Secrecy Is The Enemy Of Readiness

Just as perfect is the enemy of good, sometimes secrecy is the enemy of readiness.

Let's look at a few examples.

F-22

The F-22 is artificially limited in its performance during training exercises out of fear of revealing too much about its capabilities.

F-22 pilots may be restricted from flying the F-22 the way they would fly it in combat -- due to security concerns about exposing the F-22's unique capabilities," the report said. "These restrictions limit the value of the exercises and can result in pilots developing bad habits, according to Air Force officials. (1)

On a related note, this may be an explanation for those occasional stories about foreign aircraft/pilots who claim to have defeated F-22s – along with the desire by the American military not to embarrass foreign militaries during training exercises.

For many years, the Air Force refused to commit the F-22 to operational missions – missions which would have yielded vast amounts of actual performance data.  F-22 IOC was declared in 2005 but the first combat sortie did not occur until 2014 in Syria.

Virginia

Secrecy has crippled the ability of the Navy to evaluate the Virginia class submarines.

Because Navy security rules prevent the ability to collect useful operational test data from Virginia when conducting exercises with foreign ASW capable platforms, the Navy finished IOT&E without testing the Virginia class submarine against one of its primary threats, the foreign diesel electric submarine (SSK). (2)

Refusing to test against a primary threat because of secrecy concerns is insane.

B-2 Bomber

For many years, the Air Force refused to commit its B-2 bombers to operational missions – missions which would have yielded vast amounts of actual performance data.  The first B-2 was delivered in 1993 but the first mission did not occur until 1999 in Kosovo.

Electronic Warfare

The US military has many electronic warfare (EW) platforms and the Russian’s Ukrainian and Syrian involvements would seem to offer an excellent opportunity for some real world EW testing but, so far, we seem to be withholding much of our EW capability although it has been noted that EC-130 aircraft have been ‘disrupted’ over Syria.  EW is an area that is very difficult to find definitive information on so, to be fair, it’s difficult to determine the exact extent to which our EW is, or is not, being actively employed.  However, circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that we are greatly throttling back our EW other than monitoring Russian performance.

Conclusion

While there is a strong argument to be made for secrecy, if it is taken to the extreme where we don’t even know how our systems perform then it’s been taken too far.

Another key point is that there are very few real secrets anymore.  Cyber hacking by Russia, NKorea, Iran, and China has been so successful that attempting to preserve ‘secrecy’ is probably pointless.  The benefits of actual testing now far outweigh the dubious preservation of secrecy.

As an example, when the F-117 was developed the Air Force kept it under tight wraps, refusing to even admit its existence until it was used in Desert Storm.  At the time, this was probably appropriate and effective.  Today, however, the Chinese are probably seeing our F-35 technical data in near real time!  Thanks to the Internet and proliferation of networks, the days of physical isolation of a secret platform being able to ensure secrecy are long gone.

We need to start vigorous, real world testing and find out what works and what doesn’t.  Secrecy is no longer possible.

_________________________________________

(1)Military.com website, “Air Force Missing Out on Opportunities to Employ F-22, Report Finds”, Oriana Pawlyk, 20-Jul-2018,

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/07/20/air-force-missing-out-opportunities-employ-f-22-report-finds.html

(2)DOT&E Annual Report 2011, p. 176

Navy Getting Divorced

Well, it had to happen sooner or later.  The Navy was just served with divorce papers from its longtime partner, reality.  We can’t say it’s a surprise, can we?  We’ve seen that reality and the Navy have been drifting apart for some time.  Still, it’s always sad to see a marriage torn apart.  I wonder who will get custody of their child, the fleet?  I’m betting the Navy will and the fleet will only see reality a couple of times a year, if that.

Apparently, the event that finally triggered the divorce was the Navy’s latest desire to turn the amphibious ships into destroyers.  From a USNI News article,

Maj. Gen. David Coffman said his directorate will spend 2019 working out the finer details of an Amphibious Warship Evolution Plan, which will …  put the smaller amphibious transport San Antonio-class (LPD-17) docks more on par with cruisers and destroyers as “prominent middle-weight fighters” in a future naval battle. (1) 

Here’s a little bit more detail.

Coffman said that wargames and tabletop exercises have shown the LPD is just the right size to be highly effective in the Navy’s distributed lethality and distributed maritime operations concepts, if they were upgraded to include more lethal systems.  …

“Making a bet on increased lethality … is absolutely essential” and worth the cost, he argued. He declined to say what weapon systems he was looking at putting on these amphibs, but he said the upgrades would allow the amphibs to join the rest of the black shoe navy in the fight for sea control once they put their MAGTF ashore.

“Why aren’t you contributing to air and missile defense? Why aren’t you contributing to anti-surface? Instead of having to be protected, why don’t you put something on offer to be part of the killers?” Coffman said of the possibilities of an upgraded LPD.  “The bulk of that will be Navy systems integrated into Navy weapons architecture.”

The general described a scenario of multiple LPDs fighting alongside cruisers and destroyers, and not only would the amphibs have a complement of sensors and weapons to contribute to the sea and air control fight, but they would also have a surprise mix of aircraft and surface connectors hidden in their well decks and flight decks to surprise an adversary closer in to shore. (1)

Well, that was heavy on fantasy and stupidity and light on reality!  Let’s look at the concept in a bit more detail – detail that the Marines/Navy apparently did not.

Sensors.  The ships will, apparently, have a new “complement of sensors and weapons to contribute to the sea and air control fight”.  Is every ship going to get Aegis/AMDR/EASR?  That should drive the already multi-billion dollar cost up quite a bit!

Weapons.  This seems to be more than just welding a few Harpoon launchers onto an open space on the deck.  The vague description seems to imply extensive vertical launch systems, SeaRAM, ESSM, Standard (?), and, likely, the coming (?) vertical launch anti-ship missile (VL-LRASM), among others.  This is no minor upgrade!  No ship has large amounts of unused space.  Every compartment on a ship has a function and few (none!) are unnecessary.  Every weapon added has to be balanced by the loss of some existing function to free up space.  Where are VLS cells going to go?  Where is there room for additional magazines?

Risk.  We only have around 30 amphibious ships to begin with.  Are we really going to risk our only amphibious ships in an air/surface battle that they aren’t designed for?  The amphibs are not stealthy (LPD-17 class claims to have some degree of stealth), do not have integrated air/surface combat control software suites, do not have optimally located sensors, etc.  Yes, they could be rebuilt to incorporate all that but the cost to do so boggles the mind.  Does it make sense to risk the amphibious fleet just to gain a few extra missiles in a fight the ships are not suited for?  If we lose amphibs trying to fight a battle they’re not suited for we lose our amphibious capability (or that portion, at least) for the rest of the war.  We’re not going to build new multi-billion dollar amphibs in any relevant time frame.

Mission.  The amphibious fleet doesn’t just “drop off” the Marines.  That’s kind of what happened at Guadalcanal !  The entire ship(s) has to be unloaded to maintain a continuous flow of supplies for the ground fight.  Once the ships are emptied, their job will be to go get more supplies.  The amphibs embarked supplies are only sufficient to maintain the ground force for a couple of weeks at combat usage levels (always way beyond peacetime estimates!).  When is the amphibious fleet going to have time to hang around for an air/sea battle?  That’s just not their job.

Manning.  You can’t just add weapons with no additional crew.  Weapon and sensor operators will be needed.  Additional high end electronic and weapon system maintenance technicians will be needed.  Additonal crew will be needed to feed these added people.  Additional berthing, galley space, heads, etc. will be needed to service the added manpower.  The Navy is already on an ill-advised quest for reduced manning and this is going to increased manning.

Cost.  While there are no details offered on what the upgrade/conversion would consist of, it’s clear that this won’t be cheap!  These ships already cost multi billions of dollars and this is just going to drive the price way, way up.  The Navy is already screaming about not enough funding for new ships and that’s before the looming SSBN replacement program in addition to the normal ship construction.  Where is this money going to come from.

I also have to ask, where and when did this Marine become an expert on naval battles?  This seems like yet another example of the Marines pushing into areas they aren’t qualified for (aviation, UAVs, fleet defense, long range strike, cyber warfare, etc.).

Amphibious ships are highly specialized, incredibly rare and valuable, and not easily replaced.  Why would we want to risk them in a battle they’re not suited for?  Wouldn’t it make far more sense to build dedicated, optimized destroyers to fill the destroyer role?

This has to be the dumbest idea I’ve heard in a long while.  I know, I know, the Navy has come up with a LOT of dumb ideas recently (Zumwalts with no ammo for the guns, for example) so maybe this isn’t the absolute dumbest but it’s certainly up near the top.

I see why reality has decided to divorce itself from the Navy!  They were in a loving relationship once but have nothing in common anymore.

(1)USNI News website, “Navy Pitching Amphibious Warship Overhaul to Boost Lethality, Survivability” Megan Eckstein, 13-Nov-2018,

https://news.usni.org/2018/11/13/amphibious-warship-upgrade-plan-to-outline-offensive-capabilities-for-lpds-lhd-midlife-overhauls

Survival On The Modern Battlefield

The lethality of the modern land battlefield argues against the survival and effectiveness of unprotected infantry.  Indeed, it strongly suggests that only armored vehicles have any reasonable expectation of survival long enough to be effective.  For the infantry, this means that heavy armored personnel carriers (HAPC) are mandatory.  The U.S. military’s fascination with unarmored or lightly armored “jeeps” in various forms (such as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle) is misguided in the extreme.  The Russian lesson in artillery in Ukraine should have been eye-opening for the US and allies.

Similarly, the naval battlefield will be one of immense lethality where only the big and strong (armored) will survive.  Of course, this has always been a characteristic of naval warfare.  Naval battles have always been short, vicious, and deadly, especially for the smaller vessels like WWII destroyers and even cruisers.

Consider our modern U.S. Navy.  Our 90 or so surface warships, the Burkes and Ticonderogas, are likely one-hit kills or, at best, mission kills due to the combination of near complete absence of armor and reduced crew size for effective damage control. 

Our most powerful ships are one-hit kills?

Does this seem wise?

During WWII, ships had to be sunk or very badly damaged to knock them out of a fight and it required immense amounts of ordnance to accomplish.  Today, a single anti-radar, air burst missile can achieve a mission kill. 

Consider the Burke class destroyer.  For all its many VLS cells and impressive Aegis radar arrays, its combat effectiveness ultimately comes down to three SPG-62 missile guidance radars (illuminators).  All three are exposed high on the superstructure, unprotected by any surrounding structures to any great extent.  In other words, they’re out in the open just waiting for some simple shrapnel to wander by.  Worse, two of the three illuminators are located within 10 ft of each other which begs for 2/3 of the ship’s fire control to be eliminated with a single hit.  This violates the survival design maxim of separation of critical items and there is nothing more critical to an Aegis AAW ship than its illuminators.

Consider the recent history of “hits” on US Navy ships.  The Stark, Cole, Port Royal, Antietam, McCain, and Fitzgerald were all rendered mission kills and most were nearly sunk by a single “hit”.  Ponder what that means for the modern naval battlefield.  An entire battlegroup could be wiped out or mission killed by a dozen individual hits.  That’s a pretty low bar for the enemy to achieve!  In WWII, it required dozens (usually many dozens) of hits on a ship to sink it or render it a mission kill.  In fact, mission kills were fairly rare.  A ship either sank or continued fighting.  Losing a few illuminators should not be the end of a ship’s usefulness and yet that is exactly the situation, today.

If we’re going to intentionally and knowingly build one-hit ships then we ought to, at least, be building them much, much cheaper.  Losing a $2B Burke to a single hit is criminal.

If we want expensive ships then we need to build them to absorb damage and keep fighting.  That means firepower and armor and lots of it.  We need to remember what a warship is for, what dangers it faces, and design accordingly.

Sensors - What Good Are They?

We’ve previously noted that the US military has gone all in on sensor networks and unmanned vehicles as the basis for its Third Offset Strategy which is intended to provide the US with a military advantage over its enemies.  We’ve also noted the Navy’s commitment to distributed lethality which also depends on regional sensor networks to provide targeting to roving ships with a few anti-ship missiles.  Further, the entire basis of the F-35’s hoped for ‘superiority’ is sensor fusion and situational awareness (it’s sure not air combat maneuvering!).

Unfortunately, we’ve also noted that the entire concept of sensor and data networks is inherently flawed.  Non-enemy induced network crashes, sensor failures, UAV communications link failures, and GPS failures are commonplace.  Add to that wartime cyber attacks, jamming, GPS disruption, electronic countermeasures, electronic spoofing, false signal injection, etc. and the prospects for successful sensor and data networks is dismal – and yet we’re betting everything on exactly this.
Are we being overly pessimistic?  Well, consider,

• The Russians have been giving an object lesson in electronic warfare in the Ukraine and Syria.  US commanders have acknowledged that the Russians have disrupted and ‘disabled’ our dedicated electronic warfare EC-130 aircraft over Syria.

• Iran is believed to have disabled and captured US UAVs.

• US Navy unmanned underwater vehicles routinely wander off due to communication’s loss, never to be seen again.

• Despite having inertial navigation systems and GPS, the Aegis cruiser Port Royal managed to run aground in well known, well charted, home waters.

• Despite GPS and extensive regional sensors, two US Navy riverine boats became lost and wandered into Iranian waters and were captured.

• The Vincennes shot down an airliner despite having continuous, unhindered radar contact.

• Despite the most advanced naval sensors in the world, the Navy has been unable to determine whether any of three separate attacks on a Burke class destroyer off Yemen actually occurred.

• Despite the world’s most advanced radar, sonar, and electro-optical sensors two Burke class destroyers managed to collide with large, slow, non-stealthy commercial ships.

The examples are nearly endless.

Now, as has been recently and widely reported, the Norwegian Nansen class frigate Helge Ingstad (F313) has collided with an oil tanker and been beached to avoid sinking.  The ship has essentially capsized and is laying on its side on the beach.

The Nansen class frigate possesses a multitude of advanced sensors of various types including,

• SPY-1F 3D multi-mode radar
• Reutech RSR 210N air/sea surveillance radar
• Sagem Vigy 20 Electro-optical
• MRS 2000 hull mounted sonar
• Condor CS-3701 ESM/ECM

Despite this impressive array of sensors which should have provided unparalleled situational awareness, the ship managed to collide with a tanker. 

On a related note, yet another modern ‘warship’ has been nearly sunk by a single ‘hit’ – not exactly a tribute to modern warship design, is it?  But, I digress …

The empirical evidence is overwhelming.  Our vaunted sensors and networks do not work at anywhere near the claimed levels.

Our sensor and network systems are simply not reliable.

They don’t work.

And yet, we’re betting our military future on them working flawlessly and doing so in the face of a vast array of countermeasures.

The reasons for failure are many and varied and not all of the failures are due purely to the sensors and networks.

• Comm. links fail (UAVs being lost)

• Networks spontaneously fail (we’ve all experienced this at work or in the military)

• Maintenance shortages cause degraded sensors (the Aegis system being a prime example)

• Human action based on sensor data is inherently flawed (Vincennes)

The overall conclusion is that we can’t count on sensor and data networks and we can’t count on having situation awareness – and yet that’s exactly what we’re betting our military future on.  It’s also worth noting that all of the examples of sensor and data network failings are peacetime examples when everything should work perfectly.  How much worse will our situational awareness be during war?

Now, having said all that, I’m certainly not suggesting that we should abandon sensors and networks.  What I’m saying is that we should acknowledge the inherent limitations and tendencies to fail and not bet our military future on them.  Instead, we should use them as adjuncts to basic technologies (binoculars or sextant, for example) and common sense (post lookouts!).  We should train to function without sensors, to any great extent, and then we’ll be pleasantly surprised when they do, occasionally, work.  We have to break our mindset of dependence on sensors and networks and learn to stick out heads out the porthole and look and reason for ourselves.

We also need to recognize that data, alone, is useless in war.  We need firepower to destroy whatever we see.  Failing that, we’ll have the most perfect awareness in history of the enemy that kills us using low tech, indiscriminate, area bombardments.  For all its impressive development of electronic warfare capabilities, the Russians have not neglected to also develop impressive families of armored vehicles, advanced cluster munitions, treaty busting cruise missiles, very long range air-to-air missiles, advanced torpedoes, etc.  They understand that, ultimately, firepower wins wars. 

SSC Update

Despite what long time readers might think, ComNavOps loves to report good news.  The problem is there is so little of it to report!  Here, however, is some possible good news about the Navy’s Ship to Shore Connector (SSC) which is the LCAC replacement.

I have to stop at this point and offer the disclaimer that I’m pretty much dead set against the SSC/LCAC as a landing craft.  I greatly prefer LSTs and LCUs.  So, I find the entire SSC/LCAC program to be a waste of money and effort.  That said, the SSC program appears to be proceeding smoothly and - dare I say it? – wisely.

To refresh, the SSC is basically a rehash of the LCAC with maintenance and reliability improvements as well as various electronics upgrades.  Here’s a few basic specs on the SSC.

Troop Capacity    145

Weight Capacity    74 tons

Range              25 nm minimum

The program is planned to deliver 72 operational craft with a unit cost of around $50M each.  Delivery is scheduled to begin in 2018 with Initial Operating Capability (IOC) in 2020.

The manufacturer, Textron, began testing of the first SSC (they refer to it as LCAC 100) in April of 2018 in a New Orleans bayou in Louisiana.

One of the interesting capabilities is the ability to launch vehicles into the water rather than having to land to disembark. (3)  As we know, the Marine’s AAVs are limited to around 2-5 miles water transit before the embarked troops become too seasick to function.  Thus, the doctrine of standing 25-50+ miles offshore to conduct an amphibious assault is simply not viable.  One of the proposed solutions is to use another vessel to quickly transport the AAVs to with a few miles of the beach and drop them into the water for the final approach.  Thus, while the LCAC/SSC is doctrinally considered non-survivable and unsuited for initial assault waves, the SSC, if it can unload AAVs in stride, can provide a means to get the AAVs in range without exposing the SSC to  undue risk.  Of course, how valid the assumption is that a few miles offshore is far enough to maintain the survivability of the SSC is highly questionable in the age of rockets, artillery, and missiles!

Scott Allen, Textron’s vice president for marine systems, noted that while the individual upgraded components were all technically mature, the challenge was in integrating them.  Integration is an often overlooked challenge that has tripped up many a program.  Good to see that Textron is aware of the challenge and addressing it up front. 

Just as an interesting tidbit, Allen noted that the SSC has 66 individual compartments!  Who would have guessed that in a small craft like that?  He further noted that the compartments present their own challenge in terms of running cables and piping since every penetration has to be made watertight.

According to the Navy, the SSC is the first major program to be designed in-house by the Navy in quite some time. (2)  I don’t know to what degree that refers.  Was it just the requirements or was it nuts and bolts construction drawings or something in between?  The contractors that bid on the construction were, apparently, allowed to choose their own components so the design was not, presumably, at the construction drawing level of detail.  It sounds like the design was just a requirements level design which is not exactly designing in-house in the sense that most of us would think.  Still, it appears to be a step in the right direction.

Here’s the main shining beacon of wisdom in the program – it has no concurrency!

Allen said testing on LCAC 100 had shown “no show-stoppers” in terms of finding deficiencies or changes that need to be inserted into the production line, but he did note that “all of the learning that we got from 100 is rolled back into 101 – so where you discover things and it takes some time to work through it, we’re able to actually already have that baked in when 101 comes off the line at the end of this month. It will save us a lot of time in testing going forward.” (1)

Wow!  Unlike every other Navy acquisition program, the SSC appears to be building an initial craft, testing it, and rolling the findings back into the construction of the next craft – you know, just like any intelligent person would do.  It’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs in the Navy that doing something in a logical manner would warrant praise but that’s what it’s come to.  I’d love to know who insisted on this simple and correct approach.  Was it the Navy or the manufacturer?  If it was the Navy, why only on this program? 

In any event, this is programmatically outstanding.  Now, I just wish they’d apply this common sense to a truly useful landing craft like a modern LST/LCU and, maybe, a modern LCVP.

____________________________________

(1)USNI News website, “First Ship-to-Shore Connector Begins On-Water Testing in New Orleans”, Megan Eckstein, April 17, 2018,

https://news.usni.org/2018/04/17/32985

(2)Naval Sea Systems Command website,

http://www.navsea.navy.mil/Home/Team-Ships/PEO-Ships/Ship-to-Shore-Connector-SSC/

(3)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship-to-Shore_Connector

Carrier Strike

As I read comments, I can see that there is a lot of misunderstanding about what a carrier does and how it does it.  The purpose of a carrier is strike, either directly via its own air wing or indirectly by clearing air space and establishing temporary air superiority for Air Force bombers to attack or by escorting Tomahawk missile shooters (Burkes).  Let’s look at the case of a direct strike.

We have a couple of data points to use in our analysis.  The US launched a strike against a Syrian air base in 2017 and against a Syrian R&D center, just recently, in 2018.  Those strikes used 76 and 60 missiles, respectively.  Those were small, undefended targets.  In the case of the Syrian air base, the goal wasn’t even to destroy the air base, just to damage it to some degree.  Many buildings were left untouched.  So, 70 missiles is the very low end of what’s required to destroy a small, undefended target.

Let’s consider a carrier strike on such a target.

The strike weapon of the carrier is the F-18 Super Hornet.  Let’s assume each strike aircraft carries two long range strike weapons such as these:

• AGM-84H/K Standoff Land Attack Missile Expanded Range (SLAM-ER)
• AGM-88 HARM Anti-radiation missile (HARM)
• AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW)
• AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM)

Thus, we need a minimum of 35 strike aircraft to carry the 70 missiles required for a small, undefended target.  The exact number of missiles carried would, of course, depend on the range to the target, the flight profile of the aircraft, the endurance required, the likelihood of air combat maneuvering, the availability of refueling, and other factors.  Lacking a specific scenario, two major weapons seems a reasonable load and would probably be combined with some air-to-air missiles and fuel tanks.  Again, two strike weapons per aircraft seems reasonable.

Now, who are we kidding?  We’re talking about a carrier strike so we’re at war.  War means the target will be defended.  That means we need to double the number of missiles as many will be shot down.  So, now we’re up to 70 strike aircraft needed.

Of course, we’re going to need electronic warfare assistance for the strike.  Let’s call it 6 EA-18G Growlers.  We’ll also want some dedicated HARM shooters.  Let’s call it 6 more aircraft.

Enemy aircraft will decimate the strike so we’ll need some escort fighters.  Let’s say 30 Hornets.

We’ll want to set up a few barrier and target Combat Air Patrols (BARCAP, TARCAP) to interdict likely enemy aircraft approach routes.  We did this routinely in Vietnam and that wasn’t even remotely a peer combat situation.  Let’s say 6 aircraft each for a total of 12.

We need tankers.  Again, without any specifics we’ll say a dozen tankers.  If we don’t have the unmanned MQ-25 tanker then the tankers come from the Hornet ranks.

Now, as we send this strike off, we’ll need to defend the carrier, too.  We can’t leave it defenseless.  What would suffice for carrier defense?  Two or three dozen fighters, maybe?  Let’s call it 30.  We’ll need some electronic warfare aircraft to help in the defense.  Let’s call it 6.  We’ll want a few Hawkeyes for airborne early warning and battle management.  Let’s call it 3.  We’ll need recovery tankers – another 8.

So, where are we at on this strike, so far?  Here’s the totals.

F-18     148

EA-18     12

Tanker    20

E-2        3

Total    183

Now, recall that an air wing has around 44 F-18s, 4-6 EA-18G, 0 tankers, 4 E-2. 

My goodness!  Our strike is going to need more aircraft than a single carrier even has!  For F-18’s alone, we’ll need 3.4 carrier’s worth and that assumes that we have a dedicated unmanned tanker.  If not, we need 168 F-18s which is 3.8 carriers worth.

Of course, all this calculating assumes that every aircraft is available to fly and that the air wings are at full strength and have suffered no attrition from previous combat.  The reality is that we need to allow for a 10% unavailability, at least – likely more in war.  However, we’ll ignore this aspect for now.

We can’t have partial carriers so we see that we need 4 carriers to conduct a single strike.  Hey, isn’t that what ComNavOps has been saying all along?

Almost, But We Need Four!

We also note that if the target is larger than a small air base or R&D building, we’ll need even bigger strike packages.  Oops!  We can’t assemble a bigger strike package.  This small effort maxed us out!  There’s a lesson here about numbers.  Even the mighty, invincible F-35 can’t strike and defend the carrier at the same time.  The old Nimitz carriers started out with nearly double the air wing size we have now.  The conclusion is obvious - our air wings are not properly sized for high end combat.

It’s also now painfully obvious why carriers have to operate in groups.

Another obvious lesson/conclusion is that carriers shouldn’t be conducting strikes.  Attacking peer defended targets is a job for stand-off missiles with significant range – Tomahawks.  We need to seriously rethink our carrier doctrine.  I’ve stated that I believe the role of the modern carrier is to escort the Tomahawk shooters (Burkes) and establish local air superiority for Air Force strikes.  Now you can see why.

Some of you are thinking, 183 aircraft for a single mission?  That’s ridiculous.  Well, it only seems ridiculous to you because it’s been so long since we’ve had to conduct peer naval combat that we’ve forgotten what real strikes are and what they require.  For example, the WWII Battle of the Philippine Sea (The Great Marinanas Turkey Shoot) involved 900 US carrier aircraft.  The Nov 1943 attack on Rabaul involved almost 300 carrier aircraft.  And so on.  We’ve simply forgotten.

And, for every idiotic argument along the lines of, “now we have precision guided weapons so we don’t need as many aircraft”, recall that the defenders now have precision guided anti-aircraft weapons so we’ll need MORE weapons and aircraft – it cuts both ways and the net result is a wash.

Now you have a better idea of what a carrier strike is and what it entails.

Weapons Armor

We previously discussed the general need for and benefits of armor.  Now, let’s look a bit closer at the specific case of armoring weapons.  The WWII ship designers recognized that it was pointless to build a ship whose main weapons could be easily disabled.  Gun mounts, the main weapons of the day, typically had twice or more the armor protection of the rest of the ship.  For example, the Fletcher’s 5” guns were protected by 1”-2” of armor while the rest of the ship had ½”- ¾”.  Compare that to a modern destroyer whose 5” gun has absolutely no armor, just a thin weather covering.  How long will a Burke’s 5” gun survive in combat?  Yeah, not long. 

WWII 5"/38 Gun - The Last Part To Fail

I know some of you are leaping for your keyboards, already furiously typing out a snarky reply pointing out that the 5” gun of a modern destroyer is not its main weapon.  Well, hit the backspace key, relax, and keep reading.  What is the main offensive weapon of a Burke DDG?  For anti-ship work, it would be the Harpoon missile.  The Harpoons are housed in totally unprotected quad launch racks out in the open on deck.  Simple shrapnel can destroy them.  For land attack, the Tomahawk is the main weapon and those are housed in VLS cells which I think have some degree of armor protection but I’ve been unable to determine how much protection they have.  Further, the protection that the cells have seems to be designed to protect the rest of the ship from an explosion of the stored missiles rather than to protect the missiles, themselves, from incoming weapons.  Thus, the bottom and sides of the VLS pit seem to be protected but the exposed deck face appears to have little protection.

What about the Burke’s main role of AAW?  Well, the Standard missiles, like the Tomahawks, are housed in the VLS so, again, they may have a small degree of protection.  However, the Standard missiles are only usable if they can be guided to their target.  What provides the guidance?  Three completely unarmored and unprotected SPG-62 illuminators with two of them clustered within about ten feet of each other on the aft superstructure.

So, we see that the guns and Harpoons are completely unprotected while the VLS missiles are protected to an unknown degree although the illuminators are vulnerable.  Little can be done to protect the illuminators without impacting their performance although greater separation would be nice so that a single hit can’t take out multiple illuminators. 

It is also technically possible to house the illuminators in armored recesses on retractable mounts.  The illuminators could be exposed when needed and retracted if hits were imminent – for example, when incoming missiles reach the ESSM and SeaRAM range, the illuminators are no longer necessary.  The Soviets and others have used retractable missile launchers so the concept is perfectly feasible.

This is also another reason for making extensive use of SeaRAM and Phalanx CIWS with their self-contained radars.  A hit on any one unit does not disable the functionality of all the others.

While sensors and illuminators are somewhat challenging to protect, the guns and Harpoons could be easily protected.  Armored mounts for the guns would be a simple and cost effective way of enhancing their survivability.  As we’ve previously discussed, an inch or two of mount armor won’t protect against a direct hit from a cruise missile but it will ensure that a mount can’t be destroyed by simple shrapnel.  Harpoon missiles can be placed in recessed “pits” with armored walls – not perfect but better than the current situation and analogous to the VLS protection.  This would also somewhat enhance the stealth signature.  Such weapon pits have been used on various ships such as the Egyptian Ambassador missile boats and the Absalon class although the degree of armoring of the side walls, if any, is unknown.

Ambassador Mk III With Recessed Weapons Pit

To be fair, the Harpoon is all but obsolete and any further effort at armoring is probably not worth the cost assuming the VLS-capable LRASM is deployed in the next few years.  Also, the more recent Harpoon canisters are thicker walled to, presumably, provide a small measure of shrapnel protection although the degree of protection is questionable.

The overall conclusion is that the Navy no longer designs ships for sustained combat.  Today’s design philosophy seems to view ships as short-lived, offensive launchers with no sustained combat capability in the face of damage.  Indeed, the LCS is intentionally designed to be abandoned at the first significant hit!  Recent grounding, explosion, and collision experience suggests that the Ticos and Burkes are extremely sensitive to even mild damage and will become one-hit mission kills in combat.

We need to return to the WWII design concepts where the main weapons are the last part of a ship to fail in combat.  We need to design in a much greater degree of protection for our weapons and critical sensors than we currently have and there is no technical reason why we can’t.  It just requires a combat mindset from the outset.  The required changes and protections are not particularly difficult and require only the admission that our ships will take hits in combat and the determination that we should be able to keep fighting after taking hits. 

Our ships have, for too long, been designed for peacetime operations instead of war.  This must change.

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Note:

The common twin 5” gun mount of WWII had protective mount shields that varied from ¼” thick to 2.5” thick, depending on the shield version and the specific location on the shield.  The Mk28 shield, for example, was a uniform 2.0” thick. (1)

(1)https://maritime.org/doc/fiveinchtwin/five548.htm, p.548