Submarine Aircraft Carrier - Future Designs

Future Designs

There are no known submarine carriers in use today, but several concepts exist that could provide a design in the future allowing an attack force to move entirely underwater, attack without warning, and vanish again. Against this there is the unavoidable fact that a submarine aircraft carrier would be tactically very limited with any attempt to use it to maintain air coverage forcing it to spend large amounts of time on the surface and as a result negating the advantage of being submersible. A marginally more viable role would be carrying out sudden surprise strikes on vulnerable targets. The cost of overcoming the engineering challenges of carrying an aircraft the size of a modern strike fighter combined with such a limited tactical role means that it is unlikely that any navy would consider their construction worthwhile.

There are, however, several projects to develop UAV launch and recovery capabilities. There are three known methods for doing so: launching out of a standard torpedo tube, out of an ICBM vertical launch tube, or from a custom designed unit (probably residing in the sail). The US Navy is a primary driver and customer for this capability, recognising the need for more advanced littoral combat capability, to counter growing area-denial asymmetric threats. The German type 212 submarines will have the capability to launch UAVs.

Another idea is to modify jet fighters into seaplanes, so they are capable of taking off and landing on water, then retrieved by the submarine carrier. This would remove the need of building a runway on the submarine itself.