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Small Boats for warship protection Thanks for the web site. Helps a person
think. A thought or two on embarked small craft for DD-sized ships. ################################### Our Navy is lucky our opponents have been stupid Doesn't the sight of a US Navy aircraft carrier moving slowly thru the Suez Canal stir some emotions? All those planes on deck with fuel in the tanks, the banks of the Canal only 200 meters away, no ADA on alert (Why should they be on alert? They probably don't have permission to fire at incoming objects. Besides, ADA is the responsibility of the supporting AEGIS ships.), the crew on normal watch, the rest of the Battle Group ahead and astern of the carrier; sorta makes me want to scream, "YO! ATTENTION ALL BRAIN DEAD LEADERS! THIS IS WHAT WE AIRBORNE/RANGER/SF TERRESTRIAL TYPES CALL A REALLY BIG, EASY TARGET!"Anyone want to make a guess on how many RPGs you'd have to fire into the planes to cause a real colorful sight on CNN? How many RPGs would it take to sink the lead and trail AEGIS cruisers, thus bottling up thousands of US military personnel and blocking one of the 3 strategic maritime choke points for how knows long? How about mortar rounds? Or rockets? If Saddam Hussein had a real military brain and had done his planning for his attack on Kuwait, the above scenario could have easily happened. This was first published in a February 1997 letter in "ARMY" magazine. See how fast people still look at things? We are getting perilously close to running out of stupid enemies. Counter-measures, both active and passive, are urgently needed on US Navy ships of all types to prevent the next scenario from becoming a disaster for the United States, and the loss of far too many personnel. Yes, I have possible solutions, that are cheap, quick to emplace and limit collateral damage. I'll present them in the future. Larry A. Altersitz rgrlarry@aol.com ###################################################### ICBM Anti-Ship missile should have multiple warheads With the ICBM, I like the basic concept, but to have any chance of selling it, it's got to have to have a multiple kill-vehicle capability. That doesn't mean one target per missile, but at the least, means multiple kill chances against a single target, instead of one shot. The idea of using high speed and a top attack profile is right on, a lot of close in defensive systems aren't designed to counter high angle threats, as there aren't that many (The KS-4 Kitchen is one that was deployed by the Soviets which has a top attack profile, but the missile itself is considered obsolete, and is, or already has been, phased out. With the NMD, part of the kill equation is that the target vehicle is on a steady ballistic trajectory, which, in theory, makes it an easier target than if it was maneuvering. The problem up with ships is the terminal guidance phase, because the maneuvering ability of the kill vehicle drops drastically as it closes the distance to the target vehicle. With a ship moving forward, maneuvering, and changing speeds randomly, complicates hitting it, and at the speed that a warhead would travels, it would become increasingly difficult to maneuver with the target, i.e., a sudden change in speed or direction at the last minute would make it impossible for the kill vehicle to make the change before it hits. If you used multiple vehicles per shot, and, even though a missile would have a lower speed of about Mach 3, it would be designed, and able, to make terminal maneuver adjustments, and could still use a top attack trajectory. You would just use the ICBM booster to put the missiles in a position where they could acquire and attack their target. The selling points on a system of this kind would be multiple kill-vehicles per shot; long stand-off range (a Trident D5 missile has a range of 4,000 nautical miles); flexibility, because the launch platform would basically only have to be in the same hemisphere, and the targeting platform could be as simple as a guy with a SATCOM set; and low risk, because, as with the flexibility aspect, you would only put one or two men near the target, or if you used a sub, the sub could get the coordinates for the ship(s), move away, and transmit the coordinates from a safe distance. The single most difficult part, though, would be finding or developing a missile that could survive being deployed from an ICBM booster, and be able to successfully acquire, discriminate, and track the targets from high altitude. After that, though, it would be relatively elementary.
Matt Szelog
########################################### Chain Armor I'm an avid student of military affairs and like some of the ideas on your page.
as for bar and chain armor for APC's, I definitely think
it is a good one for
the Army's current globocop missions, where RPGs are a
greater threat than
high tech PGMs. Ball and chain and/or
reactive armor is a great low tech solution that can save lives. Going
back in time a bit, I recall reading that during the
Civil War, the wooden steam sloop U.S.S. Kearsarge
armored itself with a
long section of chain, converting itself into a virtual
ironclad for its encounter
with the C.S.S. Alabama. The chains saved Union
lives, even though they
were denounced as unsporting by the surviving
Confederates. Maybe the
Navy can learn something about this. That, and
better more proactive ROE
are the way to go.
Keep the great ideas flowing, if we're ever in a major
conflict some of them
could turn out to be war winners.
William S. Cobb
##################################################### M113A3s are C-130 transportable with room to spare The Army transformation plan makes C-130
transportability the critical yardstick for its medium-weight vehicles which it
wants "off-the-shelf" immediately to meet urgent battlefield
requirements. The amazing C-130 can short take-off or land from
almost any open area 3,000 feet long; a stretch of road, a desert plain, a
grassy field as long as it Since rubber tires are easily punctured by
bullets, LAV-IIIs have "run flat" inserts (5 mph for 5 miles). However
these stiff shapes inside the tires prevent air from being Mike Sparks dynmicpara@aol.com ################################################### |