Really? Tell that to the Sweds
Sweden Has A Sub That's So Deadly The US Navy Hired It To Play Bad Guy
Posted on 06/20/2016 9:16:02 AM PDT by sparklite2
The U.S. Navy has fallen into a troubling pattern of designing and acquiring new classes of ships that would arguably best be left as single ship or at most in limited numbers. It’s also building several types of new aircraft that fail to meet specifications.
The Navy is developing a new class of supercarriers that cannot function properly, and has designed them to launch F-35 fighters that are not ready to fly their missions. This is all happening during an era of out-of-control budgets, which bodes poorly for American sea power and leadership ahead.
That the Navy is concentrating larger percentages of its total force structure on large, high signature and increasingly vulnerable ships endangers America’s future. Fortunately, there’s better options to the status quo if the Navy moves now.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
The Navy has an inadequate budget and three expensive needs: to maintain, update, and replace its current inventory of ships; to develop new ship designs and weapons and bring them into service so as to enhance its capabilities; and to expand the numbers of its current hard pressed fleet. Buying unsuitable surplus civilian tanker hulls would not offer much toward any of these goals.
I read about it in a book that my sister gave me, but here are a few tidbits from Wikipedia:
On that very first escort mission, on 24 July 1987, the Kuwaiti oil tanker al-Rekkah, re-flagged as the U.S. tanker MV Bridgeton and accompanied by US navy warships, struck an Iranian underwater mine planted some 20 miles (32 km) west of Farsi Island the night earlier by a Pasdaran special unit, damaging the ship, but causing no injuries. The Bridgeton proceeded under her own power to Kuwait, with the thin-skinned U.S. Navy escorts following behind to avoid mines
On July 24, Bridgeton collided with a mine at a position of 27°58' north and 49°50' east, 13 miles west of Farsi Island. The explosion caused a 43-square-meter dent in the body of the oil tanker. Bridgeton slowed, but did not stop. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy warships took station in the tanker's wake.
A USN escort also hit a mine and didn't fare as well:
USS Samuel B. Roberts had arrived in the Persian Gulf and was heading for a refueling rendezvous with San Jose on 14 April when the ship struck an M-08 naval mine in the central Persian Gulf, an area she had safely transited a few days earlier. The mine blew a 15 feet (4.6 m) hole in the hull, flooded the engine room, and knocked the two gas turbines from their mounts. The blast also broke the keel of the ship; such structural damage is almost always fatal to most vessels. The crew fought fire and flooding for five hours and saved the ship.
Add some redundant power, comms, propulsion, and CWS defense and it would take an armada to destroy the thing.
It wouldn't move fast or maneuver, but why bother? It's not as though the radar signature would get much smaller.
Thus, like an old clunker of a car, those surplus oil tankers are cheap because they are nearing the end of their useful lives. Whatever the Navy spends to acquire, rehab, and modify the tankers must then suffer rapid depreciation. How long will these navalized, missile-spewing Tankers of Death last in service? Ten or fifteen years, with lots of babying and maintenance expense. Then they must be written off. Budget analysts will be highly skeptical.
Second, against modern naval weapons, the damage absorbing capacity of oil tankers is much less than it may seem. Modern missiles and bombs can easily penetrate the unarmored sides of a tanker and explode in the vitals of the ship. A single torpedo will commonly be fatal by exploding under the hull and breaking it in half.
Due to the innovations of naval weapon designers in fashioning more lethal warheads and more accurate missiles, the example of the Atlantic Conveyor containership during the Falklands War is no longer relevant. Yes, after a hit by an Argentine Exocet missile, the ship lingered for days, but that would not happen today. One and done is far more likely against any unarmored civilian vessel, even a large tanker.
The basic problem is that without armor, watertight compartments and bulkheads, damage control systems, and defensive anti-missile systems, large civilian ships are easy targets these days.
By definition, a frigate like the USS Samuel B. Roberts lacks the bulk to suffer a mine strike and remain serviceable, while a tanker many times larger may survive a mine strike that misses the vitals of the ship. Different results might obtain in the open sea against anti-ship missiles. There the large tanker would be easy to target and the frigate much harder, with terminal defenses like the Phalanx auto cannon offering a fair chance of destroying an incoming missile.
A carrier group has many missiles and detection systems. It is one of man’s most destructive inventions.
No argument there. The article, though, makes the case that the money we are spending on one carrier could be better spent on other items, and that there have been many instances demonstrating the vulnerability of carriers to submarine attacks.
The author is a journalist dealing with politics. He does not appear to have much military experience or knowledge.
Mach 7
300 mile range
Pinpoint 50 pound projectile
Explosive warhead unnecessary ..sheer energy transfer extremely destructive
And that’s just for now
And rapid fire
How can any force projection tool known at this point in history thwart or withstand it
’ He could have asked for all the funding needed to re-equip the armed forces after 9/11 but sought to fight on the cheap, delaying or cancelling program after program. ‘
He was a real effing prize.
I wasn’t advocating tanker conversions, but this exchange just reminded me of that book I read. Being a navy vet, I found it amusing that our ships were ducking for cover behind the tankers they were supposed to be protecting.
It is an interesting idea, but did you know we’ve converted four Ohio class ballistic missile submarines into Tomahawk launching platforms?
The older Ohios had the C4 Trident SLBMs while the newer ones have the D5 Tridents. Instead of upgrading their SLBM capability, they modified the tubes to be able to carry 154 Tomahawks.
Almost like your tanker idea.
IIRC the Zumwalts can not handle rough seas. They are inherently unstable (hull design).
Really? Tell that to the Sweds
Sweden Has A Sub That's So Deadly The US Navy Hired It To Play Bad Guy
Not for the defense contractors - nor for the politicians they own and operate.
Lazy Dog from space
I was referring to EM RAIL
projected shortly to hurl non explosive 200 pound projectiles one after another at Mach 10
that’s just unfathomable
First, I doubt very seriously that a single torpedo could break the back of a VLCC. It's just too big and built too stoutly.
Most newer tankers are double hulled, for instance. They are built tough to avoid oil spills.
As I noted, I wasn't talking about just strapping missile systems to the main deck: the ships (including propulsion) would have to be thoroughly overhauled, redundant power and command centers added, comms, and, of course, CWS. Outer bulkheads would have to be reinforced, perhaps some armor added.
Such ships would have one overwhelming advantage compared to regular Navy ships when it comes to weapons and armor: size. Heck, you could put in more bulkheads and just fill the outer compartments with water and you'd still have an enormous interior space.
Stuffed with long range land attack and ship-to-ship missiles, as long as it was within range it would retain major offensive capability even if seriously damaged.
Total armament is actually quite impressive: 154 Tomahawks per sub.
But how many do we have? Four.
Even with all four on station all the missiles would be used up in a few days at most.
One carrier (I assume) could carry thousands of guided munitions deliverable by aircraft.
Notably, it has been proposed that if the necessary engineering and prototyping was done in advance, in an emergency, US flagged and allied merchant vessels could be quickly equipped with enhanced radar and surveillance capabilities and drop in batteries of antiaircraft and antiship missiles. Such vessels could have considerable value as naval auxiliaries even though they would not be suitable as front line naval combatants.
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