The sight of President Donald Trump in the cockpit of the aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush was a great reminder that no one fears American aircraft carriers more than China.
Trump flew on the aircraft carrier, which was underway in the Atlantic Ocean, as part of the Navy’s 250th anniversary celebration. He brought along First Lady Melania Trump, wearing a tight leather flight jacket and, more importantly, closed-toe, low-heeled shoes, per Navy regulations for flight deck personnel. Together they watched a firepower demonstration of F/A-18EF Superhornets, F-35C fighters and the strike group’s Aegis destroyers at the Navy’s Atlantic Training Range.
Later, Trump applauded aircraft carrier operations, speaking at the pier at the Norfolk Naval Base, Virginia. “They land screaming fighter jets on decks in the dark of night, with no room for error,” he said.
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Despite this praise, Trump’s visit actually marks a turning point in the future of aircraft carriers. There is no doubt about it: Trump knows the value of aircraft carriers. In March, Trump combined two carriers, the USS Harry S. Truman and the USS Carl Vinson, to reach more than 1,000 Houthi targets in Yemen. Operation Rough Rider “unleashed American fury against Houthi terrorists in the Red Sea,” Trump said Sunday, and included “the largest airstrike from a U.S. aircraft carrier.” Last week, the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, found itself in the Baltic Sea staring at Russia.
However, the airlines hit rough seas during the Pentagon reviews conducted after Trump’s inauguration. Trump’s team was shocked to discover that shipyard labor shortages and post-COVID supply chain issues were delaying aircraft carrier construction. Worse, Pentagon staff expressed doubts about the role of aircraft carriers against China.
Here’s the scoop. Aircraft carriers are deadly. Airlines play an important role in the Pacific battle because they are the only mobile air bases.
Oh yeah, the Chinese want you to think they can find, target, hit and sink an aircraft carrier with a handful of their DF-26 or DF-21 missiles. It is true that Chinese missiles could hit the Western Pacific and Guam. And the Chinese military built a life-size model of a fake Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in the Chinese desert as a target practice.
But the chances of China hitting, let alone sinking, a US aircraft carrier are slim.
First, finding and hitting a moving target at long range is extremely difficult. Because they run on nuclear power without having to refuel, American aircraft carriers can move anywhere in an area of 700 miles in 30 minutes. That’s a serious targeting problem for long-range Chinese missiles. Especially when the US carriers use deception and electronic warfare to confuse missiles.
As Trump saw on Sunday, aircraft carriers and their strike groups are well protected against missile attacks. “I fly a mini Golden Dome every day,” one pilot recently commented. US Navy Aegis destroyers carry a range of air defense missiles and can eavesdrop on satellites to track and hit maneuvering hypersonic missiles. In addition, the new Ford-class aircraft carriers have enough power to carry laser weapons for close-range defense.
Furthermore, aircraft carriers have a double hull and multiple watertight compartments, making it almost impossible to sink. Do you want proof? View the full shock tests performed on the 40,000-pound USS Gerald R. Ford. underwater explosion with live artillery within 75 meters of the aircraft carrier. China would have to fire 30 of its DF-21 missiles to match that weight.
The Chinese will run out of missiles before the US aircraft carriers run out of tactics.
Upgrades are on the way. Next year, the aircraft carrier will finally get “robot gas,” courtesy of the MQ-25 Stingray, an unmanned refueling drone that will add 500 miles of range to Navy fighters.
In fact, the Navy has a secret long-range stealth fighter jet for the aircraft carrier ready to unveil. Ten years in the making and dubbed “F/A-XX” by the Navy for future “combat strikes,” the aircraft features advanced engines to increase range and lethality. Congress has fully funded the plane, so everyone is just waiting for Secretary of War Hegseth, Assistant Secretary Stephen Feinberg, and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan to award that contract.
A pair of aircraft carriers in the Pacific, loaded with F/A-XXs and MQ-25s, can attack targets 24/7 from 1,500 miles away.
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The firepower of carriers is unbeatable. No wonder China has three aircraft carriers at sea and has just started work on a fourth aircraft carrier: a copy of the Ford class, including nuclear propulsion and sloping decks.
You see, the air power of large aircraft carriers requires an angled deck to launch and recover aircraft. Straight-deck aircraft carriers were fine for the propeller planes of World War II, but not for the jet age, as the Navy found out the hard way.
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“I landed on a straight-deck aircraft carrier,” retired Navy aviator Capt. Ed Grunwald, age 98, US Naval Academy Class of 1950, told me. During one of his missions in the 1950s, “I was landing and taxiing when my wingman’s plane failed to catch a wire, hit the guardrail, bounced over it and killed six sailors,” Grunwald said. Slanted decks prevent these accidents, because a “bolter” plane whose hook does not hold one of the three deck wires can add power and fly around safely.
The agility of aircraft carriers is more important than ever and China’s Xi Jinping knows that.
