Carrier Losses In War

USNI Blog has an article about carrier losses in a peer war and suggests that we should be prepared to lose around half within the first year (1).  The article goes on to suggest that we should be preparing to deal with replacement rates, environmental impact due to nuclear issues, and the impact of losses on subsequent combat operations.  This article jibes with a commonly held belief among many that carriers are highly vulnerable – essentially sitting ducks waiting to be sunk.

The problem with this article is that it looks at historical data and then projects the results to a modern war (with China, obviously, though the article does not specifically state that) without considering the circumstances of the historical data and the likelihood (or not) of those circumstances repeating themselves in a modern war with China.  This is the most cursory kind of analysis and leads, inevitably to incorrect conclusions.

The data is what it is.  The US Navy started WWII with 7 fleet carriers (I’m not counting Langley) and lost 4 of them in the first year of the war.  The article projects that loss rate to a modern war.  Is that a proper analysis?  Of course not!  Let’s look at the circumstances surrounding those WWII losses.  Here are a few key points.

• Because of Pearl Harbor, the US started the war with no viable battle fleet and had ONLY carrier groups to fight the Japanese.

• The Japanese were advancing rapidly across the Pacific.  If we did not stop their advance, we would lose all our forward bases.

• Initially, Japanese battle fleet ships and carriers outnumbered Navy forces significantly.

Thus, due to circumstances, we had no choice but to try to stop the Japanese advance when and where we could and the only naval assets available were the carriers and our fleets would always be outnumbered.  The carriers that we lost were expended stopping the Japanese advance at Coral Sea and Midway.

How is this relevant?  Our carriers were not lost at random.  They didn’t just spontaneously sink.  The Japanese didn’t methodically hunt them down and destroy them.  Quite the opposite.  We carefully husbanded our carriers and committed them to high risk, major battles as necessary to stop the Japanese advance.  In other words, we knowingly and intentionally put them in situations where they were at great risk of being sunk.  Of course, what they accomplished before sinking is legendary but that’s not the point of this post.

Unlike the expectation of so many carrier critics and unlike the implication in the USNI blog article, carriers don’t just spontaneously sink and an enemy has very little ability to find and attack a carrier that is not, itself, committed to battle.  We had no unexpected carrier losses in WWII.  If we had opted not to commit our carriers to high risk battles, we wouldn’t have lost any!  Of course, we would have had a much harder time winning the war.  Similarly, if we opt not to commit our carriers to a modern battle, we won’t lose any!  But, is that any way to fight and win a war?

This gets back to circumstances.  In WWII, we had no choice but to commit to high risk battles to stop the unchecked Japanese advance.  Consider, now, the circumstances of a war with China.  At least for the foreseeable future, it is highly unlikely that the Chinese will attempt a wholesale advance across the Pacific.  Thus, the pressing need to commit to high risk battles in a desperate bid to stop an advance won’t exist.  A war with China is, in the foreseeable future, going to start at, and be fought around, the periphery of the South China Sea, a relatively contained and small region.  There likely won’t be a need to commit to desperate, high risk battles.  Thus, there likely won’t be high carrier attrition.  We’ll be in a much better position to pick and choose our battles as opposed to WWII.  The circumstances, which the article chose not to consider, will be vastly different!

The one possible exception to this is the Taiwan scenario.  I’ve stated that in any war with China, Taiwan will be the first act.  If the US commits to an immediate, and strategically unwise, retaking of Taiwan then we may well be forced to commit carriers to a high risk battle.

Another circumstance that would be different in a war with China than WWII is the initial number of carriers and surface ships.  Because of Pearl Harbor, we started with a severe shortage of ships.  Barring a modern Pearl Harbor, we will start a war with China with twice the number of carriers and our full surface fleet.  This will allow us to form proper carrier task forces (neglecting that each carrier will have a vastly undersized air wing!) with robust AAW protection in the form of numerous Aegis escorts.

Yorktown Sinking

We see, then, that the circumstances are everything when it comes to carrier usage and potential losses.  Carriers will sink only if and when we commit them to high risk combat.  Thus, the article’s prediction of losing half our carrier force in the first year of combat is logically unfounded because it fails to account for circumstances.

Okay, so far I’ve criticized the article but I’ve got to be fair and note that it brings up some good points and raises some good questions.  The article makes clear that carrier losses are inevitable unless the carriers are simply withheld from combat which would then lead to the obvious question, why did we bother building them?  Thus, we have to accept the fact that losses will occur if we commit carriers to battle.  That’s not a bad thing, assuming they accomplish suitably worthy tasks before they’re lost – it’s just part of the attrition of war.  However, this, in turn, suggests that we ought to rethink the current cost of carriers.  Do we really want to spend $14B+ on ships that can and will be lost in combat?  Might it behoove us to simplify carrier design and construction and get that cost down to a level that we can afford to lose, however reluctantly?

The article also raises questions about our ability to replace lost carriers, the environmental impact of sunken nuclear ships, our plan for carrying on the war when don’t have as many carriers, etc.

As the article suggests, we need to be able to “quickly” replace lost carriers which means, again, that we need to simplify carrier design.  Perhaps we ought to be building conventional, non-nuclear, “basic” carriers especially in light of the diminished air wing sizes.  We certainly ought to begin qualifying at least one other shipyard to build carriers. 

The article also suggests that we need to begin planning for how to continue combat operations when don’t have as many carriers as needed.  We need to game out naval strategies that are not dependent on carriers.

In summary, although the article completely misses the most important factor in carrier losses – circumstances – it does raise important questions and issues that we need to address now.

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(1)United States Naval Institute blog, “What Is Old Is Old Again - We Will Lose Carriers, and That’s OK”, CDRSalamander, June 14, 2017,

https://blog.usni.org/posts/2017/06/14/russia-and-the-rebalance-of-great-power-the-us-navy-its-role-in-sea-control

F-22 And Attrition

A passing remark by a commenter on the SNAFU website prompted the realilzation that we have a potentially serious problem regarding our air superiority capability during war.  What’s the defining characteristic of war?  It’s attrition.  Men, ships, and aircraft will be destroyed.  The key is being able to replace them.

What aircraft is the key to our future air superiority?  It’s the F-22.  The military has repeatedly admitted that the F-35 is not an air superiority fighter.  Various Air Force generals have stated that the F-22 is needed for the F-35 to succeed in war.  Further, those same generals have stated that a single F-22 is equivalent to several F-35s.  I apologize, I don’t have the exact quotes at hand.

The F-22 is out of production.  In a war, where do we get new F-22s to replace those that are lost?  The only combat aircraft that the military wants to produce is the F-35 which the Air Force acknowledges is not an air superiority fighter.  As the F-22s are lost in combat, where do we get replacement air superiority fighters?

Protracted War

Cdr. Salamander has a blog post describing the similarities between 1914 and 2014 as regards the possibility of war and the attitudes prevalent then and now.  I won’t cite the article because I’m not going to use anything from it.  The topic merely sets the stage for this post. 

Many commenters dismiss the possibility of war with China.  The reasons are varied:  the Chinese are just friendly world neighbors, our countries are so interconnected economically that they would never risk a war, the devastation would be too great for a country as reasonable as China, our military is more powerful than the next [however many] militaries combined so China would never attempt a war, and so on.

Of course, history suggests that many of the same reasons for the unlikeliness of war were put forth prior to every war ever fought – and yet they were fought.

Well, fine, many of these commenters sniff and snort, if war does come we’ll win, of course.  This, despite the fact that we have nowhere near the quantities of munitions, ships, planes, etc. to wage a protracted war – and there’s absolutely nothing to suggest that war with China will be short.  Not to be discouraged, the commenters simply state that we’ll build more ships and planes and munitions and whatever else we need to compensate for attrition.  After all, we did it in WWII so we’ll do it again.

Unfortunately, this could not be more wrong.

Unlike the pre-WWII era when we had dozens of major shipyards already in existence, we currently only have a few.  Likewise, the labor force has dwindled to just those few. 

No problem.  We’ll just build new shipyards and hire new workers.

This isn’t even remotely in the realm of reality.  Shipyards capable of building modern ships don’t just spring up overnight.  Even more limiting, the labor to build ships doesn’t exist today.  The basic welding, pipefitting, and electrical skills no longer exist to anywhere near the degree they used to.  We’ve farmed much of our skilled manufacturing labor out to foreign countries.  High schools have largely abandoned vocational education programs in favor of the every-child-must-attend-college-or-be-deemed-a-failure philosophy.  The pool of skilled labor just doesn’t exist and it can’t be reconstituted overnight.

Even if the shipyards and skilled labor could be magically created in a useful time frame, the more serious shortcoming is the dependence of modern ships, systems, and munitions on computer chips.  Computer chips are already in short supply with periodic shortages a current reality.  Ominously, computer chip manufacturing facilities are extremely complex and take years to build.  If welders, electricians, and pipefitters are in short supply, the supply of computer chip engineers and technicians is even more limited. 

In short, we would have no hope of ramping up ship, aircraft, and munition production in under five years and probably longer, much longer.  While it’s a truism that war is a come as you are affair, future war will probably be a “fight with what you have because you aren’t getting any more”, affair.  ComNavOps has already pointed out that numbers is the most important factor in winning a war and this inability to replace attrition makes numbers even more important.

An extension of the attrition and lack of replacement issue is that victory may come down to numbers of second rate assets.  Think about it.  Once both sides have blown up each other’s top of the line assets they’ll be fighting with second rate assets and whoever has more will likely win.  That reserve fleet that the US refuses to maintain because, in part, the ships are hopelessly outclassed by modern standards, may turn out to be the highest tech still functioning after the initial stages of war.  That entire class of Spruances that we sent to the bottom of the sea might look awfully good after the Burkes are destroyed.  Those old supercarriers that we’re scrapping might be the class of the world at some point.

Consider that the US used WWII gravity bombs as recently as the Desert Storm conflict and we were lucky we had them in storage.  Where is today’s vast storage of low tech munitions that we can call on in a pinch in the future?

The Navy has made the conscious decision to travel the path of quality over quantity.  For a short term conflict that’s a viable path.  For a protracted war that’s the path to defeat.

In Harm's Way

Our recent discussions about amphibious assault have highlighted a characteristic of the Navy that is a bit disappointing and that is the unwillingness to accept any degree of risk in combat.  In fact, it’s gotten to the point where it’s becoming codified in the form of doctrine.  Put simply, the Navy has become risk averse to the point where safety and preservation of assets has taken precedence over mission accomplishment.  Let’s look at some specific examples.

The Navy has decided that they can’t operate even remotely near an enemy shore.  This shows as a doctrinal move from horizon distance amphibious assaults to 25 nm - 50 nm or even greater.  Of course, as we’ve discussed, these kinds of distances have hamstrung the ability of the Marine/Navy team to conduct a successful amphibious assault. 

In fact, the Navy has gone so far as to design an entire LCS class around the concept that the blue water Navy couldn’t operate in littoral waters.  The littoral zone (whatever distance that is) is now accepted by the Navy as a forbidden area due to the threat of land launched anti-ship cruise missiles.

The Navy appears to have ceded the A2/AD challenge to the Chinese without a shot being fired.  The Navy now implicitly recognizes that they can’t operate within the A2/AD zone.  This is evidenced by the overwhelming focus on BMD.  Of course, the issue is not that they can’t operate but that they won’t.  They won’t risk ship losses and so they strive for a mythical and unachievable perfect defense that will allow them to operate in the zone.

At its most basic level, war is attrition.  To win, you have to inflict attrition on the enemy to the point where it becomes unacceptable to him and he quits.  The corollary to that is that you have to be willing to accept attrition of your own forces in order to accomplish your goals.  That doesn’t mean behaving recklessly but neither does it mean being so risk averse that you can’t or won’t accept losses.

If you want to conduct a successful amphibious assault you have to move to horizon range and accept some losses.  If you want to ensure no losses then you can stand 200 nm offshore but your assault will fail.

If you want to operate in the restricted waters of the Middle East during a war then you have to accept some losses.

If you want to press a war with China then you have to enter the A2/AD zone (long range blockade strategies not withstanding) and accept some losses.

Why has the Navy developed this risk aversion and what can be done about it?

The why is easy to answer.  The Navy has opted for a force structure that is continually shrinking while the individual ships are getting bigger, more expensive, and more capable.  In other words, we’re concentrating more and more firepower in fewer and fewer hulls.  We have so much money and capability tied up in each hull that the loss of one borders on catastrophic.  No wonder we’re risk averse! 

Consider the amphibious assault issue.  Aegis, and now AMDR, was designed specifically to deal with swarms of supersonic cruise missiles.  Yet now we’re refusing to approach an enemy’s shore closer than 50 – 100 nm because of the presence of anti-ship missiles.  Why are we spending a bazillion dollars on Aegis/AMDR ships if we don’t think they can stand in close and fight they way they’re designed?  Why are we spending billions on new amphibious ships that are going to stand so far off shore that we can’t conduct a successful amphibious assault which is their reason for being?

We have got to turn this trend around and the only way to do so is to stop concentrating so much capital and firepower in each hull.  We need to revert to a much more distributed firepower force structure.  We need greater numbers of less capable hulls.

I’m not arguing against having any highly capable ships.  There’s nothing wrong with having some highly capable ships that can act as the core of a group.  We just can’t have every ship be a very expensive, highly capable platform.  We can’t afford that approach, it’s gutting our fleet numbers, and it’s imposing a culture of risk aversion that conflicts with mission accomplishment.

AirSea Battle Failings



AirSea Battle Report from the CSBA

Much has been made about the AirSea Battle document produced by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.  For those of you who are only casually familiar with it, the AirSea Battle (ASB) describes the scope and impact of Chinese Anti-Access/Area Denial (AA/AD) capabilities and attempts to provide a battle strategy for countering it.  The document does a fairly nice job of the former by providing a fairly explicit description of Chinese capabilities, objectives, and methods and for this reason alone the ASB is worth reading.  Unfortunately, the ASB fails to deliver on the latter.  The battle strategy is deficient on two counts, one practical and one conceptual. 

Again, for those less familiar with it, the ASB’s strategy envisions a two stage process whereby the Chinese capabilities are sequentially countered and then methodically rolled back during a period of prolonged combat.  The rollback will allow the Navy to operate closer and closer to China (the location of most of the U.S. military objectives, of course) over time.  The rollback phase is deemed necessary since the U.S. military, and Navy in particular, have only limited range weapons and must achieve a certain level of “closeness” in order to employ their weapons.  This is, essentially a war of attrition.

Thus, the ASB’s first failing becomes apparent.  In a war of attrition, the side with the most, wins.  Setting aside the adverse public reaction to a war of attrition and the resulting lack of support, the U.S. military does not have sufficient numbers of planes, ships, weapons, or people to successfully engage in a war of attrition.  While the U.S. may maintain a technological superiority enabling it to achieve a favorable kill ratio, the end result will be depletion of U.S. forces to a point where “victory” becomes impossible. 

The U.S. military has recognized since WWII that mutual attrition is not a desirable strategy.  Every battle doctrine and strategy since then has emphasized selective concentration of forces, maneuver, stand-off engagement, and so forth for the express purpose of achieving victory without mutual attrition.  To return to a strategy of attrition, especially against a numerically superior enemy is both simplistic and impractical.

Besides, what’s the point?  Is the purpose of a rollback strategy of attrition to kill every person in China?  Of course not.  But what, then, is the point of the rollback strategy?  This question reveals the second and most serious failing of the ASB.  It does not define what victory is.  What end result or set of conditions constitutes victory?  A certain number of people killed?  A certain level of degradation of Chinese military capability?  A level of destruction of industrial capability sufficient to ensure that the Chinese military can’t be rebuilt within a given time frame?  A simple return to pre-war boundaries?  What? 

ASB itself seems to recognize its own failing to certain degree with the statement, “As a doctrine for the operational level of war, AirSea Battle should not be seen as a “war-winning” concept in itself.”  Fair enough but if the authors don’t see their own strategy as “war-winning” then what is its purpose?

Without a definition of victory the suggested strategy has no frame of reference against which to measure its value.  This is analogous to describing how to throw a baseball.  Interesting in and of itself but without knowing the context the value is limited.  Is the throwing for the purpose of playing catch in the backyard?  Playing professional baseball?  The answer will determine the intensity of the effort, the amount of time that should be spent learning the skill, and the ultimate degree of skill required.

So, too, with a strategy of rollback.  To what purpose is it being applied?  To what degree and level of completion must it be taken?  If we know the victory conditions we can begin to make assessments of the amount and type of weapons that will be needed.  Without the victory conditions we can only describe vague generalities about warfare – and that is exactly what the ASB winds up doing. 

Now, having criticized the ASB, let me turn around and briefly praise it for what it does well.  It presents a though-provoking description of Chinese objectives, strategies, and weapons.  It’s a good start for a further, serious discussion of the issue.  To be fair to the authors, the title itself recognizes this, “AirSea Battle, A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept”.  Unfortunately, too many people within the Navy seem to believe that ASB is a complete and finished work of strategy.  It’s not and I’m waiting for someone to take the next step and define victory and begin matching strategy and force structure to the victory conditions.  Hmmm…..  sounds like another post about to happen!

For those interested, here's the link to the actual AirSea Battle document.