Future of Air-Craft Carriers

[A.Rahman]

CVN-21

The CVN 21 program is designing the aircraft carrier for the 21st Century, as the replacement for the NIMITZ Class nuclear aircraft carriers. CVN 21 will be the centerpiece of tomorrow’s Carrier Strike Groups and a contribution to every capability pillar envisioned in Sea Power 21. CVN 21 will be a primary force in Sea Strike with enhancements such as a future air wing that will include the Joint Strike Fighter and Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems.

CVN 21’s transformational command centers will combine the power of FORCEnet and flexible open system architecture to support multiple simultaneous missions, including integrated strike planning, joint/coalition operations and Special Warfare missions. The CVN 21 based strike group will play a major role in Sea Shield protecting United States interests, while deterring enemies and reassuring allies. CVN 21 will provide the United States the capability to quickly project combat power anywhere in the world, independent of land based support.

Overall, CVN 21 will increase sortie generation rate by 20 percent, increase survivability to better handle future threats and have depot maintenance requirements that could support an increase of up to 25 percent in operational availability. The new design nuclear propulsion plant and improved electric plant together provide three times the electrical generation capacity of a NIMITZ Class carrier. This capacity allows the introduction of new systems such as Electromagnetic Aircraft Launching System, Advanced Arresting Gear, and a new integrated warfare system that will leverage advances in open systems architecture to be affordably upgraded. Other features include an enhanced flight deck, improved weapons handling and aircraft servicing efficiency, and a flexible island arrangement allowing for future technology insertion.

CVNX, the centerpiece of the Navy's next generation carrier Fleet, will be a large-deck, nuclear-powered ship. This next generation aircraft carrier will be achieved at an affordable, evolutionary pace beginning with CVN 77. CVN 77 will have a newly designed and integrated combat system that eliminates rotating antennas. CVNX 1 will incorporate this new CVN 77 integrated combat system, and will add both a new nuclear propulsion plant and a new electrical power and distribution system. The new nuclear propulsion plant will provide immediate warfighting enhancements, immediate life cycle cost reductions, and will enable future warfighting enhancements and further life cycle cost reductions. Subsequent carriers will feature additional new technologies including an Electromagnetic Aircraft Launching System (EMALS), an Electromagnetic Aircraft Recovery System (EARS), improved crew habitability, survivability improvements, performance improvements, and new functional arrangements and distributed systems.

The CVNX is designed to deliver more combat power through its ability to arm and refuel, launch, and recover aircraft more rapidly and effectively than current ships. An advanced weapons-information management systems automates the process of weapons movement from magazines to aircraft. The electromagnetic aircraft launching sand arresting systems require less wind across the deck for aircraft launch recovery, and significantly accelerates the process of "turning around" combat aircraft and generating high sortie rates. The CVNX is optimized to support the next-generation Navy combat aircraft such as the Super Hornet and the Joint Strike Fighter.

The CVNX features a substantially smaller redesigned command "island" (the carrier superstructure) than current aircraft carriers, as well multifunction arrays that replace the forest of antennas that current ships sprout, making the carrier inherently harder to detect and attack. Additionally, the ship's more capable electrical power distribution system supports the future addition of directed energy weapons that can provide enhanced shipboard self-defense, to an already highly survivable design. Finally, a redundant electrical grid system and advanced damage-control features make the ship more capable of surviving battle damage.

By early 2003 the CVNX (aircraft carrier, nuclear, experimental) program had been restructured to place as much technology as possible on the lead ship, now called the CVN-21. New propulsion plant, electric catapult, reduced manning, improved survivability and more efficient flight operations are the keys to this new carrier, planned to be available in the 2011 period.

CVN 77, which will replace USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) in 2008, began construction in 2001. CVNX 1, which will replace USS Enterprise (CVN 65) in 2013, was initially scheduled to begin construction in 2006. In fiscal year 1998, CVN 77 initiated the design process necessary to accomplish the technological changes planned for CVNX.

The ultimate result of these design efforts will be a carrier class that has not only substantially lower life cycle costs, but also a significantly improved warfighting capability to successfully accomplish a wide range of future missions in what is rapidly becoming an increasingly uncertain world.

The CVN 21 began as the CVX, a new ship class that is the second and long-term part of the Navy's two-track strategy for aircraft carrier recapitalization. The Navy's vision for CVX is to develop a new class of aircraft carriers to significantly reduce total ownership cost and incorporate an architecture for change and flexibility, while maintaining the core capabilities of Naval aviation (high-volume firepower, survivability, sustainability and mobility) for the 21st Century and beyond. Achieving this vision will require significant design changes to incorporate advances in technology and to focus the design on enhanced affordability since little carrier research and development has been undertaken since the 1960's.

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