It's time for our regular open thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
Overhauls are The Washington Treaty and for 2024 Suez parts two and three, my review of the National Guard Museum and theredlamb's review of the AMC Museum.
Comments
Bean (or anyone else) - how seriously is Lindberg and Todd's Blue/Green/Brown-water navy 2002 book to be taken in 2025? Is that still a sensible book to read, or have there been better classifications or systems since?
As far as I know, the concept remains current. Haven't read the book (or even heard of it before) but I'm actually considering picking it up.
In the "Drone Countermeasures" comments we discussed the feasibility of an Operation Spiderweb type attack by cheap drones against USA airbases and/or naval targets. It was pointed out that slow short range drones are less than ideal for attacking mobile aircraft carriers tens or hundreds or kilometres away out in the ocean.
So, how practical is Operation Box Jellyfish, a shipping container full of short range drones delivered into a commercial port like San Diego or Yokosuka with the aim of hitting the US carrier deck park in harbour, or when entering/leaving?
To this non-expert it looks a lot easier. Vast quantities of containers arrive and leave each day, and only a tiny fraction ever get searched AFAIK. Security around the containers is aimed at stopping people getting in to steal stuff, not the contents flying out.
Thoughts, observations?
@Hugh Fisher
I would be surprised if they would do it during entering/leaving. Why to attack mobile, manned target with CIWS, when you can attack it unmanned sitting in a port.
I would say that a big problem with "Operation Box Jellyfish" is how to actually hurt the ship? Air wing usually arrives at carrier after it leaves the port. And it is problem to hurt a 100 000 ton ship with 2kg explosives, maybe you damage some radars and communications. Planes are far more vulnerable to this attack.
And there is also political point of view. If China smugles 40 containers into the US, then attack some bases and then let some rogue state, or organization publicly claim responisibility, the investigation will quickly show that China was heavily involved and there would be big international backlash, but you are probably prepare for massive backlash and sanctions if you want to attack Taiwan 2 months later. But it is basically still a terrorist attack. It is far more internationally denieable than putting your drones on your merchant ships and then launch attack on the US (basically Pearl Harbour 2.0).
Thanks again for the series on exotic hulls.
You expressed mild interest in narcosubs. If you do, I hope you can discuss the feasibility of interdiction, since that seems to see a lot of back and forth in other forums I've read. I'm left noticing I don't really know. On the one hand, they're easy to identify, and probably not innocent; on the other, the Caribbean is huge (and now I'm hearing reports of encounters in the Pacific). Back on the first hand, they supposedly follow "known routes", which cuts down the area. And if a missile can reach them, maybe a USCG boat can? But that missile is no doubt coming from a jet, which isn't going to be able to board a boat.
Hence, back and forth.
So, offhand speculation without reading a lot on this: everything I know suggests they should be pretty easy to pick up on passive sonar, because the vast majority of the sound energy is going into the water. Silencing that is very difficult and specialized work, and I doubt the drug smugglers have much knowledge of that beyond maybe the very basics. Apparently, the Americans occasionally deploy an SSN for anti-narco work, and the Dutch send their submarines to do it too. There are articles which suggest the narco-subs will be hard to pick up on sonar because they're made of fiberglass, but I can only assume this is active sonar, assuming it's even true at all.
We've done interdiction with boats and helicopters for a long time. Using a missile is somewhat easier, and definitely better PR if you're a certain type of person. But I don't think this is really a game change in the fight against drug trafficking.
The absolute state of defense reporting these days (not a knock on you, bean, of course)
So, to dig into this a bit more, I pulled Rebuilding the Royal Navy, which has a couple pages on the adoption of GRP hulls by the RN. There's no mention of benefits to silencing, which would be important in a minesweeper, and is absolutely the sort of thing DK Brown would talk about if it was a thing. I am genuinely unsure if fiberglass is harder to see on active sonar, but am pretty sure it doesn't make a significant difference to passive sonar.
Very much so, and I am not a defense journalist. I know what I'm talking about.