Ship Defense

The Navy’s trend in ship design has been towards lighter and lighter built ships with less and less defensive capabilities.  Well, let’s step in and put a stop to that!  Since the Navy clearly doesn’t know how to design a ship with defensive capabilities, let’s do it for them.
 
We’re all familiar with the concept of a carrier group’s layered defense.  Aircraft provide wide ranging defense against search aircraft and provide the initial defensive layer against an attack.  Standard missiles offer the possibility of very long range intercepts.  Escort ships range dozens of miles out to provide extended ASW and AAW protection.  Medium range defense is provided by closer escorts and medium range defensive missiles.  Various missiles, electronic warfare systems, and CIWS provide close in defense.
 
Similarly, an individual ship’s defense should consist of more – much more! – than just Standard/ESSM missiles and one or two RAM/SeaRAM, as the Navy seems to believe.  A ship’s defense should be a multi-faceted, layered construct.  Let’s consider the individual components.
 
 
Outer Layer
 

• UAVs – small, stealthy, wide ranging UAVs providing passive aerial sensor coverage
• Standard Missiles – long range anti-air defense
• Passive Sonar – long range detection
• EO/IR – long range visual and infrared detection integrated into a 360 deg hemispherical sensor system
• ESM – very long range signals analysis (Outboard/COBLU and S-3 Shadow type sensing) providing detection and triangulation
• Stealth – do all the above without, in turn, being detected

 
Middle Layer
 

• EO/IR - medium range visual and infrared detection integrated into a 360 deg hemispherical sensor system combined with fire control
• ESSM – medium range anti-air defense
• EW/ECM – detection, jamming, spoofing, etc.
• Stealth – do all the above without, in turn, being detected

 
Inner Layer
 

• EW/ECM – point defense jamming, spoofing, etc.
• RAM/SeaRAM – close in anti-air defense
• CIWS – close in anti-air defense
• Decoys – integrated into Aegis
• Stealth – do all the above without, in turn, being detected

 
 
A few supplementary comments are warranted:
 
Sensors – 360 degree EO/IR with targeting capability (IRST) in addition to supplement and largely replace radar.  Such a system would involve far more than the current one EO sensor on ships today.  This would be several, perhaps dozens, of sensors each scanning a portion of the sky and acting as a single, integrated system.  During war, this may actually be the main sensor system so that the ship doesn’t have to radiate.
 
UAVs – This has been posted on previously.  Every ship should sail with several dozen small, stealthy, passive UAVs for establishing situational awareness.  These are cheap and expendable.  They must be stealthy.  It’s pointless to try to establish situational awareness if doing so gives away your own position.  We must be able to see without being seen.
 
Long range missiles – I hesitate to even include long range missiles as I believe their use will be quite limited, bordering on never.  No enemy is going to present high altitude targets other than ballistic missiles which are a special case.  So many people forget that long range missiles can only engage high altitude targets because of the radar horizon limitation.  Beyond the radar horizon, radar can only see targets at altitude. 
 
Close In – Attackers will get through.  It’s guaranteed.  Even in scripted exercises, they always do.  Every ship should have several to dozens of close in weapon systems instead of the nearly useless single (or no!) close in weapon on today’s ships.
 
Inner Layer - The inner layer has the most components and yet the Navy devotes the least amount of effort and resources to it.  The Zumwalt has no close in weapons.  The DDG(X) concept graphic has only two RAM launchers for close in defense.  The Burkes have only one CIWS.
 
EW/ECM is the most common and, historically, the most effective anti-air component and yet the Navy devotes very little attention or resources to it.  Even the current SEWIP upgrades are a limited effort, poorly executed.
 
Focus - So, what does the Navy focus its attention and resources on?  That’s right, the most expensive and least likely to be used component:  long range missiles.

Mine Countermeasures Emphasis

Recently, a reader (username “Chinese Gordon”) made the astute observation that mine countermeasures (MCM) was not a path to flag rank.  He’s correct, as far as I can tell.  Of the 250 or so  flag officers we have, how many are former MCM operators?  I don’t know but my guess is somewhere between none and almost none.  This may explain, in part, why the Navy has, for all practical purposes, abandoned MCM.  If we had a couple dozen flag officers with MCM career backgrounds, I’d like to think the Navy would be paying more than lip service to MCM.
 
How do we get more MCM officers into flag ranks?
 
Well, this is where we run into a brick wall.  Even if the Navy magically decided to add MCM officers to the flag ranks … … there aren’t any to add.  There simply are no MCM focused officers left in the Navy.  The Avengers are essentially gone, parked pierside, rotting as they wait to be officially retired.  The LCS has yet to field a viable MCM module so there are no LCS officers that have worked LCS-MCM.
 
You’d have to go down to the Lieutenant level to find anyone who deals with MCM to any degree and those few are doing one-at-a-time, unmanned mine hunting technology development, not real world MCM.
 
Who in the Navy has ever cleared a thousand-mine field, or even just a hundred, in the real world?  No one.  Who has engaged in an amphibious assault exercise that included actual clearance of mines from a 50 mile approach to the beach?  No one.  Who has cleared mines from a chokepoint while under enemy fire, real or simulated?  No one.  And so it goes.  No officer in the Navy has even a rudimentary level of MCM expertise as it would pertain to a peer war or even a disagreement with a group of radical Girl Scouts.
 
We can’t develop flag level focus on MCM because no one in the Navy has any MCM experience.
 
We’re screwed.  We’ll be forced to learn MCM on the fly in a real war and that is a very costly way to learn anything.
 
By the way, the same applies to offensive mine warfare.

ESSM Inventory Perspective

Just a quick follow up on the previous post about the Blk 2 ESSM inventory.  As a bit of perspective, if the entire Blk 2 ESSM inventory were applied across the 70+ Burke class, that would give each ship approximately 7 missiles.  How’s that for an inventory?!
 
Of course, there are other ESSM variants but not all that much more.  If we go to war, I hope it’s a very, very short war!

ESSM Blk 2 Delivery

In case you missed it, here’s a brief update on ESSM Blk 2 missile deliveries.  According to DOT&E[1], ESSM production missiles began delivery to the Navy in July 2022.  Raytheon has just delivered the 500^th missile to the Navy.[2]  That’s 500 missiles in a bit over three years.  That also tells us what the entire current, maximum Blk 2 inventory for the Navy is.  Those who envision ships teeming with quad-packed ESSM missiles should note that a single Burke, with 96 VLS cells, would consume almost the entire inventory of ESSM Blk 2 missiles!
 

ESSM Blk 2

 
_____________________________

 
[1]https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2022/navy/2022essm.pdf?ver=OqRFEN_Af764y6bEgF_k3A%3d%3d
 
[2]Naval News website, “RTX’s Raytheon delivers 500th ESSM Block 2 to U.S. Navy”, staff, 2-Sep-2025,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/10/rtxs-raytheon-delivers-500th-essm-block-2-to-u-s-navy/

AI Hacked – How Would We Know?

Since the age of sail, sailors have mastered the skill of navigation on the open seas using the stars and a sextant.  What happened when we introduced the miracle of GPS?  We completely lost our navigating skills.  Aside from a few individual throwbacks who enjoy using a sextant as a hobby, no one in the Navy can navigate without GPS.  Unbelievably, in some of the recent spate of collisions and groundings, it was discovered that bridge navigation teams had even lost the skill of fixing a position by taking bearings on known landmarks.
 
Since time immemorial, explorers have traversed the land using the stars, a map, and dead reckoning.  Our overland navigational skills increased even further with the advent of the compass.  Today, the Army has lost the ability to navigate overland without GPS.
 
Pilots used to be able to navigate cross country and hit a time on target to the second with nothing more than a map, bearings, and a stopwatch.  Today, that’s a lost skill.
 
GPS, the miracle of technology, caused us to lose our navigational skills and has made us weaker and less competent.  We have become dependent on GPS.  When our GPS systems fail or are degraded or eliminated by the enemy, we have nothing to fall back on.  Exactly like a drug addict, we have become addicted to GPS and unable to function without it.
 
What’s the next miracle of technology that we’re working so hard to acquire?  Yes, artificial intelligence (AI).  Does anyone have the slightest doubt that we’ll become utterly dependent on AI?
 
Ask a college student to write a report without using AI.  He’ll produce gibberish.  He’s lost his ability (or never developed it) to conduct research, assemble a cogent thesis, and present an intelligible, written document.  Heck, forget AI;  ask a student to write a paper without the Grammarly app and see what results.  Even simpler, ask any young adult who’s gone to public school to calculate change for a purchase in his head, without a calculator, and watch the deer in the headlights, frozen response.  We’ve become dependent on calculators and can’t even do simple arithmetic in our heads anymore.
 
Does anyone have the slightest doubt that we’ll become utterly dependent on AI?
 
The military, by the way, is attempting to make AI the foundation of our entire command and control systems.  We believe, mistakenly, that AI will give us the advantage we need to beat China.  AI, we believe, will analyze all our data, make sense of the fog of war, tell us exactly what the enemy is going to do even before he knows, and will tell us how to counter and defeat the enemy.  AI.  Magic.  One and the same.
 
Those of us who grew up during the introduction of computers are all too familiar with the well known computer programming adage, Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO).  Bad data in, bad results out.  AI is not immune to this phenomenon.
 
Be honest.  Does anyone seriously question what they find on the Internet?  Sure, we’ll make jokes about the Internet but does anyone actually question what they read?  Of course not.
 
Does anyone have the slightest doubt that we’ll become utterly dependent on AI?
 
Where are we going with this?  Hang in there.  We’re almost at the point of the post.  One more tidbit to assimilate.
 
Does a week go by without hearing about high level computer systems and programs, both in the military and civilian worlds, being hacked?  Nope.  And those are just the incidents that are made public.  The military and government computers and programs are hacked on a daily basis but for security reasons the incidents are kept quiet.  Despite our best efforts, various state and criminal actors routinely hack our most secure systems.  For all practical purposes, they’re unstoppable.
 
So, now put those two bits together:  absolute dependency on new technology and unstoppable hacking, and ask yourself what the result will be? 
 
The answer is easy to predict.  China will routinely hack and compromise our AI-based systems and we’ll by absolutely paralyzed because of our dependency.
 
But wait, it gets worse.  What if China hacks our AI-based systems subtly and we don’t even know it?  What if they simply manipulate the AI to give us results that give them the advantage?  We’d blindly accept the results (that’s what dependency is), never questioning them and never knowing we were being mislead and manipulated.  In fact, it would never even occur to us to ask whether the AI output was valid.
 
But wait, it gets still worse.  Even if someone was inclined to question AI results, we have no one competent enough to know what a valid result should be.  You have to have subject matter knowledge and expertise to even have an idea that something might not be right and our so-called professional warriors have no expertise (you built a ship without galvanic corrosion protection!).  So, even someone who was inclined to question a result wouldn’t have the slightest idea whether the result was or was not valid.
 
A calculator is a great tool for someone who has been trained in classical math and can recognize a garbage out result.  It is a terrible tool for someone who has no useful math skills and is unable to recognize a garbage out result.  So too, an AI command and control program could be a useful tool to a thoroughly trained and experienced professional warrior who can recognize a garbage out result.  It is a terrible tool for someone who has no useful warfighting skills and is unable to recognize a garbage out result … such as entire current flag officer corps.
 
We all recognize that networked computers are a vulnerability because if one is hacked, they’re all hacked.  We aren’t doing much to address that vulnerability but we do recognize it.  Similarly, we must recognize that AI is a vulnerability, especially when it’s being used as the basis of our highest level command and control programs.
 
Right now, just like drug dealers, we’re being given a free taste of AI to get us hooked.  We need to halt the process before we become totally addicted and helplessly dependent.  We need to regain our unaided warfighting expertise.  We do that by eliminating all non-war education (diversity, equity, gender sensitivity, climate, etc.) at the service academies, eliminating diversity crap from the leadership and ranks, ruthlessly eliminating paperwork from the daily lives of officers, eliminating deployments, bringing the fleet home for maintenance and training, start promoting a culture of acceptance of aggressiveness and ‘good’ mistakes, and start conducting daily realistic warfighting exercises and force our incompetent leadership to learn their profession.
 

This is Your Mine Countermeasures

The last Avenger class mine countermeasures (MCM) vessel, USS Devastator (MCM 6), has now been retired.[1]  Our surface MCM capability is now entirely in the hands of the Independence class LCS.  Yes, that LCS.  The ship and MCM module that has suffered years of delay, failure after failure, and no realistic operational testing.  That one.  That disaster.  No, this isn’t a Halloween horror story, although it should scare you to death.  This is our current naval MCM reality.
 
To briefly review, the LCS-MCM consists of a helo and an unmanned boat, each of which carry/tow various attachments as listed below.
 
MH-60S Seahawk mine warfare helicopters 

• AN/AES-1 Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS) shallow water laser mine detection
• AN/ASQ-235 Airborne Mine Neutralization System (AMNS) suicide drones

 
Common Unmanned Surface Vessel (CUSV) tow boat 

• AN/AQS-20C forward/side scan mine detection sonar
• Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) acoustic and influence sweep

 
Now, how is that all working?  Go read the annual GAO and DOT&E weapon assessments and you’ll get the history and status of the LCS MCM module.  It’s not pretty.  In addition, Naval News website offers a fantastic summary of the Independence-MCM.  Here’s some excerpts. 

Embarked helicopters also operate with the AN/ASQ-235 Airborne Mine Neutralization System (AMNS), offering a safer method to counter-mine potential threats compared to traditional mechanical minesweeping with EOD divers.[1]

Safer?  Yes.
Effective?  No.
Efficient?  No.
Fast?  No. 

The sonars on the CUSVs are not a high enough resolution to identify specific threats. The lasers used on MH-60S helicopters require water that is not too turbid to operate in.[1]

So, the system only works in clear water and even then can’t reliably identify the threats?  Good … good. 

… when it comes to the unmanned systems used for mine countermeasures. Each mission takes roughly four hours of maintenance pre-mission followed by one-and-a-half hours of calibration of GPS and sonar to reach acceptable accuracy for MCM missions. The rough estimate is six hours of pre-mission preparation before mine countermeasures can begin. In real-world scenarios, that time may not exist.[1]

So, the equipment may not be effective but it’s slow.  Agonizingly slow.  That might be okay for clearing a fifty foot wide channel over the course of a month but that’s useless for combat operations. 

These concerns do not address the single points of failure in the LCS and MCM package, which make the package an extremely risk-prone platform for operations.
 
The platform lift on the LCS that moves equipment from the mission bay to the flight deck is a major operational point for equipping the MH-60S with ALMDS or AMNS. If the lift fails, the helicopter is combat ineffective. If the tow hook on a CUSV breaks, it is combat ineffective and must be towed back or recovered another way. If the Twin Boom Extensible Frame, used to lower CUSVs into the water, breaks, the entire MCM platform is inoperable and USVs cannot be launched for missions.[1]

As an example, 

One test of the MCM package on USS Tulsa (LCS 16), a ship that arrived in Bahrain in May for MCM operations, resulted in a runaway USV, according to one U.S. Navy official familiar with the testing. During that test, part of the tow bracket used to recover the mine countermeasures CUSV broke, leaving it unrecoverable.[1]

But wait, there’s more! 

The components of the LCS MCM mission module were not originally designed to be loaded into the 30,000 square feet of mission bay space and shortcomings have been encountered in balancing the space between 11 meter CUSVs, four or five 12-foot CONEX boxes, a lift system for the CUSVs, and an independent berthing box for the operators of the MCM suite.[2]
 
Due to these space constraints, modularity of this platform is no longer offered or being pursued by the U.S. Navy to switch between mission modules, a sharp turn from the original planning of the LCS.[2]
 
According to Captain Scott B. Hattaway, Director of the SMWDC Mine Countermeasures Technical Division, the 11 meter CUSV is currently limited by form factor, limiting the endurance of the platform and the weight of the cable for towed sonar depth. The current form factor of the CUSV is limiting the maximum performance that can be extracted from the AN/AQS-20C sonar suite.[2]
 
Another limiting factor, according to Captain Hattaway, is the range offered by the CUSV. Line of sight between the LCS mothership and the CUSV is required. In heavy sea states, effectiveness is limited. Bandwidth is taxed by the amount of information that needs to be shared back and forth to the operator and the sensor suites. The U.S. Navy is working on methods to extend the range of deployed CUSVs, including the use of Starshield, the U.S. military’s arm of the Starlink satellite internet platform.[2]

Conclusion
 
Really?  Isn’t the conclusion pretty obvious?
 
 
 
____________________________________

 
[1]Naval News website, “Unproven Littoral Combat Ships are replacing retired MCM ships in Bahrain”, Carter Johnson, 26-Sep-2025,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/09/combat-ineffective-littoral-combat-ships-are-replacing-mcm-ships-in-bahrain/
 
[2]Naval News website, “Update on the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship Mine Countermeasures Mission Package”, Carter Johnson, 4-Jan-2025,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/01/update-on-the-u-s-navys-littoral-combat-ship-mine-countermeasures-mission-package/

The Meeting, The Message

SecDef (SecWar?) Hegseth has delivered his speech to the assembled leadership of the US military and it was one of the best speeches I’ve heard/read in a very long time.  As reported and summarized by Redstate website[1], here are some excerpts on various topics:
 

Leadership
 

For too long we've promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons. Based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic, so-called firsts. We've pretended that combat arms and non-combat arms are the same thing. … Promoting risk-adverse, go-along-to-get-along conformists instead. …  Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading and we lost our way. We became, The Woke Department …

Ideology
 

No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris. As I have said before, and will say again, we are done with that sh*t.

Fitness
 

… either you are disciplined, fit, and trained, or you are out.  … each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat MOS, for every designated combat arms position, returns to the highest Male Standard only.
 
… it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world.
 
… if you do not meet the male level, physical standards for combat positions or cannot pass a PT test or don't want to shave and look professional, it's time for a new position. Or a new profession.

Appearance
 

… grooming standards. No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression. We're going to cut our hair, shave our beards, and adhere to standards.

Toxic Leadership
 

Upholding and demanding high standards is not toxic. Enforcing high standards, [is] not toxic leadership. Leading war fighters toward the goals of high, gender neutral, and uncompromising standards in order to forge a cohesive, formidable, and lethal Deparatment of War is not toxic.  …  Real toxic leadership is endangering subordinates with low standards. Real toxic leadership is promoting people based on immutable characteristics, or quotas instead of based on merit. Real toxic leadership is promoting destructive ideologies.  …  The definition of toxic has been turned upside-down, and we're correcting that. That's why today, at my direction, we're undertaking a full review of the Department's definitions of so-called "toxic leadership," bullying, and hazing. To empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retritibution or second-guessing.  …  words like "bullying" and "hazing" and "toxic" — they've been weaponized and bastardized inside our formations, undercutting commanders and NCOs.

Females
 

… when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result, so be it. It will also mean that weak men won't qualify, because we're not playing games.

Oversight and Legal Intimidation
 

We are overhauling an Inspector General process, the IG, that has been weaponized. Putting complainers, ideologues, and poor performers in the driver's seat. We're doing the same with the equal opportunity and military equal opportunity polices — the EO and MEO at our department. No more frivolous complaints. No more anonymous complaints, no more repeat complaintants, no more smearing reputations. No more endless waiting. No more legal limbo. No more sidetracking careers. No more walking on eggshells.

Firing
 

… if the words I'm speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign.  …  But, I suspect, I know, the overwhelming majority of you feel the opposite.

 
Discussion
 
There was only one thing in SecDef’s remarks that I disagree with and that is his rosy view of the viewpoints of those in attendance.  If he truly believes that the overwhelming majority of senior leadership really feels as he does then he is delusional.  We have seen for the last several years exactly how the majority of senior leadership feels and it is largely in line with the liberal agenda.  Those liberal leaning officers have been systematically selecting other liberal leaning officers for promotion resulting in a thoroughly infested officer corps.  They are not going to suddenly change their mindsets because of a single speech from an administration that is limited to a single term.  They may cover their tracks, now, but they’re going to resist at every opportunity.  Wholesale firing of the senior leadership is the only solution.
 
That aside, I agree with everything else.  However, this is only talk.  Hegseth has yet to demonstrate much in the way of concrete actions to back up the talk.  Indeed, his inactions have already repudiated much of what he says.  He has failed to engage in wholesale firings for all the infractions and failings he cites in his speech and which have been blatantly evident for years.  What is he waiting for?  He’s been in office for several months, now.  He’s had more than ample opportunity to actually implement the various points he discusses.  Talk but no walk.  At the end of this year will we still be waiting to see some evidence of action or will I be writing an apology post to SecDef?  I hope it’s the latter but color me skeptical.  We’ll see.
 
 
 
________________________________

 
[1] Redstate website, “Pete Hegseth Sets Directives and the New Direction for the Department of War”, Jennifer O’Connell, 30-Sep-2025,
https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2025/09/30/war-secretary-pete-hegseth-sets-10-directives-and-a-new-direction-for-the-department-of-war-n2194564