Posted on 10/17/2025 7:19:55 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
Key Points and Summary - In a massive 1999 naval exercise, the Dutch diesel-electric submarine HNLMS Walrus, playing the role of an adversary, achieved a stunning simulated victory against a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group.
-Told it was "expected to lose," the submarine's skilled crew used stealth and passive sonar to penetrate the defensive screen.
-The Walrus "sank" multiple escorts before launching a successful mock torpedo attack on the supercarrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. The carrier is valued at around $4.5 billion and has thousands of personnel on board.
-It then daringly sailed directly underneath the carrier to escape, proving the profound vulnerability of even the most powerful surface fleets to quiet, modern conventional submarines.
Ever since the end of World War II, the aircraft carrier has been the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy's strategy.
Carrier strike groups allow the U.S. Navy to project power all across the world and provide assistance to any allies in need.
However, despite the comprehensive measures taken to protect them, aircraft carriers are not invincible.
In one such instance, a Dutch Walrus-class diesel-electric submarine was able to penetrate an American carrier’s defenses and simulate a successful torpedo strike against it.
This was just one of many instances of a small submarine slipping through a carrier strike group to “sink” a super aircraft carrier.
JTFEX 99-1 was one of the largest naval exercises since the Gulf War, involving 24,000 personnel, with 15,000 at sea, and a vast array of ships and aircraft.
The exercise spanned a massive area from Norfolk, Virginia, to Puerto Rico, simulating a high-intensity conflict scenario.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Underscores the reality that naval surface combatants are obsolete death traps.
Polishing the old Torpedo?...... Great movie
The Swedes sent one of their Air Independent Propulsion submarines to San Diego to do similar exercises against the US Navy.
In a real war with russia or China, but just fine for policing Venezuela and other type of evil countries.
26 years ago…
I wonder if anti-submarine technology has advanced since then?
The hysteria is overdone. War games bind blue force hand and foot, give red force superhero abilities.
One example was the Iranian navy sinking a carrier battle group. A naval aviator dismissed the result as nonsense for the reasons outlined below:
Van Rippers wargame is a frequent subject of humorous derision in the wardroom. He launched C-801s from 360cc dirtbikes that towed them into position per the rules he himself wrote. Look up the weight on one of those batteries.
Ripper had completely unbreakable comms (he handed notes to his chief of staff and that was the totality of his kill chain) while instantly and effortlessly breaking all blue force comms and knowing exactly where mother and the air wing were at all times (because he ran the exercise from blue force CIC). Lucky!
Since he knew second by second the exact tactical state of all blue forces, he could launch his main effort precisely when the CSG turned into the wind for flight quarters after the flight leads had launched but not the rest of the sections. Then he dispatched hundreds of Boghammers and changed the simulation rules to allow them to carry 4xSS-22Ns, an enormous soviet missile, which would capsize a boghammer even in steady seas (as in one single one would) and which Persia posses none of, so the blue force planners obviously did not account for. Also for “reasons” the flock of 400 boghammers was somehow not spotted by submarine pickets, the DDG sentries, CAP, I&W, literally anyone. Magic.
He was fired almost instantly by the DoD for wasting government resources on an idiotic simulation that proved nothing but to stroke his own ego. Millennium Challenge is one of those litmus tests to see how much actual naval experience someone has based on their views upon it. It’s a hilarious boomer trap.
If it makes you feel better, other room temperature IQ boomers believed the exercise at face value without ever talking to JOs who were a part of it
And used it to justify the LCS and DDG-1000. People like you have made our Navy substantially weaker based on your credulousness and lack of military experience]
It sank it then sailed underneath it? Hmmmm?
Navy surface ships are obsolete.
The UK-Argentine Falklands War proved that.................
A diesel submarine is just as quiet as a nuke - potentially slightly more so - when it is running on batteries. The drawback, though, is range and speed. So if you have a canned exercise with known locations where the diesel doesn’t have to traverse a lot of ocean quickly to locate and engage targets, that’s the ideal situation for that sub.
Standard military planning - bigger is always better, until technology/tactics change
Cavalry in the late Middle Ages got ever-bigger and heavier and more massed - until first firearms, and then rifled guns and artillery ended it.
I fear aircraft carriers are on the same path.
it’s a BS article meant to paint US as incompetent.
Didn’t the Navy lease one of those subs for testing?
In the movie “Down Periscope” there is a scene where an old World War II-era diesel submarine, with a captain played by Kelsey Grammer, travels directly underneath a supertanker to avoid being picked up by sonar on Navy ships during a naval war game.
His point was that the results of the exercise had already been determined.
I remember when this happened.
You are going back over 25 years now, I am certain many lessons were learned, and tactics and technologies have changed since.
However, the risk is NEVER zero when you engage an enemy, no matter how more technically advanced you are.
[Van Riper (one “p”) resigned; he wasn’t fired.
His point was that the results of the exercise had already been determined.]
The exercise rules had the ships stationary, and did not allow the surface fleet to actively search for submarines. Not a realistic scenario.
Think Taiwan Strait. Should the Chicoms do a massive amphibious assault a trap could be set for them. The assault would only happen after a major air assault when all bets are off. The troop carrying ships would/could be sitting ducks.
“The exercise rules had the ships stationary, and did not allow the surface fleet to actively search for submarines. Not a realistic scenario.”
And where did you get that?
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