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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."
The US Navy's main project right now is the DD(X) destroyer. It uses advanced automation (damage control, weapon countermeasures), stealth, advanced radar, reduced crew, full control/integration with the rest of the fleet. The best toy: Its capability for rapid-fire, pinpoint 155mm shell attacks from up to 100 miles away may sometimes eliminate the need for aircraft carriers entirely, resulting in an operational cost probably an order of magnitude or two cheaper than a carrier, and with very little chance of any casualties. Of course many of those same capabilities are also going to soon be added to cruisers, aircraft carriers, etc.
It doesn't sound as impressive as a new aircraft carrier, but for most scenarios it's going to have amazing results. It's meant to be the first ship to arrive, and carriers will only be used for prolonged engagements.
The real problem with this mentality is that these are warships. Smaller crews are vastly less efficent at damage control and have much smaller margins for casualties before the ship ceases to be combat effective. Automation is all well and good but ships that size NEED vast crews simple due to the unpredictable nature of sea service. Imagine if you have a gastro outbreak onboard and 400 of your crew are down. Larger crews can absorb unexpected events much more easily than smaller ones. Plus most of these studies tend to ignore hte fact that less crew means more and longer watches for the duty stations that remain. The US is moving to this right now with the new San Antonio LPDs and DDX program but they are facing the same choices. Reality wise we'll probably see much more automation and relyability but I have serious doubts if anyone will field a warship of this size without a crew of at least 1/2 the normal rate.
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.
In fact, when facing a country such as the US or EU which has basic respect for the rules of war (eg, the Geneva Convention), a "fair" war pretty much maximizes the number of people killed.
Look what happenned in the Pacific during WW2. American, Commonwealth, and Japanese soldiers got fed into a meat grinder for 4 years because they were reasonably well-matched. Then the Americans got the ultimate weapon, and their absolute air superiority allowed them to use that weapon with impunity. That doesn't sound very fair, does it? No big surprise: the war ended about a week later. This saved the lives of not only countless American GIs, but millions upon millions of Japanese soldiers and civilians.
Who exactly is this aimed at?
There are no major nation states left that could maintain a sustained war a la WWI or WWII any more. Every European state lacks the trained cadre of military personel to field a major army. Any every small nation is so outclassed by even 20 year old US/NATO equipment that spending billions on "next generation" systems makes no economic or military sense. Russia lacks economic power to play, and China lacks the geographic location to every conventionally threaten the US or Europe.
Example, the US Abrams tank is 2-3x better than any other tank it will meet except perhaps the British Challenger tanks. The US could build a tank for a fraction of the cost that would still outclass anything it will face.
The sheer military and technological superiority of even decades old weaponry is why most of the world has shifted to guerrilla or terrorist political tactics.
From the article:
"An aircraft carrier must fight, and find the enemy, and do a lot of other stuff."
Brilliant writing there. Very eloquent. No, really, I mean it, and other stuff.
I think the best way to put it is that everybody (with the possible exception of arms suppliers) wants there to be as little violent conflict as possible. War is a terrible waste of resources, and war against a nuclear-armed nation is likely suicidal.
In fact, when facing a country such as the US or EU which has basic respect for the rules of war (eg, the Geneva Convention), a "fair" war pretty much maximizes the number of people killed.
I agree. The question is, is fighting against such countries really the threat that we need to prepare for? Or is the era of large-scale country-to-country warfare over (due to MAD if nothing else), and the real threat these days comes from terrorism? And if that is the case, wouldn't this money be better spent on combatting terrorism, rather than on building ships for wars that won't happen?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
No, they won't. Here's what will happen:
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
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.