I must point out that fossil fuel CVs with same compliment and sorting rate ie Kitty Hawk historically had 10-20% lower displacement than CVNs.
Displacement is weight of a ship, so greater displacement indicates greater storage mass. CVNs can dedicate all storage space taken up by fuel in CVs to aircraft fuel, fuel for escort ships and other resources.
CVNs also do not suffer from decrease in fuel efficiency at higher speeds. Conventional propulsion operates at marginal efficiency of fuel mass i.e. the faster ship travels the more fuel mass it must consume. This is why conventional ships have longer ranges at lower speeds. In contrast nuclear-powered ships have no such restriction due to the high energy density of their fuel. CVNs can therefore consistently travel at much greater speeds than CVs which requires only refueling of escort ships, which can be done with fast supply ships or directly from the CVN.
The ability to travel constantly at 20+ or 30+ knots may not be relevant if you are an Italian CVL/LHD in the Mediterranean but it does matter in WestPac. A single carrier may maneuever in theater more aggressively and any deficiency of maneuver of the escort may be mitigated by greater number of avaialble escort ships. With sufficient number of DDGs and FFGs PLAN CVNs may "jump CSGs" rather than drag the necessary supplies along. Such tactical is viable for a small number of CVNs and large number of large surface combatants but is impossible with a conventional carrier which is the primary resource/fuel sink in any task force.
They also wanted their carriers built quickly, because they wanted to renew their global presence fast rather than being like France and spending 14 years from lay down to commissioning.
France had terrible project management and 14 years is a very long time that can snowball.
Time of construction was not an issue with QE class. The primary factor was the cost of reactors required for necessary power output and cost of catapults, which is why QE is a STOBAR carrier. During the development phase, and even later during the construction there were suggestions to scrap the second ship and build a single conventional CATOBAR but there was pressure on retaining two ships.
The reasons for building two CVs were simple:
- the number of jobs sustained by two ships which were built 2009-2017 and 2011-2019, at a time when economic situation was very difficult. The public debate around QE was very widely reported in British media, so it shouldn't be difficult to learn about it if one only makes the effort do so.
- the intended role of QE as not only a CV but also an LPH to complement HMS Ocean which ended up being sold to Brazil in 2018. Britain has the largest expeditionary capability of all the European navies as part of Royal Fleet Auxiliary, and QE was meant to complement that, as it fit the more active foreign policy under Blair.
Charles de Gaulle was not an issue of project management but of funding shortages due economic circumstances and political factors as well as technological constraints forced by France's use of LEU reactors.
We will see. If Fujian is commissioned and no more CVs are built then I'm wrong due to the considerations you said.
If Fujian is commissioned and we see 3 CVs being laid down at once then I'm right because of the build speed, unit cost, technological maturity and high readiness of conventional platforms is more important than range and fuel logistics.
To correct:
- Unit cost is the only valid reason for choosing a conventional carrier over a nuclear one.
- Build speed is not a problem, as demonstrated in two of my previous posts. You're deliberately misleading.
- Technological maturity is not something you choose against but a factor objectively preventing the construction of nuclear carrier.
- High readiness of conventional platforms is a vague, arbitrary and completely unsubstantiated statement that means nothing out of context and which you will struggle to back with data.
Cost of selected aircraft carriers -
reported by Wikipedia and
adjusted for inflation
- Kitty Hawk - $264m (1957-1961) / $353m (1970)
- Enterprise - $451m (1958-1961) / $604m (1970)
- Dwight D. Eisenhower - $502m (1958) / $679m (1970)
After adjustment Eisenhower is only 11% more expensive than Enterprise which in turn is 71% more expensive than Kitty Hawk.
However the cost of the aircraft carrier is only one of four main cost factors beside:
- maintenance and operations,
- personnel (ship crew + air wing)
- air wing (aircraft)
6000 crew (ship + air wing) at 24k annual pay for lowest enlisted rank cost
$144m in
salaries without cost of housing, food, medical care etc. I didn't look for the actual complement so we can assume that the actual salary cost is 2-3x and closer to or higher than ~$0,5b annually.
64 fighter aircraft (24 F-35C + 30 F/A-18E/F + 10 EA-18G, not including other aircraft in the CAW) at $85m per airframe cost
$5,45b to
procure without cost of O&M such as fuel, munitions, servicing etc.
If we assume cost of Gerald Ford ($13b) or George HW Bush ($6.2b) then cost of procuring the air wing (fighters only) constitutes 42% or 88% of ship construction. I will assume that China builds a CVN at an efficiency of CVN-77 because Ford is a prototype with several major improvements.
Cost of CVN at 170% per Enterprise/Kitty Hawk but without considering the entirety of additional cost or O&M is then:
CVN + CAW + salary = $6,2b + $5,4b + $0,5b =
$12,1b
CV + CAW + salary = $3,6b + $5,4b + $0,5b =
$9,5b
CVN / CV = 127%
CV / CVN = 78%
At that rate building 3 CVs will
cost as much as 2,25 CVNs but the time of construction will be
the same (see my previous two posts). Since the cost of sustainment is calculated over a ~50y lifecycle the savings are not nearly as significant as you imply. Another matter is the actual cost distribution for shipbuilding in China as opposed to US or otherwise. We don't have concrete information about which specific elements of the CVN increase cost and at what rate.
Therefore we can assume that the
only factor which matters is
technology maturity, which is what
@Blitzo suggested above, and not any other factor.
Carriers are very threatening to small defenseless countries because carriers can deliver lots of munitions very quickly and cheaply.
Supercarriers were specifically designed in response to peer threats from the Soviet Navy posed to Atlantic convoys.
USN supercarriers were
defensive in nature because the entire maritime posture of NATO was fundamentally defensive until the 1970s. In the 1970s Soviets also took a defensive posture but that wasn't recognised by US intelligence until the 1980s. The shift to more aggressive thinking only emerged in the 1980s as means of forcing USSR to disperse their resources over the entire area of the Soviet Union to address WarPact's numerical superiority in Europe.
The notion that supercarriers, and CVNs in particular, are intended for the type of operations that we've seen after 1991 is hilariously ignorant. They were literally designed to counter the emerging Soviet submarine and naval aviation threats very much like the AEGIS cruisers which only later were narratively re-purposed for defending against Iran or North Korea.
Nimitz and Ticonderoga are anti-Soviet
defensive designs. Seawolf was on the other hand an anti-Soviet offensive design.
Look at the map of the world 1945-1991. USN carriers have no access to within striking range of WarPact territory unless it's in the Pacific or past GIUK which is an area infested by Soviet submarines and naval aviation. How can anyone claim that such situation validates an "offensive" carrier is just beyond me.
No trends that inform the future can be deduced from an
imaginary past.
