One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power (76 page)

Before becoming Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Zumwalt had been the last Chief of the Long Range Objectives Group. In that role he had had a good chance to think through what he considered the great challenges of the post-Vietnam world, as well as the technologies he thought would soon come to fruition. He particularly worried that Soviet silencing would render SOSUS, the key to American ASW, useless.
¹³
Without SOSUS, the U.S. Navy would find itself relying heavily on convoying, and on local mainly active sonar. In Zumwalt's view, that in turn would require a large force of small carriers, which he eventually called sea control ships. As CNO, Zumwalt considered the sea control ship a key program.
¹⁴
Zumwalt hoped that such ships could be built for a fraction of the price of a conventional carrier. They would have little or no strike capability. New VTOL technology would provide them with some fighter defense.
¹⁵
Instead of the usual airborne radar aircraft (E-2 Hawkeyes) they would rely on unmanned radar airships, which would lock onto them and
follow them around the oceans.
¹⁶
Helicopters were already accepted as the key to local ASW defense.

In fact Zumwalt's sea control ship did not long survive his tenure as CNO, although the Spanish navy built a sea control ship to U.S. plans, and a Spanish shipyard built a scaled-down version for Thailand. Both navies operated British-designed Harrier attack fighters from their ships. In the United States, advocates of small but numerous carriers were defeated. The smaller the carrier, the more vulnerable to weapons (which were not of course scaled down). To mount the same air effort, the smaller carrier had to be replenished more frequently, and replenishment was both expensive and potentially dangerous. Moreover, the VSTOL aircraft that would make a small carrier practicable offered lower performance, including dramatically reduced payloads and shorter ranges (which would keep the carrier closer to hostile forces).

Admiral Zumwalt accepted that larger carriers retained a valid role, but he wanted to scale down from the big
Nimitz
. He proposed a conventionally powered 50,000- to 60,000-ton Tentative Conceptual Baseline (T-CBL) ship; in September 1972 Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird issued a program decision memorandum calling for the design of a $550 million carrier (the sea control ship was expected to cost $100 million, and the frigate $45 million). The third
Nimitz (Carl Vinson
, CVN-70) was bought instead for the FY74 program, but by this time T-CBL was regarded as a likely future carrier design, more affordable than the existing one, but not yet mature enough to buy.
¹⁷
Thus in July 1975 new Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger ordered the Navy to begin further studies of a non-nuclear carrier (the Navy appealed). Eventually Schlesinger approved work on a 50,000-ton CVNX, whose cost should not exceed that of USS
Nimitz
. The CVNX was to incorporate a variety of innovations in areas such as catapults, elevators, and command and control. However, in January 1976 a panel concluded that it would be more economical to buy a fourth
Nimitz
to retain the thirteen-carrier force beyond 1985. President Gerald Ford therefore included long-lead items for the ship in his draft FY77 budget. However, in response to criticism, he substituted plans for two oil-fueled carriers in FY79 and FY81. The cut in size (to something like T-CBL) was justified partly by hopes that a transition to a new generation of VSTOL aircraft would minimize demands for carrier size. The new carrier was tentatively designated CVV, the second V indicating VSTOL.

The Carter administration, which entered office in 1977, was far less interested in attack carriers, which it associated with power projection in the Third World (as it entered office, the administration view was that it was essential for the United States to make peace with Third World countries, as reflected in its decision to turn the Panama Canal over to Panama). Despite its reluctance to consider carrier construction at all, the Carter administration did support the reduced-price CVV. Designed within a severe price limit, it would be much smaller than the existing ships, and it
would be non-nuclear. Instead of designing the ship to operate a tactically coherent Air Wing, it was designed with an Air Wing scaled to meet the price and size of the ship. It turned out that quite drastically shrinking a conventional carrier saved remarkably little money. Congress was unimpressed; it approved a fourth
Nimitz
in the FY79 program—which President Jimmy Carter then vetoed. The following year he felt compelled to reverse course, partly because operations in the Indian Ocean demonstrated the value both of nuclear power and of a large carrier Air Wing. Thus the fourth
Nimitz
was finally included in President Carter's final budget (FY80). By this time, too, hopes of a new VSTOL generation had generally been abandoned.

Then the situation changed dramatically. President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Navy, John F. Lehman, envisaged a fleet built around large carriers, consistent with the maritime strategy he supported. He knew that the war plans written by the Joint Chiefs of Staff required an unaffordable total of twenty-two; he settled for an affordable force of fifteen operational carriers. That meant more ships, because some carriers were always in long-term refit. Lehman was determined to build up the Navy at minimum cost; he was painfully aware that a build-up could easily cause gross inflation in defense products, so that it would buy almost nothing. Among his achievements was an agreement with the sole American yard capable of building nuclear carriers, Newport News, to invest in sufficient plant to build two ships simultaneously, so that each would cost considerably less than if ordered separately. Congress understood what he was doing, and it approved two pairs of carriers (CVN-72-3 and CVN-74-5).

Lehman also understood the potential of the large-deck amphibious ships. He replaced the ageing LPH fleet with much larger LHDs (
Essex
class), effectively improved versions of the LHA. By this time the Marines were operating STOVL fighters (versions of the British Harrier). Lehman required the LHD to be convertible into a sea control ship. The situation had changed dramatically since Zumwalt's time. Zumwalt had espoused the small sea control ship as an alternative to the expensive carrier, a way of killing off the big decks. Because he was so successful in building large carriers, Lehman saw the LHD as a potential supplement, to make up numbers in areas of less intense threat, and to extend U.S. naval presence.

Although Lehman's large decks looked much like their predecessors, the logic of their design had changed. USS
Forrestal
was designed to operate heavy attack bombers, which were then the largest U.S. carrier aircraft. Existing fighters were far smaller; they could operate even from an
Essex
. By 1980 the F-14 Tomcat was by far the most demanding carrier airplane, the one that set minimum carrier standards. The largest attack bomber, the Douglas A-3, could operate from a substantially smaller ship. However, it was the F-14 that could, it was hoped, fight the outer air battle, killing Soviet missile-bearing bombers and thus winning sea dominance.

As the Cold War ended, the logic of carrier operation began to change again. The role was again mainly attack. The emerging reality was that national air defense systems, like those of Iraq, could be knocked out in the initial stages of a war. Attack aircraft could operate at higher altitudes. They could more easily use the precision weapons, such as laser-guided bombs, which had emerged from the Vietnam War. Within a decade, the best such weapons were GPS-guided. Both kinds of weapons offered a new kind of attack. In the past, a carrier had launched mass raids against single targets. Mass was needed both to saturate enemy defenses and to ensure that hits were made, since the probability of hitting per bomb was limited. Precision weapons, delivered from outside enemy air defense range, could be used singly. One airplane could attack multiple targets on each sortie. A carrier with, say, forty-eight attack aircraft on board could hit at least forty-eight separate targets if her aircraft flew once per day.

The question became not how many airplanes the carrier could accommodate, but rather how many targets she could attack each day. That in turn depended on how rapidly her flight deck worked.
Nimitz
-class carriers reflected some much earlier ideas: that the bow catapults should be reserved for ready nuclear strikes, for example (to be launched at the outset before the ship could be vaporized), and that most strikes should be full-effort Alfa strikes, in which all available aircraft flew together to hit the same target. Flight deck turnaround time depended on how crowded the deck was, and on how weapons elevators were arranged in relation to aircraft elevators and catapults. Flight deck configuration really had not been rethought since the mid-1960s.

It gradually became clear that the new kind of operation could be conducted most efficiently if the deck were emptier, because airplanes could move around more easily. It also helped to move the island further aft, exchanging it with an elevator, so that airplanes could be fed to the catapults more efficiently. Weapons elevators should be rearranged. By the time the new configuration was being developed, it seemed likely that at some point the Navy would adopt unmanned armed aircraft (UCAVs). A new flight deck arrangement also seemed to offer the most efficient way of operating them. Big decks and big ships were still clearly best, but for very different reasons. On this basis the most recent carrier, USS
George H. W. Bush
(CVN-77), was designed.

Several studies showed not only that large carriers were far more efficient than smaller ones, but that even larger ones might be attractive. Just how large was never clear. By the late 1990s it could reasonably be argued that the
Nimitz
hull had more than run out of design margin, and that some redesign and enlargement was warranted. On the other hand, it was not clear how such growth could be controlled. Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz personally decided to cap growth by requiring the next carrier (CVN-77) to fit within the same hull form as its
predecessors. There were noticeable external changes: a large bow bulb, for better hydrodynamics, and a new island and mast.

The next carrier, CVN-78 (
Gerald R. Ford
), is a fresh design built around a new reactor (S9G instead of A1W) with a new flight deck arrangement (the island is further aft, and should be equipped with new fixed-array radars). As in other U.S. warships, systems are more electric—in this case the catapults and the arresting gear (which converts the energy absorbed as an airplane lands into electric power). The internal layout is more modular, for easier modification as systems and aircraft change. The new reactors are 25 percent more powerful than their predecessors, to provide three times the electric power of the earlier
Theodore Roosevelt
(a modified
Nimitz
). At least as importantly, the reactor requires many fewer operators and its core should last the lifetime of the ship (nuclear ships absorb much of their lifetime cost when they are re-cored). The redesigned flight deck should support 160 rather than 120 sorties per day.

The Marines, who operate from the large (carrier-like) amphibious ships, came to consider their shipboard attack aircraft integral with their helicopter-borne assault forces. When the time came to replace the big LHAs built in the 1970s, they initially chose a design about the size of a
Forrestal
, with two angled decks (converging at the bow): one for helicopters, one for VSTOL attack bombers. This “two tramline” design was initially accepted, but then dropped about 2004 as too expensive. Instead the LHD, which can accommodate VSTOL fighters, but which has only a single flight line, has been developed further. The great question is whether current plans for a follow-on to the Marines' Harrier (AV-8B) attack aircraft will materialize in the form of the F-35C. Without such an airplane, the Marines will no longer have the integral air attack capability they consider essential. However, the cost of the F-35C is escalating. Several foreign navies have also bet on the F-35C.

To operate conventional high-performance aircraft, a carrier must have a combination of catapults and arresting gear. Together they set a minimum size for an acceptable carrier—probably something like the French
Charles de Gaulle
(something less than half the size of a
Nimitz);
that is, at the least the ship must have sufficient length for arresting gear well clear of the after end of the flight deck, for pull-out once the wires are engaged, for a safety barrier, and for parking aircraft that have landed. The parking area must be clear of the catapults, whose length is set by the required end speed (a pilot can withstand only a certain acceleration).
¹⁸
More length can buy more catapults and more working space for faster turnaround. The smaller the carrier, the less numerous the Air Wing, with important tactical consequences. Sheer size also buys survivability and magazine space (so the carrier need not reload as often). STOVL aircraft like the Sea Harrier made it possible to produce a carrier of sorts within much smaller dimensions—the British
Invincible
is less than a quarter as large as a
Nimitz
. However, the smaller carrier cannot operate nearly as
many aircraft (and often the ones she can operate are not particularly capable). Thus STOVL made it possible for several navies to operate affordable carriers—but they were not nearly so effective as large U.S. carriers.

Carriers have succeeded because they are, in effect, the first modular warships: they could operate successive generations of Navy aircraft without needing radical reconstruction for each change. As it happened, the outer limits on size, landing speed, and takeoff speed set by the postwar nuclear bombers sufficed for later aircraft such as the F-14 Tomcat fighter and the A-6 Intruder bomber. The current F/A-18 Hornet is smaller than either, and the coming F-35 is still within these limits. In a very broad sense a carrier is a broad flight deck and an open hangar deck ready for whatever aircraft she can launch. She still needs to carry specialized support equipment for each new airplane, but that entails far less effort than the sort of reconstruction surface that warships need to accommodate new weapons. The most important internal change to accommodate a new generation of aircraft was the installation of computer combat direction systems, which began in the 1960s. It radically changed carrier/Air Group capability, but again it was relatively easy to accommodate from a physical point of view. The same basically modular ship has supported multiple generations of air weapons, of self-defense weapons (beginning with 5-inch guns and now using short-range missiles), and of radars. Thus the same ship has offered dramatically different capability over the years.