A Navy with fewer aircraft carriers no longer unthinkable.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: DEFENSE WATCH

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...