A Navy with fewer aircraft carriers no longer unthinkable.

THE DISPLAY OF NAVAL firepower currently in progress in the waters of the Persian Gulf is a reminder of the commanding presence of the big-deck aircraft carriers. But even this imposing show of military muscle may not be enough to save the venerable flattops from the overwhelming power of the Pentagon's budget ax.

In a world where fighting wars at sea is no longer about sinking megawarships and more about capturing random terrorists and pirates, are big-deck carriers becoming too much of a luxury?

Yes, says naval historian and analyst Norman Polmar. "The affordability of carriers--that's what's going to sink them."

The bad guys could never sink them. The Air Force couldn't. But their heavy price tags eventually will, Polmar says.

The Navy has eleven carriers but it may have to get by with fewer. They cost nearly $10 billion apiece to build, and billions more to keep afloat. These expenses are becoming harder to justify when the Navy is trying to grow from 280 to 313 ships during the next 30 years, with an annual shipbuilding budget of about $13 billion.

Adding to the financial worries are the ballooning costs of the war in Iraq and the Pentagon's plans to dramatically expand the size of the Army and the Marine Corps. Despite assertions by defense officials to the contrary, it is hard to imagine how the Pentagon will pay for all this without shifting billions of dollars from the Navy and the Air Force.

As they become more expensive, big-deck carriers will see their value decline, Polmar predicts. Naval strategists project that during the next 20 years, the Navy mostly will be operating in "green" or "brown" waters, close to ground combat zones. Some countries don't even allow nuclear ships in their waters. Two-thirds of the world's navies don't own any ships larger than a frigate.

"Why use a 100,000-ton carrier with two nuclear reactors that doesn't fit in half the harbors of the world and requires a crew of 3,500 when, in many instances, you could send other ships to do the same job?" Polmar asks.

A sensible move for the Navy would be to retire a couple of its big-deck carriers and to make more use of amphibious assault ships and smaller combatant ships, experts suggest. Amphibious ships are ideal for what we'll be facing in the next two to three decades, Polmar says. "We are not going to have a peer competitor at sea for 20 years at least."

At a meeting of retired flag officers in San Diego recently, a burning topic of conversation was the future of aircraft carriers. One of the participants, retired Rear Adm. Hamlin Tallent, views this debate as central to what is happening in the Navy today. "Right now the Navy has an almost invisible role in the war on terror. It is struggling for relevance."

While the Navy has been doing its share in the war--it is deploying a river-patrol boat squadron and has more than 14,000 sailors on the ground in the Middle East--that may not be enough to protect its current budget.

Hamlin, who piloted F-14 Tomcats off carrier flight decks, admits that even slight suggestions that the Navy should rethink its commitment to these ships are dismissed as heretical nonsense.

"Aircraft carriers are beautiful, powerful and they've done great things for us. But if they are going to be a multibillion-dollar insurance policy that doesn't have any relevance, people are going to question that," Hamlin says. Naval aviation will not be engaged in a war against Iran or China any time soon. "We have to be able to put other missions on aircraft carriers that do more to fight the daily war on terror," he says. Navy carriers have on occasion served as floating bases for Army helicopters, but that turned out to not be a good fit because ground-based aviation cannot survive in the corrosive environment.

Instead, aircraft carriers should be put to use in support of ground operations such as medical outreach, well drilling, road building, special operations training, Hamlin says. "You could train coastal patrol operators something that large, that mobile, with that much capability, we are going down the wrong track."

The Navy's role in the global war on terrorism could be "gigantic" if it chose to accept it, Hamlin says. "The war on terror requires so much more preventative activity.... It frustrates me that the Navy has not eagerly addressed this mission."

The most urgent concern for the Navy, Polmar says, will be the continuing pressure to reduce costs. Ironically, the Navy--and the Air Force--will become "bill payers" for ground forces that, once Iraq is over, the nation will be reluctant to send to war for at least 10 to 20 years. "It will be a Vietnam syndrome again," says Polmar. "We won't want to commit ground troops."

During that presumed hiatus, the Navy would do well to embark on a restructuring plan that takes into account the blue-, green- and brown-water threats that will be confronting the United States during the next quarter century. Perhaps fewer carrier strike forces would in fact offer the nation more clout, assuming Navy shipbuilding and strategy strike the right balance.

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