Hate to keep beating this dead horse but can you all tell me something?
When a crisis breaks out now why do we have to send three or four carriers to the scene and disrupt our rotation schedule?
Its because our carriers are understaffed when it comes to the number of planes that they carry. A NIMITZ class carrier can hold more than 100 airplanes! We send them out with 50 or 60.
If those same aircraft carriers were fully staffed then one carrier would be doing the job of two. You would have less to send to various trouble spots but when trouble broke out, more than likely one would be enough! You want to talk about surge rates? Get the Carrier Wing back up to full strength and watch what happens. You want shock and awe from the sea? Let the enemy know that over 100 strike fighters on one carrier is sitting off his coast with double the number of escorts equipped with cruise missiles because we're able to get a fully equipped battle group together.
Fewer carriers does not mean less firepower. If executed properly it can increase throw weight.
Theres no reason the US cant fully plane its three response carriers.
ReplyDeleteThree Strike groups allows attacks from three directions too.
Imagine, the US is at war with India.
One fully equipped carrier, is one threat.
Three half manned carriers, well, one sits off the coast of Oman, one off the coast of Malaysia, and one equidistant from Madagascar, Australia and India.
On a random schedule, they speed in, strike and retreat out of range of counter.
India faces assault from three directions, it just doesnt have the C4 resources to fight a war on three fronts and quickly collapses
the airplanes themselves can fly in from whatever direction. the point is this. the US miltary needs to be smarter with its defense dollar.
ReplyDeletebesides one fully staffed battlegroup reinforced with escorts is more firepower than many nations combined.
Besides lacking budget for more aircraft, I believe one motivation for going to smaller air wings was to keep a higher percentage in the hangar. Parking them on the flight deck exposes them to to the corrosive elements.
ReplyDeleteAlso, having to move a aircraft around a packed carrier complicates deck cycles.
Lastly, IIRC, to run continuous 24 hour ops, we usually use two carriers in 12 hour shifts to give each some down time.
Its a long way round if your carrier in the Bay of Bengal wants to bomb Mumbai, and its bloody risky (and still a long way) to fly right over
ReplyDeleteSol, what if a major wars leaves a couple of carriers destroyed or out of action? Surely its easier to surge more planes (or even build more if its really that bad) than to build more carriers when they're needed?
ReplyDeleteAnd how many of those 100 planes can a Nimitz operate concurrently, and for how long? 2 Nimitz's with the wing spread evenly not only provides backup capability, it also doubles fuel and weapons storage etc. What if a plane crashes on deck, on 1 fully loaded carrier that could well be many destroyed parked planes and the carrier out of action.
I'm sure you didn't intend this, but in my opinion, your whole first paragraph actually helps prove Solomon's point.
DeleteBy having smaller better staffed carriers we could more easily afford to build more carriers, and the carriers would be more effective at this mission instead of having to double up because everyone's running half-staffed.
It's simply false that a Nimitz can operate 100 fighters nor is it correct the carriers now are half full. Today each carrier operates about 50 strike fighters, 10 EW and AEW, and about 12 helicopters in 2 squadrons. The Cold War wing had the same except for the addition of the all weather attack squadron and a fixed wing asw sqdn replacing the current asw helo. It's about 72 aircraft today vs 90 then.
ReplyDeleteLet's for a moment pretend you can operate 100 fighters. Having twice as many aircraft does not, for a moment, indicate you can generate twice as many sorties. Moreover, if it did then you'd burn through stores twice as quickly and spend twice as much time doing replenishment.
Adding a single attack squadron gets you to Cold War sized air wings and we're starting to do that with UCAS. We are not running our air wings at half the size. We used to have 4 fighter and 1 medium attack squadrons and we still operate the same 4 fighter squadrons minus the attack sqdn.
The main consideration for a carrier is how many sorties it can generate over a given period of time and this is party influenced by the dance of the aircraft throughout the cycle. Adding more aircraft, at a certain point, does not increase sortie rates but lowers them. Jamming 100 fighters on a CVN will not increase sortie rate but lower it.
In a classic sustained operation with 4 carriers, 2 normally operate all day, one at night, and 1 is doing replenishment. That's a very difficult dance with only 2 carriers and you're losing 1/2 your aircraft now when you replenish.
Lane.
ReplyDeleteyou're wrong. you had a fighter, attack, light attack, aew, asw and helos. the aircraft carrier of the cold war operated well over 100 aircraft.
you can't paper over the fact on this one. our carriers are operating at half strength,.
No I'm not in fact wrong. Please provide any citation to support any Nimitz class carrier ever operating 100 aircraft, even if only for a test or exercise.
DeleteThe carrier air wing changed very little since 1973 to the 1990's. There were 4 fighter squadrons, attack squadron, patrol squadron, EW and AEW squadrons, helo sqdn, and detachments of recon and/or ELINT aircraft. The only change from this to now is losing the attack sqdn, the Patrol/ASW sqdn which was replaced with a 2nd helo sqdn, and the ELINT detachment.
The only significant change from this was the all Grumman wing which I believe only operated with 2 wings and instead of 5 fighter and attack squadrons only operated 4 of two F-14 and two A-6 squadrons all four of which were brought up to 16 aircraft each. While arguably the most effective carrier wing it was very challenging to maintain.
Currently fighter squadrons contain 12 aircraft. The USN plans for the F-35C squadrons to have 10 aircraft while keeping the F/A-18E/F's at 12 so the wing will have 44 fighters and a detachment of 4 to 6 UCAS.
Today a wing has 48 fighters, around 5 EA-18G's, around 5 E-2's, about 12 Seahawks in two squadrons, and a couple C-2's or 72 aircraft. What was lost were the 10 A-6's, 4 KA-6's, a net loss of 2 asw aircraft (we lost 8 S-3's and gained 6 more Seahawks), and say 2 ELINT. We lost about 18 aircraft from the 90 we normally operated.
We've operated 4 fighter squadrons on every large carrier for over 40 years. We still do. The main difference is the loss of the A-6 squadron and the substitution of Seahawks for the S-3. All though the Cold War we operated about 90 aircraft and today operate about 70.
just out of curiousity. where are the A-7's and A-4's in your history of USN squadrons?
DeleteWhat used to be 2 light attack, 2 fighter, and 1 medium attack sqdn got turned into 4 fighter sqdn's when the A-7's were replaced by the F/A-18. To be more specific the attack squadrons were VA's and were then called VFA when they got the F/A-18.
DeleteWhen you're assessing air wings the number that matters most is the number of combat aircraft. The latest Proceedings annual Navy issue shows the average air wing to have about 44 combat aircraft (Hornets). Given the short legs of the Hornet and the loss of dedicated tanking (the S-3's and KA-6's) several Hornets are typically used for buddy tanking which further reduces the number of effective combat aircraft.
ReplyDeleteRemember that not only has an entire squadron been eliminated from the air wing since the Cold War days but squadron sizes have decreased by an average of two planes. The Navy has stated that when the JSF reaches fleet service, squadrons will be further reduced by another two aircraft.
As far as surging aircraft, that's a good idea except that there aren't any to available to surge. The JSF was supposed to already be in squadron service and replacing Hornets. The Hornets are reaching the end of their arrested landing limits and flight hours. At least one squadron has had to reverse transition to -A models and Hornets are being cross-decked from returning carriers to deploying ones to fill gaps in the deploying squadrons.
Yes, a Nimitz can operate around a 100 aircraft, however, Lane's point is well taken that that won't proportionally increase sortie rates. It will, however, allow air wings to absorb combat attrition losses which currently sized air wings can't do.
If you want to see more info and data on the air wing size, look here.
i agree with your assessment sol, i wonder how much of it is just a status symbol, the US saying "oh look at all the big ass ships we have", counting super carriers is alot easier than counting aircraft. it not an excuse and its a horrible foreign policy as it weakens our military but i think it might have something to do with it. Remember Clinton said the first thing thats asked is wheres the nearest carrier, not how many planes does it have as well, unfortunately that will be a question that needs to be asked.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you. I think the USN is just the dick waving.
DeleteSolomon, Norman Friedman's US Aircraft Carriers gives the maximum airwing weight of USS Enterprise as 1,350 tons and that of USS Kennedy as 1,000 tons. By my calculations the current airwing weighs a little less than 1,000 tons leaving little weight for more aircraft.
ReplyDeletefencer. thats almost nonsensical. by that measure an LHA has more capacity than an aircraft carrier.
ReplyDelete