Norman Polmar has a nice post up at Defense Tech about the future of the aircraft carrier. The big deck carrier remains an extremely powerful platform, but is also remarkably expensive, especially considering the extended task force needed to support and defend a carrier. I'm a little less skeptical than many about the carrier; people have been predicting the imminent demise of the capital ship for a hundred years, with the culprit variously being the aircraft, the submarine, the mine, and now the ballistic missile, yet the ships continue to have their uses. Polmar is right, I think, to suggest a future in which the USN concentrates less of its power in big deck platforms (some reduction from the current eleven ship force, perhaps), and relies more on its LHA/LHD vessels, which will, assuming that the F-35B goes forward, be capable within a decade of flying an advanced air superiority aircraft. As I
discussed here
, the quite sensible direction that the Navy is headed for seems to be a combination of high intensity warfighting capability with the capacity for facilitating maritime cooperation amongst the "1000 Ship Navy", a project that eases the demands on Navy hulls. --Robert Farley
