The U.S. Navy just dropped another $2.4 billion on a class of new light aircraft carriers specifically designed to carry the U.S. Marines’ F-35B stealth jump jet. Just one small problem: the F-35B is still plagued by design problems — and there’s no guarantee if or when they’ll be resolved.
The Navy and Marines run the risk of deploying miniaturized aircraft carriers without aircraft. And they’re not alone. The planeless-carrier problem is afflicting a number of Western militaries.
On Friday the Navy awarded a $2.38 billion contract to Huntington Ingalls Industries in Pascagoula, Mississippi, to build the future USS Tripoli (LHA-7), the second and last vessel of the America class of big-deck amphibious assault ships. The future USS America (LHA-6), also under construction at Huntington Ingalls, is scheduled to leave the builder’s yard in June. “LHA-7 will be a great ship,” Ingalls president Irwin Edenzon crowed.
Technically, the America class are amphibious assault ships meant to carry Marines and their equipment on dangerous beach assault missions, while also launching planes and copters from topside flight decks. But unlike many of the Navy’s roughly 30 assault ships, America and Tripoli don’t have a floodable well deck for launching landing craft, swimming vehicles and gun-armed riverboats. Instead, the two new ships have extra aviation facilities including an extended hangar deck plus additional storage for missiles, bombs and jet fuel. In other words, the America class is optimized for the aerial aspect of assault missions.
The idea behind the America class is to take advantage of the Marines’ growing arsenal of high-tech aircraft, including the MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor and the “fifth-generation” F-35B Joint Strike Fighter, the latter built by Lockheed Martin. The V-22 and F-35B need more deck space than the old-school helicopters and Harrier jump jets they replace. In optimizing America and Tripoli for aviation, the Navy and Marines blur the distinction between assault ships and the Navy’s 11 full-size, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
Except, of course, the Navy’s super-carriers are far bigger — 100,000 tons displacement versus 45,000 tons for the America class. And the America class can sail into shallower waters than the super-carriers because the former have flat-bottom hulls. What the ships have in common is that both will carry variants of the F-35.
The blurring between the big and small carriers is deliberate, according to Marine commandant Gen. James Amos. “Big-deck [nuclear] carriers … we’ve got 11 of those, and we’ve got 11 large-deck amphibious ships,” Amos said last year. “And those are the ones that look like a smaller carrier; they look exactly like a carrier, only they don’t have an [angled] deck.” Amos pointed out that the only U.S. carrier operating off the Libyan coast during the NATO attacks in early 2011 was an assault ship carrying Harriers. With the America-class ships hauling Marine F-35s, in the future the Corps will be able to carve out new air-power responsibilities once reserved for the Navy alone.
But that’s assuming the F-35 enters service as planned. The trillion-dollar JSF program — history’s biggest weapons development — has been beset by delays, cost overruns, slipping performance standards and warnings of potential production cutbacks. The Marines’ vertical-launching B-version has been by far the most troubled of the three F-35 variants. In 2010 then-Defense Secretary Bob Gates placed the B-model on probation, threatening to cancel it if it didn’t perform better.
As it stands, the Marines will likely possess both America-class carriers before the F-35B is ready for combat. Harriers can fill in temporarily, but until the Joint Strike Fighter is fully functional, the two new carriers will fall far short of their combat potential. That gap places the Navy and Marines in the same camp as the British and the Italian navies, both of which have or are building aircraft carriers but are betting on the problematic F-35B to fly off them.
There are reasons to hope the carrier woes will be resolved. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ended the B-model’s probation in January and has since praised the jet as “meeting requirements.” The first F-35B training jet took off for its inaugural flight from a Florida base in late May. Despite much hand-wringing over cost, the Pentagon has not yet cut back F-35 production plans. “The Marines need a fifth-generation fighter for the future, and they will have it,” Panetta said.
Two multi-billion-dollar aircraft carriers are counting on it. LINK
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