Burke Flt III Delivered

The Navy has taken delivery of the first Flt III Burke destroyer, USS Jack H. Lucas, DDG-125.  Photos and concept drawings show that the ship’s entire close in defense consists of a single CIWS mounted aft of the rear stack, on top of the helo hangar.  That’s it.  One CIWS.  That’s either an extraordinary faith in the long and medium range AAW missiles or an incredible display of stupidity.  I’ll let you decide which.
 
There is also an open spot forward of the superstructure which I’m guessing is reserved for a laser of some sort.

USS Lucas DDG-125

Seagull USV – Yet Another Miracle

The Navy (Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWC Pacific) has contracted with Elbit Systems of America to develop an autonomous, unmanned boat to track maritime targets clandestinely.
 

Elbit Systems of America (Elbit America) has been awarded a prime contract by the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWC Pacific) to develop and demonstrate an autonomous maritime target tracking capability as part of the United States Navy’s Information Warfare Research Project (IWRP).

Elbit America’s autonomy prototype will extend the reach of those forces by leveraging attritable systems to covertly find, fix and track maritime targets … [1]

I keep reading about the Navy’s pursuit of systems like this (Sea Hunter, Saildrone, Mantas, etc.) and they all have a few common characteristics:  they’re small and they’re useless for the claimed task of persistent, survivable surveillance.
 
Why are they useless?  Consider this Elbit drone which appears to be based on the 12 meter Elbit Seagull unmanned surface vessel with an EO/IR sensor atop the cockpit and a towed array or VDS.
 

Elbit Seagull

Now, consider what that means in terms of sensing capability.  The EO/IR sensor sits, perhaps, 8 ft above the water which gives the sensor a horizon of around 10 miles.  That’s the limit of the sensing capability – 10 miles.  That’s not exactly broad area maritime surveillance, is it?  Similarly, the array/VDS is a low power (on a 12 meter unmanned boat it’s probably running off a battery of some sort) sensor with limited range and little or no sophisticated analysis computing.  That’s not going to find much!  This is the epitome of the looking through the soda straw analogy.  You just can’t see much.  The sensor just won’t see much of an area.  Given that the mission is area surveillance, it’s an automatic failure!
 
Consider further, a 12 meter boat is going to have endurance measured in hours and no open ocean sailing capability.  How will that allow for broad area maritime tracking?
 

Despite these obvious limitations, the Navy apparently believes that this small boat with small, short range sensors is going to roam the oceans, finding all the enemy's assets  ...  a miracle of surveillance.  Not only that, but the Navy believes that this drone will operate in contested waters.  Just out of curiosity, how will this tiny drone get to the contested operating area?  It's certainly not going to cross an ocean unattended.  Will it be carried by a cargo or amphibious vessel?  I guess the Chinese won't see that any more than they'll see the Marine's large, slow,  non-stealthy, Light Amphibious Warfare (LAW) ship, right?  But, I digress.  Let's just hand wave that concern away and move on.

To be fair, this boat could have some use in a small area, harbor defense scenario but that’s for the Coast Guard not the Navy.

Why are we pursing a small, limited endurance, low power, short sensor range boat?  Other than pursing unmanned technology for its own sake, there’s no use for such a boat.  Bafflingly, we continue to throw money at concepts that have no practical combat application.  If it doesn’t benefit our naval combat capability we shouldn’t be wasting time, money, and resources on it.  Everything we do should have to pass through the filter of, ‘how does this enhance our combat capability?’.  If it can’t pass the filter, we shouldn’t pursue it.  This doesn’t pass. 

 
 
 
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[1]Naval News website, “Elbit America Selected For U.S. Navy Information Warfare Research Project”, Staff, 26-Jun-2023,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/06/elbit-america-selected-for-u-s-navy-information-warfare-research-project/

Yokosuka Pearl Harbor

The US Navy has, for several decades, maintained a permanently forward deployed carrier at Yokosuka, Japan.  Here’s the sequence of carriers that have been based at Yokosuka:
 
1973  Midway
1991  Independence
1998  Kitty Hawk
2008  Washington
2015  Reagan
2024  Washington
 
 
To have maintained a carrier at Yokosuka for so many decades, the Navy must perceive some value in it.  What is that value?  I ask because I’m not seeing it.  Let’s examine some possible benefits and risks.
 
 
Deterrence
 
The obvious potential benefit – and the one that I’m sure the Navy believes - is deterrence of the Chinese.  In general terms, we’ve discredited forward presence as a deterrent.  Let’s look at the history of China’s actions over the last several decades and see whether deterrence has worked.  Note, this is attempting to prove a negative which is not possible so we’ll try to discern a pattern to see whether we’re succeeding at deterring China.  Consider the following Chinese actions:
 

• China has annexed every unclaimed or disputed island/reef in the East and South China Seas.
• China has built and militarized several artificial islands, illegally and in violation of the UNCLOS treaty of which they are a signatory.
• China forced down and seized a US EP-3 surveillance aircraft in international airspace.  They then held the aircraft and crew, stripped the aircraft of equipment, and dismantled the aircraft before eventually releasing the crew.
• China seized a US underwater drone vehicle.
• China has routinely violated Philippine and Vietnam territorial waters.
• Chinese fishing fleets have routinely encroached on the territorial waters of various countries.
• China has routinely threatened Taiwan and violated its territory and air defense zones.
• China has interfered with US military operations in international waters (McCain towed array incident near Subic Bay, Philippines, for example).

 
Does this sound like we’ve deterred China?  Does this sound like a pattern of deterrence?  Not in the least!  It sounds like a pattern of unrestrained, non-kinetic conquest!
 
Some of you are going to attempt to claim the fact that China hasn’t initiated a war demonstrates that deterrence must be working.  Of course, there is absolutely no indication that China had any intention of going to war with the US, prior to now.  You can’t deter someone from doing something they weren’t going to do anyway. 
 
Even now, why would China want to go to war with the US?  They’re getting everything they want without needing a war!  They’ve annexed and fortified the entire East and South China Seas.  For all practical purposes, they’ve kicked us out of the E/S China Seas.  They’re expanding into the Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, South America, and Cuba.  They’re in the process of annexing the Philippines through a combination of emigration, intimidation, and foreign assistance.  They’re isolating Taiwan and working to encircle Japan.  They’re attempting to intimidate Australia and gain control of various strategic resources via financial and business manipulations.  And the list goes on and on.
 
They don’t need or want a war when they can get everything they want thanks to our policy of appeasement.
 
Is a single carrier in Japan deterring China from anything?  No.
 

USS Reagan at Yokosuka

 

Combat
 
Another potential benefit is combat.  Can a single carrier conduct initial, forward, combat operations to disrupt Chinese operations and buy time for a more forceful US response?
 
Unfortunately, as we’ve repeatedly proven, a single carrier is not an effective combat force.  It’s a ship waiting to be sunk.  A single carrier is incapable of effective self-defense let alone able to simultaneously mount any kind of useful offense.  A single carrier serves no purpose other than to provide China with a live fire, carrier SINKEX.  So, if a single carrier is not survivable in combat and serves no useful combat purpose … why are we maintaining one there?
 
 
 
Risk
 
Okay, so a Japan-based carrier offers no benefits but what’s the harm?  Why do we care whether there’s a carrier in Japan?  The answer is that we care because of the concomitant risk of losing that carrier.
 
There are only a couple of possibilities for a Japan-based carrier at the start of a war with China:
 

• The carrier is sunk in the first hour of the war.  China is not going to pass up a free sinking of a carrier.
• Japan opts to remain neutral and the carrier is interned for the duration.

 
Neither of those options provides any useful combat capability and both result in the loss of the carrier.  The inescapable conclusion is that a Japan-based carrier is a certain loss in a war with China.  Is the loss of a hideously expensive carrier and air wing for no positive return really what we want?  I would hope not!
 
A carrier in Japan is a ‘Pearl Harbor’ waiting to happen.  You might be tempted to say that we’ll simply pull the carrier back to the US if war seems likely.  That’s possible but history suggests that’s unlikely.  We had ample warning about the actual Pearl Harbor and opted to do nothing.  China is all but telling us they’re just about ready to initiate the invasion of Taiwan and we haven’t pulled our carrier out of danger.  History – and our current inactions – strongly indicate that our carrier will still be sitting, docked in Japan, when war starts.
 
 
Summary
 
So, if a single Japan-based carrier isn’t providing any discernible deterrent effect, isn’t survivable in combat, can’t contribute any useful offense, and is certain to be ‘Pearl Harbored’ in the first hour of a war  …  why do we have a carrier there?  There are two answers:
 

1. Inertia – we’ve always had one there so we’ll continue to do so.
2. Stupidity – our so-called professional warriors are too stupid to understand the situation and change it.  As we’ve repeatedly documented on this blog, the extent of stupidity by Navy leadership is staggering and this is yet another example.

 
The conclusion is obvious – we need to end the Japan-based, forward deployment of a carrier and bring the carrier back home.

This is NOT How You Prepare for War

The Independence variant LCS-18, USS Charleston, just completed a 26 month overseas deployment.  That’s incredible!  More than two years at the tip of the spear.  They must have done lots of realistic exercises and live fire events to demonstrate their readiness and maintain the honed edge of readiness. 

… the ship successfully launched a Rolling Airframe Missile (SeaRAM) during an at-sea, live-fire exercise … [1]

While deployed, Charleston was embarked with the Naval Strike Missile …  “We do have a typical load-out that we maintain throughout the deployment,” Knuth [Cmdr. Matthew Knuth, gold crew commanding officer] said of the NSM. “That said, we did not do any live fire testing of the missile.”[1]

Let’s add up the live fire testing of the various weapon systems over the 26 month period.  This involves high level math and large numbers so, don’t worry, I’ll do it for you.

 

1 RAM + 0 NSM = 1 launch

 

That’s the raw data.  Let’s do some analysis and calculate the average weapon firings per year.

 

1 launch / 2.2 years = 0.4 launches per year

 

There’s your Navy.  Prepared for anything and, why not?  They did enough live fire exercises to be supremely proficient at combat launches and utterly confident that their equipment and systems would work under any of the 1 or 0 conditions that were tested.

 

The LCS, as you know, operates with a 2-crew, Blue-Gold, manning system wherein the crews rotate on and off the ship.  Just out of curiosity, I wonder which of the two crews got to do the 1 RAM launch?  The other crew, of course, would have spent two years with the ship and never fired a weapon.  How’s that for readiness and training?!

 

At the end of the 26 month deployment, this ship and its crews were the epitome of trained maritime warriors based on all the live fire exercises they did.

 

Idle thought:  Did anyone even look inside the NSM canisters to see if there were actually missiles there?  They didn’t do any test launches so one can’t help but wonder …  German soldiers have trained with broomsticks instead of rifles so is it really that much of a stretch to wonder if we really have missiles on board the LCS?  Just saying …

 

On a seemingly unrelated note … WWII US torpedoes …  Am I the only one who can see the parallels?

 

 

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[1]USNI News website, “Littoral Combat Ship USS Charleston Completes 26-Month Deployment to Western Pacific”, Gidget Fuentes, 21-Jun-2023,

https://news.usni.org/2023/06/21/littoral-combat-ship-uss-charleston-completes-26-month-deployment-to-western-pacific

New Dry Dock Construction

It is not often that I can offer good news about the Navy so I relish the opportunities when they come along.  One such bit of good news is the announcement that Austal is beginning construction of a $128M[2] Auxiliary Floating Dry Dock Medium (AFDM) for the Navy. 

It has a 18,000 LT lifting capacity and a clear deck working area of 90,800 square feet. The craft has an overall length of 694 feet, overall pontoon breadth of 157 feet, and a height of 65 feet from baseline to wing deck.[1]

 

Dry Dock AFDM-5 Resourceful
Built 1943, sunk in Subic Bay 2018

Now, build another ten or fifteen of these and the Navy will have taken a legitimate step forward in ship maintenance and repair!
 
 
 
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[1]Naval News website, “Austal USA Starts Construction On Navy Dry Dock”, Staff, 12-Jun-2023,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/06/austal-usa-starts-construction-on-navy-dry-dock/
 
[2]Naval Technology website, “Austal to build US Navy’s auxiliary floating dry dock medium”, 21-Jun-2022,
https://www.naval-technology.com/news/austal-to-build-us-navys-auxiliary-floating-dry-dock-medium/

Demystifying Naval Matters

One of the reasons I started this blog was that I had observed far too many misconceptions involving naval matters.  I’m not talking about differences of opinion but factually incorrect beliefs that had taken on an air of ‘truth’ and acceptance due to sheer repetition with no one challenging the fallacies.  One of my goals for this blog is to remove the mystery and misunderstanding from these commonly accepted but incorrect beliefs.  Doing so allows us to have discussions that are based on fact and can, therefore, be more logical and productive.
 
Here’s a partial list of some of the misconceptions we’ve corrected, so far, along with links to the relevant posts - a compendium of myths, so to speak.  In no particular order,
 
 
Torpedoes – Most people believed that torpedoes were miracle weapons that would sink any ship, instantaneously, with a single hit by breaking the ship’s back by suspending the ship over a giant bubble of air.  Torpedoes, while seriously dangerous weapons, cannot one-shot kill a ship much larger than a corvette and the bubble-back-breaking phenomenon is purely a myth and does not exist even for a small vessel.
 
See, “Torpedo Lethality Myth”
 
 
Explosive Effects – Most people believe that explosive filler weight is the only thing that determines damaging effects.  In reality, containment, in the form of thicker walls, determines the degree of damage for a given weight of explosive filler.
 
See, “Explosive Effects”
 
 
Armor -  Most people seemed to believe that armor would sink a ship under its weight or, if not, would slow the ship to that of a drifting barge.  We demonstrated that every WWII warship had armor appropriate for its class while maintaining 30+ knot speed and fantastic range.  We also dispensed with the belief that the main function of armor was to provide total immunity to every weapon, past, present, and future.  In reality, the purpose of armor is to mitigate damage and allow the ship to stay in the fight, effectively, for longer periods.
 
See, “Armored Ship Misconceptions”
See, “Armor for Dummies”
 
 
Escorts – So many people have grown up never seeing more than three escorts for a carrier that a common belief had sprung up that that was all that was needed for a carrier in war.  We analyzed the historical escort requirements and the current escort needs and determined that we need around 38 escorts for a carrier group.
 
See, “Escorts”
 
 
Kinetic Energy – There was – and still is! – a widespread belief that kinetic energy, alone, will vaporize a target.  This belief has been applied to supercavitating torpedoes, Mach+ missiles, naval shells, and any other weapon that ‘goes fast’.  We’ve analyzed the kinetic energy effect of several of these weapons and found that the kinetic energy contribution ranges from insignificant to present but not terribly damaging.  Kinetic energy is, typically, simply not all that much of a factor.
 
See, “Supercavitating Torpedo Kinetic Energy”
 
 
Rail Guns – Related to the kinetic energy misconception, most people believed that rail guns would instantaneously vaporize anything they hit.  We demonstrated that rail guns actually have a very small and limited target set that they could be effective against.  We noted the bullet and paper analogy which applies to soft targets and renders rail gun projectiles nearly useless against such targets.  Even a modern, unarmored ship is likely a soft target for a rail gun and nearly immune to significant damage from a rail gun.
 
See, “Rail Guns in Combat”
 
 
Helicopters – We disproved the common assumption - almost article of faith -  that every ship must have helicopters, a flight deck, and hangar.  We noted that helos require a 1/3 larger ship to accommodate flight deck, hangar, and support facilities.
 
See, “Does Every Ship Need aHelicopter?”
 
 
Deployments – Most people believed that ships would conduct deployments during war, just as in peacetime, and that we would need the traditional 4 ships to support 1 deployed ship.  We debunked that belief by examining the conduct and missions of the Enterprise during the first full year of war.
 
See, “War Deployments”
 
 
Sequestration – The Navy tried to sell us on the idea that sequestration was the root cause of the Navy’s problems and we thoroughly debunked that notion.
 
See, “Sequestration is Not the Problem”

 
 
 
 
Looking at the list of myths and misconceptions we’ve debunked and corrected, it’s amazing how much misinformation and erroneous beliefs were impacting naval discussions and preventing us from reaching correct and logical conclusions.  Fortunately, we are now better equipped to examine and discuss naval matters.

Groundings and Collisions

For no particular reason or point, here’s a partial list of US Navy collisions and groundings in recent years.  I say, partial, because I’m sure there are more.  These are just the one’s I’ve been able to find documentation for.
 
Does this seem like a lot, a little, or just expected frequency for our operations?
 
 
Oct 1999 – USS Underwood ran aground in Egypt
Feb 2000 – USS Shreveport grounded in the Suez Canal
Feb 2000 – USNS Yukon collided with civilian ship
Jul 2000 – USS Denver collided with USNS Yukon
Aug 2000 – USS Detroit and USS Nicholson collided
Sep 2000 - USS La Moure County ran aground off Chile
Feb 2001 – USS Greeneville collided with Japanese trawler
Nov 2002 – USS Oklahoma collided with LNG tanker east of Gibraltar
Oct 2003 – USS Hartford ran aground in Sardinia
Jul 2004 – USS Kennedy collided with a dhow
Jan 2005 – USS San Francisco collided with seamount
Sep 2005 – USS Philadelphia collided with merchant ship in Persian Gulf
Jan 2007 – USS Newport News collided with Japanese tanker in Strait of Hormuz
Feb 2009 - USS Port Royal ran aground off Hawaii
Mar 2009 – USS Hartford and USS New Orleans collided
May 2012 – USS Essex and USNS Yukon collided
Oct 2012 - USS Montpelier and USS San Jacinto collided off Florida
Jan 2013 – USS Guardian ran aground in Philippines
Jan 2013 – USS Jacksonville collided with trawler in Persian Gulf
Feb 2014 – USS Taylor ran aground in Turkey
Aug 2016 – USS Louisiana and Military Sealift Command vessel Eagleview collided
Oct 2016 – USS Montgomery collided with a tug causing a hull crack in the LCS
May 2017 – USS Lake Champlain collided with South Korean fishing vessel
Jun 2017 - USS Fitzgerald collided with cargo ship
Aug 2017 - USS McCain collided with cargo ship
Jan 2017 - USS Antietam ran aground in Tokyo Bay, Japan
Jun 2019 – USS Billings collided with a moored freighter in Montreal
Oct 2021 – USS Connecticut collided with seamount in South China Sea