In the July issue of Proceedings magazine Admiral Stansfield Turner, former director of the CIA, argues that Navy aircraft carriers are obsolete and “superfluous.” I normally don’t look at Proceedings, the journal of the U.S. Naval Institute, because I always thought it wasn’t particularly pro-Navy. Surprisingly, the editor confirms my suspicions in this very issue, writing “we are not advocates.” He was referring not to the Navy in general, but to various programs and issues within the Navy. I’m sure the editors of Proceedings are in favor of the Navy, I guess.

Case in point is Admiral Turner’s article. It is obviously anti-aircraft carrier, and less obviously anti-Navy in general. You will probably remember Admiral Turner as being the director of the CIA during the Carter administration. He was responsible for eliminating approximately 800 “human intelligence” personnel, while turning the focus of the CIA to technical intelligence – in other words, satellites. This decision has been widely regarded as one of the worst ever made in the history of the CIA, resulting in uncounted intelligence failures. Turner was very critical of the Reagan administration in his memoirs, and has also criticized the Bush administration, writing in the 4 September 2003 issue of the Christian Science Monitor:

“most of the assumptions behind our invasion have been proven wrong: The intelligence did not support the imminence of a threat, the Iraqis have not broadly welcomed us as liberators, the idea that we could manage this action almost unilaterally is giving way to pleas for troops and money from other nations, the aversion to giving the UN a meaningful role is eroding daily, and the reluctance to get involved in nation building is being supplanted by just that.”

This statement is wrong in almost every particular, but we’ll leave that analysis for another time. Given all this, why should anyone listen to Stansfield Turner?

His article is written in response to a previous article in Proceedings, which I have not read. Consequently I may repeat some of the arguments of the previous article. If so, it is by accident, and just the result of similar thinking coming to similar conclusions. The article begins with a short history of aircraft carriers, which to me seems a little presumptuous, given the audience. He then begins his case against carriers, using the classic “straw man” mode of argument. The “straw man” argument involves establishing a false premise, attributing it to your opponent, and then “knocking it down,” a process made easy by the falsity of the premise. For instance, in citing the work Men, Machines, and Modern Times, by Elting E. Morison, Admiral Turner puts forth the proposition that the USS Wampanoag, commissioned in 1866, was “the first U.S. Navy ship constructed from the beginning with steam propulsion, albeit with sails as well.” Obviously this can be parsed several ways, but the Wampanoag was not by any stretch of the imagination the first U.S. Navy ship built from the beginning with steam propulsion. The USS Monitor comes to mind, for example. He then uses the subsequent decommissioning of the Wampanoag in 1868 as an example of the hidebound parochialism of the Navy at the time. What he fails to mention is the extreme experimental design of the Wampanoag. It was small, unarmed, unarmored and had a small crew. It was, to use a modern phrase, a technology demonstrator. It was decommissioned because there was no use for it beyond its experimental nature. Furthermore, there were extremely good reasons for maintaining sailing vessels, despite their drawbacks. They don’t need fuel, for one. In an era when the U.S. had few overseas coaling stations, it made sense to retain sails for vessels intended for long range patrolling. In the same way, today we have retained some propeller driven aircraft, despite the obvious performance superiority of jet engines.

Admiral Turner then states that “This new concept of a steam plant below decks was just too revolutionary to win acceptance quickly.” To which I respond “Whaaaaat?” New concept? Hardly. Steam had been widely used since the early 1840s. Winning acceptance? I’m sure that the captains of all the steam vessels in the Civil War were grumbling under their breath about new-fangled steam engines as they sailed up and down the inland waterways, unfettered by the whim of the winds, maneuvering through tricky channels and engaging the enemy without worrying about having the windward gauge. He then makes the astonishing statement that “The Navy did not build another warship with steam propulsion for 15 years!” This is patently false. Now if he had said “commissioned” he might have had a case, as all types of ship construction was at a definite nadir during this time period, but many of the ships that were being slowly built were steam powered. The Miantonomoh, for example was launched in 1876 but not commissioned until 1882. Her sister ships Amphitrite, Monadnock and Terror had similar beginnings. The phrasing of the complaint also seems to ignore the numerous steam vessels laid down at the end of the Civil War, but not completed until later, such as the USS Ammonoosuc. Furthermore, with a plethora of Civil War-era vessels laid up in ordinary, and no enemy in sight, why would the Navy need to build new vessels? Some might say that the U.S. Navy smartly avoided the failures and growing pains of developing modern vessels, instead letting the European powers do so, and then copying the successes.

Skipping forward, Admiral Turner attributes the false premise of the Wampanoag to today, and aircraft carriers. He states that today “a weapon can be maneuvered by remote control to its target with far greater precision than with traditional aircraft bombsights and freefall bombs.” Really? This is another strawman argument. Precision munitions have been around since the mid 1960’s, and they haven’t caused aircraft carriers to become obsolete. They have simply made them more lethal and effective. Admiral Turner argues that increased precision and range in missiles allows surface units and submarines to replace air-delivered ordnance. He states “some weapons being launched…are being directed onto their targets from command centers in the United States.” As far as I know, and I am willing to be corrected here, this is an exaggeration. Some targets are being selected by command centers, but the targeting is still performed by the units in theater. Albeit this may be as simple as plugging coordinates into a GPS-guided munition, it is still misleading to state that weapons are being “directed” from stateside. Admiral Turner then unveils the “startling” reality of unmanned vehicles, without explaining what about them makes carriers obsolete. UVs can and do operate from aircraft carriers, and there is nothing about them that implies that a mobile base like an aircraft carrier is any less of a strategic advantage than it is for manned aircraft.

I am starting to grow weary of this, but one more statement requires a response. Admiral Turner says “A few aircraft with precision weapons can accomplish what traditionally has taken much greater effort.” Admiral Turner is apparently still trapped in the 60’s. “A few aircraft with precision weapons” is the tradition, and has been for a number of years! The admiral is hearkening back to a bygone era that was long ago consigned to history. As stated above, precision ordnance simply makes the carrier more effective, not obsolete.

Sure, carriers are expensive. So are missiles. So are aircraft. Especially experimental, remotely piloted aircraft. Especially a remotely piloted aircraft, as envisioned by the admiral, that will allow power projection from the continental United States. I imagine that the number of hyper-long range UVs needed to project the equivalent power of a carrier strike group would be quite expensive. I imagine having a few would be a good idea, but I don’t think they can replace an aircraft carrier. Admiral Turner does not provide any convincing evidence that aircraft carriers will become any less useful than they have proven to be since their inception. Granted, we do not face a large scale threat at the moment, but more lives have been lost in wartime through ill-preparedness than from any other reason. But then, that would be a specialty of the Carter administration, wouldn’t it? Returning to the Civil War, if the United States had possessed a large, European-sized army in 1860, do you think the Civil War ever would have happened? Can you balance the lives lost against the cost of maintaining a large army during peacetime? Please let me know when you come up with that number. No, carriers can and should be retained for the foreseeable future. The only thing that will make the carriers obsolete is anti-gravity technology. You heard it here first.

So here are some mundane reasons why aircraft carriers will not be going away anytime soon:

1) Missiles can’t do close air support, and the Marines will always need our help.

2) Carriers have many functions, not just carting around a bunch of aircraft. They are command centers for the admiral and his staff. They are intelligence centers, receiving top secret data from a variety of sources not necessarily available to other ships. They are manned to perform numerous command duties, such as ASW and air defense. Admittedly these functions are often delegated to cruisers and destroyers, but the carrier is always there as a backup. Now all these functions could be parceled out to other ships, but not cheaply. Next thing you know, they’ll be arguing to get rid of the LHAs and LHDs because they are too expensive…

3) Carriers are the stepping stone to flag rank for aviators. Take away their carriers, and they will be less likely to be promoted. Not that this is a bad thing, but since aviators run the Navy, expect carriers to hang around.

4) Carriers construction is a political plum. Politicians from Virginia are not likely to let the economic boost of a ten year carrier construction project go by the wayside.

5) A nuclear aircraft carrier pounding along at 35 knots plus is a truly tremendous sight to behold.

In the interests of full disclosure, I served proudly, if not happily, on USS Constellation for three years.