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Despite Budget Woes, The Navy Is Unlikely To Cut Carriers:
Forbes link
The Navy organizes its most capable warfighting units around those vessels, each of which hosts about 90 fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft launched from four-acre flight decks. A typical carrier “strike group” will include one carrier, several surface combatants such as destroyers, and a submarine. The smaller warships are multi-mission vessels that help protect the strike group from overhead, surface and undersea attack while providing additional striking power, mainly in the form of cruise missiles.
Such forces can rapidly defeat the defenses of most littoral nations, delivering devastatingly accurate attacks deep into an enemy’s interior from secure locations at sea. The carrier strike group’s unique combination of precision effects, multi-layered protection, and exquisite coordination is a big part of the reason why America’s military routinely accomplishes missions that no other country has even attempted.
....... Nonetheless, there is good reason to believe that the Navy will not reduce the number of carriers in the fleet anytime soon, despite the budgetary challenges that lie ahead. The reason resides less in the rigorous metrics used to size the current force to national strategy than in two other, less noticed factors. One is the management culture in the modern Navy and the other is the protracted life cycles of modern aircraft carriers. With regard to the management culture, the Navy Department is by far the best run of the military departments, and it typically enjoys stronger support from the political system than the Air Force or the Army. Under a series of politically adept Navy secretaries including current incumbent Ray Mabus, the sea services have exercised disproportionate influence over Pentagon deliberations, largely eclipsing the inputs of other services. ......................
The other seldom-noticed factor working to protect carriers is the protracted life cycles associated with building and operating the biggest combat systems ever conceived. It takes about seven years to construct and outfit a large-deck aircraft carrier, and even longer when a new class of carriers is being introduced — as is the case today. Once the carrier is commissioned, it will stay in the fleet for 50 years, making it by far the longest-lived class of warships in the modern Navy.
This has some interesting implications. It suggests the service could increase the intervals between beginning each new carrier without having any near-term impact on the size of the fleet. A study by the RAND Corporation earlier this year noted that increasing the interval between construction starts from four to five years, as recommended by former defense secretary Robert Gates, would not result in the number of carriers in the fleet permanently falling from 11 to 10 until 2042. Congressional naval expert Ronald O’Rourke has noted a similar absence of near-term impacts if the interval were extended to six or seven years.
However, because of the diverse skills and careful sequencing that are required to build the world’s most complicated weapons system, extending the intervals doesn’t yield much in the way of budget savings. The Navy would still need to maintain the pool of suppliers and skills necessary to build the carrier, many of which are unique to the aircraft carrier enterprise. In addition, other naval programs performed at the same shipyard such as submarine construction would have to absorb overhead costs transferred from the carrier program. Thus, delaying carrier construction would allow some near-term cost avoidance, but over the longer term the service would end up paying more for each carrier and other combat systems such as the Virginia-class attack submarine.
While another source says this:
Navy Drops Carrier Group, Down To Nine
(Source: Center for a New American Security; issued Aug. 5, 2011 — UPDATED)
WASHINGTON --- A recent Navy decision to deactivate one of its aircraft carrier groups could be a sign of things to come for the service's carrier fleet.
On Monday, former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead announced that the Navy's Carrier Strike Group 9 will be reassigned from the USS Abraham Lincoln to the USS Ronald Reagan.
The reason for the group's reassignment? To take the place of the recently deactivated Carrier Strike Group 7, stationed in San Diego, Calif. Taking CSG-7 out of the fleet leaves the Navy with only nine operational carrier strike groups.
A number that the sea service will likely be stuck with over the next decade, according to Ray Pritchett, who runs the Information Dissemination blog that covers Navy issues closely.
According to Pritchett, the move is the Navy's way of cutting costs early on as DoD prepares for lean funding years ahead. By cutting a carrier group, the Navy can clear all the operations and maintenance costs for that group off their books.
In addition, Pritchett points out, the Navy will also save service dollars in operations and maintenance for the air wings tied to CSG-7.
Even though the Navy will keep all 11 carriers in the fleet, which will drop to 10 ships once the USS Enterprise retires, it will likely maintain the nine carrier group construct for the long term.
Once the Enterprise is taken out of service, the Navy will likely just do the same thing it did with CSG-7, simply shifting the group (CSG-12) from the Enterprise to another carrier.
While the Navy will be able to shoulder the loss of the group, and still maintain a strategic presence worldwide, the message the move sends -- particularly to the Hill -- could be irreversible, according to one defense analyst.
If Navy operations do not suffer as a result of the cut and maintain the nine strike group construct long term, "it will be very hard to bring that [number] back up" if needed, said Travis Sharp, a defense budget analyst at the Center for a New American Security.
The move will also make the Navy's case for the new Ford-class carrier harder to make, Sharp said, noting that the Navy could bolster its amphibious fleet as a way to fill that gap.
link : Defence Aerospace link
