Friday, August 10, 2012
Carrier Navy. A bad day gets worse. Here come the heavies!
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| The current issue of the USNI Proceedings (1) reports that China has reached a deal to license-produce Tu-22M Backfire bombers. The arrangement will initially result in 36 bombers which is regimental strength from the old Soviet days and was believed to be the amount needed to defeat a US Navy carrier group...via Navy Matters Blog |
36 Backfire Bombers.
Old word tech updated with modern weapons.
The Chinese are launching a MAX EFFORT strike to take out one of our carriers. We've seen a couple of Regiments of SU-27 (family) Strike Fighters...we've seen Fast Attack Missile boats...we've seen subs...and we've seen the J-20's.
But if there is any airplane that should chill the blood of the Commander of a Carrier Battle Group, it should be a Backfire Bomber loaded with the latest anti-ship missiles produced by the Russian military.
That's exactly what's headed toward our mythical fleet in the Pacific. They've been shrugging off body blows all day. They've seen almost half their escorts taken down by those irritating J-20's that seemed to be going after them(!) instead of the carrier...and now we have the march of the mega predator of sea strike.
F-22's have been scrambled and the Air Force has instructed the pilots to shake the planes apart if they have to but to get to the scene as soon as possible. Same goes for the train of Tankers that will be needed to refuel them. The carrier has put up every airplane it has and is trying to work out a refueling schedule. Full missile loadouts are being carried by the F-18's so while they have an impressive load out of 12 AIM-120D's apiece they don't have any extra space for spare gas....F-35's are also roaring to the area to do their part and a couple of America Class LHA's are making rooster tails in the water trying to get to the location.
But its too late.
The Backfire Bombers launch at distance.
The remaining escorts knock down half the incoming missiles.
The airwing along with the early arriving F-22's knock down another quarter
Only 5 missiles hit. But they hit at the waterline and between the blasts from the missiles, the secondary explosion from munitions carried onboard and the lack of training in damage control, its obvious in 5 minutes that all is lost.
Our carrier sailed into dangerous waters. It poked the dragon and the dragon bit back.
4000 Sailors are missing and presumed dead.
The pride of a nation sits at the bottom of the Pacific.
The President's popularity rating plumments, the Secretary of Defense resigns, as does the Secretary of State.
The war has just begun but we're already behind the 8-ball.
NOTE:
The point of all this (as I've said before) is to illustrate what I see as the composition of the Carrier Battle Group being outdated. Tommorrow I will post how this battle should have gone with a robust Air-Sea and LAND battle integrated into planning...how a LHA acting as a Sea Control Ship could have made a difference, why we should disperse F-22 basing and why the USN should get fully onboard stealth and electronic attack. Oh and finally why the LCS should be terminated post haste and replaced with an anti-air frigate.3 US Marines (MARSOC) killed.
Some points...
1. MARSOC and the Marine Corps are hesitant to identify these "soldiers" as Marines. Why?
2. Green on Blue attacks are becoming accepted. No outrage. No headlines. Just another uncomfortable fact of life.
3. SOCOM is going to have an interesting time once the Conventional forces leave. They will be tested like never before.
4. SOCOM has to somehow get back onboard the training mission. Every unit involved is Raider first, trainer somewhere down the line. This is going to be a hard slug culturally...especially with the SOCOM Commander being from the Raiding not Training camp.
Task Force Jaguar. Apache.
The journalist lost focus. It had been a nice series with the focus on what each airplane brought to the fight but when she got to the Apache she focused on the maintenance section.
Thursday, August 09, 2012
Carrier Navy. The undetected threat. Now enter the J-20's.
So with that cleared up.
Now enter the J-20's...or I should say the J-20's will be leading the fight against our Carrier Battle Group in this scenario.
A two ship formation of J-20's flew ahead of the main force of SU-27 fighters to locate and provide targeting information. The Chinese are nothing but thorough. The J-20's on the surveillance mission are really redundant. They have purposefully placed their space station in orbit to remain over the Pacific ocean. Chinese Astronauts wear two hats. Scientist and Military Intel Specialist. They have been keeping tabs on the US carrier since it left Pearl Harbor. Additionally they have a constellation of spy sats that are equipped with one mission in mind. Maritime surveillance.
The J-20's are the vanguard of a group of 40 others that are headed to the CBG.
The mission.
Destroy the Escorts.
The good news for the Chinese and the bad news for our guys is this. The Chinese have been eating our lunch for years. Not only do they have a network of spies inside both our defense industry and government but they have also penetrated our computer systems.
Because of this the Chinese have improved the coatings on the J-20. When we developed stealth pods to carry missiles externally on the F-35 and F-22, the Chinese simply helped themselves to the information that we labored to produce.
The J-20 fly high and fast. They've been vectored by sats and the space station. Once they've located the prey they relay that information to the follow on strikers.
The strike J-20's benefiting from the improvements follow the same flight path. The Burke's pick up intermittent reflections and fighters are scrambled just in case.
Now that the CBG has been located the Recon J-20's pull back. Its up to the strikers now. They're coming head on to the Burke's providing cover and since the J-20's frontal cross section is where this airplane is stealthiest they never pick them up.
The J-20's launch at distance...mere minutes before the other parts of the strike package let off.
The Burke's are good...but the Chinese only have to be lucky.
This was a heavy escort group. It had 10 Burke's assigned to the CBG.
After the J-20's are finished only 5 remain. The opening salvo of this mythical conflict cost the US 1500 sailors dead, 900 wounded and recovered and 400 missing.
From the Fraternal Order of United States Marines.
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| This is much more like it! Wish more Marine Generals talked this way! |
C-130XJ Super Hercules & SC-130J “Sea Herc”
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| Artist’s rendition of the newly “expandable” C-130XJ aircraft, which takes advantage of the exceptional operational capabilities of the baseline C-130J Super Hercules. The aircraft is offered at a reduced price based on a combination of uninstalled line replaceable units and the configuration return to the legacy C-130 cargo handling system. |
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| Artist’s rendition of the latest variant of the C-130J, the Sea Herc. The SC-130J will redefine maritime reconnaissance and patrol. |
Carrier Navy. Threat Personified. Chinese Subs.
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On October 26, 2006, a Chinese Song class submarine is said to
have "popped up" and "surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and
missiles before being detected" within 5 nautical miles (9 km) of the
carrier USS Kitty Hawk while she was operating in the Pacific Ocean
|
The series continues despite some catcalls from the cheap seats.
You would think that after a regiment of SU-27's and Fast Attack Missile Boats, that the carrier in our mythical exercise would begin to catch a break.
NOT GONNA HAPPEN!
In 2006 a Chinese Song Class Sub was able to pop up virtually in the center of a Carrier Battle Group. The stunning thing. She was undetected. This points to another weakness in the carrier force. The lack of a proper fast flying anti-sub asset. The Anti-Sub Helos do good work in restricted waters but over open ocean and a fast moving carrier force it becomes a bit of an issue. You say well no problem we have P-8's coming online and P-3's right? Well not so fast. They'll be searching for Boomers and attempting to sweep the area ahead of the fleet. Quiet diesel subs will still be an issue.
In this scenario they would seek to lay in wait and pop up for quick shots on the carrier group. The hope would be to cut reaction down to mere seconds...almost too quick for automatic systems to react, definitely too quick for the officers on the bridge to give the order to fire.
On a sidenote, the British experience in the Falklands must be taken into account too. Many have talked about decoys and what they would do to incoming missiles. The Brits found that decoyed missiles sometimes hit other ships in your task force. Additionally if the attack by the subs is timed to coincide with the attacks by the fighters and fast attack boats you can bump up the number of missiles going after our carrier in this mythical incident to 1200.
1200 missiles going after a carrier in a max effort attack. Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles still have to be included (I can tell you now I'm thinking at least 5 per carrier) and bombers and a few stealth aircraft.
This is gonna get good.
New Zealand SWAT conducts helo-assault during raid on dot com house!
via Tactical Life.
A heliborne assault to go after a dot com guy? A coordinated ground force follow on force? I wonder what they would do against some of our drug dealers! And I thought US police were militarized!
Wow.
Upping the ante. Tossing in Chinese surface forces against a US Carrier.
Time to end the nonsense and slap the dogshit out of those that think that we're ready to deal with a max effort being tossed at our nation's pride.
So with that, lets put into this mix a small surface combatant. The Chinese version of our streetfighter concept the Houbei Class Fast Attack Craft. Specs are from Wiki.
| General characteristics | |
|---|---|
| Displacement: | 220 long tons (224 t) full load |
| Length: | 42.6 m (139 ft 9 in) |
| Beam: | 12.2 m (40 ft 0 in) |
| Draught: | 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) |
| Propulsion: | 2 diesel engines @ 6,865 hp (5,119 kW) with 4 waterjet propulsors by MARI |
| Speed: | 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph) |
| Complement: | 12[2] |
| Sensors and processing systems: | Surface search radar: 1 Type 362 Navigational radar: 1 Electro-optics: HEOS 300 |
| Armament: | • Anti-ship missiles: 8 C-801/802/803 in friction stir welded aluminium missile launch containers[3] or • Land-attack missiles: 8 Hongniao missile-2 long range land attack cruise missiles.[4] • Surface-to-air missiles: FLS-1 surface-to-air launcher with 12 QW class MANPAD missiles • 1 × licensed copy of KBP AO-18 6-barrel 30 mm gun (AK-630) by ZEERI |
| Notes: | Details remain speculative |
Can't find an estimated range for the boat but it doesn't have to range far. Its missiles will make up for any short legs it might have and 36 knots is'nt anything to sneeze at.
Speaking of missiles.
8 anti-ship missiles per ship. If we can expect the Chinese to modernize and upgrade the current fit then those vaunted one missile carrier killers can be expected in the near future...but even wthout them, the Chinese have 89 of these boats at 8 missiles a piece which puts another 700 plus missiles into the air combined with the 400 that were launched by our mythical SU-27's in this exercise.
1100 plus missiles and we only have two systems involved. A couple of Regiments of SU-27's and some fast attack missile boats.
We still aren't including subs, bombers, J-20's or J-10's. We also haven't added any friction to the equation by having mines being laid in the area, the threat of anti-ship ballistic missiles, hacking or space warfare aimed at taking out communication relays and ISR assets.
1100 anti-ship missiles are streaking toward one of our carriers in this mythical exercise and the heavy hitters haven't even shown up yet.
Do you think our carriers could withstand this attack?
UPDATE:
Because Aussie Digger is being an asshole, let me fast forward this little series. But first let me say that it was suppose to build up to including Xian Bombers, subs, and a mythical regiment of J-20's and J-10's. The whole point of it was to say that instead of building a navy to fight in the littorals the US Navy has a responsibility to continue to build towards winning the blue water fight. In light of that fact which I hoped to illustrate over the course of a few more posts, I was saying that the naval equivalent of land based counter insurgency (littoral warfare) is past its sell by date and by extension the LCS too. Thanks Aussie Digger and Company for ruining what was building to be an enjoyable little exercise. Hope you're happy. Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Hmmm. Marine Personnel Carrier let down.
I expected clarity. But instead we got this.
I expected this to clarify things.
This is weak sauce. Quite honestly I expected it to be between BAE/Iveco and Lockheed Martin/Patria.
To have the Terrex and LAV Demonstrator still in the running makes me wonder if the Corps isn't buying time for other options to play out.
I really have to wonder if the Marine Corps isn't just jerking manufacturers around.
More later. I'm honestly too stunned to know exactly what to think.
UPDATE:
Congrats to the selectees...I guess.
I REALLY EXPECTED MORE.Posted on InsideDefense.com: August 8, 2012The Marine Corps has selected four teams to build prototypes of the Marine Personnel Carrier, and the contracts are worth about $3.5 million each, according to a source familiar with the program.The service will award the contracts sometime this week to a BAE Systems-led team, a team led by Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics Land Systems as well as a team headed up by Science Applications International Corp.The prototypes will help inform a capability development document, and the Marine Corps is meeting with each team to go over program milestones, according to the source. MPC's primary mission will be to navigate rivers and waterways, and it is meant to be both a wheeled vehicle and robust swimmer.The systems demonstration and studies portion include a water performance evaluation, limited survivability evaluations or blast tests, a human factors and stowage capacity study and a study with industry to see how much of the vehicle will be built in the United States.It is uncertain how the MPC will fit into the Marine Corps' amphibious capability plan. During an April Senate Armed Services seapower subcommittee hearing, panel Chairman Jack Reed (D-RI) was critical about procuring both the MPC and an Amphibious Combat Vehicle since the two missions are similar, although the ACV is a tracked vehicle and the MPC is a wheeled vehicle. The service recently wrapped up an ACV analysis of alternatives, but the results are not yet public.Lt. Gen. Richard Mills, deputy commandant for combat development and integration, defended the need for both the MPC and ACV during the subcommittee hearing. He said the MPC makes sense from both an affordability and flexibility perspective."It is different, but it also mitigates some risk," he said. "If you lose a vehicle, you don't lose an entire squad." -- Lee Hudson
I expected this to clarify things.
This is weak sauce. Quite honestly I expected it to be between BAE/Iveco and Lockheed Martin/Patria.
To have the Terrex and LAV Demonstrator still in the running makes me wonder if the Corps isn't buying time for other options to play out.
I really have to wonder if the Marine Corps isn't just jerking manufacturers around.
More later. I'm honestly too stunned to know exactly what to think.
UPDATE:
Congrats to the selectees...I guess.
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