05/21/2001 - Updated 08:15 AM ET
Biggest U.S. ships called vulnerable
By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY
NORFOLK, Va. — Since their wooden-decked ancestors swept across the Pacific Ocean and obliterated Japanese forces in World War II, aircraft carriers have been the centerpiece of U.S. naval power.
Sixty years later, the gigantic floating airfields are fighting a new war — for survival.
The Navy's 12 aircraft carriers, the largest warships in the world, are facing flak from their own shores. Civilians in the Bush administration and other defense planners are raising questions about the carriers' vulnerability to attack in a world where smart bombs can seek out a small building and anti-ship missiles streak to their targets at twice the speed of sound.
The most recognizable symbol of American military might, the carrier is part of a larger debate over how the armed forces should fight 10-20 years from now. Critics say potential enemies such as China, Iran and Iraq could target U.S. carriers with long-range missiles and satellites.
But at Norfolk, a sprawling naval base that is home to five carriers, disciples of naval air power say the critics are wrong.
Looking over the USS Theodore Roosevelt's flight deck, which spreads over 4 1/2 acres, Cmdr. Mark Adamshick says threats to ships such as his are overstated.
"We have mitigated the risks," says Adamshick, a Gulf War veteran and former F-14 squadron commander. "It's like being in a bulletproof car with the pope — sometimes you have to go into bad neighborhoods."
Adamshick, 42, has been on six carrier cruises in a 20-year career, and says he finds it difficult to imagine a world without American carriers muscling their way into hostile areas. Capt. Rich O'Hanlon, commander of the Roosevelt, describes the nation's psychological attachment to aircraft carriers this way:
When crises erupt around the world, "the White House response is, 'Where's the nearest carrier?' "
An aircraft carrier can steam 700 miles in a day. Its arsenal for a surface ship is unrivaled: 50 bomb-dropping F-14s and F-18s that can fly more than 100 missions a day. And unlike overseas military bases, they do not require the permission of foreign nations to launch attacks.
"It's a tremendous tool our leadership can use to control a situation," O'Hanlon says.
The aircraft carrier's value as a symbol of American might has a downside that worries even its most ardent supporters, however. The giant ships are densely packed with as many as 6,000 sailors. A few well-placed bombs could trigger a catastrophic loss of life.
Rumsfeld's strategic review
One source of the doubts is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's broad review of military strategy. His review is challenging long-held assumptions about U.S. forces, and the idea that Rumsfeld's staff is rethinking the carrier's 60-year reign as king of the high seas alarms Navy brass. In recent weeks, the Navy has made a case that carriers are not as vulnerable as Rumsfeld's advisers say, and current thinking inside the Pentagon is that they will survive the review largely intact.
"The aircraft carrier is the toughest, most robust ship ever built," says Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn, the deputy chief of naval operations for warfare requirements and programs. "Nothing is invulnerable," McGinn says, but the probability of a future enemy being able to easily sink one of the Navy's carriers "is very, very small."
Even some of the aircraft carrier's most vocal critics agree that in the open ocean there are few threats to the ship. U.S. carriers are the Strom Thurmonds of big weapons — once built, they typically keep going for 50 years, far longer than other Navy ships. Some defense experts contend that within the next 25 years, America's enemies might learn how to find these floating air bases and sink them with a barrage of smart weapons.
Navy officials say the Pentagon's new leadership team — led by strategy guru Andy Marshall — has considered cutting the number of Navy carriers from the current fleet of 12. It also has explored building smaller, harder-to-target aircraft carriers. Rumsfeld could complete his review this summer.
Politics inevitably will play a role in whatever decision is made about large weapons. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and carrier proponent, is likely to fight efforts to reduce their role.
USA's biggest stick
Since World War II, Navy "flat tops" have been the USA's biggest stick when trouble erupts overseas. Other countries, including Britain and France, sail carriers to distant waters. But American carriers are at least one-third longer and weigh three to four times more, which allows them to pack more
punch.
America's Nimitz class is the most modern. The carriers cruise faster than 30 knots and carry 72 aircraft. A 24-story building that floats, the nuclear-powered Roosevelt has 2,500 telephones, 3,000 TVs and serves 18,600 meals a day.
But it's a challenge to staff and maintain such a seaborne metropolis. Because of that, no more than three of the Navy's 12 carriers are typically deployed at once. Carriers sail with crews of 5,000-6,000. They patrol for six months at a time and are accompanied by a carrier battle group — a combination of six to eight cruisers, destroyers and submarines.
Their main value is in their flexibility and independence, the Navy says. Overseas operations often require allies' permission to use airspace, ports or airfields. That can take time. All that's needed to launch a carrier strike is the order.
But Rumsfeld already has hinted at the kind of force he wants in the future: high-tech, oriented toward air power and space and agile enough to zoom to distant battlefields. So "older" weapons such as large artillery pieces, heavy battle tanks and perhaps large ships might be deemed antiquated.
Norman Polmar, a naval analyst and author, says that the aircraft carrier's vulnerability isn't the critical question. Carriers, like all ships, can be attacked and sunk by a determined enemy, he says.
"The real issue is, can other systems do the same job?" says Polmar, who favors a debate on whether the United States should buy smaller carriers that can use vertical-takeoff jets and develop other ships that might project power just as efficiently.
Former Navy secretary Richard Danzig, who left office earlier this year with the change in administrations, had proposed the Navy reduce future aircraft carrier crew size by 1,500 people, to a total of 4,000, including pilots and others who support flight operations. He says that would reduce costs and allay fears that a determined enemy could inflict heavy losses.
Among the biggest dangers is the availability of new weapons designed specifically to take out a ship. The Russian-made Sunburn anti-ship missile flies at about 1,500 mph (sound travels at 740 mph). It zooms a mere 60 feet above sea level and can be fired from 155 miles away.
Other potential dangers are a new generation of ultra-quiet diesel submarines and sophisticated underwater mines.
But even if carriers are viewed as increasingly vulnerable, they are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. In addition to the dozen in service, another two — including the USS Ronald Reagan — are under construction. The Navy is set to build four more to replace aging carriers between now and 2018.
"I wouldn't advocate we get rid of them, but we should do an objective analysis of what to do next and keep the ones we have," Polmar says.
A question of size
A giant Nimitz-class carrier is more than 1,000 feet long, costs $5 billion and takes seven years to build. The Navy says that size matters, in longevity and being able to defend against attack.
For several decades, Navy admirals have discouraged building smaller 600- to 800-foot ships. The Navy says a fleet of smaller carriers would cost more to maintain and be fitted with fewer on-board defenses. In classified, Cold War-era tests comparing the survivability of small and large aircraft carriers, the Navy found large ships could survive direct hits from as many as 10 anti-ship missiles. Small carriers were far easier to sink.
British carriers, for example, do not have the ability to launch far-searching radar reconnaissance planes. During the Falklands War in 1982, the
Argentine air force raced past air defenses of the British fleet to fire Exocet missiles that slammed into the destroyer HMS Sheffield and the container ship HMS Atlantic Conveyor.
Nearly 20 years later, many of the United States' potential enemies have acquired anti-ship missiles and modern submarines.
Scott Truver, a military analyst with the Anteon Corp. in Fairfax, Va., says future threats to all naval ships, including aircraft carriers, are very real. Truver sees diesel submarines as perhaps the most serious of all challenges to surface ships. He noted that in recent years the Navy has cut back funding on both anti-submarine warfare and mine detection.
"In the future, many countries will be able to target and detect ships at sea," Truver says.
Past as prologue?
Those who say giant ships like the Roosevelt present an inviting target point to the Navy's armada of battleships on the eve of World War II.
Navy commanders who came of age when armor-plated dreadnoughts ruled the waves in the 1920s and '30s believed battleships were invincible.
The program from the Army-Navy football game of Nov. 29, 1941, showed the USS Arizona plowing through ocean swells. The caption read: "Despite the claims of air enthusiasts, no battleship has yet been sunk by bombs."
Eight days later, a Japanese bomb destroyed the Arizona at Pearl Harbor. The blast killed 1,177 sailors.
Navy leaders don't view the battleship debate of the 1940s as comparable to the carrier discussions of today. McGinn and other senior Navy commanders say that carriers can operate far offshore if necessary, and targeting them on the move is exceptionally difficult.
Even the best technology, the Navy argues, might not help. Future enemies will need a minimum of 138 low-orbiting satellites to know where U.S. carriers are at all times, according to one Navy study. Only a handful of such satellites exists today, and in the future U.S. officials consider it unlikely satellites would be able to provide timely information on ship movements.
The Navy admits that low-flying, "sea-skimming" missiles pose a serious threat. But carrier advocates argue that carrier battle groups have an array of means to confuse or shoot down enemy missiles — from an ability to move rapidly in the time it would take enemies to get a precise fix to the AEGIS combat system that defends against anti-ship missiles.
The Navy also says better technologies are just around the corner. Its new Cooperative Engagement Capability system will allow the aircraft carrier battle group to detect enemy attacks from much farther away, much more quickly.
Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va. think tank, agrees that the debate over the future of aircraft carriers is "long overdue." But Thompson says the Navy can make a good case that the giant ships are not nearly as easy to find as many believe.
"If we can convince ourselves that carriers are vulnerable, we can convince ourselves we don't need to spend money on them," Thompson says. "The problem is, we really don't know how we would do many of the carrier missions without them." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, yeah, can't have carrier missions without carriers.