China to rule under the waves.

[r16]

can't argue much then . Reading Tom Clancy makes one no expert , as ı should learned by now .

and while we are on it , is it really possible for a French and British missile boats to be in the same patrol area , not hear each other until the last moment and believe that they must have collided with a sunken shipping container and go home ?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Let me ask this- China spends one third of what the Us does on its military. Does it sound like a racist assumption to make that a nation spending more on its military would have reached a particular military advancement earlier? Unless of course you ignore the rules of reality in which yes, this could happen. The only way this would be possible is if the US didn't want to pursue this avenue of military research.

Let me say this before I get accused of racism- I think the US and China are both equally suckish places to live. China forces citizens from their homes unlike the US where property rights are inviolable...unless of course, the cops launch a drug raid on your house, then your property can be seized with little warning and requires an expensive lawsuit to get back. China also pays government benefits to the people, unlike the US in which the government tries to avoid paying as much of the benefits you deserve as possible.

I'm not suggesting that pointing out how and why the Chinese military might be deficient in certain areas is racist don't jump to conclusions. Facts are facts. But he didn't do that. My issue is that he didn't think it was possible for lesser-developed nations to do anything the more developed nations hadn't already done. As in, physically incapable, a statement of absolute inferiority to the more developed peoples. I've already explained why that's an extremely problematic statement.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

can't argue much then . Reading Tom Clancy makes one no expert , as ı should learned by now .

and while we are on it , is it really possible for a French and British missile boats to be in the same patrol area , not hear each other until the last moment and believe that they must have collided with a sunken shipping container and go home ?

Being in the same patrol area would certainly be possible. I would guess that no navy would assign two of their own to the same patrol area, but even allies like GB and F would probably not coordinate that since missile sub location data is among the most highly classified information there is.

Not hearing each other until the last moment. Like the moment both of them hear some sort of crunching scraping sound and say 'what was that?!?' is probably possible. I'm not up on current technology. Sound isolation-making the ship quieter- competes constantly with improving sonar -better listening- if this event happened in a time when sound isolation was running ahead of sonar, which in my time it usually did, then yeah, two subs creeping around doing their best to not be heard could just bump into each other. Assuming no significant damage to either one (meaning some sort of 'glancing blow' where neither really just plowed right into the other) there wouldn't necessarily be any change in their sound characteristics so they could both just go on creeping and not have any clue what they hit.

In their mutual cluelessness would they both come up with the same 'sunken shipping container' theory? They were in the same place, so likely enough they would come up with the same 'most likely' answer, yeah. It seems a little odd to me that either of them would come up with sunken shipping container, since I personally would expect a shipping container to float for a while, and when it didn't any more that it would just go straight to the bottom rather than submerge to my submarine's operating depth and wait there like some sort of trap...but again, when stuck with the inexplicable people will always come up with something.

As a side note that may actually have been mentioned in a Clancy novel but is also true...Human nature is to deal in few significant digits. You don't hear orders like 'make your depth 416 feet', you hear 400 feet. It's just how people are. So, while it was not in any fleetwide instruction or anything (AFAIK, that would actually have been above my paygrade so I'm not sure, but I got the feeling it was more a common sense thing), we avoided operating at depths where our simple number in feet coincided with a simple number in meters. Like at 300 feet a boat is less than thirty feet above someone running at 100 meters...and since their boat is more than thirty feet tall that isn't good for anyone. Clearly in this situation being the only country using an obsolete measuring system for depth is an advantage.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm not suggesting that pointing out how and why the Chinese military might be deficient in certain areas is racist don't jump to conclusions. Facts are facts. But he didn't do that. My issue is that he didn't think it was possible for lesser-developed nations to do anything the more developed nations hadn't already done. As in, physically incapable, a statement of absolute inferiority to the more developed peoples. I've already explained why that's an extremely problematic statement.

That seems a contrived reading. I read his comment as a claim that, if the technological principles behind such a project were sound, then given the utility of such technology, it would have been investigated by powers better-positioned to pursue research down such lines, and which have historically invested more of their budget into such technology. It's a claim about the economics of military research, not the intellectual capacities of those doing the research.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

The question is: would such better-positioned powers be interested? It is like in the case of ballistic antiship missiles. It is a technology that may render big navies almost defenseless, so it is very interesting for countries whitout big navies, so they can somehow fight naval powers, however it is not interesting to such naval powers who already rule the waves now, so investing in any technology which could potentially change such situation would be very counter-productive, the more if we have in mind that once developed technology tends to disseminate and fall under the reach of anybody in some years.

 

[Traitorfish]

If it could render big navies defenceless, then we'd still expect countries with bag navies to be interested in it, because they're not the only countries with big navies. They wouldn't want such technology to be generalised, but that just means they wouldn't want anybody else to have it.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Well, there is this country with a really big navy plus a small bunch of countries with relatively big navies which are all very advanced and allies and are very happy ruling the waves all along, and then a bunch of less advanced countries with small navies who are not very happy with such situation. It is perfectly logical for the first ones to avoid or at least to be not interested at all on developing any technology which could help the second ones some day, and for the second ones to be eventually the first ones developing such technology...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If it could render big navies defenceless, then we'd still expect countries with bag navies to be interested in it, because they're not the only countries with big navies. They wouldn't want such technology to be generalised, but that just means they wouldn't want anybody else to have it.

Actually, I would expect the countries with the big navies to be very actively pursuing counter technologies so their big navy would not be rendered defenseless.

Hence my earlier statement that even though China has an anti-ship missile closer to the cutting edge of anti ship missile technology than the US has, they don't have a real advantage because the US is very close to the cutting edge in anti-missile defense system technology and at present that knife cuts deepest.

You shoot your state of the art missile at me, my state of the art defenses eliminate the threat. Then I shoot my one generation obsolete missile at you, and your three generation obsolete missile defenses are moot. That's a clear win for my side. I have no real motive to match your missile technology.

 

[r16]

Being in the same patrol area would certainly be possible...

Not hearing each other until the last moment...

In their mutual cluelessness would they both come up with the same 'sunken shipping container' theory?

thanks for the answer . Is there a way of checking the exterior while submerged ? So that one could see whether there are any significant damage after any event . Which might apparently include running into an undersea mountain ...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

thanks for the answer . Is there a way of checking the exterior while submerged ? So that one could see whether there are any significant damage after any event . Which might apparently include running into an undersea mountain ...

Well, undersea mountains generally speaking don't get around much, so running into them would involve being severely misplaced. Of course the navy has managed it, but it's unusual.

As to looking outside without surfacing...nope. Surface and inspect the top side. Got a diver on board to swim around and look at the rest. Generally speaking if you bang into something you go home.

 

[r16]

thanks again . Not getting a jab at the USN , but ı believe one boat named San Fransisco or something was into such a thing . Has it ever happened in addition to that ? Or is it just a fluke ?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

thanks again . Not getting a jab at the USN , but ı believe one boat named San Fransisco or something was into such a thing . Has it ever happened in addition to that ? Or is it just a fluke ?

That's the one I meant. It required a fairly astounding amount of stupidity so I expect it will be one of a kind for a good while.

Of course when you can do this nothing is out of the question.

 

[r16]

honest to God , ı didn't laugh . Considering 5 or 10 people died this year when the Turkish Navy managed to capsize a minesweeper inside a floating dock .

 

[Timsup2nothin]

honest to God , ı didn't laugh . Considering 5 or 10 people died this year when the Turkish Navy managed to capsize a minesweeper inside a floating dock .

You might not have. But I joined the navy ten years after that and we still had a required safety brief on that incident that we had to go through every time we had a maintenance period in port...a safety brief that most of the crew could recite from memory having heard it so many times...which we would laugh our fool heads off through from start to finish. The military runs on morbid humor.

I had to lead that brief one time and wore a dive mask and fins.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

the US is very close to the cutting edge in anti-missile defense system technology

You keep asserting this, but I haven't really seen any sources to back it up other than USA#1.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You keep asserting this, but I haven't really seen any sources to back it up other than USA#1.

Google is your friend as well as mine. I have some anecdotal sources I have no particular reason to doubt, but my interest in the problems of surface ships is insufficient to lead to extensive research on my part. If you dig up something that says the US military has prioritized finding a way to defend against these more advanced missiles I'll be interested enough to look at it, but I don't think they have.

As far as "USA#1" I am willing to use it as a general statement in regards to overall level of military equipment. They aren't spending more than the rest of the world combined on defense without any results. My position on the morality of that is not covered by "USA#1", but that isn't the subject at hand.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

If it could render big navies defenceless, then we'd still expect countries with bag navies to be interested in it, because they're not the only countries with big navies. They wouldn't want such technology to be generalised, but that just means they wouldn't want anybody else to have it.

Unless the big navies dismissed it as impractical, that is, and the Chinese have found a way to make it work.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Unless the big navies dismissed it as impractical, that is, and the Chinese have found a way to make it work.

I think he was talking about Moskit anti-ship missiles, and nobody is denying that they are practical, since they clearly exist...or even denying they are superior to their operational equivalent on the US side, at least in terms of speed. It was actually the Russians who made them work though. The Chinese bought them.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

And since they're in the Chinese tech group they clearly can't comprehend the technology behind them.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

What about antiship ballistic missiles. Particullarly the DF-21D. A number of antiship MIRVs approaching at high hypersonic speed from space is a scenery any carrier commander cant like too much.