What Happens if an Aircraft Carrier is Sunk?

Are carriers too big to fail? If so, U.S. policymakers need to break themselves from the assumption that carriers are the end product of the evolution of naval technology.

byHenry Holst

Various defense pundits, scholars, and journalists have spent a considerable amount of digital ink debating the variousthreats to America’s carrier fleet while avoiding a more central question.

In the cliché phrase of our time: Are carriers too big to fail?

Clausewitz tells us, “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” Is there any political situation of such gravity that losing a carrier would be deemed an acceptable risk? In other words, how expendable are carriers? The answer to this question has large implications for the tactical and strategic options available to U.S. policymakers.

Total security from all risk is impossible. The aircraft carrier is not invulnerable to attack. The new U.S. Ford-class aircraft carrier will be a floating home to over 4,000 sailors and comes in at the hefty price tag of around $12 billion dollars. In light of the development and proliferation of anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) weaponry, does this enormous investment of human resources narrow U.S. tactical and strategic options?

What are the implications of the sinking of a U.S. carrier?

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