Illustration courtesy Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding
tomorrow’s carriers
was also considered and rejected when the first U.S. nuclear carrier, the Enterprise, was built – but her designers envisaged a very different kind of flight deck cycle. The Enterprise designers also considered a multi-level flight deck (i.e., launching aircraft from hangar deck level), which would have been a throwback to some foreign carrier designs of the 1920s. They probably also remembered that a few U.S. carriers built during World War II had cross-deck hangar deck catapults. In those ships, the idea was to be able to launch aircraft even with a full air group parked at the forward end (the flying-off end) of the flight deck. The hangar deck catapults were used, albeit rarely; they were eliminated to provide space for more light antiaircraft guns, hardly a consideration in the post-1945 jet age. The idea in the 1950s was to increase the rate at which aircraft could be launched. The size of the island (and of accompanying masts) is set largely by the radars the carrier needs to detect enemy aircraft and to control its own. The more separate radars, the larger the island/mast footprint. Since the 1970s, electronically scanned radars, like the one in Aegis ships, have become inexpensive and reliable. They add valuable capability, but they replace earlier radars on a one-for-one basis, and often take up more space. Proposals to install Aegis-type radars on carriers failed because of cost. Now the next step in technology, the active array, is entering service. Because it can generate several separate radar beams at one time, an active array can replace multiple radars. Ultimately it should be possible to build a broadband active array that would replace even more
radars – as well as satellite communication dishes, which are increasingly important (and which are now numerous, because it takes one dish to deal with each satellite). Satellite dishes operate at radar frequencies, and they compete with a ship’s radars for the best positions in and around a crowded island (in carriers, some of them are mounted alongside the flight deck). Ultimately it may be possible to shrink the island further by embedding some satellite communication antennas in the flight deck itself. The island planned for the Ford is less than two-thirds the length of that in the Bush. Many suspect that manned attack aircraft will give way to unmanned ones; the coming F-35 (JSF) is often described as the last manned fighter. This transition, if it comes, will not change the basic carrier mission, which will still be to project air power from the sea. However, it may dramatically change carrier operating practices, and hence the shape of carriers. For example, the ideal unmanned combat air vehicle would be able to refuel in flight, just as manned aircraft currently do. It seems reasonable to argue that pilot fatigue is the main limit on current aircraft endurance; pilots become exhausted before airplanes fail in flight. A refuelable unmanned airplane would fly much longer missions. They would probably involve orbiting (perhaps en masse) within range of potential targets waiting for the order to attack particular ones. The carrier flight deck would operate with a different tempo, with much longer intervals between launching and, usually, servicing aircraft.
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