Always like to use critics’ own arguments concerning the limitations of off the shelf or low cost weapons against them, and here is a case in point. This DoD Buzz article detailing the merits and minuses of both wheeled and track armor had the following to say against the former:
The problem with wheeled vehicles is they fast reach an upper weight limit, around the 30 ton range, where performance goes completely out the window; wheels just offer far less footprint to spread the weight around than tracks.
I see the 30 ton weight limit as a plus, since it is an unsurmountable incentive to halt the dramatic rise in the size and cost of armored vehicles. Better armor and guns are fine but at some point it meets absurdity like the German giants of the late WW 2, where they were so heavy as to be increasingly immobile on the battlefield. A few large tanks didn’t matter anyway, since the Allies were swamping this with mass productions of vehicles like the Sherman and the T-34.
The 70 ton M-1 Abrams seems to be the limit for the tank, and the only way to go from here is smaller and lighter. But you don’t need some dramatic breakthrough in armor to reduce the size of tanks. We already have these with reactive armor like Chobham and active defenses like Trophy and also cage armor, plus even certain types of cloth! Where these can be fitted on the main battle tanks, likewise can they be equally effective on the armored cars like Stryker, and have been.
As with vehicle protection, the same might be said of its offensive armament. Now it isn’t so much the size of a vehicle guns, but what type of round the gun fires whether Sabot or HEAT. Some might do away with the gun altogether for the increasingly lethal anti-tank guided missile.
Recently we posted on the American use of wheeled armor versus the Canadians use of Leopard tanks in Afghanistan. We thought it interesting the fact that the US troops could do without the tanks, as much as heavy armor proponents would still laud the use of tracked armor in such rough terrain. Considering the tremendous logistical baggage such a very heavy vehicle brings with it, our thinking that the continued miniaturization warfare might favor the smaller, more affordable off the shelf vehicles better.
We would keep some tracked vehicles around, which in prohibitive terrain might be needed to pull the Stryker out of the mud! Just as in civilian life, not every vehicle is a four wheel drive, in a combat situation every vehicle need not be of the tractor variety.
M-1 Abrams in Iraq
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
The new US Navy Secretary has his work cut out for him trying to maintain USN ship numbers, especially with a procurement budget of only $14 billion a year, while expecting it to grow from 280 ships today to 313 in few decades. So many billions might be welcome to smaller navies, but when the typical Navy warship runs several billion each (a new aircraft carrier costs $10 billion, while the first DDG-1000 destroyer is expected to run up to $7 billion), then the money runs out very quickly. Here is Sec. Mabus via the Montgomery Advertiser:
“We’ve to got make sure that we buy the things that we buy on schedule, on budget — that we don’t unilaterally disarm ourselves because we’re buying ever-more-exotic, ever-more-expensive but ever-fewer numbers of ships or aircraft.”
In the same article Peter Singer at the Brookings Institution warns of a procurement death-spiral, not so much because of the lack of funds, but ongoing Navy shipbuilding practices of designing ever more capable, but not very practical weapons:
“Almost every new Navy ship and aircraft being bought is immensely costly and typically over-budget,” Singer said. “This in turn means we can only buy fewer and fewer, undermining national security. If Mabus doesn’t break this trend, he will preside over a Navy that could very well end up near 200 ships.”
At the same time Mabus admits our smaller fleet can do many more things than the much larger Navy of 20 years ago, but also such wonder vessels can’t be everywhere at once:
“They can do way more things than 550 ships could 25 years ago,” he said. “But at some point the numbers begin to matter. No matter how good the capabilities of any one ship are, that one ship can (only) be at one place at a time.”
Recently the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations admitted the fleet was suffering a “presence deficit” in which there was plenty of ships available for high end, Blue Water missions, but far fewer for the all important littoral mission which has been a core function since the demise of the Soviet Union. The only warship platform geared specifically toward this mission is the 3000 ton littoral combat ship, itself suffering cost overruns three times the original estimate, and consistently delayed with technical faults.
So far it seems the Navy answers have been ” business as usual”. Clearly the practice of fitting new tactics for fighting Third World threats on older 20 century warship types is failing, with such vessels increasing in size and cost but shrinking in numbers. Typical of this preference for gold-plated warships has been the DDG-1000 program, which we thought we had heard the last of after Defense Secretary Gates truncated the program at 3 ships. The new Zumwalt class destroyer is a 14,000 ton vessel, sold as a littoral vessel, but which might now be at risk because of rumors of Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles, with the Zumwalt possessing very limited anti-air capability despites its great cost and immense size.
Sadly, with so many more urgent needs on the table, and the littoral mission still suffering from neglect, the Navy is devising ways to maintain the budget-draining Zumwalt program. The details of this plan can be read at the Information Dissemination Blog. We also point you to the comments for our opinion on this insane idea, which reveals an ongoing Navy bent toward self-destruction, their own worst enemies still fighting the wars of the past while becoming ever more irrelevant in the present.
From your friends at New Wars, have a safe and Happy Holiday!
Future Influence Squadron?
I caught this intriguing photo at the Navy website, which looked much like the Influence Squadron recently proposed to supersede our current Expeditionary Strike Groups in littoral waters. Here’s is the photo’s caption:
The Royal Malaysian Navy multi-role support ship KD Sri Indera Sakti, corvette KD Lekir and patrol vessel KD Handalan maneuver in formation with the amphibious dock landing ship USS Harpers Ferry (LSD 49) and the guided-missile destroyers USS Chafee (DDG 90) and USS Chung-Hoon (DDG 93) during a Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) Malaysia 2009 exercise.
You have most everything you need here to project power in coastal waters without putting very expensive and vulnerable Blue Water battleships at risk for such mundane but important operations: an anti-air destroyer (would replace with guided missile corvette IMHO), an amphibious and mothership, corvettes for patrol duties, with all that is missing are the high speed vessels. Not a bad first start though!
After a rocky start, trimaran Independence (LCS 2) departs Mobile, Ala. to begin builder's sea trials in the Gulf of Mexico.
US Navy
China vs. Our Aircraft Carriers.
Cost Goals for U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship Overly Optimistic.
Littoral combat ship trials rescheduled due to propulsion problems.
What a USN Corvette Might Look Like.
Fleets Turn to Small Ships for New Conflicts.
Submarine Numbers at Issue.
The Navy’s Gators, An Endangered Species? (pdf)
Will the US Tolerate China’s Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile?
Frigate hosts latest trials for unmanned helo.
Warships of the World
Turkey, Germany to sign submarine deal.
Wrong decisions could sink Canada’s navy.
Suspected North Korean Arms Ship Flees for Home.
Naval Supremacy Without Ships.
Russia to offer Amur Class subs to Indian Navy.
World’s largest submarines will return to service.
Royal Navy carriers face £1bn cost increase.
RN Carrier HMS Invincible cannibalized for spare parts.
Royal Navy’s Trident upgrade could be scrapped.
Japan denies secret pact allowing nuke-armed US warships.
Israeli Navy Rejects American LCS.
Canada is ‘Arctic superpower’.
Tackling Pirates
All-Arab Red Sea anti-piracy force proposed in Riyadh.
Iran saves oil tanker from Somali pirates.
New NATO flotilla takes over anti-piracy patrols.
Russia sends another warship to fight piracy.
From the Navy Vaults
Captain Frederick John Walker: Royal Navy’’s German U-boat Menance.
Battle of the Bismarck Sea.
The Race to Malta.
World War I: HMS Dreadnought.
The “Best” Sub Hunter
Australian navy submarine HMAS Waller (SSG 75).
The Navy will insist the most effective way to sink a submarine is with another submarine. This may be a true statement but not necessarily how the admirals would have you believe. Historically the most successful killer of submarines have been aircraft and surface ships, with about 250 U-boats sinkings apiece during the Second Battle of the Atlantic. Only 22 German submarines were lost due to other subs, and in the Pacific just 1 US boat was sunk by its Japanese equivalent. In all recorded history only a single sub has been sunk by another boat while both were submerged, the U-864 by HMS Venturer in February 1945.
During wargames with US nuclear boats Allied conventional craft such as the Swedish Gotland have bested US warships including submarines. Apparently, the Australians are especially adept at “killing” our advanced boats, specifically the Collins class HMAS Waller, according to Wikipedia:
HMAS Waller participated in RIMPAC 2000. During the exercise, Waller successfully “sank” two Los Angeles submarines, and moved into torpedo range of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln without being detected.
During Exercise Tandem Thrust in 2001, HMAS Waller “sank” two USN amphibious assault ships in waters between 75 and 105 metres (250 and 340 ft) in depth, barely more than the length of the submarine itself.
We think the above is a history-making incident, as profound as the aircraft carrier exercises conducted by the US Fleet in the 1930s. Conventional boats are much quieter, smaller, and naturally more maneuverable than the very large craft now deployed by the USN. It could be that in a future war at sea, the nuclear submarine which is the scourge of the surface fleet, may be at risk as well from the miniature, apparently underpowered, and presumed less able versions of themselves.
The Aerial Threat
The problems of aircraft in modern anti-submarine warfare are obvious. Each operate in two different environments, one below the sea, the other well above it. Neither can effectively operate in the other’s natural habitat, so neither are a major threat to the other unless one invades the other’s territory.
When submarines sailed exclusively on the surface, before the advent of snorkels, nuclear power, and Air Independent Propulsion, the patrol bomber equipped with ASV (Air to Surface Vessel) radar had the advantage. Today as we have seen, the new diving boats are true submersibles, a major threat to all two venture in or near her dimension. With this theory in mind, the slow, hovering ASW helicopter may be at greatest risk. Here is DK Brown on the risks aircraft take, from his book, “The Future British Surface Fleet“:
In many ASW operations, a helicopter or patrol aircraft will be required to fly low and slow, which makes either vulnerable to even the simplest submarine-launched anti-aircraft missiles…It is surprising that more attention has not been given to such weapons as, even if they had a low success rate, their use would serious disrupt ASW as currently conducted.
In wartime, sub-launched SAMs would certainly be deployed. In the 1970s Britain experimented with a version of their Blowpipe missile titled SLAM (Submarine Launched Airflight Missile). The Soviets designed the SA-19 Iglas missile for use on its Kilo class conventional boat.
The Patrol Bomber still in frontline US service since the 1960s is the P-3 Orion. It is still a good platform despite its age with plans to replace it with the jet-powered P-8 Poseidon. Similar aging ASW workhorses are flown by allied nations include the British Nimrod and the French Atlantique 2. Listen to the following commentary on US patrol planes from Navlog.com:
Of the more than 10,000 hours flown by Navy P-3Cs in the Persian Gulf, none of this time involved ASW. Rather, the missions involved supporting ground troops in Iraq and performing maritime interception operations as part of the coalition’s stopping illegal smuggling of oil. While meeting the current needs of the service after essentially abandoning ASW after the collapse of the USSR, the world’s navies – the US Navy in the forefront — find themselves ill-equipped to counter the explosive growth in the Third World fleet of stealthy, fourth generation diesel-electric subs like the U-212/214-class and the Scorpene-class…The critical shortage of P-3Cs has resulted in an almost total cessation of training when a squadron returns home from deployment as most of its aircraft are quickly cycled back to the fleet for overseas operations. In 1991 the Navy had 25 active and 13 reserve VP squadrons, each with nine airplanes. Today it has 12 active operational and six reserve squadrons, with all reserve squadrons to have been decommissioned by 2007. There are simply no aircraft to spare for the reserves any longer. Today, the Navy is down to just three deployment sites with each squadron having just eight airplanes each, a total of 24 planes.
Here are some facts on Sonar and the US Navy’s SOSUS from DK Brown and his book “The Future British Surface Fleet“:
- Because (SOSUS) installations are fixed, they are vulnerable to countermeasures and they cannot be redeployed to meet threats in other parts of the world.
- Shortage of sonobouys could soon become a problem in a prolonged war, as would numbers of patrol aircraft.
- The range at which passive sonars of all sorts can detect these new, quiet submarines is much reduced, though many older, clanking boats will remain in service for years,’
- Since active sonar has to detect an echo, inherently weak, from the target, its range is limited and may be further reduced if the target submarine is given anechoic coating.
The Sum of Our Fears
A P-3C Orion patrols above USS Seawolf (SSN 21).
Some may consider the bleak picture we have painted concerning the state of anti-submarine warfare leaves no room for hope. They may see the proud surface combatants conceding defeat, lowering their flags, and dropping anchor for the final time while the new U-boats range the Blue Ocean at their will. This need not be the case, if a concerted effort is made by Western navies to recall the basics of war at sea, rejecting the special circumstances of the Cold War when they had no peer rival for much of the period.
The number of patrol plane squadrons should be boosted dramatically, perhaps giving the Air Force a greater role by steering it from hot jet fighters. The use of unmanned aerials vehicles on all warships should proceed immediately. New hulls forms, smaller ships, a greater number of combatants at sea might restore at least a parity with the astonishingly capable stealthy attack submarine. Then when all is said and done, it will be up to the sailors themselves, as it always with in naval combat, to tilt the balance back in our favor, securing Freedom of the Seas for a new generation.
Back in May I mentioned how Britain was struggling to maintain a military force which was like the US Military only in miniature. This was in a post titled “Great Britain’s Defense Options“:
The United Kingdom, much like most Western militaries, is shaped in the image of the United States superpower except in miniature. Her fine Army is built around heavy Challenger II tanks, and swift Warrior armored infantry carriers. Her historic Royal Air Force is well equipped with new Typhoon air superiority fighters, older Tornado fighter bombers, and Harrier V/STOL close support fighters. The Royal Navy’s composition makes it still one of the world’s mightiest, with soon-to-be-built Queen Elizabeth supercarriers, ballistic missile and nuclear attack submarines, new Daring anti-missile destroyers, Duke anti-sub frigates, and large Ocean and Albion class amphibious ships.
Not surprisingly and much like in America, the British have found the cost of sustaining an all-high tech military with such exquisite platforms nearly untenable, as she fights a different kind of war in the Third World that requires different sorts of weaponry.
Here is David Sapsted, at the National with the same sort of argument:
Britain should stop trying to be “a mini-United States” and give up maintaining armed forces capable of policing world trouble spots, a report from an influential think tank said yesterday. After a two-year review, the high-powered panel of experts said the UK simply could not afford its international role and recommended slashing £24 billion (Dh146bn) from proposed defence spending.
The report, prepared by a panel brought together by the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research, is being seen as the most fundamental challenge to the UK defence strategy in 50 years.
Out of a list of 10, I also proposed scrapping Trident, the aircraft carriers, and the Air Force’s Typhoon fighter. Here are the IPPR’s proposals:
Planned spending on new aircraft carriers, an Anglo-American strike fighter project and on new destroyers and submarines should be cut, the report stated flatly. Lord Ashdown said he personally favoured scrapping the Trident programme and replacing it with some other, cheaper and more flexible nuclear missile programme.
We also penned the same advice for Canada a while back, with the intent that medium/small powers should seek their own identity rather than attempt to build a force like the USA. Different economies and powers have different needs, and considering the enhanced capabilities which can be gained from low cost precision weapons, the minor power should take advantage of new technologies to replace aging and shrinking industrial type weapons and strategies. Here is an exert of “From Minor Power to the Major Leagues“:
Like most small powers, Canada is a mirror of the US armed forces in miniature. It maintains the three standard arms: air force, navy, and army. By clinging to this industrial age establishment, she finds it increasingly difficult to replace Cold War era weaponry, including aircraft, helicopters, armored vehicles, and ships. She is also failing to take advantage of the New Warfare of the Digital Age .
A case in point is her navy. Canada currently maintains a destroyer/frigate force, a handful of submarines, and a few logistics ships, while planning to build an amphibious type warship in the near future. Perhaps by focusing on maintaining the most potent of these, her submarines, she could carry out the bulk of her maritime missions at far less expense and with less procurement headaches. More…
My friend Alex at the excellent Naval Requirements blog has a rebuttal to the IPPR report.
The Scoop Deck gives us the good scoop that the South Carolina government is coming to the rescue of the veteran museum sub in Charleston Harbor:
The state government has agreed to extend a $9.3 million loan to help repair a World War II destroyer in very bad shape…The destroyer Laffey, known in the third paragraph of every news story as “The Ship That Would Not Die,” after it survived murderous waves of attacks at the Battle of Okinawa, has corroded so badly it’s in danger of sinking. But officials at Patriots Point, the Mt. Pleasant, S.C. museum fleet that also includes the carrier Yorktown, couldn’t afford to dry dock the Laffey or the renovations it needs. So, after the museum appealed to state and federal governments for help, South Carolina has secured enough money to start work on the ship.
But these things are never simple: Patriots Point must repay South Carolina taxpayers within a year.
I was told on my last visit to Charleston that “the money was there” for Laffey, but I didn’t know the details until now!
Third Russian Kilo-class submarine purchased by Iran.
If anyone doubts the utility of old fashioned diesel electric submarines when navies now operate nuclear attack submarines, fast attack supercarriers, and very sophisticated anti-missile destroyers, apparently Russia does not share this skepticism. Realizing that to a minor power, a conventional sub is a capital ship, and also that such silent and stealthy craft cause even superpowers major concern, the former communist power plans on selling to anyone with a need, according to Ria Novosti:
Russia could sell up to 40 fourth-generation diesel-electric submarines to foreign customers by 2015, state-run arms exporter Rosoboronexport said on Wednesday.
“Russia’s export potential in this market sector is very high thanks to Project 636 and Amur-1650 class submarines equipped with the Club-S integrated missile systems,” Rosoboronexport said in a press release.
The Project 636 Kilo-class submarine is thought to be one of the most silent submarine classes in the world. It has been specifically designed for anti-shipping and anti-submarine operations in relatively shallow waters.
Russia has built Kilo-class submarines for India, China and Iran.
The USS Kobayashi Maru
Star Trek Crew Member
The famed Kobayashi Maru test from the popular Star Trek space operas involved a “no win” scenario in which an aspiring starship captain might have to face overwhelming odds in the performance of duty. A young James Kirk defied these odds and won by changing the outcome of the test, or in other words, he cheated! In real life, however, you might change the way you play the game of war, but if you break the basic rules of warfare you are dead.
In the US Navy, their version of the Kobayashi Maru test might be called “the no lose scenario”, more close to that favored by the fictional Captain Kirk. By basing their entire naval strategy on a handful of costly giant warships, they gamble the security of the sea lanes on a concept untried in warfare, that of few or no causalities in a future conflict, or by avoiding conflict altogether. Instead of preparing for the worst and hoping for the best, they prepare for the best, and hope there will never be an opportunity where these exquisite and very costly ships will be tested in battle. In reality, though, the history of war at sea has never been so obliging.
Charge of the Light Brigade at Sea
The roots of this self-delusion can be found early in the Cold War. Back in the 1950s and faced with Stalin’s plan to deploy 1200 submarines against the West (the actual figure eventually amounted to less than 400), the US Navy came to the conclusion that the only way to contend with such an overwhelming force was a change in the way submarines were fought. So, instead of taking to heart the hard-won antisubmarine lessons of the recent world war, the leadership changed the rules claiming they had a better way to defeat the new U-boats. Ronald H. Spector in his book At War, At Sea describes the plan developed by then Deputy CNO Vice Admiral Forrest Sherman:
Sherman argued that the enormous numbers of advanced submarines could not be countered by the traditional methods of convoy and anti-submarine warfare; the Soviet submarine threat must be attacked “at the source,” using naval air to attack submarines in their bases and support facilities. To do that, aircraft carriers would have to approach close to the Soviet Union in range of land-based Russian aircraft.
Interestingly enough, it was a plan based on the new Navy capital ships, the giant supercarriers now entering service, which the admirals had fought tooth and nail to acquire. These would be backed by new high-end missile cruiser and destroyers, plus advanced nuclear submarines as they became available. Such a force also allowed the Navy to compete with the Air Force’s strategic bomber fleet for the coveted nuclear deterrent mission. Anti submarine warfare was sidelined to the air-admirals obsession with Big Decks and budget rivalries. In the 1980s, a revised version of this plan to sail into the Soviet Navy’s submarine bastions was adopted by Navy Secretary John Lehman in Ronald Reagan’s 600 Ship Navy .
It was a poor substitute for a very complicated form of warfare, one in which the combined armed forces had been required to combat in 1941-1945. Then it was the Air Force’s bombers, the Navy’s destroyers and escorts, frigates, small carriers, corvettes, sloops, and even Coast Guard cutters which finally overwhelmed the Axis submarines. “Never mind” said the Navy. “We have found a better way”, but it was one untested in combat, and remains so to this day.
Avoiding the Armageddon at Sea
From what we have learned this week, it appears the submarine is very likely, in the next war at sea, set to expand on its reputation as the greatest ship-killer in history. We are not sure if the dire situation which we have allowed anti-submarine warfare to fall can be reversed, but here are some suggestions:
- A freeze on the construction of all large warships, with savings going to increase smaller hulls geared toward anti-submarine warfare.
- A very long-range replacement for ASROC, which should be able to strike at submarines before the latter can come into torpedo range.
- High Speed Vessels which should be fast enough to outrun a torpedo. 50 knots is good, but 100 would be better. Also stealth features to help avoid cruise missiles.
- UAVs to replace ASW helicopters, as the new drones can stay on patrol far longer and can also be launched from smaller corvette type warships. In some cases they are also faster than the helo.
- Build conventional subs, SSK’s especially geared toward hunting other submarines. There is some evidence much quieter conventional boats are a threat to the larger and noisier nuclear submarines, especially in littoral waters.
Peruvian submarine underway with the guided-missile frigate USS Kauffman.
If any of these fail to answer the threat posed by the rise of the new battleship at sea, then we might try “if you can’t beat them join them”. We once proposed an “All Submarine Navy” which would give the fleet a single very survivable and deadly capital vessel, instead of the vulnerable and too pricey “All Battleship Navy” it currently deploys. While such a force geared to moving the Navy under the sea to survive might do the merchant navy little good, at least there will be something left when the next Armageddon at Sea comes, due to the West for the third time in a century ignoring or discounting the submarine threat to surface ships. Considering how amazingly advanced and well armed they have become in 65 years, we think it the last time the undersea boats’ abilities will be ignored.
Concluded tomorrow.
This one sentence at Jay Bookman’s blog sums up the reason to cancel the hyper expensive and underused F-22 Raptor:
In the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the F-22s already on the flight line have never flown a single mission.
Just say NO to useless weapons which can’t be used in the wars we are fighting now!
