Should the US Navy move the fleet out of harm's way?

[The WosMan]

Not sure I understand this. Why would you centralize all of your forces into one area? Isn't that putting too many eggs on one basket? Pearl Harbor ring a bell.

As far as I am concerned the Navy can and go wherever they damn well please regardless of what anyone says because you don't mess with the US Navy.

[Letum]

who pays for it?

We are talking many hundreds of billions here.

[bigboywooly]

Originally Posted by The WosMan

As far as I am concerned the Navy can and go wherever they damn well please regardless of what anyone says because you don't mess with the US Navy.

Of course

[Camaero]

Yeah, cause that brought us to our knees. ^^

Originally Posted by Camaero

Yeah, cause that brought us to our knees. ^^

If by 'us' you mean Monica Lewinsky, I'd say yes it did.

[bigboywooly]

Originally Posted by Camaero

Yeah, cause that brought us to our knees. ^^

Didnt say it did
The quote included with the pic said no one messes with the USN

[Kapitan]

personnaly i think ships are more at risk tied up in home port, at least when they are at sea they can move out of the way of an incoming threat like a motor boat full of explosives, you cant do that tied to a dock.

Whats more you need to have your forces spread out slightly what would happen if they moved all the pacific fleet to alaska and another country over ran hawai ? be falklands repeat.

whats more the wosman really need to take a reality check SS-N-19 and 22's are fully capible of putting a carrier out of action, and with the chinese and russians getting close along with the indians theres going to be some worrying problems to come.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

personnaly i think ships are more at risk tied up in home port, at least when they are at sea they can move out of the way of an incoming threat like a motor boat full of explosives, you cant do that tied to a dock.

Whats more you need to have your forces spread out slightly what would happen if they moved all the pacific fleet to alaska and another country over ran hawai ? be falklands repeat.

whats more the wosman really need to take a reality check SS-N-19 and 22's are fully capible of putting a carrier out of action, and with the chinese and russians getting close along with the indians theres going to be some worrying problems to come.

Good points

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

personnaly i think ships are more at risk tied up in home port, at least when they are at sea they can move out of the way of an incoming threat like a motor boat full of explosives, you cant do that tied to a dock.

Whats more you need to have your forces spread out slightly what would happen if they moved all the pacific fleet to alaska and another country over ran hawai ? be falklands repeat.

whats more the wosman really need to take a reality check SS-N-19 and 22's are fully capible of putting a carrier out of action, and with the chinese and russians getting close along with the indians theres going to be some worrying problems to come.

Well in all fairness to the 'poon its not designed for the same mission as the N-19 and N-22. It was designed for Anti-Sub work belive it or not. It was ment for P-3s to shoot at surfaced Russian subs back when they need to surface to fire their SLBMs.

The Harpoon has one advantage over the 19 and 22 in that it can be launched from many diffrent platforms most importantly from aircraft. I think the most any aircraft can carry is 1 or 2 N-22 while a simaler sized aircraft can carry 4+ Harpoons.

The US never had any reason to build weapons like the N-19 and N-22 because the Russians never had a huge fleet of advanced surface ships until the end of the cold war, which at that point the US Sub advantage negated them.

If the US built a ship along the same lines as a Russian Sov or Kirov at that time it probaly would have something like a couple of hundred Harpoons, four twin arm SAM launchers, three SH-2s and more ASROCs than you can shake a stick at. But we figure that a LA boat with a couple of dozen MK 48s would work much better.

[Kapitan]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Well in all fairness to the 'poon its not designed for the same mission as the N-19 and N-22. It was designed for Anti-Sub work belive it or not. It was ment for P-3s to shoot at surfaced Russian subs back when they need to surface to fire their SLBMs.

The Harpoon has one advantage over the 19 and 22 in that it can be launched from many diffrent platforms most importantly from aircraft. I think the most any aircraft can carry is 1 or 2 N-22 while a simaler sized aircraft can carry 4+ Harpoons.

The US never had any reason to build weapons like the N-19 and N-22 because the Russians never had a huge fleet of advanced surface ships until the end of the cold war, which at that point the US Sub advantage negated them.

If the US built a ship along the same lines as a Russian Sov or Kirov at that time it probaly would have something like a couple of hundred Harpoons, four twin arm SAM launchers, three SH-2s and more ASROCs than you can shake a stick at. But we figure that a LA boat with a couple of dozen MK 48s would work much better.

Again that is very true why spend $100 million when you can spend just $1 ? if a 688i armed up with adcaps and TASM whats the need for a large battery?

Thats where the soviets went wrong they spent and spent and spent on multiple platforms, which ment there had to be experts in all platforms just to maintain them which ment cost.

if you notice the americans have one frigate class perry class, one destroyer class the burke class, one cruiser class: tico class, and they have numbers in each and they all are capible of doing either ASW ASuW or AAW missions.

The russians have the sovvys for ASM and AAW the uddys For ASW now for example if they put both designes together in a cruiser form, they would have one ship thats capible of doing everything rather than 2 ships capible of only bits and pieces.

It would cut down on the number of techs needed, the number of specialist dry docks, training costs would be down, and also less cost can mean a few more ships.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by The WosMan

Not sure I understand this. Why would you centralize all of your forces into one area? Isn't that putting too many eggs on one basket? Pearl Harbor ring a bell.

As far as I am concerned the Navy can and go wherever they damn well please regardless of what anyone says because you don't mess with the US Navy.

You're in need of some basic knowledge of what modern chinese and Russians missiles and torpedoes can do to this navy that nobody wishes to mess with.

I also remind you that the British thought much the same way when heading for the Falklands, and in the end they were close to getting defeated - only wrong cables attached to torpedoes on an Argentine sub prevented them from loosing their flagship carrier, which then would have demanded the fleet'S retreat, the British admiral later admitted.

And a single Type 209 some weeks ago completely sank a NATO flotilla of fifteen ships or so in an excercise in South Africa. British and American units participated, but that did not save them.

The US navy also currently has leased a Swedish diesel sub, and still is unable to detect or destroy it, afetr over one year of testings. The Swedes say they can run circles around American ships at will, and so far never were detected, I think. they also say they are so quiet that they would be able to run up the Mississippi without the US navy being able to do anything about their invisibility.

The thought of being invincible is the first step towards total defeat.

However, I agree that a useless centralization of forces is not a clever thing to do, an turns them into an invitation to strike.

While at sea it may be a bit more different, in general Iraq war and Afghnaistan war and Lebanon war illustrate one thing: that expensive high tech military is no guarantee to be able to defeat a low budget guerilla army operating with primitive weapons like road bombs, mines, and ATGM ambushes. Especially for america, which has made a fetish of technology, this is an ugly fat, heavy, painfully big pill to swallow. Especially with regard to submarines and missiles, there may be a similar trend. The way we currently arm up maybe is a relic from the cold war, and an assumed enemy equal in design to ourselves. Hightech can compensate numerical inferiority only to a certain level, and not more. but today's conflicts are being fought beyond that level, and also on the ideological level, in the media, in virtual space. A massing of forces in alaska probably does not help in that dilemma.

[The WosMan]

Originally Posted by Skybird

You're in need of some basic knowledge of what modern chinese and Russians missiles and torpedoes can do to this navy that nobody wishes to mess with.

I also remind you that the British thought much the same way when heading for the Falklands, and in the end they were close to getting defeated - only wrong cables attached to torpedoes on an Argentine sub prevented them from loosing their flagship carrier, which then would have demanded the fleet'S retreat, the British admiral later admitted.

And a single Type 209 some weeks ago completely sank a NATO flotilla of fifteen ships or so in an excercise in South Africa. British and American units participated, but that did not save them.

The US navy also currently has leased a Swedish diesel sub, and still is unable to detect or destroy it, afetr over one year of testings. The Swedes say they can run circles around American ships at will, and so far never were detected, I think. they also say they are so quiet that they would be able to run up the Mississippi without the US navy being able to do anything about their invisibility.

The thought of being invincible is the first step towards total defeat.

However, I agree that a useless centralization of forces is not a clever thing to do, an turns them into an invitation to strike.

While at sea it may be a bit more different, in general Iraq war and Afghnaistan war and Lebanon war illustrate one thing: that expensive high tech military is no guarantee to be able to defeat a low budget guerilla army operating with primitive weapons like road bombs, mines, and ATGM ambushes. Especially for america, which has made a fetish of technology, this is an ugly fat, heavy, painfully big pill to swallow. Especially with regard to submarines and missiles, there may be a similar trend. The way we currently arm up maybe is a relic from the cold war, and an assumed enemy equal in design to ourselves. Hightech can compensate numerical inferiority only to a certain level, and not more. but today's conflicts are being fought beyond that level, and also on the ideological level, in the media, in virtual space. A massing of forces in alaska probably does not help in that dilemma.

Wall of text.......must resist....getting sleepy............. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Torplexed]

Alaska? You're gonna have every sailor who ever enjoyed R&R in San Diego or Honolulu or any other warm water port jumping ship.

With global warming....maybe.

By the way what's to stop a terrorist attack in Alaska? I wouldn't be surprised to find that vast portions of the Alaska-Canadian border probably aren't patrolled at all.

[fatty]

No (modern) precident exists for terrorist attacks in domestic ports on naval assets in Western states AFAIK. Really if you ask me the terrorist "threat" is really overblown and if they haven't launched another strike by now then I don't think they ever will. If the Mexicans can get in undetected, where are the terrorists?

With the amount of security in naval ports these days I would say the potential for an event there would be practically nil anyway. If there were some glaring fundamental flaws pointed out in port security in San Diego, Pearl, or Norfolk, then maybe it might be an option to relocate the fleets. But I feel evidence of a terror threat in the U.S. is really not there, and ergo it seems to me that the U.S. Navy is not in "harms way" to begin with.

[Chock]

U.S. Navy is not in "harms way" to begin with.

I imagine that's exactly what a terrorist would like the US Navy to think, and I daresay the sailors on the USS Cole thought that five minutes before they were attacked.

No (modern) precident exists for terrorist attacks in domestic ports on naval assets in Western states AFAIK.

Well that's true, but it didn't stop the IRA blowing up Lord Louis Mountbatten's boat slap bang in the middle of when the UK was on high alert to specific threats from that organisation, killing him and Baroness Brabourne among others, and on the same day also killing eighteen soldiers from the Parachute Regiment at Warrenpoint. This, in the same year that the INLA also blew up MP Airey Neave's car on the ramp coming out of Parliament, killing him too. All these being just a small selection of the bombings which took place that year in the UK, despite security measures and awareness of threats.

When the US Air Force can forget about some nuclear weapons slung under an aircraft and leave it sitting unguarded on the apron at a base for hours before anyone thought something was amiss, it's not a stretch to imagine that the security at Naval bases might have a few gaps in it. Complacency concerning enemies and potential enemies is just asking for it.

Chock