Marty Erdossy, Captain, US Navy (Retired)
As you know, you go to war with what you have, not what you might want or wish to have at a later time." Donald Rumsfeld
Throughout the history of carrier aviation, it has been said that the first thing a President asks during times of crisis is: “Where is the nearest aircraft carrier?” Our nation’s aircraft carriers have and will continue to serve as the centerpiece for our National Security Strategy. Given the Administration’s recent embrace of the Navy’s “Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Sea Power” and the increased commitment to the Pacific Rim, this holds true more now than ever before.
Aircraft carriers provide four-and-a-half acres of survivable, sovereign U.S. territory wherever they deploy. They represent a unique warfare capability that can quickly arrive at a trouble spot and provide robust, and sustainable combat air power. The modern air wing can provide credible combat capacity with 80-125 air dominance, strike, electronic warfare, and surveillance combat missions each day. Carriers are both responsive and capable of immediate action, as they enable our nation to project power worldwide from the sea without dependence on other governments or local bases. By relying on aircraft carriers, our country avoids the huge investment required to establish and maintain bases and infrastructure ashore in a foreign country. So there’s no question our nation needs its aircraft carriers - so the next question is why do we need eleven? The combatant commanders request aircraft carrier presence the same way they request ground troops or aircraft deployments. Their staffs analyze the current environment and decide what forces they require to maintain peace, or if necessary, conduct combat operations. While wartime capacity and routine operational presence are very important, they are not the only factors defining the need for eleven aircraft carriers. Maintenance required for the ship, and the training required to keep the crew combat ready, are also essential considerations that have been studied and refined over the history of aircraft carrier operations.
While continuously deploying two or three carriers oversea has become a normal practice, the current aircraft carrier inventory allows our country to “surge” more carriers to a hot spot if needed during an international crisis. During the Gulf War in the early 90s and again a decade later after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Navy simultaneously deployed as many as six aircraft carriers for combat operations. We surged to six for Desert Storm in 1991, four for enduring Freedom in 2001, and six for Iraqi Freedom in 2003. The aircraft carriers that were in the training cycle or undergoing light maintenance were quickly made available for these operations. The aircraft carriers that were already deployed provided an immediate, credible, and lasting combat capability until the other carriers and shore based forces could flow into the area. An aircraft carrier has large ammunition magazines, aircraft fuel storage tanks, and supply storerooms. Everything that is required to support sustained combat flight operations is available in a single mobile package. Since the carrier can replenish any of these commodities at sea, not only do these carriers serve as first responders, they may also continue combat operations for many months.
The best way to demonstrate why we need eleven aircraft carriers is to look at a recent typical day in the Navy. On that day, two carriers were deployed to the Middle East. Another carrier was under way to relieve one of those deployed carriers. Two carriers were underway near the coast of the United States conducting training. One carrier had just returned from deployment and was in a post-cruise stand-down period. Two were in-port for light maintenance and were conducting shore-based training events. Two were in various stages of a heavy maintenance period, and one was in a Refueling Complex Over-Haul (RCOH) period. So let’s add it up -- two deployed, one on its way, two underway for training, one in post deployment stand-down, two in-port for light maintenance/training, two in heavy maintenance and one in RCOH equals eleven total aircraft carriers. While on any given day these numbers may be somewhat different, the fact remains that the aircraft carrier fleet is kept busy with operational requirements, training, and maintenance.
A History of Fluctuating Requirements
During my early Pentagon tours, the prescribed requirement for aircraft carrier inventory was fifteen. I believe this requirement was based on the calculated minimum number of carriers required to support Major Combat Operations (MCOs) and provide routine presence. Over time, it was decided that we could save money if we accepted additional risk by reducing the force to twelve. Recently, we assumed even more risk by reducing the force to eleven. While current law dictates that the Navy maintains the inventory at eleven, Congress has given the Navy relief to allow the inventory to slip to ten during the period between the decommissioning of the USS Enterprise (CVN 65) in 2012 and the delivery of USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) in 2015. I’m confident that number of carriers has the Navy’s operational schedulers scrambling to lay out the carrier schedules to meet the carrier presence requirements for the next few years.
Maintenance - ‘Pay me now or Pay me Later’
Typical maintenance periods range from six to eleven months, depending upon where the ship is in its comprehensive maintenance cycle. At the mid-point of its fifty year lifetime, the aircraft carrier will undergo a refueling complex overhaul (RCOH) that lasts about forty-four months. Additionally, at any point in time, there will probably be two carriers in heavy maintenance, and one carrier will be in the RCOH process. When the required maintenance or RCOH is complete, underway training commences for the next deployment.
With some risk, maintenance can be deferred for short periods of time, but keep in mind that the maintenance schedules have been refined to an ideal interval given the experience of operating the ships. Deferring maintenance tends to be one of those “pay me now or pay me a whole lot more later” propositions that can upset the entire balance of the rotation cycle. With fewer carriers, more time will be spent underway meeting the presence requirements, and less time will be available to take care of the ever-important maintenance. This will cause increased risk for the crew, and in the long run, increase the cost of operations and maintenance.
Operational Tempo and Sailor Morale
There is also a different kind of risk associated with the longer deployments. Crew fatigue and morale can degrade over the course of a lengthened deployment. The son of one of my old shipmates is a naval aviator in an E-2C Hawkeye squadron that is currently deployed on an aircraft carrier. He is at the four-month point of what looks like will be an eight or nine-month cruise. He is already talking about everyday being the same; it is like being in the movie “Groundhog Day.” Quite likely the carrier fleet will continue to see deployments of eight or nine months for the next couple of years. It will be challenging for the commanding officer and air wing commander to keep the crew focused on safe and effective operations during the later stages of the deployment. The long time away from home may cause retention to slip from the currently great statistics. This situation is less than ideal and will become expensive in that every sailor who decides the sacrifice is too hard and leaves the Navy will result in a requirement for a new recruit that must be found and trained. This is yet another example of the increased operational costs associated with trying to meet presence requirements with a smaller carrier fleet.
I recently posted a discussion about my experiences maintaining fleet readiness as a commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73). I provided a detailed discussion of how our Navy prepares our ships and crews for combat. In summary, the aircraft carriers that are not deployed undergo what is generally referred to as a turnaround training cycle. This period is made up of maintenance, training, and some amount of time serving as an operationally ready aircraft carrier that can rapidly deploy in response to our nation’s needs. When an aircraft carrier returns from a deployment, it typically spends a couple weeks in a post-cruise stand-down for the crew. After the post-cruise stand-down, the ship may maintain a ready-carrier condition for a few months or it may transition into a maintenance period that could last from a few months to nearly a year. Determining the schedule for the carrier fleet is a very dynamic balancing act that flexes to meet the needs of our country.
In combat, a fighter pilot always expects to “rise to the occasion” but in fact he will always fall back to his level of training.” - Lt (jg) Bill “Willy” Driscoll, Navy Ace
The length of the turnaround cycle is also important for the carrier air wing. This time is needed to conduct shore-based training and perform maintenance and upgrades to the aircraft. The air wing typically spends several months in weapons and tactics training prior to deploying aboard the ship. Occasionally, the air wing squadrons may require several months of non-deployed time to transition to a new or upgraded aircraft.
Can’t Predict an Unpredictable Security Environment
One area where we can change the schedule, of course with risk, is to provide less presence globally. However, providing less presence is an open acknowledgement that our country will not continue to influence the world in the manner we have in the past. There are critics who contend that our enemies will defeat us in the financial world, not on the battlefield. Maybe that will be our downfall in the end, but if we give up our ability to defend ourselves, the sea lanes and our allies anywhere in the world, our world will rapidly change in what I predict will be disastrous ways. When I was a junior officer in my E-2C Hawkeye squadron, a few of my friends would like to have lofty discussions about the world, our Navy, and carrier aviation. We would argue about the value of presence. We would describe how we each thought our presence made a difference in the world. We talked about how our presence influenced bad actors into deciding not to do bad things. The problem with our argument is that we had no proof. How do you prove that something didn’t happen because the carrier was right off a bad actor’s coast … or might have been? After all of these years, I still can’t prove that our presence prevented disasters, but one thing I do know is that on all of my deployments, we were able to make a difference because we were there and responded to the aggression of others. On every one of my deployments, I can think of at least one event that was of historical significance. Let me run down the list of operations that my shipmates and I participated in during 10 cruises: Iranian hostage crisis, evacuation of Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon (twice), Grenada, response to the Beirut Marine barracks bombing, several freedom of navigation operations off Libya, response to the murder of Col. William R. Higgins, Operation Southern Watch in southern Iraq (three times), Kosovo, several presence operations off the coast of North Korea, operations in Afghanistan (four times), and combat operations in Iraq (three times). Our arrival on the scene was often all that was needed to quiet a belligerent, but sometimes our warfighting capabilities were put into action. Either way, the aircraft carrier has and will continue to impact history, to what degree will be a direct result of the size of aircraft carrier fleet.
Finally, it will be interesting to watch our aircraft carrier fleet over the next few years. With only ten carriers available for operations, something must change in the way we operate. What will change? Will it be less presence overseas, longer deployments, or less maintenance? In my view, none are good options.
Recent headlines provide part of the answer to my question:
Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group deploys for 9 months ... "Navy says will be the longest of its type in a decade." (Associated Press)
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