Carrier Strike Group

Makeup and Command Structure

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One thing that needs communicating: There is no such thing as a standard Carrier Strike Group. One may have more destroyers, another less cruisers, one may have a tanker in tow, another may have an entire ARG. One thing that is clear — all will have a CSG designation (such as CSG-11), they will all have an Airwing attached (such as Carrier Air Wing 11) and all will have a Destroyer Squadron attached (such as DESRON 9), and most if not all will have one or two cruisers assigned, along with helicopter squadrons. Look for the new FFG's to be incorporated into various Destroyer Squadrons as more become available. Barring any accelerated procurement of a new cruiser class, these will most likely relieve some of the pressure on the Arleigh Burkes as more and more Ticonderoga cruisers retire.

On this page we're discussing the arrangement and layouts of carrier battle groups and carrier strike groups. To do justice to this discussion we need to address the people that don't think we even need carriers anymore and claim their mission is no longer plausible. The textbook definition summarized: The Aircraft Carrier and its attached platforms are pieces of floating sovereign United States territory that can project power anywhere on the globe, and the U.S. is mandated to have no less than 11 aircraft carriers at any given time.

Now, in 2026 you've got multi-role aircraft that can't stay on station long enough to perform their basic mission. We have no frigates to screen the battle group as they were designed. We are almost out of cruisers — hull stressed and on their very last legs. We have the most formidable asset in our inventory, the Arleigh Burke destroyer, doing triple duty as an ASW platform, as a DDG to protect the battle group from incoming sea skimmers and other guided missile threats, and now asked to do anti-satellite duty as well. That's ridiculous.

And most likely by design. What other plausible explanation for that kind of gross incompetence — coupled with the LCS and the DDG-1000 modular programs both a flop, elimination without replacement of the very formidable S-3 Viking, and new aircraft off the drawing board with less capability than the previous model. All of this while even amateur military analysts cannot really find where and when that alleged "end" of the Cold War actually happened.

I'm of the opinion that the Cold War never really ended — it just shifted adversaries. The Soviet Union ran out of money and the Chinese clumsily struggle to fill the gap. Why shouldn't they? They have every reason to believe that the saturation strategy of the Soviets is still viable today. In other words I see absolutely no reason to shift away from the 1987 bar set of what the carrier battle group, as a structured battle-ready operational unit, should look like. And sadly, as a result of very poor judgement, what we see today is a shadow of that. Elections have consequences, and the CCP knows that too.

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*Clicking on the buttons will take you to a Wikipedia page, for that I apologize, but even they can't lie about this stuff

CSG 1  CSG 2  CSG 3  CSG 5  CSG 8  CSG 9  CSG 10  CSG 11  CSG 12