Warship or Cruise Ship?

ComNavOps has long pointed out that our ships are cruise ships rather than warships.  Let’s check in and see what the latest is on that …
 

When the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) pulls away from its California berth for its upcoming deployment, the crew will embark with some homey creature comforts.
 
Comforts like cushy club chairs by an electric fireplace, reliable WIFI, a gaming room, a stadium-seating movie theater. There are also phones, a pair of teal-blue rotary dial phones [with] plain old telephone system lines, are tucked into two enclosed, sound-proofed booths.
 
Those amenities are features of the new fully renovated library and lounge, courtesy of the USO, that have taken over three spaces of the Lincoln’s command religious ministries department. Each space is softened by teal bulkheads, wood laminated flooring, wood accents and artificial plants with steam punk-styled and contemporary artwork of the former Abraham Lincoln dress the walls.
 
“What the Abraham Lincoln USO Center offers is a peaceful and modern respite for our sailors and Marines to rest and recharge and to reach their families while using wifi while at sea, to watch movies in legitimate movie theater seating, and play video games in a purposefully designed video game room,” Capt. Pete Riebe, Lincoln’s commander, said during a Monday ceremony on the carrier’s flight deck.[1]

 
Is this just a one-off experiment on the Lincoln?  No …
 

The newly named USO Center is the fifth to open aboard a Navy aircraft carrier, officials said, and similar redos of library and lounge spaces aboard four more carriers are planned this year.[1]

 
This is reprehensible as a matter of survivability, if for no other reason.  Recall that during the McCain and Fitzgerald collisions, sailors died because escape paths were blocked by loose debris.  Every item not directly related to combat is a survival liability.  We are knowingly and intentionally jeopardizing sailors lives.  Sure, everyone wants a cushy video-gaming lounge right up until you have to evacuate a flooding compartment and large overstuffed pillows and furniture are blocking your way.  Today, every ship is a moment away from combat and critical survival situations.  It is long past time to strip ship and recognize that a ship is supposed to be a WARship not a cruise ship.  Any sailor who won’t serve because they don’t have access to lounges, a movie theater, over-stuffed chairs, etc. is not a sailor worth having.
 
On a personal note, I’m torn between a luxury cruise to the Caribbean or a US Navy aircraft carrier cruise for my vacation this year.  I like the Caribbean destination but the aircraft carrier has better amenities.  It’ll be a tough choice.
 
 
 
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[1]USNI News website, “Carrier USS Abraham Lincoln’s Latest Upgrade Dials Up Crew Comfort”, Gidget Fuentes, 11-Jul-2024,
https://news.usni.org/2024/07/11/carrier-uss-abraham-lincolns-latest-upgrade-dials-up-crew-comfort

Efficiency and Competition

In WWII, a dozen or more shipyards built Fletcher class destroyers.  The yards were given a set of blueprints and contracted to build the ships according to the plans.  It didn’t matter which yard built any given destroyer, they were all the same.  This worked because the Navy designed the ship and generated the blueprints.  Once that was accomplished, any yard could build the ship.  It was just a matter of following the plans.
 
In contrast, because the Navy no longer designs ships, generates blueprints, or even requires complete designs and blueprints prior to the start of construction, only the contracted yard can build a given ship.  The LCS is the standout example of this badly flawed approach.  Lacking any guidance or blueprints, both Lockheed and Austal generated their own LCS designs, spec’ed their own equipment and combat systems, and no one else could build them.  Thus, we wound up with two LCS classes that had almost nothing in common;  the epitome of inefficiency.
 
What should have happened is that the Navy should have generated a complete design concept – and locked it down instead of continuously changing it! – followed by a complete set of construction blueprints.  They could have then shopped around for the best manufacturing deal and, if necessary, utilized multiple shipyards to in competition to ensure that costs and quality were well controlled.
 
 Our ship design and contracting approach is badly broken and yet the Navy is not only embracing it but doubling down on it.  Ignoring common sense, best practices, and all previous experience, the Navy began the Constellation class frigate construction without a complete design or complete set of construction blueprints (see, “Lesson Learned?”).
 
How do we expect the shipbuilder to accurately bid on the construction without a locked in design and a complete set of blueprints?  They can’t!  And yet we turn around and try to blame the manufacturer when costs inevitably balloon out of control.
 
The Navy absolutely must regain control over the ship design and construction process.  We must reinstitute the General Board (design) and BuShips (blueprints).  Without those capabilities, the Navy is just going to continue producing failure after failure.

The Passive Warship

While many of the lessons of war are timeless, tactics do change as technology changes.  Consider the following observations and logic chain.

• With the existence of hundred/thousand mile cruise missiles, multi-thousand mile ballistic missiles, supersonic aircraft and missiles, 50 mile torpedoes, SSGNs, etc., any ship that is spotted can be killed and fairly quickly, from a distance.
• Given SIGINT, radar warning receivers, direction finders, and all manner of electromagnetic sensing devices, any ship that emits, intentionally or unintentionally, can be spotted.
• Hence, to be spotted is to be sunk.
• The obvious conclusion is don’t get spotted!
• The obvious way to reduce the chance of being spotted is to emit nothing.  No active radar.  No unshielded electronic devices.  No signals.  Emit nothing for an enemy to pick up.

 
Of course, with today’s ship designs, emitting nothing is, potentially, another definition of being blind and a ship that is blind is going to stumble into trouble.
 
The job of a naval force is to find the enemy.  How can that be accomplished without active emissions?
 
This is where we begin to see that we need a paradigm shift away from active detection systems and toward passive systems.  This doesn’t mean tacking a single electro-optical (EO) sensor on the superstructure somewhere and glancing at it occasionally, as is done today.  Instead, it means designing an entire ship around passive sensing as its main sensor system.  We need a passive warship design.  Let’s look a bit closer at this concept.
 
 
The Passive Warship
 
The passive warship begins with a maximum stealth design which includes not just radar stealth but infrared, acoustic, optical, electromagnetic, and wake stealth.  Once we have a ship that is as stealthy as possible we can begin designing its sensing system.  We want a maximum stealth ship design combined with primarily passive sensing – a ship that can’t be seen but can see all around itself.  The enemy can’t see it but it can see the enemy.
 
Electro-optical – The F-14 Tomcat (and other aircraft – no need to list them) had optical systems that were reportedly capable of detecting bomber size aircraft out to a hundred miles or so.  We have optical telescopes that can see distant galaxies.  Of course, those telescopes are far too large to mount on a warship but with something in between the F-14’s tiny camera and a giant observatory telescope we should be able to easily see fighter size aircraft at hundreds of miles.  Place several (not just one!) of these EO sensors around the ship to provide 360 degree coverage with a huge amount of overlap and redundancy to allow for battle damage and we have 360 degree, long range, passive sensing that matches or exceeds what radar can provide.  Remember that one major advantage of optical systems is that they can easily detect stealth aircraft.
 
What makes this approach viable is accompanying software that can monitor the optical images continuously and detect the faintest of possible targets – something that a human would fail to do simply due to visual fatigue. 
 
Of course, optical sensing is vulnerable to interference and degradation from weather, smoke, and other effects.  Thus, we need additional passive sensing to supplement and complement optical sensing.
 
Infrared – Take the preceding EO concept and duplicate it with IR sensors.  Picture aircraft infrared search and track (IRST) pods, scaled up for much greater sensitivity and range, placed all around the ship to, again, provide 360 degree coverage with overlap and redundancy.  IR sensing nicely supplements and complements optical sensing.
 
SIGINT – Signal intercept sensors provide passive detection of enemy electronic signals and communications.   These signals might be fire control comms, voice comms, data communications traffic, missile networking comms, helicopter traffic control comms, or any other type of signal.  Given the ability of many signal types to travel beyond the horizon – and thus be detected over the horizon – SIGINT can provide very long range detection.
 
UAVs – Not only do we want our passive warship to have the preceding capabilities but we need to extend the ship’s sensor reach/range using small, cheap reconnaissance UAVs equipped with passive sensors.  These UAVs can be employed continuously for area recon, specifically for target confirmation or intense monitoring of a specific area, or sporadically so as not give even a hint of the host ship’s presence.
 
Fire Control – The final step is to tie the passive sensor systems into the ship’s fire control.  Thus, passive sensors become the primary fire control and the ship never needs to radiate, even while defending against an attack.  Of course, if the ship is being attacked, it’s already been spotted and it’s no longer necessary to remain passive.  Active radar can be used at that point although it would still be preferable to avoid active systems thereby eliminating the enemy’s use of radar homing targeting.
 

There are already purely passive fire control systems throughout the world's militaries so this isn't something radically new. 

An alternative fire control scheme might be a mixed passive/active scheme which coordinates passive and active sensing so that tracking is passive and, at the last moment, active sensors (radar) activate for weapon guidance.  This would not, however, be the preferred approach. 
 
 
Discussion
 
From the preceding, we can envision a passive warship at the center of a 360 degree spherical ‘eye’ made up of dozens of optical, infrared, and signal sensors.  The sphere would extend from the horizon to hundreds of miles for elevated targets.  UAVs would further extend the monitored area.
 
The complementary systems would mitigate the negative effects of weather and whatnot.  What one system fails to detect, another will.
 
Of particular note is the ability of passive systems to detect stealth aircraft with ease.  A properly designed passive system almost renders radar stealth useless.
 
As noted, a passive fire control eliminates the enemy’s ability to use radar homing weapons.
 
We see, then, that a purely passive warship system has a lot going for it.
 
Radar would still be provided on our passive warship as there may be occasions to use it but there would be no need for high end, Aegis type systems.  A simple TRS-4D type radar for horizon ranges would be sufficient.
 
While the passive system is a rock solid concept, there are some unknowns that would need to be tested.  For example, can passive sensors provide sufficient weapon guidance?  What size sensors do we need?
 
We need to set up a passive test ship and determine whether we can detect, track, and fire control purely passively with sufficient effectiveness.  If we can’t, we need to find out where the limitations are and work to eliminate them.  We need to find out what the practical detection ranges are for various size/shape targets and flight profiles.  And so on.
 
Technology has changed and that demands a change in tactics.  Unfortunately, the Navy is anchored in the past.  We’re producing Burkes that are based on technology and tactics that are several decades out of date and hopelessly obsolete.  Our latest combat ship, the Constellation class, was obsolete before the first one was even laid down.  We are mired in the past.  It’s long past time for a paradigm shift in warship design.

USS United States

The most famous and gloried ship of the United States Navy is the sailing ship, USS Constitution, ‘Old Ironsides’.  However, on this 4^th of July, Independence Day celebration, what could be more appropriate than to take a look at one of Constitution’s sister ships, the aptly named USS United States.
 

USS United States

The USS United States was conceived in response to the actions of the Barbary pirates and the continued harassment of American ships by the British.  Congress passed the Naval Act of 1794 authorizing the construction of six frigates – four of 44 guns and two of 36 guns.  The Constitution was the most famous of the group but the United States was the first launched on 10-May-1797 and commissioned 11-Jul-1798.  The ship was built in Philadelphia to Joshua Humphreys’ plan.  The ship’s figurehead was the ‘Goddess of Liberty’.
 
She first sailed under Captain John Barry, performing trials and patrols before being laid up in 1801 during which her armament was upgraded along with other changes.
 
The ship reportedly sported two narrow red stripes, one each above and below the gunports, as opposed to the classic black and white scheme of the Constitution.
 
USS United States was activated for the War of 1812, captained by Stephen Decatur.  On 25-Jul-1812, she encountered the British frigate Macedonian and in a two and a half hour battle dismasted the British ship and took her as a prize.  Macedonian was eventually repaired and taken into the US Navy.
 
United States was later chased into  New London, Connecticut by a British squadron and sat out the remainder of the war.
 
Among other noteworthy post-war accomplishments, the USS United States saw the enlistment of Herman Melville (author of Moby-Dick) as an ordinary seaman on 18-Aug-1843.
 
The ship was decommissioned in Feb-1849 and lay in Norfolk until the Civil War when she was seized by Confederate forces and taken into service for harbor defense and training.  She was eventually scuttled when the Confederates abandoned Norfolk.  The Union raised the ship before finally breaking it up in 1864.
 
Though not as famous as her sister ship, Constitution, the United States still led a proud and productive naval service.  It is well that we remember her.

Book Review – "Target: Subic Bay"

Here’s a book review that gets my recommendation less for its story than for the niche subject, a Pegasus class hydrofoil, and the thought provoking usage of the vessel.[1]
 
Target: Subic Bay, by Mack Tanner, is a fictional story whose premise is a North Korean instigated overthrow of the Philippine government through the use of a few nuclear weapons and a rogue Philippine rebel acting as a front and an American admiral’s use of the Pegasus class vessel’s capabilities to attempt to thwart the coup.  Think about it … how would you go about thwarting a North Korean and nuclear weapons-backed coup with just a single Pegasus class hydrofoil? 
 

The storyline, to be honest, is solidly entertaining but nothing special.  What is special is the author’s descriptions of the many capabilities of the vessel (special ops landings, a UAV, the SLAM land attack version of the Harpoon, Harpoons, sonobuoys, the 76 mm gun, and the vessel’s extreme speed, etc.) and how a little unorthodox thinking can take advantage of those capabilities.  One’s thoughts can’t help but be drawn into the world of unconventional naval tactics and comparing those tactics against the unimaginative – and generally ineffective – actions of today’s risk averse Navy.
 
A very minor point is that the cover artwork does nothing for the book and is a disappointment.  One hopes it would have depicted a Pegasus vessel doing heroic things but such is not the case.  Of course, the cover artwork has no bearing on the value of the book, itself!
 
The Pegasus class hydrofoil was a fascinating and unique craft that stirs the imagination, even today.  The class was never given a chance to shine and that’s a shame.  This book offers a window into the possible uses of such a vessel and the book is worth the read for that, alone.
 
 
 
 
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[1]Tanner, Mack, Target: Subic Bay, Zebra Books/Kensington Publishing Co., 1992, ISBN: 0-8217-3936-0

Constellation – Type 054B Comparison

The United States and China are both in the process of building a new class of frigate.  The US is building the Constellation class frigate and China is building the Type 054B which is an evolutionary advance on the Type 054A.  China has built/building 50 Type 054A and an unknown number of Type 054B for a total of, perhaps, 70 some Type 054 frigates.  In contrast, the US plans to build 20 Constellation class ships.
 
Let’s take a look at the cursory specs and see how they compare.
 

Type 054B Launch

As the specs demonstrate, the Constellation is just a bit inferior in several respects with the only advantage being a greater number of anti-ship missiles.  The Chinese frigate has better stealth, a more powerful gun, ASW torpedoes, and an extra close in weapon.  Based just on these specs, the Type 054B is the superior vessel.  That’s a disappointing commentary on ship design and the underlying combat-mentality that went into each country’s design.
 
The US had an opportunity to produce a modern, state of the art, optimized frigate and instead opted for an obsolete base design some 20 years old.  As with the Burke Flt XXIV, or whatever they’re up to now, the Navy has opted for the illusion of a safe design instead of a modern combat capable and survivable design.  China, on the other hand, has opted for a state of the art modern frigate.

Do We Need Aerial Tankers?

Do we really need carrier based, aerial tankers?  Your immediate reaction is, of course we do!  However, let’s hold off before we make that our final answer and take a moment to look just a bit closer at the tanker question.
 
Let’s start by answering the most basic question:  why do we have tankers, currently?  This is not a trick question.  There are two general answers:
 

• Overhead Tanking provides tanking for overhead aircraft who need a just a bit of extra fuel to get back aboard the carrier.  Perhaps the pilot had to execute one too many wave offs and go-arounds and has run just a bit low on fuel or maybe the aircraft came back from the mission low on fuel due to any number of possible reasons.  Those aircraft need fuel.
• Mission Tanking extends the reach of a mission.  WWII aircraft were limited to a range of whatever their onboard fuel tank allowed them.  Tanking is a means of extending the range of an aircraft by refueling during the mission.

 
Understanding those two basic requirements, let’s look a bit deeper and bit further into the future of tanking.
 
 
Mission Tanking
 
Let’s start with the mission extension requirement.
 
Here’s a question you may not have previously considered:  what determines the maximum range of a mission?
 
Simplistically, the range is determined by the aircraft’s unrefueled range plus any aerial refueling provided as part of the mission … but is that the whole story?  Since we’re doing a post on this, you can assume it’s not!
 
If fuel were the only determinant of range, we could, in theory, have carrier aircraft fly global missions.  The carriers could stay in port, launch aircraft, and those aircraft could strike/fight on the other side of the world;  after all, it’s just a matter of sufficient refueling events, right?  However, a moment’s thought suggests that the pilot of a single seat aircraft can’t remain awake, alert, and combat effective beyond a certain number of hours in the cockpit.  Anyone who’s driven long hours in a car understands the debilitating effect of cramped quarters even with occasional pit stops for relief, food, rest, and just to stretch one’s legs.  How much worse must it be for a pilot who, literally, is strapped in and can’t move or stretch, and struggles even to relieve himself.  At some point, the pilot becomes combat ineffective.  It’s analogous to the infantryman who quickly becomes ineffective in a landing craft due to seasickness after a brief period.
 
What is the time period beyond which a pilot becomes combat ineffective?  I don’t know – and it will vary somewhat from person to person – but a reasonable estimate is around three hours.  Beyond that point, the pilot begins to lose effectiveness.  Sure, there’s nothing like the adrenalin surge of combat to wake one up but there’s no escaping the underlying decrease in alertness, reflexes, and mental agility (which declines precipitously with fatigue).  A less than completely optimal pilot is another way to describe a dead pilot.  This is not to say that a mission longer than three hours can’t be accomplished but you’re dipping into diminishing returns at that point.  Diminishing returns is another way to describe a dead pilot and failed mission.  Modern combat requires 100% efficiency in order to have a hope of survival and success.  This, by the way, is the main reason why modular ships are inherent failures – they’re not 100% optimized.  But, I digress …
 
Let’s set aside range limitations and consider enemy threats.  Submarines, cruise and ballistic missiles, supersonic aircraft, very long range SAMs, and the like have resulted in being forced to doctrinally move our carriers further and further back from the target.  We’re now talking about having to operate many hundreds of miles away or even out to a thousand miles or more.  What does that do to the mission time frame?  Using subsonic aircraft with, say, a cruise speed of 550 mph, it would take 3.6 hours to fly a thousand mile, straight, out and back mission.  Now, throw in realistic time delays for departure assembly at the carrier, tanking, non-linear routes, in-flight refueling, actual mission execution time (air to air combat or loitering), landing pattern time, etc. and that bare minimum of 3.6 hours becomes something on the order of five hours.  Wait … what did we say about cockpit time beyond which a pilot’s performance begins to degrade?  Yeah, something on the order of three hours.  Uh, oh …
 
Returning now to the tanker issue, we can see that simply adding tankers to provide longer and longer ranges is not a correct or viable approach.  Tanking is beneficial only until it extends the mission time beyond the magic three hour limit.  After that, it becomes counterproductive.  Thus, even if we had a tanker that could deliver infinite fuel at infinite range, it would be useful only within fairly narrow constraints. 
 
The pilot’s combat effectiveness is the limiting factor, not fuel !
 
Thus, bigger, better, longer ranged tankers are not the answer beyond a certain point.
 
Note:  An almost semantic variation of the range extending, mission tanking is station time extension where we want to keep an aircraft on station for an extended time at a shorter range.  For example, an aircraft flying cap at, say, 300 miles, might need refueling to enable it to loiter on station for a couple hours even though it has sufficient onboard fuel for the 600 mile round trip.
 
 
Overhead Tanking
 
Not much to say about this.  Overhead/recovery tanking is a mandatory aspect of carrier operations.  There’s no getting around the need.
 
 
Conclusion
 
Single seat aircraft are constrained by the physical and mental fatigue limits of the pilot.  As we noted, a thousand mile mission is about the limit of a pilot’s combat effectiveness.  Thus, our attempts to design and build aircraft with combat radii greater than a thousand miles and/or to provide tankers that can extend missions beyond a thousand miles are pointless.
 
Of course, if our aircraft have only an inherent combat radius of, say, 200 miles then, yes, we need to provide tanking to accomplish a thousand mile mission.  However, we have, in the past, built aircraft with unrefueled, thousand mile radii, or nearly so, so that should be our design goal.  An aircraft with a thousand mile unrefueled radius pretty much eliminates the need for mission tanking except in the extreme of, say, maximum range, air-to-air combat which requires full power/afterburner once arriving on station.
 
The conclusion is that, yes, we most definitely need tanker aircraft but we need to be careful to recognize that we’re bumping up against pilot limitations, not fuel limitations.  This recognition should impact our tanker needs (number, size, capacity, etc.) and design.
 
 
 
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Note:  I selected a value of three hours as the point beyond which a pilot becomes ineffective.  It could be two hours, or four, or 3.187.  The exact value doesn’t change the premise and there is no exact value, anyway, since it would vary from pilot to pilot and would depend, in part, on the circumstances of the mission.  Therefore, I’m not going to entertain debates about the exact value.  Fair warning!