It's time once again for our regular open thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
Book update 72,000 words. Finished with the design narrative through the start of WWI.
2018 overhauls are Battlecruisers Part 1, Why do we need so many ships?, ASW - WWI, SYWTBABB - Design Part 1, The Pursuit of the Goeben and Breslau and Operation Staple Head. 2019 overhauls are Auxiliaries Part 5, Commercial Aviation Part 10, German Guided Bombs Part 4, Spanish-American War Part 3, Naval Fiction, SYWTBABB - Construction Part 2 and The Philadelphia Experiment. 2020 overhauls are Falklands Part 20, Southern Commerce Raiding Part 2, Merchant Ships - General Cargo and Lord Nelson's review of SS Anne. 2021 overhauls are Southern Commerce Raiding Part 4, Polaris Parts four and five, Pictures - Iowa Auxiliary Machinery and Completely Correct Battleship Facts.
Comments
I'm seeing excitable people on Twitter call for the sinking of the Russian Black Sea fleet as a punitive response to war crimes in Kyiv oblast. Leaving aside the potential imprudence of such a plan vis-a-vis nuclear escalation, it strikes me that I'm not sure getting large surface vessels sunk wouldn't actually be a win for Russia. Even if eg. Moskva is not a disintegrating rustbucket on the Kuznetsov level, she is presumably quite expensive to run, and I find it hard to believe her strategic usefulness justifies that expense. Am I wrong, or are Russian guided missile cruisers little more than worthless cost centres serving delusional post-Soviet vanity?
I think the Russian Black Fleet is mostly kept around for the off chance that Turkey gets herself kicked out NATO, and Holy Constantinople needs reclaiming. I think the Black Fleet is up to the task, but my numbers may be out of date.
Direct US/NATO intervention against the Black Sea Fleet is probably a bad idea. But if Norway decides to give Ukraine some NSMs on trucks, and maybe some volunteers to run them, well, if Russia can do it in Korea and Vietnam...
As for why the Black Sea Fleet exists, I'm not really sure either. I suspect that a lot of Putin's decisions are cargo-culting Imperial Russia/the USSR, much as Hitler built a fleet because the Kaiser did. It's expensive and not all that useful, particularly given that it's nowhere near as good as the Soviets were at peak.
Congrats, that's an awesome pace on the word count. Had a question that seems to line up with where you are in the book:
What development was needed for superfiring turrets to become practical? Was it simply a matter of ships growing large enough to support the increased topweight, or was it an innovation thing that the Americans were faster at?
Topweight was part of it, although the South Carolinas weren't all that big. Probably the biggest thing was doctrine. The British were pretty concerned with fire ahead/astern, while the Americans realized that it just didn't matter and focused on the broadside. It didn't help that British sighting hoods meant that they couldn't fire superfiring turrets within 30 deg of the bow/stern until Hood, IIRC.
Any word on the planned title? : )
Ukrainian sources are now claiming a possible hit on the Grigorovich class frigate Admiral Essen with their domestically produced Neptune missile.
@Tarpitz
Sea of Azov or Gulf of Odessa?
Gulf of Odesa I think, but it's all bloody vague, not clear it happened at all, other sources claim a hit on a different ship or on both, other sources claim it was a Harpoon not a Neptune. Lots of fog of war.
@ike
No news on the title yet. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.
I just learned that Evergreen's 2022 isn't shaping up to be much better than its 2021. They've had a ship, Ever Forward, stuck in the mud off Baltimore since March 13th. This makes it both the largest vessel ever stuck in the Chesapeake and the longest any vessel has been aground in the Chesapeake. The USN, previous holder of both records, is probably quite happy to give them up.
The William D Brown Memorial Award Committee has announced that due to the particular circumstances of this incident, Evergreen has been entered into the list of competitors for this year's prize, despite being a commercial shipping line.
@bean
I am still lobbying for '(FS) Glory to (USS) Iowa'. Even though I know that it is a stupid joke.
@Tarpitz
I guess that means advancing to the Danube delta should have been a higher priority.
@ike What, because their goals weren't complex and ambitious enough already? I'd say it's evidence the Black Sea fleet should have stayed nice and safe in port while the army focused on encircling and destroying the JFO in Donbas.
@ike
It's quite a good joke, but sadly not really a viable option for the actual title.
Thanks. And yeah, looking at the South Carolina tonnage triggered the question.
It's interesting: Friedman seems to say the RN expected battleships to fight smaller/lone actions with guns firing in every direction like the cover of a model box (was this how some of the battle cruiser fights went? Would be neat to see which turrets were in action for those).
I wonder if there's any milSF from 1890-1910 that showed what people expected fleet battles to look like.
I think it's less expecting to fight with all guns firing in different directions and more that they expected a fair bit of chase and not just going broadside-to-broadside. As for what turrets were in action, that information is probably in Campbell for Jutland, but I'm not sure how much you could find for other actions, which don't have a work of that quality available. For Heligoland, it looks like Beatty's engagement against Ariadne was more or less on the bow (maybe far enough for the forward superfiring turrets) while that against Coln was more or less on the broadside.
And worth pointing out just how much naval warfare changed in the 20 years you highlighted. Given how much churn was going on during that period, anything coming from fiction was likely to be not a great indicator.
And that fiction, of whatever time period, often has reason to be less than fully realistic because that's more entertaining. If you want to read some old fiction (on whatever subject) because you think you'll enjoy it, try searching archive.org, but remember that it's entertainment not education.
Iowa vs Nowaki was all turrets and hence couldn't have been an all-out chase - possibly one destroyer wasn't considered worth it???
Today is the 40th anniversary of the departure of the Royal Navy fleet for the Falklands Islands.
I thought about doing something for the 40th anniversary of the Falklands kicking off, but it's been busy, so I haven't.
I think that was the case. Spruance and Lee didn't see much point in deviating from the plan for that. I don't remember the trackchart for that action, so can't say more on it specifically.
I have just discovered that the Air Force has finally named its Tremendous Waste of Money. Oh, sorry, misread that. It's named the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent as the LGM-35 Sentinel. Fittingly, a designation that is just as stupid as the rest of the program. Sentinel is a perfectly OK name, I guess, but I'm exceedingly baffled by the use of LGM-35. THAT IS NOT HOW YOU USE THE MISSILE DESIGNATION SEQUENCE! It was tentatively slated to be LGM-182, which is correct, but they've gone with the number 35 (previously used by an exceedingly obscure and unsuccessful target drone) for reasons that I cannot figure out. The only thing that springs to mind is that they're trying to link it to the other recent inappropriate use of 35 in a designation, that paragon of procurement success the F-35.
Why does the DoD keep tormenting me like this?
Also, reading GBSD's wiki article, they're talking about polling where they ask people if we should (a) buy new missiles (b) extend the life of current missiles (c) get rid of the ICBM force and sometimes (d) get rid of all nukes. Why on Earth are you asking them to choose between (a) and (b)? The average member of the general public has no basis on which to make that decision. I don't even feel qualified to comment on the grounds that I don't know what a life extension is going to cost relative to new missiles, and I have a couple shelves of books on nuclear weapons. Having ICBMs is a policy decision and as a democracy, we should consider the views of the public. How we implement that policy decision is a job for professionals. The only reason I can think of to include refurbishment is to dilute pro-ICBM sentiment when the poll is reported.
(They also left out "tell the Air Force they can either have Trident or nothing", which is what I'd do if I was SecDef.)
I keep reading stories about Britain wanting to give (or sometimes having already given) a load of Harpoons that are about to be retired anyway to Ukraine.
These are invariably followed by pooh-poohing to the effect that Britain has no land based launchers, which is true.
However, my understanding is that Argentina was able to improvise a viable land-based launcher for its Exocets quite quickly during the Falklands. Is there any reason this would be more difficult to do with RGM-84s, assuming that's what we'd be giving them?
Yeah, that doesn't sound like a problem. Harpoon is pretty versatile, and I suspect that if they get the electronics to go with them, it shouldn't be hard to jury-rig a land-based launcher.
If we still have Rapier SAMs lying around anywhere, they seem like something the Ukrainians could potentially use, at essentially zero cost to the UK. There isn't really any ex-Soviet equipment available, and the army is a bit light on AFVs of our own.
The problem is that missiles tend to have a specific shelf life, and need refurbishment to extend it. Typically, if the missile is being pulled from service, they'll stop refurbishing and let the stock expire. In this case, Harpoon isn't quite retired, so the missiles are still good, at least in the short term.
That said, Rapier isn't quite dead yet, so if the systems aren't spoken for, then that's not a bad plan.
I am currently having some confusion around the armor scheme on Repulse and Renown. Looking at diagrams, the belt is sloped, but nobody talks about it. Friedman mentions it briefly, but doesn't even give the slope, and nobody else discusses it at all. I don't even know what the slope is, although I'm planning on measuring it from the book of plans I have for Repulse.
I am pleased to announce that I will be the speaker for the Cambridge (MA) LessWrong meetup this Sunday. I'll be speaking on nuclear weapons and nuclear war, and taking questions. The event is scheduled to run from 2:30-5:30 Central Time, and I'll post a link to the invite in Friday's OT.
@bean Congratulations!
I hope someone will be typing up your remarks.
I'm planning to use them as the basis for post(s), although they'll obviously be edited for this format instead of a live presentation.
"So, you want to build a strategic deterrent: how to get the most bang for your buck."
: )
Well, Ukrainian sources are in fact now claiming to have hit Moskva with a Neptune. "On fire in a heavy storm," supposedly, though for now supposedly is very much the word. Not really sure what Moskva would be doing wandering around in Neptune range of Ukrainian-held territory, but it would hardly be the first idiotic thing the Russians have done.
Tarpitz:
Because they have to be that close to be able to do anything.
Do what, though? Moskva has no missiles suitable for ground attack. I suppose it could potentially shoot down Ukrainian aircraft flying missions over the Kherson area, but how many of those really are there? And is it worth risking expensive surface assets in that role?
If it were me, Plan A would still be scrap the stupid thing. Plan B would be park it in Sevastopol, stop wasting fuel gallivanting around the place, and send the crew ashore to do policing duty in occupied areas.
Maybe it's all an ingenious scheme by an unusually pragmatic admiral to provide political cover to actually scrap it by suffering damage too extensive for the cost of repairs to be justifiable.
Russian state-owned media quotes the Russian MoD as saying:
Looks like she's wrecked regardless of how it happened.
Yeah - can't imagine the prospects for surviving a heavy storm after an ammunition explosion with no crew aboard to do damage control are great.
It seems reasonable to assume the Ukrainian claims were accurate: the fire was started by a missile hit. I don't completely put it past a Russian sailor to have been huffing paint and smoking crack in the magazine, but it's not the way to bet.
@Tarpitz: I'm seeing some sources claiming that Moskva was anchored off Sevastapol when this happened; that's extreme Neptune range from Ukrainian territory, but plausible. The Russians were using her for naval gunfire support earlier in the conflict, but they may have decided to adopt your Plan B before the Ukrainians selected Plan A.
The ship being at anchor would help explain why its nominally formidable missile defenses failed to provide an effective defense.
So, Ukraine hoarded their few Neptunes until they had the opportunity and intelligence to catch a major Russian surface combatant asleep? Or could be disinformation, but with both Russian and Ukrainian source apparently confirming the kaboom, there's only limited latitude for that.
Yeah, I guess Neptune has a longer range than I'd realised. I'd heard it suggested the ship was quite a bit further West than that, but not from anywhere remotely authoritative, so that may well be right.
Would the stormy conditions represent a potential issue for radar or CIWS accuracy?
As Bret Devereaux pointed out on twitter, what does it say about the state of the Russian navy that "it wasn't the Ukes, we totally sank our own flagship through incompetence & negligence" is at least a somewhat plausible claim?
@Tarpitz
Yeah, the storm could have made radar/CIWS less effective. More likely is that they thought they were out of danger and didn't have the system switched on. Or that it just didn't work because nobody had taken care of it.
@AlanL
Yeah, that. This is the navy that sunk its big floating drydock and nearly sunk its carrier along with it.
On the "how did it happen" front, unconfirmed reports are that Ukraine got it to engage a drone from one direction, its main radar system only provides 180 degree coverage, and the missile attack came from outside that arc.
On the "what is happening" front, the most credible sources now seem to be saying that the fire has been controlled and it's under tow. Presumably that means repairs would be lengthy and extravagantly expensive if Russia is capable of making them at all. More likely, it's scrap but they won't admit it for several years.
That seems unlikely. All of the radars in the latest photos on Wikimedia (which are from 2012/2013, so they could have done refits since then) are conventional dishes, which means they can either stare in one direction or rotate. Scanning a 180 deg arc isn't particularly natural for that kind of radar, and I'd generally expect reversing to be harder and more annoying than just doing a 360 scan. A single rotating phased array that's parked on a specific bearing might do it, but none of those seem to be present. I'd guess that the crew just got fixated on the drone and didn't pick up the missiles in time. In which case, Bravo Zulu Ukraine. Here's hoping she sinks under tow.
I'd expect that if there was a Bayraktar in the area, it was providing targeting data for the missiles - that's always the challenging part for over-the-horizon engagement, and an obvious solution. Russians fixating on the drone and missing the missiles is plausible, but more likely due to Russian sloppiness than some specific technical defect that the Ukrainians knew about and exploited. But if you're a Russian apologist, "they were sneaky and mean!" looks better than "we were stupid and lazy".
I'm wondering if all the navies that have been deprecating Harpoon, etc, because OTH targeting is hard and air superiority is easy, are having second thoughts.
I am writing up a more technical critique of the nuclear war literature, and have found possibly the best sentence ever in a scientific paper:
"Unfortunately, we have two real-world examples of this, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were burned by U.S. atomic bombs on 6 and 9 August 1945. We discovered that this was actually the culmination of a genocidal U.S. bombing campaign."
Wow. This is an amazing discovery that we should tell everyone about. Clearly, you are pushing forward the frontiers of history, Mr. Robock.
In sad museum ship news, USS The Sullivans (not DDG-68, DD-537) has a hull breach and is apparently sinking. Almost certainly a TCL.
What is the thinking regarding attacking both the vessel providing tow and the ship being towed? Is this a case by case determination or is it all fair game?
Not maintaining the Ukranians will get another chance in that area...but if they do.
Good work on their part for what they got so far.
How do we work out a baseline estimate for how far we expect a Neptune to be able to reach? Sounds like the kind of thing you'd want everybody else to underestimate for exactly this sort of occasion
@Blackshoe
Just saw. Very sad, and alarming how low she is. I suppose someone had to take over from Texas as the sick ship in the museum ship world.
@Neal
If they have more missiles, the ships are in range and they can get a spot, then they should be able to do it just fine. Wouldn't want to be the tug in that case. But I'd guess that probably won't happen.
@Lambert
Not really. You can go quite a ways with a missile of that size if you want to, but it depends on how much fuel you have vs how much space/weight goes to the warhead. Given the baseline, we're probably looking at ~100 nm, but the error bars on that are large.
The Russians are now reporting Moskva has sunk. I think the words of those guys on Snake Island must have really stung.
I think I have traced the source of the radar claim.
180 degrees is a red herring presumably resulting from Telephone. The actual assertion is "due to the presence of only one 3P41 Volna guidance radar, the Fort anti-aircraft complex can be used to repel an attack from only one direction at a time"
I am in no way equipped to say whether this is true or even plausible, or exactly how it cashes out.
@Tarpitz: That would explain why the S-300 "Fort" system, Russia's answer to Aegis, didn't engage. It still leaves the question of why the 9K33 "Osa" point-defense missile system or the AK-630 close-in weapons systems didn't engage, or why the ship's ECM and decoys were ineffective.
This was just plain sloppy of Russia. Particularly if they were tracking a TB-2; the plausible and somewhat excusable "we didn't believe they had antiship missiles and we didn't want to risk automated friendly fire" doesn't fly if you know you are being shadowed by the kind of platform that could call in ASMs.
I wonder if they had some kind of equipment casualty, either the air search set so they were using the Volna to track air contacts and missed the Neptunes entirely (though ESM should have seen something), or maybe the Osa or AK-630 malfunctioned.
I wonder how far out the TB-2 was, though. If they suspected that might be spotting for an ASCM battery, or even for artillery, I'd think the thing to do would be to ignore it and watch the other arc! (Or engage it with Osa or main guns, if it's in range of those.)
Also, on the note of CIWS - it's striking me that, AFAIK, no CIWS-equipped ship has ever engaged an ASCM with its CIWS, successfully or otherwise. They were all either blindsided and didn't have it on (Stark, Hanit) or neutralized the threat with SAMs, ECM, decoys or an escort's SAM (Missouri, Nitze, Mason, Wainwright). I wonder if the AK-630 even fired?
FWIW, the Russian story is that she suffered a magazine explosion (cause unknown) and that led to her loss. I find that at least as (and in some aspects far more) plausible than an ASCM hit. The Russians do have a long history of ammunition problems (some on here are old enough to remember the Severomorsk Disaster; supposedly half of Northern Fleet's war stockpiles went up that day). That's not going to get better with war. As always with this war, we will probably never know.
@AlanL:
As much as the world's supposedly pre-eminent Navy burning a capital ship to the waterline pierside, I suspect.
The S-300 system on the Slavas has only a single illuminator, which is a weird choice, but one the Russians made, and which could have very easily messed with their attempts to shoot down the Neptune. But there are the lesser systems, as John says, and they should have done something, but appear to have not.
@bean: It's a single illuminator, but a phased array that can illuminate three targets simultaneously. And they've got the datalinks for six missiles in flight at a time. So, roughly the engagement capability of a Burke, but without the space and EMI concerns of trying to get three big dishes on the same hull. But without the capability to engage targets across a wide range of azimuths simultaneously.
Which means they depend even more on the second- and third-tier missile defenses, and it should have been SOP to turn those on whenever the Top Dome is working a potentially hostile contact in a war zone.
As for accidental explosion, if all we knew is that the ship blew up, that would be my bet. But the Ukrainians reported it before the Russians did, even though the ship was well out to sea, and they reported it through two secondary sources rather than an MoD press release. I don't think it is likely that they could have put together a propaganda op on that short notice, with any confidence that they wouldn't wind up with egg on their face.
I read a conjecture earlier that suggested that Moskva did in fact fire on something - probably the drone - and the missile exploded on launch, which started a fire and disabled/destroyed the other defenses. This might be consistent with both the "Ukrainian missiles were fired at Moskva" and "Moskva self-destructed by means of monumental derp" variants.
@Blackshoe: I dunno - the level of incompetence involved in starting a serious fire on a ship in the yards, with material condition relaxed, reduced crew and after normal working hours is a bit different from losing a ship to self-inflicted fire, at sea, in a war zone. In the latter case you at least ought to be at a higher material condition and with full crew aboard. Not that the loss of Bonhomme Richard wasn't a frak-up of the highest order, but if we had, for example, lost a Ticonderoga operating in the Arabian Gulf while at sea, I'd call that much more damning.
@John Schilling: Doesn't SPY-1/Aegis have a lot more than six data links? I was under the impression that illuminator limits would hit long before data link limits would. (Also, SM-2 Block IIIb and SM-6 make those a much lesser limit than they once were; I'm not sure if S-300 has any such improvements. I've read anecdotally that some of the newer missiles for it have the secondary IR mode but I'm not sure how true that is.)
I have no idea how accurate this, but if this sim is at all accurate, that's quite the damning assessment. I'd think this same sim against a Tico or a Burke would be two splashed Neptunes, every time or near to.
That said, who knows. The sim is likely baloney.
Jade Nekotenshi:
I'd expect the drone would've seen it if that happened.
@bean Your article on nuclear weapons was featured in The Browser, an online newsletter of interesting articles from all over the Internet.
I tested out Moskva vs an Iowa in CMO, and it ate the 16 Harpoons in that scenario quite handily. I could see the illuminator being pointed the wrong way, but if it's two Neptunes, the point defenses should have handled that easily.
The simulation @Jade links to suggests that the Neptunes get swatted out of the sky on a good day, but 30-knot winds, rain, and swell (sea state 6?) turn it into a CIWS crapshoot with the point-defense missiles failing to engage due to surface clutter. Sometimes the guns get both, sometimes not.
I've seen conflicting reports on how bad the weather was off Odessa on the 13th, but sea clutter is a particular problem for engaging sea-skimming missiles and I wouldn't expect a 1980s-vintage Pop Group radar to be the tool to cut through it.
Whether CMO or any other sim accurately reflects reality on this anyone's guess, but it's at least a plausible explanation. Except, if the weather was that bad, how did Ukraine find the ship in the first place. Would be pretty ballsy flying an irreplaceable TB-2 in that, and if you're limited to visual search, low expected return. SIGINT cueing with the drone for confirmation, maybe?
Osa is a pretty old missile system, more late 60s than 80s. I wonder if it even has capability against sea-skimmers on paper? AFAIK it's ACLOS guided - I'd think you'd want/need SARH and/or track-via-missile for sea-skimmers, so that losing track of your missile doesn't scupper the whole shot.
When it was first deployed, the expected threat was Falkands-style iron bomb runs, not Harpoon/Exocet, ya?
A Global Hawk out of Sigonella has been patrolling over the Black Sea most days since February...
@bean: "I could see the illuminator being pointed the wrong way, but if it’s two Neptunes, the point defenses should have handled that easily."
Maybe the two Neptunes are the ones that got through.
"As soon as we launch the battery is deader than a dodo, so let's do a full salvo!"
4? 8? 16?