Free Preview of Members-Only Content
To view the requested intelligence, you must be a Stratfor.com member.
- To download a PDF of this piece that was suggested by Stratfor Member Michael Kuzik, Click here.
If there is a single symbol of the military power of the United States and its global reach, it is the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Although capable of projecting immense striking power, these warships also possess inherent vulnerabilities.
The lead ship of the class, the USS Nimitz (CVN-68), was laid down in 1968. The 10th and last of its class, the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), will not be commissioned until 2009, more than four decades after the USS Nimitz. Built around a massive 4.5-acre flight deck and displacing more than 100,000 tons, the class represents the largest warships ever constructed.
This size allows the Nimitz-class to embark an air wing with more than 60 combat aircraft, comparable to the number of such aircraft in a small NATO member state’s entire air force. Even today, refinements in the composition of the carrier air wing and the maturation of precision-guided munitions now allow a single carrier air wing to hit the same target set that would have required more than six such wings at the end of the Cold War. In more than three decades of operational service, they have proven themselves again and again an invaluable tool of U.S. foreign policy and military operations.
Yet part and parcel of this immense size and impressive strike capacity is the inherent vulnerability of the modern U.S. aircraft carrier.
The Problem
The much-vaunted battleship was eclipsed by carrier-based airpower during World War II. The battleship’s vulnerability was inextricably tied to its design, which incorporated immense armor and massive guns. Such battleship designs were excellent for tasks like sinking the HMS Hood, but were poorly tailored to the era of torpedo bombers.
It is not that the battleship was obsolete — the final Iowa-class battleships were only finally stricken from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in 2006 — but rather, the apex and decline of one era crossing the emergence and rise of the next era. The proof of this transition was provided by the massive naval battles of World War II.
| Stratfor Members, please log in at the top left hand corner |
