Today, the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy is undoubtedly the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, a hugely expensive but immensely flexible asset that can turn its hands with some success to almost every naval role imaginable. Indeed their versatility is the stuff of legend, prompting the popular claim that whenever a crisis erupts in some distant part of the world, the first thing on everyone’s lips is “Where is the nearest Carrier?” With such accolades, it may be difficult to imagine a time in the future when this power projection ability can no longer be guaranteed, but recent developments in surface warfare and air warfare are hinting that that time may not be too far off. The problem has essentially two parts: First, the radius of action of the offensive piece of the carrier’s arsenal, the air wing, has been allowed to decline with successive generations of tactical aircraft. Today, the commonly-quoted figure of around five hundred nautical miles is about half that of an equivalent air wing in the 1960s. Second, the new developments in precision anti-ship weaponry, most notably the Chinese DF-21D “carrier-killing” ballistic missile, promise effective ranges of roughly double this figure.

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While many may question the accuracy and targeting system of ballistic missiles, even modern, anti-ship cruise missiles such as those fielded by Russia and China, are fast approaching engagement ranges that would be very restricting to effective carrier operations offshore. While these operating constraints are probably the most important, they are not the only ones bedeviling carrier operations. Wildly escalating costs, both in procurement and operation, and the proliferation of less expensive delivery systems for precision ordnance may combine to make the naval aviation option less attractive in the longer term. In the words of one author, “If the fleet were designed today, with the technologies now available and the threats now emerging, it would likely look very different from the way it actually looks now.”

Voices of concern are one thing, but navies are nothing if not conservative in their outlook. The United States has invested heavily in carriers since the World War II and, like the battleship navy before it, the resulting culture and infrastructure within the service is unlikely to go quietly. Nor might such a drastic step even be necessary. In that war, carriers fought other carriers in order to gain sea control for their fleets. In effect, they were simply continuing the essential rationale for navies since their inception: namely that the nation that can put together the best-handled fleet with the most powerful (and longest range) weapons would likely prevail. The advent of the aircraft at sea offered an offensive capability and power over ranges that the gunners could not match and, at the same time, it completely invalidated the surface torpedo threat. It’s a small wonder then that within a few years the once omnipotent battleships had been re-tasked to fleet air defense and fire support missions, leaving the business of sea control to be fought over by carrier groups hundreds of miles apart.

Nothing stands still, however, and with the demise of the Soviet naval threat at the beginning of the 1990s, there was realistically no other naval power that could compete with the naval forces of the Western alliance. As a result, the U.S. Navy has busied itself with projecting power over land in support of the joint force. A whole generation of institutional doctrine has sprung up to provide for this mission and today the projection of power over land seems almost the “sine qua non” for the entire service. Central to this evolution has been a steady decline in the combat power of the group of ships accompanying the carrier, the so-called “Carrier Strike Group” (CSG). With no appreciable air, surface and sub-surface threats to contend with, the number of escorts has diminished; today, the numbers of aircraft embarked fall far short of the actual capacity of the carrier itself. Has the U.S. Navy allowed itself to be lulled into a false sense of security by all these years of dealing with second or third-rate naval threats? In the words of James Holmes, “the CSG is a concept designed for safe seas,” however, things have moved on yet again in the last two decades and today’s seas seem far from safe. As Holmes explains, and in the face of a much more competent naval threat, there is at least an argument that would have the CSG’s mission focused once again on the business of sea control.

The aim of this article is to outline some reasonably low cost measures that ought to be taken now to begin this process of readjustment. It will do this by developing Holmes’s ideas a little further: first, by examining the growing anti-ship missile threat in a little more detail and then by proposing that, even in its current, short-range configuration, with only minor modifications, the carrier air wing can still present a formidable counter in the anti-ship role. Since the Russian Anti-Ship Cruise Missile (ASCM) threat is arguably the most mature and in the interests of brevity, our examination will be confined to these systems but it is important to appreciate that parallels can, and no doubt should, be drawn with similar capabilities being developed in the Chinese Navy.

The Russian Anti-Ship Missile Threat

Most experts agree that the main vulnerability of an aircraft carrier group in contested waters stems mainly from the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated ASCM’s, both ashore and afloat. If these are combined with modern, capable surface and sub-surface launch platforms, then the result may impose significant limitations on the U.S. Navy’s ability to project power ashore. There are two potential ways in which ASCM’s could be used to achieve this goal. First, they can be combined with other, shore-based anti-ship weapons to form a part of a strong, layered defense, specifically designed to make any attack from the sea a prohibitively costly endeavor. Few countries are capable of coordinating such a threat, although Russia and China have both demonstrated their capabilities and intentions to do just this as a part of their broader maritime strategy.

The second method is essentially tactical and relies more on mass and coordination. A synchronous deployment of surface ships and potentially submarines armed with suitable ASCM’s that can be fired in salvos, could potentially overwhelm a western group’s air defenses with repeated, multi-directional attacks by swarms of missiles that can fly at supersonic, and potentially hypersonic, speeds. This situation could be compounded by profiles that have the missiles perform evasive maneuvers in the terminal stage of flight. Essentially, the implications are that an expensive asset, such as a nuclear aircraft carrier, might be successfully deterred, rendered mission incapable, or even destroyed by much smaller and cheaper warships, provided the latter are armed with sufficiently sophisticated ASCM’s.

In effect, this is nothing more than a modern version of the French Jeune Ecole naval strategy of the 1880’s, which proposed that swarms of small, inexpensive torpedo craft might effectively deter or counter the British battleship blockade strategy. The theory went that the Royal Navy would likely be unwilling to risk the loss of their very expensive battleships under these circumstances and thus it offered the French a chance to compete with a maritime superpower for a fraction of the expenditure. The parallels with the Russian use of corvettes today are marked, but theoretically any country with sufficient number of ASCM’s, domestically produced or imported, might be able to deploy them in such a way that a sophisticated group of warships would be faced with potentially devastating losses. Could today’s ASCM threat do to the aircraft carrier what the torpedoes (and later, carrier-borne airplanes) did to the battleship?

Russia is perhaps the leading non-Western producer and exporter of ship-borne, anti-ship cruise missiles. Like the Jeune Ecole before them, it seems that the Russian naval planners interpret their country’s strides in missile development as an opportunity to blunt the power-projecting capabilities of the U.S. Navy without having to spend the money and effort necessary to build a balanced naval force. Specifically, they are proposing to employ a combination of new, ASCM-equipped frigates and corvettes backed up by submarines and a few old cruisers acting as quasi-Arsenal ships, as a force that can challenge the US naval power projection capability in areas the Russians deem essential.

Long-range cruise missiles and ASM’s have been in the Russian navy's arsenal for some time, but were not fired in anger until October 7, 2015, when four light frigates and corvettes of the Caspian flotilla fired twenty six 3M-54 Kalibr missiles at targets in Syria, about a thousand miles away. In 2016 and the first six months of 2017, cruise missiles have been launched on several occasions against Syrian ground-based targets from a variety of platforms which have included both surface ships and submarines, all deployed in the Mediterranean. The multiplicity of platforms essentially served to demonstrate that the Kalibr missile could be fired from any surface ship that could accommodate a vertical launch shaft. All the ships that took part had the eight-shaft clusters of the universal vertical-launch system (VLS). More importantly in operational terms, the launches demonstrated that the Russian navy now possesses a long-range precision strike capability against poorly defended stationary targets. Naturally, the state media made the most of this propaganda coup, erroneously claiming in many cases that the precision guidance and thousand mile range of the Kalibr could give the Russian Navy an edge over a U.S. carrier group.

This of course was an artificial conflation of two entirely different systems. What is loosely called the “Kalibr,” is actually a family of 3M-54 missiles with both land attack and ASM variants, including reduced-performance export variants. The land-attack variant is reported to have a range of about 1,500 miles and uses an inertial guidance system combined with the Glonass Russian satellite navigation system to deliver a 990-pound warhead. They are subsonic and although they can have a terrain-following mode, their en-route altitude is around 150–500 feet making them susceptible to modern air defenses. This was the variant used against targets in Syria. The ASM variant is different. It carries a 440-pound warhead over distances of between 150 and four hundred miles. It, too, is subsonic, but flies at a sea-skimming altitude of around fifteen feet, making it very hard to detect even for modern shipborne radars. It is reported to be able to perform evasive maneuvers in the terminal phase and one variant at least had a rocket-propelled warhead that separates and accelerates to Mach 2.9 in the final stages of its flight. The other main family of ASCMs are the P-800 Oniks, a dedicated ASM with a wholly supersonic flight profile. Oniks carries a 250-pound warhead over distances of up to 370 miles (reduced, if in sea-skimming mode) and can travel at around Mach 2.5. Significantly, Oniks can share the same, eight-shaft Universal VLS with Kalibr and therefore, theoretically at least, can be fielded by the same small, corvette-sized platforms, although the targeting will necessarily be a joint effort with other, more sophisticated sensors.

What should be noted here though is that, in order to mount a credible ASCM threat, the launch platform for either missile will have to close to within approximately four hundred miles of its intended target. Therefore, even with the reduced ranges of the modern air wing, there should be significant opportunity for a well-handled carrier-group to intercept the launching ship before any missiles are released. The key, of course, will be an ability to detect the defending ships at long range and an ability to overcome their air defenses.

Launch Platforms and Air Defenses

The Admiral Gorshkov class frigates represent the only type of modern, ocean-going warships projected to enter the Russian navy in the near future. When the first ship of the class was laid down in 2006, some reports suggested that the number built might eventually be as high as fifteen. While those numbers have likely been curtailed significantly, this class, or ships very like them are expected to become the mainstay of the new Russian fleet. Fully 4,500 tons in displacement, the ships have two eight-shaft vertical launch systems compatible with both Kalibr and Oniks missiles. They also have a modern air defense capability, the “Poliment-Redut complex” which is based around a naval version of the S-350 Vityaz medium range missile, capable of engaging low-flying targets. Of the four ships so far laid down, only one, the Admiral Gorshkov, is undergoing sea trials. The rest are awaiting replacements for their propulsion plants which were originally ordered from a Ukrainian supplier and had not been completed prior to the introduction of the arms embargo in 2014. Russian engine maker UEC-Saturn has been commissioned to design new engines for the ships, but these will likely not be available before 2018.

Apart from the main engines, there have been numerous other teething troubles. Admiral Gorshkov has demonstrated issues with the integration of its weapons systems and sensor arrays, as well as with individual weapon systems themselves, including the Poliment-Redut complex. At the same time, the inability of subcontractors to supply component parts on schedule has led to cascading delays in construction. It is likely that these problems, which remain unresolved ten years after the construction of the lead ship started, will surface repeatedly with the remaining ships of the class. This sort of thing raises doubt in Russia’s overall ability to produce modern blue water warships.

As a direct result of these delays, and to fill an emerging gap in its surface fleet, the navy has ordered six smaller and simpler frigates, based on the older Krivak design and its Indian Talwar development. At four thousand tons full displacement, the Admiral Grigorovich has an endurance and seaworthiness comparable with the Gorshkov class. Significantly however they only carry a single, eight-shaft, vertical launch system and their air defenses are based on an older Shtil-1 medium-range complex, the navalized version of the Buk M1-2, whose capability to engage multiple low-flying targets is inferior to the Redut complexes. Two of the Grigorovich class have been commissioned, one is finishing sea trials, and three others are waiting for engines, as with the Gorshkov’s.

It is unlikely that the long-term rearmament program will find the funds to order the troublesome Gorshkov class beyond the four currently under construction, while the Grigorovich class is likely to remain limited to just six ships. However, if all the frigates of both classes now under construction are completed, the navy will have 112 launch tubes for modern ASMs on ten platforms with adequate air defenses. Adequate however, does not mean optimal. Should these frigates face an adversary capable of overcoming their medium range air defenses while staying outside the range of their ASMs, their role will be limited at best.

Elsewhere the old, heavy missile cruiser Piotr Velikiy will soon join its sister ship, Admiral Nakhimov at the Sevmash shipyard for major upgrades. Both ships, at twenty-eight thousand tons displacement and with nuclear-propulsion plants, are old, Soviet-era, Kirov class, heavy missile cruisers, laid down in the early to mid-1980’s. They are expected to receive a new armament of ten eight-shaft vertical-launch systems for ASMs, likely compatible with both Kalibr and P-800 Oniks missiles. More importantly, their air defenses will be upgraded to the navalized version of the S-400 Triumpf missile complex, the latest anti-aircraft weapon in the Russian arsenal. If the claims of ranges of up to 150 miles and an ability to engage multiple low-flying targets hold true, the new system will make the old cruisers the best-protected ships in the Russian navy. Meanwhile, the sole remaining aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, another Soviet-era ship, is also being upgraded, to include the installation of Kalibr/Oniks missile launchers. When these upgrades are completed, the navy will have added more than 160 cruise missile launchers to its strength. More importantly, each firing unit will be protected by strong air defenses.

Way Ahead for the U.S. Navy

While the surface ship ASM threat has grown significantly over the last two decades, it is not insurmountable. The situation is certainly no worse than it was during the Cold War in the 1970s, and back then, the U.S. Navy was able to counter the Soviet missile threat by using a combination of both technological overmatch and aggressive doctrine. Even if today’s Russian systems achieve their promised performance, they will undoubtedly be hampered by a lack of launching platform numbers and this can offer opportunities. For example, even if both heavy cruisers are refitted, which is still by no means certain, this would likely give the Russians a maximum of two, deployable ASM groups, consisting of one heavy missile cruiser and two frigate escorts each. In these situations, historical parallels would indicate that only one of these groups would likely be operational at any one time, with the other either refitting or undergoing training. This amounts to a maximum of around one hundred missile tubes per group. While still a formidable threat, the opportunity for separate axis coordinated attacks is necessarily limited, since the air defense needs will likely keep the ships fairly close to one another. This greatly simplifies the problem for the United States in both locating and countering such a group.

On the material front, the United States has a variety of systems under development to mitigate specific threats and these will likely improve with time. New cyber and counter-space capabilities may enable the degradation of space-based ISR and over-the-horizon targeting, while technical counters are undoubtedly underway in order to defeat the individual missile sensors themselves. This is one approach, but it needs to be recognized that it is invariably easier to neutralize a given ASM threat by dealing with the launch platform at range—and before it has launched any missiles—than it is to defend against the incoming missiles themselves. To this end, the long-awaited LRASM and a revival of the anti-ship variant of the Tomahawk will go a long way to improve the fleet’s offensive reach.

However, given that procurement is often beyond service control, are there any immediate, organizational and institutional measures that the U.S. Navy might take now, in order to set the service on the right path for the future? We believe the answer to that question is “yes.” In fact, in many ways the greatest rewards come ultimately from the institutional changes that a service makes in support of any new technology it may receive. One need only consider the 1930s adoption of BlitzKrieg by Nazi Germany as a classic example of this. In this light, the recently released, unclassified version of the “Littoral Operations in Contested Environments (LOCE)” represents an encouraging and valuable first step, recognizing as it does that the long-range ASM threat has made effective sea denial far more likely. Significantly however, its focus is limited to shore-based systems, and the need to clear these with marines before power projection can begin in earnest. This is only a part of the problem.

Against the sea-based ASM threat, the only weapon in the current naval inventory with the necessary range advantage is a properly cued, ASM-equipped aircraft. Thus, the first and most important change has to be the emphasis of the carrier’s mission. The current focus on strike warfare needs to be adjusted in favor of an emphasis on gaining sea control and dealing with the burgeoning ASUW (ASM) threat. In short, the carrier needs to go back to its historic “Eyes of the Fleet” role. Its primary mission should be that of finding the enemy vessels and dealing with them at long range, just as it was when the large fleet carrier concept was originally conceived in the 1930s. The difference today however is that this will likely involve both anti-surface and anti-submarine measures, but the carrier is eminently qualified on both fronts. The key will be in the ability of naval aircraft to overcome the S-400-level air defenses. There is no “silver bullet” here either; success will come from an informed use of stealth technology, ESM and cyber as well as more proactive SEAD measures.

Organizationally speaking, the “modest measures” that Holmes outlines in his argument to return to the “Carrier Battlegroup” level of organization, need to be implemented. As he explains, the air wings need to be gradually brought back up to their earlier strength and more escorts need to be attached to the carrier for longer than is currently common practice. In addition though, the overall level of surface warfare knowledge resident in the carrier- and air-wing staffs needs to be dramatically improved. For far too long the finer details of strike and air group management have received undue prominence at the expense of traditional naval warfighting skills and this trend needs to be reversed. The Carrier Air Group Commander (CAG) is the appropriate source of air warfare management information, but this need not necessarily extend into other areas of the upper leadership. In other words there is no reason why, in this era of joint education, a modern carrier could not be commanded by a Surface Warfare specialist officer (SWO). He would still have access to the most up-to-date air warfare knowledge through his CAG and the Squadron CO’s, but his deeper understanding of the surface warfare modus operandi of the carrier and her escorts would give a much needed boost to the on-board credibility of the ASUW mission. Carrier staffs should also have additional billets for SWO-qualified officers so as to bring enhanced ASUW expertise to the battle-staff watch-keepers.

The key ultimately will be in the cultural and institutional change that can be engineered over the longer term. As Holmes explains, there needs to be “messaging and branding,” both internally and externally. Changing the group’s title will be for naught if this is not followed up by a concerted effort from within the service to emphasize the primacy of “Sea Control” as an overall prerequisite in naval warfare. Everything the Navy works and trains for should have this as the ultimate goal. Above all, the SWO community needs to embrace, internalize, practice and teach the contribution that the carrier group can make to the sea control mission. Well-managed “War at Sea” exercises need to be reinstituted at every CSG meeting. However, the vital first step is to change the way the institution thinks.

Repurposing the carriers to meet the challenge of surface ship-based ASMs will only take place if the Service itself believes in—and is prepared to advocate for—such a shift. This is because the all-important human dimension needs to be energized and mobilized to address the many problems that will undoubtedly arise, and this will only happen if they collectively share the necessary incentive to succeed. Developing and advocating for the appropriate doctrinal shifts is a vital precursor to this acceptance, as it will begin the process of debate and experimentation that will ultimately fuel the necessary innovation. With national attention slowly turning towards fleet recapitalization, there is not a moment to lose.

Angus Ross is a Professor of Joint Military Operations at the Naval War College and something of an amateur historian, while Andrew Savchenko writes on political risk in the post-Soviet space and teaches Economy and Society at RISD. The views expressed here are theirs alone.

Image: Reuters.