Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

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Simon_Jester
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by Simon_Jester »

Hm. Is something about that ship's mission requiring it to stay close to shore where it gets shot at? Or are they just really, really determined to go after that particular ship?
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by Sea Skimmer »

The whole point is to enforce freedom of the seas, after a ship was wrecked by what legally is more or less a pirate attack, since the Houthi still won't admitthey are doing it, even if we did recognize them as a government. You don't do that by running away and as I already pointed out these missiles have the firing range to reach the far shoreline over a wide area. What else did we build all these ships and SAMsfor anyway if were just going to run away from single poorly aimed missiles?

The next move will probably be to go after the small boats they are using for reconnaissance and in some prior cases, rocket attacks on Arab coalition ships.
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by Simon_Jester »

I'm totally okay with the idea that there is a continued naval presence in the area. I'm just wondering why it's the same ship. So I speculated: Does that ship's mission make it an unusually enticing target for the Yemenis, or are the Yemenis just repeatedly going after that specific ship because of some bizarre reason.
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by Patroklos »

The task CTF that covers those waters usually only has one or two ships assigned to it, it might have one or two more now. The point is there is nothing odd about it being shot at twice. It wasn't actually hit the first time so there was no reason to pull it out.
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by Simon_Jester »

If it's the only ship doing XYZ, and the ship(s) doing XYZ are most likely to get shot at, then yeah that makes sense.
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by hunter5 »

Simon_Jester wrote:I'm totally okay with the idea that there is a continued naval presence in the area. I'm just wondering why it's the same ship. So I speculated: Does that ship's mission make it an unusually enticing target for the Yemenis, or are the Yemenis just repeatedly going after that specific ship because of some bizarre reason.
Navy deployments often have ships maintain a "deployment zone" where the ship stays doing whatever the particular mission is. These deployments last for months while the ship does travels around the area pulling in really only for the crew to have a few days rests. It is not surprising that it would be the same ship they are probably going to remain in that area for a while.
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by MKSheppard »

Why has the US Navy not sent the Littorial Combat Ships to this area to clear the Littorials of this dangerous threat?
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by Simon_Jester »

Lack of anti-Yemeni mission modules?
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

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MKSheppard wrote:Why has the US Navy not sent the Littorial Combat Ships to this area to clear the Littorials of this dangerous threat?
1.) They re broken.

2.) Even if they were up 100% they are featureless POSs.

3.) Specifically they have minimal AAW capability, they would be nothing but targets. From what I hear 2 SMs and an ESSM were shot by the Mason in defense. Both are non point defense AA weapons. All LCS has RAM and if that's your first and only option against even a second hand C802 you are having a bad day.

4.) given all that yes, the LCS never should have been built.
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by ray245 »

I don't know why the USN can't just build more frigates and Corvettes instead.
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

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The hard part is figuring out how to make a warship cheap and capable at the same time given the expense of modern weapons. Try to make them cheap enough to be palatable (no sticker shock at the billion dollar light warship), and they lose critical capability and become vulnerable in a combat zone.
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by Sidewinder »

ray245 wrote:I don't know why the USN can't just build more frigates and Corvettes instead.
USN frigates were formerly designated "destroyer escorts." As the name implied, their design speed was to let them keep up with ships in the convoy they're escorting, and no faster. Reducing the required speed, allows a frigate's procurement and operating costs to be reduced, allowing the USN to buy enough frigates to support its mission.

Corvettes are useless to the USN, which must deploy its ships all over the world, and thus, requires its ships to carry enough fuel to let them travel all over the world, meaning these ships must be larger than a corvette.

Problem was, when the USN's Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates needed replacing, some jackasses proposed the following:
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littoral_combat_ship#Background]Wikipedia article on the LCS[/url] (I know, I know) wrote:Two Navy strategists, retired Captain Wayne Hughes and Vice Admiral Art Cebrowski, refined an opposing Streetfighter concept for a 1,000-ton small, specialized, and heavily armed vessels costing just $90 million (2001 dollars). Being small, light and numerous, the Streetfighter was envisioned as a "single-serving" ship to be abandoned once hit, made possible by its low cost. The concept of a manned expendable warship was contentious and the idea was not picked up.
The "Streetfighter" concept was meant to have superspeed, i.e., reuse the "speed is armor" concept that [sarcasm]worked SO WELL for the Royal Navy's battlecruisers[/sarcasm]. The need to have both superspeed AND to carry enough fuel to let the USN deploy the ship all over the world, meant the LCS had to be bigger and more expensive than the intended. Of course, the jackasses who proposed the "Streetfighter," forget the ship's crew is NEVER expendable- the US government subsidizes the SGLI, an insurance plan that pays the family of each deceased military service member $400,000, to say nothing of the costs of training the crew.
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

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Sidewinder wrote:I don't know why the USN can't just build more frigates and Corvettes instead.
USN frigates were formerly designated "destroyer escorts." As the name implied, their design speed was to let them keep up with ships in the convoy they're escorting, and no faster. Reducing the required speed, allows a frigate's procurement and operating costs to be reduced, allowing the USN to buy enough frigates to support its mission.[/quote]

This hasn't been true since at least the 70s, I am not sure how relevant it is today.
Corvettes are useless to the USN, which must deploy its ships all over the world, and thus, requires its ships to carry enough fuel to let them travel all over the world, meaning these ships must be larger than a corvette.
BS. The Navy has a great need for a frigate or even a corvette, the issue is that we can't seem to build one competently. Other nations, like the Danes and their Absalon, have frigate sized ships that out LCS our LCS. The Germans have a corvette class that works and is comparably armed. There are quite a few other examples. And they are almost all cheaper bang for your buck then our gold plated broken down cigar boat.

The fact is the US has bases all over the world that mean that our ships don't have to travel across the globe, and small and less complicated ships (ie not carrying SPY) mean they can be operated effectively out of most of them. In theory an corvette or frigate could operate just fine from current facilities like Napes for the Med, Bahrain for the Middle East, or Japan/Guam for the Pacific. And that's before we talk about allied facilities.

The same is true for diesel submarines. If you think our all nuclear sub force is that way for any reason other than a power flex by Naval Reactors then you are sorely mistaken. We would have twice the number or submarines, with half the basing bullshit due to their reactors, if we didn't insist all of them had to be nuclear and most had to be based CONUS. Hell, just having to need so many fewer nuclear qualified officers and sailors almost makes the case by itself. Some reading on this:

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/us- ... ines-11306

The school of thought that thinks we need 100% high end peer warfare capable hulls that can trot the globe is ridiculous. Whats the point of paying a premium for all these overseas bases if we insist on pretending all our assets are deploying from CONUS? I will partly answer my question with the unfortunate reality that whenever a Hi-Low mix has been tried invariable Congressional budget shenanigans mean the Low half gets full funding and the High is severely truncated or canceled. Our own acquisitions BS doesn't help.
Problem was, when the USN's Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates needed replacing, some jackasses proposed the following:

The "Streetfighter" concept was meant to have superspeed, i.e., reuse the "speed is armor" concept that [sarcasm]worked SO WELL for the Royal Navy's battlecruisers[/sarcasm]. The need to have both superspeed AND to carry enough fuel to let the USN deploy the ship all over the world, meant the LCS had to be bigger and more expensive than the intended. Of course, the jackasses who proposed the "Streetfighter," forget the ship's crew is NEVER expendable- the US government subsidizes the SGLI, an insurance plan that pays the family of each deceased military service member $400,000, to say nothing of the costs of training the crew.
There really is no relevant line to draw from WWI to modern naval technology, and SGLI for the entire crew is rounding error when you consider just the lost fuel or ordinance cost of a sunk warship.

However, speed is the #1 boondoggle from the LCS concept. The hulls these things have been forced into to gain maybe a dozen knots over more traditional vessels was a very bad trade off for our money. Sure you can go fast, assuming the water space and tactical environment allow that, but to what end? The engineering plants can't handle sustained top speeds so you aren't goting to get anywhere any faster operationally. It makes you marginally more effective against fast small boat attacks but for the cost of your water jets I could have compensated with more armament. You are supposed to operate in the littorals but you are now increasingly under shore based and aircraft launched ASM coverage and you aren't outrunning supersonic or nearly so ASMs. At the same time yoru AAW suite is compromised in service to speed.

Whatever, I don't want to wade full into how much the LCS sucks yet again.
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by Sea Skimmer »

ray245 wrote:I don't know why the USN can't just build more frigates and Corvettes instead.
Because they would either end up armed like LCS, and lightly (cheaply) built to boot, or end up so expensive that they make no goddamn sense for anything. Unending possibilities of cut down AEGIS ships were studied in the past, they always came out to situations where they were say 70% of the cost but 1/3rd the actual combat capability, if that. LCS was aimed to get 3-4 hulls per the cost of 1 Burke. That's worked out completely, and provided somewhere to put all our incoming this or that drones in the process.

Any step in between is utterly pointless, all the more so now that China is laying down large destroyers and its new Type 055 is probably going to bigger then a Ticonderoga. We'd just end up with a billion dollar frigate that still can't actually face up to first tier threats, and cannot support a heavy shore bombardment armament of any sort. And if its not going to do that then LCS is an entirely logical design path.
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Re: Houthi Rebels Lauch Two ASMs at US Warship

Post by Simon_Jester »

Skimmer, if I understand you rightly, you're arguing that a ship in the same general cost and tonnage range of the LCS is desirable. In your opinion, does does the LCS's speed make sense, or would it have been more logical to design a ship with the same mission but lesser speed, avoiding some of the design compromises that went into the LCS?
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