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To: JasonC
I agree - it will NOT be done (though the few new destroyers are better than all previous classes) those few do NOT make up for the systemic poor redundancy and poor response of support systems under battle damage.

Face it.

The USN has NOT been under battle conditions (air and Seal being the two exceptions!) since WWII.

Korea? We controlled the sea, sea approaches, and the air. No ship attacked, no ship damage of any note. No mine warfare - except Inchon defenses. No aggressive mining against us. Against our ports.

Vietnam? We controlled the sea, sea approaches, and the air. No convoys needed, no merchant or supply shipping attacked. No warship attacked, no ship damage of any note other than frag damage. Minor mine warfare against ships afloat in the rivers, but no at-sea attacks. (Gulf of Tonkin incident noted.)

Med (mid-50's till now) and Lebanon and Libya? Israeli Wars We controlled the sea, sea approaches, harbors and the air. No warship attacked, no ship damage of any note. No merchant shipping, convoys, or resupply ships attacked. No aggressive mining of sea approaches or homeports. Liberty attacked and badly damaged, but she was an unarmed WWII Liberty ship. Can't be compared to a post-WWII destroyer or cruiser.

MidEast (Iran-Iraq War, Gulf War I, No-Fly-Zone war, Gulf War II, ? No ship-ship, air-ship combat. When we did attack, we attacked successfully and strongly, BUT these attacks do NOT show the effect of battle damage against our ships. They only confirm the effectiveness of our weapons when WE control the battle planning, battle air zones, and type of fight. What DID occur in the MidEast? Isolated single ship actions that consistently (every time!) took out the destroyer-sized US warship: from dud missiles, command-detontated mines, armed missiles, and explosive-laden boats. Every attack was successfl and DID disable the ship against a second weapon. But these were single ships destroyed (at will) at isolated times. Follow-on attacks did NOT occur. So the ship survived, and instead of being used to demonstrate the problem, each "survival" of an attack and "prevention of sinking" earned praise for the captain, but NOT condemnation of the fundamental design.

The Navy hasn't learned yet. The Brit's almost lost 1/3 their fleet in a just few weeks stationed near land (but many hundreds miles from the Argentinian air bases).
223 posted on 07/16/2006 11:38:20 AM PDT by Robert A Cook PE (I can only donate monthly, but Hillary's ABBCNNBCBS continue to lie every day!)
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To: Robert A. Cook, PE
Sure it will be done, it is just a matter of the contractors presenting it as a new enhancement to win out over the other guy.

The naval stuff in the gulf during the Iran-Iraq war was as real as you please.

Brit losses in the Falklands came mostly from A-4s delivering dumb bombs in low level passes. Many of which failed to explode. Many ships survived multiple hits, a few did not.

Damage control matters, and hit equals sunk is false and has been false for a long time. We can do better at it than we are doing, certainly. But you are peddling a notion that isn't literally true.

This latest Israeli ship is just another example. It took at C-802 and it is still afloat and in service. It needs repair - that is the normal consequence of any naval combat hit.

226 posted on 07/16/2006 4:50:35 PM PDT by JasonC
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