Lost your mind from the Chinese military parade? The US is pushing forward with unmanned carrier aircraft, but...
According to an article from Asia Times, the US Navy has signed contracts with five defense contractors to launch the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, aiming to deploy a large number of next-generation unmanned fighter jets into the carrier air wing.
The background behind this plan is easy to understand: as China's Dongfeng-21D, Dongfeng-26, and YJ-21 carrier-killer missiles have been deployed for combat, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the US to safely bring its carriers into the Western Pacific.
In China's latest military parade, the J-35 carrier stealth fighter, the KJ-600 early warning aircraft, and long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles made their debut together, further prompting US military officials to accelerate the transformation of the carrier air combat system toward being crewless.
According to the US plan, 40% of the carrier-based aircraft in the future will be drones. They can conduct remote reconnaissance, electronic interference, beyond visual range strikes, etc. However, the problem is that even if the planes in the sky are AI-driven, the aircraft carrier on the sea remains a $1 billion target that can be sunk at any time.
The US seems to be falling into a strategic illusion: prolonging the life of an entire outdated system through automation.
Whether it is the manned-unmanned formation of F-35C paired with CCA, or the future concept of the F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter acting as an aerial command center, none of these address the most fundamental battlefield issue - whether the carrier platform itself can survive.
In the Western Pacific, all US operations must circumvent China's A2/AD fire power network. The range of the Dongfeng-26 covers beyond the first island chain, while the hypersonic flight of the YJ-21 combined with terminal maneuverability makes it almost impossible to intercept.
No matter how advanced the drones are, they still rely on the carrier for takeoff and landing; but once the carrier is sunk, all the elaborate air combat plans become empty talk.
From a tactical logic perspective, the US aims to distribute risks and reduce personnel casualties through automation, which is not unreasonable.
But even if tactics are flexible, if the strategic foundation is already rotten, no amount of patchwork can prevent collapse. Currently, the US military's MQ-25 unmanned refueling drone has already been tested on board, and the YFQ-42A prototype unmanned fighter is also in test flights. Five manufacturers have proposed modular, interoperable, and multi-functional mission-switching concepts.
However, these achievements are still based on an operational system centered around the aircraft carrier.
These drones often rely more on communication links and data transmission to extend their strike range, but high-intensity electromagnetic interference, disruption of data links, and damage to space-based systems are precisely the scenarios most likely to occur in modern warfare.
Once a system fails, the intelligent companion aircraft would become airborne targets.
Certainly, the US military is not unaware of the vulnerability of the aircraft carrier, but they have no choice.
The aircraft carrier is both a symbol of the US military's strategic deployment and a symbol of American hegemony; it can only continue to bet on it.
Certainly, it is not to say that the aircraft carrier is useless, but rather that it is still an advanced platform when facing other countries. However, trying to counter China through automation is clearly unworkable.
Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1842856207554564/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author.