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Automating Future Aircraft Carriers
Roland Piquepaille writes "Britain and France will jointly build three new huge aircraft carriers which will be delivered between 2012 and 2014. With their 60,000 tonnes, these 275-meter-long carriers will be the largest warships outside of the U.S. Navy. They're going to cost about $4 billion each, but with their reduced crews due to automation, they'll save lots of money to taxpayers during their 50 years of use. StrategyPage tells us that these ships will need at most a crew of 800 sailors instead of 2,000 for ships of that size today. At a cost of $100K per sailor per year, this represents savings of more than $6 billion. Impressive -- if it works."
USS Enterprise was commissioned in 1960 and is scheduled for decommissioning in 2013. So far its been in service almost 46 years. I see no reason why these ships won't last for 50 years. Even submarines last 30 years (and some SSBNs are under consideration to be extended to 50 years).
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Agreed. Building new aircraft carriers - especially big ones like these - more than 60 years after the end of WW2 demonstrates a profound lack of imagination. In fact, it is a perfect illustration of the dictum that nations always prepare for the last war.
In WW2, carriers were very important, as witness the fact that there were only a handful in 1939 but hundreds in 1945. Aside from the US Navy with its 100-plus carriers, even Britain's Royal Navy had over 70 carriers at the end of the war. (Admittedly, most of them were small escort carriers, but still - the Royal Navy doesn't have 70 warships in all nowadays).
The only reason the US Navy maintains its big carriers, and countries like France and Britain are planning new ones, is that there has been no serious naval warfare since 1945. Carriers are big, fat targets which positively invite attack by tactical nuclear weapons - whether delivered by torpedo, cruise missile or even ballistic missile. It's not necessary to get a direct hit - anything within a mile or so should do the trick. Anyone who has seen "Top Gun" even once must realize that, without the director on their side, Maverick and his friends should have failed to defend their carrier. The odds were all on the side of the attackers - who could, for instance, have split up and come in individually. How do three or four defending aircraft intercept six or more attackers, all widely separated? The real truth is uttered by CAG when he says "this whole thing will be over [in a few minutes]".
In this day and age, big carriers are reminiscent of the "mighty Hood" in the interwar years 1919 - 1939. Universally admired as the epitome of British naval power, Hood toured the world on goodwill visits, stopping off at many foreign ports where visitors marvelled at her huge guns, glistening brasswork and holystoned white decks. When she was put to the test at the battle of the Denmark Strait, however, Hood was sunk within minutes. Ironically, she may have been sunk not by Bismarck (a real battleship), but by a shell from the cruiser Prinz Eugen - precisely the class of ship that battlecruisers like Hood were originally intended to hunt down and destroy.
Armed forces always tend to forget their proper role in peacetime. Instead of genuine capability, they begin concentrating more and more on the show of force. This tendency is well described in Norman Dixon's superb book "On the psychology of military incompetence". Then, when a real war starts, it takes a while for the "parade ground" generals to be dismissed (or killed), and replaced by real warriors coming up from the ranks. Similarly, the floating gin palaces that look so impressive in peacetime are quickly sunk, to be replaced by ships that can survive and fight effectively.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Basically I think they are willing to write these ships off as combat ineffective after taking damage, at least until it is repaired. Perhaps, just perhaps, a reduced crew may be able to conduct damage control while continuing combat operations but I don't believe so and automation is something I'm very familiar with here. If all personnel are involved in watchstanding/combat duties, any diversion of personnel is going to reduce/eliminate some of the ship's capabilities with respect to operations, period. You can't avoid it.
Another thing you have to remember is that any Aircraft Carrier is a veritable Disneyland for fire anytime and anyplace. We've had experience in the fleet with that (USS Forrestal, while my Father happened to be serving on it, among others btw). Toss a missile into the mix and forget it.
As for wandering around checking things, that's certainly true of some of the engineers (my first field), but not true of most of the rest of the crew that have watchstanding duties, aside from the security rover. Mostly you sit at a console or in an office watching and/or waiting for something to happen. Been there, done that, burned the t-shirt. A lot. If anything, that's more mind-numbing than wandering around checking things. That's one reason, among many, why the US Navy runs more on coffee than diesel fuel marine. Heck, even lookout duty is far more interesting than staring at a sonar or electronics warfare display one watch in three.
If they reduce the personnel, I can't see the number of watchstanders going down by much as when I was in it was already automated to the max so you'll have roughly the same number of watchstanders with roughly half to two-thirds the personnel. That probably means going to one watch in two as a normal watch rotation. That's a formula for personnel retention disaster. Things are already bad enough what with the extended deployments due to all the reductions in force during the '90's. Sure, recruiting is about right or even up in some ratings, but if you don't retain trained personnel, your overall personnel costs go up due to the high training costs. I know for a fact that well over a million was spent on my training and that was even before I hit the fleet where more schools were heaped on top (see above). True, I was an extreme case but high training costs are a given for any technical rating (and I'm not just talking about electronics here). Even Damage Control Techs are expensive.
The days of sending someone just out of bootcamp to a ship are long past and career long training is reality. So, I see yet another possible false economy here. Human capital applies to the military just as much as it does to the business world, if not more so as you also need trained NCO's to train their juniors as well as the odd Ensign or Lieutenant The senior NCO's are the one's that make the Navy work as well as providing the glue that holds it together.
Perhaps the British (likely) and French navies are different, but that's the way I see it.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go