-------Original Message-------
If you saw the movie "Independence Day", you'd think that the U.S. had
thousands of F-18s at the ready. I don't think the average American has any
idea about how much our Military is stretched to the limits. I'm willing to
bet that most in the U.S. Congress don't know how many Carriers, Fighters, etc.
that the U.S. actually has.
Whether or not you believe in the direction OUR Country is headed
Militarily, you have to realize that OUR Military Men and Women are doing a
tough job daily in support of decisions our Leaders/Politicians have made.
And, yes, Freedom isn't Free!
Where are the Carriers?
When word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it's no accident that
the first question that comes to everyone's lips is: 'Where's the nearest
carrier?'"
March 12, 1993 aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt
At a dinner party on Manhattan's upper east side recently, I asked my
table-mates how many aircraft carriers they thought America had in service. It
wasn't an idle question. It was triggered by comments from two of the guests.
Both had just returned from Iran, and one was a senior European Union staffer
involved with security issues. Their report was seriously distressing, and the
conversation turned to the possibility of U.S. (or Israeli) intervention.
The answers to my question - how many carriers - ranged from 22 to 100.
The EU expert weighed in with 40. All were shocked to learn that the United
States has a total of just 11 aircraft carriers. And even that number is
misleading: two are in dry-dock, one for a four-year refueling; six are various
stages of refurbishment, training and certification and can, in theory, be
ready to "surge" in 30 to 90 days. But only three are actually deployed.
I knew the number because I had recently been aboard the USS Harry
Truman, a nuclear super-carrier with some 70 jets and a crew of 5500.
Following my embark, I was determined to investigate the value of these
behemoths as objectively as a concerned citizen (without a security clearance)
could. I interviewed dozens of defense experts and reviewed thousands of pages
of studies and testimony. I was also sensitive to the fact that I had
experienced a tailhook landing and catapult launch, which are often referred to
as "the most fun you can have with your clothes on." I appreciate why, and
tried not to let that interfere with my assessment.
My questions started with the basics: Are carriers cold war relics as
critics charge? Or are they, as supporters profess, cost-effective platforms
essential to achieving critical foreign policy and security objectives? Are
they too vulnerable to new Chinese anti-ship missiles as Defense Secretary
Gates implies? Or is that vulnerability the latest feint by
inter-and-intra-service rivals? And is 11 the "right" number to meet current
and potential obligations?
The answers I found were not encouraging. And my dinner partners'
surprise quickly turned to concern.
Most experts fear that our carrier capability is stretched way too thin.
And they are very concerned about what will happen in 2013 when the 50 year-old
nuclear super-carrier Enterprise is retired. Its replacement, the USS Gerald
Ford, is not scheduled to be commissioned until late 2015, and won't join the
operational fleet until several years after that.
Moreover, the carriers and their crews are being worked harder and
longer. At today's heightened operational tempo, deployments are more
frequent, longer, and leave less time for essential maintenance. As retired
Navy captain Dick Costello put it, "We're driving them hard and putting them
away wet."
Contrary to critics' rhetoric, aircraft carriers have played an expanded
role since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The carrier's traditional roles of
deterrence, sea control, and showing-the-flag have taken advantage of their
hard-to-miss presence. Carriers have been front-and-center in numerous
conflicts where weapons were never fired. But since the end of the cold war,
carriers have taken on the greater demands of kinetic power projection:
carrier-based aircraft have flown most of the critical early sorties in almost
every "hot" encounter of the last 20 years. Troops are never sent into harm's
way without first securing the airspace and without on-going close air support.
Initial air operations are almost always the predominant responsibility of
Navy-Marine air, while on-going sustainability is shared with the Air Force.
When special operations forces and CIA operatives went into Afghanistan
after 9/11 - some of them memorably on camels - it was carrier-based aircraft
that provided the essential cover. In fact, Navy Air was responsible for fully
75% of all strike sorties. This required four carriers on station.
In 2003, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, five Navy carriers again provided
essential air-superiority and ground support. More than half of all American
sorties were conducted by carrier-based pilots, as Turkey and Saudi Arabia
refused American requests to operate Air Force jets from land bases.
Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni explained another benefit of having
carriers forward-deployed: the element of surprise. When, in 1999 President
Bill Clinton ordered air strikes against Iraq, Zinni was able to draw on
carriers undergoing "routine" operations in the area. The Iraqis had no
advance notice of night-time strikes by carrier-based pilots and were unable to
disperse valuable pieces of equipment. In subsequent strikes by land-based Air
Force planes, the Iraqis had enough time to move their machinery.
Carriers are also playing a growing, non-traditional role: disaster
relief and delivering humanitarian aid. Following the 2004 Asian tsunami, the
USS Abraham Lincoln led relief efforts. Not only did the carrier's flight deck
provide the main staging area for distribution of desperately needed supplies,
its medical facilities were literally life-saving for thousands. Moreover, as
former Ambassador Douglas Paal noted, its quick response and presence provided
Secretary of State Clinton with a formidable platform from which to engage the
Indonesian government.
Does the Navy believe 11 carriers are enough to meet the challenges
demanded of them by successive presidential administrations? As recently as
June of 2000 - before the attacks of 9/11 or our interventions in Afghanistan
and Iraq - the Navy told Congress that it needed 15 carrier battle groups.
Unfortunately, with only 11 carriers, large areas of the globe are suffering
from a "presence deficit." According to Vice Admiral Barry McCullough, these
include the Black sea, the Baltic region, Indian Ocean, and areas off the
African coast. In addition, South America, the Caribbean, and the Balkans have
not seen a carrier in several years.
The most formidable carrier critic is outgoing Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates. "I'm not going to cut any aircraft carriers," Gates told Fred
Kaplan in his recent Foreign Affairs interview. "But the reality is, if Chinese
highly accurate anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles can keep our aircraft
carriers behind the second island chain in the Pacific, you've got to think
differently about how you're going to use aircraft carriers."
Gates may not have cut the number of carrier groups outright, but he has
significantly delayed the start date for building new carriers from every four
years to every five. And there is some talk about not refueling the Abraham
Lincoln when its reactor core must be replaced in 2014, halfway through the
carrier's 50-year lifespan.
Is this Chinese missile threat sufficient to diminish carrier
capabilities? Not according to former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral James
L. Holloway III. "The Chinese lack some of the key hardware and software to
constitute the 'system of systems' required to achieve the kill chain of
detection, tracking, guidance and pinpoint accuracy needed." Holloway also
notes that a carrier can move 12 miles between the time a missile is launched
and when it arrives at the target. And its flight deck and hull are heavily
armored. "The Enterprise experienced a serious fire a number of years ago when
nine major caliber bombs (750 - 1,000 pounds) exploded on its flight deck. It
was back in operation after four hours."
Perhaps most tellingly, no nation is pursuing aircraft carriers more
assiduously than China. They have purchased three old carriers from the Soviet
Union and a fourth from Australia. In addition, they have constituted an air
wing that is practicing landings on a carrier-shaped strip, and are reported to
be building a new carrier in secret.
The one thing critics and supporters agree upon is that carriers are
very expensive. The USS Gerald Ford will cost about $11 billion by the time it
enters the fleet. And that doesn't include the cost of its air wing or its
strike group of cruisers, subs, and support ships. (Just as a point of
reference, the "cash for clunkers" program cost us $3 billion, and the overall
stimulus and bank-bailout have totaled $1.5 trillion. That is 1500 billions.)
Our current spending on carriers and aircraft is a grave concern to
former Navy Secretary John Lehman. He notes that we have only 10 airwings and
no attrition aircraft. Moreover, he is critical of Secretary Gates' position
that while we may have no back-up aircraft for the carriers, we have plenty of
Air Force planes. Lehman notes that, "In any potential conflict with an
increasingly truculent and aggressive China, Air Force reserves are largely
irrelevant. We have very few land bases in the Pacific."
As I conducted my investigation, I kept hearing that the Navy has no
congressional champion, as it did first with Georgia Congressman Carl Vinson
and later with Virginia Senator John Warner. Moreover, the public seems not to
know or care what the Navy does. In a recent Gallup poll, the Navy was ranked
dead last among the branches of the military services in terms of both prestige
and importance.
So, without a champion or broad public support, is there little wonder
why our carrier resources continue to erode? I came away from my investigation
convinced that the modern super-carrier is our most flexible and proven defense
platform. But I was also very troubled by the realization that our initial
incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq required four and five carrier battle
groups respectively. And that we didn't have enough ships to support those
operations simultaneously.
What my dinner partners worried about was: what would happen if
two-or-more conflicts erupt concurrently? We went around the table citing
current concerns: Iran is attempting to build a nuclear weapon; North Korea
recently sunk a South Korean warship; a Japanese tanker was attacked just last
month in the Straits of Hormuz; Venezuela has threatened Colombia; and China is
showing increased belligerence towards Taiwan. And all those were cited before
appetizers were finished. We'll just have to hope that no President, faced
with a crisis, will ask, "Where are the carriers?" and hear that they've been
retired in favor of the next politically popular clunkers program.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Brooks Isoldi, editor
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http://www.intellnet.org
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