I would like to see a cheap long range cruise missle that can fly in very low and fast and drop mines In an enemy harbor. They wouldent need as accurate a system as a tomahawk so they should be able to be cheaper. So say day one in a war with China several hundred fly into each of Chinas harbors and drop bottom mines across the harbor. This ties up the harbor for days or potentially weeks while they clear them.
might be easier to come up with a cluster mine for water and mine their small boat marinas. If we can complicate the lives of the harbor patrol we might help ourselves lay the mines for the big ships.
Attended a briefing while the looper to NavSea 00. Had the sub bubbas and the 2 briefers from DARPA. Presentation was on the idea of a sea skimmer missile that could "deploy" the business end and transition to a 50 kt torpedo, as torps are harder to take out than a sea skimming missile. Launch platform of choice was the S-3, altho the sub guys were fairly positive. After I departed NavSea never heard anything more about it.
I would like to see an air-breathing back end that turns any JDAM into a cruise missile, which by extension would turn Quickstrike-ER 40nm glide-mine into a shallow water mine which can be launched hundreds of miles from where it needs to end up once armed.
Navy will stick with Mk.110 57mm I'm afraid; and probably mount 30mm instead, but decent self-defense capacity. Maybe an Unmanned Vessels Tender (UVT) as we expand use of those platforms.
for pickup, I can't help but think we may have actually found a viable use for little crappy ships. forget "modules" just build into the vessel a system like the torpedo retrievers have, and up gun them. Forward base a couple out of Guam and the PI.
fair enough but I wasn't thinking crane I was thinking ramp & rollers in the back, and pull it up onto the rollers, like pulling a car onto a flatbed tow truck. Just like the torpedo retrevers at Nanimo do.
A very reasonable thought. One of the many naval architectural faults of LCS is their incredibly limited weight and KG margins. They are literally at the bottom rung of the ladder in that department.
A 1000 mile range is laughable and unserious. Has the USN paid any attention to a map of the South China Sea? Combine short legs and inevitable breakdowns…DOA.
Which plays into the question this raised for me. If we’re looking at this, you can bet the Chinese are also. And if they’re looking at it, who’s to say they haven’t already developed their own mines and leveraged their merchant fleet to seed the approaches to PH or San Diego or Bremerton or even Norfolk in the event of war? Is anyone even considering defense against that scenario?
Drill Sgt, good point. And applying Wayward Sailor's thinking, who says those container ships need to be U.S. flagged? WW1 and WW2 German merchant raiders weren't.
We gonna build a shadow fleet, equip these ships with moon pools and use them in normal trade now to all these CCP run ports around the world, then in wartime, sail them to a US Navy port and line them up at the Navy pier and fill them up with mines and sail them to Hong Kong?
Or are we going to build these ships and hold them in a secret location and put them into service for their first runs to Hong Kong after the balloon goes up? Flying Liberian flags?
you are thinking Navy and warships. CA is a oil island. Nearly half of the fuel used in CA comes from overseas and arrives for the most part in Long Beach. Travis, East of SF lost its fuel pipeline from the Valero in the East Bay when it closed recently. Imagine a war in the Pacific with no ability to surge trash hauler flights West of the Golden Gate. No ability to air deploy Fighter squadrons...
Exactly. Everyone is playing offense. In WW2 Japan demonstrated one of their big subs could approach CA shore and fire a few shells. So, I expect a few Chinese ballistic missile subs to start rotational deployments off CA coast soon. Sure it won't be something our navy talks about.
If we were even remotely serious about that type of threat, we would immediately prohibit all COSCO container ships from entering U.S. ports. But then everyone would moan and wail that all of our retail stores are out of Chinese products. What a *stupid* position we’ve put ourselves in.
Amazing the Navy's institutional disdain of mines given how effective they were against the Japanese and in Wonsan, Nortj Korea against the Navy itself.
I get mine warfare isn't sexy, but it is discouraging that lessons we have to learn over and over and over.
The bang for the buck with mines is so great that so few people are involved that they can't form their own mafia to keep it going once the war is over.
CDR, always enjoy your topics, highlights and thought-provoking analyses. MK-60 Captor mine was in my portfolio when I managed the Navy weapons budget. Even visited Keyport to see the assembly facility. Then got flown into Canada to see how we tested Mk-48 torpedoes.
Ask any black hull Coastie how to recover bulky, heavy objects from the sea. Answer: send a ship that has a boom, a sturdy deck, a dive team, competent ship handlers, and a well trained deck force.
We do it every day. Just build the UUV with padeyes and the rest is doable.
Quickstrike-ER air-launched mines are 40nm standoff deployment, and various efforts to add rocket or air breathing boosters on JDAM would work just as well on QS-ER to make them even-more-ER.
And if the USAF is too busy and no naval aviators want to fly that profile, those cool new tanker flying combat droids have hard points, yes?
Back in the 80's there was a Navy group traveling around doing a classified Mine dog and pony show. When they showed up in Long Beach it was well attended. My own impression as a W-2 was "Wow!" Fast forward to Desert Storm. Our ship sailed in the northern Gulf, in minefields of low-tech WWII floating mines, for the duration. Our pre-war preps for that was minimal. The training material available for our regular lookouts, and auxiliary lookouts (barbers, storekeepers, cooks) was almost non-existent. What we did do was feed them lots of coffee, see that they got daily pep-talks about how much their shipmates were depending on them, give them genuine pats on the back as encouragement and thanks. Our helos were airborne most of the day, lookouts and topside people had eyes on the sea, always. We never saw a mine. But, I can tell you, that mines sure preoccupied our thoughts. I was the CICO and by default the Lookout Training Officer & Intel Officer, a lower-level minion. We surface guys (most present company excepted) don't take mines as seriously as we should.
Remember how the sheep would fall off their transports and float around for a couple days with their legs up in the air, looking from a distance like that mine on the Gilligan's Island episode?
I heard that you could almost smell the Sheep Carriers before getting a visual. We had the good fortune to never encounter one. As much as I love dining on Crown Rack of Lamb, I am thankful for that.
I would like to see a cheap long range cruise missle that can fly in very low and fast and drop mines In an enemy harbor. They wouldent need as accurate a system as a tomahawk so they should be able to be cheaper. So say day one in a war with China several hundred fly into each of Chinas harbors and drop bottom mines across the harbor. This ties up the harbor for days or potentially weeks while they clear them.
It's a start but, building on yesterday's post, I'd like to see a dozen CDMs loaded on to a ballistic missile.
I prefer a solution that doesn’t advertise its arrival.
might be easier to come up with a cluster mine for water and mine their small boat marinas. If we can complicate the lives of the harbor patrol we might help ourselves lay the mines for the big ships.
Attended a briefing while the looper to NavSea 00. Had the sub bubbas and the 2 briefers from DARPA. Presentation was on the idea of a sea skimmer missile that could "deploy" the business end and transition to a 50 kt torpedo, as torps are harder to take out than a sea skimming missile. Launch platform of choice was the S-3, altho the sub guys were fairly positive. After I departed NavSea never heard anything more about it.
I would like to see an air-breathing back end that turns any JDAM into a cruise missile, which by extension would turn Quickstrike-ER 40nm glide-mine into a shallow water mine which can be launched hundreds of miles from where it needs to end up once armed.
Navy will stick with Mk.110 57mm I'm afraid; and probably mount 30mm instead, but decent self-defense capacity. Maybe an Unmanned Vessels Tender (UVT) as we expand use of those platforms.
for pickup, I can't help but think we may have actually found a viable use for little crappy ships. forget "modules" just build into the vessel a system like the torpedo retrievers have, and up gun them. Forward base a couple out of Guam and the PI.
You would need to scale it up quite a bit for an XLUUV. The new ocean tugs have an 80,000lb rated crane which might be large enough to do the job.
fair enough but I wasn't thinking crane I was thinking ramp & rollers in the back, and pull it up onto the rollers, like pulling a car onto a flatbed tow truck. Just like the torpedo retrevers at Nanimo do.
A very reasonable thought. One of the many naval architectural faults of LCS is their incredibly limited weight and KG margins. They are literally at the bottom rung of the ladder in that department.
57mm on a TR? Love it!
A 1000 mile range is laughable and unserious. Has the USN paid any attention to a map of the South China Sea? Combine short legs and inevitable breakdowns…DOA.
Need to pair it with an autonomous surface carrier that has the longer legs.
Why not a container ship with a bottom door like Glomar Explorer? They easily go in and out of Chinese ports?
because all the ships coming in and out of a Chinese port are Chinese? How many US flagged ships are on a Chinese route? 0 of 60?
Which plays into the question this raised for me. If we’re looking at this, you can bet the Chinese are also. And if they’re looking at it, who’s to say they haven’t already developed their own mines and leveraged their merchant fleet to seed the approaches to PH or San Diego or Bremerton or even Norfolk in the event of war? Is anyone even considering defense against that scenario?
Drill Sgt, good point. And applying Wayward Sailor's thinking, who says those container ships need to be U.S. flagged? WW1 and WW2 German merchant raiders weren't.
We gonna build a shadow fleet, equip these ships with moon pools and use them in normal trade now to all these CCP run ports around the world, then in wartime, sail them to a US Navy port and line them up at the Navy pier and fill them up with mines and sail them to Hong Kong?
Or are we going to build these ships and hold them in a secret location and put them into service for their first runs to Hong Kong after the balloon goes up? Flying Liberian flags?
You think the CCP is that dumb?
you are thinking Navy and warships. CA is a oil island. Nearly half of the fuel used in CA comes from overseas and arrives for the most part in Long Beach. Travis, East of SF lost its fuel pipeline from the Valero in the East Bay when it closed recently. Imagine a war in the Pacific with no ability to surge trash hauler flights West of the Golden Gate. No ability to air deploy Fighter squadrons...
Exactly. Everyone is playing offense. In WW2 Japan demonstrated one of their big subs could approach CA shore and fire a few shells. So, I expect a few Chinese ballistic missile subs to start rotational deployments off CA coast soon. Sure it won't be something our navy talks about.
you can count on this being the case...
If we were even remotely serious about that type of threat, we would immediately prohibit all COSCO container ships from entering U.S. ports. But then everyone would moan and wail that all of our retail stores are out of Chinese products. What a *stupid* position we’ve put ourselves in.
one way trip, maybe
Amazing the Navy's institutional disdain of mines given how effective they were against the Japanese and in Wonsan, Nortj Korea against the Navy itself.
Just like they ignored small drones. A lesson Ukraine and Iran is reteaching.
And the lesson of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020.
?? What did I miss.
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/drones-in-the-nagorno-karabakh-war-analyzing-the-data/
https://www.raf.mod.uk/what-we-do/centre-for-air-and-space-power-studies/aspr/aspr-vol25-iss2-3-pdf/
same way the USAF hates things that can't be flown by a pilot
and Vietnam at Hyphong
OK, what is that Captain standing next to?
ORCA
This is all cool stuff. What's the priority again?
"Time to Make ARS Great Again" I believe the builder of the current class is now a baseball field.
How good are bottom-settling torpedoes against a maritime power with dredges?
Would be a very bad day for the dredge that found one.
And for the dredge’s navy? Probably a good day. The real question is can enough small ships render them useless.
How did they let that redneck into the base? Was he deer hunting and made a wrong turn?
I get mine warfare isn't sexy, but it is discouraging that lessons we have to learn over and over and over.
The bang for the buck with mines is so great that so few people are involved that they can't form their own mafia to keep it going once the war is over.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsub/articles/2026081954738.aspx#gsc.tab=0&gsc.sort=
It's long, and starts out with subs and SOSUS, but stick with it.
Long term,
(near term?)
Surface WarFare 🎱🚢⚓♠️⚔️ may no be survivable 🪸🐚🦑 for much more than a week or two......
Food Fuel Ammo in an age of autonomous 🛰️📡 death.
CDR, always enjoy your topics, highlights and thought-provoking analyses. MK-60 Captor mine was in my portfolio when I managed the Navy weapons budget. Even visited Keyport to see the assembly facility. Then got flown into Canada to see how we tested Mk-48 torpedoes.
Ask any black hull Coastie how to recover bulky, heavy objects from the sea. Answer: send a ship that has a boom, a sturdy deck, a dive team, competent ship handlers, and a well trained deck force.
We do it every day. Just build the UUV with padeyes and the rest is doable.
Quickstrike-ER air-launched mines are 40nm standoff deployment, and various efforts to add rocket or air breathing boosters on JDAM would work just as well on QS-ER to make them even-more-ER.
And if the USAF is too busy and no naval aviators want to fly that profile, those cool new tanker flying combat droids have hard points, yes?
Now that we are developing jet-powered, winged, standoff JDAM, add a modernized DST fuze.
Back in the 80's there was a Navy group traveling around doing a classified Mine dog and pony show. When they showed up in Long Beach it was well attended. My own impression as a W-2 was "Wow!" Fast forward to Desert Storm. Our ship sailed in the northern Gulf, in minefields of low-tech WWII floating mines, for the duration. Our pre-war preps for that was minimal. The training material available for our regular lookouts, and auxiliary lookouts (barbers, storekeepers, cooks) was almost non-existent. What we did do was feed them lots of coffee, see that they got daily pep-talks about how much their shipmates were depending on them, give them genuine pats on the back as encouragement and thanks. Our helos were airborne most of the day, lookouts and topside people had eyes on the sea, always. We never saw a mine. But, I can tell you, that mines sure preoccupied our thoughts. I was the CICO and by default the Lookout Training Officer & Intel Officer, a lower-level minion. We surface guys (most present company excepted) don't take mines as seriously as we should.
Remember how the sheep would fall off their transports and float around for a couple days with their legs up in the air, looking from a distance like that mine on the Gilligan's Island episode?
Good times.
I heard that you could almost smell the Sheep Carriers before getting a visual. We had the good fortune to never encounter one. As much as I love dining on Crown Rack of Lamb, I am thankful for that.