The Era of the Aircraft Carrier Is About to End

For the better part of a century, nothing has projected American power more effectively than the aircraft carrier.

A 100,000-ton behemoth of sovereign U.S. territory, capable of launching a more powerful air force than most nations possess, the supercarrier has been the undisputed king of the seas.

It is the centerpiece of our naval strategy, the first asset sent to any global crisis, and the ultimate symbol of our military might.

The Aircraft Carrier Era Is Over

But what if the king is now vulnerable?

What if a weapon exists that can turn our most powerful asset into our most catastrophic liability?

Take it from me: that weapon is no longer theoretical.

China’s development and deployment of advanced anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), specifically the DF-21D and the longer-range DF-26B, represents the most significant threat to U.S. naval supremacy since the Cold War.

These are not just another class of missile; they are a revolutionary capability designed for a single purpose: to hold American aircraft carriers at risk and push them out of the Western Pacific. To understand their impact is to understand the daunting new reality of a potential U.S.-China conflict.

To grasp why these missiles are such a game-changer, you have to understand how they differ from traditional anti-ship weapons. For decades, the primary threat to a carrier was from cruise missiles or submarines. While dangerous, these were threats the Navy’s layered defense systems were designed to counter. A cruise missile flies low and relatively slow, giving a carrier strike group’s Aegis cruisers and destroyers a chance to detect, track, and shoot it down.

An anti-ship ballistic missile is a different beast entirely. Launched from mobile launchers hundreds or even thousands of miles inland, the DF-21D and DF-26B rocket into the upper atmosphere. They travel at hypersonic speeds—we’re talking Mach 10 or higher—before plummeting back to Earth, coming down on their target from an almost vertical angle.

This trajectory creates a nightmarish problem for our defenses. Intercepting an object moving that fast, from that angle, is exponentially more difficult than hitting a sea-skimming cruise missile.

What a ‘Wargame’ Can Teach Us 

Let’s wargame it out for a moment. Imagine a crisis over Taiwan. The President orders a carrier strike group into the Philippine Sea to signal American resolve. China’s military, however, has spent two decades building a sophisticated system to counter this exact move. This is their “kill chain.”

First, they have to find the carrier. This is no small task in the vastness of the Pacific, but China has invested heavily in a network of over-the-horizon radars, long-range drones, submarines, and, most importantly, a constellation of surveillance satellites. Once they have a fix on the carrier’s location, that data is relayed to a land-based missile brigade.

Then comes the launch. A salvo of DF-21Ds or DF-26Bs is fired. In the terminal phase of their flight, the missiles’ maneuverable reentry vehicles (MaRVs) use their own onboard sensors to make final adjustments, allowing them to hit a moving ship. The carrier strike group’s defenses spring into action, launching their own SM-3 and SM-6 interceptors. But they are facing multiple warheads descending at over two miles per second. They have to be perfect. The missile only has to be lucky once.

A single DF-21D warhead striking a carrier’s flight deck would be a mission-kill. It wouldn’t sink the ship, but it would crack the deck, making it impossible to launch or recover aircraft. The carrier, for all intents and purposes, would be out of the fight. Several successful hits could very well sink the vessel, resulting in the tragic loss of over 5,000 American sailors and a $13 billion national asset. It would be a Pearl Harbor-level catastrophe, a blow from which American prestige might never recover.

The strategic implication here is even more profound than the loss of a single ship. The DF-21D has a range of over 900 miles, and the DF-26B can reach targets nearly 2,500 miles away. This creates a massive “anti-access/area denial” (A2/AD) bubble. To stay safe, U.S. carriers would be forced to operate far outside these ranges. The problem is that our primary carrier-based fighter, the F/A-18 Super Hornet, has a combat radius of around 500 miles. If the carrier is pushed 1,000 miles out to sea, its air wing is rendered useless for a conflict over Taiwan.

The Bottom Line 

This is the uncomfortable truth we must be willing to embrace.

The era of the aircraft carrier operating with impunity in any ocean it chooses is over. It does not mean the carrier is obsolete, but its role must fundamentally change.

We can no longer risk sending our most valuable naval assets into a shooting gallery. The Navy must adapt, investing in longer-range unmanned aircraft, more survivable surface combatants, and a more distributed, resilient force structure.

If we don’t, we face the daunting prospect of seeing the symbol of American power neutralized—or worse, sent to the bottom of the Pacific.

More About Harry Kazianis 

Harry J. Kazianis (@Grecianformula) is Editor-In-Chief and President of National Security Journal. He was the former Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI), a foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon based in Washington, DC. Harry has over a decade of experience in think tanks and national security publishing. His ideas have been published in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many other outlets worldwide. He has held positions at CSIS, the Heritage Foundation, the University of Nottingham, and several other institutions related to national security research and studies. He holds a Master’s degree focusing on international affairs from Harvard University.

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