Summary and key points you need to know: The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s most modern aircraft carrier, has a staggering price tag of $13 billion, which underlines the strategic importance of such ships. However, in 2005, a Swedish submarine, HSMS Gotland, managed to “sink” the USS Ronald Reagan during a large-scale US Navy exercise.

– The Gotland, a small $100 million diesel submarine, repeatedly breached carrier defenses using its nearly silent Stirling engines, raising concerns about the vulnerability of aircraft carriers to cheaper, stealthier submarines.

– This incident underscores the challenges facing the U.S. Navy, particularly amid rising tensions with China in the Indo-Pacific.

USS Ronald Reagan “sunk” by tiny Swedish submarine during naval exercise

Aircraft carriers are the most expensive warships of all. The world’s most modern carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, has a price tag of $13 billion. Although this price is at the extreme end of the scale, it is not far from the average cost of an aircraft carrier, which is between $5 and $9 billion.

The high costs underline the strategic and operational importance of aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers can demonstrate power and foreign policy like no other weapon system in the world. In fact, there is hardly any other instrument of war that can boost the morale of an ally or terrorize an enemy than the aircraft carrier.

Because the Navy recognizes the importance of aircraft carriers, they are never sent into battle alone. Instead, each aircraft carrier goes to war as the leader of a carrier battle group. In the U.S. Navy, a carrier battle group consists of guided missile cruisers, guided missile destroyers, submarines, and supply ships.

So imagine if a cheap submarine somehow managed to break through the defenses of an aircraft carrier and sink it. Although it is a hypothetical scenario, it happened during a large-scale exercise when a Swedish submarine managed to “sink” an American aircraft carrier.

A big surprise: US Navy aircraft carrier against Swedish submarine

In 2005, the U.S. Navy conducted a large-scale anti-submarine warfare exercise off the West Coast. As part of the training program, planners pitted the small Swedish HSMS Gotland against the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its battle group. To the surprise of everyone, though perhaps not the crew, HSMS Gotland managed to penetrate the layers of anti-submarine warfare protecting the carrier, including helicopters and destroyers specifically searching for the submarine, and land several simulated torpedo “hits.” Planners concluded that if the exercise had actually taken place, USS Roland Reagan would have sunk or been severely damaged.

To make matters worse, the small diesel submarine HSMS Gotland was able to repeat its feat several times within two years, causing unrest in the naval community. If a small, cheap submarine could sink a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier protected by multiple layers of anti-submarine warfare, could Chinese or Russian submarines cripple the U.S. Navy in the event of a conflict?

The Swedish submarine cost only $100 million, a tiny amount compared to the $4.5 billion that the USS Ronald Reagan cost, not even including the price of the entire battle group. In addition, while diesel submarines are cheaper than nuclear submarines, they are much noisier and can stay submerged for shorter periods. The HSMS Gotland, on the other hand, used Stirling engines, invented in the early 19th century, which made the submarine almost completely silent to enemy sonar equipment, making it invisible even to an aircraft carrier.

The success of the Swedish submarine was so great that the US Navy leased the ship to test how to counter such threats.

As competition with China increases on equal terms and Beijing seeks to assert its power in the Indo-Pacific primarily through naval forces, the lessons from the small HSMS Gotland are all the more relevant.

About the author and his expertise

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a veteran of the Greek Army (military service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army Headquarters) and a defense journalist specializing in special operations. He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.

All images are Creative Commons or Shutterstock.

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