US Navy Ford Class nuclear carriers

FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
With all the criticism of US weapons, it is strange to see AShBM missiles relegated to the status of near invincibility without so much as a single end-to-end test using space based cueing sensors and moving targets 1000 Km's from the launch point

Yet very difficult for AShBM missiles reach the target and nothing is sure right now, in more USA have yet " the antidote " with AEGIS ships which are armed with SM-3 bl I/II 700/1500 km range only ABM and in more from next year new variant of SM-6, SM-6 Dual I polyvalent SAM/ABM range 370 km !
And also US Army have the THAAD range 200+ km, 18 lauchers in 3 independent battery same number in order with many USAF C-5/17 easy to transport quickly

But the best way is to remove the cause, ennemy launcher.

Notice : SM-3 and THAAD are ineffective vs aircrafts.
Patriot Pac-3 don' t worck vs DF-21D only vs BM 1100 km range max, trajectory problem mainly.

But this is a matter for talk on this thread ;)
https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/naval-missiles-and-launchers.t7866/#post-365110
 
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Are supercarriers like the Ford-class CVNs too expensive to field? Is the USN better off with something like 3 modernized Nimitz-class CVNs as opposed to two Ford-class CVNs?
Ford Class is the Modernized Nimitz Class. That's what people keep forgetting.
This is not a case where the Navy started with a true clean Sheet.
Each of the US Super Carriers is a evolution of a design set with the USS Forestal CV 59 in 1955, Forestal and Saratoga started the line with conventional decks then were converted Angled decks Ranger and independence Carried that through to Kitty hawk CV63 in 1961 along with the Great Experiment the Nuclear Enterprise CVN 65, Kitty Hawk was the budget choice and that lead led to Constellation Then to America that lead to the John F Kennedy in 67 but The Nuclear power plant proved more effective and efficient for a Super Carrier.
So by 75 Nimitz came online and each successive Nimitz has evolved the class and design. The Major evolutions like the Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan earning the term sub class as they changed the most. but Again Each new ship even if of the same "Sub class" Changed. The Latest off the line was the George Bush and she is the Transition Ship. the closest to the Ford Same hull same construction. Change Reactors, Islands add EMALS and she really becomes a Ford.
Ford is not the Zimwalt Where the navy wanted to try some thing bold. She is the Burke Flight III all the latest goodies in a proven hull.
 

kwaigonegin

Colonel
All very good points and like I said the ford class could very well be the last of it's kind i.e 'supercarriers'.... Whatever that comes after it may be smaller (likely) or bigger who knows! ..... or it may not even be a carrier at all as we know aircraft carriers to be.

What I do know however is organic air power will still be in use. A hundred years from now it's a distinct possibility that most combat aircraft will be stovl ,, maybe even unmanned which would then negate the use of such large platforms. It may be a smallish 20k ton vessel that carries a couple hundred VTOL A.I drones.., who knows.

Regardless we are all veering OT. Since this thread is about the FORD class I wanted to stress the point that the ford is a natural evolution/progression of the Nimitz class and at this point in history and in the forseeable future that class fits the bill. As long as manned fast jets are still 60,70 ft long with almost as wide span, carriers are here to stay. The USN is not ready to go 'smaller' or 'less capable CVN' for that and other reasons I've already stated.
 
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Blackstone

Brigadier
Well like i said ford is a natural progression of the Nimitz class and while expensive the cost is also a natural progression as well.

Purposely making a new class of 'less capable' CVN would not only be a fatal mistake but put your entire force structure in operational limbo. A CVN is a CVN is a CVN and the Ford class fits the bill.
Unless we harken back to the days of whips and chains, I think you'll be hard press to built a vessel utilizing present day technologies while maintaining and surpassing the capabilities of say CVN 77 for that much cheaper that what the ford cost.

It would be foolish for the USN to say build 20 Liaonings or 20 CdG type carriers instead of 4 or 5 Fords. They have to totally rewrite, retrain and reorganize the entire war fighting strategies and operational doctrines of the entire Navy.... And knowing how money politics work these days in the government/pentagon etc I wouldn't be surprise if a CdG size carrier would end up costing probably almost as much as a FORD anyway... LOL but 10x less capable.
But the argument on US carriers isn't between Ford-class and Liaoning-class, but Ford-class vs. smaller CVNs with Nimitz+ capabilities. I agree USN should stay far away from Jeep Carriers, but given the fact 21st. Century naval ships aren't any faster than WWII ships, physics says three or four less expensive CVNs could cover greater portions of the world's waterways than two Ford-class CVNs. Also, let's not forget the improved Nimitz-class CVNs would still outcass anything else out there. Here's a nice discussion on virtues of smaller carriers for the USN (it's a long blog)-

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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
There is no improved Nimitz it is Ford class, and I remind you the last Nimitz leaves service in 2058. Over 40 years from now the George H Bush being the last of the class.

The only ship close to what you are describing Blackstone in a smaller carrier would be the British Queen Elizabeth class built as a Catbar not Nimitz at all.
 

Bernard

Junior Member
Carriers Crucial In War With China – But Air Wing Is All Wrong: Hudson
ford_float17nov13-1.jpg

The new carrier USS Ford is afloat but still unfinished.

UPDATE with Forbes statement WASHINGTON: At $4.7 billion over budget,
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.
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, though, the
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will roll out a
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from the conservative Hudson Institute that’s a ringing defense of the carrier — but which also contains a stinging indictment of
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that fly from it. The report calls for upgrading current multi-mission planes for longer range and building multiple new types of more specialized aircraft, potentially including two different models of
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.

Nuclear-powered super-carriers are irreplaceable, co-author
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told me, and the Ford is a good design. But, he said, “the air wing will have to be completely rethought…to win and deter the war we cannot lose.”

That’s also the war we often
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: a war with China. “What bothered me was the degree to which there was a self-evident, high-end argument that was not getting made by the Navy,” McGrath said. “So I, with my partners at Hudson, said, ‘we’re going to have to do this for them.'”

Rep. Randy Forbes, the House Seapower chairman who’ll headline tomorrow’s roll-out, has frequently criticized the executive branch for
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. While a strongly partisan Republican, Forbes takes congressional oversight seriously and once hammered a Bush administration official for 22 minutes just to get him to admit Chinese espionage was a problem.

One of Forbes’s favorite stories about such self-censorship concerns “a very good personal friend” he otherwise much admires, former Chief of Naval Operations
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. “When they were at the War College, they had a young officer stand up and ask them in a very, very sincere way, how do we talk about Chinese competition?” Forbes recounted Tuesday at the
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. “The admiral said to even talk about China as a competitor goes across the line and goes too far.”

The Navy’s current case for carriers is the Islamic State. For 54 days until allies okayed the use of land bases, only
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could strike targets in Iraq and Syria. But you don’t need the Ford for that, McGrath said.

Fig-10-China-US-300x251.jpg

Threat ranges of Chinese weapons (graphic courtesy Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments)

“If all you wanted to do was sit off some Third World nation and plink targets 12 hours a day, you wouldn’t need a $12.9 billion aircraft carrier,” said McGrath. “In order to really talk about why $12.9 billion is worthwhile… the opponent that makes that investment most worthwhile is China.”

That argument’s pretty counterintuitive in national security circles. The conventional wisdom is that carriers are great for projecting American airpower around the world, just as long as nobody can shoot you down or sink you. If the enemy has long-range, precision-guided anti-ship and anti-aircraft weapons, plus the sensors and networks to target them — what’s often called “
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” or A2/AD — you can
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.

That’s precisely wrong, McGrath argued. The A2/AD threat makes the carrier more relevant. “If you think that the aircraft carrier is vulnerable,” he said, “what is the word you use to describe First Island Chain airbases” — i.e. islands within range of China — “that don’t move at 40 miles an hour?” Land-based aircraft, like Air Force fighters, are going to be bombed out of their bases in short order by salvoes of long-range missiles. So, he said, “if you hope to have tactical air power to do all the things the joint force needs” — defeat enemy fighters, escort friendly bombers flying from intact, distant bases, and so on — “the only way you’re going to have it available is from the aircraft carrier.”

(The implicit criticism of the Air Force here, McGrath acknowledged, is another reason why the Navy can’t make such arguments in public).

McCain-Ford-class-carrier-graphic.png

Graphic courtesy of the office of Sen. McCain

That said, the report hardly recommends sailing aircraft carriers into the East China Sea on day one of a war. To the contrary, “just after the shooting starts…aircraft carriers and surface ships are likely to be brought back beyond the range of the hardest of the A2/AD weapons,” McGrath told me. “The
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will then go in, and [Air Force]
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with long range weapons, and they will do the business of creating opportunity by taking out ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] capability, creating pockets of reduced risk to operate.”

Note that word, “pockets.” You don’t try to bring the whole A2/AD defense down so the carriers can return to their standard offshore circling, launching a steady stream of airstrikes. Instead, the report advocates “pulse” tactics. Once other forces tear a hole in the A2/AD defense, several carriers and their escorts race into it, launch a few huge raids, and then get out. Essentially, the report acknowledges, this is a massive hit and run attack.

Bryan McGrath

The Navy will need new kinds of training to figure this out, McGrath said. “We haven’t operated multiple aircraft carriers in an integrated manner in my memory,” he said. Carriers might operate near one another and split up targets, but they don’t mass their air wings together as a single striking force.

The air wing is the carrier’s main weapon and it’s also the main target of the report’s critique. The big problem is short range. As long as they can get mid-air refueling — mainly provided by vulnerable Air Force tankers — F-18 Hornets from a carrier in the Indian Ocean can hit targets in Afghanistan. Without aerial refueling — all too probable in high-threat airspace — “the striking range of a modern aircraft carrier is about what it was in World War II,” McGrath said.

The Navy’s standard F-18 Hornet can hit targets roughly 600 miles from the carrier without refueling. Against China, that’s not enough: Chinese anti-ship missiles like the DF-21 and DF-26 have ranges between 2,000 to 2,500 miles. As a result, “the air wing is what drives much of the carrier’s vulnerability,” McGrath said. “If we create… an air wing that buys some of that range back, then the aircraft carrier operates in a less risky profile,” striking from greater and safer distances.

Central to this long-range future air wing is the UCLASS drone, Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance & Strike. There’s been a fierce debate over whether UCLASS should be optimized for
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, with strike secondary — the Navy’s position — or for
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, with surveillance secondary — the position of Rep. Forbes and
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McGrath and his colleagues say that we need both, even if that means buying two kinds of UCLASS aircraft.
 

Bernard

Junior Member
Continued
even if that means buying two kinds of UCLASS aircraft.

“I had been for the longest time a strike-oriented-UCLASS guy,” McGrath said. “We have plenty of surveillance with
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.” But while writing this report, he said, he realized the Poseidons and Tritons are unstealthy, unmaneuverable, vulnerable aircraft that might not be make it from their distant land bases to provide surveillance inside an A2/AD zone. That puts a premium on a survivable scout drone that can fly from the carrier itself.

UCLASS-Lockheed-300x150.jpg

Lockheed Martin’s UCLASS concept.

Two kinds of UCLASS would be just a start. The Navy has spent decades getting rid of specialized airplanes — the S-3 Viking sub-hunter, the F-14 Tomcat interceptor — in favor of multi-purpose fighter-bombers, the F-18 and future F-35. But it’s time to bring back the specialists, the report argues. For example, the next Navy fighter, the
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, needs to be a thoroughbred air superiority machine rather than a fighter-bomber.

UCLASS, F/A-XX, and “sea control” sub-hunters make a formidable shopping list, especially in a time of sequestration. Even in flush budget times, it would take decades to implement the new air wing. But then aircraft carriers are proverbial for how long they take to turn around.

UPDATE“Carriers provide our commanders with an unrivaled range of options, but both the ships and their air wings need to evolve to stay ahead of changes in the security environment,”
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said in a statement to Breaking Defense praising the report. “The Navy has given a great deal of thought to the future of the carrier and its air wing, but it is critically important to have independent experts offering their own insights about the capabilities and concepts we will need.”
 

FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
...
That’s precisely wrong, McGrath argued. The A2/AD threat makes the carrier more relevant. “If you think that the aircraft carrier is vulnerable,” he said, “what is the word you use to describe First Island Chain airbases” — i.e. islands within range of China — “that don’t move at 40 miles an hour?” Land-based aircraft, like Air Force fighters, are going to be bombed out of their bases in short order by salvoes of long-range missiles. So, he said, “if you hope to have tactical air power to do all the things the joint force needs” — defeat enemy fighters, escort friendly bombers flying from intact, distant bases, and so on — “the only way you’re going to have it available is from the aircraft carrier.”

The Navy’s standard F-18 Hornet can hit targets roughly 600 miles from the carrier without refueling. Against China, that’s not enough: Chinese anti-ship missiles like the DF-21 and DF-26 have ranges between 2,000 to 2,500 miles. As a result, “the air wing is what drives much of the carrier’s vulnerability,” McGrath said. “If we create… an air wing that buys some of that range back, then the aircraft carrier operates in a less risky profile,” striking from greater and safer distances.

Central to this long-range future air wing is the UCLASS drone, Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance & Strike. There’s been a fierce debate over whether UCLASS should be optimized for
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
, with strike secondary — the Navy’s position — or for
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
, with surveillance secondary — the position of Rep. Forbes and
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
McGrath and his colleagues say that we need both, even if that means buying two kinds of UCLASS aircraft.

Very interesting ! My chart for this matter :)

US navy CAW 1990-2010-2025.jpg
Range of A-6 and F-14 were significantly better also a Combat Sqn in less but renewal for 2025.
A thing 4 KA-6D could not refuel a full squadron.
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
The Ford class will be able to modify its air wing composition over the coming decades and will do so to meet future challenges.

Right now, with F-35Cs, F/A-18E/Fs, EA-18Gs, E-2Ds and C-2s, there is simply no stronger air wing available on earth...and that air wing, when properly armed, would be precisely the right air wing for any major war at sea, for any of the potential OPFORs currently out there.

Now, over the next 20+ years when UCLASS aircraft start being added, and ultimately the 6th gen aircraft...the composition will change again. But that new composition, I believe will be able to make the same claim with F-35Cs, 6th Gen F/A-XX, EA-18Gs, E-2Ds and CV-22s. That is, it will then be the same most powerful available against any OPFOR for those future decades.

The absolute best available composition air wing off a carrier for any conceivable threat is what the US Navy is aiming for.
 
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