Of Aircraft Carriers in New Age of Lethality

Of Aircraft Carriers in New Age of Lethality

Navneet Bhushan

Military affairs have been revolutionized by increasing the dimensions of war. No one thought before the WW II thought that aircraft and submarines will play almost decisive roles. The War ended by US creating a totally new dimension of “mass lethality” by using fission bombs – not once but twice.  One of the major legacies of Second World War has been the aircraft carrier group that was used by Japan with a telling effect during Pearl Harbor attacks and later by US and Soviet Navy during cold war global shadow boxing. Lesser powers – UK and France also operated aircraft carriers and still do. India had an aircraft carrier that helped us block the East Pakistan during 1971 Bangladesh liberation war. May be that gave our naval planners a fixation on having aircraft carriers and plans have been in place to operate 3 aircraft carriers – so that 2 carrier groups are always at sea. The recent proclamation by Chief of Indian Naval staff reiterating the same is a clear indication of how it is not easy for Indian Navy or Indian military planners in general to understand the new technological and doctrinal shifts needed to create changes. Lethality the fundamental war making capability is seeing a marked shift. From “piecemeal lethality” to “massed lethality” and “stealth lethality” we have seen the evolution of lethality in the age of industrial revolution and a machine based world. In the information based world “remote lethality”, “virtual lethality” and “non-lethal lethality” are emerging new capabilities.

Dimensions of Warfare and Weapon Systems

War making requires ability to inflict disruption, damage, and destruction of enemy capabilities and resources. This reflects in the primary capability of war making systems, instruments and arms, i.e., their lethality. The lethality should be protected from enemy’s lethality – hence every weapon system needs a self-protection capability – a defensive capability. Further, many weapon systems need to operate together to achieve an effective lethality hence a weapon system requires integration capability that become more pronounced in the information age with systems such as C4ISR attaining same importance if not more than combat systems. Further, lethality needs to operate and be operable in multiple heterogeneous environments. Hence weapon systems need operability in multiple environments without impacting its main function – that is its lethality.

From massed destruction capability to de-massification of destruction has been achieved by advanced technologies for surgical, pin-point attacks on high value targets instead of using the earlier method of massed attacks on large area in the fond hope that the target will be made in-effective.  This is possible nowadays with the advent of ‘Smart’ and ‘Brilliant’ weapons and capabilities coming up in the form of unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs). Besides these the recent capability in the “cyber warfare” dimension demonstrated by the sole superpower against Iran in the form of Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame is an indication of shift to “virtual and non-lethal lethality”.  The unmanned systems are becoming more and more capable and with the advent of unmanned combat systems – we are entering an age of what we can call “remote, virtual and non-lethal lethality”.

 

Manned Fighter Aircraft and New Age of Lethality

In a telling article last year, the Economist wrote “the future belongs to Drones”. The article published is titled “The last manned fighter” and it gives a detailed account of F-35 fighter plane costs and ends with a future direction that clearly seems to be favoring unmanned combat aircraft. It states, “In many roles, unmanned planes are more efficient: they carry neither a bulky pilot nor the kit that keeps him alive, which means they can both turn faster and be stealthier. And if they are shot down, no one dies. Even the F-35’s champions concede that it will probably be the last manned strike fighter aircraft the West will build.” Given the promise and capability of unmanned aircraft, cyber warfare and increasing cost of training pilots to operate such complex aircraft, it is but foolhardy to build a future military capability ignoring the new age of lethality which is characterized by remote, virtual, non-lethal and cyber lethality.

Where can an Aircraft Carrier go in the New Age of Lethality

If manner fighter aircraft are facing extinction in the next 40-50 years, what can be said about aircraft carriers? These real big floating cities, visible on the high seas, operating manned fighter aircraft, has defined power – political and military global power, for last 70 years or so. They have been the key instruments of global military reach and have definitely carried the stick whenever, the sole superpower wanted to cajole or influence any other country in the strategic shaping that US has been involved in for last 20 years or so.  They are the instruments of sea-control. However, in the age of accurate, long range missiles and very efficient, effective and stealthier submarines, aircraft carrier has been described as “sitting duck”. To protect an aircraft carrier requires large number of other ships. The age of 40-70 manned aircraft carriers controlling high seas and projecting power may be ending.

During this phase, if Indian navy is planning, continuing the previous century’s lethality thinking, to operate 3 manned aircraft carriers – and committing large number of other ships to escort, protect and support these aircraft carriers – it can only be explained in terms of very slow process of understanding of shifts in the modern warfare – may be limited understanding of new revolutions in military affairs.

If indeed aircraft carrier (the manned aircraft carrier) is not the right choice, are we saying death of aircraft carrier? Just like many other weapons systems and platforms, typical evolution of technical systems leads to changes in the way these systems are designed and used. Potential ways in which the concept of aircraft carrier and the investment made in these ships still can be optimally utilized and meshed in a new doctrine. Most likely future of manned fighter aircraft is what people call Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV). Technologies exist to make such systems viable and robust to the extent they can be used at the fraction of the cost fighter aircraft and without endangering the human life as in the case of fighter planes.

Indian Navy should integrate UCAV and other possible unmanned remote systems to be placed on smaller ships instead of the big aircraft carriers. These remote unmanned systems can be aerial vehicles, submarines or even unmanned missile boats. The future of networked smaller ships with multi-dimensional capabilities that can disperse and re-assemble to swarm an enemy ship, positions or systems, will prove to be true network centric capability.

Conclusions

Given the shift to the new age of lethality which is network centric rather than platform centric, too much focus on platforms such as manned aircraft carriers will actually do more harm in future war making capabilities of the nation. We propose a rethink to integrate network centric concepts of smaller nodes connected through robust links with remote lethality capabilities that has more unmanned and virtual. We propose a focus on unmanned aircraft carriers – or more appropriately UCAV carrier groups which are smaller, swifter and we conjecture more lethal in the new age of lethality.

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