Virginia SSN on Discovery Channel
 

Did anybody else watch this? Did you see the part at the end when they were running an exercise against an "enemy" ship? Well, I found it interesting that they dispatched a Tomahawk missile against it in the exercise. Anybody else catch that? I'm not asking anyone to confirm anything. But I found this quite interesting considering there is no TASM's anymore and there was speculation recently that the current form of UGM-109 is rumoured to be anti-ship capable. If so, removing the Harpoon from US Navy subs may not be too bad of a drawback. And Oscar Austins may have more of a longer anti-ship reach than we might think.

It wouldn't happen to be the Futureweapons show that was on last night, would it?


But yeah, the Tomahawk firing made no sence. I was confused as to weather they were attacking a land target or the ship. But if what you say about the modern Tomahawks is correct, alot of web pages will have to be re-done, and Luft Wolf will be back in the buisness of indulging in our desires for DW (HINT, HINT;)).

I don't think it was on Futureweapons. I think it was actually a show specifically about the Virginia Class. It might have been Futureweapons, but I don't remember as I only caught the last 15 minutes. But it clearly showed the the crewmembers running some sort of drill against a hostile surface ship. And they used a Tomahawk missile against it.

Read This:

https://wrc.navair-rdte.navy.mil/war...m/overtext.htm

Block IV Tomahawks are capable against land moving targets and ships. They're vague about what sort of sensor they have, though. It may or may not have radar terminal homing like in DW. I think the real driver was the capability against land moving targets and the anti-ship capability came for free.

That was Futureweapons....

That Mackowitz guy has a great job... I think that goes on the list of "Top Ways to Use Your Clearance After Leaving the Government" list. :)

Cheers,
David

I teach those weapons. That show was full of crap. It used Firing Point Procedures for a weapon that wasn't shot (at the wrong type of target no less), and stock footage of a harpoon(!) leaving the water.

Take these shows with a grain of salt. The Navy only allows them to see so much, the rest is just edited in to make it more interesting by people who don't understand what they're editing to begin with. Do you think your average documentary producer really understands on any level, "match sonar bearings and shoot?"

It also says "Current plans call for...missiles to be produced by remanufacturing currently bunkered TASMs" So perhaps they do share the radar termanal homing. Either that or they just wanted to get rid of the the TSAMs :)

I think that whether they use a radar or not (I suspect they probably don't), they want to get rid of the TASMs no matter what. The Navy is ALL about recycling.

I don't know what a producer understands (there's more than a few ex-Navy men who became journalists), although regardless of what he understands or doesn't understand they almost certainly were required to be very vague in the documentary. I know that there is also a lot of misinformation intentionally spread out there to mislead potential adversaries.

Do you think it's possibly the case that they were simulating a future weapons system in an exercise or playing the part of a red sub making simulated cruise missile attacks?

[joke on]What?:o Why would the Navy want to keep that stuff secret??? [/joke off] I've seen two doco's on the Virginia Class.. One kept calling it "The Super Sub":up: and suggested it was an awesome anti terror weapon. The other was more of a "Hey this is a very well designed sub and this is some of how it was built" one.

As with all Documentaries about modern weapons half of what they show is either incorrect or absolute fantasy.:know:

I wouldn't go that far. One of the things the Navy is quite keen about is that the taxpayer has a vested interest in what their dollars go towards. The thing is, they often reflect a lot about the interests of the producer, as well as what the Navy feels comfortable making public. My theory is that the fewer submarines that are actually being built, the more likely the Navy is to make public EVERYTHING they can do with a submarine in gorey detail because they want the public to lobby Congress for them. Like the GWOT thing, yeah submarines can contribute some ISR and SOF sorts of things to the GWOT, but really they're sort of a small part of that. None the less, the Navy still wants money for submarines, so if they think it will get some members of Congress to shovel more money their way, they emphasize their contribution to it.

Things you should never expect them to reveal include things like current tactics or specific system parameters. The other things you won't see them reveal is failings, in part because they never want any other nations to be aware of what the shortcomings of the Navy are, so they might exploit them. They tend to only come out in the vaguest of terms in opened sessions of Congress or occaisionally they're leaked to the Washington Times by right leaning officers at the Pentagon.