However, the ability to quickly move the Independence and her battle group from their forward-deployed position near Diego Garcia made it possible to demonstrate American resolve to the Iraqi dictator. That is the real point of aircraft carriers: to be seen. Once seen, they can cause an aggressor to show common sense and back off. But if the aggressor fails to show common sense, then the CVBG can act to make them back off with force.
It is not just the obvious power of the carriers—or more particularly, of the aircraft that fly off them—that is the source of the options a CVBG provides national leadership. In fact, to look at a CVBG without seeing beyond the carrier is to look at an iceberg without seeing what lies submerged. The real power of a CVBG is far more than what the flattop with its air wing can bring to bear. Each CVBG is a carefully balanced mix of ships, aircraft, personnel, and weapons, designed to provide the national command authorities with an optimum mix of firepower and capabilities. That the group can be forward-deployed means that it has a presence wherever it goes, and that American leaders have options when events take a sudden or unpleasant turn on the other side of the planet. The downside is cost. CVBGs are among the most expensive military units to build, operate, train, and maintain; a country can only buy so many. Nevertheless, in the years since the end of the Cold War, CVBGs have demonstrated how very useful they can be on a number of occasions. Operations like Southern Watch (Iraqi no-fly patrols, 1991 to present), Uphold Democracy (Haiti, 1994), and Deliberate Force (Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1995) are only a few of these.
Carrier Battle Group Development
Common sense dictates protecting the most valuable warships in your arsenal when they head into potentially hostile waters. And that—simply—is the reason why aircraft carriers are placed in battle groups. Aircraft carriers are useless unless they are carrying aircraft. But it takes more than just airplanes to insure the carrier’s survival. More important, using the CVW’s assets for carrier defense defeats the real strength of sea-based aviation. Unless carrier-based aircraft are flying attack missions or defending other fleet vessels (and aircraft are not in fact able to stay airborne long enough to fully accomplish that job), they are being wasted. In other words, sentinels with more staying power than aircraft must protect the carrier against threats—particularly submarines—that can leave it so much burned and twisted scrap metal on the ocean floor. Any ship, no matter how well built, even a huge ninety-thousand-plus-ton Nimitz-class (CVN-68) carrier, can be sunk by conventional weapons. Without some sort of escort, a carrier is just a very large opportunity for some enemy officer.
The original configuration that gave birth to CVBG development dates from the early experiments with carriers in the late 1920’s. Because of their high speeds and medium-caliber gun armament, the large carriers that emerged from the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty tended to be assigned to the scouting or cruiser forces of navies. They initially were used as “eyes” for the lines of battleships that were then the real measure of seapower. But before long, carrier admirals found ways to operate independently, showing that they could survive without the backing of a line of battleships. By the outbreak of the Second World War, they were the battle forces.
In 1939, no nation had more than a half-dozen large-deck carriers, and most CVBGs had only a single flattop, with a handful of cruisers and destroyers as escorts. However, this practice began to change very rapidly with the outbreak of World War II. Early in the war, the British began to add fast battleships and battle cruisers to carrier groups, providing protection against enemy surface units. Then the Japanese grouped their six big-deck carriers into a single unit called the Kido Butai (Japanese for “Striking Force”). Its escort included a pair of fast battleships, some cruisers, and over a dozen destroyers—enough to stand up against all but the largest surface fleet. With multiple flight decks and hundreds of fighters and strike aircraft, Kido Butai could overwhelm any fleet or air force it encountered. Officially known as the “First Air Fleet,” and commanded by Admiral Chichi Nagumo, it was Kido Butai that struck Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. For the next six months, Nagumo and Kido Butai ranged across half the globe, the most powerful force in Naval history. Only the “miracle at Midway” stopped Kido Butai, and returned the initiative in CVBG evolution to the Americans.
By early 1943, the power of American industry began to make itself felt as a stream of new Essex (CV-9) and Independence-class (CVL-22) fast fleet carriers steamed across the Pacific. Before heading for action, they would stop at Pearl Harbor to conduct training and be integrated with fast, new battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and other support ships, and then formed into Task Groups. (Two or more Task Groups formed a Task Force.) Experience gained during raids on Japanese island outposts in 1943 showed that the optimum size for such groups was three or four carriers, a pair of fast battleships, four cruisers, and twelve to sixteen destroyers. More carriers than that tended to make the groups unwieldy. Task Groups were commanded by a senior naval aviator, who assigned strike missions, refueling assignments, independent raids, and other jobs.
By early 1944, Task Force 34/58 had developed into the most powerful Naval force in history. This force, based around four Task Groups and commanded by Admiral Marc Mitscher, won key battles—in the Philippine Sea, off Formosa, at Leyte Gulf, in the South China Sea, and around Okinawa—that eventually led to Allied victory in the Pacific. Task Force 34/58 never lost a battle, and throughout its two-year life span lost only a single flattop, the light carrier Princeton (CVL-23).
The end of World War II brought a number of changes to CVBGs. In fact, the massive force reductions following the war almost spelled their end. Results of the early atomic tests at Bikini showed the need to disperse carrier groups. Thus single-carrier CVBGs again became the norm. On the other hand, new technologies began to make these individual carriers much more effective and powerful. Angled flight decks, steam catapults, jet engines, air-to-air missiles (AAMs), and atomic weapons marked just a few of the new systems that Naval aviators saw arrive in the decade of Elvis and Ike. As new technologies arrived, CVBGs began to change their mixes of aircraft and ships. Piston-engined propeller aircraft were sent to the boneyard, and replaced by supersonic jets and high-performance turboprops. The battleships and big-gun cruisers were also retired, as new guided-missile destroyers and cruisers took over the job of escorting a new generation of flattops. Even without the destructive power of the nuclear weapons they carried, each carrier now had more firepower than an entire World War II Task Group.
At the start of the Vietnam War in the mid-1960’s, America had more carriers than the rest of the world combined, allowing the USN to easily station three or four CVBGs in the South China Sea. Each group normally had one attack carrier, as well as a guided-missile destroyer or cruiser to provide surface-to-air missile (SAM) coverage. Known as Task Force 77, the flattops were on station near Vietnam from the torpedo boat attacks of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964 to the evacuation of Saigon a decade later. By then, the older World War II-era carriers were worn out and had to be retired. Yet, with the defense budget drained by the Vietnam War, one-for-one replacement of ships and aircraft was impossible. Instead, the Navy built a new generation of amphibious ships with flight decks for helicopters (the Tarawa-class (LHA-1)), and combined the attack and ASW missions into the air wings (CVWs) on the fifteen newer carriers commissioned since the end of World War II. By adding a squadron each of S-3 Vikings and SH-3 Sea King helicopters to the existing attack carrier wings, the so-called “CV Air Wing” was created in 1975. This remained the basic CVW structure for the rest of the Cold War.
While the Navy was reducing the number of carriers and beefing up their air groups, the new Nimitz-class (CVN-68) nuclear supercarriers began to arrive. A new generation of aircraft also began to appear on the decks of American flattops. In 1974, the F-14 Tomcat arrived in the fleet, along with new models of the A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair attack bombers, and improved models of the E-2 Hawkeye and EA-6B Prowler elec
tronic aircraft.
By the late 1970’s the driving force in CVBG development was no longer American plans or technology. That honor fell to Admiral of the Soviet Navy Sergei Gorshkov. In the generation following the high seas humiliation of his fleet during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Gorshkov had managed to create the largest navy in the world. Though much of the Soviet naval buildup was designed to support and protect its growing fleet of ballistic-missile submarines, a large share of its maritime budget was devoted to the destruction of American CVBGs.
Over a period of two decades, Gorshkov grew his fleet with a focus on the large air-to-surface (ASMs) and surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs) that I discussed in the fifth chapter. Supporting this construction effort was a program of tactical development, exemplified by Gorshkov’s concept of “the Battle of the First Salvo.” His plan was to win a naval war by crippling enemy CVBGs by means of an early series of missile strikes, some of them pre-emptive. By the late 1970’s, the Soviet fleet of ASM-armed bombers, and SSM-armed surface ships and submarines, was thought by some to be ready to take on the USN for global maritime dominance.
None of these Soviet developments went unnoticed, and systems like the F-14A Tomcat, AIM-54 Phoenix AAM, and E-2C Hawkeye were the first responses. Then, with the arrival on the scene of President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of the Navy John Lehman in 1981, the men of America’s CVBGs finally got the new ships and equipment that had been needed since the 1960’s. After years of being undermanned, underpaid, and short on spares and ordnance, the U.S. Navy was ready to win its share of the Cold War’s final victory. To meet the increasingly sophisticated Soviet threat, the Navy bought new Aegis SAM ships, and improved aircraft and weapons. However, the basic structure of the CVBG remained unchanged in the 1980’s, and would stay that way until the end of the Cold War and the coming of Desert Storm in the early 1990’s. What did change was the strategy by which carrier operations were to be conducted. In Secretary Lehman’s vision (called “The Maritime Strategy”), in the event of war with the Soviets, massed groups of three or more CVBGs would advance into the Norwegian Sea or North Pacific to strike military bases on the Soviet mainland. In the event, the collapse of the Soviet Empire put an end to “The Maritime Strategy.”
The post-Cold War American military drawdown scaled John Lehman’s vision of a “600 Ship Navy” back to just over half that number. In addition, the structure of battle groups and air wings was radically altered. Older classes of ships were rapidly retired, along with the entire fleet of A-6 attack bombers and KA-6 tanker aircraft. The Cold War-era CVW of approximately ninety aircraft shrank to just over seventy. Because the Soviet threat of ASMs launched from bombers and SSMs fired by submarines and surface ships was no longer significant, the need for fleet air defense was greatly reduced and the CVW could become an almost purely offensive force. The “outer air battle” was therefore handed off from the squadrons of F-14’s, F/A-18’s, and E-2’s to the Aegis radars and SM-2 Standard SAMs of the battle group’s cruisers and destroyers.
Today, the Tomcats and Hornets have been assigned to carry a variety of air-to-ground ordnance, including precision guided munitions (PGMs) for delivery onto targets ashore. In the current era of “littoral warfare” (as defined in “From the Sea” and “Forward from the Sea”), this is to be the primary function of sea-based naval aviation units. Along with delivering air strikes, the battle groups of the 1990’s have been given other powerful offensive capabilities. Now CVBGs have each been teamed with a three-or-four-ship amphibious ready group (ARG) embarking a battalion-sized “Marine Expeditionary Unit-Special Operations Capable” (MEU (SOC)).64 This means that as the first century of naval aviation comes to a close, the CVBG/CVW team stands as an almost purely offensive targeting and striking force for supporting units and objectives ashore in the littoral zones.
Force Structure: How Many Carriers?
Though the power, flexibility, and mobility of CVBGs make them a critical asset for national leaders, and this is unlikely to change in the 21st century, those same leaders must justify the costs of building, training, operating, and maintaining such forces. The costs of CVBGs are immense. The price tag for the U.S. version probably runs close to $20 billion to build and equip, and another $1 billion a year to operate and maintain—a lot of money! With those mind-numbing numbers in mind, let me put a question to you: How many carriers do we need? The answer is complex.
For starters, there are very few nations in the world with the means to even own flattops. The Royal Navy is committed to maintaining two carriers, as is France. Spain and Italy also plan to build additional flattops to give them each two CVBGs. Russia, Brazil, Thailand, and India will struggle to maintain the single carrier groups they currently possess—largely for reasons of national prestige. And then, standing alone, the United States is currently committed to keeping a dozen carriers in commission—as many flattops as the rest of the world combined. In the 1980’s, John Lehman’s “600 Ship Fleet” included fifteen CVBGs, a total driven by the strategy of simultaneous strikes around the Soviet Union’s vast periphery. Launching strikes from the Norwegian Sea, the Mediterranean, and the North Pacific required between six and eight groups ready to get under way at any time. Today, with no monolithic threat on the horizon, the need for a dozen carriers in commission seems less obvious. So is twelve CVBGs overkill? No, not really.
The number of carriers our nation requires is ultimately determined by its commitments in the post-Cold War world. In a world without superpower confrontation, our “enemies” become “rogue states,” like North Korea and Iraq, while international terrorists, criminal cartels, and chaotic regional, ethnic, or tribal conflicts now are the key threats to day-to-day peace. In today’s world order, America’s major overseas commitments and interests lie mainly outside the Western Hemisphere. At the same time, our victory in the Cold War has burdened the U.S. with responsibility for peacekeeping and stability in areas that, frankly, most Americans would prefer to ignore. Consider the following list of global flashpoints:• North Korea—On the verge of starvation and collapse, North Korea continues to threaten the South Koreans and other nations in the region. It has recently deployed the Tapo-Dong ballistic missile, and may have one or two nuclear warheads.
• People’s Republic of China (PRC)/Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan)— Following their confrontation over democratic elections and ballistic-missile tests/exercises in 1996 (in which two American CVBGs intervened), these two estranged countries continue to face off in a slow simmer.
• India/Pakistan—As both countries celebrate their golden anniversaries, they confront each other over disputed borders and ethnic and religious differences. An accelerating nuclear arms race raises threats of regional nuclear war, and the proximity of China only exacerbates the problem.
• Persian Gulf—UN—sponsored sanctions and “no-fly” operations against Iraq continue, while Iran increases the size and capability of its military forces, causing concern among other countries in the region. Iran and Iraq once again are disputing border areas in the northern end of the Persian Gulf, and firing into each other’s territory.
• Balkans—The crisis in the Balkans has continued, despite attempts to implement the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords. Bosnia continues to be a hot spot, requiring continuous monitoring by NATO forces, while old ethnic hostilities are erupting in Kosovo and other areas.
• Algeria—A chronic Islamic insurrection faces a repressive military regime, as fanatic groups commit brutal massacres in villages near the country’s large cities, killing hundreds of innocent civilians.
• Central Africa—Hutu and Tutsi factions wage genocidal war, spilling across national borders and defying international relief efforts.
• West Africa—Destitute nations continue to be wracked by coups and civil wars that have been endemic since the end of colonial rule in the 1960’s, requiring frequent evacuations of foreign civilians.
Current U.S. national military strategy calls for a force str
ucture sufficient to deal with two “major regional contingencies” (small wars or big crises) plus one “complex humanitarian emergency” (natural disaster, epidemic, famine, refugee migration, etc.). You might think that a dozen CVBGs would be enough to handle all that. Unfortunately, the unforgiving demands of complex machinery and the natural limits of human endurance set boundaries that make a dozen carrier groups just barely sufficient to maintain two or three carriers on distant deployment at any one time. Let me explain.
When you build a warship like an aircraft carrier, it is not available for deployment overseas all the time. Warships require regular maintenance and upgrades. Thus, in the forty-five-year planned life of an aircraft carrier, it will spend as much as a fifth of its time in docks and yards being repaired and maintained. For example, for every year the ship is in service, two or three months are spent on minor upgrades and maintenance to keep the ship going between “deep” overhauls (when the warship is brought into dry dock for major work). These major overhauls are done every five years or so, take from eight to twelve months to complete, and include everything from repainting the hull to upgrading the living quarters and combat systems. Additionally, nuclear-powered carriers are periodically out of service for a three-year refueling, an intricate surgery (with meticulous attention to radiation safety) that requires cutting great holes through decks and bulkheads and then welding everything back together. All this means that a warship is only available to sail about three years out of every five.
The crew, also, requires its own “overhaul,” for the multitude of combat skills embodied in the battle group’s ten thousand sailors, marines, and aviators are “perishable.” If skills are not taught, practiced, and tested regularly, the combat potential of a ship or air group rapidly deteriorates, even when deployed into a forward area. So a battle group must be assembled and “worked up” for almost six months before each six-month deployment.