Sea Control - Sea Control 317 - Lightning Carriers with John Bradford and Dr. Olli Suorsa

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Links1. "‘Lightning Carriers’ Could be Lightweights in an Asian War” by Olli Suorsa and John Bradford, War on the Rocks, October 29, 2021.2. “Italian Air Force F-35B Lands on Navy Aircraft Carrier for the First Time,” by David Cenciotti, The Aviationist, November 22, 2021.3. “Thailand’s Maritime Strategy: National Resilience and Regional Cooperation,” by John Bradford and Wilfried A. Herrmann, The Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs, December 13, 2021.

Hey, folks, Jared here. Walker Mills is your host today, and he's got John Bradford and Oli Suarza discussing lightning carriers in the Pacific. We are still looking for audio editors to join our team, so if you're interested, please email us at ccontrol at simsec.org with your resume. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome back aboard the Sea Control podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security.

I'm your host today, Walker Mills. Today, we're talking with John Bradford and Dr. Oli Sworsa about their recent essay in War on the Rocks, Lightning Carriers Could Be the Lightweights in an Asian War. John is a senior fellow in the Maritime Security Program at the S. Roger Rottenham School of International Studies and a former commander in the U.S. Navy. Ollie is an assistant professor at the Rabdon Academy in the United Arab Emirates. John, welcome aboard. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Yeah, thanks. As you sort of mentioned, I'm a senior fellow at the Roger Rottenham School of International Studies here in Singapore. Before that, I did 23 years as an active duty SWO. That was almost all Asia-Pacific time, eight sea tours based out of Japan. My other overseas tours were in Southeast Asia. And in fact, my only CONUS tours were back-to-back Pentagon tours where I was doing Asia-Pacific work, first in APNAV N52 and then OSD Policy.

So I've been a full-time researcher for just over a year now, and I'm really enjoying it. Olli, over to you. Same question. Thank you, Walker. I am currently an assistant professor at the RAPTAN Academy in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where I teach subjects like maritime security, defense policy, and modern warfare. And before joining RAPTAN, I was a research fellow at the RSIS in Singapore, where John and I started to put together our thoughts on this article. and education wise i have phd from the city university of hong kong masters from sowas in

university of london and ba from estonia and i have defense industry background as well which is something i try to use to my benefit a lot in my research as well and quickly about some research interests so i try to focus a lot on smaller powers which is rather natural for me coming from Finland. And security and defense with strong focus on especially on air and naval warfare as well as maritime security. We're happy to have you both. Welcome aboard. Before we start, I'd like to remind our listeners that the opinions presented here are solely our own and should not be taken as representative of any of the institutions that we're associated with. So to start out, John, can you kind of define what a lightning carrier is for us? How would

define it? For the article that Ali and I wrote, we kept it very simple. It's simply a ship which can carry and launch and operate F-35 Bravo lightning aircraft. I know that in U.S. doctrine, it's meant different things at different times. And rather getting that debate, we just wanted a sort of a fairly catchy term that we could plant in the thesis statement and carry through throughout the article. Olli, anything you want to add to that definition? Not so much in terms of the essay we wrote, but just want to highlight the challenge really

of defining lightning carriers as many of these so-called lightning carriers are rather retrofitted or repurposed ships from other roles like amphibious ships and other like the Queen Elizabeth class, which we also include in this article as a representative of a lightning carrier is a purpose built for operating aircraft. So this is rather a light aircraft carrier. So this is just to highlight how different these different ships are from one another and how they have been either

purpose or purpose built or repurposed for these roles and missions. Can you tell us who's building them? And you talk about this some in your article, but what countries have them and what countries are kind of working on them, these lightning carriers? Okay, so there are four countries operating the lightning carriers today. And these countries are the United States, of course, with the America class, Japan with the Izumo class, and UK with Queen Elizabeth class. And something that is not in our article, but I want to also mention just to make sure that we cover all the countries that are currently using these type of ships. So Italy is the most recent country also operating now, F-35Bs from the ITS Gabor ship. And moreover, then South Korea is looking to acquire light carriers as well.

and this is out of the current and future lightning carrier operators uk and south korea are those a little bit different in that they have or are adopting those purpose-built light carriers that i was talking about earlier and all the others like us japan and italy are retrofitting or repurposing existing ships to this purpose or adding to their current missions or taskings. And it is also worth mentioning, I guess, that there are others in Asia who have also studied the possibility of either repurposing

or acquiring lightning carriers. And these include Australia and Singapore. And we should also not forget China, of course, which has also studied these concepts and some unofficial or official computer renderings have come out already demonstrating some future interest in the class john do you have anything you want to add there the one thing i would add is just to point out that both the japanese and the italian uh abilities or capabilities in this area are really nascent our article came out in October. The impetus to get it published was the first deck landing of an F-35 Bravo on board

Izumo. And it was just a few weeks after we published it that the first F-35 Bravo touched down on the Italian carrier. So the US and the UK both have a FOC capability that's already done a full deployment or more. Japan and Italy are both in the process of building their capability, which is sort of the first flight ops. And then the ROK's capability is the one which has been planned and budgeted, but is still in a precarious position where it could easily be canceled or retooled in a new direction. And John, do you think that some of these countries are going to use or trying to use the lightning carrier concept as kind of a stepping stone to a full-size carrier or a larger vessel? Thinking specifically here about Japan, Korea,

and in the United Kingdom, which obviously the UK's lightning carrier is a little bit larger? So generally speaking, I would say no. I think this kind of depends on how you define it. You know, in my mind, and Alio has something different to say about this, because I know he classifies things and he makes sense of it a little bit differently than me. But to me, the Queen Elizabeth is a full-size carrier. And, you know, it's about 65,000 tons, carries about two dozen aircraft. And the Nimitz and the four classes are supercarriers, a term which I don't think Ali likes very much. But you're talking 50% bigger. And then the rest of these vessels that exist are being planned right now are in the 20,000 to 45,000 ton range.

I don't see any of these nations leapfrogging up bigger, except maybe Japan. But even there, it would be an incremental change. So they're converting Izumo and Kaga to become lightning carriers. That won't be complete for some years. After that, I could see them building a purpose, you know, a ground up aircraft carrier capability. And I think it might be a bit bigger, maybe as big as Queen Elizabeth. But that's speculatory. And my instinct says that, that there's no interest in resourcing an American-style supercarrier. Olli, would you disagree with any of that or classify it somewhat differently? No, not really so much classifying it so much differently.

It's just for me personally, understanding a little bit more or putting a little bit more flexibility in our definition. So for me, the supercarriers, as John used the term, is rather the exception here. that basically all the others than americans are using carriers that for me are already full-sized carriers like the ones that the brits chinese indians russians are using and french of course having a nuclear powered carrier so these are significantly smaller of course than the american super carriers but if like i said that we understand that the super carriers are rather

the exception here then if you look from this perspective then it is possible certainly that either Japan or Korea could go that way but then to be very realistic manpower challenges are very real budgetary problems are very real there's always competing interests and I don't frankly believe that country like Japan for example could stomach a full-sized aircraft carrier So there are a lot of challenges and probably political objections to really operate bigger aircraft carriers. I'd just like to add to that that I think a lot of our article points out that these carriers, recline and lightning carriers, are a navalist vision, and they bring a tremendous amount of statecraft, and they bring some capability, but that there's some limitations there and there's some questions

whether or not they're really smart investments of resources. And if you go larger, all it does is exaggerate those same issues. You only get a little bit more bang for your buck, especially in the strategic environment of those countries. And then on the flip side, your costs skyrocket, your vulnerabilities to various different systems become even more acute, et cetera. John, I want to kind of follow up on that and ask, how different is it now that we've got the F-35 that we can put on these platforms instead of the Harrier, the AV-8B, right? Because some of these short takeoff aircraft are not necessarily new. They've been around for a while. The Marine Corps has been flying them off of amphibious ships for a while, as have the Italians, I think the Spanish too.

So is it, does the F-35 make it a really different platform, or is this more of an incremental change in capability for these type of vessels? Well, I'm going to let Ali do most of the talking on that because he's our air power specialist. But I just point out that the AV-8 Bravo is a very old aircraft. It's been phased out of most of these navies. The UK stopped flying it a decade ago. And so, you know, going to the F-35 is, you might be able to call it an increment, but the increment is huge. I mean, you're talking a jump of a couple of generations of aircraft, essentially. Ali? Yeah, thanks.

So certainly F-35 can do much more than the Harrier. So Harriers basically, they have really served and matured well in service, but they are rapidly, of course, becoming irrelevant in modern battlefield and in particular against any adversaries that have capable anti-air or air capabilities of their own. So the type is simply not survivable anymore in any high-end environment, and not least because, of course, of the sensor and systems obsolescence issues and very challenging maintenance issues that those jump jets have. But when we look at the F-35B then, it's really not incremental change. It is really a significant step change in comparison to the Harriers. So what it provides for any warfighter is really a huge step change. So, especially because of its low observable characteristics, highly advanced and secretive even electronic warfare and attack capabilities. And one of the most important elements as well is the unrivaled situational awareness that the aircraft can build.

so with all of that in mind the lightnings will offer a survivable like really actually a survivable platform that will on its own already pose a significant challenge to any adversary even in smaller numbers so the F-35B or the Bravo can act as an effective fleet defense platform utilizing its low observability of stealth and long-range sensors, as well as the data-sharing functions. And that really ensures that the type can take on almost any currently available combat aircraft that the potential adversaries might possess, and especially on their own aircraft carriers. In air-to-ground domain, on the other hand, the type can also effectively escort itself. the system can also gather huge amounts of intelligence electronic intelligence signals

intelligence and share it effectively and that's the really critical point here as well so it is not just f-35 as a system but it's but it really is a system of system of systems that's really the reality of the modern aircraft like F-35. And then kind of moving on from some of the more hardware questions, John, how do we think that these are going to be used? I mean, we have a couple of different countries with somewhat different, I would think, national policies and objectives, acquiring the same types of capabilities. How do we think that these are going to be employed in the Pacific?

And, you know, it might make sense to go kind of country by country for this one. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. You know, one of the issues out there is that countries or naval officers or analysts that are familiar with the character, you know, the use of a carrier in their own national context sort of assumes that others will use them in the same way. And I think that if you look at the three different, you know, I'll use the UK, the US and Japan as examples in this region and how they're all poised to use them very differently. You know, for the United States, you know, the America is an amphib, and by doctrine and by design, by fleet design, it's supposed to be the air element, you know, the primary air element of an ARG or an Expeditionary Strike Group. and be able to operate independently in that function. And I think that in most complex warfare scenarios, that's exactly what it would do.

But if you look at how we used America in theater in 2020, it was very different. It was two things. It was a major defense diplomat that showed the flag at events like Cobra Gold 2020. and it was used as a supplemental carrier when the supercarriers were not available. We see this early in the year. Reagan was in maintenance and the Theodore Roosevelt was out in the region to provide presence, but Theodore Roosevelt famously became tied up in Guam with their

COVID situation. And so America was out and about reassuring allies, taking part in exercises, doing things like a show of force in the West Kapala incident in the South China Sea. And then later in the year, when Ronald Reagan was redeployed out of the Western Pacific, out of East Asia to cover the withdrawal from Afghanistan, I can only imagine that that decision was made easier by the fact that America was available and by the fact that the UK Queen Elizabeth was on her way so that the gap of missing the FDNF supercarrier was covered down by these other assets. So I think that's what we're going to see more of with the United States. For the UK, it's a little bit different. For the UK, the carrier represents

two things. For one, it is a core capability to implement and demonstrate the strength of post-Brexit global Britain. And in particular, with this recent deployment, and we hear there are more deployments to come, a core element to demonstrate the UK's Indo-Pacific tilt. So it's no surprise that the Queen Elizabeth's basic maiden deployment was to this region, and they jammed packed that deployment with everything they could. It went as far as Guam and Japan. The carrier and its escorts operated with 44 different countries while they were out on their deployment. So in this way, it's a demonstration of the United Kingdom as a global power. It's an independent ability to make relationships and forge defense partnerships.

But at the same time, and this is the second thing it does, is it is a supplement to U.S. combat power. A huge part of the British strategy is to line up with the United States and offer itself as the United States' best friend. And they're taking that friendship beyond the Middle East and Europe global right now. So, you know, in that the Queen Elizabeth was able to sort of cover down in the Western Pacific while Ronald Reagan went to Afghanistan, you may see more of that again in the future. Now, Japan would be very, very different. Japan does not have an ambition to be a global maritime power or to use its navy to strengthen its global economic position. You'll see these lightning carriers, the Izumo and the Kaga, doing two things. In peacetime, they'll be training up and preparing for combat contingencies in Northeast Asia, and they'll probably join the rotation of flat decks that goes on the so-called Indo-Pacific deployment.

Every year, they've got three or four months. They send one of their large ships, traditionally Izumo, Kaga, Ise, et cetera, as far as India. And they do a lot of engagements and exercises with Southeast Asian and South Asian partners. I think they'll continue to do that. And these ships will just fall into that rotation. And in a combat scenario, we don't foresee Japanese carriers sailing the world to augment United States strike operations or to support United States operations ashore. But you see them as mobile and because of their mobility, therefore resilient airfields that can take part in the direct defense of Japan, especially the Japanese Southwest Islands and the contested zone with the People's Republic of China. following up ollie i want to ask about um kind of threats to these kind of carriers so

i think anyone that's been uh paying attention to kind of naval news and naval development over the last few years have probably noticed the uh a slew of arguments arguing that the carrier might be um obsolete or under threat particularly from uh land and uh air and ship-based uh long-range missiles um and what we might call uh anti-access aerial denial um type technology how do we how should we think about those arguments in the context of lightning carriers are they more vulnerable or less vulnerable than say the the super carriers if you want to use that term that the united states is is using yeah uh this is very good but always also a very difficult difficult question since we really don't know how those weapons would perform in real world and

that's for me always the big question that how do you how do these things perform in real world and the same of course goes for any possible soft kill and hard kill defenses and how well these systems would operate how well those operating these systems would perform at a given point and nevertheless there is a growing concern of course of the potential adversaries rapidly developing and expanding arsenals of different velocity and endgame trajectory weapons ranging from anti-ship ballistic missiles to supersonic even hypersonic missiles and possibly even salvos of all of Diablo. So what we have to remember here is that technologies,

looking at offensive or defensive advantages, are always a game of move and counter move. So what is certainly true is that the United States does not have the freedom of action it once had. and it has to factor in all these adversaries high-end capabilities but that said it is doubtful that whether we can truly claim that this marks the end of the carrier era as some is sometimes suggested advances in defensive technologies are also great especially in emerging technologies and may yet level the playing field once more so what can be said is also that the this is

the pace of modern and future naval combat will be rapidly pushing our human ability to sense, decide the most suitable course of action and react to these threats is absolutely pushed to the limit. So that is one reality behind this. And then as my last point, I would just highlight This is part of the overall debate that whether we indeed focus and concentrate a lot of power on a single supercarrier strike group with multiple ships, creating layers of defenses against these modern threats, or we distribute the assets into smaller groups around perhaps a single supercarrier and multiple lightning carriers, for instance. Both arguments have a lot of good points, but also, of course, a lot of issues that would be argued against. So coming from a very technological background, a very technical background, I don't want to really give answer for yes or no, either or, because as you understand, as our listeners would understand also, it really depends. And the only thing that we can see is in any possible future fight who's right. I mean, even in my own kind of experience, I've noticed of writing and podcasting, I've noticed that it's a touchy issue.

And sometimes with active duty folks in the in the U.S. Navy, they actually don't really want to weigh in and it can become almost kind of a personal or political issue. John, do you have anything that you want to add? Yeah, I actually think this is one of the most interesting questions when you're looking at global trends in naval shipbuilding. So we have this debate in the United States, and the debate involves a very mature and it's a very mature carrier community that has proven itself valuable for decades, right, for nearly a century since World War II. Yet we have this debate whether or not investments should continue on single high cost platforms. Now, if you look at these other countries from a purely warfare standpoint, their carriers are going to be even more vulnerable because they don't benefit from the robust defense in depth, including robust electronic warfare and other sophisticated capabilities that the United States brings to a battle group to defend its carrier. so you know from a pure shooting war kinetic warfare kind of picture you think that these are actually probably worse investments for them now i think that's debatable some people would

say that's not true but i kind of think that's the way that the overall thinking would lean yet you see countries spending a lot of money not just building new ships but either constituting for the first time or reconstituting naval carrier aviation wings or capabilities within their air forces to operate from ships. So they're either developing for the first time like Japan or they're brushing off a doctrine that they haven't used for some time. So it's a huge investment. And all I can say is that it certainly reflects a triumph of navalism. it it reflects a triumph in the way of thinking that says a strong and visibly strong navy is important to the strategic future of countries and it may be that those sort of political

leanings and those sort of statements are overshadowing a debate about the combat utility of these ships, which remains, as Ali said, somewhat unresolved. And so I want to follow up. You guys actually wrote in your article that should a war break out, and sorry, this is the quote, should a war break out in and around the confined waters of the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan, lightning carriers will offer a marginal additional capability. So why is it that you guys think that these don't actually bring that much additional combat capability or bring only marginal combat capability to these fleets? And do you think that you could get a bigger bang for your buck for these countries like

Japan or South Korea by investing in other capabilities? Yeah, I'll be brief and to the point with this one, so I'll go first. I think the key word there is marginal. I mean, certainly no war planner is going to scoff at the idea that they can have an additional aircraft carrier leading with F-35 Bravo aircraft. But when you're looking at a dozen, at most two dozen aircraft on a ship that probably isn't survivable once it's located and targeted, it's a huge investment for relatively low sortie generation rate. Whereas we kind of point out, and Ali is the expert on this, that you take those resources, you can build much more resiliency ashore and build hardened airfields or more resilient airfields that can produce a lot

more firepower. And over to Ali, do you want to comment on that? Yeah, just quickly, two points. I think that this is an area where me and Sean probably differ most on this but it's it's then up to another podcast episode to discuss it in more detail that whether they offer any combat value really but when we really look at the uh even a flight or two of f-35 bravos coming from these lightning carriers so they are that sort of significant capability that even on of their own and even as a one or two flights of those aircraft already offer so significant threat to any adversary that it needs to be taken into account so that is something to really bear in mind that this is not really harrier carrier so this

this is the point that i would like to make it the second issue is that what john already raised is that especially when we talk about japan so the japanese southwestern islands the riku island chain offers a big number of airfields of different sizes in my own research i have found some 24 runways that are usable by f-35bs as well as a's so that means that there are a lot of runways available for F-35s to go into the fight. And again, these are low observable aircraft that can be also distributed to a high, big number of smaller airfields. Those runways are not very high value targets in the sense, this sounds a little bit controversial. What I mean by this is that they are not same as kadena airbase these are small ones that can also be quickly

rebuilt or if they're damaged they can be quickly repaired and the aircraft can all the time be switching their locations when they take off from one runway they can be landing to another one And also, unlike in many of the readings that you can find on this topic, that these kind of smaller, small footprint air bases do not, or locations rather, don't require that level of air defenses as, say, cadena, as we were talking about earlier. So the resources that are required for operating like this in a distributed manner is significantly less in my own research in comparison to either operating several lightning carriers or operating from a very big, hardened airbase like the Cadena. and kind of as a is a final question i want to zoom out um a little bit instead of talking specific capabilities and platforms do you think that these what do you think these carriers or these investments by by countries in the region mean regionally are we watching a new uh arms race a new naval arms race unfold in asia and i know there's also been a little bit of recent commentary

also in War on the Rocks about that. I'll ask you, John, and then Olli. Actually, Olli, if you don't mind, do you want to take that one first? Sure. So this is also, of course, a very good question and frankly, quite delicate one as well. So arms race is such a strong expression

which can easily evoke a lot of misplaced fears or unsupported narratives as well. So in Asia, for instance, prestige carries a significant role as well. And very often, this is also behind a lot of these issues. In many instances, like in Korea, for example, the carrier debate is also part of the country's debate about its own naval ambitions and different directions which navalists want to take it to. In the UK's case, like John also alluded to before, the carriers are part of London's ambitions to recreate UK's maritime power once more. I would rather speak of trends in capability development rather than arms races in this case. Yeah, I 100% agree with all of that.

I think that it's not helpful to talk about arms races unless you're prepared to have a long conversation about the specifics of arms races and what you mean by that and what the risks you see with that are. Because the terms just carry a lot of connotations and a lot of baggage that is only useful if you want to get into that baggage. But I do want to kind of highlight two things. One is these carriers are a symptom of a huge investment that the Indo-Pacific is making in defense, and in some ways they represent next-generation capabilities that will be very useful, and in other ways they do, in fact, represent more political statements. And those are political statements about national identity, and those are political statements about how countries and or navies want to be seen. But if I kind of just close with some of those points, you know, some data to back up my point that there is huge investments in the region. If you look at the defense budget growth in 2021, everybody's on a different fiscal year, so this is not exactly temporarily equivalent. But basically, in 2021, the PRC expanded their defense budget by at least 6.8%, maybe more when you include the hidden budget lines.

The United States by 5%, Australia by over 4%, and Japan by 3%, with Japan talking about having an even bigger growth in 2022. So there is a region which is investing in defense capabilities, and these carriers are really high-profile symbols of that investment. So unfortunately, I think we're just about out of time for today, but before we go, I'd like to ask you both what you're working on and where, if anywhere, our listeners can find you online. Ali, over to you first. Thank you. I'm currently doing quite a few research projects that relate to Asia, indeed, despite my current location. So I still try to keep one foot in Asia. So I continue to look a lot of topics related to both naval and air warfare and the power rivalries in the Indo-Pacific. you can find me in both Twitter and LinkedIn by searching by my name so I'm used to be very active

in Twitter as well but the current teaching is keeping me a little bit busy on that front but I try to get back to it as soon as I can thank you same question to you John yeah thanks maybe it's most useful for me to just sort of mention a few projects that will be coming out in December 2021, so that by the time this airs, people can grab the links. With CSIS, Asian Maritime Transparency Institute, I'm almost done with a series of articles that I wrote some of and edited the remainder about how Southeast Asian countries and the Quad conceptualize and define maritime security. So a little bit abstract, but I think valuable to more practical people as well. Also with CSIS, AMTI, in the next week or so, I should have a commentary coming out about the UK's

tilt and how they plan to brace it using their Navy in the Indo-Pacific. I think it's a fairly complimentary article to what we've just been discussing. And then I have a pair of pieces on security and maritime security in mainland Southeast Asia. Just earlier today, I had an article that came out in the Air Force's Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs about Thailand's maritime strategy. And next week, the U.S. Institute for Peace should be launching a major report that I I developed about the PRC's security force posture in the lower Mekong, the possibility of PRC bases, the cross-border policing that the PRC has been doing, and the growth in PLA exercises in those countries over the last decade or so. So I'm definitely keeping busy, trying to be as busy in retirement as I was as an FDNF SWO. awesome we'll try to grab some of those links and put them below the podcast and

maybe we'll have to have you back looking forward to seeing those again i'd like to thank my guest john bradford and dr ollie swarsa for joining us today to talk about their recent essay in war on the rocks lightning carriers could be lightweights in an asian war take care There I met with Greasy Annie Put it on the shimbo now So help me, Boban, put it in the alley Way, hey, put it in the alley Help me, Boban, put it in the alley

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