Sea Control Ships: Are Aircraft Carriers Redundant?

Are they expensive? Yes. Are they floating targets with huge bullseyes on them? Yes.... Are they the most effective means of power projection over nearly 80% of the planet? YES!

This question has been around for decades. The US Navy recently did a review of different ways they could distribute forces, including more small carriers, more destroyers, more subs, etc. Their analysis came back to carrier battle groups, with fewer large carriers. That was the most bang for the buck, easiest to defend, and gave sufficient firepower to make a difference.

You can't think of an aircraft carrier as a single entity. At least with the US Navy never operates carriers singly.

I served on 3 carriers. They are 4 acres of flight deck and up to 5'000 people with the air-wing on board. The issue is you get limited to certain deep water ports with the logistics capable of servicing a ship of that size. In a deployment we would get maybe 4-5 ports, but the smaller ships would usually get 1 or 2 more. The smaller carriers give us more options.

Japanese carriers didn't take 25 years to manufacture like the video says. Their first aircraft carrier, the Hōshō, was laid down in 1920 and completed in 1922. Most of their carriers took under 2 years to be built and another year to be fitted out before being put into service.

So basically Carriers are not obsolete; they're just building smaller ones and are calling them Sea Control Ships... But as long as they carry aircraft, to me they will be aircraft carriers.

Battleships weren't useless by any means, as demonstrated by the American Iowa class. They were excellent for shore bombardment and anti-aircraft fire. All four Iowas participated in WWII and Korea, New Jersey was in Vietnam, all 4 were modernized and reactivated in the 80's, and Missouri and Wisconsin participated in Desert Storm. You don't have an almost 50 year career by being "useless".

I think the big come back in lightning carriers is the fact that there is now a supersonic jet that can launch from them. Once jets got too big to launch from escort carriers the need for larger carriers was focused on more heavily. Once helicopters began to take more roles helicopter assault ships started being built. Now that the 35 is 'ready' the lightning carriers are a great option.

In the same way that the Lexington class aircraft carriers initially carried 8in guns because no one was quite sure about an aircraft carriers role in the battle line, and thought it might need to defend itself against surface warships. I believe that the aircraft carrier's role will simply change and evolve as it has been doing since the first observation baloon barges.

Japanese carrier Sōryū Laid down -20 November 1934 Launched - 23 December 1935 Commissioned - 29 December 1937 How do you get 21 years out of that ?

This one feels more like SImon's reading a Reddit post than a Megaprojects Script. The writer definitely had a bit of a wild ride with this one

Let's not neglect to remember that square cube law favors larger carriers too, if I recall correctly. Bigger volume means you can more carry larger amounts of things inside with a slower increase of infrastructure, and ships move more efficiently when they're larger too.

USS Tripoli (LHA-7) is an amphibious assault ship and LHA stands for Landings Helicopter Assault.

The aircraft carrier has continued to evolve, informed by the requirements specific to US geopolitics and related military technologies. They are multi-domain vessels, not just for "sea control" but also for alliance power projection, humanitarian aid and until recently, maintaining a robust defense industrial base (including maintenance, R&D and efficient construction). The future of carriers will likely include increasing aspects of automation (to reduce costly manpower requirements), the addition of directed energy weapons (powered by the excess energy of its nuclear propulsion) and air wing augmentation by various drones (for ISR, refueling, gun trucks for LRASMs & MUMT models for the F-35C). If carriers were "redundant", then I doubt China, India, France and Russia would waste their time and resources planning to build new vessels and/or replacements. That's not to say that recent developments in missile technology and sensor fusion haven't posed increasingly lethal threats to the carrier, and so combat doctrine will also need to evolve to defeat a A2/AD stratagem.

Aircraft carriers not only control the seas, they control airspace and provide a military presence that cannot be ignored. That can be anywhere in the world. The light aircraft carriers control of the seas may be redundant, but their big brothers are not redundant in their role. They stand alone as a Carrier Task Group or Force.

Carriers are not defenseless by any means. They never operate alone, and over half of the carrier strike group is devoted to missile defense. They are not obsolete

The fact many think there are reasons aircraft carries will become obsolete makes me think it won't go exactly that way. We've been really bad at these predictions. It is always something else, something nearly completely unconsidered before hand.

Name a better way to project power with air power? Are there weaknesses? sure, but redundant, hardly

Absolute, masterpiece of an opening Simon. We romanticize the hardware of war. Like the chariot was defeated by the trench, the knight by the longbow, and the cavalry charge by the machine gun; the more dominant the tool the more focused your enemy in on making it obsolete.

To be honest, it may be the same case as "tanks are obsolete". Only real action will tell how exactly it works. We can simulate and plan and whatnot, but as classic says: "No plan can survive first contact with harsh reality".