Posted on 06/05/2019 11:00:21 AM PDT by RevelationDavid
Freighters have run into our Navy ships.
A missile seems unnecessary.
Ever taken one of the Navy ship tours in Norfolk?
What poppy cock.
If they could avoid getting hit by the U.S. Navy first... /s
I, for one, would feel much safer if we preemptive scuttle our entire fleet. /sarc
So Travis should we just scuttle our fleet now?
One time.
> Ever taken one of the Navy ship tours in Norfolk? <
Not yet. So please elaborate. Or you saying that ship security/countermeasures are very high, or not high enough?
Nope. We won't go nuclear over a ship loss. If a nuke wasn't used in Korea, Vietnam and Cold War then there is no chance one will EVER be used.
This takes me back ....
To about, oh, 1866-1870 or so, when Whiteheads self-propelled torpedo, which could be carried by anything, was to make all warships obsolete. Whitehead was indeed the co-inventor of the modern torpedo, and it made him very wealthy. Curiously he settled in Austria. His granddaughter married George Von Trapp, an Austrian Naval officer, and was the mother of the Von Trapp children, as in “Sound of Music”. Talk about connections.
Anyway, over the years there have been many superweapons that have promised to invalidate the warship. There were counters to all of them.
A .50 supersonic bullet renders soldiers obsolete too. /sarc
The torpedo was a game-changer. As was the submarine. And the airplane. Antiship missiles have been around since the German Fritz-X of 1943. Heck, they even sank a proper battleship with one.
There will always be game-changers and the game will be changed so that the game will no longer be susceptible to that particular game-changer. Its all a cycle of countermeasure vs countermeasure.
And land launchers. The Iranians have the straights dialed in from their bunkers.
One tramp steamer, a dozen containers, half a dozen jihadis eager to meet al uh and get 72 perpetual virgins and 18 young boys like pearls.
Scratch 8 or 9 capital ships, al uh willing.
Yes, you can surprise any navy at sea and/or in port in a surprise peacetime attack. You can do that only one time. Ask the Japs.
Thank God it took multiple attacks on targets across every state and territory and spread over decades to get us to throw open our borders to tens of thousands of swarthy military aged middle eastern fifth columnist men, otherwise I’d feel like were were an enemy occupied country.
Oh wait, that was only three buildings, an open field, and a single morning.
nvrnmd
Visualize a new type of mine. Dropped in the ocean by a freighter, it’s just a capsule containing an anti ship missile and some electronics. It sits well below the surface, with a tiny antenna lead going close enough to the surface to pick up a signal.
When a satellite notices a carrier getting close enough, it tells the capsule to rise to the surface and launch, telling the missile where to go.
Think a few hundred will make life uncomfortable for surface fleets? How about a few thousand?
MK 60 Encapsulated Torpedo (CAPTOR)
The problem with that is that salt water/the ocean is a very user-unfriendly environment. Any such ‘smart mines’ would need regular maintenance and upkeep, or end up useless after a few months (or whatever period of time).
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