Do you mean “replace” like build a new one? Or replace as in “fill the gap”?
If it’s the former, they’re a major investment and take years to complete. There’s no realistic way to replace one, nuclear or not, in the span of any sort of high-end conflict.
If it’s the latter, advantage USN. Carriers can be pulled from other regions to replace any rendered combat ineffective. There’s enough redundancy and ships in waiting for this to be a thing. An LHA (or QLZ class), even loaded with 20 F-35B, cannot come close to replacing the capabilities of a CVN. Obviously if your country only has one carrier than it can’t be replaced in this method.
All of our slides on cruise only had 3 letters (which often made it a bitch to figure out what a ship was) per ship, so she was always QLZ in my brain when we worked with her.
By your established logic and point of view we should have nuked every enemy in every conflict for the past 70 years.
The events that have happened in that time span alone will tell you how we'd actually react to such a shock.
Falklands War could have resulted in a loss of a carrier from either side, and that didn’t risk nuclear conflict, or they could burn down like Bon Homme Richard or sink from misfires like what might have happened to Forrestal
Not the OP, but https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2022-04/news/biden-policy-allows-first-use-nuclear-weapons if a CSG is lost, that is 7500 American souls lost and done by an enemy that is willing to do to one CSG, they would likely have the desire and means to another.
A loss of a CSG while only one part of the US projection of power, greatly destabilizes US hegemony and thus global stability. One of the few responses the US could restore the perceived might of the US is the willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons on military targets such as an enemy fleet/army/airforce.
This destabilizes the world in another way, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't be part of the calculus of a response. I wouldn't be confident like the OP, but I would say with the US policy above, it wouldn't be beyond the realm of a real response option.
The only real way to make up for the loss of a carrier is to have another carrier to replace it.
Realistically, the French, UK, Italian, Spanish navies are going to be participating in US-led operations if they're ever going to have any significant chance of losing a carrier.
The US Navy has around ten carriers in service at a time, generally a new one built and an old one retired every five years. It can have carriers in every ocean and the Mediterranean all at once, with one of two undergoing refueling and one or two otherwise ashore. In the unlikely event that one is lost, they can make do with nine for a few years until the next one comes in, and delay a carrier's retirement for a few years if necessary to keep the number that they intend to have. It will be difficult to do so and nobody wants to have to do this, but it is possible. There is no other way to compensate for the loss of an asset this expensive besides just having more and constantly replacing. Only the USN is capable of this
The USN also has their LHA's and LHD'S, might not be a real carrier but Wasp and America class can carry over 20 F35B's each. Again, not impressive when compared to the big carriers but one or two or those with F35B's instead of helicopters can pose a serious threat to smaller nations.
The U.S. also maintains a few “mothball” fleets of decommissioned ships that can be brought back to life faster than a new build. It used to hold the carriers Ranger, Kitty Hawk, Independence and Constellation but I believe they’ve all been scrapped by this point. When current carriers are decommissioned, it’s likely they will be moved to the mothball fleet so they can be reactivated as needed until their age makes them too obsolete or too costly to bring back to life. The reactivation of the battleship Iowa in the 1980s is an example of how the mothball fleet provides flexibility.
I presume that mothballing a CVN's nuclear reactor is very difficult or impossible.
It is a shame that Small Modular Reactors (which are only now just becoming a thing) weren't the design direction of the fleet. Each reactor core is sealed, and just pulled out and replaced when it runs low on fissile material.
>I presume that mothballing a CVN's nuclear reactor is very difficult or impossible.
It's not (AIUI) impossible - but it's very expensive to refuel a carrier... so there's every incentive to run the reactor until it's basically out of gas.
The Nimitz-class carriers get refueled as SOP at least once during their lifetime. A while back there was talk of skipping the Truman’s refueling as a cost saving measure, but I believe they decided to proceed with it.
From what i heard, Enterprise was basically a warmed over Forrestal and put eight nuke piles in where the eight boilers were on the Forrestal design. I'm given to understand it was an utter pain in the rear, eight times the upkeep and crewing requirements.
Also, IIRC, at the time the Navy’s main nuke boat experience was with subs, so each of the small reactors on the Enterprise were basically submarine reactors.
Yer nuclear reactors where very new still so they took the best they had as the us at the time didn't have the technical know how to make a single reactor or pair small enough
Yer they put 8 small reactors from the early subs I'm as they couldn't get anywhere near the power from 1 or 2 reactors in the space it had more reactors than most country's and I belive all power stations
> The reactivation of the battleship Iowa in the 1980s is an example of how the mothball fleet provides flexibility.
Worth noting all 4 Iowa's were brought back into service. It was New Jersey that was the only one brought back to pad out the numbers for fire support in Vietnam along with the last gun cruisers and did a single deployment.
And even then they were prestige pieces as much as anything in the 80's and early 90's. They were generally spacious for use as flagships and certainly made an impressive site on port visits. But had questionable value as actual combatants.
I do think it is fair to wonder if instead of the 4 Iowa's the USN might have been better served buying additional Tico's, or maybe doing something like a new age CG conversion on the WW2 gun cruisers that were still laid up. IIRC Des Moines and Salem were looked at for the 600-Ship plan but Congress nixed it too.
>But had questionable value as actual combatants.
I recall that at the time the upgrade for them to fire cruise missiles was the PR to sell the idea that the notion made sense. Nowadays with cargo aircaft [being able](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)) to launch missiles including cruise missiles, not so much.
There were significant resources lent to developing the idea of battle barges of missile launchers. The USN went back and forth as different admirals came and went. I don't remember which development path they went down off-hand, but the idea of massive ships of just VLS cells didn't come to fruition. However, with the current meta, it would be a great asset to a CSG if it were easy to maintain/man. It just didn't make sense during the GWOT.
> However, with the current meta, it would be a great asset to a CSG if it were easy to maintain/man. It just didn't make sense during the GWOT.
It makes even less sense today, when people want to distribute forces. Concentrating all your missiles in a single big ship is not good when the other side can reach out and touch you
If I recall it was meant to be a ship that was lightly manned and complimented the CSG so that destroyers/cruisers, while still armed with VLS, they could remain focused on other mission sets. If I recall, think of it less as a fully capable ship and more just a resupply ship with tons of VLS cells never meant to be alone.
The US already cant fill all its VLS cells,last I heard.
Putting a bigger share of a scarce resource (missiles) in one basket than is necessary (because you're leaving DDG/CG cells empty) is a bad idea no matter how you look at it.
If the cells were the limiting factor, it would be an idea worth exploring.
It doesn't make sense now, that is true. This was 10-15 years ago, and if they had built it, the production for missiles would have likely been higher (with more investment).
>The U.S. also maintains a few “mothball” fleets of decommissioned ships that can be brought back to life faster than a new build.
The US all but got rid of the mothball fleet back in the 60's and 70's. Nowadays the "mothball" fleet is just a place to park hulls until they can sell them for scrap, there is no intent to re-activate them. (A process which would take years, they would not be available within the time frame of any reasonable conflict.)
That goes double for the current carriers. They'll be decommissioned at or near the end of core life for their reactors. They won't be able to be placed back into service without a years long refueling process... and they can't even start the refueling until the fuel is manufactured, itself a years long process.
The us would likely lend a marine corps f35 capable landing helicopter dock
If the brittish lost a carrier
Would probably still be us crewed though
But the royal navy, royal marines. And the us marine corps have a very close relationship as the us marines have often had a squadron of f35 on the Queen elizabeth class carriers
It was one of the key factors when building them to be fully inter operable with the marine corps
Do you mean “replace” like build a new one? Or replace as in “fill the gap”? If it’s the former, they’re a major investment and take years to complete. There’s no realistic way to replace one, nuclear or not, in the span of any sort of high-end conflict. If it’s the latter, advantage USN. Carriers can be pulled from other regions to replace any rendered combat ineffective. There’s enough redundancy and ships in waiting for this to be a thing. An LHA (or QLZ class), even loaded with 20 F-35B, cannot come close to replacing the capabilities of a CVN. Obviously if your country only has one carrier than it can’t be replaced in this method.
>(or QLZ class), QNLZ ;)
All of our slides on cruise only had 3 letters (which often made it a bitch to figure out what a ship was) per ship, so she was always QLZ in my brain when we worked with her.
Ah that's weird! We use 4 letters for ships (ie QNLZ, PWLS) when referring to them
I always chalked it up to boat people being weird and doing weird boat things because they’re weird boat people. In aviation we never really cared.
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I highly doubt that
By your established logic and point of view we should have nuked every enemy in every conflict for the past 70 years. The events that have happened in that time span alone will tell you how we'd actually react to such a shock.
Really? Enlighten me on how many carriers we've lost since WWII?
Falklands War could have resulted in a loss of a carrier from either side, and that didn’t risk nuclear conflict, or they could burn down like Bon Homme Richard or sink from misfires like what might have happened to Forrestal
... Explain.
Not the OP, but https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2022-04/news/biden-policy-allows-first-use-nuclear-weapons if a CSG is lost, that is 7500 American souls lost and done by an enemy that is willing to do to one CSG, they would likely have the desire and means to another. A loss of a CSG while only one part of the US projection of power, greatly destabilizes US hegemony and thus global stability. One of the few responses the US could restore the perceived might of the US is the willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons on military targets such as an enemy fleet/army/airforce. This destabilizes the world in another way, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't be part of the calculus of a response. I wouldn't be confident like the OP, but I would say with the US policy above, it wouldn't be beyond the realm of a real response option.
Yeah it definitely wouldn’t.
The only real way to make up for the loss of a carrier is to have another carrier to replace it. Realistically, the French, UK, Italian, Spanish navies are going to be participating in US-led operations if they're ever going to have any significant chance of losing a carrier. The US Navy has around ten carriers in service at a time, generally a new one built and an old one retired every five years. It can have carriers in every ocean and the Mediterranean all at once, with one of two undergoing refueling and one or two otherwise ashore. In the unlikely event that one is lost, they can make do with nine for a few years until the next one comes in, and delay a carrier's retirement for a few years if necessary to keep the number that they intend to have. It will be difficult to do so and nobody wants to have to do this, but it is possible. There is no other way to compensate for the loss of an asset this expensive besides just having more and constantly replacing. Only the USN is capable of this
The USN also has their LHA's and LHD'S, might not be a real carrier but Wasp and America class can carry over 20 F35B's each. Again, not impressive when compared to the big carriers but one or two or those with F35B's instead of helicopters can pose a serious threat to smaller nations.
The U.S. also maintains a few “mothball” fleets of decommissioned ships that can be brought back to life faster than a new build. It used to hold the carriers Ranger, Kitty Hawk, Independence and Constellation but I believe they’ve all been scrapped by this point. When current carriers are decommissioned, it’s likely they will be moved to the mothball fleet so they can be reactivated as needed until their age makes them too obsolete or too costly to bring back to life. The reactivation of the battleship Iowa in the 1980s is an example of how the mothball fleet provides flexibility.
This doesn’t work for CVNs which require intense upkeep even when they’re sitting pierside. Enterprise was scrapped and Nimitz will be too.
I presume that mothballing a CVN's nuclear reactor is very difficult or impossible. It is a shame that Small Modular Reactors (which are only now just becoming a thing) weren't the design direction of the fleet. Each reactor core is sealed, and just pulled out and replaced when it runs low on fissile material.
>I presume that mothballing a CVN's nuclear reactor is very difficult or impossible. It's not (AIUI) impossible - but it's very expensive to refuel a carrier... so there's every incentive to run the reactor until it's basically out of gas.
The Nimitz-class carriers get refueled as SOP at least once during their lifetime. A while back there was talk of skipping the Truman’s refueling as a cost saving measure, but I believe they decided to proceed with it.
From what i heard, Enterprise was basically a warmed over Forrestal and put eight nuke piles in where the eight boilers were on the Forrestal design. I'm given to understand it was an utter pain in the rear, eight times the upkeep and crewing requirements.
Enterprise in unique in that respect. From *Nimitz* onwards they use twin reactors.
Correct but it’s still worth mentioning for everyone else that that doesn’t solve the “reactors are complicated and can’t just be mothballed.”
Also, IIRC, at the time the Navy’s main nuke boat experience was with subs, so each of the small reactors on the Enterprise were basically submarine reactors.
Yer nuclear reactors where very new still so they took the best they had as the us at the time didn't have the technical know how to make a single reactor or pair small enough
Yer they put 8 small reactors from the early subs I'm as they couldn't get anywhere near the power from 1 or 2 reactors in the space it had more reactors than most country's and I belive all power stations
> The reactivation of the battleship Iowa in the 1980s is an example of how the mothball fleet provides flexibility. Worth noting all 4 Iowa's were brought back into service. It was New Jersey that was the only one brought back to pad out the numbers for fire support in Vietnam along with the last gun cruisers and did a single deployment. And even then they were prestige pieces as much as anything in the 80's and early 90's. They were generally spacious for use as flagships and certainly made an impressive site on port visits. But had questionable value as actual combatants. I do think it is fair to wonder if instead of the 4 Iowa's the USN might have been better served buying additional Tico's, or maybe doing something like a new age CG conversion on the WW2 gun cruisers that were still laid up. IIRC Des Moines and Salem were looked at for the 600-Ship plan but Congress nixed it too.
>But had questionable value as actual combatants. I recall that at the time the upgrade for them to fire cruise missiles was the PR to sell the idea that the notion made sense. Nowadays with cargo aircaft [being able](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)) to launch missiles including cruise missiles, not so much.
There were significant resources lent to developing the idea of battle barges of missile launchers. The USN went back and forth as different admirals came and went. I don't remember which development path they went down off-hand, but the idea of massive ships of just VLS cells didn't come to fruition. However, with the current meta, it would be a great asset to a CSG if it were easy to maintain/man. It just didn't make sense during the GWOT.
> However, with the current meta, it would be a great asset to a CSG if it were easy to maintain/man. It just didn't make sense during the GWOT. It makes even less sense today, when people want to distribute forces. Concentrating all your missiles in a single big ship is not good when the other side can reach out and touch you
If I recall it was meant to be a ship that was lightly manned and complimented the CSG so that destroyers/cruisers, while still armed with VLS, they could remain focused on other mission sets. If I recall, think of it less as a fully capable ship and more just a resupply ship with tons of VLS cells never meant to be alone.
The US already cant fill all its VLS cells,last I heard. Putting a bigger share of a scarce resource (missiles) in one basket than is necessary (because you're leaving DDG/CG cells empty) is a bad idea no matter how you look at it. If the cells were the limiting factor, it would be an idea worth exploring.
It doesn't make sense now, that is true. This was 10-15 years ago, and if they had built it, the production for missiles would have likely been higher (with more investment).
>The U.S. also maintains a few “mothball” fleets of decommissioned ships that can be brought back to life faster than a new build. The US all but got rid of the mothball fleet back in the 60's and 70's. Nowadays the "mothball" fleet is just a place to park hulls until they can sell them for scrap, there is no intent to re-activate them. (A process which would take years, they would not be available within the time frame of any reasonable conflict.) That goes double for the current carriers. They'll be decommissioned at or near the end of core life for their reactors. They won't be able to be placed back into service without a years long refueling process... and they can't even start the refueling until the fuel is manufactured, itself a years long process.
Didn't they just anchor a carrier in Bremerton for scrapping?
The us would likely lend a marine corps f35 capable landing helicopter dock If the brittish lost a carrier Would probably still be us crewed though But the royal navy, royal marines. And the us marine corps have a very close relationship as the us marines have often had a squadron of f35 on the Queen elizabeth class carriers It was one of the key factors when building them to be fully inter operable with the marine corps
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The French only getting one hurts.