Posted on 12/06/2002 3:35:33 PM PST by luv2ndamend
WASHINGTON (AP) - An unidentified vessel struck a U.S. Navy destroyer Friday in the northern Persian Gulf, punching a small hole in the destroyer's side but causing no injuries, U.S. military officials said.
The USS Paul Hamilton was in no danger and continued operating after the collision, the officials said. The small hole in the all-steel hull was above the water line.
There was no immediate word on the type or nationality of the other vessel, but the officials said there was no indication of hostile action.
The Paul Hamilton has been conducting maritime intercept operations in the Gulf in support of the global war on terrorism when the unidentified vessel struck it at 8:24 p.m. local time (12:24 p.m. EST). It is under investigation.
The Paul Hamilton, whose home port is Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is part of the USS Abraham Lincoln battle group patrolling the Persian Gulf. The battle group is scheduled to return to the United States this month.
The destroyer is 505 feet long and has 32 officers and 313 enlisted sailors aboard. It was commissioned in 1995 and is in the Arleigh Burke class of destroyers. One of its sister ships, the USS Cole, was rammed by terrorists while refueling in Aden, Yemen, in October 2000, killing 17 sailors.
The Paul Hamilton is equipped with radar systems designed to detect seaborne and airborne threats at great distances. It is armed with Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles and Standard anti-aircraft missiles.
Yes, against a small boat close by, you'd use the 5 inch gun. It is cheaper and sufficient. I was merely correcting your list because it left out the main weapon system of the ship, one fully capable of handling even large numbers of small boats simultaneously at range. Because others (not you) seem to be worried about lots of small suicide craft overloading our ships, as though we lack any counter to get a ton of them before they get close. Not so. The escorts around a carrier collectively field thousands of VLS missle cells, each of which can independently target a small surface target long before it gets close enough to hurt anything, and blow it out of the water.
Of course, when you are inspecting them, you get close on purpose. And rules of engagement can be too lax (which was the problem in the widely publicized war games over the summer), with the fleet just not using its longer range weapons for lack of authorization or poor judgement of hostile intent, etc. But there is no physical incapacity of the weaponry - which someone might easily have concluded from your prior post, because it left out the VLS and its capability. That was the only reason for my correction.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/weaps/mk-41-vls.htm
See in particular the schematics at the bottom showing the various missle load options in the VLS. The rest of the FAS site has loads of info on various systems, including the various missles that can go in the VLS tubes.
http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/missiles/wep-stnd.html
Likewise for the rest of that navy site, if you poke around a bit.
Here is a quote from the second, about the Standard missile -
"In more than a thousand firings over the past two decades, SM-2 consistently has demonstrated effective performance against targets from surface ships to helicopters, manned aircraft, and cruise missiles, from very low to very high altitudes and from stationary to supersonic speeds, under a variety of weather conditions, and across a spectrum of stressing electronic countermeasures environments."
The basic idea of Aegis is to couple advanced radar, target tracking computers, the VLS launch system, and large numbers of Standard missiles - or others that go in the VLS where more appropriate - on every major surface combatant. Then each of them can handle scores of threats from incoming missles to planes to surface ships, and collectively a group of them utterly dominate a whole "battle space" hundreds of miles across around every task force.
The Standard is continually being upgraded for new roles. These days the latest ones are high altitude theater ballistic missle defense (the IVA model), and GPS guided land attack out to about 200 miles range (LASM).
Please note - wild ass speculation is the norm here. If El Gato had waited three more posts, someone would have guessed it was hit by a SAM .... or is that only EVERY time an airplane falls out of the sky?
SEE the nuts do come out soon! A suitcase nuke wasted on a destroyer! R O F L M A O!
I suppose the answer is to stop doing those pesky inspections.
Sir, I do not belittle what people think .... I belittle people who don't think. I'm a Curmudgeon, it's my job, and besides, so many people make it so easy!
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