Quotulatiousness

May 28, 2013

Unseemly worship of the military state

Filed under: History, Liberty, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:21

L. Neil Smith received one of the many email chain letters from a conservative acquaintance about “thanking a veteran” and indulged in a bit of fisking:

So with all that in mind, let’s consider the Memorial Day claims my friend sent to me, and I can only hope he’ll be my friend after this.

“It is the veteran, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion.”

The truth is that neither the veteran nor the preacher ever gave us such a right, it is ours, under natural law, the very moment we are born. It can certainly be suppressed, and has been other places in the world, and here, as well — ask any Mormon — but this government hasn’t fought a war to defend any American’s rights since the Revolution.

“It is the veteran, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.”

Once again, not so. When the War of 1812 “broke out” — the U.S. was attempting to bestow the blessings of American life upon Canada whether Canada wanted them or not — and people objected (New England nearly seceded over it) people were accused of “sedition”, a charge that should be impossible under the First Amendment, and thrown in jail.

Later, Abraham Lincoln used the Army to smash the printing presses of his political opposition and intimidate voters during the 1864 election.

“It is the veteran, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.”

Freedom of speech and of the press are natural rights, as well, which governments in general, and the American government in particular, have always regarded as a threat. If any single individual can be thanked for it, that honor belongs to John Peter Zenger (look him up). At some point, the establishment press became so corrupt, concealing or excusing government atrocities, that they became a part of government, and a new press — the Internet — had to evolve in its place.

“It is the veteran, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble.”

Having once been a “campus organizer” myself, I am well aware how little we had to do with defending the right to assemble, and how very badly it was done. But please, don’t be ridiculous. Two words: Kent State.

“It is the veteran, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.”

Actually, to the extent that any human institution is responsible for the right to a fair trial, it’s a thousand years of English Common Law.

“It is the veteran, not the politician, Who has given us the right to vote.”

A dubious gift, at best, but it didn’t come from any politicians or veterans. Thank the Greeks, and don’t forget the Basques, whose methods of self-government were consciously imitated by the Founding Fathers.

I like and admire veterans, My dad was a vet and his dad before him. But name any war the United States ever fought to defend American rights.

May 27, 2013

The economic and technical issues with domestic ship-building programs

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:44

The Royal Canadian Navy is supposed to be getting some new ships (eventually), at a proposed cost of $25 billion. But the best way to get the most bang for our buck is not the way the government is going about it … building these highly specialized vessels in Canada does two things: it guarantees that we’ll pay far more money for fewer hulls, and it briefly raises employment in certain fields (metalworking, electrical work, welding, etc.). What it doesn’t do is create a viable industry for building naval or coast guard ships for other countries — because most other countries can either build their own (France, Germany, the UK, and the US) or have the economic sense to buy from friendly countries that can build efficiently at reasonable cost. Even if we pay a significant premium to build frigates or destroyers in Canada, once that job is over the shipyards will close down and most or all of the workers will be looking for new jobs.

Michael Whalen has more:

Given the above, the second, far more strategic, issue to be discussed is: Should we in fact be building warships in Canada at all? What is the long-term benefit to Canada?

The immediate answer from politicians of all stripes is, interestingly, not great ships, but jobs, jobs, jobs. However, the jobs they are talking about may well be far less valuable than we imagine.

There is no standard breakdown of the costs of building a warship, but a recent study by the South Australian government (as part of its input to that country’s proposed 30-year, $250- billion naval shipbuilding strategy) suggests the actual shipbuilding represents much less than half of the cost of a warship, perhaps 30 per cent to 40 per cent.

The rest comes from the design, armament, engines, electronics, etc., which will largely be procured outside of Canada, certainly outside of Nova Scotia. The benefits to Nova Scotia and to Canada will be in largely blue-collar jobs such as shipwrights, welders, electricians and general labour. In a job-poor province such as ours, these are nothing to sneeze at. This massive expenditure will not, however, create a sustainable long-term industry for our province.

To put it bluntly, there is no market for Canadian-built warships. The major buyers, the Americans, the British, the French, the Chinese, etc., build their own. They will never buy a ship from Canada.

Our governments, federal and provincial, will spend billions establishing a small, inefficient industry for which there is no market outside the government of Canada.

There are economies of scale to consider: for a dozen ships, it makes no sense to essentially create an industry from scratch. For a hundred ships, the costs start to be reasonable (but we don’t need that many, couldn’t crew that many, and nobody will buy them from us). We have an infamous historical test of this, too:

There is something of a parallel here with the aircraft industry. John Diefenbaker has been condemned for nearly 60 years for cancelling the Avro Arrow, Canada’s last attempt at building a warplane.

In retrospect, he was right. Instead of spending billions on a jet for which there was no market, subsequent governments invested in companies like DeHavilland and Canadair (both ultimately purchased by Bombardier) and Pratt and Whitney Canada which focused on the growing market for commercial aircraft, particularly small airliners serving regional markets.

Today this country has a vibrant aerospace industry that is among the world’s largest. Canadian-built aircraft fly on every continent and jobs have been created across the country, including many here in Nova Scotia.

Large parts of this industry resulted from the identification of a sustainable, growing niche market (regional airliners) and investing in the components (e.g. airframe design, small turbine engines, landing gear) required to meet that demand. There is no evidence that kind of strategic thinking has gone into Canada’s shipbuilding program.

May 22, 2013

Spain needs to put new submarine design on a diet

Filed under: Europe, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 16:33

If they launch the new class of submarines as designed, they might not be able to re-surface after diving:

Spanish engineers, who already spent some $680 million on designing the new generation S-80 class submarine, say it is a major “technical innovation.” There is just one problem the calculations show – if submerged into water, it may never come up again.

The Spanish media has been furiously discussing the errors made by the state-owned Navantia construction company, which has spent about a third of the huge $2.2 billion budget only to produce an ‘overweight’ submarine that is not able to float.

Spain’s Ministry of Defense has confirmed that Navantia detected “deviations” in the new submarine’s design, thus delaying its March 2015 scheduled launch for one or two years.

Navantia said an excess weight of up to 100 tons has been added to the sub during construction, and the company may have to redesign the whole craft.

May 21, 2013

Last of the Royal Navy’s Type 42 destroyers to leave service

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:22

HMS Edinburgh, the last of the Type 42 destroyers, will be hauling down her flag on June 6th:

In 1966 the Labour government cancelled the CVA-01 aircraft carrier project and the Type 82 destroyers that were designed as the carrier’s main escorts. The Type 82 programme was quite advanced and HMS Bristol was eventually completed. The Type 82 was really a light cruiser, large, heavily armed and expensive, with complex steam & gas turbine propulsion. In some ways it was a blessing that the costly Type 82′s were axed as the RN was able to get decent numbers of the alternative cheaper Type 42s.

The Type 42 was always an ‘austerity design’ and although by the batch 3 ships many of the problems had been cured, they were always considered only a partial success. Sometimes the quality and excellence of the RN crews could overcome these deficiencies, sometimes not. In the design stage it was decided not exceed a certain hull length in the erroneous belief that would save on cost, the first 8 ships were too short and this caused various problems throughout their lives. Poor sea-keeping was not only tiring for crews but affected the operation of the gun and delicate missile launcher on the foredeck. Rather cramped with a crew of around 250 (300 could be crammed in at a push), there was small margin for additional equipment but the RN just about managed to keep them effective with small incremental upgrades. The Type 42 was built around the Sea Dart missile system that was designed to provide area defence for the fleet from medium or high level Soviet bombers. The Sea Dart was pretty effective when the targets obliged by flying high but lacked the ability to engage close-in and low-level aircraft and anti-ship missiles. The RN developed the excellent Sea Wolf system for this role but it would be too costly to fit to the already cramped Type 42. Inexcusably for an air-defence destroyer, close-in weapons (CIWS) amounted to just 2 of manually–aimed WWII vintage Oerlikon 20mm cannons. This was quickly remedied after the Falkland’s war with fitting of 4 modern 20mm cannons and ultimately by the 1990s all ships were properly equipped with 2 Phalanx 20mm radar-controlled gatling guns. Unlike the Type 82, there was a hangar and flight deck which allowed the carrying of a Wasp and then the superb Lynx helicopter which gave the ship a major anti-submarine capability and light anti-shipping punch. Finally the Mk 8 4.5” gun provided limited air defence capability, last-ditch anti-shipping role, but was mainly used for bombarding land targets.

[. . .]

The Falklands war has dominated the story of the Type 42. On 4th May 1982 HMS Sheffield was hit by an Exocet missile, caught unawares while transmitting on satellite comms, she failed to detect the missile but without adequate CIWS would probably have been unable to save herself anyway. The missile failed to explode but the resulting fire eventually destroyed the ship, killing 22 of her crew. On 12th May HMS Glasgow was hit by a 1000lb bomb which fortunately passed right through the ship without exploding. She was patched up but had to limp home leaving HMS Coventry as the only remaining air defence ship in the task force. Coventry was sunk on 25th May 1982 by bombs while bravely operating in an exposed position to defend the landing ships with Sea Wolf-armed HMS Broadsword. The idea was that the combination of Sea Dart and Sea Wolf would provide long and short-range anti-aircraft coverage but although initially a success, Coventry’s luck ran out when she accidentally blocked Broadsword’s field of fire. This would not have been a problem for a single ship fitted with both weapons. HMS Exeter and Cardiff arrived as replacements and Exeter (with her better radars & electronics) achieved 3 aircraft kills. The Sea Dart system was a partial success in the Falklands war, exact figures are disputed but it achieved a roughly 50% hit rate. Its greater achievement was to force Argentine pilots to attack at low-level where their bombs sometimes didn’t fuse properly and failed to explode. What can be seen is that the presence of fighter aircraft (Sea Harriers) was a more effective weapon against attacking aircraft. Ship launched missiles are generally inferior to fighter aircraft, although missile systems in theory can be available 24/7 when it is difficult to maintain continuous combat patrol (CAP) cover. Although 2 were lost and 1 damaged the ‘expendable’ ‘fighting 42s” achieved their main strategic objective that was to defend the carriers and other ships that ultimately won the war.

May 18, 2013

US Navy’s UAV conducts touch-and-go landing on carrier deck

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:24

It’s still a work in progress: perfect conditions, no particular weather concerns, totally clear flight deck, but it shows that unmanned aircraft are becoming capable of much more than they’ve done so far:

An X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator conducts a touch and go landing on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), marking the first time any unmanned aircraft has completed a touch and go landing at sea. George H.W. Bush is conducting training operations in the Atlantic Ocean.

May 17, 2013

Greenwald: Welcome to the never-ending “War on Terror”

Filed under: Government, Military, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:26

In the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald explains why this admission by the Obama administration is much more serious than any of the other current crop of scandals sucking all the media oxygen out of the room.

That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the “war on terror” will last at least another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week’s big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP/DOJ) combined. The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent years warning that US policy planners have adopted an explicit doctrine of “endless war”. Obama officials, despite repeatedly boasting that they have delivered permanently crippling blows to al-Qaida, are now, as clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring this to be so.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war — justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism — that is the single greatest cause of that threat.

In January, former Pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson delivered a highly-touted speech suggesting that the war on terror will eventually end; he advocated that outcome, arguing:

    ‘War’ must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs. We must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the ‘new normal.'”

In response, I wrote that the “war on terror” cannot and will not end on its own for two reasons: (1) it is designed by its very terms to be permanent, incapable of ending, since the war itself ironically ensures that there will never come a time when people stop wanting to bring violence back to the US (the operational definition of “terrorism”), and (2) the nation’s most powerful political and economic factions reap a bonanza of benefits from its continuation. Whatever else is true, it is now beyond doubt that ending this war is the last thing on the mind of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and those who work at the highest levels of his administration. Is there any way they can make that clearer beyond declaring that it will continue for “at least” another 10-20 years?

May 15, 2013

US Navy successfully launches UAV from aircraft carrier

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

Spencer Ackerman talks about yesterday’s step forward for unmanned aircraft in the US Navy:

ABOARD THE U.S.S. GEORGE H.W. BUSH — At 11:19 a.m. today, for the first time in history, a plane without a pilot in it executed one of the most complex missions in aviation: launching off an aircraft carrier at sea. Only the Navy can’t yet land that drone aboard the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush, an even harder but necessary maneuver if large drones are really going to operate off carriers.

On a crisp, bright and nearly cloudless day, about 100 miles off the Virginia coast, the crew of the Bush and the team behind the highly autonomous X-47B loaded up the deck’s second catapult with the drone and shot it off into the sky above the eastern Atlantic. The drone — which has its own callsign, “Salty Dog 502″ — turned downwind and passed over the ship twice, first from 1000 feet overhead and then from 60 feet overhead, before flying back to dry land in Maryland. The launch went exactly as the Navy hoped.

With that, the era of the drone took a major step toward patrolling the skies above the world’s waterways. It’s something the Navy hopes will have big implications for supplementing manned fighter jets in a carrier air wing, providing both persistent surveillance far out at sea and ultimately firing weapons in highly defended airspace that might mean death for human pilots.

Senior Navy officers openly likened the X-47B’s launch off the Bush to the first-ever launch of a plane off the U.S.S. Birmingham in 1910. “It’s one small step for man,” remarked Rear Adm. Matt Winter, the Navy’s chief program officer for unmanned systems, “and one significant technical step for unmanned-kind.”

May 8, 2013

More questions about the Arctic Patrol Ship project

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:48

Last week, the CBC’s Terry Milewski posted an article questioning the progress and ongoing costs of the Arctic Patrol Ship program. The ships are supposed to be based on the same design as the Norwegian Coast Guard’s Svalbard:

KV Svalbard

The design was purchased for $5 million with the intent of revising it for Canadian requirements. The government allocated an incredible $288 million for the revisions. The original Svalbard cost about $100 million in 2002 … but that was to design, build, and launch the actual ship. Not just to come up with a revised design.

In yesterday’s Chronicle Herald, Paul McLeod predicted that the price of the patrol ships will rise in the same way that the F-35 project costs have risen:

The mandate for the Arctic/offshore patrol ships is to do offshore work on Canada’s coasts and also be able to patrol icy northern waters. Yet a recent report by the Rideau Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives argues the ships will be able to do neither job well.

Co-authors Michael Byers and Stewart Webb say the ships will be too small to be effective icebreakers and will only be able to crash through thin ice in the warmer months. They also say the thick, reinforced hulls of the ships will make them too slow for patrolling jobs like chasing off smugglers or illegal fishing boats.

And of course, because we’re designing them from scratch, they will cost far more than an off-the-shelf design.

So the purchase of the original plans — a trivial amount in proportion to the current budget — was a waste of money because the new ships are in effect going to be a new design anyway.

The PBO only looked at two ships being built in Vancouver, but there’s no reason to expect the same problems won’t hit Halifax. The $3-billion price tag for the Arctic/offshore patrol ships has stayed the same for years, though purchasing power has decreased.

Ottawa still says it expects to buy six to eight Arctic/offshore patrol ships but almost no one believes eight is realistic anymore. The Byers-Webb report points out that the navy initially wanted the ships to be able to drive bow-first or stern-first, like Norwegian patrol vessels. That feature was ruled out; presumably it was too expensive.

The ships will still be built in Canada because it would be politically disastrous to move those jobs overseas now. Fair enough. There’s historically been a 20 to 30 per cent markup on building ships in Canada, says Ken Hansen, a maritime security analyst at Dalhousie.

So in summary, we’re going to be paying a higher per-ship price for fewer ships with lower capabilities than we originally specified? This really is starting to sound like a maritime version of the F-35 program. And the Joint Support Ship program. And the CH-148 Cyclone helicopter project.

May 4, 2013

Why the terror-through-shipping-container threat has not materialized (yet)

Filed under: Business, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:11

Strategy Page explains why the much-discussed threat of terrorists smuggling in weapons of mass destruction using the ubiquitous shipping container has not actually happened:

A decade ago there was much talk about how vulnerable the United States was to a terror attack via shipping container. It never happened. It’s also unlikely because of the large number of variables the terrorists face. The problems associated with using cargo containers to move a nuclear or conventional bomb are manifold. The big problem is that these containers often don’t arrive right on schedule. Sometimes the ship breaks down or encounters bad weather. This last event leads to thousands of containers a year falling off cargo ships and going to the bottom with their cargo. Sometimes containers get lost “in the system.” More frequently containers get robbed or opened by mistake. Customs officials open a small percentage (this varies by port) for inspection. Another problem, whether the bomb goes off or not, is the fact that containers have to have documentation like bills of lading and such. These can be faked, but the problem is that a paper trail is being created and that can lead to terrorists getting arrested. All containers must officially belong to someone, they are tracked and any that aren’t being tracked tend to get noticed. Many countries do scrutinize containers coming from certain countries in an attempt to catch people smuggling drugs or arms. Large bombs, be they nuclear or conventional, are relatively fragile and may not survive (in working condition) the punishment received during a long sea voyage. If all that weren’t enough to make terrorists nervous, container ships can be delayed when trying to enter a port because of congestion. This can delay arrival by days, or even weeks.

Israeli air attack on missile shipment in Syria

Filed under: Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

It’s almost anti-climactic to report that the Israeli defence ministry is confirming that an air strike was launched against Syria yesterday. The unexpected part of the news is that the attack was on a shipment of missiles, not a chemical weapons depot:

Israeli officials said the shipment was not of chemical arms, but of “game changing” weapons bound for the Lebanese militant group. The airstrike took place early on Friday, but did not say where it took place.

American officials earlier told the Associated Press of an airstrike. One report had suggested the strike was on a chemical weapons facility.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has repeatedly warned in recent weeks that Israel would be prepared to take military action if chemical weapons or other arms were to reach Hizbollah.

Lebanon’s army said pairs of Israeli airplanes entered Lebanese airspace on three occasions overnight between Thursday and Friday.

The move will raise tensions in the Middle East and comes amid mounting pressure over the alleged use of chemical weapons by president Bashar Assad’s regime.

May 2, 2013

Canada’s Arctic patrol ship design program just a job creation scheme that doesn’t actually create jobs in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:58

The CBC’s Terry Milewski on the Harper government’s much-heralded shipbuilding program which is far more expensive than it needs to be — because of the demand that the work be done in Canada — and yet somehow doesn’t even manage to create Canadian jobs:

Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose and Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced March 7 in Halifax that Ottawa will pay Irving Shipbuilding $288 million just to design — not build — a fleet of new Arctic offshore patrol ships.

Irving will then build the ships under a separate contract.

However, a survey of similar patrol ships bought by other countries shows they paid a fraction of that $288 million to actually build the ships — and paid less than a tenth as much for the design.

In addition, the design of Canada’s new ships is based upon a Norwegian vessel whose design Ottawa has already bought for just $5 million.

The Norwegian ship, the Svalbard, was designed and built for less than $100 million in 2002.

Experts say the design price is normally 10-20 per cent of the total cost of the ships.

But don’t worry … jobs are being created or saved by this major Canadian government project … in Denmark and in the United States:

Another criticism of the project is that much of the design work — in a project meant to create Canadian jobs — is actually going overseas.

Although Irving will manage the design project in Nova Scotia, it has subcontracted the actual production of final blueprints to a Danish firm, OMT. Seventy Danish ship architects will work on those.

The job of designing the systems integration is going to Lockheed Martin and the propulsion system will be designed by General Electric, both U.S. companies.

This is only to be expected, say supporters of the project.

“We’ve been dormant here for better than two decades now. We don’t have the skill sets inside the industry,” said Ken Hansen, editor of the Canadian Naval Review in Dartmouth, N.S.

May 1, 2013

Syrian use of nerve gas

Filed under: Middle East, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:13

Strategy Page outlines what we think we know about the use of nerve gas in Syria:

In Syria the rebels have been accusing the government of using nerve gas shells and bombs. Israel is convinced this is so and the U.S. is inclined to agree with them. The known incidents occurred in the northern city of Aleppo where government forces are taking a beating. Syria insists that no nerve gas was used, but the nerve gas may have been ordered as a desperate measure to halt the advancing rebels, with instructions that “this never happened”. Israel insists it has definitive proof and apparently that is convincing many NATO members, including the United States. Moreover a Syrian general defected in late April and said he was ordered to use chemical weapons against rebels in the southwest recently, but fired shells with harmless chemicals instead. The general offered to reveal where he had buried the actual chemical shells.

Syrian nerve gas is stored at some fifty locations all over the country. A large number of troops are devoted to defending these stockpiles and some chemical weapons have been moved to avoid capture by the rebels. Officially Syria has no nerve gas, but the Assad government has recently made statements indicating that it is abandoning that fiction. Syria has maintained stocks of chemical weapons for decades as a last ditch weapon for any future war with Israel (which few Syrians believe could be won). Israel has prepared accordingly. Recently Syria announced that it never had any intention of using nerve gas against Israel. This all gets even stranger as Israel has recently advised the United States to stay out of Syria, even if nerve gas is being used. That’s apparently because Israel wants to take care of this problem itself, as its Israeli civilians who are likely to die if Syrian nerve gas is captured by Islamic terrorists (who still want to use nerve gas against Israel).

Photos of dead civilians the rebels claim were nerve gas victims do show signs of nerve gas in use (foaming at the mouth and contracted pupils). The only way to obtain conclusive evidence is for someone to bring out the bodies of victims (or blood samples) and soil samples from the area where the nerve gas was used. If the rebels want to prove their accusations of nerve gas use they just have to collect these samples and get them out of the country. Apparently that has been done, at least to the satisfaction of Israeli intelligence. The U.S. said it would intervene militarily if Syria used chemical weapons and demands conclusive proof (blood and soil samples) before deciding and acting. Now the U.S. has apparently been shown evidence of Syrian use of chemical and is debating what to do about it.

April 30, 2013

QotD: Shades of Yamamoto

Filed under: Middle East, Military, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

While the results of the wargames are all well and good, El Reg hopes this won’t induce a sense of complacency. Wargames are just that — games — and reality is going to be much more unpleasant. As the 19th century Prussian military strategist Helmuth von Moltke the Elder noted, “No human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle.”

Barely a decade ago we saw this demonstrated with the Millennial Challenge in 2002 — a simulated land, sea, air and electronic online wargame against a fictional Middle Eastern country (somewhat like Iraq). It was intended to be the first test of the switched-on, network-centric warfare beloved by former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and in practice it failed miserably.

The Red team, controlled by Marine Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, refused to play ball — using motorcycle couriers and pre-arranged signals at evening prayers to trigger attacks on the Blue team forces rather than easily-tapped radio or wired signals. By the second day, Van Riper had sunk one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers, and five of six amphibious ships of the attacking force, and the $250m exercise was shut down and reset.

Iain Thomson, “NATO proclaimed winner of Locked Shield online wargame”, The Register, 2013-04-29

April 29, 2013

US Navy’s innovative Littoral Combat Ship designs still undergoing teething problems

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:53

Strategy Page looks at the documented issues facing the two different ships in the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) class:

The U.S. Navy is encountering a seemingly endless list of problems with their new “Littoral Combat Ship” (LCS). Last year it was decided to put the ship into mass production. But it was recently revealed that last year the navy discovered that the computerized combat systems of the LCS were vulnerable to hacking. The navy understandably won’t provide details about the vulnerability or the fixes that have since been implemented. This sort of vulnerability on U.S. warships has been hinted at for years, but navy officials have largely been silent on the subject.

Such vulnerabilities have become more common as warships became more networked (internally and externally) over the last two decades and installed constant Internet connections for work and improving morale. The LCS problems were encountered when one of the navy “red teams” (sometimes called “tiger teams”) played offence on the LCS electronics and found there was a way in that provided opportunities to do damage. The navy has no comment on the vulnerabilities with other ship classes.

The LCS has been unique in many ways and this has caused the navy all manner of grief in the media. The LCS is a new ship type and generating a larger number of problems than older, more traditional ship designs. The media loves this, because problems with weapons grab attention and ad revenue. In response to this media feeding frenzy the navy has tried some damage control.

[. . .]

This is all part of the expected years of uncertainty and experimentation as this radical new combat ship design seeks to find out what works, to what degree, and what doesn’t. There is some nervousness about all this. The U.S. Navy has not introduced a radical new design for nearly a century. The last such new design was the aircraft carrier, which required two decades of experimentation and a major war to nail down what worked. Even the nuclear submarines of the late 1950s and early 60s were evolutionary compared to what the LCS is trying to do.

In the last seven years two different LCS designs were built and put into service. Problems were encountered and that was expected. The much smaller crew required some changes in how a crew ran a ship and how many sailors and civilians were required back on land to support a LCS at sea. It was found that the interchangeable mission modules take far longer (2-3 days instead of 2-3 hours) to replace. The LCS has still not seen combat and the navy wants the first violent encounter to be successful or at least not disastrous. It is expected that there will be surprises, which is about all that can be guaranteed at this point.


USS Freedom at sea. Click for full-sized image at Wikipedia


USS Independence at pier side. Click for full-sized image at Wikipedia.

April 27, 2013

The Caspian Sea as a potential trouble zone

Filed under: Asia, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:46

Strategy Page provides some background on the possibility of conflict on the Caspian in the post-Soviet era:

The Caspian Sea, long a Russian lake, is now witnessing a naval arms race. Before the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the only nations bordering the Caspian were Russia (with most of the coastline) and Iran. But now those two nations have been joined by parts of the Soviet Union that have become independent states (Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan). It goes downhill from there.

Iran shares a land border with Azerbaijan and has a historical claim on Azerbaijan. In the 19th century Azerbaijan (as in the area occupied the Azeris, a Turkic people) was divided by Russia and Iran. Currently about a quarter of the Iranian population is Azeri, but the Azeris of Azerbaijan believe all Azeris should be part of an independent Azerbaijan. This was how it was for centuries before Turkey, Russia and Iran began seeking to conquer Azerbaijan. Some Iranian Azeris like this idea and Iran is always looking for ways to make Azerbaijan back off. So Iran is building up its Caspian naval forces, which is annoying Russia more than Azerbaijan.

The Iranian buildup includes a new corvette, an Iranian built 1,400 ton ship. Azerbaijan responded by buying $1.6 billion worth of weapons from Israel (which angered Iran a great deal.) Among the items ordered were Gabriel anti-ship missiles. These are 522 kg (1,150 pound) weapons with a range of 36 kilometers. Azerbaijan will use these to protect its Caspian Sea coast from the growing number of Iranian warships being introduced in the area. Most of the Iranian Caspian “fleet” consists of small patrol boats. Some are armed with anti-ship missiles but they are basically coast guard type craft.

What really controls the Caspian is aircraft and Russia has the most of those. Russia also has the only water link to the ocean and thus the ability to bring in more warships on short notice. These, plus Russia’s larger air force gives Russia the edge.

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