Looming over the horizon the nearly 60,000 tons of American diplomacy waits menacingly
as the enemy aircraft approach.
The pilots are stunned.
They can’t believe they’ve made it this far without being spotted.
As they get closer and closer to their target they make their missiles ready to fire and
wait until they are sure they can hit their target.
With the American super carrier unusually quiet, the pilots let go their deadly payload
and peel away.
As they head back towards base they can see that all their missiles hit the carrier but
did not cause a scratch!
Disappointed but not undeterred other units join the fight to try and take it out.
Next up is a destroyer that launches a surface-to-surface missile at the carrier.
It too hits it but causes little damage to the integrity of the carrier.
Lastly, a submarine tries its luck by launching torpedoes at it.
Torpedoes are known to snap ships in half with just one shot and with several on its
way surely the carrier must go down now.
But to the submariners dismay, even with all direct hits the American behemoth still floats!
While this scene might sound like wishful thinking or something out of a cheap war movie,
it actually happened in real life.
The USS America was a Kitty Hawk class aircraft carrier and holds the title of being the only
supercarrier sunk, intentionally or in battle, in world history.
After she was decommissioned in 1996, the carrier was slated to be destroyed in live
fire testing for the up and coming Nimitz class carriers.
The reason why she was selected was because she was quite similar in design and make to
the Nimitz class carriers and US Navy engineers wanted to see really how much punishment a
ship like this could take.
The results of the testing far exceeded any of their expectations.
Over the course of four weeks, the America was pounded with missiles from aircraft and
ships as well as torpedoes from submarines.
She definitely took some heavy damage but due to her construction was still able to
stay afloat by herself even without a crew onboard conducting damage control.
In the end, Navy explosive specialists had to board her and place demolitions charges
in specific places in order to sink her which they finally did on May 14, 2005.
It is incredibly unlikely that a team of skilled saboteurs could ever board a US Navy carrier
and sink it with timed explosives.
But even against conventional threats, these behemoths of American diplomacy are pretty
darn hard to take out.
Here are ten reasons why US Navy aircraft carriers are impossible to sink.
Number Ten: The F-18 Attack Aircraft
What would an aircraft carrier be without their aircraft?
After all their carrier air wing is what gives them their ability to attack from hundreds
of miles before enemy units can even get within firing ranges of the carrier.
There are three main aircraft that make up carrier air wings and the F-18 Super Hornet
is the strike warfare side of the house.
The F-18 is the workhouse of the air wing and each carrier can have up to about 50 of
these aircraft onboard.
They are an all purpose fighter that can combat targets in the air and on the ground.
With their speed and maneuverability they can easily outrun most combat aircraft in
the world today.
Though they have had limited history in proving their air-to-air prowess, with just two kills
in the Gulf War, they have seen extensive use against ground targets in the Wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
Because of this, the F-18 is more than capable of knocking out enemy aircraft and shore installations
hundreds of miles before they even become a threat to the carrier.
Number Nine: Link 16
US and NATO units use what are called tactical data links to share information.
Though most NATO units only have Link 11, US forces are all equipped with the newest
and most secure data link called Link 16.
Broken down in its most basic form, tactical data links are simply a secure way to share
information.
By utilizing a variety of measures like frequency hopping and encryption, the link can be near
impervious to enemy attempts to intercept or disrupt the information flow, thereby guaranteeing
the free flow of communications.
In a real world scenario, the carrier would be able to link up with the entire strike
group and as many other units as the carrier wanted thereby ensuring that all units would
have secure comms and a means of feeding information quickly in a real-world scenario.
Number Eight: The SCIF (pronounced SKIFF)
Going along the lines of secure information, onboard every carrier is what is called a
SCIF which stands for Secure Compartmentalized Information Space.
These spaces are Top Secret and only those with extensive security background investigations
and a need to know are allowed to enter.
While the equipment inside is highly classified, SCIFs are an incredibly useful tool in that
they allow the processing and dissemination of vital information quickly.
The information that could be received could be intel about an upcoming strike, indications
and warnings of a terrorist attack, or anything else that would be of national security interest
or pose an imminent danger to the carrier.
Because other smaller ships like destroyers and cruisers do not have a SCIF, the carrier
becomes crucial as a means for getting vital information quickly and securely.
Because of this, even if an enemy was planning an attack, the carrier would be forewarned
about it.
Number Seven: Their Personal Defense Systems
All warships are equipped with a robust line of defenses that when all other measures fail
and a ship must stand on their own, she can still counter an attack.
Carriers are no different.
They have a variety of active and passive countermeasures onboard that can be their
last line of defense should an enemy threat ever get through.
The most dangerous threat a carrier would face would be an enemy missile.
For this, carriers have multiple Sea sparrow or Rolling Airframe Missiles designed to take
out enemy missiles as a last resort before they strike the carrier.
They are also armed with the Close In Weapon System designed to shoot 20mm Tungsten tipped
rounds at a rate of thousands of rounds a minute.
The CIWS (pronounced SEA-WHIZ) can also be fired in surface mode against small contacts
like skiffs or suicide boats.
For sub-surface threats, carriers can employ active countermeasures known as NIXIE.
NIXIE is a towed array that can be fitted with acoustic buoys that attract torpedoes
away from the carrier and towards it.
Lastly, the carrier can pick up and fight against attacks along the electromagnetic
spectrum with its SLQ-32.
(Pronounced SLICK).
The SLQ-32 is a powerful piece of equipment that can operate passively and actively against
enemy threats like jamming.
Number Six: The E/A-18 Growler
The E/A-18 Growler is a modified version of the F/A-18 Hornet in that it has advanced
electronic warfare suites onboard to counter a variety of threats.
Its primary mission is the suppression of enemy RADAR defenses and it does this in two
ways.
The first way is called passive countermeasures whereby it can pick up electromagnetic frequencies
from enemy RADARs and pass that information along about their bearing and range to the
carrier or other units.
If needed, the Growler can then take out the threats itself through active measures by
launching a missile at the RADARs.
Because of this aircraft, carriers can feel relative comfort from the threat that anti-ship
missiles and even ICBMs pose, since without fire control RADARs to find and track a target
the missiles are essentially high priced junk.
Number Five: Their Escorts
Carriers are never alone and they always deploy with escort ships.
This combination of ships is then called a Carrier Strike Group.
Within each Strike Group there is typically one carrier, three destroyers, one cruiser,
and then a submarine.
Though in today’s operations escorts may peel off to conduct other taskings, in a scenario
where the strike group would be under a real threat of attack all the escorts would return
to be within range to protect the carrier.
As grim as it sounds, the escorts, especially the destroyers, would act more or less as
a bullet sponge for the carrier in an actual battle.
This is because though the goal of a destroyer is to take out missiles well before they reach
their target, in the end if it came down to trying to save a carrier by losing a single
destroyer, commanders would make that difficult decision only to save as many lives as possible.
But do not worry since though cruisers and destroyers might seem expendable they are
in all reality highly capable ships and even taking one of these ships down would be a
challenge for any major power in the world.
Number Four: Compartmentalization
Onboard a vessel, there are not just a couple floors and a few dozen compartments.
Rather, even a smaller ship like a destroyer will have about ten decks and hundreds of
spaces while a carrier will have dozens of decks and thousands of spaces.
This large number of spaces is crucial since it means that even if some spaces are lost
due to damage or flooding, they can be sealed off and the ship can continue fighting.
Another benefit of all these spaces is what is called cross flooding.
Cross flooding is whereby perfectly good spaces are intentionally flooded out.
This is usually done as a way to manage the stability of a vessel.
Because of this, even if large numbers of spaces are lost or flooded, the ship will
not lose mission capability and definitely will not sink easily.
Number Three: The E-2D Hawkeye
The most advanced and top secret aircraft onboard a carrier, the E-2D Hawkeye is the
eyes and ears of the Carrier Air Wing.
It is also its number one intelligence gathering asset.
With a huge radar dome on top of the aircraft, the plane can coordinate strikes of all the
other aircraft already in the air.
Additionally, with the Combined Engagement Concept, it can congregate data from other
aircraft to help the carrier form an accurate and real time picture of the battlespace.
The onboard sensors are also quite powerful in picking up enemy missile RADARs, surface
search RADARs, and other electromagnetic signals that can be sent back to the carrier.
Because of all these functions, it is unlikely that any enemy aircraft, surface contact,
or missile will get close undetected.
Number Two: Their redundancy
Carriers are just like any other warship in that redundancy is built into the system.
Take for example the electrical system.
There are numerous electrical generators onboard an aircraft carrier along with a port and
starboard bus.
Taking out just a few generators or even one of the electrical buses will not take out
power to the ship.
Another example would be its firemain system.
Firemain is just seawater that is the primary method of attacking fires on the ship.
The firemain loop, or how the water travels, is varied and full of twists and turns.
That way, if the firemain loop is affected anywhere it can be quickly isolated and water
can still be directed towards a casualty.
Number One: Their speed
The best defense an aircraft carrier has is its speed.
Though the official stance is that they can go greater than 30 knots, in reality it is
believed that they can go much faster than that.
So fast, in fact, that they could outrun practically every other warship on the planet at full
power.
Why speed matters is that if a carrier can move extremely quickly to avoid danger, than
it is unlikely the threat will hit the carrier.
Whether it is a missile, torpedoes, or another ship, if the carrier cannot defend against
it, then it can just run away.
That is not to say that a carrier can go anywhere close to what a speeding missile can travel.
Rather, a carrier can move so fast so quickly that the enemy’s fire control solution will
be outdated by the time the missile gets there, or that the seeker on the missile will have
great difficulty in reacquiring the carrier.
For missiles and torpedoes that are passive, moving out of the general area quickly would
surely defeat most of these systems.
Those were the top ten reasons why an aircraft carrier cannot be sunk.
Though extremely unlikely to be sunk by any singular threat, there are emerging technologies
that seek to overthrow carrier dominance.
One of the main ones is the threat of swarm attacks either through drones, missiles, or
suicide boats.
With the prospect of facing hundreds of threats at once, this yet untested tactic is perhaps
the only means to actually sink a carrier.
But as of yet the enemies of the United States have not tried such a method and the US Navy
has probably already come up with ways to counter such a threat if it were to ever face
it on the battlefield.