Posted on 09/18/2006 7:41:46 PM PDT by neverdem
On Dec. 4, 1983, 28 aircraft from the USS Independence Carrier Battle Group attacked Hezbollah and Syrian anti-aircraft positions in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Two U.S. Navy A-7s were lost on the mission and a third aircraft was damaged. One of the downed pilots died of wounds in captivity and the other, Lt. Robert Goodman, was taken prisoner and paraded before the cameras. Though Lt. Goodman was eventually released, the U.S. Navy had learned a hard lesson.
Ten days later, U.S. reconnaissance flights were fired on again -- but this time the response was different. Instead of launching air strikes, the battleship USS New Jersey opened fire -- and with just 11 2,700-pound, 16-inch rounds, silenced the anti-aircraft sites. This feat was repeated on Feb. 8, 1984, when Syrian artillery opened fire on Christian West Beirut -- inflicting heavy civilian casualties. Less than two hours of fire from the New Jersey's 16-inch guns eliminated the Syrian artillery threat. It wouldn't be the last time the World War II-era "battlewagons" would serve our national interests.
During the 1981-1988 Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollahs running Tehran decided the best way to influence the outcome of the conflict was to attack Western oil tankers transiting the Persian Gulf -- through which passes 20 percent of the world's oil. The United States responded by beefing up the 5th Fleet -- and deploying the USS Iowa. The battleship's captain, Larry Sequist, described the effectiveness of the 45,000-ton armored behemoth: "When we would sail the Iowa down the Strait of Hormuz, all southern Iran would go quiet. Iran's Revolutionary Guards were steaming around in boats with rockets, shooting at ships. When we arrived, all of that stuff stopped."
When Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the battleship Wisconsin was among the first capital ships to arrive in the Persian Gulf. By the time Operation Desert Storm concluded on Feb. 28, 1991, the Wisconsin and her sister battleship, USS Missouri, had delivered more than 1 million pounds of ordnance on the enemy from their 16-inch guns, Tomahawk TLAM-C cruise missiles and 5-inch gun batteries. Fire from the battleships was so overwhelming that an Iraqi garrison actually surrendered to one of the USS Wisconsin's unmanned aerial vehicles.
Despite the effectiveness of the vessels in modern warfare -- and pleas from the U.S. Marine Corps to retain them for Naval Surface Gunfire Support -- two of the four battleships, the New Jersey and the Missouri, were decommissioned and turned into floating museums. Until now, however, Congress has insisted that the Wisconsin and Iowa be maintained in "a state of readiness" for "rapid reactivation" in the "event of a national emergency."
But all that may be about to change. A House-Senate Conference Committee is now considering lifting the requirement that the last two "heavy gun" ships in the allied arsenal be kept ready for action. Apparently the lessons of recent history have been lost on the administration -- and perhaps even in the corridors of Congress -- despite new threats from Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and interfere with shipping in the Persian Gulf.
Just three weeks ago, Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval craft attacked a Romanian oil rig, assaulted the offshore platform and briefly took the crew hostage before evicting them. And last week, as President Bush was preparing to remind the world of the threat posed by Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a cheering crowd of supporters that "Iran has the ability to control the flow of oil the world needs."
Given the Jihad being waged against the West in much of the Islamic littoral, Iranian "saber rattling" and the lack of any replacement for the well-protected firepower of the Wisconsin and Iowa, turning them into floating museums now seems foolhardy. Yet, according to the green-eyeshade procurement wizards at the Pentagon, the two remaining battleships are too old, too expensive to operate and too costly in crew size to be deployed.
Instead of keeping the heavily-armored battlewagons maintained and ready, the brass at the five-sided puzzle palace and big spenders on Capitol Hill want the Marines to bide their time until 2012, when the Navy says it will deploy seven new DDG-1000 class destroyers -- at $3.3 billion apiece. These slower, thin-skinned vessels are to be equipped with an unproven Advanced Gun System designed to fire rounds weighing only 63 pounds but costing nearly $100,000 each. Even if the new ships eventually perform as advertised by their promoters, that's scant solace to the soldier or Marine who needs naval gunfire support at any point during the next six years.
People in Washington who ought to know better -- like Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- have turned a deaf ear to the plight of the Marines. Thankfully, a handful of stalwarts led by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., have taken up the cause of preserving the Wisconsin and Iowa as mobilization assets. He believes that keeping the battlewagons ready to fight will save American lives. He's right.
What sells the arguement for me is that the Marines want it; as I understand it almost to a man their Flag-Rank retirees don't want them gone. Until I see large numbers of these guys say they are not necessary, were I a congressman, I'd support the Marine Corps against the Navy.
My goal is to be out before the rainbow flag is hoisted over the division's area at Fort Bragg.
yeah but those old battlewagons are aged to the point of nearly be more of a hinderance than a help.
Big guns or no, if the boat can't get them there, and if the boats are a bastard to maintain and always breaking down, I'm sure the Corps would rather not have a headache...
Techology demands craftsmanship as well as design. If you had to build from scratch a 1940 Dodge, the rebuilding would require tools and materials that are no longer available and human skills that have been lost.
And yet people do it as a hobby...
I'm a fan of the A-10, too. Unfortunely the aging fighter pilots who run the air force are not . Not sexy enough for them.
Produce the car from scratch? My guess is that it would be easier to reproduce a 1905 Olds than the 1940 Dodge.
I think that the last go-round showed the limitation of the choppers. Small arms fire is not very useful against the bucket bottom of an A-10. I have never seen them in battle, but I have seen them doing manuevers that most piper cub pilots could not match. As an anti-tank weapon, they are, I hear, quite "useful."
BTW, I wonder what the air force is going to do with the robot planes. Right now they are using pilots to manuever the things, but seargeants can manage those babies. One of these days a robot is going to take out an F-22.
The BB's are pretty much in a class by themselves. They are smaler than the CVN's, but bigger than everything else. Nothing else has the armor to take a beating and deliver one at the same time.
Were they? They shelled Kuwait a couple of times, but in Iraq and Afganistan they're useless. The days of sending marines ashore on an opposed beach head are past. We can get a whole lot more bang for our buck with other platforms.
Really? I'd give the Aegis a decided advantage in air defense, but in armament and conventional firepower (including cruise missiles) advantage Iowa Class. imho.
Except for mines, s7rface to surface missiles, submarines, air-launched surface attack missiles, anything that can keep the battleship farther offshore.
Hmm, if the Marine leadership thought so, they'd not push the issue. Isn't it odd they think it's so important to keep these platforms around. The guys who seem most concerned about defense (Hunter/Kline/Johnson) seem to be siding with the Marines.
As an aside, and in my judgement; unfortunately for the Navy, much of their leadership has devolved into the Sestak variety. Fortunately for the Marine Corps, most of their leadership remains of the Krulak/Gray variety. I'd side with the Marine Corps.
Like, "Honey I Shrunk the Crew" kind of tiny?
Apples and oranges argument using the F117 to B52 and F35 to A10. Totally different missions and roles. The F117 garners political respect quite quickly when it's deployed and the B52 strikes fear into the hearts of the troops deployed on the line. The F117 is a strategic weapon, designed to attack high priority, highly defended targets, with little to no air cover or support. While the B52 is a front line smashing weapon with air supremacy already established.
I don't know enough about ALL of the F35's capabilities but I'm pretty damn sure it will still be getting the respect of the troops on the ground when it comes screaming over dropping hundreds of pounds of high explosives and steel on the bad guy's heads.
I don't disagree that a BB showing up off your enemy's coast gets their immediate attention. However, the technology used to construct the BB was based on the known threats of the time. How well it would survive now could probably only be based upon calculations of "known" threats.
An Exocet or Silkworm doesn't have to hit the hull to be effective, it could hit the superstructure near or on the bridge and be just as effective, both politically and militarily.
SZ
I have nothing against A-10s, but they were designed as an anti-armor weapon. It also assumes available airfieds and air superiority. Nothing is guaranteed. Being within range of artillery support can be priceless.
During the Vietnam War, my squadron bombed a concrete blockhouse on the ocean near the DMZ. We hit the place all day long. We used 1000-pound bombs with impact fuses -- and all we did was chip a little concrete off the building. The battleship New Jersey sailed into view, opened fire with its 16-inch guns, and flattened the place in about five minutes. It was awesome.
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