Pulling the Carriers' Plug

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara last spring stood beside President Kennedy on the tenth-deck bridge of the nuclear-powered carrier Enterprise. For as far as the eye could see, other U.S. ships deployed over the Atlantic seascape. Overhead screeched half a dozen different types of carrier-based planes. The U.S. Navy was conducting an exercise aimed at impressing its civilian bosses. The show impressed McNamara all right--but not in the way the Navy intended. He leaned over to Kennedy and asked: "What good are all these different kinds of planes?"

An even more basic question, enough to shiver any admiral's timbers, was on McNamara's mind: What good are carriers themselves? Unconvinced by a Navy report on "the future role of the aircraft carrier," he ordered a new study. The Navy now has until May 15 to justify its carrier-construction program. Says a McNamara aide: "We want logic and options, not a sales pitch."

Cheaper Ways? McNamara has no present plans for scuttling the Navy's carrier fleet-in-being: 16 modern attack carriers and nine World War II flattops. But he has grave doubts about letting the Navy continue its program of starting a new carrier every other year. Says one of McNamara's Whiz Kid analysts: "It's a question of how many we need. The more we ask the question, the more one thing becomes clear: we're not sure the Navy has any clear strategic rationale for building more carriers. We're determined to find out."

Typically, McNamara wants the Navy to put its case in terms of "cost effectiveness." He notes that a new carrier costs at least $300 million. It normally carries some 100 jet fighters, requires up to six destroyers for protection and three ships for supply. Such a task force costs more than $1 billion, and according to a McNamara man, "many of us think there may be cheaper ways to do much of the carrier's work."

To many admirals, asking the Navy to justify the carrier is akin to asking it to explain why there should be a navy. Outwardly, they profess confidence that they can ease McNamara's doubts. "I'm not defending carriers," says Admiral George Anderson, Chief of Naval Operations. "Carriers defend themselves--for the good of the U.S. They represent the only weapon system simultaneously prepared to wage general war, limited war, sub-limited war, or simply to make a show of force whenever and wherever necessary in support of our national policy."

Time to Doubt. Navy officers point to the use of carriers to dramatize U.S. power merely by steaming into crisis areas, such as those in Lebanon and the Formosa Straits in 1958. They cite the key role of the Enterprise and the Independence in the Cuba quarantine last fall, claim that carrier aircraft would provide mobile bases to deliver a nuclear punch in a big war, could support ground action almost anywhere in a small one, would be indispensable in seeking out enemy submarines. Declares one admiral about Mc Namara's doubters: "There's always the need to educate these new people about the great value of carriers. We've just got to put our reasons in terms McNamara's Whiz Kids can understand."

Some carrier enthusiasts consider it no coincidence that McNamara's Defense Department last week announced that four Soviet Russian Bear bombers had made nine passes over the Constellation about 600 miles southwest of Midway. Earlier, McNamara had announced four other such overflights. These flights could hardly help point up the vulnerability of the carriers--despite Navy insistence that the Soviet planes were detected on radar while still 200 miles from the Constellation, were intercepted by the carrier's planes while some 100 miles away and were escorted in their passes. When asked whether the announcement of the over flights had anything to do with McNamara's doubts about carriers, a top Defense Department civilian said: "If you haven't wondered about carriers before, you should now."

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