THE ERA OF THE CAPITAL SHIP IS OVER
This
article is meant to draw the attention of naval planners to the fact that
recent trends in both guided missile and cruise missile technology are sounding
the death knell for the age of the capital ship which began in 1906 when the British
Royal Navy laid down the first Dreadnought class battle ship.
I have spent
over 37 years of my life studying the conflicts of the world in the last 100-
plus years beginning in 1914 till date seeing the evolving technologies in both
military and naval warfare and seeing how that nations that were smart enough
to not only observe trends but ‘see’ into the future were the nations that not
only ruled the waves but also sailed the crest of the future.
The Royal
Navy, the German Imperial Navy and the US Navy were the only navies in 1906
which were discerning enough to see that the age of the battleship from 1914
and beyond was going to be ruled basically by the ships that could adapt to
faster speed, heavier gunnery, thicker armor and ultimately a change from steam
powered propulsion to heavy fuel, ultimately diesel powered propulsion.
These
innovations gave birth to the Dreadnought class of battleships which dominated
the oceans until 1940, when the aircraft carrier came into being as the new
master of the waves.
Who led the
way was always determined by who could see into the future. The British Navy in
WW2 kept its hold on the Mediterranean Sea in 1940 up till the invasion of
Sicily simply because HMS Ark Royal and HMS Eagle were involved in the sea
patrols of the Mediterranean.
These handful of carriers and accompanying submarines and destroyers acting in
tow kept the Mediterranean Sea safe for the British Navy even though the
Italian Navy which was bristling with battle ships and cruisers with its
home port nearby couldn’t challenge the British for the control of the
Mediterranean because the few attempts it made to challenge British naval power
met with humiliating losses from war planes operating from the British aircraft
carriers, particularly the HMS Ark Royal.
Even the
destruction of the German battleship the Bismarck the most powerful in the
world at that time in 1941, even though credited to the old battleships the HMS
King George and the HMS Rodney as the Bismarck steamed towards the French port
of Brest trying the escape the wrath of the Royal Navy after it had sunk the
HMS Hood, was actually made possible because a late carrier strike by aircraft
dropping torpedoes from HMS Ark Royal
had jammed its steering gear and the rudderless ship could only move in circles
with a jammed rudder making it possible for the two British battleships to
catch up with her and finish her off.
To
discerning naval observers, it was becoming clear that the Aircraft carrier was
becoming the prince of the waves. This observation was not lost on the Japanese
naval chiefs as they schemed on how to scuttle the American Navy in Pearl Harbor in 1941.
The realization then was that capital ships were becoming vulnerable to air power particularly the aerial torpedo which could be launched at a distance
even by a single plane.
It took further down the war before Admirals
on both sides of the conflict realized that the aircraft carrier was now the
main battle station in the high seas, able to strike at ships, planes, land and
sea based targets. In one of the most audacious deployments of the carrier
strike groups in WW2, Admiral William Halsy's Third fleet sailed to Formosa off the
China Sea attacked and destroyed over 600 Japanese land based planes in late 1944
as the US planned to invade the Philippines
Here
carrier based planes decimated land based fighters in an aerial battle on a
scale hitherto unprecedented in WW2. Thus the aircraft carrier finished WW2 as
the master of the waves and has held sway over the seas for the last half a
century and more.
However the
strategic equation is about to change once more as we enter the 21st
century and the age of the precision guided cruise missile. To be candid the
cruise missile, particularly the long range missile with artificial
intelligence capability and the armed drone is about to sweep the piloted
aircraft from the skies as a an 'economical' weapon of choice in conducting a strike especially
in the offensive role.
Spending
billions of Dollars on investments in aircraft technology including the stealth
characteristics to me is pointless when an artificially guided cruise missile
either ground to air or air to air can bring it down. The cruise missile is no
respecter of stealth technology. To start with the cruise missile with
artificial intelligence is cheaper, pilot less, and can be sent on missions with
pin point strikes that even the stealth fighter cannot abort and at no human
cost at all.
To compound
matters the cruise missile of today with improvements in GPS positioning systems and
its own in-house guidance system can target even a moving target such as a ship
or aircraft carrier. The speed of the carrier strike groups in WW2 were its
greatest assets and best defenses.
The faster the carrier groups could sail, the
more difficult it was to target them. That was why modern day aircraft carriers and
submarines are fitted with nuclear power plants that can propel them
indefinitely.
Today the greatest defense of a carrier is its
high speed and infinite propulsion. However high speed drones are in vogue
today that can hover over even a mobile target for hours while serving as a command and
control center for targeting a moving ship or a land- based target.
Even the contemporary cruise missile has the
capacity to alter or correct its course as long as its in-built radar can lock
on the target as well as obtaining assistance from a remote command and control
center which a drone hovering above can easily provide
With
today’s technology, a WW2 PT boat of the type President Kennedy rode in 1942
off Guadalcanal if equipped with today’s cruise missiles with the appropriate
guidance system could have taken on a battle ship or even an aircraft carrier
of that era.
Precision
guided weapons make it very unwise today and highly unprofitable on the
long-run to deploy mobile assets with massive tonnage on the battlefield. All
you will be doing is creating a good and tempting target platform for the precision guided
weapons.
In my own
thinking a flurry of low cost , nimble and agile mobile precision guided weapons platforms such as a destroyer equipped with
intelligent weapons and air to air, ship to air missiles can hit any target any
where today in the world.The
practical thing to do would be to invest in concealment, preponderance in numbers and
precision.
Nothing
frustrates in a conflict with an adversary like the knowledge of the fact that no
matter how many of his mobile assets you take out of action, it is of no
consequence to him on the long run and will not diminish his firepower or
capacity to fight. That was basically why the Soviet Union overcame Germany in WW2 in spite of Germany's qualitative edge in terms of technology and advancement.
The Soviets focused on assets that were easy to mass produce, easy to maintain , whose losses meant little to them and this took off a lot of burden off the officers who were required to deploy these assets., so they could operate without coming under undue pressure.
Vietnamese guerrilla leader Ho Chi Minh told
the French in 1956 during the French Indo-China war that ‘you will kill ten of
my men and I will kill one of your men, but on the long run you will quit’. On
the long run Ho Chi Minh truly won because the French could not sustain the predicted casualty level indefinitely.
No rational minded person will want to start a conflict if he cannot figure out how he can win on the short or long-run.
As an Admiral today I will rather have
thousands of mobile assets even in the class of the Coast Guard cutters or destroyers
cluttering the high seas with innumerable batteries of precision guided
missiles that can hit any target on the land and sea than a single 100,000 tons
platform that is so massive that it can be targeted from anywhere in the world
with hundreds of warheads, and with the more depressing knowledge of the fact that the loss of
one single such platform can alter the course of the conflict. To start with
such a visible platform is an open invitation to attack.
That to me
is a completely unacceptable risk and an unworthy investment especially when
you consider the psychology of war fare. Nobody will want to find an enemy that
is elusive in presence, has preponderance in numbers, the destruction of whose
assets no matter how many is negligible in consequence, has unlimited capacity
to cheaply replace his assets and more importantly is evicereal like the true
masses of uncountable battle rats that can overwhelm even a king’s palace.
Such a
nation or state is one most people will try to avoid in conflict or warfare.
That was
the psychology that the United States and the Soviet Union employed in
defeating the Germans in WW2. While the Germans began in 1942 to invest in the
high class heavy weight 70 ton Tiger tank which was expensive to build,
consumed a formidable amount of fuel, slow and sluggish in movement, could
break down easily and had a rear burner that was extremely volatile, and more importantly difficult to replace.
The
American simply turned out the simple to build , cheap to maintain and high speed
Sherman with although a smaller gun, 76 mm compared to the German’s 88mm on the
Tiger, in such huge numbers that even though outclassed by the Tiger in
one-on-one fighting simply swamped the Germans by virtue of their numbers and
preponderance on the battlefield.
The Russians achieved the same result with the
T-34 that shared the same vital statistics with the American Sherman
The Germans
won the technological race but the Russians and Americans won the war and that
was all that mattered ultimately. I guess the logic involved in the
confrontation between the Sherman tank and the Tiger tank still holds relevance
even in naval warfare today.
Had
President Roosevelt spread the deployment of American warships all across the
West coast instead of concentrating them in Pearl Harbor, or kept the entire
fleet on Patrol in the Pacific there would never have been the attack on
Pearl Harbor. In conclusion, I would like to add that the battle ‘rats’
approach to conflict management is difficult to defeat.
The key is
therefore to spread the risk, diminish the strategic and tactical importance of
any particular and singular asset and multiply the ability to widely and
preponderantly overwhelm the opposition no matter the circumstances.
Holding the
preponderance in opportunity to react no matter the circumstances is vital to
one’s long term security. Pinning your hopes on a highly expensive fixed or mobile asset that cannot be affordably mass produced and replaced is to create a psychological vulnerability that is highly unnecessary.
Phase two on this blog would focus on the true place of the aircraft carrier in the 21st century navy in terms of strategic placement and deployment.
