Obsolete weapons

In The Future of War: Power, Technology & American World Dominance in the 21st Century, by George and Meredith Friedman (see book list on sidebar, 1996), the authors trace the lifecycle of new weapons, from their first appearance on the battlefield when they are a game-changer, to their eventual obsolescence when it costs far more to defend them than they are worth. Airplanes, tanks and aircraft carriers have all been through this cycle. 100 million dollar fighter planes can now be destroyed by a cheap shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile like the US Stinger or the Russian Strela-3 missiles. 50 ton tanks can easily be put out of action by cheap shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles, as the Israelis learned to their cost in the recent war in Lebanon.

In the case of a aircraft carrier, today’s aircraft carrier carries about the same combat power that a World War II carrier carried, in terms of deliverable bomb load, but now requires a full fleet of dozens of escort ships and submarines to protect it. We currently have 11 “battle groups”, as a carrier and its accompanying escort ships are called, and while extraordinarily expensive to build and run, they have proved useful in recent years supporting air power against minor opponents.

But they are no longer of any real use against serious opponents like China or Russia. Against serious opponents, one might as well just paint a bull-eye on the carrier, and so we probably ought to begin to think of a new way to project US sea power around the world.

The French Exocet anti-ship missile that caused such havoc among the British ships in the Falkland War with Argentina has been followed by a variety of improved designs, such as the Chinese Silkworm missile. And US ships have struggled to build effective defenses against such threats, including the AEGIS combat system with its SPY-1 air-defense radar, and the Phalanx Close-in Ship Defense Guns, which spew a stream of radar-guided depleted-uranium slugs into the path of an oncoming missile.

But now there are two weapons in the world which probably finally make carriers obsolete. One is the new Chinese DongFeng 21D missile, which can reach out and strike a carrier 1500 or more miles from shore.

The other threat is the Russian-made VA-111 Shkval hypersonic torpedo (also being worked on by Iran), which rides within a vacuum bubble caused by hypersonic caviation at speeds reported to be in excess of 200 knots (220 mph), and could strike a carrier from 20 miles distance.

Both are in the final stages of development, and will no doubt be deployed within a few years, if they aren’t already in the field. Both cost many orders of magnitude less than the aircraft carriers they can destroy.

The question is, how soon will the US Navy rethink its approach. Historically military forces have been slow to recognize and adapt to significant changes like this. No doubt the US is working on similar weapons, and may even be ahead of the Russians and Chinese in their development, but in any case they certainly make the expensive carrier group, whether US or foreign, obsolete against serious opponents.