CARRIER KILLERS

Is the US Navy still dominant in the Pacific, or is its era of ascendancy under threat?

- PAUL METCALFE

The United States Navy (USN) is regarded as the most technologically advanced and capable naval service in the world. History has shown that whenever a global crisis occurs, one of the US president's first questions is: “Where are the carriers?” This is especially true if an armed response is deemed necessary.

It is a position that has seen America’s Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) dominate the world’s maritime regions. Since the end of the Cold War, the USN has enjoyed over three decades of unchallenged supremacy on the world’s oceans and has become accustomed to deploying warships in support of its national interests. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the Middle East, where CSGs have established their presence since the 1980s, and with skirmishes with Libya over Muammar Gaddafi’s ‘line of death’ resulting in the downing of two Su-22s in 1981 and a pair of MiG-23s in 1989. This was alongside a continuous CSG presence in the area that provided strike aircraft for the El Dorado Canyon in 1986, when UK-based F-111s struck targets around Tripoli.

In the years that followed, the mere presence of a CSG offshore, in full view of a nation eager for a fight or confrontation with a neighbour, was deterrent enough for them to reconsider their actions or cease any hostile acts.