Having an aircraft carrier is the most important part of a country's navy's ability to form ocean-going combat capabilities, for example, the most powerful U.S. Navy currently has 11 aircraft carriers, including 10 Nimitz-class and 1 Ford-class.
So what exactly makes the aircraft carrier have such a powerful combat power? Will aircraft carriers be eliminated in the future?
The root cause of the combat effectiveness of the aircraft carrier comes from its ability to use carrier-based aircraft for air combat in the ocean without land-based aviation support, and this air-based sea combat method has completely subverted the situation of naval warfare.
This is also determined by the fundamental laws of physics.
First of all, the resistance of aircraft flying in the air is much less than that of ships navigating in the water, and with the same fuel consumption, aircraft can run farther and faster than ships.
In addition, an aircraft attacking a surface ship from a higher position downwards will fire ammunition that has a longer range than a surface ship can fire similar ammunition because it has the initial velocity and gravitational potential energy given by the aircraft.
This also causes surface ships to be almost passively beaten when confronting aircraft.
(Battle of Cape Fang)
This was evident as early as during World War II. On April 7, 1945, during the famous Battle of Cape Mills, the Japanese sent the most powerful battleship ever sent, the Yamato, to lead the fleet in an attempt to fight the Americans to the death.
However, the U.S. military did not send Iowa-class battleships to engage in a naval gun duel with the Japanese, but sent 8 aircraft carriers and launched nearly 400 air strikes.
During the three-hour battle, only 4 small destroyers of the 13-ship Japanese fleet escaped, while 8 Japanese warships, including the Yamato, were sunk, killing more than 3,000 Japanese, but only 10 American aircraft were shot down, resulting in the death of 12 American pilots.
This battle marked the official replacement of battleships by aircraft carriers as a new generation of maritime overlords.
(U.S. F-4U carrier-based aircraft of the 1950s)
However, the battleships at this time had not yet been completely eliminated, because the piston propeller-powered fighters at that time could not install the nose radar and could only rely on visual search for the enemy, so they did not have the ability to fight at night.
During the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942, the fighter formations of Japanese aircraft carriers were unable to launch attacks because they took off too late and reached the night over the American aircraft carriers.
In this case, surface ships can still rely on night sneak attacks on aircraft carriers to win a chance, such as the Battle of Samar Island in October 1944, the Japanese Seventh Fleet successfully attacked the vicinity of the Us fleet at night and sank the US aircraft carrier Gambia Bay.
But this situation also became a thing of the past with the invention of the jet fighter, which could be equipped with a nose radar.
The large-scale use of airborne radar has also given the aircraft carrier an unprecedented intelligence advantage.
Due to the existence of the curvature of the earth, the radar installed on the warship cannot detect the target behind the horizon, and according to the difference in the height of the radar installation position, the detection distance of different warships to the sea surface target is between 50-80 kilometers.
However, the aircraft carrier can carry an early warning aircraft, allowing the early warning aircraft to climb to a height of 10,000 meters and detect the enemy fleet within a few hundred kilometers around.
After World War II, in order to maintain its global hegemony, the US military began to develop aircraft carriers wildly, and as of 2022, a total of 23 aircraft carriers of Midway class, Forrest class, Kitty Hawk class, Enterprise class, Nimitz class, and Ford class Type 6 were developed.
At present, the main force of the US Navy is the largest number of Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers with a scale of 10. The U.S. Navy's last conventionally powered aircraft carrier, the Ussadhawk, has also begun to be dismantled in 2021, replaced by the fore of the ford class of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, the first ship of the Ford class.
(Ford-class aircraft carrier)
A typical Nimitz-class aircraft carrier battle group, in addition to the aircraft carrier as the core of the battle, will generally have 1 Ticonderoga-class cruiser and 6 Ali Burke-class destroyers as escort fleets, and there are 1-2 Virginia-class attack nuclear submarines underwater, depending on the mission and deployment area, a large Sacrament-class supply ship (about 53,000 tons in a full row) or a medium-sized Wichita-class supply ship (about 40,000 tons in a full row).
Of course, the combat core of an aircraft carrier is naturally the carrier-based aircraft it carries.
The current US Nimitz-class aircraft carriers will generally carry: two fighter squadrons with a total of 4 squadrons of 44 FA-18E/F "Super Hornet" fighters, 11 per squadron; one electronic warfare squadron of 5 EA-18G "Growler" electronic fighters; an AWACS squadron of 5 E-2D Hawkeye AWACS aircraft; and an anti-submarine, rescue helicopter squadron of 19 MH-60R/S "Seahawk" helicopters.
A total of 73 aircraft of various types, covering air superiority, early warning, sea-to-ground strikes, anti-submarine, rescue and other combat tasks.
The original US aircraft carrier actually carried four kinds of fighters, namely the FA-14 responsible for long-range air superiority, the FA-18 responsible for medium-range air superiority operations, and the A-6 (combat radius 1500 KM) and A-7 attack aircraft (combat radius 600 KM) which are responsible for long-range and medium-range ground-to-sea strikes, respectively.
Even at that time, anti-submarine and transport tasks were responsible for special S-3 "Poseidon" anti-submarine aircraft and C-2 "Greyhound" transport aircraft, rather than now uniformly handed over to helicopters.
After a long time, the US military found that equipping aircraft carriers with so many types of carrier-based aircraft would bring great difficulties to daily operations. Because the space of the aircraft carrier is so large, it needs to carry different spare parts for all different types of aircraft, and mechanical engineering personnel also need to master the maintenance skills of seven or eight kinds of aircraft at the same time.
(FA-18C/D与FA-18E/F对比)
Therefore, the U.S. military has enlarged and improved the FA-18, the length has been expanded from 17 meters to 18.3 meters, the wingspan has been expanded from 11.4 meters to 13.6 meters, and the maximum take-off weight has been increased from 22 tons to 29 tons, which has given birth to the FA-18E/F fighter currently used by the US Navy.
The improved FA-18E/F replaces all the fighters on the US aircraft carrier, and anti-submarine, rescue, transportation and other tasks are also covered by MH-60 helicopters, only early warning aircraft and special aircraft, and the scale has been reduced from more than 80 to 73 now.
May be different from some readers and friends imagine, such a large number of aircraft, in the operation of the aircraft carrier can not be fully accommodated into the hangar, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier hangar usually can only accommodate about 50 aircraft, the remaining aircraft need to provide fixed ropes tied to the deck, regularly with the hangar aircraft rotation for maintenance.
(Nimitz-class hangar placement)
In the state of operation, especially in high-intensity combat, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier will transport more than 30 fighters, 1-2 early warning aircraft and several helicopters to the deck in advance, parked on the right and rear sides of the deck, waiting for the order to attack.
Although the Nimitz class has four C-13 catapults, in decades of deck operation, the U.S. military found that only the two catapults on the inclined deck and the catapult on the left side of the foredeck were used to release the aircraft, and the right catapult position on the front deck was used to park the aircraft, which was more efficient than the four catapults together, because this operation saved the trouble of constantly replenishing the aircraft on the deck.
After the air traffic control gives the order to attack, the three catapults will all release these aircraft within 20 minutes, allowing the US Nimitz aircraft carrier to send 3 fighter squadrons and several auxiliary aircraft at a time, while the fighters of one squadron can be transported to the deck in the next 10 minutes and then released, which the U.S. Navy calls "full-deck attack" or "Alpha Assault".
(Nimitz class ready for a full-deck attack)
In 1996, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Washington set a record for 72 aircraft, including helicopters, in 30 minutes when it participated in operation "Southern Watch" against Iraq, which is actually the entire force carried by this aircraft carrier.
Such a huge scale of attack, in the sea-making mission, if the other side is not an aircraft carrier battle group that can also operate carrier-based aircraft, the 44 fighters do not need to be mounted with air-to-air missiles, only need to be mounted with AGM-84 "Harpoon" anti-ship missiles.
Under the guidance of the E-2D AWACS, the position of the surface fleet will be exposed, and the EA-18G electronic fighter will also interfere with the enemy's radar as much as possible, weakening the air defense capabilities of the other side.
According to the calculation that each FA-18 can carry 4 anti-ship missiles, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier battle group can drop up to 176 Harpoon anti-ship missiles on enemy ships 1,000 kilometers away, sink 10 general-purpose destroyer fleets without the "Aegis" system in one go, or sink 10 "Aegis" air defense ships in two waves.
At this time, the attacked surface fleet does not even know where the aircraft carrier is, which is the horror of the aircraft carrier battle group.
(F-18 with four anti-ship missiles)
So is there any way to counter an aircraft carrier? Will a series of anti-aircraft carrier killers developed by the mainland eliminate aircraft carriers?
First of all, the way to counter the aircraft carrier is actually very simple, that is, it has a stronger aviation strike force than the aircraft carrier, and in the defensive operation relying on the land territory, it only needs to send more early warning aircraft and fighters than the aircraft carrier from the ground airfield, which can easily suppress the aircraft carrier.
In the nearly 40 years of confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in the last century, the Soviet Union's way of confronting the US Navy was to use shore-based fighter jets to contain US aircraft carriers and force US carriers to mount air-to-air weapons to engage in air combat with the Soviet Air Force, rather than mounting anti-ship weapons to attack Soviet naval ships.
At this time, the Soviet Navy ships loaded with heavy supersonic anti-ship missiles would rush into the missile range under the cover of the Air Force and kill the US aircraft carrier battle group.
(Soviet Kirov-class cruiser capable of carrying 20 granite heavy anti-ship missiles)
Before 2010, the mainland also used very similar tactics against the US aircraft carrier battle group, but the disadvantage of the tactic was that its effective range could only cover an area of about 1,000 kilometers from the coastline.
In order to expand its ocean-going combat capabilities, the Soviet Navy began construction of two Kuznetsov-class aircraft carriers and one Ulyanov-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
However, unlike the US aircraft carriers, the Soviet aircraft carriers did not emphasize the use of carrier-based aircraft-mounted anti-ship missiles to attack the enemy fleet, and the role of the Soviet aircraft carriers was still to use fighter jets to prop up the air defense barrier for their own fleets, and to cover the use of heavy anti-ship missiles by warships and cruise missile submarines to attack the US fleet.
However, such an efficiency is actually very low, and the adoption of such a combat idea is a helpless move to make better use of a large number of large anti-aircraft carrier cruisers that have not yet reached the time of retirement.
(Kuznetsov class)
The two existing aircraft carriers on the mainland, the Liaoning and the Shandong, are both developments of the Former Soviet Kuznetsov-class aircraft carriers, although both have been greatly improved on the basis of the backward design of the Soviet Union.
For example, the latest phased array radar was installed, and many of the original missile launchers on the Soviet aircraft carrier were removed to obtain better carrier-based aircraft operation capabilities, but there was a certain gap between the number of carrier-based aircraft and the operational efficiency compared with the US aircraft carriers.
Therefore, the continental navy has also adopted similar tactics to the Soviet navy, except that the anti-aircraft carrier weapon, the heavy supersonic anti-ship missile carried by the cruiser, has been replaced by the more efficient anti-ship ballistic missile developed by the mainland.
It can hit the top of the head of the US aircraft carrier within 20 minutes after the continental aircraft carrier battle group engages the US aircraft carrier battle group, and it is more difficult to be intercepted by air defense systems.
（DF-21D）
However, this tactical disadvantage is also that there is a distance limit, for example, the range of the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile is about 2,000 kilometers, and the DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missile is about 3,000 kilometers, although the range of shore-based aviation support has been much larger.
But in deeper ocean-going areas, aircraft carriers are still the rightful hegemons, and to defeat an aircraft carrier and an aircraft carrier battle group at its core, you must rely on more powerful aircraft carriers.
It is gratifying that the mainland has also begun to build a new type of aircraft carrier, and the inclusion of a new type of aircraft carrier in our army in the future will not only enable the mainland to have a third aircraft carrier battle group, but also allow the tactical strategy of the mainland aircraft carrier to completely get rid of the shadow of the Soviet Union, form a powerful ocean fleet, and take an important step in the construction of a blue-water navy.