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The challenging global economic situation shows few signs of lessening, and across the world there are reports of further cuts in equipment, hulls and operations. In Spain for instance the veteran carrier Principe De Asturias (PDA) has finally been paid off after some 25 years service as part of budget cuts.
It is perhaps ironic to consider that she was originally conceived in the early 1980s as a cheap ‘Sea Control Ship’ solution originally looked at by the US Navy to provide cheaper carriers. Intended to put ASW helicopters to sea as a replacement for the Delado, she represented the closest any nation has perhaps come to a truly ‘austere’ carrier, with minimal support facilities for the airwing.
Optimized in the first for ASW, with a very limited fixed wing capability using the Harrier (although never to the same level of development as the UK with the mixed FA2 / GR7 airwing), the PDA was an example in the 1980s of how smaller‘harrier carriers’ could be built for emerging middle tier navies, providing them with airpower at relatively small cost. In reality she remained the sole of her class built around the world , with the closest other example being a Thai vessel optimized for EEZ protection and to act as a Royal Yacht. This is not to say that naval aviation does not have a future – it emphatically does.
However in an era of tight budgets, it is easier to see the construction of multi-role ships such as Juan Carlos being the preferred setting for most navies, as they represent a more versatile platform which is cheaper to run.
As nations increasingly focus on influencing the littoral environment, LPHs / LPDs seem to be the new generation of capital platform. Able to be built relatively cheaply, but providing wide flexibility, they are not ‘proper’ aircraft carriers, but they do provide a deck, hangar space, command facilities and the ability to put troops ashore. The authors personal prediction is that while carriers may be on a slow decline, the broader global market for this sort of platform may boom.
Lead author Ian Easton, of the Project 2049 Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank says, "China's fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, could be technologically superior to those in the American arsenal and might have the ability to "swarm" in attacking an American aircraft carrier".
According to a new analysis of the country's drone program program, China first started publicly flying drones in October, 2009, during its National Day parade. Since then, it had stockpiled at least 280 UAVs as of 2011 that could be used for "intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, precision strike missions and electronic warfare missions," according to the report, released by the Project 2049 Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank. "Since then, the country has likely manufactured many more", Ian Easton says.
"Chinese UAV technology is a woefully understudied topic," he says, adding that there's reason to believe that China has either already surpassed U.S. prowess in unmanned air technology or will soon do so. "They're certainly far more advanced than I expected them to be. You get the impression they're doing very advanced, cutting-edge research."
Like in many other industries, Easton says "there's no question" China has likely caught up to the U.S. with a cyber warfare campaign to steal technological secrets —the country has UAVs "that look exactly like the US Predator or the Global Hawk. According to Easton, who studied more than 100 Chinese-language military technology journals, official government reports and news reports out of Taiwan, the Chinese see drones as a platform to wage war at the "highest level of conflict." Chinese documents suggest that the country's People's Liberation Army "envisions attacking U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups with swarms of multi-mission UAVs."
While the American military has mainly used drones for reconnaissance in the Middle East and Northern Africa and precision strikes against small groups of insurgents or terrorists, Chinese reports suggest that they plan to use the drones in the event of a conventional war. America.
China envisions attacks "with initial waves of decoy drones" followed by swarms of strike drones that would often be shot down during their mission. "When the Chinese look at UAVs, they see tremendous capabilities for high-end conflict. We've been using them for low-intensity situations," Easton says. "The Chinese have done an overwhelming number of studies discussing using UAVs as having the capabilities of hitting U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups. That's what they're probably planning to do.
The very stark reality of all this is that most navies seems to be stepping gracefully away from the Carrier game – it is hard to see the British Royal Navy in 2050 investing in new carriers, or the USN being able to afford one for one replacements for their CVN’s.
"Although the process will be slow, the increasingly likely outcome is that within 30 years the bulk of those carriers left in service around the world will be operated by nations whose strategic interests are not always in alignment with those of the West. The era of Western carrier dominance is nearly over, as costs rise. But, the era of carrier proliferation is not here either, with costs for a ‘proper’ carrier remaining too significant for all but the richest of nations.
EU-Digest
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