Just when will aircraft carriers become obsolete?

This video discusses the future of the large aircraft carriers. What factors influence their effectiveness? And how will the future tech and future warfare needs change the battlefield? Will we see the decline of the aircraft carrier? And when might that come? Watch the video to find out!

Image elments used in the thumbnail:
USS Carl Vinson CVN-70 by Tom Tonthat, U.S. Navy
Sinking exercise by Iranian State TV

Music by Matija Malatestinic

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[realdanksta]

I don’t think carriers will ever be obsolete tbh, their role as a power projection platform far away from home is always gonna be needed. The way they are used might change but they will keep on existing.

[adamblakeslee]

Don't overlook the possibility of using carriers as logistical hubs. You can land a C-130 on a carrier, transfer it's cargo to helicopters, and then use the helicopters to distribute that cargo to other ships.
Likewise, the America class also doubles as a troop transport.

[Raptor]

00:58 Okay, that segway into the promo really got me. Did not see it coming. Bravo.

[TheJoey]

Honestly, carriers are still in a position as they were in ww2. This means that carriers still provide exceptional offensive capabilities, while also remaining vulnerable. It seems a lot of people have the notion that carriers are supposed to be invincible now, which they aren't. If anything, there will be carrier losses in a big war like in ww2.

[Ikbeneengeit]

You're going to make a prediction about military hardware 70 years in advance? That's like a general in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 sitting on his horse and predicting a Me 262 fighter bomber jet from WW2.

[EstellammaSS]

Ships are just platforms for their weapons. Aircraft carriers would be obsolete only when planes are obsolete. Which is not anytime soon.

[mickeyg]

The carrier isn't a weapon in itself, it's merely a platform. The purpose of the aircraft carrier is the projection of air power. What'll make the carrier obsolete is not directly from a weapon designed against it, but from the development of a better replacement.

[petercandance]

The supercarrier will be to world war III, as what the Maginot line was to World War II. Though not completely obsolete, reliance will shift to smaller carriers accompanied by destroyers that have drone jet capability.

[jeffreykalb]

In the First World War, battleships represented such an immense investment of money and training that England and Germany were afraid to lose them. So they actually did very little fighting. The same will eventually happen with carriers. They will only be brought in after the battle is won in order to project air power. No one is going to bring a carrier into an environment in which it can be sunk.They will likely remain the only way of projecting at will military power anywhere in the world.

[TheYeetiest]

USA: Discussing with itself what's gonna come up after the Aircraft Carrier

150 Countries: *Don't even have a destroyer*

[arunkimar]

Aircraft carriers wont die out. They will evolve.

[Jehcbit]

when spaced based weaponry is implemented

[KrisWustrow]

Binkov forgets that those island bases can't move. The carrier fleets can.

[jeffsanders]

Maybe we'll build smaller but more numerous submarine carriers.


The Japanese had a class in late WWII that had watertight hangers where the planes were stored one after the other facing the runway at which is the front of the sub. They even had an air filtration system so they could start their planes in the hanger without poisoning their pilots and crews from gas fumes. All they had to do after that was surface, open the hangar door and launch their fueled and armed planes. Then the sub could dive away and resurface somewhere else to pick up the pilots.


They came too late in the war to be used but they are proof of concept. A subcarrier can sneak up on a landmass, surface, launch its planes and disappear before land missiles could hit it. Making a carrier a sub also eliminates the threat from enemy submarines. A carrier is safest the less time it spends on the surface.

[heartfeltgiftideas]

Surely China could build a stealthy drone bomber armed with long ranger supersonic missiles by 2050. These would be way cheaper than a carrier yet a huge threat.

[stephenhawk]

While I agree that Carriers will soon be obsolete I must contest several points here:
1. Even with hypersonic missiles, there is an extremely complicated kill chain, in other words the carrier has to be spoted, which near impossible even with a satelite. After being spoted the missile is launched, but the question then is where did the carrier go, even with a window of only 15 minutes theres a 100 nautical mile area in which the carrier might be. In war time, the carrier groupe will have air interdiction zone preventing enemy aircraft from seeing the carrier group, and no it is not easy to track a carrier on radar.
2. Aquadynamics still limit subs to lower speeds than the carrier group. No matter how adanced the sub they can't move as fast as ships, it is simple physics. Even if a sub tried to catch up or intercept it would have to move at speeds that will make it easily audible for destroyers to find.
3. Future tech actually enables the carrier rather than making obsolete. Lasers and Hyper sonic missiles reafirm the carrier groups power. Hypersonic missiles are still slower than a laser. The carrier group might soon have its own hypersonic missiles, and while the carrier groupe is mobile, the opposing forces launch pads arent and will be vulnurable after giving up they're position.

[JohnSmith-skcg]

The most important aspect of a carrier task force is that unlike long range missiles and ballistics, a carrier group can be used as a way to exert leverage since attacking one is both an act of war and escalates out of tit for tat negotiations immediately due to loss of life during the attack. If a US carrier group pushes into for instance, the South China Sea, China would need to negotiate, tolerate (which would be a bargaining chip down the road), or risk full on nuclear war by attacking it. Something much harder for the US to achieve simply through ultra long range weaponry.

[kyrudo]

That is to say that something doesn’t come along and makes missles worse.

Imagine a future with lazer tech and such insane computational abilities for guidance where ship platforms can destroy multiple inbound missles with a flip of a switch

[brucetucker]

The problem with the comparison to battleships becoming obsolete is that none of the threats that have been presented to carriers for the last 75 years have been capable of taking over the missions the carriers themselves are needed to perform. That's why the response to those threats has always been "how can we make carriers survivable in the new environment?" rather than "what should we replace carriers with?" - because there _is_ nothing to replace carriers with: submarines, ballistic missiles, and intercontinental bombers can all destroy carriers but none of them can then establish control of the air in the carrier's place. By contrast, once carriers became better than battleships at doing what battleships were designed to do - sink other capital ships - they made battleships obsolete overnight because there was nothing else battleships did that carriers couldn't do better - battleships were still used for shore bombardment, and one and only one time for a surface battle, because we had them sitting around and new carriers were limited in number, but by 1944 there was pretty much no situation in which a battleship would be preferable to a carrier if a commander could choose one or the other.

[patrickweaver]

When ships stop carrying cargo. It's amazing how few people understand the mission of the Navy.