US supercarrier ‘sunk’ by French submarine in wargames

news.com.au ^ | MARCH 06, 2015

[lentulusgracchus]

That's an interesting bit of history about the docklands and the Mob. They must not have succeeded in Hawaii; the ILA out there is where Frank Marshall Davis went when he fled HUAC's probing eye in the 60's.

[BobL]

DO NOT BELIEVE IT.

According to the ‘experts’ here at FR we spend more money than ANY OTHER COUNTRY on the military, therefore we CANNOT BE DEFEATED. They use that ‘rationale’ to justify why we are able to continue to goad Russia and China into WW3 (and still win), while continuing to GUT our military spending at the same time.

[Psalm 73]

"The TR Battle Group had a sub."

Always does - but it wasn't part of that "game" scenario or the French sub would never have gotten in range.
(I cannot beleive that a French sub could out-fox even an older Los Angeles-class attack sub).

[central_va]

What would happen to that base day one in a hot war?

[C19fan]

I remember the stories the US Navy leased the latest Swedish submarine with Air Independent Propulsion, super quiet, including the crew. The Swedes time and time again were able to penetrate the ASW screen and take a picture of the carrier with the periscope. The reason the Navy in interested in low frequency sonar, which the enviros claim harm marine mammals, is to aid in the detection of these ultra-quiet subs.

[tanknetter]

Some quick points about that picture you posted.

It’s of the USS Wasp (CV-7) after bring struck by the torpedo that sunk her during the Guadalcanal campaign.

Wasp was a very odd duck of a carrier. Her design was intended to put the most aircraft onto a hull that used up the remaining 15,000 or so tons alloyed to carriers under the Washington treaty.

While she was well built, she had all sorts of design shortcuts to meet the tonnage restrictions. Limited compartmentalization. Inadequate torpedo protection. Limited reserve bouyency. An asymetric hull to allow the starboard side island. Two shafts, not four, with a reduction in machinery that limited her to about 29 knots speed.

A lot of people call her a “smaller Yorktown”, but in reality she was a marginally improved Ranger. She had no business being in the Pacific, but the USN had no other options given the early war attrition of the other carriers. Yes, the Japanese sub got lucky ... but her loss can be directly attributed to her design issues, given that carriers built before her (Saratoga) and after her (Yorktown and Hornet) either took worse torpedo hits and survived, or took worse hits before sinking.

[driftdiver]

"to line up a shot on the $13 billion monstrosity. "

I wonder what the writer thinks about the military? /s

[driftdiver]

They probably rigged it to remove some of the screening ships. Probably trying to justify eliminating more ships from the fleet.

[tanknetter]

I also think, being a multi-national exercise, some of the screening ships were probably ... French.

How many cases of Chardonnay would it take for the skipper of a French destroyer or frigate to “inadvertanly look in the wrong direction” so his good friend the submarine skipper could get a nifty picture of a US CVN taken by his periscope camera?

“Why Jacques, that is a lovely picture you took of the American port-avions. I can’t believe I only charged you a case of the ‘74 for it!”

“Merci Jean-Claude! Oui, you should have held out for the ‘68. Its a much better vintage!”

[Spktyr]

Same thing that would happen to all our based on day one in a hot war. What’s your point? Ships based in a port are not necessarily in that port 24/7.

[GreenLanternCorps]

I agree, Wasp was smaller and not as well designed as the Yorktown class carriers but my point stands about lucky shots.

Stuff happens in war, and sometimes the enemy gets lucky. Heck, the Japanese had one of the best runs of dumb luck in history from December 1941 to June 1942.

It should be noted that of the seven fleet carriers we had at the start of World War II, four were sunk and two had taken significant damage resulting in yard time by the end of 1942. (Ranger was kept well way from the Pacific...)

Carriers are important, indeed critical to our defense, they are well protected and difficult to sink. But not impossible, and we need to prepare for the worst when planning for war.

[af_vet_rr]

Utility of carriers sunsetting now..?

Carriers, as we know them here in 2015, are already on their way out, it's just going to take several decades. They are way too attractive of a target, and they require far too much infrastructure to support/defend, and as we reduce our military resources, decisions will have to be made - commit a massive amount of resources to defending/supporting large carriers, or commit those same resources to offensive vessels.

More importantly, UAVs are becoming extremely powerful much quicker than people anticipated. When naval planners were working out details of the carriers we will be deploying over the next few decades, UAVs were seen as basically flying cameras (USS Missouri was using them in 1991 against Iraq). Of course, over a decade of combat in Afghanistan and several years in Iraq, not to mention our previous drone usage in combat over the last 25 years or so, combined with miniaturization and better/faster computers is speeding up UAV tech.

The US Navy has been thinking about this a lot - there is a reason why they were making such a big deal out of UAVs working with existing carriers - there have been some unique proposals from the Navy for building UAV carriers. Popular Science or Popular Mechanics even had a nice little rundown of the prospects, including submersible UAV carriers (or submarines with hangars as I call them).

Which is amusing, because submarines that can handle aircraft have been around since the 1930s.

[Ozark Tom]

They are a means to an end—finding unquestioned assumptions that render a strategy ( with undetected flaw )dangerous. Competition inspires genius (and bragging rights). Rough on the ego, but can you counter the move?

[Hot Tabasco]

It used the Denali s a het came up between the screws

Care to translate your warrior speak so everyone who was never in the navy might understand?

[MasterGunner01]

What I cannot understand is the deliberate destruction of the battle group's ASW assets with no replacement. It is as if the Navy's brass has elected to put all their best and most expensive surface ships on the chopping block for the growing Chicom Navy threat in Asia.

[Spktyr]

Only if you actually learn from the exercise. The Obama Navy doesn’t seem to be able to.