Are Aircraft Carriers Obsolete? | Ask The Professor

0:03 Hi, this is John Meersheimer, and I'm here today to answer another question from a channel member. This question comes from Jerry McLaughlin R8W. That's Jerry McLaughlin R8W. And he writes, Professor Meersheimer, in the Iran War, the threat of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles pushed U.S.

0:32 aircraft carriers into a defensive posture about a thousand miles from Iran. Have these accurate, low-cost weapons greatly reduced the military value of U.S. aircraft carriers around the world? If so, was the U.S. Navy aware of these new limits on its ability to project power before the Iran War began?

1:02 I think it's clear to say that the U.S. Navy and the U.S. military have always been aware that aircraft carriers are vulnerable when they get near large land masses. For example, if you go back to World War II, we did not use aircraft carriers in Europe to fight against Nazi Germany. It would have been remarkably foolish to get aircraft carriers into the fight against Nazi Germany.

1:40 You're much better using, much better off using airfields on land instead of relying on carriers. And in part because those carriers are very vulnerable. There was no question about that. Back then, and during the Cold War, when we thought about fighting a war in Central Europe, nobody seriously argued that you could bring aircraft carriers near the European mainland to fight against the Soviet Union or to fight against the Warsaw Pact.

2:17 The carriers just simply would have been too vulnerable back then. Now, I think there's no question that given what's happened in the Ukraine war, and especially what's happened in the Iran war, as Jerry points out, it's quite clear that you cannot bring aircraft carriers close to a large landmass when you're dealing with a rival or an adversary that has ballistic missiles, drones, and cruise missiles.

2:47 The fact is that the threat to an aircraft carrier today is much greater than it was at the time of the maritime strategy in the 1980s or even in World War II. And as I said, back then people were reluctant to bring an aircraft carrier near a land, a large landmass where the adversary had weapons that could be directed at those carriers.

3:16 So the situation has only gotten worse for the carriers. Now, the question is, what does this mean for the U.S. military? Well, it's quite clear that the principal concern that the United States has today when you talk about the different threats that uh it faces is China, right? The China threat is of paramount importance.

3:47 The Pentagon sometimes refers to it as the pacing threat. It's hard for me to imagine that in a fight with China over Taiwan or over the South China Sea, that you would rely on aircraft carriers. They would be very vulnerable if you brought them anywhere near the Chinese mainland. And the thing you want to remember about an aircraft carrier is that the carrier itself, plus the battle group, the other ships that go along with it, uh are remarkably expensive.

4:24 An aircraft carrier battle group is uh extremely expensive. And these ballistic missiles, especially the cruise missiles and the drones that you might attack a carrier with, are remarkably cheap when compared to the cost of an aircraft carrier. So the cost exchange ratio clearly favors the cruise missiles, the ballistic missiles and the drones over the carriers.

4:52 And uh so I think if you're planning uh a containment strategy against uh China, uh I think aircraft carriers are basically useless. Uh and I think if you go to the Middle East and you think about what's happened in the Iran war, you may be able to use carriers, uh, but it will be at a great distance, and you'll have to have lots of refueling capability.

5:21 And uh it's not clear in the end uh that carriers will be very useful, especially moving forward, because what's likely to happen moving forward, and there's already evidence of this, is that the Iranians are developing more sophisticated cruise missiles and more sophisticated ballistic missiles and more sophisticated drones.

5:45 And what that means is that the range of those missiles and drones will increase significantly. And I believe the lethality will increase as well. Now, you might say that what will happen here is that the carriers uh will develop defensive capabilities that will allow them to deal with that increased uh lethality uh that you see on the Iranian side.

6:12 But I think there the advantage is with the offender, not with the defender. I think it's going to be very hard to defend those carriers uh against Iran moving forward. So my guess would be that moving forward the carriers will have to operate at even greater distances from the Iranian uh coastline than they now do.

6:35 All of this is to say that I think the future for aircraft carriers uh is going to be greatly diminished from what it has been in the past. Now, the final question that Jerry asks is whether or not the U.S. Navy is aware of these new limits. I think there's no question that the Navy uh is filled with people who understand uh what's going on here.

7:08 Uh and there are surely some people in the Navy who are interested in greatly reducing uh the United States' reliance on aircraft carriers. Uh but at the same time, it's very important to understand that the very essence of the Navy is inextricably bound up with aircraft carriers. Uh aircraft carriers are of great symbolic importance to the Navy.

7:40 Uh they are they are the weapon that is of the greatest prominence. Uh I mean submarines are important for sure, but submarines, I believe, play second fiddle to aircraft carriers. So getting rid of aircraft carriers or reducing our reliance, reducing our reliance on aircraft carriers moving forward will be very difficult because so many people in the Navy will go to great lengths to come up with stories that tell us how carriers can survive and still prove to be remarkably lethal weapons in any potential fight against adversaries, be that adversary China or be that adversary Iran.

8:34 The argument will be that we can fix this problem, we can deal with this problem. Yes, carriers face a vulnerability problem, we're not denying that, but we can figure out ways to defeat that vulnerability problem, and carriers will be very useful weapons moving forward. So you'll hear that argument made, I believe, oftentimes in the Navy.

9:00 And the end result will be that it will be difficult to significantly reduce our reliance on carriers moving forward, in my opinion. Even though I do believe that putting bureaucratic politics or organizational politics aside and looking at this issue in a purely strategic way, I think the United States would be well served to spend much less money on building carriers and to spend much more money building other naval weapons like submarines.

9:39 So that's my thought regarding this very important question that we'll surely hear much about moving forward. Thank you very much.