Are Aircraft Carriers Obsolete?

The United States probably has the best equipped military force on the planet, but we have paid dearly for it. Every year the military industrial complex raises the prices on our equipment. I have shown many times how much more each aircraft carrier is costing us than it did and the same is true for subs and other ships, along with planes and everything else. What hurts even more is when we see a country like Russia build a plane which the critics are calling the best plane in the world and it is only costing them about one third of the cost we pay for the same type of plane. It seems like the US is being looked at by the military industrial complex and other companies as a giant piΓ±ata and each company is trying to get all the prizes. Well the piΓ±ata is almost empty and one has to wonder how long this is going to be allowed to continue. One thing is for sure, loyalty and patriotism seem to be non-existent when it comes to these big companies and they seem to be in it only for the money. We know they have to make a profit, but what is going on should net some of them criminal charges.

If we look at our fleet of aircraft carriers and how weapons have advanced in the world since the first carriers were built, one has to wonder even if they are viable anymore. The air power is, but the platform seems to be in grave danger. A few years ago a diesel submarine was developed which was undetectable by current technology. Since it was built by a friendly country we were allowed to examine it and actually leased it for about a year. I don’t know if we were ever able to figure out how to detect it since its engines were so quiet and its propulsion system didn’t register on sonar, but now these types of subs are being built in places like Russia and probably China. New missiles are being specifically created in China to take out aircraft carriers and other missiles are being built which are going to be used to overwhelm the missile defenses of a ship. There are now torpedoes which travel hundreds of miles per hour and at least both Russia and China have them.

There has been talk of the US getting out of the aircraft carrier business after the next one or two carriers are built. I have no idea if this is true or not, but it could be they have become too hard to protect. If this is true we must have some other method for projecting air power, because we wouldn’t stop making something so important unless we had some alternate means for doing the same thing. There are a couple of answers to that question. The first answer has to do with drones. We are building up our drone forces at a rapid pace. It is said that some planes such as B-52s can carry a lot of drones, maybe up to 50 of a certain type. Some are saying the X-37B, the secret aircraft we put into orbit is a test to see if we can orbit ships with lots of drones inside them which would be ready to use anywhere in the world at an hour’s notice. The second answer is many experts are saying we have the third generation of a fighter plane which can go into orbit and if this is true it also can reach anywhere in the world in about an hour.

Can systems like this replace aircraft carriers? In some ways yes, but in others it doesn’t seem so. While we might be able to replace our fighter planes and bombers, what about planes like rescue helicopters? Β Will we have some sort of rescue drones? It doesn’t seem likely, but I guess I could be in error on this. There was also a project I heard about which some might think is really nuts and can’t be true. It is a submarine aircraft carrier. For those who think this is science fiction I would like to remind them the Japanese in World War II had them. I encourage these people to Google “Japanese Submarine Aircraft Carriers” and I am sure they will be surprised by the results. The subs didn’t carry a lot of planes, most of them just three, but you can see how a submarine could be designed to carry more. With today’s planes which can hover, it would not be impossible for them to land on a submarine carrier. If we built ten of these submarines and each held ten planes, that could be a force to be reckoned with in many situations. Some naval people are saying submarine carriers are the weapons of the future. They didn’t work out too well for the Japanese, but things were different then. The original plan had been for the Japanese to build 18 large submarine carriers and 7 small ones and it called for them to all meet off the coast of San Francisco and launch their planes. Lucky for us this never worked out.

There have also been other plans I heard of and they called for submarines which would carry drones, lots of drones. This would make them almost a submarine aircraft carrier and indeed many if not all American submarines carry drones, but not in the numbers a submarine drone carrier would. There are so many new weapons on the drawing boards around the world, it is a shame they are not devices to cure diseases instead. I have always said we spend far too much time trying to figure out the most efficient way to kill each other and instead should be thinking about helping each other. As far as aircraft carriers go I believe the military industrial complex will lobby to keep them as long as they can, because they are one of the most expensive weapons systems on the planet and unless they come up with an alternate system which will cost at least as much I don’t see aircraft carriers disappearing unless there is some attack on them and it proves they are helpless.

In World War II aircraft carriers were harder to destroy because there were less ways of doing it. You could either bomb them or torpedo them, today things are different. Missiles can take them out, bombs, super-fast torpedoes shot from silent subs, drone attacks and nukes. There are probably other weapons which can also do the job which I know nothing about. Carriers present a very large target on the water and there doesn’t seem to be much which is stealthy about them. They rely on their aircraft and the battle group around them for protection, along with some weapons they have onboard. During World War II we suffered a lot of damage because of Japanese suicide pilots, today we have drones which have no pilots and thus no fear, can you imagine the damage they could inflict on a ship? If we consider everything I think we have to come to the conclusion it may not be possible to protect our carriers anymore in an all-out war.