Murdoc reported the other day that the Navy will soon be permanently retiring the last of the Iowa-class Battleships. In some respects – mostly for reasons of nostalgia, this is a sad thing. Those ships were the last warships that looked, well, like warships. Carriers, for all their impressive size, do not look as intimidating as a big-ass BB. (Not for nothing did the ship in Starblazers look like a dreadnought and not a carrier.)
The Navy is moving on. It has no plans to replace the Battleships (although it promised Congress it would replace the Battleship’s shore-bombardment capability, something that as yet it has not done) and will replace the aging, cold-war era cruisers, destroyers and frigates with the new DD(X) class of warships. In addition, the Navy plans on acquiring a large number of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), a smaller multi-role ship based on a modular design.
Some of the commenters on Murdoc’s post complained that putting down the battleships was a big mistake. Among the reasons cited for this, they mentioned: new ships have no armor, leaving them vulnerable to asymmetrical warfare; the Navy is pursuing technical solutions at the expense of proven warfighting potential; new ships cost too much, and we already have the battleships; one of the Navy’s primary missions is landing and supporting ground forces, and the battleship is essential for this; brass hate battleships because they are effective, but not sexy, pretty or high tech; and battleships do not require large taxpayer outlay.
In this, they are entirely wrong except for one point. Battleships are sexy.
The primary role of a blue water navy is to control the sea lanes. Sea control consists of two things: assuring the use of sea lanes for friendly shipping and fleets, and denying the same to hostile shipping and fleets. That is the primary mission of a main-line warship. Other tasks either support the primary mission (e.g., the Aegis cruiser which protects the carrier, allowing its strike aircraft to complete the primary mission) or support secondary missions (e.g., projecting power inland either by use of carrier air assets or supporting Marine landings.)
In a perfect world a speed boat with a missile launcher would be more than adequate for denying access to the sea. A bulk transport would suffice for moving Marines around. Sadly, there are nasty rude hostile forces who hope to interfere with our cunning plan to control the world’s oceans. To put a spoke in our wheel, they build boats that can sink our boats. We don’t build nifty umpty-billion dollar boats just because they’re cool, or even just so they can sink the bad boats. While this back and forth evolution of offensive and defensive weapons systems follows its costly logic, remember the primary mission.
We roll in all sorts of defenses, and clever weapons to allow the platform to survive in a hostile environment and as a result, almost every aspect of the modern warship, indeed the entire composition of the carrier battle group has little to do with accomplishing the primary mission per se, but rather with protecting the fleet from enemy action so that it can survive the battle and then carry out the primary mission – establish sea control
This process has already had its way with the venerable battleship. Exceedingly clever naval architects put armor on battleships to allow it to survive toe-to-toe engagements with other battleships. They installed massive 16” guns because those were the most effective weapons of the day. The most advanced analog computers were installed at great expense to increase the accuracy of those guns. Large crews enabled rapid and effective damage control in an era of unguided munitions. However, despite all of the skull sweat and careful thought, a battleship’s engagement range never increased much beyond twenty miles.
Aircraft carriers signaled the demise of the battleship for one very simple reason – airplanes have vastly greater range than big guns. The battleship became obsolescent because airplanes fly farther than shells from sixteen inch guns. Airplanes could detect enemy ships from much greater ranges. No matter how much armor a battleship has, once we know where it is, any number of aircraft can be dispatched from beyond its weapon’s range, and will eventually destroy it. As the Japanese learned. That is why battleships ceased to be the frontline weapon in America’s naval arsenal.
That we were able to re-task obsolete battleships to useful missions like shore bombardment is all well and good. But those guns only reach 21 miles or so, and are not precision weapons. Cruise missiles and any number of other future weapons will do the job better. But the battleship, once queen of the sea, has really found work as a janitor, no longer able to perform the mission for which she was designed – sea control.
There is a point of diminishing returns, where the additional cost of defensive measures costs so much that the platform is ridiculously expensive, even though it might be a technological marvel, look really cool and seem awfully impressive in every way. The high cost of all the enhancements necessary to permit the weapon system to continue (for a while) to perform its primary mission not only reduces the number of platforms, but diverts resources from other needs.
Right now, B-2 bomber is a perfect example of a weapon system on the very teetering edge of obsolescence. At a billion dollars a pop, it is an expensive bird. Where did that money go? Not into increasing the range, payload, speed or other characteristics that bear directly on the mission of delivering munitions on target. In fact, in most of these regards, the B-2 is less effective than the B-52. All that extra money went into stealth and low observables technology. Defensive measures to allow the bomber to survive an increasingly hostile battlefield. Will we be able to afford the follow on to the B-2 and all the defensive measures that will be needed to keep a human crew alive in say, 2030? Most likely not.
The reason is precision weapons. Advances in cruise missiles and brilliant weapons will soon render most surface vessels as obsolete as the battleship.
A carrier costs five billion dollars. A cruise missile costs a million. How many cruise missiles are you willing to expend to get value for your money? 4,999 and it’s still a bargain. Logistical issues aside, even the most advanced fleet defense system is going to be saturated by hundreds of missiles, let alone thousands. And as computer technology hurtles forward, those things are going to be cheaper and cheaper. And then there’s the guy in New Zealand who built one in his garage for $5000. Sea-denial will be within the reach of any nation or entity that has the technological wherewithal to build what is essentially a small RC jet plane with explosives and commoditized computer parts.
The fast, smart missiles that will be arriving at a military near you over the next few years will change the nature of warfare. Inhumanly precise, they will make armor useless. With sufficient intelligence, they can target warships and task forces from beyond the range of their strike aircraft. In sufficient numbers, they will saturate any imaginable defense. That last task will be easier yet when you imagine that the missile will have built-in terminal guidance systems that will allow it to dodge incoming defensive fire. In that world, how big and expensive a ship do you really want to build? How big can you risk building, and how small can you build and still retain significant military power? That is the question that will confront naval planners over the coming decades.
We will have to weigh the cost of a weapons platform with the risk of losing it. The ultimate in distributed warships would be a SEAL sitting in a Zodiac boat with a shoulder-fired precision munition. We could have thousands of those. The risk of losing any individual ship would be acceptable. Multi-billion dollar warships are a much bigger thing to risk losing, in terms of both cost and personnel. If precision weaponry evolves to the point where almost any ship can be destroyed as soon as it is detected (and it will) then the days of the large warship will be over. The flipside of that argument is that ships can be much smaller and still (through the use of brilliant weapons) maintain as much effective firepower as a battleship.
Distributed, stealthy, small ships are the only things that will survive in the furball of the future. They will be supplemented by long duration unmanned combat vehicles for both strike and surveillance – perhaps operating off of small and stealthy mini-carriers. There will be missile barges sailing in safe waters with hundreds of cruise missiles able to hit with centimeter accuracy targets a thousand miles away. Nearly undetectable submarines will launch similar cruise missiles from a hundred feet below the surface. Land, air and space-based brilliant cruise missiles will extend the range at which the fleet can project power. Global space-based communications, surveillance and intelligence networks will tie the dispersed fleets together, and give them an accurate picture of enemy activities. Fleet elements from half a globe away or in orbit or in visual range or all three will combine to give us the sea control that we seek.
There will be no place for the traditional carrier in this battle, just as there is no place for the battleship today. Two things guarantee it: the vulnerability of large ships to precision weapons, and the superiority of advanced cruise missiles to naval aircraft. Compared to traditional naval aircraft, missiles are faster, more maneuverable, more expendable, cheaper and smaller. The only factors that have given aircraft the edge up until now are accuracy and range. But just like the aircraft eclipsed the big gun, the cruise missile will eclipse the aircraft.
Carriers will linger on – they will remain useful as extra-territorial airstrips and for projecting power in exactly the same manner that those last two battleships did. They will also remain symbols of American naval mastery. But we are already nearing the point where it has become a serious consideration as to whether we can afford the risk of committing carriers to certain areas like the Persian Gulf, where Iranian missiles could saturate a tactically immobile and easily visible fleet. The range at which that kind of interdiction zone can be projected will only increase over time.
The LCS, and to a lesser extent the DD(X), are the Navy’s attempts to come to grips with this emerging reality. Enhancing our capabilities to project logistical power – in support of troops on the ground – is very important. But we need to really change the way we think about naval warfare. Littoral strategies and forward from the sea are all well and good, but all of our ships – up to and including our current lords of the sea, carriers – will be very vulnerable to any enemy that can build a cruise missile and (key point here) pinpoint the location of our carriers.
The future of warfare is that anything that can be seen can be killed. Further, it can be killed from thousands of miles away. What we need to focus on is developing better weapons, sure; but even more important is securing the base from which all our military power flows – space. (You knew I get here eventually, didn’t you?) Even now, 75% (a wild-assed estimate, but in the ballpark) of our power derives from control of and use of space. Without satellite intelligence, we are blind. Without satellite communications, we are clumsy. Without GPS, our bombs are knocked back to 1970s accuracy levels.
Battleships are the last thing we need to worry about. Even carriers are on their way to obsolescence. Where we need to focus our efforts is where those efforts will yield the greatest payoff, both in terms of absolute combat power on the ground, but also in terms of power relative to other militaries. No one else can (right now) develop space power like we can. Every dollar’s worth of advantage that we gain now is worth three or more in a future where other nations are competing with us directly.
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