American supercarriers are the face of U.S Navy and have enabled powered projection far
off from the U.S homeland.
Nimitz-class carriers which form the backbone of U.S carrier fleet, as well as the new Ford
class carriers, are the biggest warships to roam the oceans displacing around 100,000
tons of water.
The U.S is the only nation to operate so many supercarriers since they are very costly to
build and operate.
American supercarriers are not only an important military platform but are home to thousands
of sailors, making them a vital asset for the nation.
In this video Defense Updates analyses why American Supercarrier are almost unsinkable?
Let's get started.
China & Russia, America main rivals don’t have resources to build so many supercarriers.
So, there are investing in asymmetric capabilities to neutralize American supercarriers.
Anti Surface warfare has come a long way in the last decade with the development of supersonic
& hypersonic anti-ship missiles.
Supersonic missiles like Indo-Russian Brahmos, Hypersonic cruise missile like Kinzhal & Chinese
Anti Ship ballistic missile like DF-21d pose a genuine challenge to the supercarriers.
Last year even a direct verbal threat against American supercarrier was directed from China.
On December 20, a high-profile Chinese military commentator, Rear Admiral Lou Yuan during
his speech in 2018 Military Industry List summit told that disputes over the ownership
of the East and South China Seas could be resolved by sinking two US supercarriers.
As reported by Taiwan’s Central News Agency, he stated that China’s latest crop of anti-ship
ballistic and cruise missiles was capable of sinking American supercarriers and fear
of casualty will frighten America.
He said that the loss of one super carrier would cost the US the lives of 5000 service
men and women.
Sinking two would double that toll.
Admiral Lou added, “What the United States fears the most is taking casualties.
We’ll see how frightened America is”.
When U.S Navy started to envision the Ford class it wanted to have data that could provide
the real-life impact of weapons attack on a supercarrier.
Till then supercarriers were designed mainly with simulated data based on the sinking of
older, smaller aircraft carriers and surface combatants.
But obviously, they were no match to the structure & design aspects of a supercarrier.
The issue was that no American supercarrier has been sunk in recent time and we have to
back to World War II for this when Japan sank U.S carriers.
After due deliberation to mitigate this issue, the US Navy decided to use USS America (CV-66)
as a testbed instead of scraping it.
USS America was a Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carrier and splayed more than 80,000 tons
when fully loaded.
It was built by Newport News Shipbuilding and commissioned on 23 January 1965.
On April 19th, 2005, USS America was towed to an undisclosed location off the Virginia
coast.
Then it was attacked with various types of weapons that resulted in numerous explosions
above and below the waterline.
But USS America didn't sink even after the repeated onslaught of 4 weeks.
Finally, after the failed attempt to sink it, the supercarrier was scuttled and on May
14th, 2005 it finally went down.
The main reason attributed to this is that the supercarriers are designed to have hundreds
of watertight compartments.
This prevents water flow into other portions of the carrier and stops the vessel from going
down.
It also must be noted that American supercarriers have very strong kevlar armor protection in
sensitive parts and hence are hard to penetrate.
The results of the exercise remain classified.
Also, there is very few pictures or videos of this event in the public domain to keep
things under wraps.
But it clearly understood that American supercarriers can absorb a lot of beating and can stay afloat
even when it has sustained heavy damage.
It must be noted that in a battle scenario the supercarriers won’t be in this kind
of helpless position.
Though these carriers are massive, powered by their nuclear reactors they can move at
35 miles or 56 km per hour.
This means they are fast enough to outrun modern submarines as well as many types of
destroyers & cruisers.
An in open ocean a carrier is not easy to detect or track.
In 30 minutes after a sighting by an opponent, the area within which a carrier might be operating
will expand to 900 square miles and this will increase to around 4,000 square miles after
60 minutes.
Also, a supercarrier in battle will not be defenseless like in the test.
Nimitz as well Ford class carriers have powerful sensors for 360 coverage of the space around
them as well as have a host of defensive weapons to neutralize different types of threats.
This includes 16–24 RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missiles and 3-4 Phalanx Close-in Weapon System.
Also, the carrier air wing of 60+ aircraft includes a squadron of early-warning radar
planes.
These fly well ahead of the aircraft carrier and keep scanning vast areas for potential
perils.
The aircraft carrier also has helicopters equipped with anti-submarine, anti-surface,
and counter-mine warfare weapons.
Notably, American carriers do not operate alone but are deployed as part of a "carrier
strike group”.
The carrier strike group consists of multiple Ticonderoga-class cruiser and Arleigh Burke-class,
as well as Virginia class attack submarines.
These vessels can intercept incoming missiles & torpedoes and in case of eventuality also
act as a shield for the supercarrier by coming in between missiles or torpedoes and the supercarriers.
The Virginia class submarines can defeat enemy submarines as well as clear sea mines.
Viewers must note that Nimitz class is far more advanced than Kitty Hawk-class and Ford
class has been designed considering the lessons learned from the exercise.
Keeping in view all the aspects, it can be stated that American supercarriers are a very
hard nut to crack and are almost unsinkable.
They could probably be only taken out with nukes.