Questioning the Carrier: Opportunities in Fleet Design for the U.S. Navy

by Jeff Vandenengel

Overview

Winner of The Navy League's 2024 Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement.

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is naval history’s most powerful and versatile warship. It is the reason the U.S. Navy is the predominant force at sea today. Throughout its illustrious history, the carrier has overcome serious flaws, including its expense, vulnerability, centralization of combat power, and its airwing’s short range. The U.S. Navy always accepted those flaws because the carrier was the best means of delivering firepower. Today’s technologies, however, provide key opportunities for the U.S. Navy to move beyond the limitations  of a carrier-centric fleet by redesigning its force structure.
 
Questioning the Carrier examines how the U.S. Navy can embrace the Age of the Missile, network the distributed fleet, and diversify to develop a fleet that benefits from the aircraft carrier’s many strengths without being wholly dependent on them. By acting on those opportunities, the U.S. Navy can develop a structure that performs the carrier-centric fleet’s functions more effectively using a force consisting of more platforms with less total risk and within the same long-term budget. As adversaries are improving their ability to deter the carrier thus causing its utility to wane, the author examines the Navy’s past successes to show how it can overcome institutional resistance to change and continue to rule the seas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781682478707
Publisher:	Naval Institute Press
Publication date:	11/15/2023
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	668,133
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jeff Vandenengel is a naval officer with tours on three fast-attack submarines. Winner of the 2019 Admiral Willis Lent Award as the most tactically proficient submarine department head in the Pacific Fleet, he deployed to the Western Pacific three times and to the Atlantic during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Editorial Reviews

Questioning the Carrier skillfully uses naval history and current events to conduct a holistic review of the aircraft carrier’s ability to lead the U.S. Navy against our nation’s adversaries. This is a superb contribution to the debate over the Navy’s force structure, especially valuable because it comes from a serving naval officer."―Adm. James G. Stavridis, USN (Ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander, NATO and author of The Sailor’s Bookshelf and The Leader’s Bookshelf

"Questioning the Carrier addresses macro questions of geopolitics that are of interest to many. Vandenengel uses a clever analogy of aircraft carriers fighting against a “archer” who they can choose to hide from, shoot, or shoot down their arrows—all increasingly that find the odds no longer in their favor."―New York Journal of Books  

“Just as citizens should always look beyond the echo chambers coinciding with their beliefs, service planners should do so as well when examining alternative concepts and the force structures that support them.  While not everyone (including me) will agree completely with Jeff Vandenengel's diagnosis of and prescription for the U.S. Navy's future, Questioning the Carrier is a highly thought-provoking and very useful addition to the debate.  We need more young people like Jeff with the courage to challenge the assumptions about our Navy's future!” ―Adm. Sandy Winnefeld, USN (Ret.), former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and author of Sailing Upwind

“Jeff Vandenengel’s Questioning the Carrier provides analysts with a sobering, superbly documented, and exceedingly well reasoned examination of the future of the aircraft carrier in naval warfare. His 'must read' comprehensive review of the evolution of U.S. fleet operations which placed the carrier at the center of operations even as America’s adversaries slanted their weapons development to target it suggests that the relevance of the carrier is not only in decline but at an end.”—Capt. Jerry Hendrix, USN (Ret.), PhD

"The author, Jeff Vandenengel, is a US naval officer who specialised as a submariner with numerous tours of duty in SSNs. In 2019 he won the Admiral Willis Lent Award for being the most tactically proficient submarine department head in the Pacific Fleet.  He has served in three boats in the Pacific and was serving in another in the Atlantic at the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Vandenengel’s source notes fill 40 pages, his bibliography a further 20 and the text brings out his firmly held belief that nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, CVN, represent too great a concentration of the fleet’s power in a small number of hulls that are increasingly vulnerable to submarine and mine threats.  The CVN has, he believes, become too expensive and too much of a national symbol to risk in a hostile environment. The loss of only one would significantly reduce the USN’s striking power as well as being a devastating blow to national pride."—Australian Naval Institute 

"This book is intended to provoke thought, bringing up a topic that challenges the status quo of the U.S. battle fleet — the future of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier."—Seapower Magazine

"The book format is at a Naval academic level yet is still an easy read. This publication presents the concept well and worth a read especially by those in the Naval strategic, tactical and design fields."—Sea History
 

"Questioning the Carrier is a clear-eyed examination of the design of the U.S. Navy and how it should be changed. The book’s foundation is a short history of naval tactics and technological change with breakdowns of air, surface, and undersea warfare operations in recent years. It highlights how today’s technological paradigm is to the detriment of fleet structured to defend large carriers. Questioning the Carrier is a must-read for those interested in naval warfare or fleet design. It is an enjoyable, evocative, and enlightening book that belongs on the shelf of the neophyte and the expert alike."—Proceedings

 

From the Publisher