Looming over the horizon the nearly 60,000
tons of American diplomacy waits menacingly as the enemy aircraft approach. The pilots are stunned. They can’t believe they’ve made it this
far without being spotted. As they get closer and closer to their target
they make their missiles ready to fire and wait until they are sure they can hit their
target. With the American super carrier unusually
quiet, the pilots let go their deadly payload and peel away. As they head back towards base they can see
that all their missiles hit the carrier but did not cause a scratch! Disappointed but not undeterred other units
join the fight to try and take it out. Next up is a destroyer that launches a surface-to-surface
missile at the carrier. It too hits it but causes little damage to
the integrity of the carrier. Lastly, a submarine tries its luck by launching
torpedoes at it. Torpedoes are known to snap ships in half
with just one shot and with several on its way surely the carrier must go down now. But to the submariners dismay, even with all
direct hits the American behemoth still floats! While this scene might sound like wishful
thinking or something out of a cheap war movie, it actually happened in real life. The USS America was a Kitty Hawk class aircraft
carrier and holds the title of being the only supercarrier sunk, intentionally or in battle,
in world history. After she was decommissioned in 1996, the
carrier was slated to be destroyed in live fire testing for the up and coming Nimitz
class carriers. The reason why she was selected was because
she was quite similar in design and make to the Nimitz class carriers and US Navy engineers
wanted to see really how much punishment a ship like this could take. The results of the testing far exceeded any
of their expectations. Over the course of four weeks, the America
was pounded with missiles from aircraft and ships as well as torpedoes from submarines. She definitely took some heavy damage but
due to her construction was still able to stay afloat by herself even without a crew
onboard conducting damage control. In the end, Navy explosive specialists had
to board her and place demolitions charges in specific places in order to sink her which
they finally did on May 14, 2005. It is incredibly unlikely that a team of skilled
saboteurs could ever board a US Navy carrier and sink it with timed explosives. But even against conventional threats, these
behemoths of American diplomacy are pretty darn hard to take out. Here are ten reasons why US Navy aircraft
carriers are impossible to sink. Number Ten: The F-18 Attack Aircraft What would an aircraft carrier be without
their aircraft? After all their carrier air wing is what gives
them their ability to attack from hundreds of miles before enemy units can even get within
firing ranges of the carrier. There are three main aircraft that make up
carrier air wings and the F-18 Super Hornet is the strike warfare side of the house. The F-18 is the workhouse of the air wing
and each carrier can have up to about 50 of these aircraft onboard. They are an all purpose fighter that can combat
targets in the air and on the ground. With their speed and maneuverability they
can easily outrun most combat aircraft in the world today. Though they have had limited history in proving
their air-to-air prowess, with just two kills in the Gulf War, they have seen extensive
use against ground targets in the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because of this, the F-18 is more than capable
of knocking out enemy aircraft and shore installations hundreds of miles before they even become
a threat to the carrier. Number Nine: Link 16 US and NATO units use what are called tactical
data links to share information. Though most NATO units only have Link 11,
US forces are all equipped with the newest and most secure data link called Link 16. Broken down in its most basic form, tactical
data links are simply a secure way to share information. By utilizing a variety of measures like frequency
hopping and encryption, the link can be near impervious to enemy attempts to intercept
or disrupt the information flow, thereby guaranteeing the free flow of communications. In a real world scenario, the carrier would
be able to link up with the entire strike group and as many other units as the carrier
wanted thereby ensuring that all units would have secure comms and a means of feeding information
quickly in a real-world scenario. Number Eight: The SCIF (pronounced SKIFF) Going along the lines of secure information,
onboard every carrier is what is called a SCIF which stands for Secure Compartmentalized
Information Space. These spaces are Top Secret and only those
with extensive security background investigations and a need to know are allowed to enter. While the equipment inside is highly classified,
SCIFs are an incredibly useful tool in that they allow the processing and dissemination
of vital information quickly. The information that could be received could
be intel about an upcoming strike, indications and warnings of a terrorist attack, or anything
else that would be of national security interest or pose an imminent danger to the carrier. Because other smaller ships like destroyers
and cruisers do not have a SCIF, the carrier becomes crucial as a means for getting vital
information quickly and securely. Because of this, even if an enemy was planning
an attack, the carrier would be forewarned about it. Number Seven: Their Personal Defense Systems All warships are equipped with a robust line
of defenses that when all other measures fail and a ship must stand on their own, she can
still counter an attack. Carriers are no different. They have a variety of active and passive
countermeasures onboard that can be their last line of defense should an enemy threat
ever get through. The most dangerous threat a carrier would
face would be an enemy missile. For this, carriers have multiple Sea sparrow
or Rolling Airframe Missiles designed to take out enemy missiles as a last resort before
they strike the carrier. They are also armed with the Close In Weapon
System designed to shoot 20mm Tungsten tipped rounds at a rate of thousands of rounds a
minute. The CIWS (pronounced SEA-WHIZ) can also be
fired in surface mode against small contacts like skiffs or suicide boats. For sub-surface threats, carriers can employ
active countermeasures known as NIXIE. NIXIE is a towed array that can be fitted
with acoustic buoys that attract torpedoes away from the carrier and towards it. Lastly, the carrier can pick up and fight
against attacks along the electromagnetic spectrum with its SLQ-32. (Pronounced SLICK). The SLQ-32 is a powerful piece of equipment
that can operate passively and actively against enemy threats like jamming. Number Six: The E/A-18 Growler The E/A-18 Growler is a modified version of
the F/A-18 Hornet in that it has advanced electronic warfare suites onboard to counter
a variety of threats. Its primary mission is the suppression of
enemy RADAR defenses and it does this in two ways. The first way is called passive countermeasures
whereby it can pick up electromagnetic frequencies from enemy RADARs and pass that information
along about their bearing and range to the carrier or other units. If needed, the Growler can then take out the
threats itself through active measures by launching a missile at the RADARs. Because of this aircraft, carriers can feel
relative comfort from the threat that anti-ship missiles and even ICBMs pose, since without
fire control RADARs to find and track a target the missiles are essentially high priced junk. Number Five: Their Escorts Carriers are never alone and they always deploy
with escort ships. This combination of ships is then called a
Carrier Strike Group. Within each Strike Group there is typically
one carrier, three destroyers, one cruiser, and then a submarine. Though in today’s operations escorts may
peel off to conduct other taskings, in a scenario where the strike group would be under a real
threat of attack all the escorts would return to be within range to protect the carrier. As grim as it sounds, the escorts, especially
the destroyers, would act more or less as a bullet sponge for the carrier in an actual
battle. This is because though the goal of a destroyer
is to take out missiles well before they reach their target, in the end if it came down to
trying to save a carrier by losing a single destroyer, commanders would make that difficult
decision only to save as many lives as possible. But do not worry since though cruisers and
destroyers might seem expendable they are in all reality highly capable ships and even
taking one of these ships down would be a challenge for any major power in the world. Number Four: Compartmentalization Onboard a vessel, there are not just a couple
floors and a few dozen compartments. Rather, even a smaller ship like a destroyer
will have about ten decks and hundreds of spaces while a carrier will have dozens of
decks and thousands of spaces. This large number of spaces is crucial since
it means that even if some spaces are lost due to damage or flooding, they can be sealed
off and the ship can continue fighting. Another benefit of all these spaces is what
is called cross flooding. Cross flooding is whereby perfectly good spaces
are intentionally flooded out. This is usually done as a way to manage the
stability of a vessel. Because of this, even if large numbers of
spaces are lost or flooded, the ship will not lose mission capability and definitely
will not sink easily. Number Three: The E-2D Hawkeye The most advanced and top secret aircraft
onboard a carrier, the E-2D Hawkeye is the eyes and ears of the Carrier Air Wing. It is also its number one intelligence gathering
asset. With a huge radar dome on top of the aircraft,
the plane can coordinate strikes of all the other aircraft already in the air. Additionally, with the Combined Engagement
Concept, it can congregate data from other aircraft to help the carrier form an accurate
and real time picture of the battlespace. The onboard sensors are also quite powerful
in picking up enemy missile RADARs, surface search RADARs, and other electromagnetic signals
that can be sent back to the carrier. Because of all these functions, it is unlikely
that any enemy aircraft, surface contact, or missile will get close undetected. Number Two: Their redundancy Carriers are just like any other warship in
that redundancy is built into the system. Take for example the electrical system. There are numerous electrical generators onboard
an aircraft carrier along with a port and starboard bus. Taking out just a few generators or even one
of the electrical buses will not take out power to the ship. Another example would be its firemain system. Firemain is just seawater that is the primary
method of attacking fires on the ship. The firemain loop, or how the water travels,
is varied and full of twists and turns. That way, if the firemain loop is affected
anywhere it can be quickly isolated and water can still be directed towards a casualty. Number One: Their speed The best defense an aircraft carrier has is
its speed. Though the official stance is that they can
go greater than 30 knots, in reality it is believed that they can go much faster than
that. So fast, in fact, that they could outrun practically
every other warship on the planet at full power. Why speed matters is that if a carrier can
move extremely quickly to avoid danger, than it is unlikely the threat will hit the carrier. Whether it is a missile, torpedoes, or another
ship, if the carrier cannot defend against it, then it can just run away. That is not to say that a carrier can go anywhere
close to what a speeding missile can travel. Rather, a carrier can move so fast so quickly
that the enemy’s fire control solution will be outdated by the time the missile gets there,
or that the seeker on the missile will have great difficulty in reacquiring the carrier. For missiles and torpedoes that are passive,
moving out of the general area quickly would surely defeat most of these systems. Those were the top ten reasons why an aircraft
carrier cannot be sunk. Though extremely unlikely to be sunk by any
singular threat, there are emerging technologies that seek to overthrow carrier dominance. One of the main ones is the threat of swarm
attacks either through drones, missiles, or suicide boats. With the prospect of facing hundreds of threats
at once, this yet untested tactic is perhaps the only means to actually sink a carrier. But as of yet the enemies of the United States
have not tried such a method and the US Navy has probably already come up with ways to
counter such a threat if it were to ever face it on the battlefield.
