THE CARRIER'S ROLE IS NARROWING

摘要

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy has enjoyed more than two decades of unchallenged supremacy on the world's oceans. With its global reach, it has become accustomed to deploying warships in support of its national interests wherever needed with virtual impunity. The activities of would-be competitors and recent developments in naval warfare, however, suggest its "Long, Calm Lee of Trafalgar" is about to run out. The centerpiece of U.S. power projection has been the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, a hugely expensive but immensely flexible asset that can conduct almost every naval role imaginable. Today, the carrier does have some growing limitations when facing first-rate opposition. Operationally, the problem has two parts. First, the radius of action of the offensive piece of the carrier's arsenal, the air wing, has been allowed to decline with successive generations of tactical aircraft. The commonly quoted figure of around 500 nautical miles is about half that of an equivalent air wing in the 1960s. Second, new developments in preci- sion antiship weaponry, most notably the Chinese DF-21D "carrier-killing" ballistic missile, promise effective ranges of roughly double this figure, thereby exposing the ship to significant risk. In addition, wildly escalating costs, both in procurement and operation, and the proliferation of less expensive delivery systems for precision ordnance have combined to make the naval aviation option less attractive in the longer term. In the words of one author, "If the fleet were designed today, with the technologies now available and the threats now emerging, it would likely look very different from the way it actually looks now."