Few machines capture the imagination like an aircraft carrier. Often described as a floating city — and sometimes as a floating airport — it is a warship whose main weapon is the air wing it carries. Only a handful of countries operate carriers, and they remain among the most powerful instruments of naval power projection ever built. This explainer looks at how these giants actually work: launching and landing jets at sea, the strike groups that protect them, how they are powered, and why navies keep investing in them.

A Floating Airbase: The Basics

Modern large carriers typically carry around 70 or more aircraft, including strike fighters, electronic warfare jets, early-warning radar planes, helicopters and, increasingly, drones. The ship turns into the wind and builds speed to generate airflow over the deck; launches happen from the forward deck and recoveries on an angled landing strip.

Below the flight deck lies the hangar deck, where aircraft are stored, maintained and prepared. Massive deck elevators lift jets between the hangar and the flight deck. Around 5,000 crew members can live aboard the largest carriers — which is why the “floating city” comparison sticks: the ship has its own kitchens, medical facilities, desalination plants and workshops.

Launching Jets: Catapults

A jet cannot take off from a few hundred metres of deck under its own power alone, so carriers use catapults. The aircraft’s nose gear is attached to a catapult shuttle, held in place until the pilot is at full throttle. The catapult then accelerates the jet from standstill to roughly 240 km/h in under three seconds.

Older and many current carriers use steam catapults, which harness high-pressure steam from the ship’s propulsion system. The newest designs use electromagnetic launch systems (EMALS), which release stored energy through the catapult track using magnetic force — smoother and more adjustable. Both do the same job: flinging tens of tonnes of aircraft off the bow of a moving ship.

Landing: The Controlled Crash

Landing on a carrier is famously one of the hardest tasks in aviation. Pilots call it a controlled crash: the jet touches down at roughly 240 km/h, and its tail hook must snag one of several high-tensile steel cables — arresting wires — stretched across the deck. The wires run to braking machinery below deck, hydraulic or electromagnetic, which absorbs the jet’s enormous energy and brings it to a stop in under a hundred metres.

Here is the counterintuitive part: pilots actually apply full power the moment they touch down. If the hook misses all the wires — a “bolter” — the aircraft needs enough speed to take off again and circle for another attempt. That is also why modern carriers have angled flight decks: the landing strip is angled away from the ship’s centreline, so a missed landing sends the aircraft safely over the open sea rather than into parked jets and catapults ahead.

Guiding all of this is the flight deck crew, instantly recognisable by their colour-coded jerseys. Yellow shirts direct aircraft movement and operate the catapults; green shirts maintain the launch and arresting gear; red shirts handle ordnance and crash response; purple shirts (“grapes”) fuel the jets; blue shirts chock and chain aircraft and drive tractors; brown shirts are plane captains; and white shirts cover safety and medical roles.

The Carrier Strike Group

A carrier almost never sails alone. It is the centrepiece of a carrier strike group, a formation built to protect the carrier and multiply its reach. A typical group includes the carrier with its embarked air wing, several surface combatants — guided-missile cruisers and destroyers providing air defence, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare — at least one attack submarine operating largely unseen beneath, and a supply ship carrying fuel, food and ammunition.

The logic is layered defence and combined arms: the escorts shield the carrier from missiles, aircraft and submarines, while the carrier’s aircraft provide the group’s striking power, surveillance and early warning. Because carriers are such valuable targets, the group trains to operate across environments ranging from peacetime presence to high-threat combat.

Nuclear vs Conventional Propulsion

Carriers are propelled in two ways. Nuclear-powered carriers use onboard reactors to generate steam for propulsion (and, in older designs, for steam catapults). Their great advantage is endurance: they can steam for years without refuelling, stay at high speed for long transits, and free up space that would otherwise hold fuel. Conventionally powered carriers burn fuel oil or marine diesel — simpler and cheaper to build, but dependent on regular refuelling, which limits range and ties them to a fuel supply chain.

Only the United States currently operates a fully nuclear carrier fleet, with its Nimitz-class and newer Ford-class ships; most other carrier-operating navies, including the United Kingdom, use conventional propulsion. Nuclear power brings higher upfront costs and complex maintenance, including lengthy refuelling overhauls — a trade-off navies weigh against the strategic freedom of virtually unlimited range.

Why Carriers Still Matter

Critics have long argued that carriers are expensive, vulnerable to modern missiles, and relics of an older kind of war. Yet navies keep building them, for a straightforward reason: a carrier is a sovereign airbase that can be parked off any coastline without asking another country for permission. It deters, reassures allies, responds to crises and projects power far from home — all without a single foreign runway.

That relevance is being tested by anti-access weapons, drones and the rising cost of the ships themselves, which is pushing navies toward new thinking about carrier size, unmanned aircraft and distributed fleets. The debate over the carrier’s future is really a debate about what naval power should look like in the decades ahead.

FAQs

How does a jet take off from such a short deck?
Carriers use catapults — steam-powered or electromagnetic — that accelerate a jet from standstill to around 240 km/h in under three seconds, with the ship steaming into the wind for extra lift.

How do jets land on a moving carrier?
The aircraft’s tail hook catches one of several arresting wires stretched across the angled landing deck; machinery below deck absorbs the energy and stops the jet in under a hundred metres. Pilots go to full power on touchdown so they can take off again if they miss.

What do the coloured shirts on the flight deck mean?
They identify roles: yellow for aircraft directors and catapult crews, green for launch and arresting gear, red for ordnance and crash response, purple for fuelling, blue for handling aircraft, brown for plane captains, and white for safety and medical personnel.

What is in a carrier strike group?
Typically the carrier with its air wing, several guided-missile cruisers and destroyers for defence, an attack submarine, and a supply ship — a formation built to protect the carrier and extend its reach.

Why are some carriers nuclear-powered?
Nuclear propulsion gives years of endurance without refuelling and frees space for aviation fuel and munitions. Conventional carriers are cheaper to build but need regular refuelling, which limits range.

Compiled by the Khabar 24h Editorial Desk from publicly available sources.