Posted on 01/30/2016 1:55:08 AM PST by SWAMPSNIPER
The U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship struggled in drills at sea to fend off a swarm of small attacking vessels like the Iranian boats it could encounter in the Persian Gulf, according to the Pentagon's chief weapons tester.
(Excerpt) Read more at gcaptain.com ...
The Navy should consider mass drone defenses, thousands of counter drones. Simple enough to install basic tracking hardware for air to air combat.
I meant drone to small boats as well.
Bacon hoses.
Why not buff up the Phalanx and add a few more?
Why not buff up the Phalanx and add a few more?
That’s not a Phalanx, it’s SeaRAM, gunless Phalanx with a handfull or RAM rounds where the gun goes. It is it’s umm.. ‘air defence’ .
Seems like a simple civilian laser pointer can wreak havoc with pilots. Why not a military grade laser to dazzle the operators of the small boats? It would at least slow them down until they could be dealt with using hot lead if the laser was too weak to cause actual physical damage.
It’s a very difficult problem. the US Navy had to deal with action like this big time off Okinawa. Swarms of Kamikaze attacks.
The problem today with the types of weaponry available, a speedboat can be just one of dozens, each having to be tracked and targeted, each carrying something that could put a serious dent in the LCS.
That’s a job for an A/ESA, not a mechanical positioner/tracker. They may end up having to outfit these ships with weapons more suited to swarm attacks.
More importantly,how would our carriers and cruisers do?
Need a couple vtol Warthogs it seems.
How about a bunch of well trained sailors on deck with .50 caliber semi-auto Barretts?
Can’t do that. Blinding lasers are outlawed by the Geneva Conventions.
Dunno why they don’t just put a bunch of stabilized tri-barrel .50 cal turrets on the beams.
In the hypothetical realm it would be fascinating to see a swarm boat attack on one of our World War 2 cruisers. Or even better, one of the battleships.
An Iowa class with twenty 5 inchers / eighty 40 MMs/ / and forty to fifty 20 MMs might have a little bit of a chance and be able to pick off one or two boats.
Agreed. We can put 75 rounds (20 mm) per second on target with CIWS. It should not be hard to make the software work for this situation.
Since they first came out with the specifications, I’ve said the LCS were undergunned. They are over sized PT boats without any torpedoes. Or a Corvette without depth charges.
What they needed was a 3 inch class main gun, a couple of Gatlings in the 20 to 30 mm range, and quad 50’s at the corners for close in work, all in dual purpose mounts.
So is terrorism and how muslims conduct war by not wearing identifiable military uniforms when conducting their terrorist acts (suicide bombings, etc..)
Why should we play by the rules when they do not?!
Blind 'em and fill 'em with hot lead afterwards. What's the problem? Dead men can't speak and the fish / sea life will take care of the rest once we're done with 'em.
Carriers and cruisers are blue water battle group ships that face the same problems when they are in the littoral zones, which typically only occur when they are making port calls or transiting straits. The battle groups have plenty of firepower to deal with this kind of threat.
The air force has a bomb with smart sub-munitions. The 40 sub-munitions, once released, can independently seek and track on tanks.
How hard would it be to have a version launched as a ship’s missile, that could take out a swarm of small boats?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY9gojFu-_U
I am not in favor of ‘playing by the rules.’
If I had my way, terrorists would get a quick summary court martial, be sentenced to death, have a cap gun fired over their head, and then their ‘corpses’ would be sent to a special ship in the middle of the Pacific where everything they knew would be squeezed of of them before their mangled bodiers were dropped over the side. Likewise, I’d go after their families as well (guilty or innocent, there would not be an ‘bin Laden’ left in the world...).
But we don’t get to do things that way. We’re party to certain agreements.
Now, if we repudidiated the Geneva Conventions (a good idea, IMHO, as the gist of them seems to be “Western Nations will not be allowed to decisively win wars any more.” ) then maybe we could get to fixing these problems.
But, this doesn’t really deal with the LCS problem. The BEST solution to the ‘swarm’ is an Apache, (or a close support aircraft like the A-10) with sixteen Hellfires under the wings. Just make regular passes around the edge of the swarm, delivering one missile per boat, then go home, refuel and re-load and go hunting again.
Failing that, the USN needs to mount stabilzied turrents with HMGs or light auto-cannon to puree the boats as they come in range.
Check out the early battleships.
They had ROWS of small guns along the sides for use against torpedo boats.
Howasabout a half-dozen or so upgunned Phalanx guns per side?
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