We've reached 100 open threads. I'm sort of baffled that we managed to get this far, but you guys keep showing up, and so the OTs continue. As always, talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't culture war.
Sabaton has decided to help us out by giving this blog a theme song. It's grown on me since I first heard it.
Book update: 66,000 words. I've finished Britain, Germany and the US through the start of WWI, and need to clean up the rest of the world.
2018 overhauls are The Bombardment of Alexandria, Military Pricing, Amphibious Warfare Part 5, A Day on the America Parts one and two and Thoughts on Tour Guiding. 2019 overhauls are German Guided Bombs Part 3, Commercial Aviation Part 9, Falklands Part 12, Weather at Sea, my review of the Air Force Museum and the South Dakota Class. 2019 overhauls are Auxiliaries Part 0, Revolt of the Admirals Parts one and two and The Submarine that Sank a Train. 2021 overhauls are HMS Captain Parts one and two and Polaris Parts two and three.
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Sighs - opens YouTube to add another Sabaton song to the library.
While we're all busy with our eyes on land in Ukraine, the PLAN might be bringing back the ram
This is in service of a new coast guard law that authorizes the coast guard to use force in any waters which the Chinese government claims, regardless of whether those claims are recognized by international law.
@quanticle
It pains me to say this, but maybe that is smart? The rules of engagement for each side forbid shooting first. If your enemy is conducting a freedom of navigation exercise, him running away to avoid a ram is still a win for you. On the other hand, if the USS Maine sinks on a freedom of navigation exercise, and congress is debating a declaration of war. Do they really care if she was sunk by ram, shell, torpedo, bomb, or missile?
The zero-th law of international law is 'Whatever the great powers agree on goes.'. If China can convince the US Navy not to contest her claim to those waters, they are hers in every way that matters.
It's not really a ram. They're designed essentially to sideswipe other ships, which was reasonably common during the Cold War. That said, building ships designed to do that is definitely an escalation, and a very bad sign on China's part. Major violation of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea, although that isn't legally binding.
Apparently the Navy has finally decided to do something with the Zumwalt's giant hood ornaments, which after this much time came as a bit of a surprise to me.
(apologies if this has been mentioned elsewhere; I haven't looked in on an open thread in a while)
There was an interesting article in the Washington Post back in 1985(!) assessing the performance of the German Wehrmacht in WWII(link):
The article goes on to discuss why the Germans did so surprisingly well, and the British and Americans so poorly, relative to their numbers.
Interesting article, Johan. It made me look up Weigley and I've picked up a few of his books to peruse. Some parts that jumped out at me:
I don't know if Hastings was writing before the relevant analysis had been done or maybe he had the tougher tank opposition the British faced in NW Europe foremost in mind, but the idea that the 75 mm equipped M4 wasn't up to the task such that it was a significant detriment to allied tactical performance doesn't hold up.
Oddly, he says that British officers admired the willingness of the Americans to expend more men, if necessary, to achieve tactical goals, but then a few paragraphs later complains that American infantry were timid and would rather let their artillery deal with the enemy than come to grips with them by fire and maneuver. Is this really a defect or is it an adaptation, though? If I had effectively unlimited firepower at my beck and call I would certainly rather expend vast quantities of ammunition than a single life, so long as it didn't dangerously protract the operation. You'd need to do a much more detailed analysis to determine how this difference in approach impacted success and failure on the battlefield.
He is certainly correct that the US Army's single replacement system had many pernicious effects.
I'm not quite sure which of Liddell Hart's books the author is referring to. Perhaps it was an article pulled from "The Other Side of the Hill", which was published in 1948, and dealt with WWII.
@apd123
It's not entirely clear what's going on there. USNI had two articles a day apart saying that the AGS was and wasn't going, so at this point, I'm just going to sit and wait.
The inescapable truth is that Hitler’s Wehrmacht was the outstanding fighting force of World War II, one of the greatest in history. For many years after 1945, this seemed painful to concede publicly,
This may have been radical to claim in 1950 or whenever, but I remember this was conventional wisdom by the 1980s when I first encountered the subject.
These days it's considered to be the point to argue that the Sherman was a superior tank, despite weaker guns and armour, because easy transport, better fuel economy and ease of mass manufacture trumps any advantage in a theoretical one-on-one match. Because you rarely got one-on-one matches, you got 5 Shermans vs 1 Panther, because the Shermans were easier to make in large numbers, could be transported easily to Europe and didn't run out of fuel once there.
I think I'd still wager on the Panther, as long as it's not surrounded, which is a function of tactics rather than equipment, which are also commonly regarded as a Wehrmacht strong suite.
None of which matters if the bulk of the opfor has been ground to dust in the east, obviously.
That's a rather weak defense of the Sherman, actually. It was generally as good if not slightly better than contemporary medium tanks, as evidenced by the preference for Soviet Guards units to drive Shermans instead of T-34s. But Panther and Tiger are more charismatic, so they get all the press.
It was normally 5 Shermans vs some infantry with maybe an anti-tank gun. Not because the Shermans were weak, but because that was a platoon, and so anything that got a Sherman was going to get 5 Shermans.
The fact that there's a decent chance the Panther ate its transmission or final drive 500 m from the assembly area, becoming a very expensive paperweight, helps even out the tactical balance, too.
Shermans with 76mm (+HVAP) or 17 lber guns can just reliably perforate Panthers and Tigers. Plus, the stabilizer increases the chance you get the first shot off, which is the major determinant of victory in tank duels. German tank tactics degraded quite a bit by 1944. See the battle of Arracourt, where hundreds of attacking German tanks (including more than 100 Panthers) with insufficient recon were outmaneuvered and thoroughly thrashed by Allied combined arms led by 75mm Shermans.
The Sherman was also a product of it's logistical environment. The American logistics train for tanks went all the way back to Detroit, which was generally a lot further from Essen or wherever the Panthers were being made, with shipping tonnage across the Atlantic as a major bottleneck and opportunity cost.
Two major design goals or selection criteria for the Sherman were shaped by this. One was efficiency of shipping weight: given a choice between shipping five Shermans, three Pershings, or one T30 Heavy (numbers guesstimated), the five Shermans were judged to be the better deal. The other was reliability and field-servicability, as major breakdowns requiring factory servicing would effectively mission-kill an American tank for the duration of the war.
bean:
You sure that isn't just a preference for better build quality?
@bean Could you delete the previous comment? There was a copy/paste bug on my part that I didn't notice before hitting post.
Original comment follows:
I also find it interesting that the article was published in 1985, before Western scholars had access to the Soviet archives, and in an intellectual environment that wasn't exactly favorable towards glowing portrayals of the Red Army in World War 2. This was an era where it was still in vogue to claim that the Soviets had won via sheer mass of numbers, and that the German army, on a man-for-man or tank-for-tank basis, was superior to the Red Army in terms of firepower and tactics.
This view would change in the '90s, most notably with the publication of Glantz's When Titans Clashed, which highlighted the role of superior Soviet tactics, especially in Operation Uranus and Bagration. Today, I'm not sure that scholars would be as quick to agree with the claim that the German army was the most effective on a per-unit basis.
@quanticle
That might be over-egging the pudding a bit. It's more on the operational level that the Red Army was competitive, sometimes superior, to the Wehrmacht. They were still pretty stiff at the tactical level, partly out of necessity given what they had to work with.
German tactical efficiency goes back a lot earlier than WWII, as Citino's various books discuss, and has its military-cultural roots in the combination of a bias for action, delegation of authority to the man on the scene, and a solid corps of NCOs, among other things.
@Cassander I saw this article while I've not actually read it I was wondering if you had any info on what modifications the carriers might get.
https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/uk-royal-navy-will-open-carrier-flight-decks-uncrewed-operations
I'm sure that converting them to CATOBAR is off the table, so I'm not sure what might be meant. Perhaps a small catapult for drones? Though the free opening mentions conventional carrier bourn aircraft.
I'm curious, too. The little bit of that article that's not behind the paywall certainly reads like they want to convert the QEs to a CATOBAR configuration. But of course that would be crazily expensive and time-consuming now that the ships are already built (and they've bought the wrong flavor of F-35s for it) - even more so than the last time they looked at the idea, while the first ship was still under construction.
I mean, I guess they could do it, if they decide the hideous cost in both money and time is worthwhile. I just can't imagine that they would.
Designing a drone that can take off from a carrier on its own power should not be too difficult.
I thought I saw an article on that somewhere else. Based on what we know now, it looks like they're asking for a maximum catapult weight of 55,000 lb and a trap weight of 47,000 lb, both just a bit too low to operate F-35s. I can't help but think that it looks a lot like not wanting to admit that it was a major mistake to not just build them as CATOBAR carriers in the first place.
No, but it's going to impose a bunch of tradeoffs, particularly if it also has to do the VL part.
It was definitely a mistake to not go CATOBAR from the start, though knowing us we'd have probably insisted on some navalised Typhoon varient if we had. I don't get what conventional carrier aircraft we could operate even with a 55,000lbs catapult however (anyone still operating the old C/D Hornets?). It's clear that they aren't counting on vertical landing if they want traps though.
I wonder if the idea is to do STOVL/VTOL for manned aircraft and STOBAR for drones?
@Anonymous,
Designing a drone that can take off from a carrier is one thing. Designing a drone that's big enough to do that and go on to do something useful, but still small enough to land aboard the carrier again afterward is something else again.
Anyway, from the small amount of the article I could read, it sounds like the RN want to add a capability to cross-deck aircraft with conventional (i.e. CATOBAR) aircraft from other navies. I don't know how that's possible at this point without substantially rebuilding the QEs.
So, Sweden and Finland are currently considering joining NATO, and NATO has been making encouraging noises. If they were to join, then every country around the Baltic would be a NATO member, except for Russia. At that point, would the Baltic be a hopelessly hostile location for Russian warships or transports in the event of war, or could the Russians still operate there effectively if they wanted to?
@Johan Larson
The Baltic is shallow, narrow, and ice-bound much of the year. I can't imagine either side would want to risk too many of their big fancy ships there. You always have to be uncomfortably close to an enemy airbase.
Brown water fighting is scary, weird, and probably involves lots and lots of mines.
@Johan Larson,
Are you assuming that the Baltic isn't already a hopelessly hostile operating environment for the Russians (also the Swedes, Poles, Germans, and anyone else who might want to take a crack at it)?
Let's not get pedantic here. The goal is to resupply the Baltic republics in some way that doesn't require driving through the 65 km gap between Russia's Kaliningrad oblast and Belarus. If it could be done by sea with the Russian navy being conveniently absent, that would be one less thing to worry about.
Actually, if supplies could be sent from Stockholm to Turku or Vaasa directly rather than driving up to and down from Lapland, that would be sweet too.
Johan Larson:
Would Russia even notice?
Finland has ended Finlandization and Sweden was co-operating with NATO pretty much the whole time NATO existed.
Johan Larson:
The proposed Helsinki—Tallinn Tunnel might be the best bet, assuming that Russia is unwilling to escalate beyond harassment of ferries.
@Anonymous,
Russia has threatened Finland with unspecified consequences if it were to join NATO.
I would hate to rely on something as fragile as a tunnel in the event of war. It's the first thing the Russians would try to cut. I suppose it might be acceptable if it were very deep, rather than a structure lying on the seabed.
I think as long as they have their base in East Prussia, I don't think you can write off their ability, at least, to harass the supply lines.
It would probably be a lot different if they had to run everything out of Saint Petersburg with both shores of the Gulf of Finland held against them.
Johan Larson:
Which probably means nothing other than a strongly worded letter.
It's not like a country that went all in on one invasion (to the extent of removing forces from their other borders) that isn't going well for them is going to be able to invade another country.
Johan Larson:
Even if it were deep the portals would be pretty easy to collapse.
But if Russia isn't willing to go further than a naval blockade then it'd be just fine.
@Bean The time seems appropriate for a rerun of your Falklands war series.
Yeah, I've known we were approaching that for a while.
https://www.cp24.com/news/canada-chooses-to-buy-f-35-fighter-jet-cp-sources-1.5837644
Looks like Canada will be joining the F-35 club (finally)
@Johan Larson,
If we need to resupply the Baltic states during a hot war between Russia and NATO, I suspect Russian forces in the Kaliningrad Oblast would have their hands too full defending themselves to conduct a lot of offensive operations - and their resupply situation would be even more precarious than the Baltics', what with that 65 km gap between them and any potentially friendly territory.
But the larger point is that the Baltic is sufficiently narrow that everybody's air forces can mostly deny access to everybody else's naval forces; adding Finland and Sweden to NATO doesn't really change Russia's odds that much.
@Alexander is something happening with the Falklands? I must be totally out of the loop.
40th anniversary of the war starts on Saturday.
In other news, the USN released its budgetary proposal for shipbuilding and uh it's not good
As a result, the Navy is asking for nine ships in FY23, even as it plans to retire 24. It is asking for 96 aircraft, but no F/A-18 Super Hornets and fewer carrier-variant F-35C Joint Strike Fighters than last year. It’s also proposing a decrease of about 10,000 sailors to crew the fleet in the next five years.
3rd para in the above post should also be part of the quote, FYI
And there I wasted all that time wondering what the strategic rationale for FF(X) was.
Somebody needs to teach them the Aurora trick of stacking a pile of old 16"/50s onto the deck of the converted ore barge USS Congressional Mandate. Name one after each senator and you're a quarter of your way there already.
@Echo
It's less stupid than it sounds. 355 was the number that the Trump Administration's study came up with, and it had all of the types specified as well as total numbers. Congress putting it in legislation is probably a good thing because it makes it harder to change.
This is perhaps a silly question, but is there a point where power dominates weapons effects over energy or force?
With chemical explosives this is all tied very closely of course, because explosives have a certain donation speed which causes a pressure spike for x milliseconds.
But for nontraditional weapons does this break down? I.e. if you have a 90 MW laser that only delivers 1J of energy, or on the other end something like a pressure spike that has a lot of force but not necessarily a lot of power in it?
Or is it basically just energy?
*Detonation speed, not donation.
@redRover
Yes, there are circumstances under which the rate at which energy is delivered (i.e. power) makes a qualitative difference to the effect of a weapon.
For example, consider two lasers, with the same average power. The first delivers it continuously: it gradually increases the temperature of the target until it suffers heat-related structural failure. The second delivers the same amount of energy in the form of (say) a one-nanosecond pulse once per millisecond, with a million times as much instantaneous power: each pulse will vapourise a thin layer of material from the surface of the target before heat can be conducted away, and the explosively expanding vapour will cause further damage.
This is briefly alluded to in the comments here: bean mentions that, while pulsed lasers are superior for this reason, they're technically infeasible at present. (At least, for shipboard systems: we have pulsed lasers for some scientific applications.)
Ultimately, it takes both power and energy to do damage. A single 1 J pulse isn't likely to kill anything, no matter how high the power. To put it into perspective, that's about 0.5% of the energy of a .22LR round, and while those can be lethal, that's not the way to bet. At the same time, I can deliver quite a bit energy by poking you repeatedly, but it's not going to kill you no matter how long I keep it up for.
That said, DampOctopus is correct about lasers. You can get all sorts of interesting interactions out of pulsed lasers, even if the pulses themselves are quite small. But you need a lot of pulses to actually do anything if they're small. Atomic Rockets is probably the place to go for more details.
If you could focus the beam enough (down to a few atoms), might not even a one-jouler be able to cut effectively? Assuming megawatt pulses or more, as needed. Wouldn't need to blow up the target, just slice it in half. An elegant weapon and all that.
Sadly for the Pinprick9000, it is going to run into one big problem of machineing a deep hole (radius/depth > 40) - efficently clearing your chips. Even if you can efficently vaporize individual atoms - one by one - almost every trajectory you launch it on will see it strike the (cold) walls of the cut, freeze, and need to be recut.
Time are tough for our small island nation. Unfortunately, after exhausting our defense budget on aircraft and aircraft carriers, the only weapon we could afford to shoot down an irritating communications satellite is a 100W[iffle] laser.
…this could take a while.