Post-2040s: The Aircraft Carrier Concept Revisited
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By Hadrien T. Saperstein
January 21, 2021
In March 2020, the now-former U.S. acting Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV), Thomas Modly, established the “Future Carrier 2030 Task Force†(FC-2030). The task force aimed to commission a six-month study on the aircraft carrier's future viability (CV) and carrier-based aviation (CVA) concepts. The FC-2030 ran parallel to another study commissioned by the then Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist on the USN’s “Future Fleet Platform Architecture†(FFPA).
The establishment of the FC-2030 and FFPA came amid an organization-wide transformative effort by the U.S. Navy (USN) and U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) to prepare for a future great-power conflict against the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in the Indo-Pacific region. As such, both sought to complement the USN’s “Distributed Maritime Operations†(DMO) and the USMC’s “Expeditionary Advance Base Operations†(EABO) concepts, as General David Berger explained in a recent “Commandant Planning Guidance†report.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/01/21/post-2040s_the_aircraft_carrier_concept_revisited_657367.html
