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The Unstoppable Evolution of the Aircraft Carrier

Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier
The world's largest aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), steams in the Mediterranean Sea, Dec. 24, 2023. The Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group is currently operating in the Mediterranean Sea. The U.S. maintains forward-deployed, ready, and postured forces to deter aggression and support security and stability around the world. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jacob Mattingly)

Key Points and Summary: Aircraft carriers have reigned supreme in naval warfare for over a century, constantly evolving to incorporate new technologies.

-From biplanes to jets, nuclear weapons to drones, the carrier’s simple flight deck has allowed it to adapt and remain relevant.

-Despite facing threats like nuclear weapons, guided missiles, and submarines, carriers have integrated these advancements into their own arsenals.

-While modern carriers like the USS Ford are expensive and carry large crews, their ability to project air power globally remains unmatched.

-The future may see further radical changes, potentially even submerged carriers, but the core concept of a mobile airbase at sea is likely to endure.

Beyond the Flight Deck: How Aircraft Carriers Adapt to New Threats

The aircraft carrier, now just over one hundred years old, is one of the most resilient weapons of the modern era.

More than a thousand feet long, nuclear-powered, and home to more than seventy aircraft, carriers are unmatched in presence, versatility, and firepower.

Like every weapon system, the aircraft carrier will someday become obsolete, but that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

Aircraft Carrier History

In 1922, the world’s first purpose-built aircraft carrier, Hosho, entered the Imperial Japanese Navy service. Although other ships in navies worldwide had operated aircraft, Hosho was the first to be purpose-built as an aircraft carrier.

Hosho’s construction signaled that the Japanese Navy believed naval aviation had a future, or at least enough of one to warrant the construction of a 552-foot-long warship. 

Hosho had all the classic features of an aircraft carrier, features that stand out to this day. It had a raised island for directing flight operations, arresting gear to recover landing airplanes, a voluminous hangar for storing and maintaining aircraft, and elevators for shuttling aircraft and ordnance from the hangar topside. But most important of all, it had a full length flight deck, a simple flat surface that extended from bow to stern, that mimicked the runway of a conventional airfield. 

This simple feature set assured the carrier’s future for the next century and beyond.

In the 1920s, aircraft carriers, including Hosho, the Royal Navy’s Argus, and the U.S. Navy’s Langley, were equipped with biplane fighters and reconnaissance aircraft. This reflected the common attitude towards carriers as scouts of the fleet, using their aircraft to scour vast stretches of ocean in search of the enemy’s main battle fleet so that battleships and cruisers could engage in decisive battle. 

By the time of the Second World War, carriers would also add torpedo-dropping aircraft and dive bombers, boosting their firepower against surface ships and land targets. 

What Makes Aircraft Carriers Special: Attack from Range

In the hundreds of miles, the range of carrier aircraft eclipsed the range of even the largest ship-based guns. This meant aircraft carriers could fight over much greater distances than battleships, bring greater firepower to bear against them without putting themselves within the range of enemy guns, and attack targets farther inland. 

By the 1930s, the writing was clearly on the wall that carriers had surpassed battleships as the dominant naval platform. It took the Battle of Midway in June 1942, fought almost entirely with aircraft carriers, to confirm the U.S. Navy battleship losses at Pearl Harbor had ultimately been irrelevant and that the age of the flat-top had arrived.

Why All the Hate on Aircraft Carriers? They Can Adapt 

Once the carrier had risen to the top, its demise was repeatedly predicted. A single nuclear weapon could sink a carrier. Jet engines meant bombers could close with carriers faster, reducing their defensive reaction time. Guided missiles made attacks on carriers more accurate. 

Each time, the carrier absorbed the threat and made it part of its arsenal, making it more capable. Carriers shifted to nuclear power, increasing the ship’s ability to avoid attack, and added nuclear weapons to its list of aircraft-delivered munitions. Prop-powered planes gave way to jet-powered planes, and carriers fielded aircraft-launched guided missiles of their own. 

This ability to absorb and adapt was due to the carrier’s most mundane feature: a large, flat surface to launch and recover aircraft. Radar, anti-ship and anti-surface weapons, anti-submarine weapons, electronic warfare, aerial refueling, stealth, and even nuclear weapons are all a function of the aircraft, not the ship. 

An aircraft carrier could simply change and embark on the latest technology by swapping out its aircraft, embarking with newer, more capable planes. Thanks to the flight deck, an aircraft carrier can endlessly reinvent itself in the future, adding such new tech as lasers, drones, artificial intelligence, advanced communications and networking, and perhaps even tech that we can’t envision today.

Carriers won’t stay in their current form forever. Carriers today are too expensive, with the newest ship, USS Ford, coming in at a whopping 13 billion dollars. Ford also embarks too many people, approximately 4,000 sailors, ensuring a national calamity if it were somehow sunk. They are arguably too large and vulnerable, and many experts argue the submarine is now the dominant platform at sea. That might well be true, but carriers could once again co-opt the threat to their dominance by simply absorbing it. A warship that can submerge to avoid detection and surface to launch and recover drones might well be the next step in the evolution of the aircraft carrier. 

The aircraft carrier’s greatest strength is its ability to reinvent itself endlessly. While carriers might eventually lose even their flight decks, the concept of a mobile, seagoing platform for projecting air power will live on. The aircraft carrier has allowed the United States to maintain a dominant position at sea for over eighty years. 

There is every reason to believe the aircraft carrier can survive for another eighty years, but to do so, it must continue to embrace change, not buck it.

About the Author: Kyle Mizokami 

Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he’s generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. Kyle is also a Contributing Editor for 19FortyFive. He lives in San Francisco. 

Written By

Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Fransisco. His work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Esquire, The National Interest, Car and Driver, Men's Health, and many others. He is the founder and editor for the blogs Japan Security Watch, Asia Security Watch and War Is Boring.

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. JingleBells

    January 24, 2025 at 7:51 pm

    Depend on who your carriers are fighting with.

    Against two-bit adversaries like houthi militants carriers are a godsent or blessing.

    Against a determined and super capable adversary like the kamikazes of ww2, carriers are floating death traps.

    USS Bunker Hill was hit by 2 kamikaze during the battle of okinawa and several hundred men were killed, many of them by fatal smoke inhalation.

    Aircraft carriers today are extremely vulnerable because of their size and thus very easily seen and tracked by overflying satellites.

    Also, today, carriers cost an arm plus a leg to operate.

    A large carrier with escorts swallow up to a million bucks per day during an active operation or cruise. Easily several millions per week.

    In the coming ww3 which is totally unavoidable, carriers are sitting ducks for hazel trees and kf-21 missile salvos.

    Why.

    A successful strike will send arctic-cold chills of fear down the spines of admirals and crewmen alike.

    Time to call off the carriers.

  2. Zhduny

    January 24, 2025 at 11:43 pm

    There’s simply very much more to modern aircraft carriers than generally reported or known to the Mr average joe.

    In 2015, the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was buzzed by ‘UAPs’ while sailing off the eastern coast of US.

    It seems giant carriers like that vessel have odd links with unexplained phenomena, due to highly top secret US ‘experiments’ dabbling with latest super ultra advanced technology.

    According to many or numerous people involved in military work, secretive projects have been undertaken by hush hush units in US over the decades that included making contacts with aliens (or also called extraterrestrials) as well as tinkering with alien craft.

    One particular individual, jacob barber, recalled working as a copter pilot employed to transport strange craft, some that actually emitted some unknown invisible energy force or penetrating influence.

    His work was quite dangerous, and in many ways, too, as his ‘boss’ or bosses were shady types who were thoroughly unidentified and sometimes betrayed indications they saw employees like barber as expendable and replaceable.

    He also contracted strange infections or ilnesses and altered consciousness, like peeling skin, hair loss and unexplained emotions and unusual mental perceptions.

    There are many unknowns associated with nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and also the people in control of them, today, or now.

    Jan 25 2025.

    Thus ww3 is a real possibility in 2025.Even without the presence of joe biden.

  3. JingleBells

    January 25, 2025 at 9:42 am

    USS Bismarck Sea was the last american aircraft carrier sunk during the pacific war.

    In feb 1945, the vessel was hit by a lone kamikaze and a large fire erupted.

    The crew was finally putting out the fire when a second kamikaze hit the vessel at the stern.

    Due to the resulting large explosion, a major part of the fire-fighting crew was totally incapacitated along with the water distribution system.

    Thus the fire could no longer be controlled and when it reached the torpedo room, there was a really massive explosion which tore off part of the stern.

    The carrier sank rather quickly after that and taking down several hundred men.

    One survivor of the Bismarck Sea said that some men wrongly jumped down from the deck without first removing their helmets. The straps proved deadly to some.

  4. Phil Liptrot

    January 30, 2025 at 5:09 am

    It may well be that the aircraft carriers can adapt and that they are indeed a superb platform for global deployment of aircraft, however, in the very near future, new technology will ultimately cause their ultimate demise. The loss of one of these assets would result in immediate re-evaluation of their current deployment. A much smaller platform encompassing the latest technology would appear to be a more viable reality.

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