In case a force is constructed around a floating air-field, and the sea itself becomes the most concealed hiding-place?
Twenty years after a Swedish diesel-electric submarine made a fool of a U.S. carrier strike group during training, the incident continues to harbor an unwanted engineering lesson; subsea invisibility has the power to cancel enormous benefits in deck space, airplane count and sheer displacement. An example is the 2005 HMS Gotland, small, conventionally-powered, and trained to operate quietly, making numerous successful landings into firing position during exercises against USS Ronald Reagan and multiple computer-simulated attacks. The argument was never based on the fact that carriers become “obsolete.” It was that defensive envelope of a carrier is as plausible as the sensors, tactics, and training which prevents a threat from approaching sufficiently to count.
The advantage that Gotland had was technology that transformed diesel submarines into long leg stalkers. Air-independent propulsion (AIP) allows the normal submarine to spend long durations underwater without the need to snorkel, minimizing exposure to cause the acoustic issue a much more difficult challenge to defenders. In effect, that implies a comparatively small platform can spend longer in the water column with passive sonar operation being highly capricious, sound-bending thermal layers and with an assault group own noise and action creating gaps.
This same tendency has been reflected in other training experience, and this is the reason why the lesson of “Gotland lesson” never left Swedish. Workouts have already generated numerous reminders which show that quiet diesel-electric boats may breach layered defenses when the geometry, regulations, and preparedness coincide with the surface force. The one U.S. Naval Institute article discussing carrier offense has observed the ability of diesel-electric submarines in allied navies to simulate a sinking of U.S. carriers, and the article records other incidents involving the U24 of Germany and Collins-class Australian submarines. In engineering terms, the mystique is actually not the point; it is signature, sensing boundaries and the unstoppable virtue of the platform that can decide when to be perceived-at all.
That undersea advantage is being diffused since it is scaled. More navies can deploy conventional submarines designed to remain quiet and endure than they can deploy nuclear-powered fleets and their missions of sea denial, choke point pressure, and strategic uncertainty do not need an equivalent of a carrier strike group ship of ship. The example of the program in Pakistan shows this. As part of this 8-submarine program, the Hangor-class boats have been increasing the undersea force made up of Hangor-class boats, with its fourth Hangor-class submarine, named PNS Ghazi, being part of a construction program that has been divided into components both in China and Pakistan.
Meanwhile the carrier forces are not idle. The most significant change is the architectural one: submarine defense is becoming more about a couple of beautiful platforms hounding in tight formation and distributed sensing, quicker decision paths, and persistent coverage. The concept of the Atlantic Bastion created by Britain, which incorporates crewed vessels and aircrafts and autonomous surface and underwater systems and AI-assisted acoustic processing, is indicative of where most navies are trending: extensive wide-area detection nets aimed at eliminating the number of locations to which a submarine can conceal themselves long enough to gain position.
The technology is also pulling the balance between offense and defense in a top-down and a bottom-up direction. In the same article in the U.S. Naval Institute, three disruptive factors, defined as quantum sensing, artificial intelligence (AI) decision tools, and inexpensive precision weapons are noted as drivers that may alter the manner in which forces find, decide, and strike. Regardless of whether quantum sensing is going to come when it is due, the trend is evident: there will be more sensors, more data and less time to transform raw detections into a usable track, both tactically.
Gotland to today is engineering realism. A carrier is still an offensive engine, only it needs to expose itself on a regular basis, launch cycles, recoveries and communications are one way in which an opponent which lives in a medium crafted to obscure it, creates an opportunity. Sea war has thus been a battle of silent propulsion and wide range coverage detection and of covertness that can purchase a few minutes, and of systems that can seek to re-buy them back.
