Surface Ships Need More Offensive Punch, Outlook

Scott Kenny said:
If the Chinese do land on Formosa, the US will have to also land to dig them out.



Mostly because it's 500km inside the Chinese naval A2AD bubble, which makes it very difficult to reinforce or resupply once the shooting starts.



Invading Taiwan in 2027, because Mainland wants their "wayward province" back for the centennial of the PRC.
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A US landing in Taiwan would not be opposed unless China had already won. I also question the need (and ability) of the U.S. to land or supply Taiwan unless the PLAN has already been largely destroyed. It seems to me the easiest way to dig out PLA forces in occupied areas of Taiwan are via starvation and bombardment, assuming a political solution for their removal cannot be arrived at. Certainly no one is landing marines or risking landing platforms unless the anti access threat is heavily eroded and air superiority firmly established over any landing beaches…in which case, shore bombardment is probably largely meaningless.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I want the capability to do opposed landings just in case there's not enough time to roll back the A2AD bubble from the mainland.

Absolute worst case scenario short of nuclear weapons deployed. PLAN marines land and start executing every Taiwanese citizen for not welcoming their "liberators" with open arms.

A carrier needs to be practically on the coast of Formosa to have Super Hornets reach the launch sites for the Chinese AShBMs, the "optimal" weapon to hit the A2AD sites on the Mainland is an ICBM or at least a Tomahawk.
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That seems ass backwards to me and a recipe for total disaster on top of a waste of resources. I will leave it at that so we do not go further off topic.
 
I don't think US Navy would conduct much in the way of opposed landings in a war with China, certainly not any attempt to retake a defeated Taiwan (at least not without years of mobilisation).

Maybe late in a war, against isolated Chinese garrisons on island bases in the South China Sea, and only if China's fleet and maritime reconnaissance-strike complexes have been rendered impotent.

Best means of defending Taiwan would be prepositioning stocks of weapons like small arms, MANPADS and mortars, plus associated ammunition, radios, body armour etc, so that Taiwan has the means to raise a mass-mobilisation army, with wartime support being provided US air and naval forces (primarily submarines) providing the means to attrit and hopefully defeat the invasion fleets and helicopter assaults, or at the very least disjoint them so that Taiwan armed forces have the best chance of throwing them out.
 
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A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
I don't think US Navy would conduct much in the way of opposed landings in a war with China, certainly not any attempt to retake a defeated Taiwan (at least not without years of mobilisation).

Maybe late in a war, against isolated Chinese garrisons on island bases in the South China Sea, and only if China's fleet and maritime reconnaissance-strike complexes have been rendered impotent.

Best means of defending Taiwan would be prepositioning stocks of weapons like small arms, MANPADS and mortars, plus associated ammunition, radios, body armour etc, so that Taiwan has the means to raise a mass-mobilisation army, with wartime support being provided US air and naval forces (primarily submarines) providing the means to attrit and hopefully defeat the invasion fleets and helicopter assaults, or at the very least disjoint them so that Taiwan armed forces have the best chance of throwing them out.
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Agreed, any response to Chinese actions in the SCS would have to be extremely rapid, and preparing the type of large force that any landing in Taiwan would take too long. Response to Chinese action will focus on air and sea assets that are largely present in the region, or can be positioned quickly. The purpose of these forces will be as you stated, which is to disrupt Chinese landing attempts from both air and sea, while also destroying Chinese naval assets that could threaten US assets in the region. Overall, the main focus would be to delay/degrade any Chinese landing force to the point that the Taiwanese can fight off the invasion attempt, or have enough time to launch a mass mobilization.
 
The most recently public CSIS Taiwan wargame iterations generally focused on the issue of destroying PRC amphibious lift, as well as disabling any ports or air bases captured from Taiwan. So the effort was predominantly an anti shipping one, though the fact that landing ships have to load and unload in relatively known locations in constrained waters means that weapons only capable of attacking stationary targets were also used. Engaging the PLAN surface fleet was also a high priority, since in all but one scenario (which resulted in a swift one turn loss) the red team surrounded the eastern coast of Taiwan with a layer of SAGs/CVBGs to insulate the landing force from air and missile attacks. This generally required the blue team to engage the PLAN first in order to break through to the ships actually moving equipment in the straight.

Tangentially related to increased offensive power against surface ships - the US is looking to replicate (hah!) the Ukrainian's success with explosive USVs on a larger scale with more automation and range, presumably for usage in a Taiwan conflict scenario:

breakingdefense.com

Replicator's 'PRIME' time: DIU seeks small USV interceptors ready for rapid production - Breaking Defense

The DIU solicitation comes amid a raft of other Navy-led efforts to bring more unmanned surface vehicles into operations.
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com
 
Josh_TN said:
That seems ass backwards to me and a recipe for total disaster on top of a waste of resources. I will leave it at that so we do not go further off topic.
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This isn't off-topic though - the thread is about the where and how we should allocate resources to pursue a strategic objective. Folks should be able to argue their points.
 
shin_getter said:
maritime-executive.com

Report: Houthi Missile Got Within a Mile of a U.S. Navy Destroyer

U.S. officials say that a Houthi cruise missile got so close to a U.S. Navy warship that it had to be shot down with the ship's Close-In Weapons S...
maritime-executive.com maritime-executive.com

Missile in CIWS range. I think plain sheer saturation'd work since outer layer pk isn't that high even against lowish tech missiles.
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Thats or it was a bad missile launch.

Those do happen, in the Cold War the Navy expected like a 80 percent reliability rate for the missiles, thus the system standard being a Shot shot look deal.

And while it has improved, its outright impossible to to get a 100 percent rate. Considering they shot off more Standard missiles in the last month then in the last three decades...

Bound to happen.

And before that they been reliably knocking them down without any issues in far higher numbers. There was two missile in Tuesdays attack, a few weeks back the Mason Slap down multiple plus several drones at once.

So eyeah its not PK, but Reliability thats the issue.
 
Interesting to see that Diamond also dropped one drone with her 30mm gun, which isn't even a CIWS. These are slow-movers for sure. I don't think they deliberately let them I to CIWS range but they had a lot of time to engage even within a mile.
 
TomS said:
Interesting to see that Diamond also dropped one drone with her 30mm gun, which isn't even a CIWS. These are slow-movers for sure. I don't think they deliberately let them I to CIWS range but they had a lot of time to engage even within a mile.
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I think the CIWS engaged a missile, which implies a pretty high speed. But the UAVs certainly might be engaged by guns. I would have thought even the 5" could be used.
 
Josh_TN said:
I think the CIWS engaged a missile, which implies a pretty high speed. But the UAVs certainly might be engaged by guns. I would have thought even the 5" could be used.
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There was at least one 5-inch engagement early on, probably at a slow crossing target headed to Israel. That one feels like it might have been a test to see how effective the gun could be, with plenty of time to chase the target down with a missile if the gun missed.
 
Forest Green said:
www.defensenews.com

Rearming US Navy ships at sea is no longer an option, but a necessity

Opinion: Fortunately, rearming VLS cells at sea is not an impossible engineering problem.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com
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It's just going to suck and be very dangerous to do in open ocean.

Had an interesting thought percolate up in the "Drones and how to kill them" thread.

If you can keep the cost of a guided cannon shell down to roughly 10x that of a proximity-fuzed shell, that does interesting things to your magazine depth. The Italians fired a 7-8 shot burst at the Houthi drone to destroy it from their 76mm guns. Assuming that represents a pretty typical average engagement, that means each gun only has ~10 kills in the ready rack (76-80 rounds in the ready rack, depending on mount). But if your guided shell is only 33% more expensive than 7-8 ordinary shells, you can have 76-80 kills ready. Or you start messing with dual feeds and keep the guided shells in one feed for sniping drones and HEfrag or whatever your preference is in the other feed.
 
Against slow subsonic threats, I would expect any gun system to be effective. What was notable about the Italian engagement was that they apparently consciously decided to use guns and let the target approach. Interesting command choice, given that the captain doesn’t pay for the ordnance and definitely takes the blame if the ship gets hit. I bet there’s a lot more to that engagement than we know.
 
The RUMINT of Mk45 bullseye-ing Shaheeds is on a similar spectrum, until we know more.its hard to have a quality take.
 
Josh_TN said:
Against slow subsonic threats, I would expect any gun system to be effective. What was notable about the Italian engagement was that they apparently consciously decided to use guns and let the target approach. Interesting command choice, given that the captain doesn’t pay for the ordnance and definitely takes the blame if the ship gets hit. I bet there’s a lot more to that engagement than we know.
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Didn't approach all that close, it was destroyed at 4 miles or so. That's basically RIM-116 range.
 
MihoshiK said:
That's because in the old launchers (which were both maintenance and space-intensive), the missile was the round, and the launcher was the storage, whereas in a VLS system, the canister is the round AND the storage.

In the old launchers the provisions for guiding a round on a certain path were all build-in: The missile was allways moved under positive control.
In a VLS system, there's no systems for moving a round around at all. Which is why you need external equipment to reload VLS cells. If you give VLS cells the equipment for positive movement control over the rounds (the cells), you give up on two of the major advantages of a VLS system: Reduced maintenance, and reduced space, because you're adding stuff back in which was taken out when transferring to VLS.
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www.defensenews.com

Rearming US Navy ships at sea is no longer an option, but a necessity

Opinion: Fortunately, rearming VLS cells at sea is not an impossible engineering problem.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com
 
bobbymike said:
www.airandspaceforces.com

Indo-Pacific Command Wants to Triple the Air Force’s Buy of Joint Strike Missiles

America’s Pacific forces want more missiles—and a lot of them—according to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s wish list for fiscal 2025.
www.airandspaceforces.com www.airandspaceforces.com
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Each missile costs $2.8 million apiece
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Doesn't make sense. HTF do JSMs cost as much as LRASMs? Doesn't that make them redundant, since they're supposed to be the cheaper option?

www.airandspaceforces.com

Lockheed Martin Looks to Boost LRASM Production as US Rushes to Buy Anti-Ship Weapons | Air & Space Forces Magazine

Lockheed Martin has opened a second production line to produce two of the Pentagon’s most in-demand needed weapons: the LRASM and the JASSM-ER
www.airandspaceforces.com www.airandspaceforces.com
 
In addition to LVC systems, CSG-4 relies on a junior officer-developed Root Cause Analysis Tool (RCAT) that has rapidly improved delivery of actionable, fact-based performance feedback to the Navy’s training and resource enterprise to support decision-makers; outreach to the Navy and joint force to increase the complexity and capability within the exercise presentation; and its Allied Vision training events embedded within COMPTUEX.

breakingdefense.com

Operations, innovation and training: A discussion with the commander of CSG-4 - Breaking Defense

Columnist Robbin Laird talks naval training with Rear Adm. Max “Pepper” McCoy, commander of Carrier Strike Group 4.
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com
 
jsport said:
Deck space is indeed coveted, therefore the mention of "optionally expendable" still makes the most sense. Creatures need to recover safely w/ unexpended armament and relaunch. Noone is providing such a solution.
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I think the ALTIUS series is recoverable on land, though ship capture would probably be more complicated. The USNs NOMAD experimental drone was recoverable, though it lacked the endurance of a fixed wing platform (it was primarily a long endurance decoy not a sensor platform).
 
Josh_TN said:
I think the ALTIUS series is recoverable on land, though ship capture would probably be more complicated. The USNs NOMAD experimental drone was recoverable, though it lacked the endurance of a fixed wing platform (it was primarily a long endurance decoy not a sensor platform).
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yes, any deck space should box launched wigets which r fixed wing w/ potentially VTOL (is not too expendable though) which could be recovered even via unmanned boat if they dont make it back to the ship & w/ a modular payload space for everything from EW, various disposable wpns, medical, food, ammo packs for USMC & maybe even humanitarian aid. Surface ships do more HA then any other task by far.
Imagine it not being too large that a net snagger would do the trick and not inhibit helio pads.
 
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A Joint risk reduction effort could include 3 potential competitors funded to develop a genuinely military, modular payload ALE, FTUAS, hardpoint launched (USN, USAF, USA) competitor UAS which would also be Boat/Ship deck launchable & semi-expendable. If vtol capability is necessary, then it would likely need to be some sort of internal duct fan(s) of some type.
A novel version might be a purely primarily counter-drone interceptor possibly a jet. Very expendable but similar form factor. Tradition AAMs, SAMs are just too over capable and thus expensive.
 
Forest Green said:
www.defensenews.com

Navy looks to shake up traditional carrier strike group model

A new Navy plan seeks to improve flexibility of forces worldwide, while allowing aircraft carriers to remain deployed for longer periods of time.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz7ENyaIYMI
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Standardized plans should have happened after WWII. Problem is every ship captain sees themselves as Mayor/Dictator of their ship and Strike Group cdrs as Govenor/Dictator of their own state. Policy is Personality to the extreme. When in fact Cdrs should have very limited ability to deviate from precedent/codified TTPs. They can provide a very necessary & Human nuance for the real time situation but most TTPs need already be set in stone. This of course would be highly efficient but also impossible to enforce w/o the use of powerful....
 
jsport said:
A Joint risk reduction effort could include 3 potential competitors funded to develop a genuinely military, modular payload ALE, FTUAS, hardpoint launched (USN, USAF, USA) competitor UAS which would also be Boat/Ship deck launchable & semi-expendable. If vtol capability is necessary, then it would likely need to be some sort of internal duct fan(s) of some type.
A novel version might be a purely primarily counter-drone interceptor possibly a jet. Very expendable but similar form factor. Tradition AAMs, SAMs are just too over capable and thus expensive.
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Coyote-2 is a jet UAV interceptor. Coyote 3 is a prop HPM effector. The U.S. Army is buying 6000 and 600 respectively.
 
Josh_TN said:
Coyote-2 is a jet UAV interceptor. Coyote 3 is a prop HPM effector. The U.S. Army is buying 6000 and 600 respectively.
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If ever their was umder innovative overengineered ( more of heavy rugged missile ), overpriced craft . Sounds like RTX sales.
 
jsport said:
If ever their was umder innovative overengineered ( more of heavy rugged missile ), overpriced craft . Sounds like RTX sales.
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Perhaps, but I suspect the driving force was availability or production rate. There is a pressing need to produce C-UAV systems in quantity, and I suspect smaller companies with arguably superior products either did not have end to end solutions (sensors, interceptors, datalinks) or could not produce at scale.
 
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jsport said:
Standardized plans should have happened after WWII. Problem is every ship captain sees themselves as Mayor/Dictator of their ship and Strike Group cdrs as Govenor/Dictator of their own state. Policy is Personality to the extreme. When in fact Cdrs should have very limited ability to deviate from precedent/codified TTPs. They can provide a very necessary & Human nuance for the real time situation but most TTPs need already be set in stone. This of course would be highly efficient but also impossible to enforce w/o the use of powerful....
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Well, yeah.

The various navies hold the captain and group commanders PERSONALLY LIABLE for anything and everything that goes wrong on their ship.
 

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