America’s New Carrier Class Has Less Striking Power but Costs 6x as Much as an Old Forrestal
Just to give you an idea how much more corrupt and inefficient the MIC has grown since the 1950s
The Ford class aircraft carrier represents the pinnacle of carrier development. Its features represent the best aircraft carrier characteristics ever conceived and have never before been matched. The Ford instantly obsoletes every other carrier that has come before. Or so the Navy would have us believe. In true ComNavOps fashion, let’s take a level-headed, objective look at a comparison between a supposedly hopelessly obsolete carrier design, the Forrestal, and the revolutionary Ford.
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Forrestal
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Ford
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Cost, FY19 dollars
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$2.1B
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$13.5B+
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Length Overall, ft
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1067
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1106
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Displacement Full Load, tons
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81,101
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100,000
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Speed, kts
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33
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30+
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Range, miles
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12,500b
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unlimited
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Propulsion, Shaft Hp
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260,000
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?
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Air Wing, number of aircraft
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82-86
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63-70
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Combat Aircraft, number of aircraft
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58-60
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40-44
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Crew without Air Wing
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2700
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2832a
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b Estimated – USS Enterprise, CV-6, had a range of 12,500 nm at 15 kts (Wikipedia); I’ve been unable to find an actual range for Forrestal
So, how do the two carriers compare? Well, two factors just leap off the page.
Cost. The Ford just explodes any previous carrier cost by a staggering amount. Ford costs over 6x a Forrestal !!!!!! We could build 6 Forrestals for one Ford. Even compared to the Nimitz class, the Ford is about 60% more expensive (see, “Carrier Costs”).
The Ford cost is simply not sustainable. A single Ford represents nearly a full year’s shipbuilding budget all by itself. There’s no mystery about why our carrier fleet is steadily declining and why our air wings are steadily shrinking – it’s all about the cost.
Air Wing. The other number that leaps off the page is the size of the air wings and the number of combat aircraft (fighters and strike). Despite a whopping 23% increase in displacement, the Ford carries far fewer aircraft: only ¾ of the Forrestal air wing and 70% of the combat aircraft (less when F-18 tanker aircraft are excluded from the count).
Note that F-35C squadrons will be only 10 aircraft, further reducing the air wing and combat aircraft numbers. (2)
Combat. The reason a carrier exists is, of course, combat. Does the Ford offer any combat enhancements over a Forrestal? None. The only combat related claim ever made for the Ford was the now-debunked (by GAO and others) sortie rate claim. In fact, the Ford has a few features that actually decrease its combat capability such as the EMALS catapults that can’t be individually or easily repaired without taking all the catapults off line in a massively time consuming electrical flywheel spin down and spin up procedure.
All other combat characteristics are identical between the two carriers: same number of catapults, same launch capacity, same flight cycle operations, same aircraft recovery capacity, same number of elevators, etc.
Conclusion. So, what do we gain from our staggeringly expensive $13B+ state of the art Ford class carrier? Absolutely nothing! In fact, the Forrestal cost a fraction of the Ford and carried a larger air wing. Some of you may be saying that the Ford could carry a larger air wing and you’d be right, in theory. The reality, however, is that the carrier costs so much that we can’t afford the air wing. What’s a carrier without an air wing? A floating paperweight! What’s a carrier with a reduced air wing? A marginally useful combat carrier.
Note: You know that we only have 9 air wings for our 11 carriers, right? That means we only have a maximum of 9 operational carriers.
Consider, however, if we were to build modern versions of the Forrestal for $2.1B. Compared to the Ford, that would leave us with $11.4B to buy more carriers and more more/larger air wings.
A modern Forrestal sized air wing (say, 85 aircraft), at an average of $100M per aircraft, just to use a round number, costs around $8.5B – well within our $11.4B savings and still leaving us with $2.9B we could use for another carrier or escorts.
So, why are we building 100,000 ton, $13B+ Fords when we’ve just demonstrated that a modern Forrestal could provide the same combat capability and larger air wings for a tiny fraction of the cost?
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Reference – Air Wing Composition
Typical air wing composition in mid-1980’s with number of squadrons, type of aircraft, and number of aircraft per squadron. (1)
2x F-14 Tomcat, 12 ea = 24
2x A-7 Corsair, 12 ea = 24
1x A-6 Intruder, 10-12 plus 4 KA-6D
1x E-2 Hawkeye, 4-6
1x EA-6B Prowler, 4
1x SH-3 Sea King, 6
1x S-3 Viking, 10
Total = 82-86
Combat = 58-60
Typical current air wing composition with number of squadrons, type of aircraft, and number of aircraft per squadron. (1)
4x F-18 Hornet, 10-12 ea = 40-44
1x E-2 Hawkeye, 4-5
1x EA-18G Growler, 5
1x MH-60S Seahawk, 8
1x MH-60R Seahawk, 6-8
Total = 63-70
Combat = 40-44
Source: Navy Matters
The Ford, as with the F-35 is an absolute success. What are these authors thinking? Since the entire purpose and mission is to blow the budgets completely out of the water, the Ford is indeed the new champion.
it’s designed to do exactly what it was supposed to do.
make the MIC rich.
Both of them are just VERY expensive “sitting ducks”… 😛
America, as presently constituted, cannot possibly make it into the third decade of this century. From their crude and pathetic attempt at world dominance, the corruption of their MIC, their big Pharma, their Medicare, their government, etc, etc…in fact in every strand of American society, they have become totally amoral and barbaric. They conceived a preposterous idea that they were both exceptional and indispensable, easily disproved and rebuffed, but it let them abdicate themselves from conscience examination or morality, it gave them carte blanche for a campaign of international genocide and the ability to ignore all laws and treaties designed for the continuance of harmony in international relations. I believe the writing is on the wall and a calamitous reality check is just around the corner.
Modern weapons are not designed to work better than old ones. They are designed to extract the maximum amount of money from taxpayers possible by convincing them that more tech and more expense makes better weapons. The exact same technique is used to sell hugely over priced Apple phones that are, perhaps, 10% better than Chinese types that sell for a tenth of the price. It works for cars too. Try buying a simple, basic, easy to fix, cheap to run car nowadays. If it hasn’t got five computers and twenty electric motors they don’t even make it anymore. As long as people stand for it they’ll go on ripping us off.