August 18, 2019
There Is Only 1 Way to Save the Aircraft Carrier from the 'Scraper': Study Battleships
History could help.
by James Holmes
The reciprocal is that navies tend to see new, experimental ships as fleet auxiliaries—as assets that help the existing fleet execute what it already does, only better. Early on, for instance, naval officers considered the submarine an adjunct to the battle fleet. Aircraft carriers and their air wings were "the eyes of the fleet," scouting and screening for battleships, rather than offensive weapons in their own right. The dreadnought thus lingered on long after its successor, the flattop, hove into view. (Today the U.S. Navy may be repeating the pattern with unmanned-aircraft development. Having debated whether UAVs should emphasize ground attack or surveillance, navy potentates evidently favor the latter. A new set of eyes for the aircraft-carrier strike group may be in the offing.) Hanging onto old hardware and doctrine can represent a grievous mistake—so can being standoffish toward novel warmaking methods.
How can the U.S. Navy prolong the relevance of its big-deck aircraft carriers amid increasingly menacing surroundings?
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/there-only-1-way-save-aircraft-carrier-scraper-study-battleships-74501
