluous if the battlecruisers big guns and superior fire control allowed it to hit enemy warships decisively before return fire could inflict damage. Fisher envisioned the battlecruisers as the Royal Navy’s deployable “911 force” capable of meeting both enemy battle fleets and commerce raiders on the high seas while torpedo-armed destroyers and submarines guarded British littoral waters against enemy warships and potential invasion of the British homeland.
Battlecruiser HMS Invincible exploding at the Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916. (Wikimedia Commons)
The battlecruiser concept, as well as Fisher’s other capital ship concept the HMS Dreadnought-type, all big gun battleship, allowed him to reduce British naval costs from 1905 through 1910. Unfortunately, technology continued to advance and the strategic situation around which the battlecruisers were designed changed. Oil propulsion, bigger guns, and the ability to build larger vessels resulted in a further combination of the dreadnought battleship and the battlecruiser into the “fast battleship” concept; the first of which was the Queen Elizabeth class of 1913. This ship could travel nearly as fast as the battlecruiser, and possessed superior armament and armor to the existing battlecruiser fleet.
The strategic situation also changed. Fisher designed the battlecruiser against the known threat of French and Russian armored cruisers built to attack the British Empire’s global trade routes. The advent of the Triple Entente alliance and the emergence of the German Empire as the Royal Navy’s new, primary enemy resulted in a different employment for the battlecruisers. Germany had no fleet of commerce raiding cruisers, and built short-range battlecruisers of its own as scouting elements for its battle fleet. While some British battlecruisers remained stationed overseas in accordance with Fisher’s original concept, most were assembled in home waters as a heavy scouting arm of the battle fleet much as were their German counterparts.
The experience of war seemed to confirm the utility of the fast battleship over the battlecruiser. Although the first two battlecruisers (HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible) found early employment as Fisher intended; hunting down and sinking German Vice Admiral von Spee’s raiding cruiser squadron, most wartime battlecruiser operations were in support of battle fleet actions in the North Sea. German battlecruisers sacrificed gun size, operational range, and habitability for survivability and were likely more robust than most of their British counterparts. Heavy British battlecruiser losses at the Battle of Jutland were probably more to do with the failure of British gunnery officers to abide by their own standing and safety orders then any inherent vulnerability of the battlecruiser type. Nonetheless, the loss of three British battlecruisers and over 3000 men with them in spectacular magazine explosions, along with the scapegoating of the class by senior operational British commanders to cover failures in tactical doctrine did much to discourage further construction. The “last battlecruiser” HMS Hood was also sunk by a magazine explosion 20 years later by the German battleship Bismarck, an event that served only to further discredit the battlecruiser concept even though Hood was over two decades old and in need of refit and modernization.
Conclusion
What do these examples suggest about the changes in capital ship design over time? Changes in national strategy can quickly make today’s ideal warship an expensive anachronism from another era. The U.S. navy monitors, the high-speed Wampanoag, and the battlecruisers were all ideal warships as conceived in support of their respective national and naval strategies. The end of the Civil War and of the Franco-Russian surface raider threat to global British shipping made all three designs obsolete to a degree. Changes in financial support to a navy can also change capital ship definitions and bring about a search for alternatives. The post-Civil War U.S. Navy funding shortage limited the applicability of coal-hungry armored or high-speed ships, and brought a nearly two-decade return of ships with significant sail propulsion. The expensive British “Two Power Standard” building program helped to drive the search for an alternative major combatant in the form of first the Dreadnought battleship and then the battlecruiser. Post World War I financial and treaty limitations of battleships in turn helped to drive the development of the aircraft carrier. Finally, technology never stands still for long, and the monitors, the Wampanoag, and the battlecruisers were all overcome in short periods of time by ships with more advanced capabilities.
What do these changes in historical capital ships suggest about designs for the “next” primary naval platforms? The British naval architect and historian David K. Brown suggested that while the aircraft carrier was always more vulnerable to attack than was the armored battleship, the flattop was able to deliver a larger and more sustained load or ordnance on an opponent as compared to even a squadron of battleships. Anything that replaces the aircraft carrier or the nuclear submarine (both have proponents that suggest they are the current capital ship,) must at least deliver a heavier, sustained combat punch than these units. The monitors and the battlecruiser were both superseded by ships that met this criterion. The aircraft carrier, by contrast, has been upgradable over time with new aircraft making it sustainable for a long period. Continued technological advances demand that any new platform be upgradable over time. The Wampanoag’s machinery was advanced, but contained wooden gears that wore down and needed a replacement over the course of one voyage. Subsequent machinery plants and other systems were more robust. The electromagnetic rail gun may be the next weapon of the next capital ship, but its barrel life must improve beyond a few hundred shots in order to be operational and tactically viable.
There is a lively debate as to what the next capital ship or system will be, but it will still likely be affected by the same financial, technological, and strategic influences that drove past capital ship changes. Any new capital ship must be capable of greater sustained ordnance delivery over time than its predecessor. Given the changes of the last decade in terms of a new era of strategic, great power competition, the rapid advance of many technologies, and financial shortfalls for many nations in terms of naval spending, the question of the next capital ship remains a healthy one open to continued debate.
Steven Wills is a retired surface warfare officer with a PhD in Military History from Ohio University.
These views are presented in a personal capacity
References
1. Howard J. Fuller, ““A portentous spectacle”: The Monitor U.S.S. Miantonomoh Visits England, “ The International Journal of Naval History, Volume 4, No 3, December 2005, p. 8.
The Mission Command Vessel (MCV) capital ship of 2035 is a “key node” in the global U.S. Defense network dominating the tactical area of responsibility (TAOR) assigned to it. The vessel is usually supported by, and is at the center of, an accompanying Advanced Task Force (ATF). The MCV integrates their systems and capabilities for maximum combat power and efficiency. It is the ability within an ATF to integrate different weapons systems and different types of vessel to maximum effect that makes the MCV a “capital ship.”
The MCV is at once continuously connected to every other vessel in the ATF, and the systems and munitions which they control, as well as to a global network of sea and shore-based command units including links to Air Force and Army commands and their equivalents of the MCV key nodes. The intelligence which the ATF and the MCV gather is at once relayed to other commands, and in turn their intelligence to it. In the event of the failure or destruction of an MCV another MCV or shore-based command can take control of the units of the ATF to continue with the mission or withdraw the force.
The MCV is under human command and control while many of its networked assets are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV) and Unmanned Amphibious Ground Vehicles (UAGV). These are third-generation systems requiring little human interaction and are capable of limited threat analysis and decision-making.
The design philosophy of the MCV is governed by two imperatives: the need for stealth, and the need for command and secure communication with massive bandwidth and high levels of computing power to ensure excellent data collection and distribution. The vessel is, then, capable of operating above and below the water, and is nuclear powered to ensure the provision of adequate power to its onboard systems. The secure-comms system developed out of DARPA’s Mobile Offboard Clandestine Communications (MOCCA) program ensures, along with the advanced autonomy of the UV elements of the ATF, that comms traffic does not compromise the MCV’s stealth capabilities.
By early twenty-first century standards, the crew of the MCV is comparatively small, but computing and communication systems are far greater in their power and reach. The vessel above surface deploys advanced defensive/offensive weapons systems including 200kw lasers and a missile system capable of engaging aerial threats including hypersonic missiles. Below surface threats to the vessel are countered by mini-torpedoes that can target conventional torpedoes, enemy Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV), and be directed against mines which might inhibit the navigation of the MCV.
The MCV’s own UUV craft (each about the size of a conventional torpedo) are capable of wide deployment, carry passive sonar, and can send out active sonar pings. The returns from the active pings are received and monitored on-board the MCV. The sonar on-board the MCV’s UUV extend the sensor range of the vessel, and are also equipped with systems which allow the UUV to mimic the sound profile of a range of vessels. They are thus able to be employed as lures for enemy vessels, or to present potential threats from surface vessels or submarines where none are present. The UUVs can also be tasked to gather hydrographic, meteorological, and environmental data which may assist the mission.
The UUV units play a vital role in the security of the MCV and its ATF. The subsea security of the task force is further enhanced by the presence of two conventionally crewed SSNs which carry their own UUVs with capabilities identical to those carried by the MCV. Together the MCV, SSNs and their attendant UUVs can actively and passively detect underwater threats over an area large enough to ensure the safety of the ATF.
The reach and flexibility of the MCV is further extended by onboard Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Unmanned Amphibious Ground Vehicles which can be deployed for the purposes of reconnaissance on land and in the air, or for offensive/defensive purposes. The UAGVs can be used to attack specific targets on land, and the UAVs of the MCV can maintain a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) over the Advanced Task Force, or be used to target beach head defenses or targets further inland. Both the UAGVs and UAVs can be employed with special force units (eg. FORECON, USMC) in carrying out deep reconnaissance operations (eg. Key Hole), or be used in support of larger USMC amphibious operations launched from conventionally crewed LPDs (Landing Platform Dock) operating with the ATF.
The true secret of the MCV’s offensive potential lies not in its own limited offensive systems but in the new generation of general purpose Autonomous Arsenal Vessels (AAV) which will accompany the highly mobile Advanced Task Force (ATF). These AAV can have payloads dedicated to particular tasks, such as beach assault/air defense/anti-submarine warfare, or contain a general mix of smart munitions (e.g. vertically launched cruise missiles/hypersonic missiles) designed to augment the offensive and defensive capabilities of the MCV. Replenishment of the AAVs, and more extended maintenance and repair issues are handled by Force Replenishment and Repair Vessels (FRRVs).
At sea specialists based on the MCV service and maintain and repair the Arsenal Ships, and the UAVs of the MCV can maintain a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) over the Advanced Task Force. The UAVs and UAGV can be recovered either by the MCV or by LPDs, each with its USMC complement, operating as part of the ATF.
For particular missions, the MCV can also take local control of additional assets (manned and unmanned) which can be dispatched to its TAOR, and vectored to its location before being released to MCV control. Most importantly, this includes additional air assets including fighter aircraft, next generation stealth aircraft, unmanned B-52 bombers equipped with smart weapons, and next generation ground support.
The MCV capital ship is the heart of the Advanced Task Force: capable of waging a flexible Sea, Air, Land battle from the deep oceans to the littoral zones likely to become the key centers of conflict in the mid-twenty first century. It is at the same time, a command vessel, a warship, and a key node in a global intelligence combat network allowing shore-based command a continuous flow of information, and the ability to flexibly project the power of the United States military around the globe. It is the capital ship of the mid-21st century, making the most of America’s technological lead, while providing the maximum protection for the service personnel of the United States Navy.
G.H. Bennett Ph.D. is associate professor of history at Plymouth University where he has taught since 1992. He is author of 15 books dealing with military, political, and diplomatic history. He writes for the Phoenix Think Tank and is a trustee of the Britannia Royal Naval College Museum.
Featured Image: The Soviet aircraft carrier “Novorosiisk”, steaming in the open Pacific in April 1985 (Coastcomp.com)
“These three forces – the forces at play in the maritime system, the force of the information system, and the force of technology entering the environment – and the interplay between them have profound implications for the United States Navy.”- A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority.1
A capital ship’s capabilities has always revealed what is most decisive in naval warfare. In the next high-end fight, what will be most decisive is the ability to secure decision superiority in a contested information environment fraught with uncertainty and change. The understanding of how information will be contested and employed in future war remains in flux. The value of information in guiding fleet tactics and force structure is already being realized by China in unconventional ways. But what will emerge from an understanding of the future threat environment is that capital ships, especially aircraft carriers, can take the lead in contesting the electromagnetic domain itself.
China is winning the battle of presence in Asiatic waters. According to the Commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Scott Swift, the level of presence the U.S. Navy will reach this year in the South China Sea is on track for 900 ship days,3 and that figure is higher than usual due to an uptick in strike groups operating in the region. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) now shadows every U.S. warship that transits the South China Sea,4 FONOPs or otherwise, meaning the PLAN has likely surpassed the U.S. Navy in how much forward presence it maintains in key waters in Asia.
However, the PLA Navy is just the tip of the iceberg. China’s robust standing naval presence is augmented by coast guard units and potentially hundreds of paramilitary fishermen (maritime militia) and commercial vessels. China frequently leverages these forces for escalation, such as how the number of Chinese ships around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands’ contiguous zone surged to about 230 ships less than a month after The Hague ruled against China’s South China Sea claims.5In recent years there has been a consistent presence of about 70-90 Chinese ships around disputed East China Sea waters, up from virtually nothing a decade earlier.6
Japanese Coast Guard data on the numbers of Chinese vessels that entered the contiguous zone or intruded into territorial seas surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Note the spike in activity in August 2016 and the virtually nonexistent level of presence prior to 2009 (Click to expand).7 (Japanese Coast Guard)
These paramilitary forces will readily provide escalation and wartime advantages for China, especially in the area of information. These units will likely exploit the protection rights of non-combatants to secretly contribute intelligence to China’s military in a theater of active hostilities. This will pose difficult legal, diplomatic, and military dilemmas and test the limits of rules of engagement. Fears over paramilitary units will exacerbate suspicions of thousands of civilian vessels and add new layers of complexity to the operating environment. Widely dispersed paramilitary units could provide early warning and conduct battle damage assessment without incurring the risk of emitting the unique signatures of military-grade equipment. Regardless of the fact that the majority of USN and PLAN assets reside outside forward areas during peacetime, this robust paramilitary presence would provide China with some sense of informational continuity in the transition between war and peace. It is an information-focused distributed fleet on the cheap.
The rise of China’s maritime might is causing a significant shift in the operating environment the U.S. Navy considered itself the lone master of for three-quarters of a century. This displacement is jeopardizing the credibility of U.S. security guarantees in the region and allowing China to more confidently intimidate its neighbors. It is also a direct challenge to the U.S. Navy’s core missions of upholding the fundamental principle of freedom of navigation and offering avenues of access for American power. The level of U.S. Navy forward presence will only grow more inferior as China continues its large-scale and comprehensive maritime buildup. America’s grip on maritime superiority in Asia is weakening, and the U.S. Navy must undergo a major transformation to stay on top.
Establishing a Vision of Networked War at Sea
“DO NOT – REPEAT NOT – BELIEVE WE SHOULD SEEK NIGHT ENGAGEMENT. POSSIBLE ADVANTAGES OF RADAR MORE THAN OFFSET BY DIFFICULTIES OF COMMUNICATIONS AND LACK OF TRAINING IN FLEET TACTICS AT NIGHT.”-Admiral Willis Lee responds to Admiral Raymond Spruance’s query on whether to attempt a night engagement on June 17, 1944, two days before the Battle of the Philippine Sea.8
A transformation is already underway as navies around the world seek to conceptualize what warfighting at sea will entail in the information age. A common vision must be founded on a basic understanding of how various aspects of war have been evolved or outright revolutionized by modern technology. Technology has turned the electromagnetic spectrum into the centrally contested domain that critical warfighting functions depend on across the entire breadth of their execution.
Networks are not only tools but battlefields. Winning in the electromagnetic domain will determine whether critical intelligence is transferred, instructions are conveyed, and if the complex process of accurately targeting modern weapons is completed. Electronic warfare, cyber warfare, and ISR will largely be directed at understanding, confusing, and then deconstructing the system of systems that forms the adversary’s battle network. The fundamental trust that operators place in their equipment and each other will be a prime target. Degrading this trust could cripple a force out of proportion to actual losses.
A key element of the U.S. Navy’s effort to adapt to this new environment will be widely distributing its combat power to gain sea control rather than closely aggregating units together as has been common practice for generations. Up until recently, fleet combat required physically concentrating forces for concentrating their firepower. Distribution reflects how the technology behind network-centric warfare has made it feasible to disaggregate ships yet still aggregate their capabilities. Distribution better postures a fleet for electromagnetic maneuver by deconflicting the electronic warfare capabilities of friendly units and forcing an adversary to spend more time localizing contacts across a large expanse of ocean.9 But managing the networked functions of a distributed fleet is a hard enough challenge that will grow even more difficult when the electromagnetic domain is contested in wartime.
Command and control grows more strenuous with greater distribution. U.S. and allied assets will already be dispersed throughout the battlespace in some manner at the onset of sudden war, and will have to be quickly maneuvered into some viable operational structure. The task of organizing a dispersed naval force across a large theater as hostilities break out will be critical not just for success but for survival against a near-peer opponent.
This challenge reveals how gaining momentary surprise at the onset of full-scale networked war at sea can reap strategically disabling blows. Even brief victories against networks will quickly translate into the sudden and decisive destruction that has always characterized war at sea. This grim possibility will be all the more important to guard against when the Navy is asked to project power against adversaries that will enjoy the benefits of operating close to home, such as land-based anti-ship capabilities that enjoy inherently steep logistical and survivability advantages over naval forces.
CSBA graphic from 2010 on China’s principal PLA air-defense units and anti-ship ballistic missile sites. (CSBA)10
Distribution enhances survivability by attacking left of the kill chain, the complex process of targeting modern weapons. By making the adversary’s information gathering and decision-making processes the focus, distributed warfighting emphasizes deception. Deception and distribution will exacerbate the severe challenge of processing the copious amounts of information gathered by powerful, modern sensors. For example, a P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft can generate up to 900 gigabytes of data in a single mission.11 Overstimulating sensors can fray nerves and induce an adversary to make decisions to their own detriment, such as radiating active sensors which can compromise stealth, unknowingly maneuvering into firing envelopes, and even firing salvos of hard-to-replenish missiles at ghost contacts.
Gathering intelligence on the wide variety of unique signatures and capabilities that compose an adversary’s electronic order of battle will be pivotal in facilitating wartime adaptation. Threat libraries will be rapidly updated as adversaries reveal the true extent of their electronic capabilities. This intelligence will be fed into a fast-firing cycle of iterative adaptation where superior electronic capabilities will be fielded via something as quick as a software update.
Operators will strive to understand the implications of a variety of actions and inaction amidst a constant struggle for electromagnetic context. Ships will carefully regulate emissions to avoid detection, yet emissions are paradoxically important for delivering effects, managing command and control (C2), and updating situational awareness. Employing a powerful emitter such as a SPY radar can pose a liability, and ships that feel compelled to radiate and communicate for the sake of enabling their own defense can compromise friendly units and become more susceptible to follow-on attack.
An analogy for surviving modern naval combat can then be drawn from Dr. Stephen Biddle’s description of the revolution in land warfare that transpired in the early twentieth century:
“…the complexity of the earth’s surface offers enough cover and concealment to substantially shield land forces from the increasing potential lethality of modern weaponry. However, to operate a mass military of potentially millions of soldiers in a way that can exploit the natural complexity of the earth’s surface for cover and concealment means accepting tremendous complexity in tactics and operational art. Relative to, for example, Napoleonic tactics where armies could be lined up in shoulder-to-shoulder linear formations and simply marched towards an objective, if you’re going to use the complexity of the earth’s surface to provide cover in ways those massed shoulder-to-shoulder formations couldn’t do, then you’re going to have to break down those massed formations into small handfuls of soldiers few enough in number that they can fit into the folds in the earth that create what militaries ironically call dead ground, where dead ground is of course where you can live…”12
The mass, attrition-based Napoleonic formations of today are the capital ship-centered strike groups, and the “small handfuls of soldiers” are a networked fleet’s dispersed surface action groups. The protective “folds in the earth” are the various nuances of the electromagnetic domain that is being contested and manipulated. Making sense of these nuances within the spectrum in order to recognize opportunities to deliver effects will define the competition.
The wartime implications of the latest technologies are often not fully understood before they are fielded, but having a common vision of future war at sea serves as a necessary foundation for training, equipping, and operating a navy. The extent to which such a vision is being jointly established and acted upon in a coordinated manner by the various communities within the U.S. Navy is unclear.
The surface Navy is in the early stages of operationalizing its distributed lethality concept that envisions numerous surface action groups operating offensively to achieve a cumulative sea control effect. This stands in stark contrast to the strike group constructs that have been the focus of surface ships for generations, where combatants specialized in escorting capital ships in mainly defensive roles. A new distributed operating concept for surface combatants should be facilitating a Navy-wide appraisal of what this means for all other communities and how the Navy interfaces with the joint force more broadly.
To the Navy’s credit, Naval Warfare Development Command recently convened stakeholders from across the naval enterprise to contribute to the development of a forthcoming Distributed Maritime Operations concept (DMO) that could serve as a focal point for force development.13 Where there is room for improvement is in articulating what role capital ships, especially aircraft carriers, will play in a distributed fleet.
Aviation-Centric Information Dominance CONOPS for the Distributed Fleet
“At sea better scouting – more than maneuver, as much as weapon range, and oftentimes as much as anything else – has determined who would attack not merely effectively, but who would attack decisively first.” CAPT Wayne P. Hughes, Jr. (ret.)14
The idea of a distributed fleet aggregating its capabilities through networking is not itself new.15 What is novel is the confidence in the ability of the scouting and communication enterprise to provide the information needed to effectively use high-tech weapons at ranges that were once considered extreme. But confidence is not capability, as evidenced by the decision to pull the anti-ship Tomahawk missile from the Navy’s inventory due to a lack of such confidence in the 1990s.16 Now within a decade an anti-ship Tomahawk will be back in the fleet, featuring a 1,000 nm range and offering a widely distributed sea control capability alongside other forthcoming networked missiles.17 The question is whether the Navy will be able to scout and communicate well enough to employ these weapons at range, especially when distributing the fleet compounds the information-related challenges of operating within a contested electromagnetic domain.
As warships spread out to confound an adversary’s situational awareness and offer options to deliver fires, capital ships will make scouting, secure information transfer, and deception their primary missions. The natural advantages aviation enjoys in electromagnetic and physical maneuver will make the aircraft carrier central in conducting these critical missions. By taking the lead in contesting the spectrum, the capital ship will animate the networked fleet by securing decision superiority.
Aviation’s Key Advantage
Electronic action is still bound by physical limitations. Aviation can act as the connective tissue of an ocean-going battle network because altitude has a corresponding effect on detection and communication capability via a superior ability to peer over the horizon compared to a ship. This extra dimension of maneuver introduces more flexibility for managing the risks of sensing and communicating, making aircraft the scouting and information transfer asset of choice.
A high-flying aircraft with a powerful radar can sense surface contacts further out than surface contacts could sense one another over the horizon. An aircraft can emit or transmit, drop to lower altitude, and then relocate faster than a ship to mitigate risk and get information to where it needs to be.Aircraft can use their speed to maximize the use of line-of-sight communications whose considerable bandwidth and jam-resistant advantages will prove indispensable in a contested information environment.
These physical properties will allow aircraft to facilitate fleet connectivity by forming sensing and communication pathways through maneuver. Commanders will have a flexible means to augment the scope and focus of information that is being collected and shared throughout the force. Airborne sensor fusion will help commanders prioritize information flows to meet rapidly emerging needs. These characteristics hold significant tactical and operational implications for the distributed fleet.
Engage-on-Remote, In-Flight Retargeting, and Command and Control
The technology that makes distributed operations possible will be for naught if an evolution in tactical thought does not accompany it. A primary challenge of distributed warfighting will be delivering the information needed to employ the engage-on-remote and retargeting capabilities that are the hallmark of a distributed fleet’s combat potential.
Retargeting and engage-on-remote make weapons more reliable and fleets more flexible. The engagement process is transformed from a linear kill chain into an expansive kill web. Networked units can leverage capabilities from across the force to meet individual needs. Platforms will be able to fire without emitting, improving survivability. Salvos can build density as missiles from across the distributed fleet are aggregated.
But engage-on-remote and the long range of potential exchanges means that sailors will have to get used to firing weapons with incomplete information. The passage of time and the dynamic nature of the contested spectrum means that the information that precipitated an engagement will often not suffice to complete it. Retargeting will prove decisive by allowing new information to be fed into a live engagement. It will help keep firepower discriminate, resilient, and long-range while mitigating the risks of operating with less information.
Retargeting and engage-on-remote will dictate a fleet formation because a distributed force is not formless, but rather than an extended strike group of sorts. The ability to leverage engage-on-remote and retargeting capabilities from across the force will be a function of fleet connectivity and weapons range. The distance between platforms and payloads will affect the timeliness of information transfer, and weapons range will dictate the maximum extent to which forces can disperse from one another yet still combine their fires effectively.
An animation of a hypothetical scenario demonstrating the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC). (JHU APL)18
The wide-ranging tactical flexibility that can be gleaned from retargeting and engage-on-remote is directly correlated with the ability to transfer information. Ideally any sensor or communicator will support any shooter or payload, but passing information between them all will be difficult when that information is contested and loses relevance with time. The ability to fire and contribute information without radiating organic sensors opens up numerous tactical options, but using this capability will mean the man on the scene will have to rely on a man not on the scene. Therefore these capabilities combine to fundamentally change the perception of time, timing, and opportunity for a fleet.
This will aggravate the challenge of precisely conveying commander’s intent and delegating the appropriate level of initiative to networked forces. Much of the public writing on distributed lethality has argued for delegating authority to the man on the scene, but that man will be just one more node in a network. They may not fully realize the tactical possibilities at hand compared to someone with better situational awareness and a broader view of how the fleet’s combat power is distributed. The organic sensors of ships cannot be trusted to independently target payloads that need to travel hundreds of miles through a contested information environment, especially when ships operate under EMCON. Launching a salvo will be a momentous decision as a large amount of a ship’s or surface action group’s magazine could be depleted in a single exchange, requiring confidence in information and the larger operational situation.
Aviators will become the tactical controllers of warship-based capabilities in a distributed fleet because their maneuver advantage translates into a superior ability to facilitate broad situational awareness, sensor fusion, and fleet connectivity. They will have more context and ability to make decisions, execute quick workarounds, and gather additional information versus warships that are tightly controlling their emissions while proximate to the adversary. Aviation-based network nodes can shift schemes of maneuver to help commanders balance the need for information up the chain of command with the need for initiative down the chain of command.
The fact that only aircraft can realistically trail and intercept missiles in real time means they can provide more inputs to facilitate retargeting, and could close with inbound enemy salvos to target their datalinks. Aviators (with automated decision aids) will manage information flows between sensors and communications to make numerous inputs into the engagement process as it is transpiring.Because corrupt information will be commonplace in the next high-end fight, and because autonomous machines cannot be entrusted with life-or-death decisions, humans must own this process. In-flight retargeting is a weapon’s insurance policy, and aviation can be its guarantor.
In this particular sensor-to-shooter construct, aircraft become the primary sensors and communicators because they can facilitate fleet connectivity through maneuver, and ships become the primary shooters. Since firing without emitting makes units less susceptible to detection, warships will become more survivable. This is preferable because aircraft are more numerous and replaceable than ships. But employing a dynamic ship-to-aircraft information interface will involve a steep learning curve. Speaking on the challenges of making the Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) capability a reality, then-Captain Jim Kilby remarked that it involves “a level of coordination we’ve never had to execute before and a level of integration between aircrews and ship crews.”19
Aviation will also facilitate C2 by helping commanders with early-warning, battle damage assessment, and keeping tabs on one’s own forces. Having more time to react to threats will be key in crafting a tailored response from various tools that each have their own electromagnetic implications, rather than making commanders feel compelled to go all out to defend against the possibility of imminent destruction. Learning the status of dueling enemy and friendly ships can be risky, but when a ship under EMCON explodes in the ocean, does it make a sound?
Lastly, an aviation-centric C2 scheme will build upon the natural advantages of undersea forces. Submarines will be able to penetrate further into the battlespace than surface ships, improving their chances of discovering high-quality information about the adversary. Securely getting that information back to the fleet via aviation-based network nodes will make the risk worth it, and engage-on-remote and retargeting can impose a daunting tactical problem by forcing adversaries to localize a submarine that is firing missiles or deploying decoys at range.
Deception and Softkill Countermeasures
One of distributed lethality’s maxims is “If it floats it fights” but if it floats it should also deceive. Deception will enhance survivability, gather intelligence on the enemy’s electronic order of battle, and facilitate strikes. Superior deception earns decision superiority.
Deception-enabling capabilities can be distributed throughout the fleet by fielding a greater variety and quantity of decoys. These can include long-range decoy missiles that mimic the profiles of aerial platforms and conduct offensive electronic warfare, as well as shorter-range launched decoys and floatable payloads that can take on ships’ signatures. These systems often weigh less and take up less space than hardkill systems, making them easier to distribute en masse. For example, the ADM-160 Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD) missile is about half the length and a tenth of the weight of a Tomahawk cruise missile, and has a 500-mile range.20Such a decoy missile could enable an advanced fleet-wide deception capability by being fitted into launch cells, box launchers, and wing pylons.
Two Miniature Air Launch Decoys sit side-by-side in the munitions storage area on Barksdale Air Force Base, La., March 21, 2012. (U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Micaiah Anthony)
Aviation can enhance fleet deception by flexibly deploying, retargeting, and transporting a large variety of decoys on demand. The extent to which the platforms themselves are actively at the forefront of deception should be minimized. Operators should strive to delegate as much deception as possible to decoys and unmanned platforms that can take on the risks of raising a higher electromagnetic profile. Deception plans involving decoy saturation would allow for momentary opportunities to break EMCON and gather information as an adversary reacts to the deception. Decoy missiles could act as penetration aids to improve the lethality of salvos and help aircraft scout risky areas. Aircraft can manage decoy missile datalinks in-flight to maximize their usefulness.
Lastly, softkill countermeasures can have far more favorable cost-exchange ratios against missiles compared to hardkill measures, allowing a distributed fleet to conserve munitions and improve survivability. Aviation assets could maneuver on short notice to deploy softkill payloads along the axis of an inbound salvo to dilute it at a distance from the intended target. These comparatively small and lightweight payloads would allow a capital ship, via an interoperable aviation platform, to flexibly deploy defensive countermeasures over a large area and replenish other ships’ decoy and softkill inventories on demand. This capability will be critical because a distributed fleet will often struggle to mass defensive firepower in a timely manner.
Wartime Adaptation and Augmentation
Capital ships themselves still possess unique advantages in information age warfare. Capital ships will play a key role in facilitating frontline wartime adaptation because they will field the largest afloat concentration of intelligence, cryptologic, and cyber expertise in the battlespace.21 As information is continuously gathered and transferred by aviation across the distributed fleet, capital ship-based expertise will lead the effort to process that information to discover vulnerabilities and devise fixes and exploits. Capital ships will in turn use their superior reach back capabilities to act as a conduit between the forward-most warfighter and national-level assets that can aid adaptation, such as Navy and DoD threat libraries.
Aviation can take those exploits and fixes back to the distributed fleet and the enemy from the capital ship. This will be especially poignant for sustaining a deception advantage, where both sides will place priority on unmasking the other’s means of deceiving. Fresh updates based on the latest intelligence could be patched into modular decoy payloads at the capital ship, and then aviation can transport these enhanced decoys back out to the fleet via a platform that is interoperable with capital ships and surface combatants.
V-280 concept. (Bell Helicopter Image)
Such a ubiquitous and modular aerial platform will allow the capital ship to compliment warship needs in a variety of ways. Aside from aiding various warfare- and information-related missions, having an aerial platform that can land on almost anything will open up options for augmenting logistics and personnel on the fly. It will also enhance capital ship survivability by allowing the surface force to take on some of the burden of sustaining aviation assets.
Unmanned Systems
Unmanned systems can play a role by conducting a variety of the missions described, whether information transfer, sensing, or deploying decoys and softkill countermeasures. Because of their relatively small size and weight, the sensors and payloads required to conduct these missions can be fielded by unmanned systems in the nearer-term compared to heavier offensive weaponry. Additionally, automation alone will improve communications security because more automation means fewer operator inputs are needed. Because robotics has shrunken platform size, future capital ships will be able to easily host small undersea, amphibious, and surface unmanned systems to extend their reach into more domains than before.
Conclusion
“The competition is on, and pace dominates. In an exponential competition, the winner takes all. We must shake off any vestiges of comfort or complacency that our previous advantages may have afforded us, and move out to build a larger, more distributed, and more capable battle fleet that can execute our mission.” The Future Navy.22
Wayne Hughes offers an important caveat to all of this, that “tactical complexity is a peacetime disease” and that “the temptation to equate complex tools with complex tactics will be almost irresistible.”23As with what happened in WWII and elsewhere, the Navy and the U.S. military writ large will run the risk of employing tactics and technologies that are not yet fully inculcated into the force if war breaks out. Given the current pace of change, that risk may never go away.
What should be clear, at least for now, is that there is still a place for capital ships in high-end warfighting. The distributed fleet of tomorrow can become real if capital ships dedicate themselves toward prosecuting the most important and elusive target of all: information.
Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Content@cimsec.org.
5. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Protest Against the Intrusion of Chinese Coast Guard into Japanese territorial waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands”, August 6, 2016. http://www.mofa.go.jp/press/release/press4e_001227.html
7. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Trends in Chinese Government and Other Vessels in the Waters Surrounding the Senkaku Islands, and Japan’s Response – Records of Intrusions of Chinese Government and Other Vessels into Japan’s Territorial Sea”, August 3, 2017. http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/page23e_000021.html
8. James D. Hornfischer, The Fleet at Flood Tide, pg. 171, Bantam Books, New York, 2016.
13. Naval Warfare Development Command Public Affairs, Advanced Warfighting Summit Focus On Enabling Distributed Maneuver, Naval Warfare Development Command, May 19, 2017. https://www.nwdc.navy.mil/PressRelease/10.aspx
14. Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice, pg. 173, Naval Institute Press, 1986.
Featured Image: SOUTH PACIFIC (June 29, 2017) Ships assigned to Carrier Strike Group 5 sail in formation during a coordinated live-fire gunnery exercise. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Nathan Burke/Released)
Breathtakingly disruptive technologies offer unparalleled and innovative possibilities for naval operating concepts, but a large, survivable hull in the water that is able to conduct sustained combat operations will continue to define the capital ship into the 21st century. Today, a confluence of events has made revisiting the Sea Control Ship a vital task for the sea services. From commissioning new, large-deck amphibious assault ships specifically designed to maximize aircraft operations, expanding ARG-MEU mission sets via the tiltrotor MV-22 Osprey, and most significantly the imminent deployment of the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), such a ship with its vertical/short take-off and landing (V/STOL) aircraft and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) helicopters could conduct ASW and carry out other sea control missions such as surface warfare (SUW). Additionally its air group of F-35B aircraft could conduct strike missions in lower intensity conflict situations such as the U.S. in Libya in 2011. Such a platform is the key to the future of maritime warfare not because it is a replacement for the conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) aircraft carrier, but rather because it is a complement that will free up the larger and all too few fleet nuclear powered aircraft carriers to focus on the power projection mission of striking enemy targets inland during a high intensity conflict.
The Concept
Naval Doctrine Publication 1 (NDP 1) and Joint Pub 3-32 define sea control as one of the core capabilities of naval forces – necessary to the accomplishment of all other naval missions and complementary to the mission of power projection. Sea control operations include destruction of enemy naval forces, suppression of enemy sea commerce, protection of vital sea lanes, and establishment of local military superiority in areas of naval operations.1 During his tenure as Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral “Bud” Zumwalt advocated a High-Low mix of warship designs in order to affordably meet the numbers of ships required to counter the Soviet Union in any major war – specifically the building of smaller aircraft carriers to supplement the Carrier Strike Groups. In 1971, USS Guam (LPH-9) was selected as the test ship for a Sea Control Ship (SCS) concept. Testing began in 1972 and was completed in July 1974.2 Ultimately, the tests and concept were deemed unsuccessful and the Navy did not go forward with it. The short endurance and limited payload of the early model Harrier and the limited sensor capability of both the ship and the SH-3 Sea King ASW helicopter were the chief shortcomings of the concept. However, today such shortfalls would be remedied by the fielding the LHD/LHA (which has a sensor and communications suite comparably to a Nimitz class aircraft carrier), F-35B JSF, the sensor-rich MH-60 multi-role helicopter, and the MV-22 Osprey with its myriad capabilities.
The Ship
Today’s Sea Control Ship could be based on the America-class already in production. At more than 44,000 and 42,000 tons of displacement respectively, the America-class amphibious ships and their LHD half-sisters of the Wasp-class are far from small. The Wasp and America-class ships are over 840 feet in overall length and both types have a 106 foot beam.3 In dimensions and displacement they are akin to, and actually exceed, the war-winning Essex-class aircraft carriers that the U.S. Navy employed to fight across the Pacific to victory in the Second World War. The Essex-class aircraft carriers were 872 feet overall with a 93 foot beam and displaced 27,100 tons in their WWII configuration.4 Coincidentally, the Wasp and America classes also bear more than a passing physical resemblance to these carriers as well. With some modifications, such as shifting the island superstructure outboard supported by a sponson, the flight deck area could be enlarged. Since a Sea Control Ship would only embark vertical/short take-off and landing (V/STOL) and short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft, the catapults or arresting gear systems necessary for a conventional take-off and landing aircraft carrier would not be required. That saves weight, reduces costs – both construction and operating costs – and does not require as large a ship.
The chief argument often made in defense of big carriers versus small ones is that anything less than the supercarrier is not survivable – be it the Nimitz class of today, weighing in at 100,000 tons, or the earlier Kitty Hawk and Forrestal classes which ranged between 65,000 and 80,000 tons during their careers. However ,the combat record of the Essex class, which can be viewed as a surrogate for the LHA/LHD (and by extension the Sea Control Ship) in this argument, proves just the opposite. In World War II, not a single Essex class aircraft carrier was lost though several took punishing damage from aerial bombs and kamikazes. USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) was hit in quick succession by two kamikazes while covering the Okinawa landings, experiencing widespread fires and 653 casualties.5 The ship steamed back to the United States for repairs under her own power. In March of 1945, USS Franklin (CV-13) became the most heavily damaged United States aircraft carrier to survive the war after a Japanese air attack inflicted extensive damage to the flight deck, hangar deck, two decks below them, and the CIC, resulting in 724 killed and 265 wounded.6 In post-WWII service, off Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin, Essex-class carrier USS Oriskany experienced extensive fire damage through five decks with 44 killed when a flare inadvertently ignited and set off a chain reaction of explosions.7 Ample evidence exists that an aircraft carrier of 40,000 tons or so can take hits and survive.
On Essex-class carrier USS Yorktown (CV-10) crew stands at attention as the National Ensign is raised, during commissioning ceremonies at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Virginia, 15 April 1943. Photographed by Lieutenant Charles Kerlee, USNR. (Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.)
Another argument used against small aircraft carriers, and the adjective small here is used relatively, is that the embarked air component would be correspondingly small as well. This is true in part, but with precision guided munitions (PGM) and the types of missions envisioned for the Sea Control Ship, an air group of 30 or so STOVL fixed wing and rotary wing/tiltrotor aircraft would be appropriate and sufficient for mission execution. Both the LHA and LHD class ships are designed to support an air component of over 30 fixed and rotary wing aircraft. Both ships are also able to accommodate more than 20 fixed wing STOVL aircraft as an alternative load out. During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, USS Nassau performed in this role of “Harrier carrier” and USS Bataan (LHD-4) served in this capacity as well during the opening stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2013.
The LHD and LHA of today are not your grandfather’s amphibs. The command, control, computer, communication, combat systems and intelligence (C5I) capabilities are extensive and second only to a Nimitz class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (CVN) in capability, to include: two- and three-dimensional air search radars, an extensive satellite communication suite, and intelligence support facilities. The sensor and communication assets built into the big deck amphibious ships provide further proof that sufficient capability can be built into a carrier of 40,000 to 45,000 tons.
The Air Group
The Sea Control Ship’s air group would be built around the F-35B STOVL Joint Strike Fighter. With its advanced capabilities in sensing, stealth and weapons delivery, this aircraft is a game changer that puts to rest the argument that STVOL aircraft are a step down in capability vis-à-vis their CTOL aircraft relatives. Tiltrotor and rotary wing aircraft such as the MH-60R Seahawks and the MV-22 Osprey would support the F-35B. A tanker mission package is already being developed and tested by the United States Marine Corps for the MV-22 Osprey to further support the F-35B . Additional support would exist in the form of a tiltrotor airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft.
USS AMERICA, At Sea – An F-35B Lightning II aircraft completes Envelope Expansion Testing during a Short Take-off Vertical Landing aboard USS America, Oct. 30, 2016. (US Marine Corps Photo)
For the sea control mission, the main battery would exist in the form of an ASW-tiltrotor aircraft equipped with surface search radar, dipping sonar, sonobuoys, magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) gear and torpedoes. This aircraft would also be capable of surface warfare (SUW) missions if equipped with anti-ship cruise missiles. The MV-22 airframe, combined with technology and systems already in existence, make these variants well within the realm of feasibility and affordability. Rounding out the air group in the mission of sea control would be detachments of “Romeo” and “Sierra” models of the ubiquitous H-60 helicopter for use in the inner zone ASW/SUW mission set.
Distributed and Agile
A key advantage of an air group comprised exclusively of STOVL and rotary wing aircraft is the tactical flexibility in basing that they permit. Not only would the air group be able to be based on smaller aircraft carriers and big-deck amphibious ships, but they can also be based in detachments across a number of even smaller ships, to include non-traditional ones such as modified container ships in a further expression of distributed lethality. Additionally, the air group could be shore-based on expeditionary air strips in austere locations. With this capability the air group could conduct shuttle missions between their sea control ship home base and these expeditionary sites. Vulnerability to this type of shuttle bombing operation was always a concern by Admiral Nimitz and his commanders when planning operations against the Imperial Japanese Navy and its network of island bases and mobile striking fleets. It is a vulnerability we can impose on a future adversary in a theater of operations where the geography features many islands.
Complement not Replacement
In a major combat/high intensity conflict, CTOL aircraft carriers like the Nimitz class will be fully engaged in strike-oriented power projection missions and seeing to their own fleet defense. However, the supporting missions of sea control will still need to be accomplished and will require a significant amount of air support. Enter the Sea Control Ship. Sanitization of chokepoints to allow the passage of shipping and the protection of convoys are two examples of missions for the SCS. Much like the Independence-class light aircraft carriers (CVL) that supplemented the Essex-class aircraft carriers in World War Two, Sea Control Ships could be employed to provide ASW, SUW, and assist in air defense of the carrier strike group, acting as a force multiplier to maximize the offensive punch of the CTOL carriers.
In lower intensity conflicts and small scale interventions, the Sea Control Ship and its air group may be a sufficient instrument of national power to accomplish the mission. Two recent examples of intervention operations bear this out: the employment of Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group (ARG)/26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) in Operation ODYSSEY DAWN in 2011 and Wasp ARG/22nd MEU in Operation ODYSSEY LIGHTNING in 2016.
Opponents of the Sea Control Ship will correctly state that smaller aircraft carriers lack the sortie generation rate of the CTOL carriers and STOVL aircraft and don’t match CTOL aircraft in range, ordnance load out, and ordnance bring-back capability. However, for the missions envisioned and with employment of PGMs, the SCS and its STOVL air group do not need to exactly match the CTOL carrier and its air wing in these performance metrics. Additionally, the STOVL F-35B comes quite close to CTOL high-end tactical aircraft in performance and outclasses almost anything our potential adversaries currently field.
The Way Forward
The last decade has been described as budget-constrained and an opportunity for experimentation and innovation similar to the interwar period of the 1930s. As such, the United States Navy and Marine Corps should seize the opportunity to experiment with the Sea Control Ship concept. In this lean budget climate, it is especially appealing that nothing further need be designed or purchased to pursue this experiment. A point to consider is whether, and for how much longer, the appetite for the purchase of nuclear-powered supercarriers will exist in Washington. Developing a lower cost alternative now rather than later that can supplement the CVNs would maximize the utility of the existing carrier fleet.
The LHA-6, F-35B, MV-22 and MH-60 series are all in service. Now is the time to use these assets to develop and refine the concepts of operation and employment for a future Sea Control Ship. The Navy and Marine Corps should conduct a robust and iterative series of experiments and exercises to fully develop the concept of operations and employment and then use the results to develop a design for a purpose-built Sea Control Ship class. The America-class would be an obvious and appropriate starting point for this design. The AEW and ASW tiltrotor variants could be fielded in a fairly rapid fashion accordingly using existing off-the-shelf technology.
Much like during Admiral Zumwalt’s era, we are once again in an era of constrained budgets and rising international threats. Then, like now, innovative thinking needs to be applied to affordably generate the necessary numbers of ships and aircraft to meet the threat and accomplish the mission. The Sea Control Ship is easy to implement, as flexible as it gets, and requires very little research and development. It is the immediate solution to the Navy’s future needs.
Captain Pagano is a retired surface warfare officer who commanded the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group as Commodore of Amphibious Squadron Four. Prior to that, he was commanding officer of USS Carr (FFG-52). Currently he is employed as a senior analyst and instructor at Tactical Training Group Atlantic.
Notes
1. Joint Pub 3-32, 07 August 2013, I-3, 4
2. Norman Polmar, The Ships of the U.S. Fleet, 14th Edition, (Naval Institute Press, 1987), 193
3. Jane’s Fighting Ships online (IHS Global Ltd, 2016)
4. Paul H. Silverstone, U.S. Warships of World War 2, (Naval Institute Press, 1989), 42
5. Dictionary of American Fighting Ships online (Naval Historical Center)
6. Ibid
7. Wynn F. Foster, Fire on the Hangar Deck – The Ordeal of the Oriskany, (Naval Institute Press, 2001), 69
Featured Image: The amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA-6) performs flight operations while underway to Rim of the Pacific 2016. (U.S. Navy photo by Demetrius Kennon)
