Assault Carrier

Over the course of the blog, many commenters have suggested using the big deck LHA/LHD (LHx) as baby carriers.  We’ve discredited this notion in terms of traditional carrier operations (see, “LightningCarrier”) due to the limited size of the air wing and the complete lack of ability to operate E-2 Hawkeye AEW, tankers, and E/A-18G Growler EW aircraft that are crucial to combat effective air operations.
 
Other commenters have suggested using supercarriers for ground support to make up for the complete absence of naval gunfire.  This is a non-starter as the role of the carrier in an amphibious assault is interdiction of enemy strikes and reinforcements and the proper place to do that is hundreds or thousands of miles from the assault site.  It is suicidal folly to ‘tie’ a carrier to one location which is what would be required for a carrier to provide direct ground support for an amphibious assault.  And, lest we forget, we also lack a true ground attack naval aircraft.
 
However, the possibility exists that a dedicated, small, assault carrier could be useful in supporting amphibious assault operations.  Well, wait … don’t we already have ground support carriers in the form of our big deck amphibious ships (LHA/LHD)?
 
Yes, we do, but not effectively.  Consider, currently, the aviation component of an assault is housed on the LHx ships of which we only have a few (9 total LHA/LHD) and they have very limited air wings.  A typical LHx air wing consists of:

 

That’s a limited capability mix that lacks the number of aircraft to be effective in any of its roles.  Six strike aircraft can’t provide effective ground support, a dozen tiltrotors can’t transport a useful number of troops and gear, and four heavy lift helos can’t provide rapid, efficient heavy equipment transport.  Like most mixes, the air wing is a compromise that can do a little bit of everything but nothing well and ‘nothing well’ is not how you succeed in combat.  We’ve thoroughly analyzed the shortcomings of the LHx as regards aviation (see, “Aviation Amphibious Assault Ships”)  and provided the rationale for splitting off aviation from assault (see, “Separate Aviation FromAmphibious”) so I won’t belabor it any further, here.
  
The LHx came about because the Marines, institutionally terrified of being abandoned by the Navy (the Guadalcanal legacy) tried to combine the functions of both a carrier and an assault transport and, not surprisingly, managed to construct an unaffordable monstrosity that places too many eggs in one basket while performing neither function well.  So, why don’t we try separating the two functions into dedicated ships, each optimized for their role?  We previously discussed dedicated attack transports (see, “Attack Transport - APA”).
 
Having established the problems with an LHx and the rationale for separating the aviation and assault functions, let’s now consider what a dedicated amphibious assault aviation support ship (an assault carrier) would conceptually look like.
 
Focus – Separating the aviation component from assault allows us to eliminate the transport function leaving the carrier able to focus on ground attack/support.  This is crucial for a ship that will, hopefully, be substantially smaller than a full size carrier.
 
There is no need for transport helos.  They’re inefficient at their function and they’re non-survivable over a battlefield as amply demonstrated in Vietnam, Soviet Afghanistan, US Afghanistan, and elsewhere.  If we really think we need helos for some limited aspect of logistics support, we can easily provide a dedicated transport/cargo helo carrier by converting a merchant ship.
 
Aircraft – This is key to determining what an assault carrier would look like.  The choice of aircraft will determine the size and characteristics of the carrier.
 
Stealth aircraft are not needed and, indeed, stealth is largely useless when providing close range ground support (CAS).  The enemy can see you and the main threat is guns (ZSU-ish weapons) and small heat seeking, Stinger-type, shoulder launched anti-air missiles.  Radar stealth offers no benefit against either of those threats.
 
What is needed is an aircraft with the best possible combination of the following characteristics:
 

• Inexpensive so that appropriate numbers and replacements can be procured
• Armored for maximum airframe and pilot survivability
• Redundant and manual control systems enabling the aircraft to absorb tremendous amounts of damage
• Minimal IR signature to mitigate the main threat of Stinger-type missiles
• Minimal complexity which allows for easy repair/maintainability for excellent availability rates and combat damage repair
• Low maintenance per flight hour
• High sortie rates
• Excellent low speed maneuverability
• Minimal carrier operating requirements such as no, or simple, catapults and arresting gear
• Maximum number of weapons (hard points) as opposed to payload weight maximums.  In CAS, it’s far more useful to have a large number of weapons rather than a high payload weight.  To illustrate, it would be far more useful to have an aircraft with, say, ten weapon stations (hard points), each rated for a 500 lb bomb (5000 lb total payload) than an aircraft with four weapons, each rated for a 2000 lb (8000 lb total payload).

 
Having identified the desirable aircraft characteristics, let’s consider some candidate aircraft.
 
F-35B - The F-35B is often touted as a CAS aircraft but, in reality, is ill-suited for the ground attack/support role.  It is a large, fuel hogging, maintenance intensive, complex, non-damage resilient, limited hard point aircraft with staggeringly atrocious availability rates.  In addition, it is hideously expensive to procure and operate.
 
A-10 - The A-10 has many of the characteristics we’d like such as armor, redundant/manual flight controls, low maintenance, high sortie rates, and 11 weapon stations.  Of course, a naval version of the A-10 does not exist and would have to be developed.
 
F-16 – The F-16 is fairly maneuverable at moderately lower speeds but has only 6 (possibly 7?) weapon hard points and, like the A-10, does not exist as a carrier variant.  It also lacks any useful ground sensors, is unarmored, and lacks rugged, redundant controls.
 
A-1 Skyraider - A candidate you might not think of is the prop driven A-1 Skyraider.  It is incredibly simple (compared to a jet), free by current standards, easily maintainable and repairable (a wrench and duct tape), armored, highly maneuverable at low speeds, has very high availability rates, has 15 weapon stations, and can use simple catapults and arresting gear.  Further, it is a carrier aircraft and would need no development, whatsoever!
 
It is clear that high performance jets are not desirable for the aviation support role.  The best match to the desired aircraft characteristics is the A-1 Skyraider!  This, then, is the conceptual basis for an assault aircraft.  Having determined that, we can now focus on the design of the ship, itself.
 
Air Wing – Having chosen a conceptual aircraft, we now need to decide how many aircraft are needed in the air wing.  The answer, of course, is ‘as many as possible’.  Well, that’s not very helpful.  A better answer is that the number of aircraft is derived from a combination of factors such as the resultant carrier size/cost, combat effectiveness, dispersal of risk, etc.  A reasonable answer would seem to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 aircraft.  More than that and the carrier gets too large and costly.  Less than that and combat effectiveness drops precipitously.
 
Carrier – The first determination is whether we need a straight deck or angled deck.  Ideally, we’d like a straight deck, operated like WWII carrier, with no catapults and simple arresting gear.  If we could launch B-25’s off a Yorktown class carrier, I’d like to believe that we could design a Skyraider type aircraft that could launch unassisted.  Elimination of catapults would greatly reduce mechanical and utility (steam or electric) requirements which reduces the size and cost of the ship.  Assuming we can do this, we’ll be able to use a straight deck design which, again, reduces the size and cost of the ship.
 
As a point of reference, the US Navy WWII escort carriers were around 500 ft long and 10,000 – 20,000 tons with air wings of 30+ aircraft.  That seems like a good conceptual starting point for a design.
 
If we can keep the cost low enough, we can afford to build the carriers in sufficient numbers and be able to replace the inevitable losses of a vessel that is purposely placed in harm’s way.
 
The final consideration in this discussion is the fact that I don’t think there’s a strategic or operational need for amphibious assaults so the entire discussion is moot.  However, if we did want to maintain an amphibious capability, an assault carrier would be a step in the right direction though ultimately pointless without lots of large caliber naval guns.