Readiness, modernization, people top priorities for Naval aviation

Sea Power, Jun 2001

CSBA also advocated the design and construction of a new class of relatively small "Streetfighter" prototype surface combatants so that the Navy could enable its commanders to address emerging challenges and "increase the variety of capabilities" in their hands.

"Proof is Left to Student"

Criticism of CSBA's transformation strategy for the Navy was not long in coming. One observer said that the CSBA proposal for carrier aviation reminded him of the standard textbook entry for a problem in high school Euclidean geometry: "Proof is Left to Student."

Notwithstanding the potent anti-air capabilities of a SAG composed of today's Aegis guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, the history of the 20th century offers numerous examples of why it would be imprudent not to meet the stated JCS validation of 15 aircraft carrier battle groups as the minimum needed to meet U.S. forward-presence requirements.

The hazards of placing surface warships within the reach of shore-based aviation in potentially high-threat regions without organic fixed-wing air cover was first demonstrated in December 1941 when the Royal Navy lost both the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser HMS Repulse to Japanese aircraft-operating from land bases in Indochina-in a single day. As the Royal Navy again learned-to its distress and at the cost of many sailors' lives-during its Falkland Islands campaign against Argentina 20 years ago, the large-deck aircraft carrier's multimission air wing provides an unmatched search-and-surveillance umbrella extending many hundreds of miles in all directions. Advanced warning translates into early acquisition, targeting, and the destruction of enemy threats before the battle group is jeopardized.

Significant "opportunity costs" to U.S. national security associated with the lack of immediately employable sea-- based air power also are apparent when considering the regions of the world of vital interest to the United States. During the height of U.S. counterterrorist operations in the Mediterranean region during the 1980s, for example, a flight of F-14 Tomcats-guided by an E-2C Hawkeye-launched from the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga and intercepted an Egyptian Air Lines Boeing 737 bound for Tunisia with the PLO terrorists who had hijacked the Italian liner Achille Lauro.

The Tomcat fighters forced the Egyptian Air flight to divert to Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, where the terrorists were apprehended and later brought to justice. The operation-planned, coordinated, and executed within hours by the U.S. National Command Authority (NCA) in Washington, D.C., Navy European headquarters in London, and the U.S. Sixth Fleet at sea in the Mediterranean-was a total success. As Robert W. Love notes in his History of the U.S. Navy, President Ronald Reagan said that the Sixth Fleet's spectacular capture of the hijackers sent a message to terrorists everywhere: "You can ran, but you can't hide."

"Full-Spectrum Capability"

Responding to the CSBA suggestion that a 10-carrier force could be "adapted" to meet U.S. security requirements, a Navy spokesperson told Sea Power that a force of 10 aircraft carriers would further reduce the Navy's forward-presence capabilities and could not meet the unified combatant commands' crisis-response and warfighting requirements. "Forward-deployed cariers provide a significant, sustained, full-- spectrum capability for timely and powerful crisis response," the Navy said in a prepared statement.