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shawnmmcc
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Flubber - I'm back, I hate insomnia. Your summary is right reference Red Storm Rising, but what I am talking about is the Mach speed BIG Soviet anti-shipping missles getting a modern upgrade, and worldwide deployment. Probably the only reason the Chinese don't do it is because, like Stingers in Afghanistan, they realize that their ships could end up being targets in 20 years. The Chinese technocrats are not necessarily limited to the profit motivation that blinds American businesses - i.e. Mr. Cheney and Haliburton doing technically legal buiness with Iraq and Iran in the late 1990's.
Also, even though the Soviets did swamp the anti-missle systems, it would be just as feasible to do that in a heavily constricted area like the Red Sea. As we discovered with Iraq SCUD launchers, mobility and concealment can often beat bunkers when it comes to preserving your assets. Would the US Navy deploy ships in the Persian Gulf if it was bristling with a high Mach equivalent of the Silkworm - I doubt it. Imagine if we lost five or six destroyers and cruisers. That's alot of casualties, and a sh*tload of money on top of that.
Remember, and this is like Iran's nukes - as long as the US is perceived as the "tough kid" with the baseball bat - some of the kids might band together and get a knife, or even a gun. If the bully says - I dare you to use it, and they get too scared - then things can get very ugly, very fast. The Bush administrations open contempt for the UN and for Sovereign States has probably done more to guarantee the spread of Nukes than anything else I can think of. Iraq got invaded. North Korea did not. Even if that analysis is wrong - if people believe it, then it will become a self-fullfilling prophecy. Especially, look at my sig. Dictators, theorcrats, and other authoritarian governments will go out of their way to get Nukes, if only for their personal self-preservation. What else does NK have as a viable commercial product? Idiot administration.
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Lonestar
What can Subs do to project power? How effective would Subs be against, say, Iraq?
Incidently, the US Navy is very worried about the proliferation of diesel subs in the worlds' navies. So worried that We're paying the Swedes to keep a Sub in San Diego so we can train against it. .
The answer to the "OMFG iTS Teh SUBS !!!11!!!!!!111!!!1" is TRAIN, TRAIN, TRAIN. |
Even if they weren't particularly worried, wouldn't you still train train train. Perhaps this sub is good enough that it will be a real challenge . . . and if its not, the Americans could always challenge their sonar officers by eliminating some of their equipment and data
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BlackCat
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quote:
Originally posted by Dis
*cough*recent (2001) war in Afghanistan*cough* |
You need something for that bad cough - it even shows in your typing.
Exactly how many carriers was active and was not replaceable of land based air units ?
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Dr Strangelove
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quote:
Originally posted by Spiffor
Depends. Here's what I consider "decadent" in your society:
- your militarism
- your large swathes of holier-than-thou "family values" people
- your constant striving for an enemy
- your absurd paranoia when it comes to domestic safety (war on drugs)
- your terrible lack of public help toward the poor and the destitute
But I think it's not the meaning we often attribute to "decadence"  I would suspect that most people who yell that America is decadent (be they Phelps or Bin Laden) hate the idea of a country where gay people can live a fulfilling lovelife, where the law of the jungle is tamed, where problems are solved with thought intead of the immediate use of force.
That's the kind of decadence I wish for you Yanks. And I think that dropping the militarism and the constant striving for an enemy will help you achieve it. |
Oscar Wilde's little quip though was uttered at the end of the 19th century, when the US had one of the smallest militaries on the planet. On the other hand his own country and its European buddies were engaged in a veritable orgy of militarism, chauvinism and empire building, enjoying repeated rounds of anti-semitism and pogorms, building alliances to defend themselves against the consequences of their own crimes against humanity, screwinmg their own workers in ways most American capitalists could only dream of, and using their state owned churches to remind the people that they were God's designated choisen on Earth.
So really, who cares what Oscar said?
Oh, and by the way, does anyone know what Oscar's dying words were?
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shawnmmcc
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Carriers project power, as stated before. For attcking another country's conventional forces, they are the top of the food chain, both in effectiveness, and expense. except for Boomers, Submarines are primarily platforms for destroying the other sides ships. You essentially have the same arms race as occured during and before WW1, i.e. torpedo boats and dreadnoughts.
Submarines are relatively inexpensive, compared to carriers, and they can do tremendous amounts of damage, though I suspect that a modern US Supercarrier could take four torpedo hits on the same side. However, I do not know the current state-of-the-art targeting tech, and if four 21 inch torpedoes detonated under the hull of a modern US CVN - I don't know if that could become lethal, but the carrier would definitely be f*cked.
Thanks for the link on the SLQ-32. I did a little checking, and the Iranians are indeed attempting to aquire the
SS-N-22, or the Sunburn, as well as the SS-NX-26 Yakhonts. In fact there are several indications they already have them. As the SLQ-32 program, and it's decoys, are NOT available yet - that leaves US ships in a constricted area with highly effective anti-ship missiles in the hands of our likely advesaries, the Iranians. I for one am very uncomfortable about that.
Plus the Chinese DO have them, a little research showed that they have now purchased the launch platforms, Russian Sovremenny class, and are taking delivery on two improved versions in 2005-2006. This also almost guarantees that the Chinese will be making copies over the next decade, often with improved electronics purchased from the European armament industry. We have ourselves another arms race, something that I will find very technically interesting, and very sad. Decoys and smart Mach 2-3 missiles capable of "violent end maneveurs" - it sounds like Honor Harrington.
Actually, I was worried about the Serbians engaging in commericial warfare against the US back in the 1990's. Take their submarine across the Atlantic and take out one or two Supertankers off the US Gulf Coast. They'd get killed, but the cost to the US economy for several monstrous oil spills would have made a point. If they could have kept a second one out there and hidden, the resulting panic would have given them a very good bargaining chip.
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binTravkin
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Lord of Progress of the Council of Lords of Gaia
Jan 2004
time: 07:37
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Actually one poster (forget which) in this thread made very good point which noone seem to care:
The question is not whether that or other thing is gonna hit or hit hard, but the question is how much it will cost.
US has suffered very little actual military capital losses due to losing large equipment units like ships, subs, tanks and aircraft.
And they've been building that capital up on the basis it won't get destroyed, only wounded at worst.
If suddenly there appeared to be force which will be able to destroy at least one of US carriers or subs, it would be such a hit to it's military budget and economy overall to replace the unit, that it alone would convince many people inside US to vote against war.
If there were consecutive blows (like sunking 2 or 3 large ships or say some hundreds of airplanes), it would ruin US economy to even disengage the war without a clear loss.
Alas, the difference between any US military unit (be that a carrier or an infantry unit) and any of it's adversaries in most other countries lies in cost and cost efficency.
If you purchase a bunch of cheap infantry mounted AA rockets, make a squad which can disperse (in groups of 2-3 persons - carrier, loader, guard) in a city which is likely to be attacked by US marines and then just wait while a copter loaded with personell flies overheads, you're likely to put down something which costs millions of US dollars with an equipment worth only thousands.
It is good to have all those shiny thingies (and I don't believe AEGIS would work in a real battle as it's a CPU after all and one error would most likely mean the death to entire ship) to show others and say - see what I have, but when it comes to some real warring they simply are not cost effective enough.
Also - the point about Bush showing "the safe path" to countries which want to escape any US influence or the path to nukes is very good.
I am not a politician and before Iraq war I had not thought about the importancy of nukes.
Before / and during the war I also read about the Iran's progress and Korean nukes and it made me understand that the willingness of a country to develop a nuclear weapon is proportional to US agresiveness.
I mean, now it's obvious even to a common citizen.
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Lonestar
I'll let you in on a secret: That particular sub could be right underneath us, filled with Mexicans having a fiesta and firing six-shooters in the air, and we wouldn't hear it.
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That doesn't suprise me. Carriers are very noisy and right beneath one strikes me as a very desirable place for a sub to hide.
My understanding of carrier vs sub was that the carrier will rely on specialized antisubmarine shipping and helicoptors-- and that the best antisub tool in the arsenal is the USN's own submarines-- Once an enemy sub is inside the screen, its big advantage to the sub. The key as I understand it is keeping them out or detecting their approach.
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23-08-2005 22:28
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