« Pop goes the (housing) bubble | Main | Murtha's shame »
June 20, 2006
Navy studies risk to thin-skinned ships
During the 1980s I did my reserve time aboard the USS New Jersey (BB-62), one of the last WWII-era battleships in service at the time.
Commissioned in 1943, she was mothballed in 1948 and recalled to duty several times, providing sea-based support for troops with her massive 16-inch guns during Korea, Vietnam and several dustups in the Middle East.
While naval aviators and submariners proved that the massive battlewagons were anything but invulnerable, they did offer substantial protection for their crews due to their thick belts of armored steel.
Those sheets of steel came from steelmills and foundries that no longer exist; we simply can't make the stuff anymore.
As naval tactics evolved, so too did maritime design principles. Ships got smaller, faster and lighter. Relying on technology and tactics -- rather than brute strength -- military planners gambled on new manufacturing and damage-control techniques to make the ships survivable.
Unfortunately, the damage suffered by the USS Cole from a suicide attack by a small boat proved that the pendulum had swung too far away from the heavily-armored ships of the past.
The U.S. Navy, facing ongoing threats from jihadi terrorists wielding relatively low-tech weaponry, decided to see just how vulnerable modern ships are to attack.
Strategy Page has the story, and frontloads the bad news in the headline: Machine-Guns Disable Destroyers.
On June 7th, the U.S. Navy held another "Sink-Ex" (Sinking Exercise) some 450 kilometers off North Carolina. A Sink-Ex uses decommissioned navy ships for target practice, or, as in this case, to test new tactics.
What the navy wanted to examine was the ability of current naval guns (from .50 caliber machine-gun to 5-inch cannon) to disable ships without sinking them. The subjects of the Sink-Ex were two decommissioned Spruance-class destroyers (Comte de Grasse and Stump). These 7,800 ton ships, two of the largest destroyers ever built, were to be first subjected to gunfire, then Harpoon and Maverick missiles from air force B-52 and B-1B bombers overhead.
The missiles did not get used, because the hail of gunfire sank the two ships within 90 minutes. With cameras and sensors recording the damage, a variety of guns were turned loose on the ships, to see what kind of damage could be inflicted, how quickly and how accurately.
Most of the results are classified, but it did appear that the .50 caliber and 20mm machine-gun were very accurate and effective, and capable of quickly disabling a ship without sinking it. Also tested were 40mm automatic grenade launchers. The two ships were quickly sent to the bottom (12,000 feet below) with 5-inch gun fire directed at the waterline of the toe 28 year old ships.
This simply confirms what we knew back in the '80s. The joke aboard the New Jersey was that if hit with the same French-made Exocet missiles that had sunk the HMS Sheffield during the Falkland Islands War, the only response needed from the damage control teams on the battleship would be to respond to the 1MC message, "Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms, sweep down topside decks fore and aft!" If the incoming missile somehow survived the CWIS 20mm-gatling guns firing depleted-uranium shells, the Exocet would simply leave a smudge and a smattering of parts scattered around the decks when it hit armor more than a foot thick.
That modern vessels are so vulnerable to essentially small-arms fire presents a challenge to modern militaries, who find themselves as vulnerable to suicide attacks as their land-based comrades.
In no small sense, this represents a repeat of history; the Japanese kamikaze attacks of 1945, while a desperate tactic, were devastatingly effective, causing huge losses for the Americans at a relatively small cost to the enemy.
Posted by Mike Lief at June 20, 2006 12:11 AM
| TrackBack
Comments
The close-up pictures are worth seeing under the link Our Coverage. It's sad to read about in detail and it's worse that much of America doesn't know or really care. Maybe just another headline to people who blame America or think that the Dixie Chicks have a firm grasp on humanity.
Those who serve for us... give their life...
Posted by: Vermont Neighbor at June 19, 2006 11:43 PM
My uncle Ray served on the USS Ballard ... this is his Navy page.
Posted by: Vermont Neighbor at June 20, 2006 09:44 AM