Gotta get closer to
shore, the Captain thought. They
were already dangerously, recklessly close with only a few feet of water under
the keel but safety – and surprise – lay to the starboard, landward side of the
ship, not the open ocean to port even though every sailor’s instinct told him
to veer off and make for open water.
A few whispered commands and more than a few discrete,
disbelieving looks from the immediate crew and the ship inched closer to shore.
If any ship could carry out this mission, the Captain knew,
it was this one. The ship was a Fletcher
II class destroyer – a true destroyer, not some unholy, underarmed, unarmored,
cruiser size ship that was designated a destroyer to keep Congress from asking
inconvenient questions. This was a ship
built to fight and kill. The ship was
designed with maximum radar, IR, and acoustic stealth to be as nearly invisible
as was possible. It mounted four 5”
guns, dozens of CIWS and SeaRAM mounts, and a main battery of 10x 650 mm torpedoes
in two quintuple, centerline, rapid reload launchers, one midships and one
nearer the stern to provide separation in the event of battle damage.
Right now, the ship, and her five squadron mates were on
their way to knock out the southern Chinese invasion fleet that, along with a
middle and northern fleet, had been attacking Taiwan at three separate sites for
the last five weeks. The Taiwan forces
had managed to absorb the initial assaults at great cost but were losing as the
Chinese continued to pour reserve forces and supplies into the assaults. Something had to give.
The preferred method of attack against the invasion fleet had
been the anti-ship cruise missile but US stocks (and Chinese stocks!) had been quickly
depleted in the first three weeks and had proven largely ineffective against
the Chinese version of Aegis. The US had
believed in the effectiveness of their own Aegis system so it should have come
as no surprise to US planners that the Chinese version (copied and improved
from Aegis) would also be effective.
Yes, there had been several Chinese ships of various types sunk or
knocked out of the fight but the Chinese pre-war numerical advantage and close
proximity to the assault had allowed them to absorb the hits with almost no
operational impact.
The US had targeted the amphibious and supply ships which, in
hindsight, had been a mistake as it exposed the attacking cruise missiles to
the full depth of the escort’s protective anti-air defensive layer. Relatively few of the thousands of missiles
launched over the weeks had gotten through.
The Navy’s Tomahawk Block V, while lauded by Navy leadership pre-war,
was still, essentially, 1980’s technology with a few added enhancements mostly
related to networking and remote communications which had no actual combat
value. It was, for all practical
purposes, the 1980’s Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile (TASM). While the range was impressive at 1000 miles,
the missile lacked the supersonic speed, terminal maneuverability, and on-board
countermeasures to successfully penetrate the Chinese Aegis defenses. Range without lethality was pointless, as the
Navy had found out the hard way.
The Navy’s air-launched Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM)
had had greater success but the Navy had unwisely cancelled production in
anticipation of a Next Generation LRASM (NG-LRASM) and, thus, inventories were
very small and the missiles were depleted in the first two weeks.
Thus, it was that the Fletcher II class squadron found
itself skimming the southern shore of Taiwan, literally hugging the coast to
blend their already minimal radar signatures with the returns from the land as
they proceeded single file at 30+ knots with just 50 m bow to stern separation
between ships. This was insane sailing
by any peacetime standard but was now the preferred tactic for this mission. Only by getting lost in the land’s radar and
acoustic clutter could the ships hope to survive long enough to reach their
launch point.
The destroyers had broken off from escorting a resupply
convoy as it pulled into Hualien during the early evening as darkness was
descending. Hualien was a major port on
the central, east coast which was protected by mountains and had become a
natural convoy destination. It was 170
miles from Hualien to the southern tip of Taiwan – around five and a half hours
sailing at the destroyer’s best speed.
The Chinese had seen convoys come (some badly battered, some largely
untouched) and go from Hualien repeatedly and one more convoy went unremarked
by Chinese infiltrators watching from the heights. The appearance or disappearance of a handful
of escort destroyers didn’t attract the attention of the Chinese army
infiltrators who didn’t really know or care about naval matters. The destroyers were just ships going about
their convoy escort duties as they had done dozens of times before.
 |
| Map of Taiwan |
Now, the destroyer squadron rounded the southern tip of the
island, just seventy or so miles to the Chinese invasion fleet. Another five miles and the squadron reached
the launch point. Every additional mile
from this point on significantly increased the risk of detection.
One after another, the destroyers pivoted away from the
shore to unmask their centerline torpedo launchers and began the launch, rapid
reload, launch cycle. Each ship carried
40 torpedoes and the squadron launched a total of 240 torpedoes in under ten
minutes before reversing course to had back the way they had come, their
mission complete.
 |
| Southern Tip of Taiwan |
As the wave of torpedoes approached the invasion fleet at
their 30 kt cruising speed, they stayed near the shore where the surf noise
helped mask their motor noise. At around
five miles, however, the torpedoes spread out along a ten mile front
perpendicular to the shore. This set up
a ten mile wide sweep through the invasion fleet’s location.
At this point, the outlying fleet escorts began to pick up
the acoustic signatures of the approaching torpedoes and, after a few more
minutes of indecisiveness, confirmed the detection of the torpedoes and sounded
the alarm. The ships that were moving
began to turn away and scatter to the north while those that were stopped or
anchored began, frantically, to get underway.
Ironically, the initial reaction of the outer ships, which was to turn
away from the threat, wound up bringing them closer to the main amphibious
fleet and had the effect of concentrating the targets for the torpedoes.
With so little warning, there was no hope of escape as the
torpedoes accelerated to their terminal attack speed of 60 kts. The torpedoes began sensing individual
targets and their simplistic programming resulted in them locking onto the
nearest valid target, often multiple torpedoes per target. The torpedo designers had purposely omitted
any attempt at sophisticated target discrimination, acoustic imaging, networked
smart allocation of targets, or any other worthless action that contributed
nothing but cost to the torpedo. These
torpedoes were ‘dumb’. They would go
after the first target they saw that met some basic criteria. This meant inefficient allocation of weapons
but the designers realized that the solution to that was numbers. If you could put enough weapons in the water,
it didn’t matter how inefficient they were.
These torpedoes were the equivalent of area bombardment. They would attack any target and amongst a
Chinese invasion fleet, any target was a good target.
The Chinese ships frantically fled, twisting and turning to
avoid the incoming torpedoes. There were
a few collisions and many near misses but, ultimately, it did no good. A ship might evade one torpedo but the
seeming endless wave of torpedoes ensured that another torpedo would lock
on. The first torpedoes began impacting
and explosions and fires began dotting the sea.
The wave of torpedoes continued on.
Inevitably, by pure chance, some ships escaped being targeted and
survived but the southern flank of the invasion fleet was devastated and
disrupted.
The wave front of torpedoes continued on, passing through
the escorts and impacting the largely motionless amphibious ships. Ship after ship took hits, ripping the guts
out of the invasion. By the time the
torpedoes passed through the center of the fleet and began approaching the
northern escorts, there were few torpedoes left but even those few managed to
completely disrupt the escorts, causing them to flee further north.
With the Chinese invasion fleet broken and the carefully
networked Aegis-like air defense completely disrupted, a carefully timed B-2/21
bomber force, heavily supported by electronic warfare aircraft and led by an
F-22 fighter sweep, hit the surviving ships of the invasion fleet with a
barrage of various close range air dropped weapons. This kind of close attack couldn’t have
succeeded if the escort force was still intact, networked, and integrated. The destroyers, however, had seen to that
threat. As the bombers and fighters
pulled off their attack and headed home, the Chinese southern invasion fleet
had, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist, providing some badly needed
relief to the Taiwan defenders and allowing the defensive forces to concentrate
on the middle and northern invasion sites.
_______________________
The Torpedo
Don’t believe the torpedo described in the story could
exist? Consider these range
specifications for real torpedoes.
US Mk48 Torpedo
Range:
38 km (24 mi; 21 nmi) at 55 kts
50 km (31 mi; 27 nmi) at 40 kts
Type 65 Soviet 650 mm
Torpedo
Range:
50 km (31 miles) at 50 kts
100 km (62 miles) at 30 kts
Is it that big a leap to believe the torpedo described in
this story could exist?
Story Torpedo
Range:
137 km (85 miles; 74 nmi) at 30 kts with 60 kt terminal
attack speed
Story Aspects
This story demonstrates, among several other things, the
value of a very basic weapon. The
imagined torpedoes have been designed with none of the wire guidance,
multi-mode seeker, acoustic imaging, etc. that drives up cost, consumes
internal volume, increases production complexity which decreases production
rates, requires complex software, and adds little combat capability
improvements. Thus, the internal volume
savings can be devoted to additional fuel and/or a larger warhead.
Simpler, easier to produce, cheaper, and just as lethal –
what’s not to like?
The story also demonstrates the value of an optimized,
specialized weapon system, the destroyer, whose sole primary purpose was
anti-surface/torpedo. A multi-function
ship with just a few torpedoes could never hope to achieve the kind of
wholesale, efficient destruction described in this story. The entire navy wouldn’t be composed of these
ships, of course. It would just be one
or two squadrons worth. The rest of the
fleet would be a mix of various other ships, each with their own
specialization. This gives the operation
planner a menu of specialized ships to choose from instead of being forced to
use just one ship type which isn’t optimized for any one function (hi, Burke!).
Yet another aspect of the story is that it Illustrates the
profligate expenditure of weapons (many readers will be shocked by the number
of torpedoes used, having completely forgotten what real missions require in a
true war) which is characteristic of
every real war in history and totally absent from every pre-war plan in
history.
Missions
Additional mission examples for a torpedo destroyer might
include:
- Sinking merchant ships in a blockade scenario, something
that the current Navy surface ships would have a very difficult time doing.
- Launching specialized recon torpedoes (USV) for recon of
harbors, shorelines, chokepoint passages, etc.
- Land attack using torpedoes with suitable fuzing against
docks, dry docks, shoreline facilities, etc.
- Destruction of causeways being used to unload ships
- Anti-ship attack from over the horizon using with the aid of
spotter UAVs
- Convoy escort
Fun Facts:
From Wiki:
- The torpedo inventory of the U.S. Navy in 2001 was 1,046
Mk-48 torpedoes.
- In 2017 Lockheed's production was approximately 50 per year.
- Mk48 production ended in 1996. Production restarted in 2016 with initial
deliveries in 2022, as best I can tell.
Disclaimer: As always (and always ignored!), this is not intended to be a true combat simulation. It is intended to illustrate some concepts in a more readable - and hopefully enjoyable - format.
