Dave Majumdar
A new RAND Corporation study has concluded that bigger aircraft carriers such as the Gerald R. Ford-class are more effective and more survivable than smaller carriers.
While a slightly smaller 70,000-ton design would be cheaper to operate, such a vessel would be less effective and less survivable. It would also extra cost money to develop and build such a carrier. Even smaller light carriers would be much cheaper, but also much less effective and much less survivable. Thus, those vessels are not worth it.Among the four options the RAND study looked at was a “CVN 8X, the descoped Ford-class carrier,” a 70,000-ton CVN LX, a short takeoff vertical landing (STOVL) 40,000-ton conventionally powered CV LX and a 20,000-ton CV EX escort carrier. Out of the designs studied, the CVN-8X was the most effective, with performance comparable to the current Gerald R. Ford-class. However, the Ford is a still a better, more capable ship for a price that is not much greater.
“The CVN 8X, the descoped Ford-class carrier, offers similar warfighting capability to that of the Ford-class carrier today,” the report states.
“There might be opportunities to reduce costs by eliminating costly features that only marginally improve capability, but similar trade-offs are likely to be made in the current program as well.”
The CVN LX was also comparable in capability to the Ford-class, but made tradeoffs in terms of survivability.
“The CVN LX concept variant offers an integrated, current air wing with capabilities near current levels but with less organic mission endurance for weapons and aviation fuel,” the report
states.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/study-bigger-aircraft-carriers-are-better-22756
