Clearly, the flexibility, mobility, and independence of these versatile and forward-deployed assets will keep them center stage as our nation leads the world in the transition to a free-market system of democracies.
The rapid development and growth of airpower as the primary enabling capability for military operations represents one of the true military revolutions of the 20th century. At the close of this century, with manned space exploration and earth-orbiting satellites commonplace, it is hard to conceive that just ninety-five years ago, the Wright brothers made their first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. That historic first effort traveled less distance than the wingspan of a modern jumbo jet. However, things began to rapidly progress with the coming of the First World War. With the start of the Great War visionaries around the world realized the potential significance of aviation capabilities on military operations. By 1914, then-Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels had announced "that the point has been reached where aircraft must form a large part of our naval forces for offensive and defensive operations." It was an insightful thought.
The ensuing twenty-five years before our entry into World War II saw the United States developing the assets and vision to take airpower to sea in a way unmatched by any other nation. As a maritime nation dependent on the sea lines of communications for its economic and national security interests, the United States would need the edge provided by Naval aviation to win the greatest over-water military campaigns ever conducted. The history of the Second World War in the Pacific documents the great debt of gratitude our nation owes to the early pioneers of naval aviation. These were legendary men like Glenn Curtis, Eugene Ely, Theodore Ellyson, John Towers, John Rogers, Washington Chambers, Henry Mustin, and many more too numerous to mention.
However, it was at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, with the war cry of "Tora… Tora… Tora!" and our own lax state of readiness, that Japan brought home to the world the impact of carrier aviation.[1] The fact that none of our three Pacific-based aircraft carriers were in port that fateful morning may have been the single most significant factor in our eventual victory during the Great Pacific War. At the time of our entry into World War II, the U.S. Navy had just seven big-deck aircraft carriers in commission: Saratoga, Lexington, Ranger, Yorktown, Enterprise, Wasp, and Hornet. These "seven sisters" would take the war to our enemies from Casablanca and Malta to Midway and Guadalcanal.
Clearly, Admiral Yamamoto knew that Japan had awakened a "sleeping giant," and he believed a prolonged war would go in favor of the United States. He knew the potential productivity of American industry and its people, something that he had witnessed personally while on naval attache duty in Washington. Thus it was that Japan, needing a quick decisive victory over the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, set in motion the great sea battle off Midway Island in mid-1942.[2] Yamamoto mustered an overwhelming naval armada, designed to take Midway and hand the U.S. Navy and their carrier groups a crushing defeat. However, when the Battle of Midway was over, the tide had turned in the Pacific, though not in the favor of Japan. Thanks to the raw courage and aggressive tactics of the U.S. carrier pilots as well as superb intelligence, four Japanese carriers and a cruiser were sunk. In the process, Japan's ability to project naval air power throughout the vast Pacific was crippled forever.
The U.S. carrier groups and their courageous aviators had, on paper, no right to win. But win they did. The cost was not insignificant; fifteen of fifteen aircraft and twenty-nine of thirty aircrew in Torpedo Squadron 8 alone were lost. Along with scores of American aircraft and their crews, the USN lost the Yorktown and a destroyer.[3] However, finding a way to win in the face of adversity is a naval aviation tradition.
Today, U.S. carrier aviation is inextricably tied to the concept of United States forward presence and power projection; the "From the Sea" doctrine. Since the end of the East/West conflict, the United States military has withdrawn from the majority of its overseas bases. Consequently, America's ability to exercise a forward military presence and provide military forces depends on a combination of naval power and power projection from the continental United States. This means that in the complex post-Cold War world, where the majority of the world's major population centers are within two hundred miles of the open ocean, naval forces are increasingly relevant, and able to influence all manner of events that shape regional stability. The fact that this can be done with little or no land-based support and with no host nation support is a tremendous advantage for our national interests.
The independence, sustainability, and staying power of naval units often makes them the forces of choice for our National Command Authorities. This includes protecting the sea-lanes for a global free-market economy, reinforcing and supporting American embassies, and executing non-combatant evacuations of American citizens overseas. These and many other missions are ideally suited to our forward-deployed naval forces. This has been continuously demonstrated in places like the Taiwan Straits, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Albania, the Central African Republic, Liberia, Zaire, and Sierra Leone. America is an island nation, dependent upon the seas for our economic prosperity and security. There was good reason why our founding fathers determined the need for the nation to maintain naval forces and raise an army. We should occasionally remind ourselves of this reality, since it is the geopolitics, not the geography of the world, that has changed over time.
Unfortunately, aircraft carriers and naval forces in general have often been seen as both provocative and vulnerable. Many critics who do not understand the science of modern naval operations have claimed that advances in space systems and missile technology make the carrier/naval forces excessively vulnerable to air and missile attacks. Certainly technology has increased the threat from these systems, but far less so than that faced by fixed land bases and ground forces from terrorism and ballistic missile attacks.
For starters, there is the challenge to any would-be enemy who would try to find a CVBG in the open ocean. Naval units are highly mobile and the world's oceans are a big, dynamic place. Trying to coordinate sophisti-catedlong-range targeting solutions onto a target that can move thirty nautical miles in any direction in just one hour, or up to seven hundred nautical miles in a day, is a tough business. Clearly, a CVBG is not an easy target. The inherent mobility, together with sophisticated CVBG electronic-warfare-deception packages (radar "blip" enhancers, target decoys, etc.), combined with the air defenses provided by our Aegis-equipped escorts (Ticonderoga-class [CG-47] cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers [DDG-51]) as well as the CVN's own organic aircraft, make the vulnerability quite manageable.
The threat of theater ballistic and cruise missiles is also a matter of concern for the CVBG, and work is rapidly progressing to increase our defenses against these classes of weapons. The Aegis combat system is being improved and extended to be able to provide theater-wide defense from the sea, for both land and sea forces. Survivability from these threats will always be greater from a mobile bastion at sea than a fixed base on land. Arriving along with this new capability are new aircraft, ships, and even new carrier designs, which will help keep the CVBG credible long after the last manned-aircraft designs are retired. However, one does not have such naval forces for purely defensive purposes.
The real strength of CVBGs is offensive, making them a threat to the very despots and enemies that might themselves wish ill to the carrier group. Able to generate hundreds of air and missile attack sorties day and night, the modern CVBG is a powerful tool that requires no permission of ally or foe to do its job. Today, when the challenge is to get the most return for our limited defense dollars, it is significant to note that since the end of World War II, we have not lost any carriers to enemy action or geopolitical changes.
1
2
Midway and the Battles of the Coral Sea, Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz Islands were all fought between Japanese and American carrier groups in 1942. They were unique in being the first battles where the major opposing forces never actually sighted each other, and the majority of the damage was inflicted by air strikes instead of gun or torpedo fire. In these actions, six Japanese and three American flattops were sunk.
3
In the spring of 1998, oceanographer and adventurer Dr. Robert Ballard led an expedition that located the sunken