How AI-Empowered Kill Webs Enhance Carrier Operations

Since I carrier-qualified on USS Lexington a generation ago, a familiar narrative has gained momentum: US Navy carriers are “sitting ducks.” This assessment fundamentally misunderstands modern naval warfare. A missile does not kill a carrier: a validated targeting solution does.

AI, when properly integrated into the battle rhythm of kill webs with fleet-wide payload utility functions operating at the speed of light, can degrade PLAAN, PLAAF, and PLA Second Artillery targeting solutions. This warfighting doctrine enables us to carry the fight back to their hierarchical command and control platforms, even if Chinese admirals and generals fully embrace AI themselves.

Physical Realities and Electronic Warfare

Certain physical truths remain constant. A carrier in blue water engagement zones, unlike the littoral operations of Vietnam’s Yankee Station, can move over 700 miles daily. This mobility is not merely defensive: it represents the foundation of a dynamic targeting problem that complicates any adversary’s kill chain.

In the opening phases of combat, operating within a Big Blue “Tron” (electro-empowered communications) blanket, a battle fleet can alter electromagnetic air and surface signatures while using directed energy to jam incoming missiles. With AI managing emissions control, electromagnetic deception, and dynamic fleet routing in real-time, enemy targeting solutions face significant degradation. The speed at which these adjustments can be made, literally at the speed of light, transforms defensive operations from reactive to proactive.

The foundational analysis of this approach appeared in my 2019 article “Fighting at the Speed of Light,” which examined the Navy’s creation of a Big Blue Tron blanket covering the Pacific with combat information, analogous to last century’s war-winning Big Blue ship platform blanket that secured victory in World War II. This continuously AI-enabled naval combat information sensor-shooter web represents the art of the possible today. Inside a kill web, the carrier is not the center but a powerful node within the fleet-wide payload utility function.

Multi-Layered Defense Architecture

The modern, dynamically improving U.S. and Allied Pacific combat operations against China feature multiple layers, each presenting unique challenges to adversary targeting solutions. Outer layers include space-based ISR detection and disruption capabilities that provide early warning and the ability to contest enemy sensor networks before they can establish targeting solutions.

The mid-level encompasses undersea warfare and long-range intercept operations, many nuclear submarine skippers may deserve Navy Crosses for this fight. These submarines operate in the most challenging and dangerous environments, often conducting operations that remain classified for decades. Their contributions to disrupting enemy targeting chains and protecting carrier strike groups cannot be overstated.

The inner level integrates Aegis systems, electronic warfare, and emerging directed energy weapons. This layered approach ensures that even if one defensive layer is penetrated or degraded, multiple backup systems remain operational. The redundancy is not merely duplication. It represents fundamentally different engagement modalities that force adversaries to solve multiple distinct targeting problems simultaneously.

The F-35’s introduction into carrier air wings brings 360-degree sensor/shooter reach, bolstering fleet defense-in-depth. Current autonomous systems across air, land, and sea domains present both offensive opportunities and defensive challenges. Ukraine’s undersea autonomous weapon destroying a Russian submarine pierside represents a true inflection point in naval warfare, demonstrating how relatively inexpensive autonomous systems can threaten high-value assets in ways previously impossible.

Today’s AI can prioritize threats, allocate shooters, and manage combat saturation to prevent attack density from ever peaking. Combined with directed energy weapons, AI finally beats the math: laser weapons operating at the speed of light with near-marginal cost and continuous fire capability aim to make PLA mass unsustainable. The economics favor defense: each laser shot costs a fraction of the missiles it defeats.

Throughout the Pacific theater, trusted, reliable, robust, and redundant AI-boosted information flows must maintain human oversight of speed-of-light engagements. This evolving technological-human interface enables the U.S. Navy to defeat Chinese military attacks. Directed energy systems will become essential components of payload utility functions that engage at light speed with minimal cost.

However, the enemy always gets a vote. China remains reactive, focusing on sensor blinding in addition to mass. War and technology innovation is always relative when facing adaptive adversaries. Both sides are locked in a competitive cycle of innovation and counter-innovation.

Why Carriers in the 21st Century?

The answer is straightforward: they provide persistent airpower, ISR regeneration, and significant payload flexibility. AI enhances these attributes by enabling rapid retasking, launching cross-domain strikes, and generating fleet-wide distributed lethality. A carrier is not simply “the sword” but an essential offensive-defensive power generator for the kill web. It brings mobile, sovereign US territory capable of projecting power thousands of miles from American shores.

Carriers can be sunk if ISR is blinded, networks collapse, or human trust in AI fails. China’s combat doctrine aims to create first-strike paralysis and political shock, hoping for a short war that achieves objectives before American forces can fully mobilize. The U.S .Sea Services and allies can fight through initial degradation and regenerate capabilities by bringing Atlantic and Mediterranean forces to the fight, following the principle: pick a fight with one fleet, pick a fight with all. This strategic depth represents a decisive American advantage.

Carriers survive by being untraceable, not invincible. If Chinese forces cannot maintain clean target tracks, missile mass becomes irrelevant. China’s anti-carrier logic is aging because it collides with AI, kill webs, and warfighting decisions made at the speed of light, against a U.S .Navy that has never forgotten Fleet Admiral Nimitz’s World War II guidance: “train, train, train.” That training emphasis creates crews capable of adapting to unexpected circumstances and maintaining operational effectiveness even when communications are degraded or systems are damaged.

Carrier survival is embedded in kill web logic: if the carrier dies, the web fights on; if the web dies, the carrier dies. Modern war is won by whoever keeps sensing, deciding, and acting after the first blow lands. Kill webs enable that continuity. They distribute capability across multiple platforms and domains, ensuring that no single point of failure can collapse the entire system.

In Pacific AI-enabled kill web combat, the Chinese Navy’s traditional “war of mass” logic becomes increasingly irrelevant. Victory depends on network decision superiority by U.S. and Allied forces empowered with AI target acquisition and engagement using adaptable payloads. Robust redundant communications remain essential to fight through degradation. The ability to maintain decision advantage even under attack separates winning from losing forces.

Trustworthy AI and Human Genius

Trustworthy AI is everything in this fight. Dr. Jeannette Wing, Executive Vice President for Research at Columbia University and former Corporate Vice President of Research at Microsoft, addressed this crucial topic in her 2022 Michelson Lecture to the Brigade of Midshipmen.

Dr. Wing focused on the trustworthiness of artificial intelligence, discussing deployment in critical domains directly impacting human lives and growing concerns about whether AI decisions can be trusted as correct, reliable, fair, and safe, especially under adversarial attack. Her research agenda, approached from a formal-methods perspective, aims to foster increased trust in AI systems. This work is particularly critical in military applications where split-second decisions can determine victory or defeat, life or death.

She demonstrated both brilliance and humility, presenting her research as important “work in progress,” recognizing that the midshipmen would continue building on her foundational mathematical work. Dr. Wing framed the Navy’s current challenge within the advancing information revolution: “Computer science is not computer programming. Thinking like a computer scientist means more than being able to program a computer. It requires thinking at multiple levels of abstraction.”

Dr. Wing reached out to the next generation of warriors to build upon her AI foundations while brilliantly recognizing the human component and the limits of “artificial” intelligence, perfectly capturing the creative genius of the human mind that can advance beyond artificial constraints. This recognition is essential: AI augments human decision-making but cannot replace human judgment, especially in complex, ambiguous situations where stakes are highest.

Historical Lessons: When AI Would Have Been Wrong

Three historic examples illustrate human genius challenging AI’s boundaries and reveal why maintaining human oversight remains essential:

The Copernican Revolution: Nicolaus Copernicus proposed the heliocentric theory, placing the Sun at the universe’s center with Earth and other planets revolving around it, challenging the long-held geocentric model. His revolutionary work sparked the Copernican Revolution and laid foundations for modern astronomy. The AI problem is simple: AI is only as good as its database.

Surprisingly, Pope Clement VII was initially intrigued by the Copernican model. The early Catholic Church response was curiosity, not condemnation. Cardinal Nikolaus von Schönberg urged Copernicus to publish, offering to help with costs. Copernicus dedicated his book to Pope Paul III in 1543. Religious blowback came later. Early Protestants strongly opposed heliocentrism due to biblical interpretations. Major conflict arose with Galileo Galilei a century later when he insisted heliocentrism was absolute fact, leading to its 1616 ban by the Inquisition.

If AI had existed during that religious strife, database searches would have found a solid, hugely respected, validated source: the Bible. AI would have been 100 percent wrong. This historical example demonstrates why Dr. Wing challenged the midshipmen to always question trustworthy AI. Her warning remains prescient: upon entering the fleet, always keep the human mind in the decision loop during military combat engagements.

Newton and the Invention of New Mathematics: Isaac Newton formulated laws of motion and universal gravitation, co-invented calculus, and made major contributions to optics. To describe his Newtonian laws of motion, he needed to co-invent calculus. When AI can invent new mathematical disciplines, not just search databases, perhaps “artificial” can be supplemented by a different word. If new AI mathematical formulations occurred, our information world would know. The good news: AI can appropriately use Newton’s seminal work without referencing earlier biblical dictates.

Einstein, Michelson, and the Speed of Light: The Michelson Lecture series honors a 19th-century Naval Academy midshipman and later Professor of Physics, the first American Nobel laureate in Physics. Albert Michelson’s speed of light measurements became foundational to physics. Whether AI can replicate historic physical research experiments remains an interesting question.

Professor Michelson’s accomplishments included Albert Einstein incorporating his research into Nobel Prize work, culminating in the famous formula E=MC²: Energy equals Mass times the speed of light squared. Two genius minds combined: first identifying a physical property (light speed), then understanding the experiment and incorporating it into a formula that changed the world. If AI can create that human spark of genius, perhaps “artificial” deserves another name—work in progress.

The Path Forward

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, along with sister services, remain innovative and creative. Current evidence shows they are open-minded about AI combat dominance while maintaining appropriate skepticism about its limitations. This balanced approach, embracing innovation while preserving human judgment, represents the ideal integration of technology and human capability.

Fortunately for America’s continuing safety and security, Presidential Command Guidance provides seminal and visionary direction. The December 11, 2025, Executive Order “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence” arrives just in time, establishing the framework needed for AI integration across defense operations. This guidance recognizes both the transformative potential of AI and the critical importance of maintaining human oversight and accountability.

The path forward is clear: AI-empowered kill webs, with human oversight, distributed lethality, and speed-of-light decision-making, provide the operational concept to counter Chinese anti-access strategies. The carrier’s survival depends not on invincibility but on untraceability within a resilient, adaptive kill web.

As we learned in World War II and continue learning today, sustained training, technological innovation, and operational adaptability, combined with the irreplaceable human element, remain the foundations of naval superiority.

The kill web concept represents the latest evolution in this continuous adaptation, but its success ultimately depends on the wisdom, courage, and judgment of the sailors, Marines, and airmen who operate these systems. Technology enables victory, but people achieve it.