(08-15-2019 12:02 PM)bobdizole Wrote:  

(08-15-2019 11:38 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(08-15-2019 05:22 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  My question is...Where are these cruise missile threats that they speak of? Submarines?

Yes, among others. Supposedly, a Russian sub left Cuba and played around undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for a couple of months.
One very real problem we face is that our Navy has virtually abandoned anti-submarine warfare (ASW) after the end of the Cold War. Multiple Gulf wars just pushed us even further away from that capability. We need to recreate our ASW capability. But right now it is still way too close to being an afterthought in our Navy planning.
Our newest "destroyers," the next-to-useless LCSs, were supposed to be an ASW platform, but their engines make too much noise for their sonar to be able to hear any submarines. Not to mention that kind of noise makes them sitting ducks for a submarine, long before they would detect that sub. Someone recently posted on one of the naval websites that their greatest defensive capability is that they are so worthless that no intelligent enemy would waste a torpedo or bomb or bullet on them.

Link
Looks like they are trying to beef up the Aegis system work for ASW. I know the Perry class frigates with their towed array's were a great system in the 80s 90s, not sure how well they would do today.
P-8s for wide area and Seahawk's for direct action are still a force to be reckoned with.

The Aegis system is anti-air warfare (AAW). They are trying to upgrade the ASW capabilities of the Aegis ships. But that's really the wrong answer. The reason the Perrys and Knoxes were good ASW platforms is that they were basically cheap and expendable. You send an Aegis ship chasing after a submarine and you've lost a big hunk of your AAW capability. And if the sub wins, you've lost it permanently. What we need is a cheap and expendable ASW frigate, like the Knoxes and Perrys. I was on active duty when the Knoxes and Perrys came into the fleet, and I thought they were both underpowered and undergunned, but they proved their worth chasing Soviet subs to help bring about end of the Cold War.

The Navy is busy chasing high-end multi-function ships and aircraft. We need something like Bud Zumwalt's high/low mix procurement strategy. Build some Aegis ships but also build some analogs to the Knoxes and Perrys. Before the LCSs turned out to be such a flop, the plan was to have 104 Aegis Burkes and Ticonderogas, and 52 LCSs. Now it looks like they are going to let the 22 Ticos pay off and rely on the 82 Burkes, plus whatever the new "frigate" is going to be. They're great ships, but we can't build enough of them to cover all our commitments, so we end up overworking ships and crews, having Fitzgerald and McCain incidents, and wearing out the rest. The cost of a new Burke is around $2.5 billion, or $200 billion for 80 of them. And the cost to replace the ones that pay off with something similar will probably be higher. Here's what I'd do. Instead of building or replacing 80 Burkes for $200 billion, I'd do 40 Burkes at $2.5 billion each for $100 billion, 60 of the European "mini-Burkes" at $1 billion each for $60 billion, and 80 single-purpose frigates (mix of something like 60 ASW with 20 surface/land attack ones).

As far as the P-8, it's a great platform, but it gives up some capabilities the the P-3s had. I like the Japanese P-1, which has the ability to do low level as well as high level ASW. In keeping with the "high/low" concept, I would actually like to see a mix of P-8s and P-1s, each doing their own thing. But we'd have to get the P-1s license-built by somebody on this side of the pond.