"The U.S. Navy Is Slowly Realizing It May Have to Sink... " Topic

…Ships Again in the Future.

"The U.S. Navy has a ship-killing problem. The service has, over the past 25 years, neglected the basic mission to sink and destroy enemy ships. Now, with the Russian and Chinese navies on the horizon, the Navy is looking at ways of making its ships more lethal—by repurposing missiles as ship-killers.

The problem started with the end of the Cold War. Defense budget cuts in the 1990s slashed the size of the navy, and pushed back a replacement for the venerable Harpoon missile. This was understandable—with the demise of the Soviet Navy, the U.S. Navy had no peer in projecting sea power…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Nah, those admirals can just cruise around on those Little Crappy Ships, and avoid a fight.

They make nice yachts, I suspect.

Yes, but how much humanitarian aid can they carry, and how quickly can they distribute it in case of a natural disaster in a third world country?

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Always annoying for military organizations to find out they might actually have to fight against a capable ennemy:
It becomes dangerous
You have to learn again
It might mean hardships unforeseen
The ennemy might even be reluctant to fight the way of the last war, you prepared for.

No ship killing capability? The rail gun is coming on line. The latest generation of harpoon missiles are pretty lethal. We need new weapons but we aint out of the fight yet. And of course there is carrier airpower and the nuclear attack sub which is what the antiship capability is centered in.

Torpedoes. We never worried about the Chinese, just send a couple of 688s and they'd be gone.

The problem is that a lot of the Russian and Chinese missiles have longer ranges, and are supersonic, so there is a weapons gap.

Even some of their torpedoes are much faster than ours, though those can be a bit unstable, and cause catastrophic sub losses.

F-18s are inferior to the latest Sukhois.

Harpoons are 40 year old designs. They are subsonic (and therefore relatively easy targets to shoot down).

Topedoes? The US has the Mk48 heavyweight torpedo for subs to use, it's quite capable of crushing any ship smaller than 800 feet long with a single shot. You will need at least 4 to kill a US-sized carrier (and maybe not even then).

The US really needs a supersonic antiship missile.

"The US really needs a supersonic antiship missile."

Can't be emphasized enough.

Wait, the F-35 isn't going to solve all problems?

@EJNashIII: What do you think is going to carry the new antiship missile?

Agreed that being stuck with a subsonic ASM is really a hindrance against modern anti-missile defenses.

Torpedoes. We never worried about the Chinese, just send a couple of 688s and they'd be gone.

Good for sinking destroyers. How good are they against, say, fast catamaran missile boats like these: ( link ). That's not a rhetorical question, I honestly lack knowledge in this area.

Note that the Houbei-class, even at the most expensive estimate of $50 USD million each, is a really cost-effective platform against an LCS (same cost of 6 missile boats, 6 boats = 48 SSM's) or heaven forbid a Burke DDG ($1.8 billion =~ 36 missile boats). I wonder, if they were enlarged slightly to support longer operational ranges and higher Sea States….and combined with an equally-fast catamaran air-defense frigate (missile boats don't do well vs strike aircraft)…hmmm, perhaps a surprisingly capable surface action group?

The current top-line Mk48 CBASS Torpedo is a little less than $4 USDmil a unit, and will turn a 200 ton FAC into toothpicks. Sledge-o-matic versus an egg for the mental image, it's pretty gross overkill.

The Mk48 CBASS is fast enough to catch a Houbei-class FAC even in a short-range stern chase.

The typical Fast Attack sub goes to sea with roughly two dozen Mk48s onboard.

A Trident SSGN may carry as many as 17, if they completely packed the torpedo tubes and torpedo room. Assuming that as part of the SSGN refit the center tray in the torpedo room was certified to carry torpedoes instead of just being a transfer tray, anyway. 4 torpedo tubes, 8 weapons on the outboard trays, and 5 more across the center tray. And that's from a hull that wasn't really intended to use any torpedoes. The Seawolf class could have as many as 50 torpedoes onboard, and I think the Virginia-class can carry 27 (plus a dozen Tomahawks).

The better option would be for said Burke DDG to shoot the FACs with an SM2 or ESSM. I'm pretty sure a single SM2 would burn any FAC to the waterline. A single Burke carries ~60 SM2s, and the SM2s are capable of attacking surface targets at about Mach 3.