Category Sea Warfare

Kuznetsov on Fire

[Photo deleted at the request of AFP]

Just noted this article:

https://news.yahoo.com/russias-only-aircraft-carrier-fire-port-news-agencies-100747109.html

This is Russia’s only carrier. It is in dock in Siberia undergoing refitting. It is supposed to be done in 2021…but this is doubtful. The Russian fleet is still extremely limited in capability.

We have written about this before.

Lives Of The Russian (And Ex-Russian) Aircraft Carriers

The Admiral Kuznetsov Adventure

Russian Fleet Strength

Our count of carriers throughout the world in 2016 is given in this post:

Chinese Carriers

2016 count:

  • U.S. 19 carriers
  • U.S. Allies: 14 carriers
  • Neutrals: 5 carriers (India, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand)
  • Potentially hostile: 2 carriers (China, Russia)
  • Total: 40 carriers

 

SINKEX

U.S.S. Racine, serving as a target ship for a sinking exercise on 12 July 2018. [YouTube Screencap/The Drive]

The U.S. Navy has uploaded video of a recent sinking exercise (SINKEX) conducted during the 2018 Rim Of The Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, hosted bi-annually by the U.S. Pacific Fleet based in Honolulu, Hawaii. As detailed by Tyler Rogoway in The Drive, the target of the SINKEX on 12 July 2018 was the U.S.S. Racine, a Newport class Landing Ship-Tank amphibious ship decommissioned 25 years ago.

As dramatic as the images are, the interesting thing about this demonstration was that it included a variety of land-based weapons firing across domains to strike a naval target. The U.S. Army successfully fired a version of the Naval Strike Missile that it is interested in acquiring, as well as a half-dozen High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System [HIMARS] rounds.Japanese troops fired four Type 12 land-based anti-ship missiles at the Racine as well. For good measure, an Australian P-8 Poseidon also hit the target with an air-launched AGM-84 Harpoon.

The coup de gras was provided by a Mk-48 torpedo launched from the Los Angeles class nuclear fast attack submarine USS Olympia, which broke the Racine‘s back and finally sank it an hour later.

Arctic Territories

The Arctic is an ocean, so claims there should be resolvable by existing rules concerning 12-mile territorial limits and 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zones. But, the law of the sea allows countries to claim beyond the 200 nautical mile limit if they can prove that their continental shelf extends beyond those zones. This has led to more issues.

There are only five nations with claims in the Arctic: The United States, Russian, Canada, Norway and Denmark (Greenland). There are some claims that are fairly typical, like the sea border area between the Alaska and Canadian territory being in dispute, Hans lsland near Greenland being in dispute between Denmark and Canada, and the question as to whether the Northwest Passage is Canadian territory or international waters. These are all disputes that will probably be solved through diplomacy.

But, confusing the situation is that three nations claim the North Pole. The North Pole is 430 miles (700 kilometers) from the nearest land. The sea depth there is 13,980 feet (4,261 meters).

Canada’s claims go all the way to the North Pole and 200 miles beyond it, based upon where they have claimed that their continental shelf is: Canada Claims North Pole

and: http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2016/05/03/canada-to-submit-its-arctic-continental-shelf-claim-in-2018/

Russia has made similar claims. They are saying the Lomonosov and Mendeleyev ridges are part of its continental shelf and therefore part of its territory. A topographic map of the area is worth looking at:

Denmark also claims the north pole. Apparently the Lomonosov Ridge is also an extension of Greenland.

This map nicely summarizes the confusing and competing claims:

The Russians have gone so far as to dive down to the Lomosonov Ridge and plant a flag there in 2007. It is a flag planed 14,000 feet below sea level.

The Arctic

Brief article from Micheal Peck on Russia’s Arctic ambitions: Russia has plans to dominate the Arctic

In case you missed it, the Arctic has been warming up for the last few decades. As Peck points out: “Once a lure for hardy explorers–and a hiding places for ballistic missile submarines–the North Pole is now seen as a new frontier with abundant energy and mineral resources. With polar ice melting, new shipping lanes are opening up that offer the prospect of more direct routes for cargo vessels sailing between North America, Europe and Asia.”

Anyhow, while the U.S. Navy has only one heavy ice breaker, fellow NATO member Canada is working the problem. They are building a facility at Baffin Island and are developing arctic capable patrol vessels, frigates, etc.  There are also planning on building 6-8 Harry DeWolf class artic patrol vessel:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_DeWolf-class_offshore_patrol_vessel

based upon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoCGV_Svalbard

There are also the efforts of NATO members Norway and Denmark, so it is not like the United States and Russia are the only participants here.

Still the Northwest Passage has only been opened seasonally since 2000, with a cruise liner going through it in 2006. It is now being transited with increasing regularity. Of course, there is also the Northeast Passage and Russia has the Northern Sea Passage, which they are developing. Still, these passages are seeing limited use right now. In 2016, 18 ships (7 Russian) traversed the Northern Sea Passage.

A few related links:

Canada at War. The Arctic. Northwest Passage, 1944

Amazing Voyage Through Perilous Arctic Ocean (2000)

Warming ‘opens Northwest Passage’ (2007)

Plain sailing on the Northwest Passage (2007)

That pricey Arctic luxury cruise was just the beginning. Up next: Arctic shipping. (2016)

 

The picture at the top of this post is from 2016.

TDI Friday Read: Naval Air Power

A rare photograph of the current Russian Navy aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov (ex-Riga, ex-Leonid Brezhnev, ex-Tblisi) alongside her unfinished sister, the now Chinese PLAN Liaoning (former Ukrainian Navy Varyag) in the Mykolaiv shipyards, Ukraine. [Pavel Nenashev/Pinterest]

Today’s edition of TDI Friday Read is a round-up of blog posts addressing various aspects of naval air power. The first set address Russian and Chinese aircraft carriers and recent carrier operations.

The Admiral Kuznetsov Adventure

Lives Of The Russian (And Ex-Russian) Aircraft Carriers

Chinese Carriers

Chinese Carriers II

The last pair of posts discuss aspects of future U.S. naval air power and the F-35.

U.S. Armed Forces Vision For Future Air Warfare

The U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force Debate Future Air Superiority

A Return To Big Guns In Future Naval Warfare?

The first shot of the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) electromagnetic railgun, conducted at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division in Virginia on 17 November 2016. [ONR’s Official YouTube Page]

Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported last month that the U.S Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) had achieved a breakthrough in capacitor design which is an important step forward in facilitating the use of electromagnetic railguns in future warships. The new capacitors are compact yet capable of delivering 20 megajoule bursts of electricity. ONR plans to increase this to 32 megajoules by next year.

Railguns use such bursts of energy to power powerful electromagnets capable of accelerating projectiles to hypersonic speeds. ONR’s goal is to produce railguns capable of firing 10 rounds per minute to a range of 100 miles.

The Navy initiated railgun development in 2005, intending to mount them on the new Zumwalt class destroyers. Since then, the production run of Zumwalts was cut from 32 to three. With the railguns still under development, the Navy has mounted 155mm cannons on them in the meantime.

Development of the railgun and a suitable naval powerplant continues. While the Zumwalts can generate 78 megajoules of energy and the Navy’s current railgun design only needs 25 to fire, the Navy still wants advanced capacitors capable of powering 150-killowatt lasers for drone defense, and new generations of radars and electronic warfare systems as well.

While railguns are huge improvement over chemical powered naval guns, there are still doubts about their effectiveness in combat compared to guided anti-ship missiles. Railgun projectiles are currently unguided and the Navy’s existing design is less powerful than the 1,000 pound warhead on the new Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM).

The U.S. Navy remains committed to railgun development nevertheless. For one idea of the role railguns and the U.S.S. Zumwalt might play in a future war, take a look at P. W. Singer and August Cole’s Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, which came out in 2015.

Benedict Arnold’s Galleys

Spotted this article today: https://www.yahoo.com/news/museum-raise-revolutionary-war-gunboat-lake-bottom-160849735.html

Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, before he became infamous, almost became famous for building a fleet of gondolas on Lake Champlain in 1776 and actually fighting a British fleet with these row boats. Didn’t win the battle, but the process of dealing with the Arnold’s fleet delayed the British offensive until 1777….and that offensive didn’t go very well for the British (Battle of Saratoga). Anyhow, they are talking about raising another one of the gunboats (the Spitfire).

The USS Philadelphia was raised back in the 1930s and can be seen at National Museum of American History. It is my favorite exhibit there. I have also taken the time to visit the site of the Battle of Valcour Island (1776), Fort Ticonderoga, Battle of Saratoga (1777), the Battle of Lake Champlain (1814) and the Battle of Plattsburg (1814). It is a great drive, beautiful area, and good excuse to go to Montreal, which is a great city (and they have a grand prix there next weekend). Link to Philadelphia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Philadelphia_(1776)

The Challenge of Getting to a 350-Ship Fleet

This article, while a little more political than I prefer, does nicely address the reasons why building up to a 350-355 ship navy is going to be a challenge: Trumps-navy-is-already-sunk

The main points are:

  1. Current fleet is 275 warships
  2. The proposed DOD budget for FY2018 is $603, which is only $18 million over the previous administration’s projected budget.
  3. Proposed budget only asks for 8 new ships, which is been the build rate for a while.
  4. The fleet is on track to expand to 308-310 ships.
  5. Previous ship-building account was $15 billion annually. This is on track for a 308-310 ship fleet.
  6. To grow the fleet to 350-355 ships would require a budget of $27 billion annually (and I assume increased costs for operation and maintenance also).
  7. I assume this would take around eight years or more of increased building at these increased costs (so at least $90 billion more total).
  8. The U.S. industrial base is sized to build 6-9 warships a year, the rate would have to increase to 12-15 warships a year for a 350-355 ship fleet.
  9. Article concludes that a 350-355 ship fleet is not going to happen (it will be at 308-310 ships) and notes that no naval production increase was in the proposed 2018 budget.

 

Battle of Tarigo Convoy

The Italian Destroyer Lampo

On 16 April 1941, four British destroyers operating out of Malta, moved to intercept an Axis convoy moving along the coast of Tunisia. The British were able to intercept the convoy due to intercepted radio messages (but it was not Ultra). The Axis convoy consisted of three Italian destroyers protecting four German troopships and an Italian ammunition ship. The British attacked at night, having radar on several of their destroyers, which the Italians did not have. This night action that started at only 2,000 yards and at times closed to within 50 yards, with the Italians having all three destroyers and all five cargo ships sunk or beached. This one sided affair also ended up costing the British one destroyer, torpedoed by a sinking Italian destroyer, now commanded by an Italian junior officer. Around 1,800 men were killed in this convoy.

The British Destroyer Mohawk

While I was researching this, I came across a poorly translated article called the “Sinking of the Tarigo Convoy” by Cristiano D’Adamo. This article got my attention because he tracks the accounts of this battle as presented in nine books and accounts from 1948 to 1998. Of those nine accounts, only four mention that the British had radar and only two mention the interception of Italian signals. Seven of the nine accounts were missing critical material as to why the battle shaped up the way it did and why it was so one-sided. His article is here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060910011054/http://regiamarina.net/engagements/tarigo/tarigo_us.htm

This is an exercise similar to what I did in Appendix VII “A History of the Histories” in my book Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka. In that appendix, I tracked a number the accounts of the battles of Kursk and Prokhorovka that had been written over the years. It continues to surprise me how many major errors and significant omissions are made in widely published military historical works.

So, Who’s Your Favorite Admiral?

Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice by Capt. Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., (USN, ret.)

Over at Tom Ricks’ Best Defense blog at Foreign Policy, Captain Wayne Hughes (U.S. Navy, ret.) has written an entertaining and informative series of posts about four of his favorite U.S. Navy admirals and why he finds them notable.

Hughes is a familiar figure to TDI; he was a colleague and contemporary of Trevor Dupuy and a long-time member of The Military Conflict Institute (TMCI). Currently a Professor of Practice in the Operations Research Department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California, Hughes is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate with 30 years of active duty service. He is perhaps best known for authoring the seminal volume Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice (1986), Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat (2000), and Military Modeling for Decision Making (1989). In 1997, he co-authored A Concise Theory of Combat with Edmund Dubois and Lawrence Low for TMCI.

Hughes selected some familiar names, World War II stalwarts Raymond Spruance and Chester Nimitz; another, lesser-known figure from World War II who had a greater impact on the post-war Navy, Arleigh Burke; and an obscure individual who had an outsized influence on the Navy’s transition from steam to iron, Bradley Fiske. The common thread Hughes identifies that links these admirals was a grounding in a technological understanding of ships and how that related to naval warfare. Hughes credits that deep knowledge of naval technology and warfare as the basis for strategic and operational brilliance, as well as successful political and bureaucratic management of periods of great change in sea power. The pieces are insightful and a delight to read. I well recommend them.