The War Nerd has nothing good to say about the state of the US Navy in a story called This Is How the Carriers Will Die
You know that Garmin satnav you use to find the nearest Thai place when the in-laws are visiting? If you were the Navy brass, that should have scared you to death. The Mac on your kid’s bedroom desk should have scared you. Every time electronics got smaller, cheaper and more efficient, the carrier became more of a death trap. Every time stealth tech jumped another step, the carrier was more obviously a bad idea. Smaller, cooler-running engines: another bad sign for the carrier. Every single change in technology in the past half a century has had “Stop building carriers!” written all over it. And nobody in the navy brass paid any attention.
The lesson here is the same one all of you suckers should have learned from watching the financial news this year: the people at the top are just as dumb as you are, just meaner and greedier. And that goes for the ones running the US surface fleet as much as it does for the GM or Chrysler honchos. Hell, they even look the same. Take that Wagoner ass who just got the boot from GM and put him in a tailored uniform and he could walk on as an admiral in any officer’s club from Guam to Diego Garcia. You have to stop thinking somebody up there is looking out for you.
Remember that one sentence, get it branded onto your arm: “Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.”
Recommendations are found in the analysis of middle-east combat:
The difference between the Israeli navy and ours is simple: the Israelis learned their lesson and switched to smaller, lighter missile craft. No more ocean-going muscle cars to act like giant magnetized targets. The newer Israeli boats are small enough that when you lose one, like they did in the 2006 war to land-based Hezbollah surface to surface missiles, you don’t suffer 100 casualties.
Got that? No more muscle cars. This is amazing stuff to think about as I find Americans who continue to emphasize “go big” as the best measure of success. The clear lesson is to go efficient, or maybe even to go small, or face a predictable catastrophe.
Carriers are useful when few other states will let you use their airbases or overflight rights.
Yes, but I suspect a submarine with a ballista-type launch for drones would be the more appropriate technology for modern warfare. The next best approach would be an advance party of parajumpers or special forces to clear an airstrip and establish a base, even behind enemy lines. I believe the author’s main tenet is that a carrier had its day, but will be a lot less useful sitting on the floor of the ocean after the first volley is fired by the enemy.