Comments on: A Threat to America… or?

By: ASW Expert

ASW Expert — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:10:07 +0000

Mr. Polmar,
I’m not sure where you get the idea that “the operation of two Akula attack submarines off the U.S. coast is no threat to the United States.“
I, along with most of us who live within striking distance of the area these submarines patrolled, must beg to differ.
Quoting one open source site, NavalTechnology.com, “The Akula Class carry up to 12 Granit submarine-launched cruise missiles. The missiles are fired from the 533mm torpedo launch tubes. Granit (Nato designation: SS-N-21 Sampson) has a range of about 3,000km and delivers a 200kt warhead.“
200 kt… HMMM that’s roughly 15 times larger than the Hiroshima explosion that killed 80 thousand people and completely destroyed everything within a 4 mile radius. Now let’s multiply that by 12 missiles per boat. That’s 180 times the destructive power of Little Boy. Not to mention, the population is slightly higher in NYC than it was in Hiroshima in WWII.
And, oh by the way, these are not ballistic missiles that can be taken out with Mr. Bush’s fancy-smancy missile defense system. These are cruise missiles with enough range (3000km) and a small enough radar cross section (fired from a 533mm torpedo tube) to reach out and touch Denver without ever being detected, much less defended against.
I ask you sir, do you say that two Akulas pose no threat to the U.S. because:
1) You feel the Russians are politically stable enough, and have enough control over their submarine commanders, that you don’t feel they would ever launch a nuclear strike. Therefore we have no need to prepare for such possibilities?
2) You live in California and feel that anything east of the Rockies is so invaluable that the U.S. could write them off and not feel threatened?
or 3) You failed to properly research your article and simply assumed that an SSN had no nuclear strike capability?

By: abiao

abiao — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:47:17 +0000

ed hardy
ed hardy hoody
ed hardy swim trunks

By: Sean B. Halliday

Sean B. Halliday — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:01:52 +0000

First off, I have to say that I LOVE cruise ships.
I spent over 12 years working on them as a Scuba Instructor,
Shore Excursion Manager and an IT Officer.
For 2 years I also worked shoreside in Miami as a database IT guy.
During my years on ships, I have to stay that many things happened
and that life is definately stranger than fiction on cruise ships.
Many people have asked me to share the stories I have collected over
the years, so I am complying with their request.
My site is: http://www.cruiseshipstories.com
If you had any stories of your own to add, please
send them to me and I will be happy to add them.
Sean B. Halliday
http://www.cruiseshipstories.com

By: Byron Skinner

Byron Skinner — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:18:55 +0000

Good Morning marinerunner 40,
Short answer, no. The now assumed Pyrated vessel with a cargo of wood, estimated value of 18 million Euros, from Finland has a Russian crew of 18 has been located off the west coast of Africa and a ransom demand had been made to the Finnish owners of the vessel. As of right now the ransom amount has not been made public nor the nationality of the pyrates.
Pyracy is spreading and the United States still is dithering around whit how to deal with the problem. The latest efforts by the U.S. to counter Pyracy in the Gulf of Eden was with the 13th. MEU on the USS Boxer that sent out AV8 Hurriers as scout planes and followed up with a Marine boarding crew sent from the Boxer in Zodiacs. This is forward thing among the uniforms in the DoD, yippie.
The United States as well as the rest of the world still has not got a handle on how to contain and control Pyracy. The efforts of the 13th. MEU while for the DoD are innovating for the military are not the answer. The AV8 is an aging, trouble prone and expensive air frame for this type of operation, that can only stay in the air un-refueled for about and hour forty five minutes. What is needed is an UAW with an ISR package, combat capabilities, and a un-refueled flight duration of 30 hours or more and can loitter over a target until a response team can arrive or it can engage the target.
Sec. Gates recommendations in his speech at the Naval War College in Newport RI in June, for a fleet of 60 ton high speed “gunslingers” operating from a 600‑1000 ton mother ship seems to be the way to deal with the Pyracy problem. He said he would like to see 15 Squadrons of these small, fast, cheap patrol boats on the water.
As of right now one the Pyrates hit the water, the have won. Because of the ineptness of the Worlds Navies and international law it is had to legally to bring the Pyrayes into custody and detain them.
With Pyracy apparently now spreading to other parts of the world his ideas seem to be a solution that is way ahead of the thinking of the uniforms.
The organization and brains behind Pyracy of course is on shore and going after the middlemen who, do the intelligence on where vessels will be and when, what cargo(s) they carry, and how many in crew, and are the facilitators for the Pyrates with the ship owners and who set the terms and amounts of the ransoms, and act as the financial intermediaries for the Pytares.
I’m sure that no one believes that that groups of developing tribal countries can pull this off with out a lot of help from the worlds financial players who see huge returns here for little or no risk to themselves. Shut down these guys and the problem would nit exist.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

By: mainerunner40

mainerunner40 — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:10:02 +0000

Is there any connection between the pair of Akula SSN’s and the missing Russian ship? I notice the timing is coincidental? Just a thought,what is on that missing ship that has recieved so much attention?

By: Byron Skinner

Byron Skinner — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:16:19 +0000

Good Morning Joe,
You make a rather good declaration of a Naval Doctrine, I must say even superior to the current USN’s. You slide by a couple of points that I think heed to be brought up though. First the Cruise missile or any other anti shipping missile that would be effective against an American Carrier Battle Group has yet to be invented, unless they catch the group at anchor. Moving ships over the horizon are hard to hit with any defensive screens and it is unlikely that during a time of tension that any USN formation would go out unprotected.
An example of this came during the invasion of Iraq when a Chinese Silkworm Cruise missile was fired, possibly out of Iran. The missile ht a shopping center in Kuwait, surly not its intended target at 3:00AM. At that it almost missed the Shopping Center, and the Centered opened on time for business the following business day.
As for the undersea threat, the Russians have lost ground since the end of the Soviet Union in all areas boats, weapons and tactics and SAW. I have seen estimates of Russian nuclear attack boats that are operational at from 6–12. If the picture with this article is any indication the state of Russian submarines their readyness can’t be underestimated.
The Chines are even in worse shape. I know the Kitty Hawk incident will be brought up and while the Chinese did get a post card photo, is was a quark. The Hawk was on a training exercise without it normal ASW screes in place. Ooops, but it’s interesting that all the American Admirals involved got promoted.
The kinetic energy ballistic missile the Chinese are said to be working is a rather interesting approach and to work would have to involve invent a whole new technology for ballistic reentry. So far the Chinese have no inclination to tackling the physics of hitting a moving target with a ballistic missile, let alone of dealing with the Standard Missile.
Again Joe, a good statement.
ALLOS,
Byron Skinner

By: David

David — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:53:32 +0000

Ed, you obviously don’t understand the English language as i distinctly placed the word “will” in the post. The idea behind this is to make you project your imagination forwards. There are stealth UAVs on the market now and the development is ongoing. Also the ABL was only a suggestion to make yo realise that the potential (which is what my point was all along) is there. UAV’s have only really been a major weapon in any militaries arsenal for the last 15 years. Also as you are an expert you must be aware of the requirement of the US DOD for a company to create a UAV that can keep flight for a year without the need to refuel. This is in progress as wee speak. That is also where the potential lies.
So let me say again
“The aircraft carrier will become obscelete and the new threat will be by long range, long endurance UAV’s”.
By the way the Zephyr was recently tested and stayed aloft for a week and that is a vehicle still in the embyonic stages of development and it was hand launched with a wingspan comparable to any light aircraft.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:55:31 +0000

"Given A, the amount of destruction a modern heavy anti-ship missile inflicts upon a target ship if it hits and detonates, and B, the limited number of air defense missiles escorting ships can carry (and keeping in mind that in surface to air scenarios a 25% success rate is pretty good in some cases, so four or more defensive missile might be needed to destroy some incoming weapons), how viable is a super carrier against a major land or sea based air attack by a peer competitor? Or, to put it simply, if you are planning for ten or more years out, what kind of defenses would you need to invest in to insure that a carrier is safe from a large number of land based or sub based anti-ship missiles. And, at what point is it a better strategic decision to invest a greater percentage of your resources in a long range land attack capability (e.g. cruse missiles) that can be distributed amongst a larger number of potential targets (subs and surface warfare vessels) to prevent a potential enemy from concentrating their fire on one large warship?" "Defences to ensure a ship is safe"...nope...no, does not compute. I'm afraid you will never have a ship 'safe' - absolute force protection is a myth. It's a seductive one, but it's still a myth. In naval terms, attempting to achieve a ship protected from any possible threat is what produced the german's H-Plan battleship designs in WWII (Tirpitz, Bismark and their never-built-but-even-larger colleagues), and the Yamato on the ocean. And guess what - they all got sunk anyway because they were swarmed with something they were not designed to engage. Put simply, a carrier group can never be absolutely safe from determined attack; the only achievable goal is that any attack which would cause significant damage would involve sacrificing a nation's armed forces en masse (which is pretty much the case now). If someone's prepared to make that trade, you lose the carrier. Next generation land-based missiles are hideously dangerous in large numbers, but then they always have been; realistically, if the balloon had ever gone up and the classic cold war scenario of a carrier being attacked by a regimental strength bear bomber force occured, you would have lost the carrier (and yes, I know there wouldn't be a regiment of bears afterwards either, but that's the point). The most important advantage a carrier has is that you've got to find it before you can shoot at it - assuming your admiral isn't daft enough to operate within shore detection range, that means some sort of airborne or orbital sensor to locate it and give the missiles somewhere to aim at. The rules of engagement are a big decider too - if a USN admiral had blanket permission to destroy anything emitting radar, moving and/or mounting weapons within 250KM of his flagship at all times, I assure you they would be a lot safer (if not precisely popular for goodwill visits). If bound by 'proportional response' then the opposition are always going to get to shoot first outside of a hot war. Which means that if they're prepared to throw the kitchen sink at it, you've got problems. As to land attack missiles vs carriers - it's a question of purpose, I guess. If all you want to do is to blow stuff up at 35

By: Valcan

Valcan — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:28:52 +0000

The real problem about this story is The Navy is slowly losing the ability to do ASW. The Replacement for the P-3 is way over due. The S-3 units are off the CVN’s. The Libs hate the Navy using sonar in pratice areas for fears about whales. Not to mention the heavy budget axe to non Army & USMC programs in the Obama years to come.
Posted by: tiger at August 11, 2009 01:49 PM
agree with you 100%
and the cuts that dont happen to the marines and army will be only for occupation forces. Sometimes i wonder if his deffinition of WIN is the same as ours.

By: Valcan

Valcan — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:26:11 +0000

There all big rust buckets. Sad realy the russian navy and military should be used for national defense but it seems more used for controlling there people and provences. The russian federation appeers more like a neo kingdom everyday. At most its a plutocracy…