(In a wargame) The US Navy sunk by fishing boats?!

[Jingles]

From a weird and amusing article I read recently. It's pretty old, and knows if any of it's true, but I thought it might provoke a good debate:

...but what van Ripen did to the US fleet...that's something very different. He was given nothing but small planes and ships-fishing boats, patrol boats, that kind of thing. He kept them circling around the edges of the Persian Gulf aimlessly, driving the Navy crazy trying to keep track of them. When the Admirals finally lost patience and ordered all planes and ships to leave, van Ripen had them all attack at once. And they sank two-thirds of the US fleet.

That should scare the hell out of everybody who cares about how well the US is prepared to fight its next war. It means that a bunch of Cessnas, fishing boats and assorted private craft, crewed by good soldiers and armed with anti-ship missiles, can destroy a US aircraft carrier. That means that the hundreds of trillions (yeah, trillions) of dollars we've invested in shipbuilding is wasted, worthless.

http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?...K_ID=35&PAGE=1

[hellheaven1987]

It is a war game, that is it.

[Darkhorse]

Something like that happened before. There was a wargame a few years back, the officer in command of the OPFOR fleet got into alot of trouble because he won, twice, in fact, after he won, the US fleet changed the rules of the wargame so they could win.

Basically the OPFOR commander used suicide and guerilla tactics against a blue water navy, and after hitting the 2 carriers with his limited stock of cruise missiles, resulted in 20,000 US dead and much of the task force sunk. I cant remember the name of it. Operation Red something rings a bell.

[hellheaven1987]

By the way, something interesting in the article.

A few years ago, a US submarine commander said, "There are two kinds of ship in the US Navy: subs and targets." The fact that big surface ships are dinosaurs is something that's gotten clearer every decade since 1921.

What the battleship was in 1941, the aircraft carrier is now: a big, proud, expensive...sitting duck.Aircraft carriers came out of WW II looking powerful, but that was before microchips. Now, when an enemy tanker can fire 60 self-guiding cruise missiles from hundreds of miles away, no carrier will survive its first real battle.
Carriers are not only the biggest and most expensive ships ever built--they're the most vulnerable. Because even one serious cruise-missile hit means the carrier can't launch its planes, its best weapons. They will sink to the bottom with their crews, not having fired a shot.

That reminds me John Keegan once states that the future design of Navy is underwater, because current Cruise missle is too strong to be defended and cheap in price. Besides hidding undersea, there is no effective way to defend a hordes of Cruise missles attack.

[Jabberwock]

Something like that happened before. There was a wargame a few years back, the officer in command of the OPFOR fleet got into alot of trouble because he won, twice, in fact, after he won, the US fleet changed the rules of the wargame so they could win.

Basically the OPFOR commander used suicide and guerilla tactics against a blue water navy, and after hitting the 2 carriers with his limited stock of cruise missiles, resulted in 20,000 US dead and much of the task force sunk. I cant remember the name of it. Operation Red something rings a bell.

You should really, really read the article in the OP. You might discover this is what the article is about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

[Darkhorse]

You should really, really read the article in the OP. You might discover this is what the article is about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

Well excuse me for being at work where I'm rather rushed.

Yes, that is the operation I meant, thanks anyway.

[danzig]

Yeah old event but hopefully one US navy has learned from since then

[Jingles]

Without warning, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles, overwhelming the Blue forces' electronic sensors, destroying sixteen warships. This includes one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five out of the six amphibious ships. The equivalent of this success in a real conflict would have resulted in the death of over 20,000 service personnel.

OMG...

[Frederich Barbarossa]

Well at least Van Ripen is a US General

[Captain Jin]

This was a pretty good example of a good lesson being taught but not learned. Van Riper is a solid and experienced combat leader-- he served in the United States Marine Corps for 41 years and is a veteran of Vietnam. While I agree that after the initial destruction they should've refloated the destroyed ships (as Pace put it it makes no sense to spend the money and then not use them throughout the entirety). But the fact that they changed the rules of engagement and forced pre-scripted actions was pretty stupid.

Of course this was pre-Iraq and the US military and Rumsfield principally still had some hard lessons to learn. Van Riper was one of the most vocal about the post war handling of Iraq and was one of several retired Generals that continually called for Rumsfield's resignation, since he was an i-d-i-o-t.

[Pious Agnost]

This changing of the rules in a wargame, so that the US can win, I've heard of it far too often to be comfortable about it.

Who exactly would make that call?

[Haakon]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isnt carriers supposed to operate well without enemy reach? Further more, they got a swarm of ships and subs guarding. However, in war anything could happen, and the US navy would be clever to learn their lessons from this.

It should be mentioned, that in a total war scenario, the navy would probably send out planes and frigates that would destroy ANY ship in the area fishingboats or patrol boats they would all be destroyed.

[Sphere]

Anyone who's ever played Janes Fleet Command knows concentrated ASM attacks from cruisers or smaller craft are far superior to strikes launched from carrier aircraft. Getting a group of aircraft off the deck is complicated, protecting them from SAM's and AAM's difficult, and in the end their anti-ship capabilities are limited. Carriers allow you to control an airspace, but if you want to lay down the hammer on another fleet you need massive ship launched cruise missiles, not a Harpoon tucked under the wing of an F-18.

IMHO aircraft carriers are what battleships were in the 20th century, an anachronism. In any real fleet-vs-fleet action both sides would run out of naval aviators in a hurry, and cruise missiles would become the weapons of choice. A guidance system is easily replaced, a pilot is not.

[CarbEast]

I think that the right analogy for this would be cavalry trapped in a tight spot, something like Battle of Stirling Bridge. But the fact that cavalry could be vulnerable if used improperly doesn't mean it was useless. Carrier's element is open sea, where it can both spot the enemy first and strike from a distance enemy can't, never letting him get close enough to retaliate. But if you pack carriers in a tight gulf, you're making yourself an excellent target, that's for sure.

[Haakon]

Anyone who's ever played Janes Fleet Command knows concentrated ASM attacks from cruisers or smaller craft are far superior to strikes launched from carrier aircraft.

But carriers are used to project power. I.e the carriers in operating in the gulf war was not there to destroy ships but to strike at targets inside Iraq.

but if you want to lay down the hammer on another fleet you need massive ship launched cruise missiles, not a Harpoon tucked under the wing of an F-18.

IMHO aircraft carriers are what battleships were in the 20th century, an anachronism. In any real fleet-vs-fleet action both sides would run out of naval aviators in a hurry, and cruise missiles would become the weapons of choice. A guidance system is easily replaced, a pilot is not.

Carriers are not used against fleets primarily. But they can fill multirole. Also, penguin missiles can be launched from helicopters as well as jets.

[Gelgoog]

Anyone who's ever played Janes Fleet Command knows concentrated ASM attacks from cruisers or smaller craft are far superior to strikes launched from carrier aircraft. Getting a group of aircraft off the deck is complicated, protecting them from SAM's and AAM's difficult, and in the end their anti-ship capabilities are limited. Carriers allow you to control an airspace, but if you want to lay down the hammer on another fleet you need massive ship launched cruise missiles, not a Harpoon tucked under the wing of an F-18.

IMHO aircraft carriers are what battleships were in the 20th century, an anachronism. In any real fleet-vs-fleet action both sides would run out of naval aviators in a hurry, and cruise missiles would become the weapons of choice. A guidance system is easily replaced, a pilot is not.

Well I hope you do realize that a carrier battle group is actually quite hard to penetrate. Carriers have AWACs patrolling at all times greatly extending the radar ranger of the fleet to identify threats. This allows carriers to launch quick response interceptors before missile boats would be able to get into range to fire a salvo. Carriers are also well protected because they have very capable picket ships with anti-ship and anti-missile capabilities as well as extremely sophisticated radar and fire control systems.

So while it is possible to run the gauntlet and get inside this strong defensive ring, it is not as easy as just launching a bunch of missiles. The armed forces run these war games all the time to identify these threats. In fact that seems to be all they do is drill drill drill. Aircraft carriers are also extremely hard to kill. Their very complex damage control systems make is so they can survive anything short of a nuclear blast.

[Poach]

So we (western nations) are all ed if we go up against an enemy that is actually any good?

Sounds great! Once a carrier gets sunk for real we'll see changes.

[NONOPUST]

Meh, doesn't worry me too much at all to be honest. Aircraft Carriers are essentially floating cities, and being a sitting duck in a gulf isn't exactly a good scenario for any ship.

Either way, hopefully the Navy learned something from it.

[Poach]

We're aware of this scheuch, but the wargames showed the Battlegroup taking serious damage. Was it a half-strength battlegroup fighting these wargames?

I can understand your argument if the group was below proper strength, but wasn't the alarming thing these wargames flagged up that a Carrier Battlegroup could be tackled and defeated with relatively low-tech gear?

[Caelius]

Oh god....not this again......

....Where to begin....

*curls up his sleeves and takes a deep breath*

Guys....the hooplah surrounding the Millennium Challenge exercises was pure unadulterated .

Van Riper was a Gary Sue who went to the media when the Pentagon rightly reprimanded him for cheating during the exercise.

And by cheating I mean literally teleporting his "speedboats" next to the carriers and proceeding to sink them.

Speedboats that look like this:


Craft that aren't designed to carry (much less fire) these, (which weigh in excess of 2 metric tons):


The Navy disregarded the results not because the Pentagon had a hissy fit because they were outsmarted.

If anything the people at TRADOC and the Army/Navy War Colleges love innovative thinking that creates new tactics.

.....what Van Riper did at Millennium Challenge wasn't one of them.

The Navy disregarded the results because they were the result of completely unrealistic cheating, it's just that Van Riper got to the media first and gave them his side of the story.

Oh and one more thing....War Nerd? Seriously, why the hell are people still listening to that idiot? The man makes the "Gavin Guy" look intelligent by comparison.

Fine example (bolding mine):

Well, instead of just paging through Jane’s and drooling over the Harpoon’s range and 221-kg warhead (don’t bother lying, I spent years doing that stuff myself and I know), think about what that weapons means in terms of this key sentence from my last story: “Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.” Now put that together with the fact that the Harpoon, way back in the Disco Era, had a cool little feature called “pop-up.” And what it meant is that the Harpoon itself worked as a ballistic missile. So even in our own inventory, we’ve had a weapon lying around for decades that could have taken out all our carriers.

Anyone with even a half decent working knowledge of nuclear delivery systems knows how holy ing dumb that is to say.

The man pretends to be an expert. He literally can't tell the difference b/w a Harpoon, an ICBM, and an artillery maneuver.

I've been following his since roughly 2002, and he lost all legitimacy when he tried to cover up how ing stupid he was after predicting how the Iraq invasion would go down.


Anyway, going back to how much of a disgrace Van Riper was for the USMC (so much that he practically got a "post retirement boot" by the Commandant later that year), he was so blatantly cheating that he was thrown out (he never "resigned" as he said in the media, the Navy literally had him relieved on the spot) mid-exercise.

From what I've heard, he brought the teleportation stunt and explained that by "the boat was hiding in a fishing fleet."

The following discussion ensued:

Navy: There was no fishing fleet.
v. Riper: There´s always a fishing fleet. The CBG just ignored it/didn´t have the time to actually look at it. (there's more than enough USN folks here to confirm that that isn't how the fleet operates)

Navy: You didn´t have those specific ASMs.
v. Riper: Aquired them on the black market.
Navy: You didn´t have the boat, either.
v. Riper: Modified fishing boat. (Yeah right, modifying a small fishing boat to carry and fire 4 anti-shipping-missiles...)

etc., etc., ad infinitum

In a nutshell: He teleported assets around, ignored the destruction of his assets and invented additional assets for his side. He played the game in "god mode".

Van Riper is now scorned by all the current TRADOC and MCCDC officers at the Pentagon for trying to "pull a Billy Mitchell in all the wrong ways" as a friend of mine put it. The general consensus is that everything would've been a lot different if Van Riper had kept his comments "in house" as a way of playing "Devil's Advocate" to standard Pentagon dogma as far as what he did. But his going to the press is what is seen as a major betrayal and glory-seeking for himself, especially for an officer of his reputation and background as Jin correctly mentioned.

This was a pretty good example of a good lesson being taught but not learned. Van Riper is a solid and experienced combat leader-- he served in the United States Marine Corps for 41 years and is a veteran of Vietnam.

Which simply compounded the Pentagon brass for why Van Riper did something so stupid.

Anyone who's ever played Janes Fleet Command knows concentrated ASM attacks from cruisers or smaller craft are far superior to strikes launched from carrier aircraft.

.

This is real life we're talking about, not a video game.

The basic theory of carrier warfare involves striking first, and ideally from beyond the enemy's range to retaliate. The trick for the enemy without carriers is how to preserve his own forces and get them close enough to respond. It's not impossible, and the payoff is huge if he can pull it off, but its still operating under a severe tactical disadvantage every time the engagement is joined.

Now you're right in that any modern warship is vulnerable to missile attack, but wrong in that strike aircraft still remain the most flexible way of delivering those missiles - and of preventing them from being delivered - thus making this implied notion of the impending obsolescence of the carrier utterly absurd.

Getting a group of aircraft off the deck is complicated

Hence why a Carrier's naval air wing personnel are so highly trained.

protecting them from SAM's and AAM's difficult

An acceptable risk, and it's really dependent on how many aircraft are sortied, and for what mission they're being used.

and in the end their anti-ship capabilities are limited.

A spam of Air-Launched Harpoon missiles aren't enough?

Really?

Carriers allow you to control an airspace, but if you want to lay down the hammer on another fleet you need massive ship launched cruise missiles, not a Harpoon tucked under the wing of an F-18.

Why?

3 or 4 Harpoons will kill or cripple almost any modern day warship. Couple that with that fact that you can hit and overwhelm the enemy with a strike force of aircraft from thousands of miles away (not including the 200 nmi range of the latest Harpoons) before he can even hit you.

Carriers are not used against fleets primarily.

What do you mean?

Yes they are.

The carrier replaced the battleship as the king of naval warships remember?

Their very complex damage control systems make is so they can survive anything short of a nuclear blast.

As a side note.

They're also the only warships in the world that still receive Battleship grade armor belts and blast protection. Hence why the Nimitz's, Assault Ships, and other Carriers of the world usually weigh so much.

All the other non-Carrier warships out there have paper-thin (by naval standards anyway) armor protection.

Everything from American Ticonderogas to the latest British Darings would be pretty much dead if struck by just two or three SM-3s in the right spots. Modern warship design philosophy emphasizes remote sensing/detection and firepower these days, not protection.

We're aware of this scheuch, but the wargames showed the Battlegroup taking serious damage. Was it a half-strength battlegroup fighting these wargames?

I can understand your argument if the group was below proper strength, but wasn't the alarming thing these wargames flagged up that a Carrier Battlegroup could be tackled and defeated with relatively low-tech gear?

The only alarming thing about these "wargames" (they really aren't deserving of that name really) is that 1.5-ton teleporting speedboats could magically carry and fire four 2-ton ASMs without sinking......