It's time once again for our regular open thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.

I'm going to do a virtual meetup next Saturday, 7/13, in the Naval Gazing Discord channel, at the usual time, 1 PM Central (GMT-6 or so). Should be fun if you want to talk about whatever happens to come up.

Overhauls are Rangefinding, Impressment, my pictures from Iowa's goat locker, The 3T Missiles - Launch Systems, Coastal Defenses Part 8, my review of the Jeremiah O'Brien and Pampanito and for 2023, Thoughts on the lost submersible, my review of the Kansas Aviation Museum, The German Navy in the Americas and my post thanking the base commander for the long lines at last year's Tinker Air Show.

Throughout WWII, the single most effective way of delivering high explosives to ships was dive bombing. This is exactly what it sounds like, the aircraft diving towards the target before releasing the bomb, the performing a high-G pullout to avoid following the bomb into the target. It was originally developed during WWI to attack land targets, as pilots realized that it allowed them to place bombs far more accurately,¹ although the fragile aircraft of the time were limited to fairly shallow dives.²

Curtiss F8Cs, the first US dive bomber

Dive bombing nearly died off in the years immediately after WWI, abandoned in the enthusiasm of airpower advocates for level bombing, but it was adopted by the US Marines and Navy in the late 20s, using fighters equipped with light bombs for support in ground fighting. Initially, they used fairly shallow dives, but the target had a tendency to disappear under the nose of the aircraft, and it was soon realized that steeper dives not only solved this problem and improved accuracy, but also were far harder to defend against. The plunging dive bombers were generally difficult to see before they began their dives, and once in a dive, the rapid change in range meant that heavy AA guns were ineffective, while lighter AA weapons had only a narrow window to work against the diving aircraft.³ The basic technique they used would remain standard throughout the dive bomber's life: approach at 10,000' or so, then push over into a steep dive, 70° or more. As he dove, he would aim at the target attempting to compensate for wind and the movement of the ship. The bomb would be dropped during the dive, and the pilot would then pull out and fly away at high speed and relatively low altitude. What altitude the pull-out was done at varied, with early tests taking place at 1000' or so, although later aircraft had to do so at greater altitude to avoid plowing into the ground.⁴ The pullout itself would often subject pilot and plane to 6G or more, enough to make the pilot's vision gray out, which generally limited the tactic to smaller aircraft.⁵ Read more...

Satellites have found a number of military uses: reconnaissance and intelligence, communications and navigation. But all of these require the satellites to be intact and functional, and that raises the possibility of denying the enemy these capabilities by degrading or destroying their satellites. That's right. It's finally time for ASAT.⁶

Bold Orion

First, a few words of definition. We can divide ASAT weapons into two fundamental categories: direct ascent and coorbital. Direct-ascent weapons, as the name suggests, ascend directly from the surface to intercept their target, while coorbital ASAT involves launching into the same plane as the target, then approaching and using some sort of warhead at close range. Direct-ascent is conceptually simpler and cheaper (as it can be executed by a fairly small missile if it's in the right place), and can use the target's own speed in place of a warhead if it can get a hit.⁷ The downside is that it requires incredibly precise guidance, with a typical launch window being a second or less, even if the system is fitted with a nuclear warhead. Coorbital ASAT, on the other hand, needs a full-size booster, but once the price for that has been paid, the guidance problem is greatly simplified, removing the need for a nuclear warhead even with 60s technology, and it is theoretically possible to leave the ASAT shadowing the target, then kill it at a moment's notice when war breaks out. The US has always preferred direct-ascent systems, while the Soviets and Russians often went for coorbital ones. Also worth noting early on is that not all satellites are created equal from the perspective of ASAT systems. An imagery satellite a couple hundred kilometers up is a far easier target than a GPS satellite or a comsat in GEO that are tens of thousands of kilometers up. This is more true for direct-ascent systems than for coorbital systems, but it affects both of them, and news stories about LEO systems that bring up the danger to GPS and the like should not be trusted. Read more...

It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.

First, long-time reader and commenter Cassander is looking for a managerial data science/product management role, preferably in aerospace. Email tint.michael@gmail if you have suggestions or leads.

Overhauls are Part 10 of the Aurora tutorial and for 2023, Warship Taxonomies and my writeup of the 2023 meetup in LA.

I've previously gone over the various capabilities that space systems bring to the military, ranging from reconnaissance to communications to navigation. But anything that provides such a capability is obviously going to turn the military mind to countermeasures.

At this point, it would be easy to immediately launch into a recounting of the various and delightful ways that people have come up with to blow up satellites, but that would be premature, because a great deal of the time and energy involved in counter-space work has been spent on keeping track of what is going on up in orbit. After all, it's rather difficult to blow up satellites if you don't know where they are, and very easy to blow up the wrong one if you don't know what they are, not to mention all of the other things you can do with this information. Read more...

The latest hotness in the USN is Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), which is their strategy for dealing with the rise of Chinese maritime power. I'd love to give you the official definition here, but I can't, because despite talking about this for 6 years now, they have yet to give an official unclassified definition for it.⁸

Two USV prototypes

The best definition I've been able to find from DoD sources, and it took a bit of looking,⁹ is "An operations concept that leverages the principles of distribution, integration, and maneuver to mass overwhelming combat power and effects at the time and place of our choosing. This integration of distributed platforms, weapons, systems, and sensors via low probability of intercept and detection networks, improves our battlespace awareness while complicating the enemy’s own scouting efforts. Applying combat power through maneuver within and across all domains allows our forces to exploit uncertainty and achieve surprise." Translated out of five-sided thought,¹⁰ this is sort of a turbocharged version of network-centric warfare, seamlessly linking together all of the various sensors and weapons wherever they may be so we can face the PLAN with whatever assets are best-placed to destroy them while avoiding providing the enemy with juicy targets. Read more...

It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't culture war.

First, apologies for not having a Jutland post this year. I didn't really have anything to cover, so I left that slot empty.

Second, I recently watched the Prime documentary on the Blue Angels, and very much enjoyed it. Would recommend.

Overhauls are Coastal Defenses Part 3 and for 2023, The East Asia Squadron Part 2, my review of Rules of the Game and RTW3 and Information.

During the 2024 Naval Gazing Meetup, I got a chance to revisit several museums I'd been to years ago, and I thought I should take the chance to update my impressions based both on what has changed there and on the fact that I have spent the last few years thinking about how best to run a museum ship.

First was Battleship Cove, where the biggest change was the loss of Hiddensee, which had to be scrapped in 2023 because she was in bad shape and it would have been too expensive to keep her. This is an unfortunately common fate for Soviet-bloc museum ships, and I am aware of at least three others that were ultimately consigned to the scrapyard for similar reasons, but at least I got to see her before she went, unlike the others. This has had a knock-on effect, as previously visitors got onboard Lionfish via Hiddensee, so Lionfish is currently closed while they get alternate access set up. I believe they're hoping to get her open sometime this summer. Read more...

Navies have long believed that seamanship and shiphandling are best learned at sea, particularly on sailing ships. Initially, virtually all naval training was conducted at sea, but as ships grew more complicated, some work began to move to shore facilities and hulked ships. And even as sail gave way to steam in the 19th century, many clung to this belief, with rather odd results, such as the existence of a small fleet of sailing ships with unpaid crews, as many nations required sail experience to get a merchant mariner's license. The argument advanced by proponents of sail was that it taught seamanship, particularly an understanding of wind and current, in a way that simply couldn't be matched by powered vessels, as well as giving cadets a chance to learn leadership and teamwork.

Horst Wessel in Nazi service

How seriously this was taken varied greatly between navies. Some, such as the USN and RN, were quick to abandon sail training on seagoing ships, although small-boat sailing remains part of the curriculum at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis to this day. Others took it far more seriously, building new steel-hulled training ships for the benefit of future officers. Among the leading proponents of this view was Germany. The German training ship Niobe was sunk in a squall in 1932 with heavy loss of life, and public support was rallied for the building of a replacement, named Gorch Fock. She was a steel-hulled barque,¹¹ and proved successful enough that the Kriegsmarine ordered two stretched sister ships, Horst Wessel and Albert Leo Schlageter, named after heroes of the Nazi party. A fourth ship was built for Romania, while a fifth, Herbert Norkus, was cancelled incomplete when war broke out. Gorch Fock spent the war primarily as an accommodations ship, while Horst Wessel and Albert Leo Schlageter, now equipped with light AA guns, continued to conduct training cruises in the Baltic. Read more...

It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't culture war.

Overhauls are Millennium Challenge 2002, Auxiliaries Part 1, FFG(X), Tomahawk Part 1, Tomahawk Part 2 and for 2023 Drydocks and my review of RTW3.