It's time for our regular open thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
Not a whole lot new this time around. Reminder that the LA meetup is coming up, and you should come.
Overhauls are Early Dreadnoughts, WWII ASW - Sensors, my review of the Iowa, and for 2022, are ships delicious, Sea Sparrow and The FY 23 US Navy Budget.
Comments
@bean
A few threads ago, you said you needed someone to pull some books from a library for you. Do you still have this need? Mine does a good job with iLL requests.
The Amazon price came down from "absolutely not" to merely "extortionate", so I went ahead and bought it.
Howdy just wanted to give you a brief heads up and let you know a few of the pictures aren't loading properly. I'm not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I've tried it in two different internet browsers and both show the same results.
I don't remember if you've covered this, but I couldn't find a post quickly.
How automated is modern naval gunnery? Is it simply a matter of the officer in charge locating a target using various sensors, tagging it on a screen and telling the gun "Fire three rounds at this" and the gun firing itself or is it more involved than this?
I haven't covered that, but to the best of my understanding, it's probably a matter of taking a track off the combat system and telling the gun "go shoot at this", and the gun does the rest. There are a couple people here who are likely to know better than I am, though.
@FXBDM: in case the jargon is confusing, that's "probably yes". (In theory, at least.)
I just reread your updated piece on early lessons from Ukraine. It seems like your opinion of the Bayraktar was vindicated. Has any system in current use changed your opinion about the capabilities of drones / loitering ammunition?
Seems like the Ukrainians are using their grenade dropping quadcopters quite well, the Russians have a lot of confirmed kills with the Lancet and both sides use UAVs extensively for recon and artillery spotting, but is that a temporary situation? Looks like the US has refrained from ordering more of the small SwitchBlade 300 too.
I haven't been following it as closely lately, particularly conditions on the ground like that. I do think I probably underestimated how much drones would change things at the low end, particularly for poorer nations (which both Russia and Ukraine are in this context.) That said, I do expect that we're probably seeing the peak of drone effectiveness. There are lots of civilian uses for drones, but not a huge number for shooting them down, so I expect countermeasures are trailing. Also, lasers are ideal for that niche, and we're probably 10 years away from seeing reasonably wide deployment of those on ground vehicles. By 2040, I expect that drones are less useful, particularly for attacks, because they're very vulnerable.
Also, it looks like the page for RTW3 just went live on Steam, and they're saying it should release before the end of Q2 2023. Expect a review very soon after it comes out, and little else from me at that point. I am excited.