SYDNEY — Japan, for the first time since World War II, will once again have a navy that includes aircraft carriers — technically, at least, after retrofitting two helicopter-destroyers to host recently arrived F-35 stealth fighters.
While they are not the immense super carriers of the US Navy like the Gerald R. Ford, the vessels, the Izumo and Kaga, will add to an Indo-Pacific region whose waters have increasingly been plied by aircraft carriers hailing from nations in the region and half a world away, whether they’re the traditional, full-sized floating mini-cities or smaller platforms.
The combination was captured in a photo posted Sunday by the United Kingdom on X, showing a powerful mix of super carriers and their smaller cousins: the HMS Prince of Wales, the American Nimitz-class USS George Washington and Japan’s JS Kaga, as well as the US Navy’s amphibious assault ship USS America, sailing in the North Philippine Sea on Aug. 10.
At a time when the utility and vulnerability of aircraft carriers is a hotly debated topic, analysts told Breaking Defense that at least for now in the Indo-Pacific the increased deployments of existing carriers and the global push to acquire more suggests they’re not going anywhere anytime soon — in one form or another.
“I think there is rising global interest in carriers, driven by a couple factors,” said Bryan Clark, a defense expert at the Washington-based Hudson Institute. “Militaries see the value they provided the US in the Middle East over the last few years when land bases were either vulnerable to attack or subject to host nation restrictions.”
Clark, who was special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations before he became a thinktank expert, also noted that “governments see how China is growing its carrier fleet and the threat it may pose to a country’s sea lanes and interests.”
The Many Carriers In Pacific Waters
Jennifer Parker, a former Royal Australian Navy officer now at the University of New South Wales, told Breaking Defense there is “a push towards carriers globally, whether this is traditional carriers that carry crewed fixed-wing aircraft, or the trend towards drone carriers that a range of countries, including Indonesia and South Korea are investigating.” But she notes that most countries in this region, aside from China’s, are pursuing “smaller tactical carriers.”
Today, of the roughly two dozen full-sized aircraft carriers in the world, the US sails 11, six in this region. One is the only US carrier based in a foreign country, at Japan’s Yokosuka port. China sails three and India sails two carriers.
In addition to super carriers, as they are known, the US also sails what many countries would consider aircraft carriers, though the amphibious assault ships known as LHDs pale in size. In addition to Japan’s newest smaller carriers, South Korea may build a drone carrier after its navy’s plans to build a carrier stalled out.
China may also be getting on the hybrid carrier game after producing what experts say could be a small carrier dedicated to drones at the shipyard of Jiangsu Dayang Marine.
In addition to carriers of various sizes and types being built in the region, carriers from Britain, France and Italy have visited the Indo-Pacific in the last year, sending a clear signal to China that they share the goal of a Pacific free of coercion by the Peoples Republic of China.
That’s done under the little-known European Carrier Group Interoperability Initiative (ECGII), signed by a group of nations in 2010. As part of this, the HMS Prince of Wales carrier strike group called in Singapore in late June at the beginning of an eight-month regional transit, participated in the multinational Australian exercise known as Talisman Sabre and will culminate in the annual Five Power Defense Arrangements exercise next month.
The Carrier Debate
The pursuit of aircraft carriers, even in “tactical” form, comes amid a heated debate over whether the age of the aircraft carrier is ending, as the threat from drones and hypersonic missiles could make them less like formidable floating warships and more like juicy, slow-moving targets.
In fact, in January, Pete Hegseth, before he became the US Defense Secretary, said he thought China could sink all of America’s carriers in 20 minutes.
However, many experts disagree with that broad view, saying the subs, carrier group’s surface ships, aircraft and the carrier’s own self-defense measures — including their nuclear-powered speed — make them daunting targets.
“While there has been an ongoing discussion about the vulnerability of carriers, this discussion is often misguided. There is always a dance between defense and offensive, capabilities,” Parker wrote in an email. “Developments in cruise, ballistic missiles and UAVs don’t mean carriers are obsolete; they mean a greater focus now needs to be placed on capabilities, tactics and doctrine that can provide protection.”
And carriers “are critical to the achievement of sea control. You can’t have sea control, for any degree of time, without air control.”
Parker said that Australia, for instance, “should really consider this key fact as it seeks to expand its surface combatant force, and should be working at pace to consider how Australia can get fixed-wing aviation to sea.”
Meanwhile Clark said South Korea’s interest stems from their enemies to the north.
“Korean airfields are under threat from North Korea, and having a carrier that can launch aircraft from standoff range would be a good way to maintain the ability to conventionally hold DPRK targets at risk,” he said.
Hard To Hide
Still, analyst Felix Chang acknowledged carriers do have their strategic vulnerabilities.
Carriers “are inherently difficult to conceal, given the size of their operational footprint, even across the vast expanses of the Indo-Pacific,” said Chang, who has written about China’s carriers and the region from his perch at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Washington. Their electronic signatures, from both the carrier and its escorts “can serve as clear indicators of their presence. Meanwhile, for light carriers in particular, lower sortie generation rates and smaller air wings may limit their effectiveness in contested environments characterized by advanced integrated air defenses or electronic warfare threats.”
Therefore it becomes a matter of where they’re most effective.
Clark said that most countries “continue to see value in carriers because they would operate them in open ocean away from major threats but in places where the country lacks land bases. For example, China’s carriers are likely intended to help protect sea lanes and access through the Indian Ocean, including at the Malacca Strait. … US carriers may be too vulnerable to operate in the Western Pacific during a war with China, but they have been useful in the Middle East, Indian Ocean, and Atlantic where they would be survivable even in wartime and provide more flexible air fields. But it is likely the US will let its carrier fleet shrink over the next few decades.”
Then there’s cost.
Chang noted that “even the United States, with its large defense budget, is struggling to maintain its current numbers of operational strike carriers and amphibious ships. Meanwhile, Japan’s defense budget is already under strain, particularly as the yen continues to depreciate against the U.S. dollar — making high-ticket imports such as the F-35 even more costly in domestic currency terms.”
China, he said, will not be immune to “mounting financial considerations if it proceeds with plans to build a fourth aircraft carrier — especially if that one is nuclear-powered. The long-term sustainment of such a fleet would require a massive and consistent allocation of resources.”
Should China pursue new nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, Chang said that could drive interest in carriers even higher.
“A key inflection point would be if China accelerates the development and construction of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Such a move would mark a significant leap in capability and operational reach, and could prompt other regional powers to recalibrate their own naval aviation requirements in response — potentially triggering a more direct and competitive buildup reminiscent of a classic arms race dynamic,” he wrote.
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Author: Colin Clark
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