So start making improved container hulls, mount ADLs, swap them out as expended is best considering personnel challenges? And build more tenders and tankers to keep them at sea, of course.
Knox had the rail launchers, didn't it? Don't think the Navy will be willing to give up the faster volley from VLS in return for ability to reload faster. That's the impression I get from reading about launch systems, anyway.
No. We had a 5 inch and the 8 cell MK16 launcher with ASROC and Harpoons. CWIS on the fantail. We were alongside for an engineering and radar casualty. We almost lost our 40 due to a three day scirocco off Tunisia. We had to get the gimbal repaired and the schedule to make it happen. Since we were primarily an ASW ship the lack of air search radar didn’t matter so much. We were conducting MIO boarding operations and diverting shipping bound for or leaving Iraq via its friendly buddies in Jordan via the Red Sea.
We might have been two ships passing in the night, Mr. T. CG-55 was in Jeddah around mid-March 1991 and did MIO w/ a few French ships in Mar-Apr in the vicinity of the Gulf of Aqaba.
So did we. We were attached to Saratoga when we deployed but got passed around to JFK a few times as well. We escorted Biddle to Toulon when she lost her rudder…. Spent a lot of time flying over the Red Sea that deployment. FF1082. We were the first MIO centurions.
Interesting Operation Area. It was named “OZ” and all the water space was named after the characters: Toto, Tin Man etc.. we fired our .50’s and even our 5 inch at an Iraqi tramp named the Tadmur. It stopped when we shot the 5 over her bow. But don’t tell VADM Cooper that we fired a shot in anger. Let him think he is the only and first since WW2…
We worked under the French. They were professionals but very stingy with information..."Warship 55 DE Free-gaht du Nauticke Fran-khysse (gobbledygook). Your stahy-she-onne ees Gare du Nord, K" "DE U.S. Warship #55, RAR." We were asking ourselves, "WTF & Where TF is Gar-Do Nord?" One of my OS's spoke French and said it was "North Station". Put him on the red phone to ask the Frogs for more info. They were very much more forthcoming once we had a civilized R/T talker. But I always knew the French were a prissy lot. Their enlisted's hats had a red pom-pom on it. Très susceptible. Our XO was the best ever. He picked the beefiest, burliest and tallest sailors for the boarding party and kitted them out with shotguns, M-14's, 1911's, body armor, black shirts & trousers, combat boots and helmets. He admonished them to scowl at all times. The XO only carried a .45 and as I recall didn't wear body armor. An elegant and fine Naval Officer. Our CO was CAPT Bob Patton (yes, a relative to George). He had a way with words that elicited compliance from merchant ship Captains. Two of my OS1's were 6'2" and giggled like school girls before stepping out to board. I got to do the intel reports.
Our boarding parties were mostly ops guys and STG and OS particularly. We worked closely with Spanish and Greek frigates for a couple of weeks. We flew their staff around a lot. They also snuck small wine bottles into my hands when we got fuel or did a pax transfer. I gave their aircrews on both ships, zippo’s. The Greeks gave me UZO. I figured no piss test for a while out here and shared it with my maintenance night check. Senior Chief couldn’t figure out why the metalsmith’s were hung over. Lol.
CDR Sal: Superb framing. A non-naval, civilian type can read this quickly, and get the point easily. Military types get the logistics problems at the point of loading (sea state 5? Really?), cringe at the tyranny of distance and time lost, and shake their heads at the rust "husbandry" symptoms of decline in western navies.
This is a huge problem in the ME. On the other side of the world, in the Pacific, similar distance problems, tougher opposition (MUCH), opposed logistics problems not seen since WW II (think Guam will be safe?), and .ppt deep "admiring the problem" solutions continually trotted out for studies by the Military Industrial Complex (which they are handsomely compensated for). Trend lines such as ship building, personnel and training are not positive. Is this what "winning" looks like?
Which won't do much good if the Chinese have anything similar to a TLAM-D (submunition dispenser). It's not like you can "dig in" very much on Guam.
(I honestly don't know about the TLAM-D equivalent thing, but the Chinese aren't exactly unknown for copying other peoples' ideas.)
[edit] Also, the actual facilities that hypothetical ChiCom munitions would be decoyed away from are already well known. If they don't have satellite imagery of every US military facility in the region I'll be surprised.
Huh. Forgive the ignorance, but is that remotely feasible?
The ‘that's a really good idea’ buzzer is going off in my head, but I've learned 'too clever by half' also sets that thing off. Anyone with subject matter knowledge know anything about keeping combat systems running on anchored hulks? What are the costs for something like that?
I supposed a week or so ago about a Tico or Burke going Winchester on the line. They may not be able to pull off the line due to the sensor requirements for the common picture. We are planning to fail.
As for the British Navy. Sad. Simply pathetic. They could have gone to Diego but I suppose they lack the ability to even refit from there. The rearming at Gibraltar does highlight the salient fact that the rock is of critical importance for the UK as they literally have no forward operating base outside of the UK any longer. One silver lining here: since the HMS Diamond doesn’t fire Sparrows, our inventory didn’t get robbed to rearm her.
The Type 45's did in the early days, but workarounds and improvements have been made and T45's have successfully operated in the Gulf for years with little trouble. The full, belt and braces, fix is the Power Improvement Project (PIP) which is underway at present. The first ship, Dauntless, is done with Daring and Dragon underway. Diamond, Defender and Duncan will follow.
"They could have gone to Diego but I suppose they lack the ability to even refit from there. The rearming at Gibraltar does highlight the salient fact that the rock is of critical importance for the UK as they literally have no forward operating base outside of the UK any longer."
The UK has a base at Duqm in Oman...frigates have had overhaul there in recent years. The Joint Logistics Support Base...it has space for carriers, SSN's and drydocking available...
And in Bahrain...HMS Jufair.
And an airbase, but no port facilities (apart from a pier at Dhekelia), in Cyprus.
UK military presence at Diego Garcia is a literal handful of personnel.
RN also has access to Souda Bay...its a NATO facility. The Italian Navy port at Taranto could have been used as they are familiar with loading Aster 15 and 30 to Sylver VLS.
She went to Gibraltar for reloading but mainly R & R AND maintenance. She'd been out a while, longer than planned, hence why she was rusty. She was in Gib for 3 weeks...and she got painted and hull maintenance whilst she was there....
2 factors, among many, will bear particularly tragic fruit for the USN in any war with China: the inability to reload VLS at sea, and the ridiculously short legs of USN strike aircraft. Both, self-inflicted wounds.
Yes. The fact that the carrier air group has atrophied into a limited main battery is tragic. Naval Air needs a Halsey sized boot up its ass to rectify.
It's a step. Albeit one that is 15 years late. Once the Stingray proved that it worked, both strike and tanker variants should have been immediately produced. But the F-18 Community...objected.
Proving, yet again, that we have ceased to be a serious people. Pity. Because we are pitted against a foe that while deeply flawed, is deadly serious.
Each of which cost roughly what a KC-46 tanker costs, which carries ~13x the fuel. What could you do with 200,000 pounds of fuel instead of 16,000 pounds of fuel?
Different role, KC-46 can't land on a carrier or operate in contested airspace, so if you need either, the Stingray is infinitely better for the price.
I would argue the KC-46 may be just as good in contested airspace and have the potential to better the MQ-25. It isn't an undefended target. It can also fly far enough to atone for the lack of carrier landing.
To deliver 16,000 pounds of fuel out of it's roughly 200,000 usable load you'd have to base it within 18 hours flying time. So if you have lost every runway within 10,000 miles of the carrier to the enemy then you have a problem. But since you can buy 10 KC-46 for the cost of the 12 MQ-25 (which I think is the current dream per AW) and the KC-46 can air refuel you have lots of tankers to push that out to 15,000 miles or so. So you can probably get a tanker on station.
If you want to refuel in S400 range, well, that not going to work well. But we'll see how effective and survivable the MQ-25 is once an actual enemy is really trying to either kill it or make it unable to deliver fuel.
That's the exact point: 200,000 lbs of jet fuel that goes up in a big fireball is not nearly as useful as 16,000 lbs of fuel successfully delivered to a strike package made up of F-35's, execrable though they are. At least the Stingray has, we are assured, a stealthy profile.
Well, we'll see. Those Cobham curved buddy stores don't look all that stealthy to me.
I suggest they send a few of them south across Zaporizhia (yes, directly through the Russian IADS) and across the Kerch Strait Bridge at 30,000 feet to see how stealthy and survivable they are in reality. Or just fly around 20 miles north of the front at whatever their planned refueling altitude is while buddy refueling each other. (Oops I guess it can't do that.)
And I tend to wonder about RF vulnerabilities. Remember when the US took a decade to realize that insurgents could view the video feed from US drones? Good times.
We need both big wing tankers (the KC-135/46 since the KC-10s are aging out and Boeing won't support them), and something small that belongs to the navy, beyond a buddy stored F18.
Agreed. The Navy has lacked organic tanking since they retired the S-3. The Hornet(from an Air Wing of 40!) that is carrying buddy stores is a Hornet that's not carrying ordnance.
The Navy often lives up to the old dictum, "If you wish to predict the behavior of any large organization, just assume that it is being run by a cabal of its own worst enemies."
Doc, you are a multi-tasker: hanging out both here and on OT!
over a decade now, been wondering why we don't have a weapon that can be stored, moved, positioned, and fired from......a container. something similar to "club-K"
"With a force of 86,886 (as of 1 Oct 2023) civilian and military personnel, NAVSEA engineers, builds, buys and maintains the Navy's ships and submarines and their combat systems."
Apparently they can't spare anybody for an expedited development team.
Someone needs to light a fire under NAVSEA management (and cough up some money). I know from my own time there that they have a good number of young hard-charging engineers and naval architects that would love to be loosed onto a project like that. HIMARS isn't anti-air, but it could free up VLS cells for more Standard Missiles and Sea Sparrows. If necessary, make the Gods of NATOPS scream a bit by taking up room on one side of the helo deck.
In mathematical terms (including the tyranny of time and distance) we have, all by ourselves, over-constrained the problem. In more contemporary terms, we are not only constraining ourselves to think inside the box, over the years we have built smaller and smaller expensive worn out boxes in which to operate. The entire gamut of DOTMLPF options have been gnawed down to the bone. Just as General Patton claimed to have read Rommel's book, the PRC knows us inside and out, making us far too predictable and far too vulnerable.
Screw that... give the problem to an NMCB or ACB and let them solve it. Seabees just love listening to "real sailors" telling them how the real Navy works.
IDK. Perhaps Diego would be a faster, if not closer, choice: Are speeds not limited in the Suez to prevent bank erosion? When I sailed through there I was more concerned about maintaining the minimum speed than the max but I think there was a max.
and Suez is such an easy and known choke point. Can we imagine a Taiwan operation that would not have some container ship sitting sideways in the Canal? Or some IRGC guys shooting AT weaps at passing ships?
The Soo Locks in Michigan are even more vulnerable. Just think of what would happen if wheat, coal and iron ore deliveries on the Great Lakes were halted.
Ship around by rail. The lines are there, but would require upgrading to provide an appropriate substitute. A rail line on the UP wasn’t called the “D***m Slow and Shabby Affair” for nothing when it got crazy amounts of snow.
True. They aren’t exactly “vetted”. Our were flim flam artists in disguise on the many back and forths we did during desert storm (4 round trips) on the CVN post 9-11 they were escorted by armed ships defense and kept under guard the entire transit.
Always hard to answer the question why might have happened if....
I suspect that had we supported Great Britain in 1956, Nasser might have been gone and there would no war with Israel in 1967 and there might not have been a coup in Iraq in 1958 which would eventually result in Saddam.
They got rid of all the tender captains in the '90s and early 2000s because 'amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics' and the tender captains were more professional than the carrier captains.
Which would mean tender captains as admirals and that was unacceptable.
On the other hand: submariner Harry Schrader, as CO of USS Howard W.Gilmore AS-16, deployed to LaMaddalena Sardinia in 73. Capt "Screaming Harry", USNA, went to be CO USS Long Beach CGN-9, retired as a Vice Admiral. He did not suffer fools lightly, but was a great guy to work for.
I already see Amazon containers on the railroads, and it is chartering ships.
I can easily imagine going to you Amazon account and clicking on a picture of a cruise missile, indicating the quantity and see if you qualify for free shipping. Maybe, you can use your rewards card, too.
Amazon Prime, free shipping for just $139 a year. Yeah, that Chase Bank/Amazon reward card too. I hate myself because it's Chase Bank, but the bonus bucks are huge. ☺
It's like a Air force guys who wanted the F-35 logistics system to work like FedEx. When was the last time DHL hit the apron at Memphis with cluster bombs?
Are those the milllion dollar weapons we are using to shoot down $20,000 drones? Or $2,000 drones? Is it foolish of us to expend these valuable missiles & not have them when needed? Are we being suckered? Would a $2,000 drone do much damage to a container on a cargo ship anyway? US is letting its attention get pulled away from Ukraine where Europe is on the line and so is our reputation. The middle east war is neverending and we are not going to solve it. Ukraine is ten times more important.
Ukraine is 10 times, 20 times more important than the Hundred Years War in the Middle East. As tragic as Middle East wars are, no outsider is ever going to "win". But Ukraine is clearly winnable and a stable democracy and ally after winning, and active US support shows we keep our NATO promises to our allies and shows the world the US is a reliable ally. We are being suckered into the Middle East, making an unwinnable 3rd front that tires us at home and spreads our fleet and wastes our ammo,
I take your point. Sufficient for me to only note that the delay in U.S. aid has accomplished something that successive U.S. presidents have been unable to see unfold and that's a cattle-prod to the EU's six as regards their military expenditures. I bristle at the whole "how reliable the U.S. is as an ally" mantra when so many nation states are banking on our support while blissfully content to short-shrift their own national security needs for the sake of other 'priorities.'
No DDG CO would want all of that reloading stuff on their focsl in/near the WEZ with emergency breakaway in the offing. This is a bridge to nowhere, and the Navy ought to relay on unmanned surface ships as additional magazines for manned ships to use.
Laz - that is not even close to what people are proposing. Stop being obtuse. Also, your "unmanned surface ships" are vaporware that are not even IOC nor will they be in the next decade, if then. FOC even longer, and of any appreciable number to be useful to a fleet commander even longer.
I don't see any contraption that can reload VLS in sea state 5 being any closer to IOC than the unmanned magazine ships. The optics on the VLS reload system have been fuzzy at best. SECNAV has said this system would be able to load underway, making way. I do not see that happening any time soon.
Why do we have to reload in sea state 5 all the time? I get the requirement but that’s also why we can’t procure weapons because we build the requirements for doomsday.
In the days of coal, no one took on coal at sea state 5 either, they found an appropriate time and place. Anyway, if that was their standard, no one would have put to sea. It is a silly point.
Agree. In a shoot out with a sea state of 5, we are gonna have bigger things to worry about than reloading immediately. Rearming isn’t necessarily going to be “on the line”. Just behind it will do. Like the Micronesian island chains or a lee against a shoal.
Doc, you aren’t moving explosives and precision equipment in those conditions. Ship operation is a practiced operation in those conditions. Ordinance movement in those condtions, which could CAUSE HULL LOSS , is a very bad idea.
The Qual Cert program for munitions handling is written in blood. Nobody wants another ship lost like USS TURNER (DD-648) or MOUNT HOOD (AE-11).
Missile barges, in cases where speed is not a primary issue? Fast container ships with decks loaded with VLS cell containers? My understanding is that with CEC, anything can house and fire a missile and the Aegis will do the rest. Yeah, damage control, fire off the barges' loads first and then scoot or abandon ship?
In fact, there was a 60s concept called HYDRA which involved single ICBMs floating in the water like captor mines. Have a submersible or semi-submersible VLS, mule, self-propelled or even towed. Possibly have them delivered at high speed by submarine to the flotilla, dropped off and the submarine returns to other duties.
You want us to think out of the box, right?
Personally I do not understand why it should be impossible to design a fully articulating controlled feed system to reload VLS cells singly or in packs. Sounds like something they took a stab at, had difficulties with, and decided to, in Rooster Cogburn's words, let it go with that.
I think ICBMs in controlled waters is a different animal than bringing ready rounds forward. Barges are large, slow targets. FSVs are fast, maneuverable, and now can have a degree of stealth. Plus not all the eggs in one basket.
You 2 should duke this out on a Midrats. This problem's along with many others is to embrace solutions already working in nature where nature = commercial. A Bruce Lee, "Be like water." Those mk 70s can be preloaded ashore and then be moved onto a ship in under a minute. If we can't get access to a friendly container port there are hundreds of feeder containerships with their own cranes. The missile loadout on a manned ship should be focused on a tighter inner defense and the ship should be controlling the offensive rounds coming up on the minimally manned/unmanned ships. Grow time on station. That process was demonstrated with Ranger's SM-6 shot and similar test on LCS. Modular Aegis on Mariner. All the pieces are there and the money needed is minimal compared to some of the rest of this Rube Goldberg solutioning.
What was proposed is a joke. The second they put hydraulics to it, I suspect any skipper of a DDG would lose his/her patience right damn quick on that answer. This is a stabilization and positioning problem and not one that would entail machinery to heft the weight of a VLS cell.
To be honest, if the demo is a pretty polly like you advocate, it's more apt to seem like a rigged demo. If real conditions are going to be rusty like that, it's actually better to test with a real rusty module. More would be likely to go wrong in such a case and it would hopefully lead to better decisions on tolerances and clearances and TTPs.
If you are doing a demo for senior Navy officials, take some pride in ownership. As for that demo? That had all the earmarks of doing something for the sake of getting the brass off their six so they can focus on stuff "that matters."
*sigh* New black shoe CPO in 1974. Six sets of gaberdine khakis...brown shoes/tan socks, long sleeve shirt w/ black tie, piss-cutter tucked in my belt. Promptly outgrew them. Then it was starched and pressed Wash Khaki or CNT with ribbons and later a warfare pin. No loin was ever better girded. I only ever wore a poopie suit when it was my turn to inspect the Frigate's plenum chamber before we got underway.
True. And I felt the same hovering at 21.9%BF in my last decade of service. Stark terror at 0500 mando PRT and my future opportunities going to zero kept me in the "pass" category. But you know, Pete, a poopie suit could have hidden a multitude of flaws.
Gaberdine! F that S! Last thing a steam ship sailor needed was a uniform that melted to your skin.
They stuck me on a ship waiting for school. I met with Chang in my gaberdines and was told, "throw that crap away and go down to Sears and buy cotton khakis. Get the long sleeves." The ship had a car and they sent me to Sears that morning.
Ah, nothing beat punching through the starched khakis, stiff as a board.
Gabs can be in wool, wool/cotton, wool/polyester or cotton. After all these years I have no clue what the gaberdine fabric was made of. Bought them at the Navy Uniform Shop at NAS Alameda. No way they'd sell me a set of uniforms that were a fire hazard, Tom. Right? At 26 I wanted to be the spiffiest, most dapper looking Chief on board that Aircraft Carrier. When I bought the gabs and had them tailored, I had an agreement to pay in full on 1 October 1974, the 1st increment. 1974 was the first year they convened selection boards for Chiefs. Before that they used the point system. My place on the list of EWC's was #2 of 72...EW was a brand-new rating. There I was ready to suit up in those gabs and be all sartorially splendid and they went and promoted me on the 2nd increment, 1 November. Had to wait another month to pull my collar devices out of a bowl of vile gruel with my teeth. The only uniforms I kept when I retired were the Wash Khakis. Damn if I didn't outgrow them in 3 months.
Anyone see this as something that would be operated from the deck of a DDG? Mount frame (delivered by support vessel) to deck of DDG to support carriage functioning in X-Y. NO HYDRAULICS. Use an inflatable collar as part of the x-y carriage with structural bracing that helps catch & stabilize the bottom 1/3rd of the cell. Tow industry uses inflatable devices to lift and position tractor-trailers on their sides and they're dealing with loads that make the weight of a VLS look like stabilizing a pencil. That industry can devise a suitable inflatable collar with material that is both durable and serviceable. Collar stablilizes the VLS cell while suspended and helps to gradually orient the cell while the crane does the Z-axis movement. All maintenance is done off-board and not on the DDG. Has anyone in the Navy even heard of stainless steel precision rack and pinion drives. Don't even need an electric motor for any of this. Good grief how to flippin overcomplicate something.
Over 40 years I've seen enough engineering solutions that gave little heed or attention to operations and maintenance side of things. They give no attention to what it would take to get replacement parts, the tools required or what it would take to access critical parts to perform replacement or repairs.
This is all fine as far as it goes. We can manufacture the necessary equipment and we can place that equipment aboard larger ships which have the size and the volume needed both to store the VLS ordnance plus the VLS reloading equipment.
But the other major issue which no one addresses is how to get the missiles and the VLS reloading equipment into the theater of operations and then to carry out what must, for practical purposes, be a time-consuming reload operation, possibly being carried out while under threat of attack.
My argument is this. The VLS support infastructure, including those vessels assigned to VLS logistics support and reload operations, are as valuable a target for attack as are the DDG's which embark frontline VLS capabilities deep inside the theater of operations.
To me, this isn't solely about saving time on turn-around. My assumption is that whatever infrastructure we have in play before a conflict starts will not likely resemble what exists D+<xx days> later. My perspective is what means of performing a VLS reload under less than ideal conditions are likely to exist and can those conditions be sustained? I would also assert the circumstances regarding ASBM's are likely to be far more menancing concern in the future and I would not want to bank on a presumption that they're a "bridge too far" in terms of being able to hold a very distant target at genuine risk.
Keeping VLS tubes supplied in the context of a real shooting war among peer naval adversaries is an issue which has never been seriously addressed. One reason for that situation is that no solutions are possible which don't have at least one serious downside of some kind which has the potential to negate and/or completely erase all the other benefits that VLS systems have.
Current reloading is a very finite number of targets. I needs to be like a Mongol hunt where our missiles are constantly in shipment and can be ready to shoot with one lift from any container crane, or crane able to move a container on earth.
So start making improved container hulls, mount ADLs, swap them out as expended is best considering personnel challenges? And build more tenders and tankers to keep them at sea, of course.
We refitted our Knox during desert storm alongside a USN Tender in Jeddah Saudi Arabia for 3 days. We need a solution like we had back then.
Knox had the rail launchers, didn't it? Don't think the Navy will be willing to give up the faster volley from VLS in return for ability to reload faster. That's the impression I get from reading about launch systems, anyway.
No. We had a 5 inch and the 8 cell MK16 launcher with ASROC and Harpoons. CWIS on the fantail. We were alongside for an engineering and radar casualty. We almost lost our 40 due to a three day scirocco off Tunisia. We had to get the gimbal repaired and the schedule to make it happen. Since we were primarily an ASW ship the lack of air search radar didn’t matter so much. We were conducting MIO boarding operations and diverting shipping bound for or leaving Iraq via its friendly buddies in Jordan via the Red Sea.
Thanks!
We might have been two ships passing in the night, Mr. T. CG-55 was in Jeddah around mid-March 1991 and did MIO w/ a few French ships in Mar-Apr in the vicinity of the Gulf of Aqaba.
So did we. We were attached to Saratoga when we deployed but got passed around to JFK a few times as well. We escorted Biddle to Toulon when she lost her rudder…. Spent a lot of time flying over the Red Sea that deployment. FF1082. We were the first MIO centurions.
Interesting Operation Area. It was named “OZ” and all the water space was named after the characters: Toto, Tin Man etc.. we fired our .50’s and even our 5 inch at an Iraqi tramp named the Tadmur. It stopped when we shot the 5 over her bow. But don’t tell VADM Cooper that we fired a shot in anger. Let him think he is the only and first since WW2…
We worked under the French. They were professionals but very stingy with information..."Warship 55 DE Free-gaht du Nauticke Fran-khysse (gobbledygook). Your stahy-she-onne ees Gare du Nord, K" "DE U.S. Warship #55, RAR." We were asking ourselves, "WTF & Where TF is Gar-Do Nord?" One of my OS's spoke French and said it was "North Station". Put him on the red phone to ask the Frogs for more info. They were very much more forthcoming once we had a civilized R/T talker. But I always knew the French were a prissy lot. Their enlisted's hats had a red pom-pom on it. Très susceptible. Our XO was the best ever. He picked the beefiest, burliest and tallest sailors for the boarding party and kitted them out with shotguns, M-14's, 1911's, body armor, black shirts & trousers, combat boots and helmets. He admonished them to scowl at all times. The XO only carried a .45 and as I recall didn't wear body armor. An elegant and fine Naval Officer. Our CO was CAPT Bob Patton (yes, a relative to George). He had a way with words that elicited compliance from merchant ship Captains. Two of my OS1's were 6'2" and giggled like school girls before stepping out to board. I got to do the intel reports.
Our boarding parties were mostly ops guys and STG and OS particularly. We worked closely with Spanish and Greek frigates for a couple of weeks. We flew their staff around a lot. They also snuck small wine bottles into my hands when we got fuel or did a pax transfer. I gave their aircrews on both ships, zippo’s. The Greeks gave me UZO. I figured no piss test for a while out here and shared it with my maintenance night check. Senior Chief couldn’t figure out why the metalsmith’s were hung over. Lol.
CDR Sal: Superb framing. A non-naval, civilian type can read this quickly, and get the point easily. Military types get the logistics problems at the point of loading (sea state 5? Really?), cringe at the tyranny of distance and time lost, and shake their heads at the rust "husbandry" symptoms of decline in western navies.
This is a huge problem in the ME. On the other side of the world, in the Pacific, similar distance problems, tougher opposition (MUCH), opposed logistics problems not seen since WW II (think Guam will be safe?), and .ppt deep "admiring the problem" solutions continually trotted out for studies by the Military Industrial Complex (which they are handsomely compensated for). Trend lines such as ship building, personnel and training are not positive. Is this what "winning" looks like?
Guam will be a missile sponge.
Time to build convincing decoys/fake emitters, etc. on Guam.
Which won't do much good if the Chinese have anything similar to a TLAM-D (submunition dispenser). It's not like you can "dig in" very much on Guam.
(I honestly don't know about the TLAM-D equivalent thing, but the Chinese aren't exactly unknown for copying other peoples' ideas.)
[edit] Also, the actual facilities that hypothetical ChiCom munitions would be decoyed away from are already well known. If they don't have satellite imagery of every US military facility in the region I'll be surprised.
Every little bit helps. Perhaps it's time to refurbish and utilize those Japanese caves.
(Shoichi Yokoi smiles.)
Or take some of the Tico's that the Navy is desperate to decommission, and deploy them, in place, around Guam.
Huh. Forgive the ignorance, but is that remotely feasible?
The ‘that's a really good idea’ buzzer is going off in my head, but I've learned 'too clever by half' also sets that thing off. Anyone with subject matter knowledge know anything about keeping combat systems running on anchored hulks? What are the costs for something like that?
I supposed a week or so ago about a Tico or Burke going Winchester on the line. They may not be able to pull off the line due to the sensor requirements for the common picture. We are planning to fail.
As for the British Navy. Sad. Simply pathetic. They could have gone to Diego but I suppose they lack the ability to even refit from there. The rearming at Gibraltar does highlight the salient fact that the rock is of critical importance for the UK as they literally have no forward operating base outside of the UK any longer. One silver lining here: since the HMS Diamond doesn’t fire Sparrows, our inventory didn’t get robbed to rearm her.
That deck though…. Damn.
Are the RN ships still having propulsion issues in warm water? That might take Diego right out.
In my limited experience, the Red Sea had the highest water temps I saw during a circumnavigation.
The Type 45's did in the early days, but workarounds and improvements have been made and T45's have successfully operated in the Gulf for years with little trouble. The full, belt and braces, fix is the Power Improvement Project (PIP) which is underway at present. The first ship, Dauntless, is done with Daring and Dragon underway. Diamond, Defender and Duncan will follow.
"They could have gone to Diego but I suppose they lack the ability to even refit from there. The rearming at Gibraltar does highlight the salient fact that the rock is of critical importance for the UK as they literally have no forward operating base outside of the UK any longer."
The UK has a base at Duqm in Oman...frigates have had overhaul there in recent years. The Joint Logistics Support Base...it has space for carriers, SSN's and drydocking available...
And in Bahrain...HMS Jufair.
And an airbase, but no port facilities (apart from a pier at Dhekelia), in Cyprus.
UK military presence at Diego Garcia is a literal handful of personnel.
RN also has access to Souda Bay...its a NATO facility. The Italian Navy port at Taranto could have been used as they are familiar with loading Aster 15 and 30 to Sylver VLS.
She went to Gibraltar for reloading but mainly R & R AND maintenance. She'd been out a while, longer than planned, hence why she was rusty. She was in Gib for 3 weeks...and she got painted and hull maintenance whilst she was there....
2 factors, among many, will bear particularly tragic fruit for the USN in any war with China: the inability to reload VLS at sea, and the ridiculously short legs of USN strike aircraft. Both, self-inflicted wounds.
Yes. The fact that the carrier air group has atrophied into a limited main battery is tragic. Naval Air needs a Halsey sized boot up its ass to rectify.
A rectified rectum. Got it.
MQ-25 Stingray is at least a step towards fixing the second point, and it's Not Too Far from going operational.
Also helps USN strike payloads, if they can take off with a light fuel load to carry more boom and top off in the air
It's a step. Albeit one that is 15 years late. Once the Stingray proved that it worked, both strike and tanker variants should have been immediately produced. But the F-18 Community...objected.
Proving, yet again, that we have ceased to be a serious people. Pity. Because we are pitted against a foe that while deeply flawed, is deadly serious.
Each of which cost roughly what a KC-46 tanker costs, which carries ~13x the fuel. What could you do with 200,000 pounds of fuel instead of 16,000 pounds of fuel?
Different role, KC-46 can't land on a carrier or operate in contested airspace, so if you need either, the Stingray is infinitely better for the price.
I would argue the KC-46 may be just as good in contested airspace and have the potential to better the MQ-25. It isn't an undefended target. It can also fly far enough to atone for the lack of carrier landing.
To deliver 16,000 pounds of fuel out of it's roughly 200,000 usable load you'd have to base it within 18 hours flying time. So if you have lost every runway within 10,000 miles of the carrier to the enemy then you have a problem. But since you can buy 10 KC-46 for the cost of the 12 MQ-25 (which I think is the current dream per AW) and the KC-46 can air refuel you have lots of tankers to push that out to 15,000 miles or so. So you can probably get a tanker on station.
If you want to refuel in S400 range, well, that not going to work well. But we'll see how effective and survivable the MQ-25 is once an actual enemy is really trying to either kill it or make it unable to deliver fuel.
That's the exact point: 200,000 lbs of jet fuel that goes up in a big fireball is not nearly as useful as 16,000 lbs of fuel successfully delivered to a strike package made up of F-35's, execrable though they are. At least the Stingray has, we are assured, a stealthy profile.
Well, we'll see. Those Cobham curved buddy stores don't look all that stealthy to me.
I suggest they send a few of them south across Zaporizhia (yes, directly through the Russian IADS) and across the Kerch Strait Bridge at 30,000 feet to see how stealthy and survivable they are in reality. Or just fly around 20 miles north of the front at whatever their planned refueling altitude is while buddy refueling each other. (Oops I guess it can't do that.)
And I tend to wonder about RF vulnerabilities. Remember when the US took a decade to realize that insurgents could view the video feed from US drones? Good times.
We need both big wing tankers (the KC-135/46 since the KC-10s are aging out and Boeing won't support them), and something small that belongs to the navy, beyond a buddy stored F18.
Be nice if the small tanker could mid-air refuel.
Agreed. The Navy has lacked organic tanking since they retired the S-3. The Hornet(from an Air Wing of 40!) that is carrying buddy stores is a Hornet that's not carrying ordnance.
The Navy often lives up to the old dictum, "If you wish to predict the behavior of any large organization, just assume that it is being run by a cabal of its own worst enemies."
Doc, you are a multi-tasker: hanging out both here and on OT!
over a decade now, been wondering why we don't have a weapon that can be stored, moved, positioned, and fired from......a container. something similar to "club-K"
We could install MK16 launchers on any ship with the deck space. Including auxiliaries.
If we have the missiles to put in them
Nice to see the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" is aging well... Very observant sir...
"With a force of 86,886 (as of 1 Oct 2023) civilian and military personnel, NAVSEA engineers, builds, buys and maintains the Navy's ships and submarines and their combat systems."
Apparently they can't spare anybody for an expedited development team.
Lol
Someone needs to light a fire under NAVSEA management (and cough up some money). I know from my own time there that they have a good number of young hard-charging engineers and naval architects that would love to be loosed onto a project like that. HIMARS isn't anti-air, but it could free up VLS cells for more Standard Missiles and Sea Sparrows. If necessary, make the Gods of NATOPS scream a bit by taking up room on one side of the helo deck.
In mathematical terms (including the tyranny of time and distance) we have, all by ourselves, over-constrained the problem. In more contemporary terms, we are not only constraining ourselves to think inside the box, over the years we have built smaller and smaller expensive worn out boxes in which to operate. The entire gamut of DOTMLPF options have been gnawed down to the bone. Just as General Patton claimed to have read Rommel's book, the PRC knows us inside and out, making us far too predictable and far too vulnerable.
Forget that. Get some retirees with active clearances together with a GoFundMe and then ask Congress to cut / redirect their funding.
Screw that... give the problem to an NMCB or ACB and let them solve it. Seabees just love listening to "real sailors" telling them how the real Navy works.
I’m thinking the GoFundMe route for a shipboard installation and the NMCB/ACB route for shore support.
Works for me...
Or even SIMA.
I served in the Amphibs and the Mobiles.
The difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer, miracles by appointment only.
When I retired in 1991, Seabees were already compromised by what we then called political correctness, now we call it woke.
It was just about 3 months from Pearl Harbor (12/7/41) until Naval Construction Battalion 1 was commissioned 3/15/42.
Those days are long past, the next war will not allow us 3 months to mobilize.
For those keeping score, 9/11/2001 did not elicit a response analogous to 12/7/41.
So here we are, allowing our enemies to strengthen, as we vitiate our forces.
IDK. Perhaps Diego would be a faster, if not closer, choice: Are speeds not limited in the Suez to prevent bank erosion? When I sailed through there I was more concerned about maintaining the minimum speed than the max but I think there was a max.
and Suez is such an easy and known choke point. Can we imagine a Taiwan operation that would not have some container ship sitting sideways in the Canal? Or some IRGC guys shooting AT weaps at passing ships?
I submit that putting a saboteur in the pilot house of a ship passing thru the Suez or Panama Canals would be too easy for words.
The Soo Locks in Michigan are even more vulnerable. Just think of what would happen if wheat, coal and iron ore deliveries on the Great Lakes were halted.
Ship around by rail. The lines are there, but would require upgrading to provide an appropriate substitute. A rail line on the UP wasn’t called the “D***m Slow and Shabby Affair” for nothing when it got crazy amounts of snow.
Not so easy given the congestion in Chicago. Not a well-run city.
No need to go that far south. CN has a direct line from Duluth-Superior to Manitowoc.
One of the up sides of the Jones Act.
It certainly would be bad if a bulker full of something like cement sank there.
True. They aren’t exactly “vetted”. Our were flim flam artists in disguise on the many back and forths we did during desert storm (4 round trips) on the CVN post 9-11 they were escorted by armed ships defense and kept under guard the entire transit.
With the demonstrated competence of the Suez pilots, that's not necessary. Ever given? More like everclear.
Holding onto my response simply because my sometimes nefarious imagination can generate too many scenarios I’d like to not provide our enemies.
Maybe Ike made a big mistake pushing Great Britain out of the Middle East back in '56.
They would have left on their own, one way or another
Always hard to answer the question why might have happened if....
I suspect that had we supported Great Britain in 1956, Nasser might have been gone and there would no war with Israel in 1967 and there might not have been a coup in Iraq in 1958 which would eventually result in Saddam.
Just guesswork.
Post WWII, England no longer wanted to be a colonial power -
Anthony Eden wanted to maintain the UK as a world power.
If he had been backed up by Ike he might have survived politically, and events might have taken a different turn.
Tenders could go a long way towards mitigating this, and other, problems.
They got rid of all the tender captains in the '90s and early 2000s because 'amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics' and the tender captains were more professional than the carrier captains.
Which would mean tender captains as admirals and that was unacceptable.
Truth there. Tender COs tended to be 2nd or 3rd CO tour crusty SWO types. Not what the Navy wanted as Admiral selects. BTW: Love your books!!!
Rear Admiral Stanley Earl Bump, USN - C.O. USS Holland AS-32 - Unfortunately, the Admiral was a bubblehead! RIP Admiral!
My old XO from 2008-09 was CO of one of the tenders. Beats being Commodore of a Subron.
Doing some on Substack
https://johnringoauthor.substack.com/
Pass the word.
WILCO.
On the other hand: submariner Harry Schrader, as CO of USS Howard W.Gilmore AS-16, deployed to LaMaddalena Sardinia in 73. Capt "Screaming Harry", USNA, went to be CO USS Long Beach CGN-9, retired as a Vice Admiral. He did not suffer fools lightly, but was a great guy to work for.
Just turn the whole logistics operation over to Amazon.
Not a bad idea.
I already see Amazon containers on the railroads, and it is chartering ships.
I can easily imagine going to you Amazon account and clicking on a picture of a cruise missile, indicating the quantity and see if you qualify for free shipping. Maybe, you can use your rewards card, too.
You’ll shoot your eye out with that thing.
hA! yer a kick, Sir! hundred "likes" for the grin, thanx!
Amazon Prime, free shipping for just $139 a year. Yeah, that Chase Bank/Amazon reward card too. I hate myself because it's Chase Bank, but the bonus bucks are huge. ☺
LOL- reminds me of the time I ordered an F-14. Chit went all the way to Commodores office before someone caught it and asked why an AFS needed one...
It's like a Air force guys who wanted the F-35 logistics system to work like FedEx. When was the last time DHL hit the apron at Memphis with cluster bombs?
Are those the milllion dollar weapons we are using to shoot down $20,000 drones? Or $2,000 drones? Is it foolish of us to expend these valuable missiles & not have them when needed? Are we being suckered? Would a $2,000 drone do much damage to a container on a cargo ship anyway? US is letting its attention get pulled away from Ukraine where Europe is on the line and so is our reputation. The middle east war is neverending and we are not going to solve it. Ukraine is ten times more important.
Uk is 10 times more important than what?
Ukraine is 10 times, 20 times more important than the Hundred Years War in the Middle East. As tragic as Middle East wars are, no outsider is ever going to "win". But Ukraine is clearly winnable and a stable democracy and ally after winning, and active US support shows we keep our NATO promises to our allies and shows the world the US is a reliable ally. We are being suckered into the Middle East, making an unwinnable 3rd front that tires us at home and spreads our fleet and wastes our ammo,
I take your point. Sufficient for me to only note that the delay in U.S. aid has accomplished something that successive U.S. presidents have been unable to see unfold and that's a cattle-prod to the EU's six as regards their military expenditures. I bristle at the whole "how reliable the U.S. is as an ally" mantra when so many nation states are banking on our support while blissfully content to short-shrift their own national security needs for the sake of other 'priorities.'
No DDG CO would want all of that reloading stuff on their focsl in/near the WEZ with emergency breakaway in the offing. This is a bridge to nowhere, and the Navy ought to relay on unmanned surface ships as additional magazines for manned ships to use.
Laz - that is not even close to what people are proposing. Stop being obtuse. Also, your "unmanned surface ships" are vaporware that are not even IOC nor will they be in the next decade, if then. FOC even longer, and of any appreciable number to be useful to a fleet commander even longer.
I don't see any contraption that can reload VLS in sea state 5 being any closer to IOC than the unmanned magazine ships. The optics on the VLS reload system have been fuzzy at best. SECNAV has said this system would be able to load underway, making way. I do not see that happening any time soon.
Why do we have to reload in sea state 5 all the time? I get the requirement but that’s also why we can’t procure weapons because we build the requirements for doomsday.
In the days of coal, no one took on coal at sea state 5 either, they found an appropriate time and place. Anyway, if that was their standard, no one would have put to sea. It is a silly point.
Agree. In a shoot out with a sea state of 5, we are gonna have bigger things to worry about than reloading immediately. Rearming isn’t necessarily going to be “on the line”. Just behind it will do. Like the Micronesian island chains or a lee against a shoal.
6-8' waves is too much? 21-knot winds?
Jebus H. Crackerjacks on a Ritz: I've sailed a 35' boat off Santa Monica in worse weather than that and called it 'Sunday'.
Doc, you aren’t moving explosives and precision equipment in those conditions. Ship operation is a practiced operation in those conditions. Ordinance movement in those condtions, which could CAUSE HULL LOSS , is a very bad idea.
The Qual Cert program for munitions handling is written in blood. Nobody wants another ship lost like USS TURNER (DD-648) or MOUNT HOOD (AE-11).
Missile barges, in cases where speed is not a primary issue? Fast container ships with decks loaded with VLS cell containers? My understanding is that with CEC, anything can house and fire a missile and the Aegis will do the rest. Yeah, damage control, fire off the barges' loads first and then scoot or abandon ship?
In fact, there was a 60s concept called HYDRA which involved single ICBMs floating in the water like captor mines. Have a submersible or semi-submersible VLS, mule, self-propelled or even towed. Possibly have them delivered at high speed by submarine to the flotilla, dropped off and the submarine returns to other duties.
You want us to think out of the box, right?
Personally I do not understand why it should be impossible to design a fully articulating controlled feed system to reload VLS cells singly or in packs. Sounds like something they took a stab at, had difficulties with, and decided to, in Rooster Cogburn's words, let it go with that.
I think ICBMs in controlled waters is a different animal than bringing ready rounds forward. Barges are large, slow targets. FSVs are fast, maneuverable, and now can have a degree of stealth. Plus not all the eggs in one basket.
You 2 should duke this out on a Midrats. This problem's along with many others is to embrace solutions already working in nature where nature = commercial. A Bruce Lee, "Be like water." Those mk 70s can be preloaded ashore and then be moved onto a ship in under a minute. If we can't get access to a friendly container port there are hundreds of feeder containerships with their own cranes. The missile loadout on a manned ship should be focused on a tighter inner defense and the ship should be controlling the offensive rounds coming up on the minimally manned/unmanned ships. Grow time on station. That process was demonstrated with Ranger's SM-6 shot and similar test on LCS. Modular Aegis on Mariner. All the pieces are there and the money needed is minimal compared to some of the rest of this Rube Goldberg solutioning.
What was proposed is a joke. The second they put hydraulics to it, I suspect any skipper of a DDG would lose his/her patience right damn quick on that answer. This is a stabilization and positioning problem and not one that would entail machinery to heft the weight of a VLS cell.
To be honest, if the demo is a pretty polly like you advocate, it's more apt to seem like a rigged demo. If real conditions are going to be rusty like that, it's actually better to test with a real rusty module. More would be likely to go wrong in such a case and it would hopefully lead to better decisions on tolerances and clearances and TTPs.
If you are doing a demo for senior Navy officials, take some pride in ownership. As for that demo? That had all the earmarks of doing something for the sake of getting the brass off their six so they can focus on stuff "that matters."
True, it would have only been a seaman's time and effort to scrape and paint the cell, I suppose.
... or it could be someone using a sand (or glass bead) blaster, followed by professional quality paint spray gun rig.
Here's a lesson, if the men you are meeting with are wearing a suit and tie; wear a uniform that does not make you look like you are in your pajamas.
Agreed. I think it's disrespectful to wear BDUs when meeting heads of states or their ministers.
What's even worse is that Service Dress Blue is a good looking uniform, and as comfortable as a suit and tie.
Bring back dress khakis!
Its like how cops look no different than security or prison guards in some places now. Forget that.
*sigh* New black shoe CPO in 1974. Six sets of gaberdine khakis...brown shoes/tan socks, long sleeve shirt w/ black tie, piss-cutter tucked in my belt. Promptly outgrew them. Then it was starched and pressed Wash Khaki or CNT with ribbons and later a warfare pin. No loin was ever better girded. I only ever wore a poopie suit when it was my turn to inspect the Frigate's plenum chamber before we got underway.
Keeping the air pressure under control is important than looking good.
True. And I felt the same hovering at 21.9%BF in my last decade of service. Stark terror at 0500 mando PRT and my future opportunities going to zero kept me in the "pass" category. But you know, Pete, a poopie suit could have hidden a multitude of flaws.
Gaberdine! F that S! Last thing a steam ship sailor needed was a uniform that melted to your skin.
They stuck me on a ship waiting for school. I met with Chang in my gaberdines and was told, "throw that crap away and go down to Sears and buy cotton khakis. Get the long sleeves." The ship had a car and they sent me to Sears that morning.
Ah, nothing beat punching through the starched khakis, stiff as a board.
Gabs can be in wool, wool/cotton, wool/polyester or cotton. After all these years I have no clue what the gaberdine fabric was made of. Bought them at the Navy Uniform Shop at NAS Alameda. No way they'd sell me a set of uniforms that were a fire hazard, Tom. Right? At 26 I wanted to be the spiffiest, most dapper looking Chief on board that Aircraft Carrier. When I bought the gabs and had them tailored, I had an agreement to pay in full on 1 October 1974, the 1st increment. 1974 was the first year they convened selection boards for Chiefs. Before that they used the point system. My place on the list of EWC's was #2 of 72...EW was a brand-new rating. There I was ready to suit up in those gabs and be all sartorially splendid and they went and promoted me on the 2nd increment, 1 November. Had to wait another month to pull my collar devices out of a bowl of vile gruel with my teeth. The only uniforms I kept when I retired were the Wash Khakis. Damn if I didn't outgrow them in 3 months.
Gaberdine... screw that... CNT baby CNT...
Tropical Wool worsted
Anyone see this as something that would be operated from the deck of a DDG? Mount frame (delivered by support vessel) to deck of DDG to support carriage functioning in X-Y. NO HYDRAULICS. Use an inflatable collar as part of the x-y carriage with structural bracing that helps catch & stabilize the bottom 1/3rd of the cell. Tow industry uses inflatable devices to lift and position tractor-trailers on their sides and they're dealing with loads that make the weight of a VLS look like stabilizing a pencil. That industry can devise a suitable inflatable collar with material that is both durable and serviceable. Collar stablilizes the VLS cell while suspended and helps to gradually orient the cell while the crane does the Z-axis movement. All maintenance is done off-board and not on the DDG. Has anyone in the Navy even heard of stainless steel precision rack and pinion drives. Don't even need an electric motor for any of this. Good grief how to flippin overcomplicate something.
Points for looking for solutions that already exist.
Over 40 years I've seen enough engineering solutions that gave little heed or attention to operations and maintenance side of things. They give no attention to what it would take to get replacement parts, the tools required or what it would take to access critical parts to perform replacement or repairs.
This is all fine as far as it goes. We can manufacture the necessary equipment and we can place that equipment aboard larger ships which have the size and the volume needed both to store the VLS ordnance plus the VLS reloading equipment.
But the other major issue which no one addresses is how to get the missiles and the VLS reloading equipment into the theater of operations and then to carry out what must, for practical purposes, be a time-consuming reload operation, possibly being carried out while under threat of attack.
My argument is this. The VLS support infastructure, including those vessels assigned to VLS logistics support and reload operations, are as valuable a target for attack as are the DDG's which embark frontline VLS capabilities deep inside the theater of operations.
To me, this isn't solely about saving time on turn-around. My assumption is that whatever infrastructure we have in play before a conflict starts will not likely resemble what exists D+<xx days> later. My perspective is what means of performing a VLS reload under less than ideal conditions are likely to exist and can those conditions be sustained? I would also assert the circumstances regarding ASBM's are likely to be far more menancing concern in the future and I would not want to bank on a presumption that they're a "bridge too far" in terms of being able to hold a very distant target at genuine risk.
Keeping VLS tubes supplied in the context of a real shooting war among peer naval adversaries is an issue which has never been seriously addressed. One reason for that situation is that no solutions are possible which don't have at least one serious downside of some kind which has the potential to negate and/or completely erase all the other benefits that VLS systems have.
Well if the solution the Navy has in mind resembles anything close to what that photo showed, I would certainly concur with that assessment.
Well, this becomes a pretty simple process if the magazines are as limited as feared.
Current reloading is a very finite number of targets. I needs to be like a Mongol hunt where our missiles are constantly in shipment and can be ready to shoot with one lift from any container crane, or crane able to move a container on earth.