What Might a Carrier Program Mean for the German Navy?

It was a month ago that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the most dramatic German armaments program since at least the early Cold War. The announcement, of course, drew great media attention, but, to go by what I have seen of the mainstream press, at least, very little insight, with one aspect of this the references to the F-35 as being considered as a carrier aircraft--which I took as a suggestion that German officials are thinking about carriers, and not for the first time. Not long ago they floated the idea of an "EU" carrier jointly operated with France--an idea that, it seems to me, was implausible at best (co-owning a warship isn't easy), with the implausibility itself bespeaking an eagerness to have a carrier aviation capability so extreme that it was not going to let a little thing like not being ready to actually put up the money stand in the way. Now, with German defense spending likely to be something on the order of $170 billion this year taking care of a good many previously unmet wants, and German defense budgets likely to run $80 billion+ and rising in the years ahead (as against the $50 billion of recent years), the funding side of the matter would seem less of a problem.

Since then Germany has indeed gone in for the F-35s, buying 35 of the "A" model--the conventional take-off and landing type not designed for carrier operations (unlike the Short Take-Off and Landing-capable "B" and catapult-assisted take-off and arrestor-recovery-oriented "C" versions), while I have not noticed any other reference to carriers in the discussion of the new program. Again, it was a hint of interest, perhaps confirmed by the country's going in for the F-35 (with non-carrier versions perhaps a prelude to orders of the other type), perhaps not.

All the same, if it was indeed the idea that the F-35 has interest for the German government as a potential carrier aircraft why drop hints in this way that, thus far, has gone over so many heads? The obvious reason is that the prospect of a German carrier is not really relevant to the present conflict. Even were such a program begun today it would be years before Germany could have a really effective carrier force, while even were it operational sooner it would not be of much use in a conflict at all like the present one. NATO's position in Eastern Europe, after all, means all the facilities for land-based air power that could be wanted, while the small and enclosed Baltic, and even the Black Sea (entered through the narrow Bosporus and not much more than seven hundred miles across at its widest point), are hardly ideal locales for carrier operations (even before one considers Russian anti-access capabilities).

Rather an announcement of a carrier program would be by far the most serious declaration of intent yet in a long-term, global posture, which would look like the German government is merely seizing on the present ultra-hawkish mood (among elites and the media anyway) as a chance to force through dramatic changes with far-reaching consequences, the way governments constantly do amid times of "national security" crisis (like oh, you know, tripling what was already one of the world's largest defense budgets). After all, consider how the German navy has generally operated since World War II. In contrast with Britain and France with their far-flung empires, the Federal Republic of Germany's military orientation in the post-World War II period was thoroughly regional from the start, with NATO strategy and international agreement combining with geographic fact to reinforce the country's orientation to land power over sea power. As a result the German government operated what by the Cold War's end was a very powerful but locally-oriented navy. Circa 1989 the German navy had some forty major combatants, but these consisted of diesel submarines, small destroyers, and frigates, supported by a sizable force of lighter corvettes and missile boats, and a considerable land-based air element, rather than carriers, cruisers, nuclear subs.1

All of this was cut sharply after the Cold War, with the reunified Germany circa 2020 operating a force essentially the same in kind but only a fraction of the size of the old West German force, never mind the combined forces of the two Germaniesd.2 The submarine force fell from about 25 to 6, the destroyer-frigate force shrank from maybe 13 vessels to 10 or so now, as the bavy ceased to operate missile boats, reducing the forty-plus "coastal combatant" surface vessels to just a half dozen corvettes--while the naval aviation arm dispensed with its hundred Tornado-strong force of strike aircraft and cut the force of maritime patrol planes by more than half (a mere eight of them flying now).

Compared with that carriers would make for a very different profile indeed, especially when one considers that the acquisitions likely would not stop there. A navy that wants its carriers to be survivable and effective is apt to think not only in terms of carriers, but of carrier groups, with the carriers properly escorted by vessels likely to include air defense-type ships--like AEGIS-type warships, especially in an age of heightened air and missile threats (including Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles). Moreover, having a carrier available at all times means more than one such ship, and having even one carrier group out while still having other vessels available for other duties would likely require more than the present ten ships (and, especially if an AEGIS-like system is on the table, maybe some bigger and more heavily armed escorts too).

Meanwhile, along with that increased number of combatants--expected to operate far from home--there would need to be more support capability, meaning that many more support ships, and indeed, overseas bases, Germany especially requiring them because, in contrast with the rest of NATO's big, carrier-operating navies, its existing naval facilities are that much further from the conflict zones NATO planners generally concern themselves to the south and east. (France, Spain, Italy are all of course right on the Mediterranean, while even the British have Gibraltar, and have been extending their base network east of Suez in ex-colonies like Bahrain and Oman.)

While the Germans were at it they might also wonder about other assets favored by overseas intervention-oriented navies--like the longtime world-class submarine operator and builder going in for a nuclear-powered sub program, to provide subsurface escort to those carriers on their missions far from home, and maybe also for their cruise missile-lobbing capacity, while if the German government finds itself looking again at a nuclear deterrent (such as was being talked of even before the present crisis) the associated construction and maintenance capacities might also be handy if the country went in for a sea-based missile deterrent like the British and French and others have (while countries with nuclear missile submarines like to have nuclear-powered attack boats as escorts for those vessels).

In short, rather than that coastal-regional, strictly conventional, force Germany has had since the World War Two era, we would be talking about the beginnings of a much expanded, blue water-ish, carrier-equipped, nuclear-powered and even nuclear-armed navy, on par with the existing forces of Britain and France--and, depending on German means and German ambitions, not necessarily stopping there.

No, one does not broach such things lightly. (Even amid the present situation it would be difficult to imagine that London and Paris, which seemed to be losing their minds over German reunification three decades ago, are not seeing some anxious over a Germany ramping its military efforts way up, even without thinking too much about that "Das Kampfflugzeug F-35 kommt als Trägerflugzeug in Betracht" statement. And how others would react aside, were the government, perhaps mindful of just how much pricier such programs have a way of being in the end, as Britain itself has demonstrated, might decide that all this may not be the best use of its resources, and back away from it, having been too public initially would mean a certain loss of prestige . . .) But I would not be in the least surprised if, beyond the matter of the carriers, we were to hear more of any or all of these objects in the coming years, especially barring a turn from the present direction of Germany, and of European and world affairs.

1. The Lutjen--modified U.S. Charles F. Adams vessels--and Hamburg-class vessels the German navy operated were in the 4-5,000 ton range, compared with the 8,000-ton Spruance and 10,000-ton Kidd-class vessels serving the U.S. (and the Bremen-class vessels smaller still).
2. The East German navy had at the Cold War's end somewhere around 70 fast attack-type vessels of various states (its "Koni"-class ships get called frigates sometimes, but were too small and poorly armed to really compare with Germany's Bremen-type ships), and a squadron of 23 strike aircraft (Sukhoi-22s).