Submarines and aircraft remain the safest, and best way to deliver offensive firepower. The aircraft carrier does have a role, but it is far behind the contact line.
I also think the concerns about the the ability of large ships to defend themselves in modern combat are a bit overblown. Just because there exists a weapon system that can defeat something, doesn't mean that thing is irrelevant. You'll see all these comparisons of the cost of a surface combatant with the cost of an anti-ship missile or drone as though that decides the matter. But it really doesn't. It costs a ton of money to train and equip and infantry soldier, and yet you can kill that solider with a bullet that costs pennies. Does that mean infantry have been obsolete for the last few centuries? Of course not! A system is not obsolete until something comes along that can perform that same role, but better.
That's why they're called 'aircraft carriers'. The entire point of them is that the offensive firepower in the form of aircraft can reach out pretty far. They don't need to sail the carrier right up beside the enemy in order to hit him with their swords, you know.
Jokes aside, there might (eventually, maybe not today?) be a point in what you're saying. It's been a long time since 1945 when carriers last were used in a major peer conflict, and a lot has changed since then.
Xi wants to make China great again he doesn't want a nuclear wasteland.
Cruise missiles have ranges >1500km:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile_family)
And they're putting missiles in shipping containers so as long as you have a flat surface you can place them just about anywhere:
* https://gcaptain.com/pacific-dragon-is-the-shipping-industry...
You can go smaller (that’s called a guided missile frigate) but thanks to the square cube law, a bigger ship can carry much more than twice as much missiles, sensors, etc. as two ships that are half the size. You also get economies of scale on maintenance. There are tradeoffs here, and the DDG as the backbone of the surface fleet and the guardian of the aircraft carrier is a great solution to those tradeoffs.
Don’t be a doomer when it comes to the arms race between missiles and air defense. Air defense can defeat a concentrated missile/drone attack, as we’ve seen in the two recent Iranian attacks on Israel. There are novel air attack threats from drones, but there are also novel air defense systems to counter them such as lasers (https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1886259012632535520). If I had to guess I’d say that the balance is actually shifting in favor of air defense on net.
I do agree with you that submarines are important. In fact the Ohio class SSGN practically is an arsenal ship. The problem with submarines is that they have to operate as lone wolves. Surface ships and carrier aircraft can share sensor data and use sensor fusion to construct a shared picture of the battlespace, but submarines can’t be looped into the network without exposing themselves. Again, tradeoffs. And usually the solution to these tradeoffs is combined arms—you build a task force with a carrier, some surface ships, and some submarines and each ship has its own job to do to cover the weaknesses of the others.
Arsenal ships are a bad idea because putting all the missiles in one basket. It is better to have 3 destroyers that can cover different directions, or go on separate missions. The Navy has finally figured out reloading, it is much better to send one ship away to reload and still keep defense.
Until drones carrying drones carrying drones becomes a thing.
The problem is that can’t do short range from ships because it is too dangerous to get close to shore. Anti-ship missiles are common now, and guided artillery and glide bombs are possible.
Finally, drones haven’t been useful against ships in Red Sea, and some are good size. Speed matters for getting through defenses. The slow and small ones can be shot down by guns or rockets, the fast ones are anti-ship missiles.
Comparing a Houthi attack against a peer adversary drone & missile attack would likely have very different results. Defense depletion (i.e. out of ammo) is the current weakness of defenses. That is why energy weapons are the next big thing - you don't run out of shells for a laser. Counting on defense is a historic proven way to fail at war-fighting.
> Speed matters for getting through defenses.
As does stealth, surprise, maneuverability, timing, rules of engagement and many other factors. Defense is really difficult - especially given you may be countering something unprecedented. The recent Red Sea activity did not have the element of surprise, no stealth weapons were used and the timing was well known. Not a good bellwether.
It's a similar story for SM-2/3, in the Red Sea they faced massive interceptor depletion and had to leave, and even then many missiles were not intercepted, we just got lucky that they missed.
Depletion is the problem with destroyers. Something like an arsenal ship (think instead of 90-120 missiles, being loaded out with 300) would make more sense. Cheap drones are more of a depletion problem than are hypersonics.
SM6 is the primary USN weapon against hypersonic, not the SM2/SM3. SM3 is primarily designed for ballistic missile defense.
Which interceptor would be used against a target largely comes down to whether the intercept is endo- or exo-atmospheric. The SM3 is an exo-atmospheric intercepter: it's designed to collide with the target in the vacuum of space. The SM6 is an endo-atmospheric interceptor. SM3 can be used against ballistic missiles, including both traditional re-entry vehicles and hypersonic glide vehicles, before they enter the atmosphere. The SM6 can be used against anything in the atmosphere: including ballistic missiles in the terminal descent phase.
So why even bring it up? Kinzhal is just a slightly faster ballistic missile, the fact that it can be intercepted in ideal conditions is not new. What matters is the interception probability and the engagement envelope, so what's the point to bring it up and then immediately discredit whatever useful inference can be made while still jumping to a conclusion?
SM6 is just an upgraded SM2, it's intended for BMD just the same - it's just better at it, but not better enough for the Red Sea situation.
If you can read between the lines of the posture reviews, any potential full scale war with China would include a massive nuclear first strike by necessity.
Everyone is aware of this and is avoiding a large scale engagement.
Most likely a regional war with China (probably over Taiwan or less likely, the Philippines) would draw in lots of regional players because everybody want's to pick China apart.
1. Ballistic missiles: most ballistic missile systems are hypersonic. We've had ballistic missiles since WW2, the very first American ballistic missile (the redstone) was hypersonic, and that was back in the 1950s. This is not new. People make a lot of missile like the Khinzal, but this is just an air-launched version of the Iskander missile, which is from the 1990s.
2. Hypersonic glide vehicles: normal ballistic missiles drop a re-entry vehicle that just falls to earth. It might have some stabilizing fins, and some ability to make minute adjustments to its course to improve accuracy, but this is limited. In a hypersonic glide vehicle, the re-entry vehicle is meant to be more of a glide body, and is able to make actual maneuvers and turns. The technology here is also not new. For example, the Space Shuttle is an example of a hypersonic glide body. Research in this field has been around for a long time, though it's only in the last few years that countries have begun actually fielding weapons featuring glide vehicles. The annoying part with this is that the term "hypersonic glide vehicle" implies that the reason these are so difficult to intercept is because of their speed. But it's actually the opposite: in order to maneuver, a hypersonic glide vehicle actually has to travel slower than a traditional ballistic re-entry vehicle! The advantage of a HGV is not its speed, but its ability to maneuver, which makes it harder to intercept.
3. There are also hypersonic cruise missiles. These are missiles that use ramjet or scramjet engines to fly at hypersonic speeds. These tend to be even slower than HGVs, and will have much shorter ranges because they have to consume fuel to maintain this speed. Several of these are in development, but I don't believe any have been fielded. The main advantage of these is even further maneuverability, and a lower flight altitude which should make them harder to detect. Additionally, because they are flying in the atmosphere, it requires a different type of interceptor to defeat.
A ship lets you get closer to the action. The closer you get the easier it is to overwhelm electric warfare - either because the slow drones can be programed and so don't need a radio (or fiber connections), or because you can make your signal strong enough to overcome it.
Missiles don't have infinite range. Different ones have different limits. Longer range costs both more money and payload. A ship can laugh off anything a tiny drone can do (even a commercial ship).
The above are all trade offs. However navy warfare is not dead and unlikely to die.