![]() ![]() With improvements in anti-ship systems worldwide, the probability of losing this capital ship may be increasing. Its biggest disadvantage is that an adversary can sink it. One of the advantages a carrier has over a traditional airfield is that it can move. In many cases, an aircraft carrier is the quickest, most credible military force available. Timely responses to emerging conflicts or disasters, even when the arriving force is small in scale, can greatly affect cost and outcome. When a crisis occurs on or near a body of water, the aircraft carrier is unique in the speed at which it can arrive, and its independence once on station. To help one imagine how a ‘maritime runway’ could accomplish such a diverse number of missions, the 70/80/90 rule-of-thumb is useful: water covers about 70% of the earth’s surface, approximately 80% of the world’s population lives near the ocean, and about 90% of all trade travels by sea. Diplomacy, power projection, quick crisis response force, land attack from the sea, sea base for helicopter and amphibious assault forces, Anti-Surface Warfare (ASUW), Defensive Counter Air (DCA), and Humanitarian Aid Disaster Relief (HADR) are just some of the missions the aircraft carrier can accomplish. The aircraft carrier’s diverse mission set has been used regularly in conflicts and crises throughout the world over the last 100 years. This article will highlight the developments of air threats to aircraft carriers and how future countermeasures might ensure CSG survivability. While surface and subsurface systems also pose serious risks to the carrier, the lethality of air threats is growing at an exponential rate. However, strategists consider China and Russia as the most likely potential adversaries to have peer capabilities, credibly able to threaten a Carrier Strike Group (CSG). Various state-sponsored and non-state actors, utilizing unconventional warfare tactics, pose a plausible threat to the force protection of any naval vessel. More recently, many experts’ opinions have changed, stating carriers will be kept from the battlespace due to the rapid increase in the capabilities of Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) integrated weapon systems. 1 Decades ago, most experts in the field held the opinion that sea-based air power would be a critical piece of future conflicts, and that global powers should invest heavily in this core, military capability. Expert opinions on the future effectiveness of air power from the sea have also changed dramatically. Since the First World War, the importance of sea-based aviation has evolved, including the increasingly diverse mission sets aircraft carriers provide.
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