This month over at the Naval Institute Proceedings, Lieutenant Commander Jeff Zeberlein proffers an intriguing, if oblique, take on the future of the aircraft carrier. Namely that in the age of uncrewed vehicles and artificial intelligence, every ship of war could—and should—be a “carrier” of some type or another. Miniaturization plus AI, he writes, makes proliferating aviation capability throughout the surface fleet—and not just to ships-of-the-line like cruisers and destroyers but to auxiliaries and amphibious transports—both feasible and prudent. Not every ship can be a big-deck carrier. Suitably repurposed, though, all could pitch in, enhancing the fleet’s effectiveness and durability in battle. In turn the fleet would be less reliant on the carrier air wing.
Thesis endorsed. Read the whole thing and hurry back.
For the most part Commander Zeberlein sagely refrains from opining on the shopworn—yet for navy people radioactive—topic of whether modern weapons technology, chiefly shore-based anti-ship weaponry, has rendered flattops (not to mention other major surface combatants) indefensible in combat. If it has, the U.S. Navy has saddled itself with a hyper-expensive fleet of wasting assets. That notion is heresy among naval-aviation proponents—including high-ranking naval officials and uniformed officers, as well as opinionmakers in academe and the think-tank world.
Why jab the hornet’s nest?
That being said, Zeberlein does imply that taxpayer dollars could be invested more wisely. For........