WI: CVLs for the modern U.S. Navy

With a late- to post-Cold War POD, is it possible to have the U.S. Navy go for a light carrier design [1] instead of continuing production of the Nimitz-class (and later the Ford-class) flattops? The way I see it, going for light carriers will save a lot of money while retaining credible power projection capability.

[1] By "light carrier" I mean something around 55,000 - 60,000 tons. Quite larger than a true "light" carrier, but nowhere near supercarrier territory.

Marc A

If you make it fast enough, it could be sold as some sort of rapid response vehicle. It can deliver a couple squadrons of Lightning IIs to the hot zone in half the time....

The idea pops up every so often, and the main objection I've heard is based on the size of the airgroup. If I remember correctly, it goes something like this: as tonnage increases, the number of aircraft that can be carried rises dramatically but the cost of the hull rises much more slowly. So a small increase in the cost of the ship can result in a massive increase in the power of that ship. Compare the Invincible-class carriers with the USS Midway: three ships of 22,000 tonnes each, each carrying 22 aircraft. The USN carrier weighs 45,000 tons, but has an airgroup of 65 - about the same displacement as 2 of the smaller carriers, but an airgroup almost 3 times the size. Given that you can only have so many carriers, it makes sense to want each one to be as useful as possible.

The real expense for a carrier, of course, is the airgroup - a few thousand more tons of steel is expensive, but cheap compared to the cost of another squadron of carrier aircraft, their crews and support personnel, etc.

That was actually an idea that the Carter administration repeatedly tried to push without much success (see the CVV & T-CBL studies of the 1970s if you have access to Friedman's volume on carriers)- basically it's a false economy, as not only will these ships require the same number of escorts as a full-tilt carrier yet have significantly less operational capability, but with a modern warship, steel's one of the cheaper inputs- its the electronics, weapons, & specialized equipment that drive the price-tag up.

As the smaller ship would have a smaller airgroup and a smaller stores capacity meaning less ability to sustain operations- either one builds more decks to maintain operational capability & whatever savings one gets on the carriers are more than offset by the extra manpower for not only the extra carriers plus all the extra destroyers needed to ride shotgun, or if you build the same number of smaller ships as big ones (which is likely because congresscritters aren't likely to realize the capability differences & just focus on the numbers), then there'll be a significant loss of operational capability for much savings than one might think (which could be further offset by having to build more fast stores ships to keep the smaller stores magazines & jet fuel bunkers filled.)

Furthermore, the smaller carriers would be less survivable, as they simply don't have the same room for passive defenses that the big ones do.

Is that so... *headdesks*

*rubs forehead* Okay, then. How about we change the question to "in what situation would the U.S. Navy go for this sort of light carrier, despite lower surviviability and combat power"?

Marc A

marcus_aurelius said:

Is that so... *headdesks*

*rubs forehead* Okay, then. How about we change the question to "in what situation would the U.S. Navy go for this sort of light carrier, despite lower surviviability and combat power"?

Marc A

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Hmm, that's kind of a tricky one- the big carriers originated as offensive strategic weapons in that they were intended to be capable of fighting their way past Soviet defenses & get close enough to launch strikes on the Soviet Union, including nuclear ones, during WW3. The abortive United States was designed specifically for that mission, but was killed by Air Force-centric thinking (& some corruption) in the DOD, leading to the 'Revolt of the Admirals,' and the value of carriers was demonstrated by the role they played in the Korean War, leading to a shift in political thinking & the USN being allowed to get the big carriers it wanted, with the United States being heavily reworked into a general-purpose carrier, the Forrestal. The evolution of high-performance jet combat aircraft subsequently required that large of a ship for them to efficiently operate from.

If the USAF succeeded to some extent in freezing the USN out of the strategic mission & its political machinations to gut the USN in the late 1940s, then its conceivable that the USN could end up with a much smaller surface & carrier force, with a handful of such ships oriented towards a sea control mission of covering the convoys intended to resupply & reinforce NATO in WW3 from Soviet attacks.

The small carrier studies of the 1970s I mentioned had a somewhat different origin- during the mid-to-late 1960s, some officers looked at the CVA-01 concept & thought that the design showed that it'd be practical to produce a Midway-sized modern carrier that could replace the aging WW2 hulls used for sea control duties, as there had been some interest in a new small anti-sub carrier to replace the old Essexs. When Adm. Zumwalt became CNO in the early 70s, he seized upon the idea because it fit into his concept of a 'high-low' mix & cutting unit cost as the low end carrier that would make it practical to not build as many big carriers to cover everything the WW2 hulls did on top of their offensive missions.

Although the 'high-low' idea was unpopular with large chunks of the USN (both the aviation & nuclear communities, esp. Rickover, felt that the small carriers were a bad idea) & was dropped when Zumwalt left, the small carrier studies he started were picked up upon by both the Ford, & especially the Carter administrations as a political exercise to try & cut costs as through smaller carriers as part of post-Vietnam cutbacks. Again, it was unpopular with the Navy, because they were grossly inferior from an operational standpoint & were a false economy that had to be based on some unrealistic assumptions & a lot of 'fitted for but not with' when it came to equipment loadout, & Congress wasn't convinced.

If circumstances allowed for a notably larger defense structure (possibly a much shorter involvement in Vietnam), then it's conceivable that a few might have been built for sea-control & other second-line missions, while if Carter had been more powerful compared to the Congressional allies of those in the USN who objected to the small carrier, then the USN might have ended up with a couple of those foisted upon them in the late 1970s, & they'd be regarded as lemons, & pretty sure that Reagan would have gone back to full-size carriers.

DD951 said:

That was actually an idea that the Carter administration repeatedly tried to push without much success (see the CVV & T-CBL studies of the 1970s if you have access to Friedman's volume on carriers)- basically it's a false economy, as not only will these ships require the same number of escorts as a full-tilt carrier yet have significantly less operational capability, but with a modern warship, steel's one of the cheaper inputs- its the electronics, weapons, & specialized equipment that drive the price-tag up.

As the smaller ship would have a smaller airgroup and a smaller stores capacity meaning less ability to sustain operations- either one builds more decks to maintain operational capability & whatever savings one gets on the carriers are more than offset by the extra manpower for not only the extra carriers plus all the extra destroyers needed to ride shotgun, or if you build the same number of smaller ships as big ones (which is likely because congresscritters aren't likely to realize the capability differences & just focus on the numbers), then there'll be a significant loss of operational capability for much savings than one might think (which could be further offset by having to build more fast stores ships to keep the smaller stores magazines & jet fuel bunkers filled.)

Furthermore, the smaller carriers would be less survivable, as they simply don't have the same room for passive defenses that the big ones do.

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Also as implications on sustained sortie rates. A Nimitz can sustain a lot more sorties longer than a CdGaulle.

The reason the RN can only have a carrier of a certain (Malta/CVA01/CVF) size is because of basing. Perhaps if the US wanted to do some fancy trick with basing, perhaps forward bases in Allied countries or something. Otherwise the logic of the Nimitz class is inescapable.

AdA said:

Also as implications on sustained sortie rates. A Nimitz can sustain a lot more sorties longer than a CdGaulle.

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Um, I did mention that- the bits about a smaller airgroup and a smaller stores capacity meaning less ability to sustain operations, as well as needing more of the small carriers to get the same capability & needing more supply ships to keep a force of smaller carriers supplied.

Well the Wasp class can carry harriers already, so presumably you could say, to deploy to areas where a full-sized carrier would be over-priced and overkill.

As already mentioned the Wasp class and their successors can be used as Light Carriers in a pinch anyway.

A light carrier is too small for USN requirements and too expensive to be a viable export item.