Former US Navy Secretary John F. Lehman says reports of the aircraft carrier’s death have been much exaggerated.
He tells Asia Times in an exclusive interview that US nuclear aircraft carriers can successfully operate against China in contested areas like the South China Sea despite Beijing’s use of maneuvering anti-ship missiles like the DF-26. But he warns that Russian hackers are blunting the US military’s tech edge by stealing secrets and that the US no longer leads in submarines and anti-submarine warfare.
Lehman headed the Department of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan, from 1981-1987. He championed the idea of using a 600-ship force against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He currently chairs J.F. Lehman & Co. Partners, a defense consulting firm.
Are large capital ships like nuclear carriers still relevant in an era of so-called anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) weapons like Chinese anti-ship missiles?
As long as I’ve been sentient on these issues, the carrier was about to be made totally obsolete by… you fill in the blank. Accurate cruise missiles were first encountered at the battles of Okinawa and Iwo Jima in 1945. The Japanese kamikazes were the ultimate cruise missiles, and indeed they did put four US carriers out of commission — though they didn’t sink any. Carriers will be hit and carriers will be put out of action. But because they are so robust, it would take a nuclear weapon to really sink them.
So the anti-access/area-denial weapons being developed by China are not the game changers they are made out to be?
This A2/AD is just a trendy type of thing. It’s laughable for anybody who has any historical perspective. The Soviets had a maneuvering anti-ship missile. The idea is not that new and there are ways to counter it. None of these (A2/AD) weapons are any great breakthrough.
If somebody’s going to be shooting missiles at you, would you rather be tied to the coordinates of a fixed land base or moving at 35 knots?
The large capital ships, particularly the aircraft carriers, provide the protection for everything else. If you don’t have air superiority over the surface of the sea and submarine superiority under the sea, how are you going to move the world’s commerce or your army transports or anything? You can’t provide that kind of security and air superiority from land bases. So aircraft carriers have to be survivable and they can be made survivable.
Is there a need to develop new tactical concepts such as “distributed lethality” in facing the threat posed by anti-ship missiles?
Distributed lethality is just another kind of conference-speak buzzword. It’s meaningless. If you look at a US Navy task force during World War II, the lethality was distributed over thousands of square miles. You had big carriers, small carriers, destroyers, cruisers, battleships, submarines and 24-mile-range guns.
If you look at the naval exercises we recently ran in the western Pacific and the Norwegian Sea, the battle groups were spread over 2,000 square miles. They were very hard to target but they carried land-attack cruise missiles — the Tomahawk, anti-ship Harpoon missiles, F-14s that could command whatever was flying in a 300-mile disk around the task force, and submarines. That’s distributed lethality. We already have it — you couldn’t distribute it more.
How damaging has cyber-hacking by Russia and China been to US defense competitiveness?
The most worrisome aspect of it is that after World War II, the Soviet Union adopted a brilliant and effective strategy. They knew they didn’t have the depth of technological, laboratory, university and engineering development that the West had. So they said, ‘well, we’ll let them develop these weapons and we’ll steal them.’ And that’s just what they did.
Their procurement plans were to wait until breakthroughs were made in the US, the UK and Europe and then buy them or steal them — which they could always do. You remember the movie ‘The Falcon and the Snowman’? They knew their espionage would enable them to get that F-18 radar. The Gen 4 Russian fighters essentially have F-18 radars. The same is true of their version of the fire-and-forget AMRAAN air-to-air missile.
What are the Russians doing now?
Today, they have the same philosophy, except that instead of having to wait until the technology is fully developed and deployed before stealing it, their cyber hacking brings them right into the laboratories of the main defense contractors and universities — so they ride right along with us as we’re developing things like lasers, electric guns and jamming devices. So that’s the most damaging thing and it’s helped them to close that technological gap with the West.
Are the Chinese doing the same thing?
Yes. They have essentially been doing the same thing. The Russians are better at it, better at fielding what they steal. But the Chinese are not just a clone of the Russian systems. They are very good at more basic research, in some cases, than we are. Both China and especially Russia are concentrating in areas where they believe, and I think accurately, our highest vulnerabilities are.
What is a major area of US vulnerability?
The Russians have concentrated a lot of their R&D in submarines and antisubmarine technology. The confident edge we had in the Cold War we no longer have. They’ve copied their submarine quieting off of our technology. They are also ahead in some offensive capabilities.
Doug Tsuruoka is Editor-at-Large of Asia Times
Poor Russians… What could they achieve without the help of US technology… Pathetic!…
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Arrogance and disregard of intelligence are your failure…Gone are the days of hegemony…Wake up
Yes maybe he is right ,remember jap zero speed is 300 miles perhour. missile nowadayys can fly more than march2 and can be armed with electromagnetic pulse
Thts true. The Chinese would stand no chance against US aircraft carriers and they know that very well.
This is irresponsible war mongering bluster that is not helpful for a peaceful world. Poor fossil is reliving battles that happened 75 years ago. It makes wonder and worry at the quality of US neocon think tanks.
Must be a bad joke the Carrier is obsolete like the Battleship in WW2 against sea skimming supersonic cruise missiles that the Russians and Chinese posses. when they send a few hundred of those to the carrier group it’s end of story.
This is blatant lie saying that russ are dumb. How come they become pioneer of space technology without "stealing" US technology? Mig-25 and Mig-31 radar. Are those stolen too?
A good way to console Americans. Just tell them the truth that time to pay back has just arrived
F off what would the US be without forcing the rest of the world to finance it by enslaving them to the Us dollar
Med Boukrachi – look up this word in the dictionary – "sarcasm"
can US prevent Russ n Sino from stealing her technology
given that regulation and its efficacy still catching up, some news of mishaps are in coming…keep watch
all big powers are evils in different veils…..small countries need to tread carefully and get trapped in one or another
The DF -21 D is the deadly weapon for American aircraft-carriers. You can’t deny as aircraft-carriers turn into sea coffins
They make great artificial reef and plenty of food for the fish as one carrier have 6,000 personal and a carrier group would have at least 10,000
Blind the ‘eye in the sky’ and all high tech stuff will be useless. Back to good old traditional warfare.
What do former high ranking military officials do after retiring? Lobby on behalf of arms manufacturers of course. What else could they do?
Make no mistake, it’s the Lords of War calling the shot in Washington.
Stuart Budgen
I can only assume you made these comments sincerely. However from what I experienced those comments you made are plain insult to the Middleast and Asian people. Go to Iraq or Afghanistan and try to make some friends. If US did so much good by liberating people from dictators, why they hate you so much?
Stuart Budgen
Hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced, and you are taking credits for some "small under ground parties". Wow.
DOUG TSURUOKA wrote: "You remember the movie ‘The Falcon and the Snowman’? They knew their espionage would enable them to get that F-18 radar."
This is factually incorrect, if I’m accurately interpreting what was written, as Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee never had access to F-18 radar intelligence. Furthermore, in Boyce’s book "American Sons: The Untold Story of the Falcon and the Snowman," it was established that the KGB reported the satellite intelligence provided to them by Boyce and Lee was useless. But cool movie reference, anyway. 🙂
Doug Tsuruosak has an issue with accountability and veracity. The Falcon and The Snowman? At no time did either man have contact with nor discussions with the Russians about F-18 radar. Never happened.
I was the representative for both Boyce and Lee. Both men were paroled based on the fact that NOTHING that they gave to the Russians could 1) harm any existing US spy operations, 2) could not have led to deaths of existing US operatives and 3) was useless to the Russians without the daily access codes to break the KH-11 crypto cards.
If you’re going to write an article and make insinuations, it might behoove you to do some research on the validity of your statements.
How can the American aircraft-carriers defend from the rain fall of DF-21 D from the sky ?
Nothing is wrong in war and love,surviver of the fittest is highly applicable here.
I dont remeber, who try to buy plans of VA-111 Shkval in Moscow Hotel ?
Funny fact : AIM-9X seeker is a copy of Russian R-73 one, US got it when Germany re-unified…
USA has NO supersonic cruise missiles, France and Russia have, and hypersonic ones are comming…
Russians were already testing rail-guns in the 70’s and airborne lasers in the 80’s.
Their SAMs are much more advanced and BTW, US could just counter Soviet gear, courtesy of agent Sphere, AKA Adolf Tolkachev.
US aso spies on the Russians and F-35’s demonstrator was created by Yakovlev’s engineers for $400M from the Yak-43 project.
Bragging is cheap.
The most wonderful arm and military device is in the hands of India .India will win and conquer the world.
Theweapon is Love ..You will surrender because you don’t have love in your country
The US just talk big stupid thing. All the weapon Us have is nothing russian and china have the nuclear capabilities which can deliver to any place in this world. talk about nuclear arsenals no body in the world can win in this games
we should build shit then all they would have would be shit!
China has 270. USA over 6000 ICBMs. I am listening to all this horseshit talking about the inferior US weapons tech but your leaders tell quite a different story. Putin has only recently, and I mean in the last week he can NOT hope to compete with the US military. In my opinion (I am sure you will disagree as I am American and we are the poorest, dumbest, most maniacal people on the Earth in your eyes) the Russians are much more advanced between Russia and China. If your leaders know the US is more advanced, why dont you? Jeeezzz…… I mean, its obvious you hate the US but it seems more like jealousy to me and by the way, someone mentioned that the US is evil. The only people say that are the terrorists and the Snowflakes and let me tell you something people. The Snowflakes think everyone and everything is evil, including your nignorant asses.
three former US president can’t do anything to bite north korea and now seem tobe good friend with Mr.thrumb. the latest trade war US & China see who is going to retreat or financially loss. i think US just have to follow china tune. ha…ha…