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This topic is offered for NewMars forum members who have demonstrated both knowledge of and interest in US Naval policy with regard to engagement with non-US actors on the high seas and coastal waters.
The matter is pertinent to the Mars Initiative because the situations that occur on Earth today in the naval arena are certain to occur away from Earth.
This topic provides an opportunity to publish short summaries of historical incidents, as well as whatever might be publicly available about Naval Doctrine for the US and for any other nation whose information is is available.
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This post is reserved for an index to posts that may be contributed by NewMars members over time.
In this post kdb512 reviewed the history of tests of steel plate thickness vs shell penetration:
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 79#p226279
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A scenario was proposed recently (September 2024) in another topic....
In this scenario, it was imagined that a Chinese vessel were to succeed in ramming a US vessel under the (hypothetical) command of GW Johnson.
GW Johnson asserted that if that event were to occur, he would (at least attempt to) sink the Chinese vessel.
kbd512 offered the opinion that if that were to happen, and if GW Johnson survived the encounter, he would be court marshalled.
It seems to me (looking at this from some distance) that a legal proceeding would be appropriate and understandable, assuming the incident did not lead to a larger conflict.
How the legal proceeding would turn out is most definitely NOT knowable, because the most talented legal minds on Earth would be struggling with the problem.
If the ramming were intentional, then one question would be... Did the Chinese captain act on his own?
If the ramming sinks the US vessel, what is the implication of the US vessel attempting to protect itself?
We have actually had this situation in the air, near Chinese territory. A US surveillance aircraft was damaged by a Chinese fighter, and the aircraft had to land on a Chinese owned island, where it was examined by the Chinese before it was eventually returned.
The history of that encounter may be of interest in the current discussion.
In addition, there may be examples from history of such incidents on the high seas.
If anyone can find published doctrine that is given to US Naval officers regarding this scenario, it would seem (to me at least) to fit well into this topic.
It should be possible to discuss this difficult topic without emotion.
I understand that emotions are likely to engage at the thought of such an event.
However, emotions do not help in a public discussion such as the one I am hoping for here.
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tahanson43206,
My 20-year old self might have been inclined to do exactly what GW said he would do. My mid 40-year old self knows better than to immediately react in the manner he described. That is why most Captains in the US Navy are in their mid-40s to early 50s, rather than their 20s. The Navy knows how age and experience tends to produce maturity in most men and women. There are a handful of 20-somethings given command of small ships. A full Lieutenant (O-3) with 4 to 6 years of experience can handle a small patrol ship. There are no 20-somethings who are deliberately given command of an aircraft carrier or destroyer, for example. Modern destroyers are equivalent to WWII battle cruisers, only mind-numbingly more complex. Merely learning the basics of how a modern warship works can take a year or more. To know just enough to make competent decisions, even if not backed by experience, about 4 years. A lot of people think naval officers are generalist managers with little technical knowledge. They are managers, but the notion that they don't require technical knowledge is categorically false, as they'd be well and truly lost without it. Could you determine whether to put off or expedite a repair to one of the radar arrays of a destroyer's AEGIS Combat System without knowing how it works, and what the risks and tradeoffs are of "repair now" vs "repair later at a proper shore facility"? The more complex the ship and mission, the more you're asking of the person in charge, regardless of how mature they might be for their age.
I may agree with the emotional sentiment GW holds towards anyone who rammed the ship he was commanding, because I would also be very angry that someone needlessly endangered my crew and their crew while pulling some sort of stupid ego-driven stunt. At the same time, I'm telling you what the most likely outcome would be if the Captain of the US Navy ship opened fire on the Chinese naval vessel following a collision. We would be at war, in all probability many more lives would be lost, meaning the repercussions from the incident would affect world affairs far beyond the immediate scene of that incident, and the behavior of the PLAN military officers would be rewarded with what their leaders seem to want (a war with America).
Our Captain used to allow a selected Seamen (E-3s) to be "Captain for a Day" (an O-6). We had one kid, an engineer who worked in the boiler room, who said he'd give everybody the day off if he was Captain for a Day. Well, that day finally came. Our Captain granted him his wish. After talking a great game, needless to say, nobody had that day off. In point of fact, we had a General Quarters drill that day.
One of us asked him why we didn't get the day off after all that talk. He said he realized after people started responding to him as if he was actually the Captain, that he was responsible for their lives. He hated General Quarters drills because he was on a hose team. The drills are insanely hot and uncomfortable (you sweat to death in your FFE), but how well we respond determines whether all of us live or die at sea. When faced with the prospect of getting both himself and all the men under his command killed, he thought better of giving everyone the day off when he knew we all needed more training to respond fast enough to a mainspace fire. Oddly enough, he never wanted to be the Captain after that. He thought being the Captain would be the easiest job ever. Turns out that having everybody and their dog come to you with their problems, which you are fully expected to resolve on the spot, is not such an easy job after all. He hated it, far worse than simple GQ drills.
He also thought that he'd get to enjoy the accommodations of our Captain. Ha ha ha! That's the biggest joke of all. He did not get a wink of sleep that day. As I tell people who think our Captain's cabin is there for him to enjoy, it's actually there for foreign dignitaries and other officers to enjoy, but never him. It's a beautifully appointed prison cell where you will be expected to work day and night, often without sleep. If our Captain managed to get 4 hours of sleep per night, he was doing great. He didn't get to have his drink at the end of the day, either. He said he was far too busy and struggled with understanding all the paperwork he was signing his name to, so there was no way in hell he was going to be even slightly drunk while he was signing his life away over things he had thrown in his face every hour of the day. A "normal" Captain has first been a Deck Officer, a Department Head in multiple departments (Engineering, Operations, Communications, Supply, etc), and the Executive Officer, along with a lot of continuing education, before ever becoming Captain. Most of the time, he's also been in charge of a training command of one variety or another. Every US Navy Captain holds a Master of Science degree, bare minimum. In fact, you cannot become a Commander through the normal promotions process without first obtaining a Masters, battlefield promotions notwithstanding.
That's the difference between knowing and acting as if you're responsible and accountable, versus talking a good game about what you would do if Uncle Sam put you in charge. Generally speaking, he puts people in charge after consistently demonstrated performance. Within the realm of combat commands, are some promotions based on politics or popularity? While not impossible, I find that highly unlikely. Those responsible for making promotion decisions are evaluating experience and recommendations from numerous commanding officers.
Every test involves book knowledge, oral knowledge (being able to explain how something works to someone else who knows the subject matter, who has provided instruction to you), culminating with a practical demonstration of skills in an operational environment (rather than simply guess at whether or not you know how to moor the ship, you're going to be charged with managing the operation while seniors observe and take notes on how you're doing). You are endlessly tested. Your evaluation reports reflect day-to-day consistency of delivering what you're asked to provide (input from both peers and seniors), the quality of the work done (this is somewhat subjective), and how you treat and work with others (can you be entrusted with authority, and will you do what is right, even when nobody is watching). Promotions were multi-day and sometimes multi-week "grilling processes" where any weakness in your knowledge or character was exposed (how do you handle failure). There are certain tests you will take where no matter what you do, you cannot win. These tests are more about character than they are about knowledge. Will you continue fighting for your ship as effectively as you know how, even when the outcome is not resolved in your favor?
When the Navy's Brass talks about engendering confidence amongst the parents of their service men and women, regarding the lives of the sons and daughters entrusted to the officers appointed over them, that's precisely what they're talking about. In an all-volunteer force, in order to continue to receive a steady supply of high quality recruits, the officers in charge have to convince the parents of those recruits that our military is motivated solely by the desire to serve and to defend our nation, rather than ego or ambition. Raw emotion and ego have no place in military leadership, because the stakes are too high.
We may ultimately be called upon to sacrifice ourselves to defend our most cherished ideals and to protect others, but those involved should never have to question whether such a decision was made without careful consideration, and that those in command determined that no other course of action was an acceptable response. In some cases, there simply won't be another option. Sometimes you have to stand and fight. How you respond, even when you know you're going to lose, means everything.
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For kbd512 re #4
This topic provides an opportunity to show actual examples of incidents from history.
While examples from the past do not necessarily prescribe the best action to take in a new situation, they can be instructive.
We have two examples of reactions to an impending ramming by a Chinese vessel of a US Naval vessel.
We have GW Johnson's offering that he would defend the ship and accept the consequences.
We have your very long post that seems to indicate you would allow your vessel to be struck, with almost certain lost of life and certain loss of valuable property (ie, damage) assuming your vessel is not sunk.
I would expect that a court marshal would inevitably follow such an incident.
The charges would be failure to protect the vessel, and other charges might well be added.
I would like to see actual Naval Doctrine if it is available.
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tahanson43206,
We have your very long post that seems to indicate you would allow your vessel to be struck, with almost certain lost of life and certain loss of valuable property (ie, damage) assuming your vessel is not sunk.
There's a historically effective solution to the annoying issue of smaller PLAN warships attempting to ram into US warships. If we use more steel in the construction of our warships, then these ramming attack become a minor nuisance for us while potentially life-threatening for PLAN warships. America starts from a superior position of being able to purchase and operate larger warships constructed with a much greater tonnage of higher strength steel. While it's true that the Chinese have more warships than we do, the total tonnage of all PLAN warships is less than half that of the US Navy. In any collision at sea, size matters quite a lot. As part of our Navy's leadership, I would opt to use basic physics against our adversaries. Physics wins every time.
From Wikipedia:
In March 1984, Kitty Hawk participated in "Team Spirit" exercises in the Sea of Japan. The Soviet Victor-class nuclear attack submarine K-314 shadowed the task group. On 21 March 1984, at the end of the Sea of Japan part of the exercise, K-314 surfaced directly in front of Kitty Hawk, time was 22:05, too dark and far too close for Kitty Hawk to see and avoid the resulting collision, with minor damage to the aircraft carrier, and significant damage to the Soviet submarine. At the time of the accident, Kitty Hawk is estimated to have carried several dozen nuclear weapons, and K-314 probably carried two nuclear torpedoes. Kitty Hawk was thereafter considered the first antisubmarine carrier weapon and a red submarine was painted on her island near the bridge but was ordered removed upon return to home port North Island San Diego, CA.
...
On 21 March 1984, K-314 collided with the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan. Kitty Hawk was not significantly damaged but the Soviet submarine could not get underway to proceed home for repairs under her own power. The Frigate USS Harold E. Holt, stayed on scene for several days before the Soviets could send out a seagoing tug to bring her home. Holt offered assistance several times after daybreak but was refused by K-314's captain.The initial collision rolled K-314 onto her back, sparing the sail, periscope and antennas. A second strike broke loose a blade of her propeller which remained lodged in Kitty Hawk's hull. Divers reportedly removed a piece as a souvenir and samples of the submarine's hull coating were examined for intelligence purposes.
Do you really think we should've sunk K-314 to "teach the Russians a lesson", or did their near-fatal stupidity do that job for us?
We left a frigate behind to watch over the Russians because it was the right thing to do.
If all of our surface ships were built like battleships, in much the same way that our super carriers already are (the only truly armored ships still in service), then the Chinese can bounce as many corvettes / frigates / destroyers / light cruisers off our hulls as is required for them to learn basic physics.
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Incidentally, modern anti-ship missiles, whether subsonic or supersonic or hypersonic, are only effective against the paper thin hulls of modern warships. Regardless of terminal velocity, they're intended to penetrate about 2 inches of steel at most, which happens to be the thickness of the thickest hull plating, such as that found aboard aircraft carriers. If you put 12 inches of steel in front of them, then they're not going to penetrate, because both their kinetic energy and the explosive force of their warhead is woefully insufficient. A shaped charge is a different matter, but it's clearly not going to do much damage on the other side of the armor. A missile of any description is a miniature aircraft carrying a small bomb. Our Iowa class battleships have been struck by bomb-carrying kamikazes (human-piloted cruise missiles) during WWII with very little effect inside the skin of the ship. North Carolina was truck below the waterline by a Japanese Long Lance torpedo packed with as much explosive filler as the largest anti-ship missiles ever created. Tirpitz was only sunk after receiving 3 direct hits from 12,000 pound British "Tallboy" bombs. Tallboys were oversized iron bombs with very thick / hard / strong casings designed to penetrate through the thinner deck armor of a cruiser or battleship. That is why those weapons were effective against battleships. They had just enough penetrating power to punch through the deck and detonate near the ship's magazines.
Way back in 1918, IIRC, we had some guy (named Grantham or Gautham or something similar) who thought loading more explosives, similar in capacity to the largest modern anti-ship missile warheads, into a thinner-walled shell would penetrate or crack battleship armor using explosive force alone. The US Navy politely told him that his shell wouldn't penetrate their battleship's armor, nor do any serious damage to a ship from the blast effects. He insisted it would work, so he wrote to his Congressman. To settle the argument, Congress ordered a test between the Navy's then-current large caliber naval rifle (a 14 inch gun) firing armor piercing shells and his much larger caliber high capacity explosive shells which had a similar construction, in terms of charge-to-steel weight ratio, as a modern anti-ship missile's explosive warhead. His shell both failed to penetrate the armor and failed to do any real damage beyond scorching the paint off the armor. He claimed the first test wasn't fair, so the Navy then performed a second test with the exact same result as the first test. He finally conceded the matter.
If he knew anything at all about physics, which he clearly did not, then he never would've asked for the test, or maybe he would've asked the naval ordnance officers who brushed off his request as to why they ignored him. It wasn't ego or pride, they already knew from both prior testing and being on the receiving end of both AP and HE shells fired by German battleships during WWI, that more explosive was not the answer. You had to punch through the armor first if you wanted to do real damage. That's why the charge weights of battleship shells are so low. This also makes them very cheap to produce, as they're mostly steel, and 16 inch AP shells only have about as much explosive filler as the smallest iron bomb in the Mk80 series of iron bombs. Sectional density and hardness determines penetration. Explosive filler has very low density and it's as soft as silly putty. Too little steel equates to insufficient penetration.
Our post-WWII / "modern" warship designers seem to have forgotten that the entire reason for having armor is not to prevent all damage, but to limit structural damage and reduce casualties, so that a far greater amount of cumulative damage is required to actually sink the ship.
There's a lesson in here somewhere, but I don't know if we have people who are capable of learning, because their heads are filled with counter-factual nonsense about how and why things were done the way that they were. The warship designers of 100 years ago put plenty of thought into their warships and they conducted plenty of tests. They didn't know as much as we know today, yet they still took the results of testing very seriously. Back then, testing trumped all beliefs about what would actually happen if we did X / Y / Z.
"There's no point to having armor because a missile warhead can still punch through it."
That's technically true, but only in the sense that an exceptionally powerful shaped charge can put a small pinhole through the main belt of a battleship, which is not the same as a tank. A tank has a singular very confined compartment containing all of the crew, which is why a shaped charge missile warhead is so effective against a tank. That does not describe a battleship with over 1,000 compartments. A pinhole is not going to sink a ship, nor will it kill very many people on the other side of the armor. The entire reason modern anti-ship missiles are so destructive to modern warships is that the entire warhead makes it through the paper thin hull plating prior to detonating inside, which then turns that "paper" into steel confetti. You cannot do that to a ship equipped with real armor. Exhaustive testing with real weapons in real combat has proven this inescapable basic physical fact of life. It's why we had AP shells to fire at other ships with serious armor and HE shells to fire at paper thin ships, such as destroyers or even smaller vessels.
Maybe someone thought they were saving money by deleting the armor, but when one of our warships collides with a cargo container ship and does more damage than the cost of all the steel in a 50,000t hull, we have to ask ourselves what the actual point of that "cost saving" measure was. Did we actually save any money, or merely squander lots of tax dollars on pointless misadventures? Steel is cheap. Buying more steel saves lives.
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If our 300 ship Navy consisted solely of 50,000t class warships (the approximate displacement of a Forrestal or Kitty Hawk class aircraft carrier or North Carolina class battleship), the total cost of the steel is only $11.25B USD at $750/t (about what we pay for HY-80). Our Navy spent $10B on each of the 15,000t Zumwalt class "stealth destroyer", now over $30B in total and still counting. We've never used them in combat. More than a decade after being "declared" operational, they're still a pointless science experiment. After they were built, the Navy determined those ships had insufficient volume for the magazine capacity they required. 50,000t "destroyers" wouldn't have that problem. If we had the 600 ship Navy that President Trump wants, spending $22.5B on the steel is still a rather inconsequential amount of money- far less than the 3 Zumwalt class destroyers which have never contributed anything at all to our Navy's combat power.
Did I mention that larger warships also require significantly less power than smaller warships to maintain high cruising speeds?
USS Long Beach, a nuclear powered guided missile cruiser, displaced 15,000t and required 80,000shp to move through the water at 30 knots. The gas turbine powered Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers only displace 8,000t to 9,000t, yet required an increase to 105,000shp to move through the water at 30 knots. Smaller / wider hulls do not move through the water very efficiently. They ride up on their own bow wave at lower speeds, so hydrodynamic drag prevents them from sailing any faster, and ensures they burn a lot of fuel to keep up with larger ships. Larger and more hydrodynamic ships with thicker hulls and more armor have historically proven to be both more fuel efficient and more survivable than smaller ships with paper thin hulls. This is not to claim that smaller ships cannot be equally efficient, but to do so they give up range and speed or weapons or all of the above.
Our modern Navy only purchases very large ships to begin with. Our smallest "frigate" design displaces the same tonnage as a WWII light cruiser. Going even larger to obtain the rest of the benefits package offered by truly large ships is worth the minor cost differential if we've already conceded that we require larger ships to provide the range / speed / weapons we wish to have. Both Congress and the Navy agree with the wisdom of that statement. They don't want small ships, because they're not useful for blue water operations far from home. We've never really been a green water or brown water naval force. If we send any vessels into the littorals, they should be smaller dead silent battery powered drones or attack subs capable of ambushing their prey. We've gone way too large on submarines (except for ballistic or cruise missile carrying subs) and way too small on surface ships.
It turns out that the big girls are rather light on their feet. Waves that would make the ride quality in an Arleigh Burke a miserable experience are more of an annoyance aboard the much larger carriers and battleships. I know I noticed the difference between sailing on a frigate and various big deck ships. There are no footprints on the bulkheads of aircraft carriers. Even professional sailors can become sea sick when the boat is rolling around enough. You get a lot less of that aboard larger ships. Total number of required crew is equal to the amount of maintenance-intensive systems crammed into any given hull, not the physical size of the ship. You could crew a "battleship" with the same total head count as an Arleigh Burke class destroyer if said "battleship" was equipped with all the same weapons and sensor systems as an Arleigh Burke. You'd have much nicer accommodations, room for spare parts, more fuel, and less reliance on a vulnerable logistics tail. With very little top weight when equipped like a Burke, extreme battle damage would be required to produce a list sufficient to roll her over.
There's no major cost differential associated with building a dramatically larger hull, which is precisely why a 250,000t luxury cruise ship only costs $750M to build, but a 100,000t Ford class nuclear powered super carrier costs $15B. Too much pointless crap was crammed into the hull of the Ford class to provide an entirely fictional sortie generation rate improvement over the prior classes of super carriers. If we're going to spend a lot of money on each hull we put in the water, then we may as well build battleship-like hulls. We can affordably operate battleship hulls as if they were frigates, and call them frigates if that is how we choose to man, equip, and operate them. 50,000t provides plenty of reserve buoyancy to add or subtract crew members, sensors, weapons, and fuel. We can purchase 6 Forrestal class carriers for the same cost as a single Ford class, which means we have more real rather than imaginary sortie generation rate than any singular carrier with marginally more efficient catapults. We're better off operating a fleet of much larger 80,000t carriers and 50,000t battleships if we focus on what it would cost to replace a ship sunk by enemy action because we decided to pinch pennies when it came to purchasing steel.
To move at our typical carrier battlegroup cruising speed of 20 knots, the LM-2500 gas turbine powered Arleigh Burke class burns 1,482 gallons of F-76 marine diesel fuel per hour. If the USS Kitty Hawk was equipped with 60% efficient Supercritical CO2 gas turbines vs the 16% efficient Foster-Wheeler water boilers they were historically equipped with, then at 80,000t nominal displacement it would burn 1,500 gallons of F-76 per hour to maintain a cruising speed of 20 knots. Kitty Hawk's 4,000,000 gallons of fuel oil capacity is almost sufficient for completion of her longest recorded historical deployment of 62,000 statute miles, while steaming at 20 knots average speed, without refueling. Historically, Kitty Hawk required multiple underway fuel oil replenishment events per deployment, so we don't even need more fast oilers to keep our ships supplied with fuel when they're of sufficient size to complete a 180 day deployment without refueling. We could top off the tanks one time at a friendly liberty port mid-way through a deployment. In time of war, aircraft carriers and battleships strike hard and then fade away, or they get sunk. Each wartime deployment might be 30 to 45 days, they travel at high speed to and from targets, launch alpha strikes and empty the shell magazines, and then return to port to rearm, refuel, and repair.
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