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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

US Navy Aircraft Carriers Are Waddling Ducks - By Laurence F. Sanford

Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Categories: ASCF News National Preparedness ASCF Articles

Comments: 1

By ASCF Senior Analyst Laurence F. Sanford
May 27, 2022

commons.wikimedia.org

The United States Navy’s aircraft carrier battle groups are “waddling ducks” for missile, drone, and laser guided bomb attacks from hostile powers such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and other nation states inimical to the United States. The Navy should scrap aircraft carriers and put the money into submarines and missile/drone launching platforms.

The aircraft carrier group is analogous to the Maginot Line of France in 1938. Technology that worked in the past does not mean it will work in the future. Aircraft carriers in World War II replaced the battleships of World War I. Missiles will replace aircraft carriers in World War III.

Billions of French francs were spent in the 1930’s building fortifications along the German border to stop a German invasion as was done in World War I. Unfortunately, France did not construct fortifications along the Belgium border. Thus German tanks rolled through Belgium and were soon in Paris.

An American nuclear carrier battle group represents well over twenty billion dollars in construction costs and seven thousand Navy personnel. A new Ford class carrier costs over thirteen billion dollars. Add the cost of airplanes at fifty million dollars each plus supporting destroyers and supply ships plus personnel and supplies, twenty billion dollars is a conservative cost estimate.

In the World War II Pacific theater, planes from aircraft carriers were the delivery mechanisms of destruction to battleships, aircraft carriers, other ships and military installations. Near the end of World War II, a glimpse of the missile future was displayed when the Japanese deployed kamikaze (divine wind) suicide planes, acting as no return missiles, against American ships with devastating effect. In the 1982 Falklands War between the UK and Argentina, French-made Exocet missiles used by Argentina sank two and damaged a third British warship. In the current Ukraine/Russia war, two Ukrainian made Neptune missiles sank the Russian cruiser Moskva.

Defenders of the carrier strategy claim that carriers are mobile and therefore difficult for missile systems to locate. With each passing day, space based technologies can better pinpoint carrier locations and hypersonic missiles can be on target in minutes. Submarines and fishing boats can also pinpoint carrier locations. Carriers may not be “sitting ducks” but 30 knot evasive maneuvers (waddling) will not work against hypersonic missiles.

China began deploying the “carrier-killer” DF-26 ballistic missile in 2016. With a range of 3000 miles and capable of carrying either a conventional or nuclear warhead, it effectively nullifies aircraft carriers in the western Pacific. Taiwan can not depend upon US carriers to defend it. The missiles can also reach Guam with its extensive US military bases. China has and continues to conduct DF-26 missile testing in the Taklamakan Desert, in Xinjiang, with mock Navy ship targets and port facilities.

Defenders of the carrier strategy claim that carriers have defensive capabilities that will nullify incoming attacks. This may be true for a few incoming missiles but doubtful if 100 missiles are incoming. The Russian cruiser Moskva was a sophisticated missile carrying ship and yet just two missiles took her down. The Chinese will not launch one or two missiles.

An aircraft carrier’s entire purpose is to project air power off-shore. It is basically a floating mobile airfield that can be sunk with missiles. Aircraft have diminishing effectiveness with the development and deployment of new anti-aircraft missile systems.

The Navy needs to allocate its resources towards platforms that have high survivability such as submarines and low cost such as drones and missile carrying converted merchant ships with double hulls. Diesel electric submarines, costing $500 million each, should be included in the mix. A nuclear attack submarine costs $5 billion. For the price of one nuclear submarine, the Navy can have ten diesel electric submarines with near nuclear capabilities. Numbers matter and the Navy’s mission requirements are stretched to the breaking point with present limited ships and resources.

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  1. Jack Lee Jack Lee Good analysis of the increasing obsolescence of carriers. Diesel electric submarines surely have a role. One fleet ballistic missile submarine (FBMS), of which the U.S. acknowledges having 14, carries 18 Trident missiles, each with 12 independently targetable nuclear warheads. One Trident can make a 300 square mile footprint in a target country and the missile has an acknowledged range of 3000 miles. Our adversaries know that FBMSs are constantly on patrol in every ocean. This knowledge has to give them pause. Monday, July 11, 2022