Redundant Aircraft Carriers, Maneuverable Oreshniks, and Hybrid Ekranoplans
Editor’s note: On January 17, economist Philip Pilkington wrote an essay, “Why Aircraft Carriers Are Becoming Obsolete,” in The National Interest in which he identified several drawbacks of using aircraft carriers as the centerpiece of U.S. naval strategy in the twenty-first century and advocated supplanting them with highly mobile “ekranoplans.” This essay received a great deal of critical interest, and many of our readers submitted feedback, some of it positive and some negative. Today, Mr. Pilkington responds to his critics below.
My previous article on the viability of aircraft carriers and a potential technology to replace them seems to have stirred up something of a fuss. Whatever one might say about aircraft carriers, their partisan supporters are a fierce bunch. No doubt this goes back to the competition between navies and air forces that developed in the 20th century: the carrier was a piece of technology that kept the navy in the game in an era of military aviation.
Most of the responses to my initial article were on X (formerly Twitter). Some of these were, shall we say, more constructive than others—but such is the nature of the platform. A longer response has been provided by Dave Patterson over at Liberty Nation News. In what follows, I will try to respond to all the objections at once, while taking Patterson’s article as my overarching reference point. Here we must deal with three discrete issues: the nature of the Oreshnik weapons system, the effectiveness of MIRVs against moving naval targets, and the viability of ekranoplans to occupy the role currently filled by carriers.
My initial essay tried to stay short on the details, and so I necessarily had to simplify the arguments. No doubt that this gives ample space for misunderstanding, but it was required to get the message across. What follows here is a more technical and specific overview that should clear up these misunderstandings. I would advise anyone who has not read my initial essay to read it first.
The Oreshnik’s Tricks
Patterson’s characterisations of the Oreshnik system are simply incorrect. He refers to it as an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), when it is in fact an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). But this difference is trivial. Where Patterson’s mischaracterisation has a material impact on his argument is when he states that the Russians fired the weapon as a warning to the West because the Oreshnik had no payload. In fact, the Oreshnik had no payload because it needs no payload.
This goes back to classical physics. An explosion is simply a rapid expansion of gas, typically from a chemical reaction. It damages the objects it is aimed at through the force exerted by that expansion—or by shrapnel that is propelled by that expansion. Because of its extreme speeds, the Oreshnik and similar hypersonic weapons exert enough force of their own accord to do the sort of damage that would typically require a chemical explosive reaction.
This is why the Oreshnik was equipped with inert tungsten-tipped warheads instead of an explosive payload: tungsten is amongst the densest metals known to man. And since Newton’s second law tells us that the net force of an object is the product of its acceleration (the Oreshnik’s hypersonic speed) times its mass (the density associated with tungsten), it follows that the missile does not require an explosive payload at all.
The next error that Patterson makes with respect to the Oreshnik missile is that it could be intercepted by an aircraft carrier’s air defence system, or the air defence systems on ships that accompany the carrier. In reality, even far less advanced ballistic missiles than the Oreshnik are very difficult to hit even with multiple layers of air defence. In late December, for instance, the Houthis fired a single Iranian-made ballistic missile at Tel Aviv—which made it through Israel’s layered air defence and hit its target. Video circulated online actually showing the missile evading Israeli air defence.
Now consider the following. First, Israel’s air defence is much denser than that associated with an aircraft carrier. And second, the Oreshnik has at least six re-entry vehicles—meaning that a carrier’s more limited air defense system would have to deal with not one projectile, but six. These are very poor odds to begin with, and they grow exponentially worse with each Oreshnik fired. Remember that, dollar for dollar, one Nimitz-class carrier is worth between 154 and 278 Oreshnik missiles.
The next point that Patterson makes is arguably the most interesting—and one that I discussed extensively in my initial responses to the original essay on X. “Despite the speed differential, ‘Mach 10 and Mach 11’ of the missile versus 34.5 mph for the carrier,” Patterson writes, “whatever the preplanned location entered into the missile guidance system is, the aircraft carrier on the move will not be there.” In other words, at the time of the Oreshnik missile’s firing, it is impossible to know exactly where to aim it.
Here we risk entering an interminable argument about whether the Oreshnik is equipped with re-entry vehicles that can track a moving target. Outside of a select few in the Kremlin, no one knows the answer to this question, and so it is neither relevant nor interesting. But it leads to a relevant question: could the re-entry vehicles on a hypersonic IRBM equipped with a MIRV be fitted with technology that could track a moving target?
As far as I can tell, this is possible. There is an extensive literature on the possibility for aerodynamic control systems that can be used to steer a re-entry vehicle after it enters the atmosphere. One recent paper discusses “an actuation system, consisting of eight aerodynamic surfaces, referred to as flaps. The assumed control strategy is to deflect the flaps independently, in order to trim the capsule and produce enough lift and side force to give downrange and cross range manoeuvrability during the re-entry phase.”
Apart from the capacity to steer, a re-entry vehicle would require the capacity to track a moving target if it were to be effective against a carrier. In the literature, this is known as “terminal guidance”—that is, guidance of a projectile in the terminal phase of its flight. There is no reason why a re-entry vehicle on a MIRV-tipped IRBM could not be fitted with a terminal guidance system of some variety. Given that the speed of aircraft carriers is so low, and the ability to get them to change direction in a short period of time is so limited, it seems perfectly possible for a MIRV equipped with six warheads to land a blow.
Let us imagine such a scenario. Presumably the re-entry vehicle would lock onto the target when it re-entered the atmosphere. This would give the ship around 3-5 minutes to rapidly change its course. If the re-entry vehicles were programmed to lock onto the target at different times—i.e. one immediately upon re-entry, one a minute after re-entry etc.—this would make evasion even more difficult. This is a more technical account of what I originally referred to as the “shotgun effect” in my initial article. There is no doubt this would require extremely impressive engineering, but as I wrote in the original piece, even if we think that this technology is not currently available, “we can only assume that as time goes by these missiles will become more powerful, faster, and more accurate. Meanwhile, due to the very nature of the beast, an aircraft carrier will always remain a very large, very slow-moving hunk of metal floating in the ocean.”
Everything Going According to Ekranoplan
Next up are the criticisms of using ekranoplans as a replacement for aircraft carriers. Allow me to take the more minor criticisms first. Patterson states that ekranoplans can only fly in a straight line. This is simply not true. Here is a video of a recently developed ground effect vehicle (GEV) the AirFish-8 engaged in manoeuvres. GEVs are not as manoeuvrable as planes, but they are probably more manoeuvrable than most ships—and they are certainly more manoeuvrable than an aircraft carrier. It should be noted that the U.S. military has already expressed interest in the AirFish-8 for troop deployments, showing that GEV technology is already getting a second wind.
The next minor objection is that a GEV with a top speed of around 340 mph would be vulnerable to enemy aircraft, air-to-ground missiles, and presumably anti-shipping missiles more generally. All of this is true, at least to some extent. But the choice between ekranoplans and aircraft carriers is ultimately a question of risk-of-kill combined with cost. In both areas, the GEV outperforms the carrier. Aircraft carriers are incredibly expensive, and new missile technology is turning them into sitting ducks. A GEV is harder to detect and hit than a ship because it travels much faster, and it is harder to detect and hit than most aircraft because it flies very low and so is hard to detect by radar. But the real benefit is relative cost. The estimates provided in the first article show that for every carrier saved, up to 373 ekranoplans can be built. With a crew of four to eight compared with the 5,600 people on a carrier, a sunk ekranoplan would represent tolerable losses, whereas a sunk carrier would be an utter catastrophe. If a sortie of 50 ekranoplans were launched in an attack and even as many as 25 of them were destroyed by enemy fire, this would be painful for the U.S. Navy, but not decisive by any means. A sunk carrier would be intolerable.
Finally, there is the strongest objection: GEVs are designed to operate in relatively calm seas and not on the open oceans. The Soviets developed the Lun-class to fly off coasts, attack an aircraft carrier with anti-shipping missiles, and fly back to port. Obviously, one of the advantages of aircraft carriers is that they can sail across oceans. Here there are several issues. For one, if I am correct that aircraft carriers are a redundant technology in the face of new developments in missile technology, then this type of power projection may simply be a thing of the past. New missile and drone technologies seem to greatly favor defenders in any fight. We are already learning what that means with the Houthis in the Red Sea: even minor policing operations against a relatively unsophisticated quasi-state actor like the Houthis can prove exceptionally difficult in the face of new missile technologies. If defence is set to become the new offense, then ekranoplans are perfectly suited for this role.
Beyond this, however, is the tantalizing possibility that a GEV might be developed using modern computer technology to fly across the open ocean. I do not know if this is possible, but it is certainly an interesting question. The key problem seems to be one of error correction: an ekranoplan built for the open ocean would need an on-board computer that adjusted the flying height to match any inbound waves. This seems like a surmountable problem, but ultimately is something for an engineer to explore further.
There may be other weather limitations on ekranoplan usage, but the reality is that all naval and aviation technology (except for submarines) face weather limitations. Weather needs to be considered for any military activity, as both the Russians and Ukrainians have learned in the Donbass region over the past three years.
Another way to overcome the issue with long-range utilisation is to develop a hybrid ekranoplan that could operate as either an aircraft or a ship across large stretches of ocean and then revert to being a GEV when it approached the coastline. The Soviets developed an ekranoplan that doubled as an aircraft called the Bartini Beriev VVA-14. In fact, they developed this vehicle to replace aircraft carriers—exactly what I am proposing. So far as I can tell, the main disadvantage of this design is weight limitations: when such a vehicle flies as a plane, presumably it can only carry a cargo comparable to a plane. This could be overcome, however, by allowing an ekranoplan-plane to fly to a location near its target as a plane, where it is then loaded with drones and missiles and then allowed to operate as a GEV in attack mode.
Developing an ekranoplan that can also sail as a ship has, so far as I can tell, never been done before. But in theory it seems much less difficult than developing an ekranoplan that can operate as a plane—and since the Bartini Beriev VVA-14 worked, it seems perfectly plausible that an ekranoplan-ship would be simple enough to design. Such a vehicle would sail across the open ocean like a normal ship, and then switch to being a GEV when it goes on the attack.
The other possibility is to develop ekranoplan carriers. These would be conventional ships loaded with perhaps three to four ekranoplans. Ekranoplans can take off from the sea, so they would not need to have flight decks like aircraft carriers, and would therefore be much simpler and cheaper. It seems likely that a simple container ship could probably be retooled for such a role—much as the Iranians did to create their new drone ship, the Shahid Bagheri.
Musings on Miltechistan
The reaction generated by my article on aircraft carriers, Oreshniks and ekranoplans is the second time I have generated a response from military technology enthusiasts and professionals—the first being after my American Affairs article on assigning valuations to materiel. These interactions have given me some sense of the state of the culture in military technology circles in the United States. Here I would like to share a few of those impressions, as they may be useful to anyone who wants to reform the sector.
The sector seems to be dominated by engineers, which is understandable. Engineers tend to dismiss economists, thinking that what they do is too vague to be considered science. Engineering tends to deal with very precise quantities, whereas economics—particularly econometrics and financial economics—tends to deal with highly complex systems with great uncertainty built in.
I believe that this background actually gives an economist an advantage when looking at weapons technology from the perspective of usage on the battlefield. Developing a weapon and understanding its physical performance is a very different task than considering the costs and benefits of deploying that weapon on a complex battlefield. There is a strong case to be made that economists are more naturally attuned to the latter than are engineers, who tend to dislike elements of uncertainty in their thinking.
Beyond this, however, I worry that the American military technology sector has become leaden and defensive. Engineers are at their best when they want to solve a complex problem and create something completely novel, shocking and new. There appears to be little of this energy in the American military technology sector today. Energy is mostly expended on defending incumbent technologies. Interacting with the sector reminds me of my previous role as a financial analyst when presented with a sclerotic business that was once innovative and impressive but has now become stuck. There seems to be little desire to have assumptions challenged, or to push boundaries.
Is the idea to replace carriers with ekranoplans crazy? Perhaps it is (though, one hopes, just crazy enough to work). But the negative responses to the suggestion highlight an alarming problem with the military technology sector in the United States and its élan vital. Engineers should not feel threatened by new technologies. Nor should their first response be to highlight problems with them that they deem insurmountable. Good engineering should be profoundly optimistic, and problems should be approached with an intention of solving them.
Major changes are underway in Washington. Elon Musk has courted controversy by trimming the fat from the federal government through the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). Perhaps when he is finished, he can turn his attention to the Pentagon—and bring with him the dynamic energy that led him and his team to develop SpaceX and Tesla. “Department of Great Engineering” has a nice ring to it, too.
Philip Pilkington is a macroeconomic and investment professional, co-host of the Multipolarity podcast, and the author of The Reformation in Economics.
Image: Shutterstock.