Why Is A Carrier The Size It Is?

Carriers are mammoth vessels.  Why? 

Why?

This isn’t a trick question but it’s one that we never think about.  The answer is that the carrier’s size is determined by its air wing. 

The air wing needs an immense flat area simply to park its aircraft on.  That area must also be able to launch and recover aircraft while not interfering with the storage (parking) of the aircraft.  That adds immensely to the area.  More flight deck room is needed to move aircraft in preparation for launch or maintenance. 

For example, the entire bow area of the carrier is there because that much room is needed for the catapults.  If the aircraft were all vertical takeoff, you wouldn’t need the bow of the carrier and you could lop off the entire area from the bow cats forward.  Relax, vertical take off is not where we’re going with this.  I’m just illustrating that the size of the carrier is determined by the requirements of the air wing.  The same reasoning applies to the huge recovery area that constitutes much of the aft half of the flight deck.

The air wing also needs to maintain itself.  Thus, we have a huge hangar for maintenance, many repair shops, lots of spare parts storage, etc.

The air wing needs munitions and lots of them.  So, a large chunk of internal carrier volume is devoted to magazines and munition handling areas and elevators.

The air wing needs fuel and lots of it.  The carrier, despite being nuclear powered, needs immense fuel tanks for the air wing’s aircraft.

The air wing also needs the mundane things like berthing, heads, showers, food and water storage, galley space, mess decks, laundry, waste treatment, etc.

Take away the air wing and all its requirements and what do you have?  A small, nuclear powered tugboat.

Okay, so now we’ve thought about why a carrier is the size it is.  So what?

Well, let’s keep going and think a bit deeper.  Having asked why a carrier is the size it is, let’s now ask why the air wing is the size it is.

Again, this is not a trick question but it is one that is examined even less than the carrier size. 

The air wing is the size it is because of the tasks it is asked to perform.  What are those tasks?  Here’s a list of a tasks and a typical air wing’s assigned aircraft to accomplish those tasks

• Strike and Fighter – 38x  F-18 Hornets
• Aerial Tanking - 6x F-18 Hornets
• AEW – 4x E-2 Hawkeyes
• ECM – 5x EA-18G Growlers
• ASW/ASuW/Logistics – 12x MH-60(x) Seahawks

That gives us an air wing of 65 aircraft – our modern air wing.

Okay, so now we’ve thought about why an air wing is the size it is.  So what?

Well, do you recall the recent post on distributed costs and the resulting change in force structure?  We said that we need to reverse the trend towards ever larger, ever more expensive, ever fewer ships and go (return) to smaller, simpler, less individually capable, cheaper, more numerous ships.  Do you recall an overarching theme of ComNavOps calling for more numerous and cheaper, smaller, single function ships like dedicated ASW vessels and dedicated MCM vessels and narrowly defined AAW escort ships and so on?  Well, the same applies to, and is interlinked with, carriers or, more precisely, carrier air wings.

If we had a more numerous force structure of smaller, single function ships what impact might that have on carrier air wings?

Instead of the Navy’s current carrier escort of three or four Burkes, each with a single helo, providing ASW, imagine if we had 16 smaller, dedicated ASW vessels, each with a single helo for a total of 16 ASW helos.  We wouldn’t need the carrier’s helos.  The requisite number would be distributed throughout the escort.  So, the air wing’s helos could be reduced from 12 to 2 (for plane guard duty).

Suppose we were to distribute the air wing’s capabilities across two carriers instead of one.  That would mean each air wing would have 2 Hawkeyes instead of 4 and 2-3 Growlers instead of 5.

We don’t want to distribute the air wing’s strike/fighter capabilities, however.  Quite the opposite.  We’d like to increase the number of strike/fighter aircraft.  So, what if each of our notional two carriers had an air wing of 38 Hornets, 6 Hornet-tankers, 2 Hawkeyes, and 2 Growlers?  That would give us an air wing of 48 total aircraft with the exact same combat capability as a current air wing!

Because the air wing is only 48 aircraft, a 26% reduction in numerical size, the carrier needed to operate the air wing could be substantially smaller. 

Let’s go still further.  If we’re willing to accept a slight reduction in launch capacity, our notional carrier could be equipped with only 2 catapults instead of 4.  All four catapults are rarely (almost never) operated simultaneously.  They’re mainly useful for full strike launches which is less and less a viable operation.  A reduction of two catapults gives us a significant reduction in equipment and required flight deck space.  Remember earlier in the post when we noted that if it were not for the two bow catapults we could lop off the entire bow section of the carrier?  And with a wing of only 48 aircraft the bow flight deck area wouldn’t even be needed for parking. 

You can see where this is going.  A smaller air wing means less flight deck area, less hangar space, fewer repair shops, less personnel berthing, etc.  In short, it means we can have a much smaller carrier.  In this concept, we would actually have two carriers instead of one and they would pool their Hawkeyes and Growlers to have the capability of a full air wing today plus twice the strike/fighter numbers.   This would result in a force of 20 carriers as opposed to today’s 10, resulting in distributed cost, distributed and increased lethality, twice the combat aircraft, and, most importantly, distributed risk so that we would actually be willing to commit carriers to combat.

So, why is the carrier the size it is?  The answer is, for no good reason.

Distributed Cost

The Navy continues on its inexorable path to irrelevance – an irrelevance brought on by having too few ships that are too expensive and too vital to risk in combat which is the very task they are supposedly built for.  A force that’s too expensive to risk in combat is a force that’s irrelevant.  For example, a carrier that costs $15B (the equivalent of an entire year’s shipbuilding budget !!! ) and that is one of only nine or ten in the fleet is just too expensive and too vital to risk in combat.  That renders the carrier irrelevant.

We’ve seen this phenomenon play out.  For many years, the Air Force would not risk their (at the time) new B-2 bombers so the B-52 shouldered the work load.  The Air Force would not risk the F-22 until just recently.  The Marine’s combat ready (they told us they were) F-35s are not being used in combat even though a single F-35 is worth a hundred legacy aircraft, so they tell us.  Why?  Because of risk (and because they aren’t actually combat ready – they lied to us).

What can we do about it?  Well, the Navy has actually given us a model that can pave the way to a better force structure – a structure that we would actually be willing to risk in combat.  The model is the Navy’s woefully misguided “distributed lethality” concept.  We’ve discussed the flaws inherent in distributed lethality so I won’t repeat that, however, the underlying concept is exactly what’s needed to produce a force structure we’d be willing to commit to combat.  

The key is “distributed”.  For our purposes, what we need to distribute is not lethality but cost.  Instead of a single $15B carrier that we won’t even allow to go to sea in the event of war, two $7B carriers or three $5B carriers would be far better.  Or, instead of a $2.5B Burke that no one wants to risk playing tag with a submarine, despite ASW being a theoretical Burke capability, we need two $1B, pared down, generic destroyers or five $500M dedicated ASW vessels.

The concept is to distribute the cost so that when war comes we’re willing to risk using the ships for the jobs they were designed for rather than hold our ships back from combat because we can’t afford the cost of losing even one of them.  Wargame after wargame has shown that the commanders are unwilling to commit their high priced ships to combat because of the risk of losing a ship that is so expensive and contains so much capability.  Halsey would cry over this timidity but that’s another issue.

Now, here’s the truly ironic part.  If we pursued a distributed cost force structure, it would, inherently, give us a distributed lethality structure as well but without the idiotic failings of the Navy’s current distributed lethality concept.  Instead of putting Harpoons on tankers or supply ships and risking losing those very precious assets, we’d be distributing the fleet’s aggregate lethality across actual warships that are built to fight and built in sufficient numbers, at a low enough cost, to be able to afford losing some.

Make no mistake …  this is 180 degrees opposite the Navy’s current path of ever bigger, ever fewer, ever more capability-concentrated ships.  The Navy is knowingly heading down a death spiral of fewer ships that cost more which leads to fewer ships which cost still more which leads ... 

We must break that cycle and establish a new path and this is the way to do it.

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Note:  Thanks to reader Jim Whall for the inspiration for this post.

The Buck Stops Here

The Captain of a ship is a special position.  Historically and traditionally, the Captain is granted absolute authority but is also held to a standard of absolute accountability. 

The absolute authority began as a necessity in the days of sail when there was no ability to communicate with higher command.  The Captain had no choice but to make every decision on his own.  This included not only decisions about his own ship but could include interacting with foreign governments, making national policy, and negotiating treaties.

The flip side of this unlimited authority was absolute accountability.  The Captain was ultimately responsible for everything that happened on or to his ship, even if the Captain wasn’t on board at the time!  If a ship was sunk in action, the Captain was automatically tried by a board.  If the ship ran aground, the Captain was held accountable whether he was on deck or asleep in his cabin.

Every Captain has understood this unique arrangement and, by accepting the position, accepted the arrangement and acknowledged the ultimate accountability.  The accountability was sometimes not fair but it was understood and accepted.  Captains were men who rose to a higher level than ordinary men and accepted the burden of a higher accountability.

Disturbingly, in the last few decades we’ve seen an erosion of the Captain’s unique arrangement.  Micro-management, enabled by instantaneous, world-wide communications, has eroded the Captain’s absolute authority.  At the same time, we’ve seen more and more Captains refusing to accept the accountability that goes with the position.  More Captains are appealing punitive measures rather than accepting the accountability that goes with the position.

We see, now, that the captain (senior officer), Lt. David Nartker, of the riverine boats that were captured by the Iranians, is appealing his punishment (apparently, a punitive letter of reprimand) as determined by an Admiral’s mast proceeding.  Let’s think about that a bit.

First, the accusations, forum (Admiral’s mast), and punishment could have been a lot worse.  Given their actions, the Lieutenant and his fellow sailors could have been subjected to Courts Martial and charges ranging all the way up to mutiny.  That they were not, indicates the desire on the part of the Navy to make this incident go away as quickly as possible and the group was the beneficiary of that ill-considered desire.

Second, that the Lieutenant is appealing his watered down punishment indicates that he has no concept of what it means to be a captain in the Navy.  Of course, this is not surprising given the litany of failings he committed both prior to and during the course of, the incident.  This man was clearly unfit for command and should not have been in the Navy.  For him, the Navy was a job with a paycheck rather than a calling of high responsibility.

Third, the command elements above the Lieutenant had to have known (or, it should have been their responsibility to know) that he was unfit for his rank and yet they took no action.  They should be punished even more severely.  To be fair, the Navy did relieve the two command levels above the Lieutenant but that was, again, a half-measure.  Those commanders should have been kicked out of the Navy.

Finally, this exposes the badly flawed promotion process.  We have far too many officers achieving ranks that they are not qualified for.  The Navy’s steady and relentless drumbeat of firings of Captains clearly indicates that the Navy is consistently selecting the wrong people for command.

All of this can be summed up by recalling the saying popularized by President Harry Truman,

The Buck Stops Here

Clearly, this Lieutenant did not understand the concept of command and did not accept the ultimate responsibility and accountability that went with his command.  In his mind, accountability is a buck to be passed, rather than a responsibility to be accepted.  That is the definition of unfit for command.  Given that he is an officer, that is also the definition of unfit to serve.  He should be kicked out of the Navy.

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(1)USNI News website, “UPDATED: Leader of U.S. Sailors Captured by Iran Appeals Punishment”, Sam LaGrone, August 11, 2016,

https://news.usni.org/2016/08/11/leader-u-s-sailors-captured-iran-appeals-punishment

Asiatic Fleet Lessons

I dislike repeating posts or articles from other authors if I can’t add value through analysis.  I’d much rather just recommend it and move on.  Occasionally, however, I come across an article so good that I have to largely repeat it because it makes such good points.  Such an article is “1941 Asiatic Fleet Offers Strategic Lessons” in the current issue of Proceedings (1).  I'll leave it to you to read up on the fate of the Asiatic Fleet if you're not already familiar with it.

The author draws parallels between the Asiatic Fleet at the outbreak of WWII and today.  He presents both the 1941 pre-war assumptions and the actual results

• The Asiatic Fleet contained the largest single concentration of submarines in the world and Adm. Hart expected that they would operate inside the Japanese defensive zones.  Similarly, today, we believe that our submarine force will be able to operate inside the Chinese Anti-access/Area Denial (A2/AD) zone with great success.

• The Asiatic Fleet depended on air support from the Philippines based Far East Air Force which consisted of 130 modern aircraft.  Similarly, today, we believe that we will be able to depend on air support from Guam, Okinawa, and various Japanese bases.  We are also attempting to establish bases in the Philippines.

• Pre-war plans assumed that the Japanese would attempt to seize the Philippines and that the Asiatic Fleet’s submarines and Philippine base air power would blunt the Japanese effort.  Similarly, we assume the Chinese would attack our bases in Guam and, likely, Japan but that we will be able to defend them.

• Adm. Hart assumed that the main bases of Subic Bay and Manila would be rendered inoperable leaving the fleet dependent on 4 large tenders.

• The Asiatic Fleet would combine with the powerful British and Dutch battleships and cruisers at the outset of hostilities.  Similarly, we seem to be putting great stock in our allies in the Pacific region despite the fact that, with the exception of Japan, they have only very meager military resources.

• The Philippines would be threatened initially but would be supported by reinforcements from Pearl Harbor.

Here are the actual results for comparison with the assumptions.

• The surface ships and submarines operated without aerial scouting and accomplished little.  The failure of the submarines, in particular, was disappointing and unforeseen.  The well known US torpedo debacle negated what little success the submarines might have had.

• At the Battle of Makassar Strait, at which Japanese air forces damaged the only two cruisers of the Asiatic Fleet, it was found that 20% of the fleet’s anti-aircraft shells failed to explode, possible due to age.  The problem was undetected, prior to combat, due to budget cuts which severely limited live fire testing.

• The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor effectively prevented any reinforcement of the Philippines and ensured their loss.

• The Japanese sinking of the British battleships eliminated any possible heavy surface ship actions.

• Japanese attacks on various forward bases left the Asiatic Fleet with only their 4 tenders for resupply.

• Most of the Philippines based air forces were destroyed on the ground.

The parallels and lessons are obvious and striking.

For starters, we have a piecemeal and limited forward naval presence.  LCS squadrons present no credible combat capability and will be cut off and annihilated at the start of hostilities, as was the Asiatic Fleet.  We have a carrier group forward deployed in Japan but, much like the British battleships, a lone carrier group cannot survive inside a powerful A2/AD zone.

Our logistic support ships are limited in number and type.  The Navy has only a single tender ship (submarine) in the entire fleet.  Worse, we cannot reload VLS cells at sea.

Our forward bases are few and vulnerable.  It is a certainty that they will be hit hard at the onset of hostilities and will likely be rendered non-operational.  This underscores the importance of logistic support ships that are mobile and more survivable.

We are extremely vulnerable to pre-emptive strikes.  The US would not initiate hostilities with China so that leaves China with the luxury of choosing the timing and location of initial strikes.  China will get the first hit in and it will be heavy.  We will lose any usable base in the opening minutes of a war.

Just as the Asiatic Fleet found out that its munitions were defective and its torpedoes were flawed, so too will we find out that our weapon systems have problems.  As then, we today are restricted by budget and policy from conducting sufficient live fire testing that could reveal problems now, in time to be fixed.  We will be hampered by flawed weapons in the initial months and years of war.  Somewhere in our weapons inventory is our version of the WWII torpedo debacle.  It would be far better to find it now and fix it rather than wait and find it in combat.

History offers valuable lessons to those who will heed them.  The Asiatic Fleet’s lessons are particularly pertinent as we head down a path of repeating their experience.

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 (1)USNI Proceedings, “1941 Asiatic Fleet Offers Strategic Lessons”, Hunter Stires, Aug 2016, p.58-63.

Real Diversity

Diversity – the Holy Grail of liberalism.  That magic state wherein anything created by two people of different racial backgrounds is, by definition, inherently superior to anything created by two people of the same racial background.  Similarly, a man and a woman are inherently a superior armed force than two men.  And so on.  Absolute bilgewater.  But, that’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post is that there is a valid Diversity at play in the Navy.  A Diversity that actually carries with it an inherent expectation of superior quality and performance.  That Diversity is Type – specifically ship types and aircraft types.

Before we go any further, let’s discuss diversity from an evolutionary perspective.  Evolutionary diversity is what ensures the survival of a species and an ecosystem.  Diversity provides the cushion to absorb evolutionary bumps in the road.  The cushion takes the form of numerous choices (species) with different characteristics.  Thus, when the environment changes, at least one of the many different species will, hopefully, have the characteristics necessary for survival in the altered environment.  For example, when the asteroid hit and triggered an ice age which killed off the dinosaurs, species diversity ensured that some would survive and, thus, we had a change from a reptilian world (assuming dinosaurs were reptiles – not settled science!) to a mammalian world.  Without the diversity of species, life on land would have ended.  Similarly, diversity is what allows gray moths to survive and thrive when their green forest habitats are torn down and replaced by gray cities (we’re talking about camouflage for protection from predators).

Now, how does this apply to the Navy?  Well, a diverse fleet of carriers and battleships is what allowed the Navy to survive the loss of most of the battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor and continue to fight using carriers.

Diversity shows up in other ways, too.

Intellectual design diversity – WWII represented the pinnacle of military diversity.  Many different companies offered many different ship and aircraft designs.  Some succeeded and some failed but choices abounded.  The military was not locked into a single design thought process driven by a single design team. 

Contrast that sheer number of design sources and diversity of design thought to today’s very few design sources.  How many carrier design sources are there? – One.  WWII saw the development of fleet carriers, escort carriers, paddle wheel carriers, and even an ice/concrete carrier.

Test bed diversity – While not every WWII era design made it into production, many did.  Those designs offered a vast array of characteristics which underwent the selection process of combat.  Some characteristics were seen as beneficial and were continued in subsequent designs while others were failures and dropped from subsequent designs.  Again, contrast that situation with today’s extremely limited range of options.

So much for theory.  Let’s take a quick look at actual numbers.

Currently, the Navy has three surface warships (I’ll count the LCS if it ever acquires any combat capability).

• Carriers
• Aegis cruisers
• Burke destroyers

Of those, the Navy is trying desperately to get rid of the Aegis cruisers and has settled on their replacement consisting of more Burkes.  If one discounts the LCS, the Navy would like to have only two combat ship types:  carriers and Burkes.

I don’t even count the Zumwalt since the Navy didn’t want them and only reluctantly built three (apparently the costs of cancellation were high enough that it made more sense to complete three than none).

We can see the same trend towards a single ship type on the amphibious side of things where various types are being replaced by the common LPD-17 (itself, not exactly a successful type!).

So, we’re moving towards a Navy of two surface combatants, carriers and Burkes, and one amphibious vessel, the LPD-17.  Where’s the diversity?  What happens when war comes and we find out that one of those is not a good design?  Where’s the alternative?  There isn’t one!  We’ve lost our naval diversity.

Why have we lost our diversity?  It’s because the Navy has focused on accounting and oversight avoidance rather than combat design.  The Navy believes they can save money by having only one basic type of ship – a dubious claim, unsupported by data.  Closely linked to this, and probably more importantly, the Navy believes that by sticking to a single ship form they can avoid Congressional, legal, and public oversight.  This is why the Burke was chosen as the AMDR platform despite being inadequately sized or equipped to handle it.  The Navy has deliberately sacrificed combat performance for savings (almost certainly a falsity) and reduced oversight.  You’ve heard the saying, penny wise, pound foolish?  This is peacetime wise, combat foolish.

When combat points out the flaws in our very few designs, what alternatives will we be able to look to for better ideas?  There aren’t any. 

Where’s the reservoir of design ideas from industry?  There isn’t any.  We’ve winnowed our industrial base too far.

Diversity?  The Navy needs it desperately!

Maintenance Upgrades

One of the most common justifications for a new design aircraft is that the existing one is too maintenance intensive (even though it was undoubtedly considered a vast maintenance improvement over its predecessor!).  Consider the F-14 Tomcat and its replacement, the F-18 Hornet.  No one had any real performance issues with the F-14 Tomcat but it was considered to be too maintenance intensive.  The F-35 was going to be a huge improvement in ease of maintenance over the F-18 Hornet (hasn’t happened but that was a major part of the justification).  And so on.

What I’ve never seen discussed or considered is the concept of a maintenance upgrade instead of a new design.  If you have an aircraft whose performance is satisfactory, why not just upgrade the maintainability?  The systems that are considered high maintenance can be stripped out of the aircraft and replaced with whatever you were going to put in the new design.

Strip out the high maintenance components and systems and rebuild the aircraft with low maintenance components and systems.  A good time to do this would be as the aircraft cycle through depot level maintenance availabilities.  Consider what we’re doing to the Hornet to extend its life.  We’re completely replacing the center barrel section of the aircraft among other major changes.  Surely, we could perform maintenance upgrades!

Yes, it would be costly to strip out electronics, pneumatics, hydraulics, piping and tubing, etc.  It would cost millions per aircraft but that’s hugely cheaper than hundreds of millions for a new aircraft.

Consider, again, the Tomcat.  Compared to its successor, the Hornet, it had superior range, endurance, speed, more weapon hardpoints, greater weapons payload, better sensors, and was, purportedly, a better bomber in its Bombcat guise.  The Hornet was less maintenance intensive and, let’s be honest, the Hornet’s main attribute was that it would ensure continued budget for the Navy.

What attributes is the Navy looking for in an aircraft, now?  Why it’s range, speed, endurance, payload, and sensors.  Hmmm …….

Of course, you can’t upgrade forever.  The F4F Wildcat was a fine aircraft but we couldn’t have upgraded it forever and still be flying Wildcats today.  At some point, the basic airframe is simply no longer viable.  However, that point is well beyond where the Navy thinks it is.  The F-14 Tomcat could have been upgraded for improved maintenance, sensors, and engines and the entire Hornet family could have been skipped.  In the time it took, and the money it cost, to progress through the Hornet generation, the Navy could have taken its time and developed a successor to the Tomcat that would have incorporated stealth and whatever other functions were desired and that successor could be entering service now, fully tested, debugged, and combat ready.

F-14 Bombcat - Skip the Hornet?

We look fondly on the Hornet when we compare it to the F-35 but we forget that the Hornet is ill-suited to the Navy’s actual operational needs – and I’m being polite about the ill-suited part.  The Hornet is a huge failure by any standard other than comparison to the F-35 which speaks more to the magnitude of the F-35’s failings than any strengths of the Hornet.

I’ve used aircraft examples but the concept of maintenance upgrades applies even more to ships due to their extreme cost.  The Tarawa class could have been easily maintenance upgraded (I’ve never really heard a good reason for their retirement).  Ships are often described by the Navy as being worn out.  That’s just another way of saying that the mechanical systems have been neglected.  Navy leadership should be fired for not conducting proper maintenance but, even so, the ship’s systems can be removed and replaced for much less than the cost of a new ship class.

Before we toss the next aircraft or ship into the dustbin, let’s think about maintenance upgrades if the platform is still capable of acceptable performance.

LCS Harpoon Failure

We have a report that a Harpoon test fire from the LCS USS Coronado failed during a RIMPAC 2016 SINXEX (1).  The missile apparently launched successfully but then disappeared.  The Navy is investigating. 

Let’s get this part out of the way.  I do not link the Harpoon failure to the LCS.  The Harpoon launched from the Mk141 rack launcher which is a self-contained, modular launch system that was, at one time, ubiquitous throughout the fleet.  This appears to be a pure Harpoon failure.  Plus, the Harpoon and launcher were not integrated into the LCS combat system, anyway, so the LCS seems an unlikely cause of the failure.  Still, the LCS program can’t seem to catch a break, can it?  But enough of that …

You’ll recall that the Navy’s inventory of Harpoons is old and most have been pulled from active duty in order to extend the life of the remaining stockpile.

This appears to be a simple failure associated with complex weapons.  When you consider all the components of a missile (motors, sensors, circuit boards, flight control surfaces, etc.) that must function perfectly for overall success, you immediately realize that each component has a failure probability and that all those probabilities added together (statistically, it’s actually the product of the individual probabilities that determine the overall probability) determine the overall probability of success.  Thus, statistically, there is a probability of failure for every missile (and every weapon system, for that matter).  In other words, a certain level of failure is inevitable.  Of course, the manufacturer and the Navy claim that the probability is almost non-existent while actual test data, such as this, demonstrate that the probability is significant.  For what it’s worth, my overall assessment of Tomahawk/Standard/Harpoon missiles is that 10%-15% will fail to guide.  That’s fine, as long as we have a realistic understanding of the failure rate and compensate for it by having and launching a few extra missiles.

Harpoon Launch Failure

So, what’s the point of this post?  It’s testing, of course.

It’s not enough to simply conduct tests when a weapon is first introduced.  That’s good, and madatory, but we must continue to test weapons throughout their service life, especially as the weapons reach the end of their shelf lives.  I’m guessing that the Harpoon failure rate has doubled by now, compared to when the missile was first introduced.  Again, that’s okay as long as we test and know the failure rate as time passes and the rate changes.

Has anyone heard of reliability testing of Harpoon in the last 5-10 years?  I haven’t. 

I’m just speculating about the failure rates.  The Harpoon failure rate may be 70%, for all I know!!!

We’ve seen how hard it is to get the Navy to conduct proper testing when a weapon is new; how much harder and rarer is it to get the Navy to conduct proper testing of established weapons?  And yet, these are the weapons we’ll go to war with.  It’s vital to know how they’ll perform and how they are holding up over time.

Solitary live fire tests such as this one demonstrate nothing.  That failure could be the unlucky one in ten thousand failure or it could be the common one in three failure.  Without a statistical test, we don’t know – and that’s both the danger and the point of this post.

Someone is sure to bring up the cost of testing and that’s just idiotic.  Say we test two dozen Harpoons.  That’s $24M or so worth of missiles.  That’s a vanishingly small drop in the budget bucket and if it saves a single ship in combat by having a better idea of how our weapons perform, it’s completely worthwhile.

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(1) Popular Mechanics website, “Navy's Harpoon Missile Misses Target During Test Fire”, Kyle Mizokami, 21-Jul-2016,

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/news/a21979/navy-shoots-new-anti-ship-missile-misses/