Naval Surface Ships Are Still Sitting Ducks

For a variety of reasons (none of which have much to do with the intrinsic combat capabilities of our naval fleet), the U.S. Navy has not had anyone actually try to sink any of its surface ships in decades. 

When, and not if, a near peer ever does, it will be a tragedy of epic proportions. 

Why?

Surface combatants are basically sitting ducks. They are big. They are slow. There are great limits on the extent to which they can be stealthy on the flat ocean or sea with no cover, visible to satellites, drones, radar, and having audible signatures as well. The contest between the defensive virtues of armor and the offensive power of missiles and torpedoes was won by the offensive side many decades ago.

Going to war in a blue sea ship is essentially like heading into a battle zone on land in an RV, with all of the living base facilities for the crew as well as the armaments brought into the battlefield at sea.

There are multiple threats to which even the biggest ships, like aircraft carriers, are intensely vulnerable. 

One of them is submarines. Even cheap, small, air independent propulsion submarines can easily sink an aircraft carrier and any other U.S. surface ship before it even knows it is under attack.

Fortunately, only a few of the main adversaries of the U.S. (Russia, China, Iran and North Korea) have significant naval forces. Russia's fleet is hollow due to lack of sufficient funds to maintain a Navy built for a nation with twice as many people and twice as much money, and is divided between many theaters. North Korea's military is even worse in terms of readiness and technological sophistication. China, Iran and North Korea are all primarily equipped to deploy only in the vicinity of their own coasts, although China's blue sea navy capabilities are surging.

Fortunately, none of these allies has seen fit to enter into a major, near peer class naval conflict with the United States. 

In the recent U.S. military engagements in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Iraq, for example, local adversaries had no meaningful naval forces to speak of, for obvious reasons of geography (and also for less obvious reasons of insufficient funds to marshal one even if they had someplace to deploy it).

But the amount of expenditure it would take to devastate the U.S. Navy's surface fleet with submarines, advanced missiles, aircraft, and drones in the air, on the surface and underwater, and to thwart it with mines, is a tiny fraction of what it costs the U.S. to purchase and operate these forces.

Sooner or later, the U.S. will face an enemy who recognizes these facts and decides to give us a bloody nose by exposing the immense vulnerability of the U.S. surface fleet. And, when we do, it will be an exceedingly ugly moment that will be forever remembered in military history that is worse than Pearl Harbor.