Drone Aircraft Carriers Could Replace Traditional Aircraft Carriers: Critics have long predicted the demise of the aircraft carrier. Submarines, anti-ship missiles and “carrier-killer” ballistic missiles are supposed to end the dominance enjoyed by flattops since Pearl Harbor.
Now, traditional aircraft carriers face another threat: being replaced by carriers that launch drones rather than aircraft. These vessels may also be so automated that they are almost drones themselves.
Enter the Age of the Drone Carrier
There are several ways a drone-equipped carrier could be employed. “A carrier strike group could include an auxiliary all-UAV carrier alongside a traditional carrier, resulting in increased overall sortie rates,” argues a report by the RAND Corp. think tank. “As the U.S. Navy comes to better understand how to design and use all-UAV carriers, they could someday operate alongside other ships without a traditional carrier. In time, one or more all-UAV carriers might be used as the centerpiece of a carrier strike group.”
Aircraft carriers are as much concept as warship. On a planet which is 71 percent water, there are too many advantages from having a mobile airfield that can sail close to any conflict or crisis zone. This is especially true for the U.S., which invests in carriers because it has global interests, often in remote regions for which land-based airpower isn’t always a solution.
But where is it written that the aircraft that a carrier launches must have a human pilot? From mere reconnaissance systems, drones have evolved over the last 70 years to become deadly munitions, missile-armed strike platforms, airborne tankers, and will likely become aerial dogfighters.
A drone-equipped ‘aircraft carrier’ would solve the biggest problem faced by traditional carriers. The cost of a traditional carrier is staggering: around $13 billion each for a 100,000-ton US Ford-class nuclear-powered carrier. Even Britain’s 65,000-ton Queen Elizabeth-class, which is powered by gas turbines and lacks catapults, still cost around $4 billion apiece. Add in the cost of a carrier air wing – 30 to 90 manned aircraft, such as the F-35B at $100 million per plane – and it is evident why the U.S. Navy only has 11 carriers, all of which are vastly overworked.
Launching manned aircraft creates dilemmas for ship designers and naval budgets. Traditional carriers are either big, expensive vessels with catapults and long flight decks to launch planes like the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, or smaller “ski jump” flight decks and short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft, which limits aircraft performance.
Drone-equipped carriers would avoid many of these dilemmas. “Today’s aircraft carriers need to be long enough to launch and recover aircraft while subjecting pilots to tolerable G-forces,” said RAND. “That critical length constraint could be relaxed if UAVs were launched and recovered over shorter distances, using advanced materials with greater tensile strengths than those used to launch and recover today’s aircraft.”
Turkey Has a Drone Carrier of Sorts
Non-carriers could also be quickly converted into drone-capable flattops. One example is Turkey’s new amphibious assault ship, the 27,000-ton Anadolu, which can carry 30 to 50 UAVs and UCAV (unmanned combat aerial vehicle), as well as helicopters, marines and amphibious assault vehicles. After plans to equip the Anadolu with F-35Bs for political reasons, Turkey replaced the F-35s with combat UAVs such as the TB3 Bayraktar and the Kizilelma, a jet-powered drone designed for air-to-air combat.
Even as drones seem poised to replace many some carrier-based aircraft, carriers themselves may become more robotic. Already, unmanned vessels are proliferating in quantity and sophistication. Navies are embracing autonomous speedboats, robot minesweepers, and unmanned submersibles. Given the difficulties that navies face in recruiting and retaining sufficient personnel, even manned ships are becoming increasingly automated.
Through extensive automation of ship functions such as routine maintenance and damage control, all-drone carriers would require fewer sailors. “These changes could have a multiplicative effect: Every operator whose presence was eliminated would enable a large fraction of another person to be subtracted from the crew, given diminished demand for roles from cooks to military police,” RAND noted.
The RAND study even envisions drone-centric carrier strike groups, with a UAV-equipped carrier protected by robotic escorts. “Some could host sensors, such as radar and sonar, while others would serve as oilers that would effectively constitute offsite storage for other ships. Other robot ships could carry “missiles, torpedoes, or lasers and other electromagnetic weapons and be directed to use them by personnel aboard crewed ships within the strike group.”
Still, there are numerous hurdles before naval warfare is transformed by robot carriers launching hordes of drones. The biggest is reliability and connectivity. Humans will need to be in the loop regarding the decision to use lethal force, or for when AI on board these platforms can’t handle a situation correctly. Yet with a limited amount of bandwidth to enable links between unmanned craft and human operators, command and control will always be fragile.
The U.S. Navy and Boeing conducted ground testing of the MQ-25 Stingray at Chambers Field onboard Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. The MQ-25 Stingray is an unmanned aerial refueling aircraft. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Sam Jenkins)
Jamming is another problem. Ukraine was losing 10,000 drones per month in 2023, mostly due to Russian electronic interference. Controlling drones via fiber-optic cable has enabled Ukrainian and Russian drones to avoid jamming, but tethered UAVs only have a range of around 10 miles, which is far, far closer than any carrier would dare venture toward the enemy.
Drone Carriers Sailing Into the Future
Nonetheless, given the frenetic speed at which drone and AI technology are evolving, and the spiraling cost of traditional carriers, drone-equipped carriers are more than a possibility. They may be the backbone of tomorrow’s battlefleets.
About the Author: Defense Expert Michael Peck
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Business Insider, Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
