And before anyone goes off on an ” Obama is Carter” style rant- I will remind you that another new president was more than willing to offer up a carrier or two to the QDR……9-11 intervened and saved us then. What will save carrier aviation now?
NAVY WILL OFFER UP CARRIER & AIR WING IN QUADRENNIAL REVIEW
Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D.
The word within the Pentagon is that the White House wants to collect 6-8
“scalps” — major program kills — in this year’s Quadrennial Defense
Review. Some of the cuts are already being considered as defense secretary
Robert Gates rewrites the 2010 budget. You can expect to hear a lot of
rumors about which programs are being targeted between now and when the
Pentagon releases details of its budget request in April. But while most of
the military services are scrambling to protect programs, at least one is
getting ready to offer up a signature weapons system. The Navy will propose
removal of one aircraft carrier and air wing from its posture, dropping the
number of carriers to the lowest number since 1942.
Of course, today’s carriers make World War Two carriers look like toys.
With nuclear propulsion, supersonic fighters, and over four acres of deck
space, they are the biggest warships in history. But at any given time some
are being repaired, some are being replenished, some are in training and
some are in transit; if the fleet is cut to ten then maybe half a dozen will
be available for quick action on any given day. Congress didn’t think that
was enough, so it mandated in law that at least eleven carriers must be
maintained in the force. But with big bills coming from the Obama
Administration and other items like healthcare costs pressuring Navy
budgets, the service has repeatedly sought relief from that requirement.
This year’s quadrennial review is the likely venue for another such bid.
The issue is coming to a head now because the pace of new carrier
commissionings is not keeping up with the rate of retirements. Kitty Hawk,
the last carrier in the fleet powered by fossil fuels, was removed from the
force last summer after nearly 50 years of service. The Navy plans to
decommission the nuclear-powered Enterprise in November of 2012, leaving the
fleet with only the ten flattops of the Nimitz class for three years, until
the next-generation Ford class of carriers debuts in September of 2015.
Going to ten isn’t supposed to happen under present law, but since the
service hasn’t made budgetary provisions for maintaining the Enterprise and
its crew until the Ford class arrives, it looks like ten carriers will be
the total number in the fleet.
In the current budget environment, once the Navy gets used to having ten
carriers, that’s probably where it will stay. Navy insiders think the
service will decide to forego the refueling of the Lincoln, which is
scheduled for 2012. And when the decision to stay at ten is formalized, the
service can also move to eliminate one of its carrier wings. That step
would cut the Navy’s projected shortfall in strike aircraft by half. So
billions of dollars are saved by skipping the refueling, cutting the
purchase of aircraft, and eliminating the need to sustain 6,000 personnel
associated with ship operations and air-wing support.
There’s only one problem with all this. It reduces the nation’s capacity to
project power from the sea at the same time access to foreign bases is
becoming doubtful. And why is such a move necessary? Because the Obama
Administration has decided to stick with Bush-era plans to grow the size of
ground forces by 92,000 personnel, and the Navy must pay part of the bill
for that. Yet the administration is getting ready to depart Iraq, which was
the main reason for increasing the size of ground forces in the first place.
There are precious few other places where the warfighting scenarios for the
next QDR suggest a big ground force will be needed. Most of the scenarios
envision reliance on air power for the big fights of the future — the kind
of air power delivered by carriers. So cutting carriers to build a bigger
ground force doesn’t make much sense.
A personal opinion. The Navy has always coupled Carriers and Air wings in terms of force structure-I would submit that recent events make that coupling prohibitively expensive to the Navy. The Navy might be able to live with 10 carriers, but it can’t live with 9 air wings-if for no other reason, maintaining sufficient inventory of aircraft.
The Navy today, actually needs more carrier air wings and perhaps less carriers. E.G. 12 Air Wings and may be 10 carriers. Now there are some who may say that without carriers, the Navy is no different than the Air Force. I disagree. It still takes Naval Aviators to land on carriers and the training that Naval Aviation produces cannot be replaced by the USAF.
However, in today’s world, the aircraft carrier has become just that-a transport carrier of aircraft. Thanks to some really boneheaded decisions about surface ships-LCS being a prime example- the battle group is no longer as important as it used to be. Damn shame too, since the Navy can and should be training as a battle group-just in case it has to fight for Taiwan. But its not.
So that means that carrier based aircraft could actually operate ashore more than we wish to think about. I submit that with less carriers, the Navy should-in my humble opinion-look at overseas home porting of an additional air wing. A few years ago, when the debate of Guam was raging, CNAF was adamantly opposed to putting a carrier there because of the high cost of a maintenance infrastructure for the ship. They were probably right about the carrier.
An air wing however-could plug into an already existing maintenance infrastructure in Guam and Japan, and the airfield is more than sufficient to host an air wing: dual runways, lots of ramp space, and the USAF uses too much space there anyway.
Plus-11-12 Air wings would allow the Navy to meet some of the “in country” CAS requirements and EW requirements without robbing the whole piggy bank. Or pulling squadrons off the ship mid- deployment.
Just my .02,
Where is John Lehman when you need him? Or better yet, just think what we could buy if we were not wasting so much money in Iraq?