In a Fight, Having Your Reloads at Home in the Safe Won't Help

There was a topic as a JO in the 1990s that we bandied about when we started to think about what we wanted to see show up in the fleet before we had to fight a no kidding war at sea for any length of time.

Of course, at the end of the Cold War when "there was no other place I'd want to be" was in the air with the world waking up from history etc ... no one was really interested in spending the shrinking Clinton Era defense budget on something that, at best, maybe should be on the bottom of the unfunded priorities list from the perspective of the Potomac Flotilla.

At the end of the decade and the experience of Desert Fox, the requirement came in to even sharper relief. With the 330+/- TLAM we fired over those few days, we emptied out one DDG's VLS cells of TLAM and left the remaining DDG, DD, and CG with a land of misfit toys with either "interesting" warheads that we did not have good targets for, or were fail-to-fire duds taking up space.

That was just the surface ships. Though the Persian/Arabian Gulf's floor was littered with tube-launched TLAM that failed to fire at a silly rate - a few of them were left along with the handful that had VLS cells with one or two, but were pretty much emptied as well.

We were, in just a few days a spent force except for the ships in the Mediterranean Sea  whose TLAM we underutilized but would come in handy in Kosovo. 

More strikes? With what exactly? Call a training time out for a few weeks?

No, we were lucky it was only a 72-hr war or so.

We knew we would not be that lucky at some point in the future ... or at least should plan for it.

This shortfall was known a decade prior - even earlier I am sure - yet in at the end of the 20th Century, there was no longer a way to deny it, but we did anyway.

And yet, via Megan Eckstein at Defense News, here we find ourselves in the third decade of the 21st Century ... 

In early October, the U.S. Navy reloaded a destroyer’s missile tubes using a crane on an auxiliary ship pulled alongside the destroyer, rather than a crane on an established pier.

Reloading a vertical launching system, or VLS, is a challenging maneuver, given the crane must hold missile canisters vertically, while slowly lowering the explosives into the system’s small opening in the ship deck.

It’s also a maneuver the Navy cannot yet do at sea. This demonstration took place while the destroyer Spruance was tied to the pier at Naval Air Station North Island, as a first step in creating a more expeditionary rearming capability.

But in the near future, that same evolution between a warship and an auxiliary vessel could take place in any harbor or protected waters around the globe. One day, it may even take place in the open ocean, thanks to research and development efforts in support of a top priority for the secretary of the Navy.

Ponder for a second and then I want you to bring to mind the geography of the Pacific to get ready for the next paragraph; 

Carlos Del Toro is eyeing this rearm-at-sea capability as one of a handful of steps the service must take to prepare for conflict in the Pacific; other steps include strengthening logistics capabilities and identifying foreign shipyards that could conduct repairs to battle-damaged ships.

Today, the Navy’s cruisers and destroyers can only load and unload offices at established piers with approved infrastructure. For the Pacific fleet, these reload sites are in Japan, Guam, Hawaii and California.

In any large conflict in the Western Pacific, we can pretty much plan on most, if not all, of the facilities in Japan and Guam not being usable for an undetermined period of time. 

What option does that give us? That's right - transit all the way to Hawaii or the West Coast to rearm.

That isn't just unacceptable - that is almost a criminal in 2023.

More and faster please. As our friend Brian McGrath likes to say; winter is coming. 

Saki’s Lessons for WESTPAC

Was it Ukrainian Special Operations forces? Did the Ukrainians operationalize their Grom SRBM? Did the USA sneak in some ATACMS along with HARM missiles to strike Saki Airbase in Russian occupied Crimea?

My bet is in that order, and in time we will find out … but there is one thing I do know for sure; this is just another reminder that this regional conflict is telling us a lot about what we need to understand about the future of war that will manifest itself in the likely big war to come in the Western Pacific.

Multiple explosions on Tuesday rocked a Russian air base in occupied Crimea — killing at least one and wounding several others, Russian authorities said.

Videos circulating on social media purported to show large explosions at a military airfield in the Saki district of Crimea, a disputed peninsula annexed by Russian forces in 2014.

Russian state media reported one death at the airfield, and at least five wounded.

“We have blasts at the airfield. All the windows are broken,” Viktoria Kazmirova, deputy head of the occupation government in Crimea, told Russian outlet TASS.

Local residents reported hearing 12 explosions coming from the base. Russian officials said the explosions were caused by the detonation of several ammunition stores.

Not unlike how the Spanish Civil War gave hints to what WWII would look like, the Russo-Ukrainian War today is showing shadows of what is to come.

From drones, to highly accurate long range precision fires by conventional ballistic and cruise missiles, to exceptionally well-trained special forces – if you have a high percentage of your air forces, supply depots, maintenance facilities, and ammunition magazines within range of your enemy – if they have the ability, they will attack them. If you concentrate your forces, you distill your operational risk to an essential vulnerability too attractive not to attack.

The Russians are lucky that the pre-war Ukrainian government and its blinkered Western advisors did not have the Ukrainians properly ready for the war that came this February. 

America and her allies do not have that luxury in the Pacific west of Wake. There is no larger power who will send us meaningful amounts of aid to cover our peace time distraction.

The People’s Republic of China’s rocket forces have our bases covered. You can safely assume that the PRC’s clandestine services are good and well set. They know what needs to be done. They have been preparing for decades and the Russo-Ukrainian War shows they were on the correct path.

If we continue to assume that we will be able to have access and use of these fixed facilities in any future conflict for more than a day or two, we are setting ourselves up for an inability to operate forward.

Yes, this is an election season, but time is short and our leaders need to act now.

We need to start to better distribute our risk, faster – especially maintenance and rearming. Otherwise, we will find ourselves – once again – pushed back east of Wake and south of New Guinea for the second time in a century in the opening months of a global war that will last years – one fate does not guarantee we will win this time. 

Photo credit NZHerald.

Navy Missiles for all my Friends

There are some smart decisions being made by the Army when it comes to what the cool kids call “long range fires” (I don't care if they call in medium) … and the products are blue and gold.

Via Sydney Freedberg at BreakingDefense;

Instead of picking a single missile to be its thousand-mile Mid-Range Capability, the Army has chosen to mix two very different Navy weapons together in its prototype MRC unit: the new, supersonic, high-altitude SM-6 and the venerable, subsonic, low-flying Tomahawk.

...

Lockheed Martin won the OTA contract, worth up to $339.4 million with all options, to integrate the two missiles – both built by Raytheon – into the Army fire control systems, vehicles, and support equipment required for a fully functioning artillery battery. Lockheed builds the current wheeled HIMARS and tracked MLRS launchers, which can handle a wide variety of current and future Army weapons, but neither the service nor the company would say whether they could fire either SM-6 or Tomahawk, citing security concerns.

They are set to enter service in 2023.

The most important factor in the Pacific remains what it has always been, range.

The subsonic Tomahawk cruise missile is the long-serving mainstay of long-range strike. It was first fielded in the Reagan era and has been much upgraded since, with more than 2,000 fired in combat since 1991. There used to be a whole family of different versions, but nuclear-tipped, land-based, air-launched, and anti-ship variants were retired after the Cold War. That left the Navy’s conventional-warhead Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM), which can only be fired from ships and submarines, and only at stationary targets ashore.

...

The supersonic SM-6 is the latest and sexiest version of the Navy’s Standard Missile family, whose primary role is defensive, built to shoot incoming enemy aircraft and missiles out of the sky. But the new SM-6 is also capable of striking surface targets on land and sea.

Range, range, range. For reasons probably best discussed between them and their confessors, since the end of the Cold War our Navy has retreated from range. Our airwing forgot about it. Our surface force remembered it shortly, then forgot it again. I don’t think out submarine force ever did … but we don’t talk much about submarines because they seem to do a great job in most things (though that may change next week if I can get a post out of draft).

The SM-6 selection surprised me at first, because its reported ranges are well short of the 1,000 miles the Army wants for the Mid-Range Capability. While the real range is classified, estimates range up to 290 miles (250 nautical miles).

However, the Navy is now developing an extended-range model of the SM-6, the Block 1B. (It’ll use the rocket booster from another Standard Missile variant, the ICBM-killing SM-3, which is known to have a range greater than 1,000 miles). What’s more, while the current SM-6 maxes out at Mach 3.5, the SM-6 Block 1B will reportedly reach hypersonic speeds, i.e. above Mach 5. While the Navy plans for Block 1B to complete development only in 2024, it wouldn’t be a stretch to have a handful of missiles available early for the Army’s MRC roll-out in late 2023.

The maritime gods of the copybook headings are back, and they are pissed. All the non-transformational concepts such as range, affordability, production lines, and robustness are coming back to the front. Why? Simple.

We are running out of time to be unserious. From the Army's press release;

“The Army and joint service partners have conducted extensive mission thread analysis to solidify the kill chain and communications systems required to support MRC operations. Details are not publicly releasable due to OPSEC considerations,” Army officials wrote me in an email.

“The Tomahawk and SM-6 were chosen in order to accelerate a mature capability to address near-peer threats. They provide the required mix of capability to engage desired targets at mid-range distances. Working closely with the Navy, the Army will be able to integrate these missiles for the MRC prototype battery to meet the FY23 fielding date.

“The Army will not modify the Navy missiles. While working on materiel solutions, the Army is also consistently doing analysis to determine the best mix of weapons systems, how the enemy is going to fight against new capabilities, and how to address capability gaps.

“The MRC prototype battery is planned to include a mix of both SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles to provide the desired capability in FY23.”

The best way to keep the People’s Republic of China from being a danger to our interests is to keep her close to shore. To do that, you need to hit targets on the coast and inland. With her impressive S/M/IRBM forces, you need to do that at range at sea and ashore. 

The maladministration of our airwing over the three decades is almost criminal, but we have what we have. Working at the speed of smell, NAVAIR may have a F/A-XX (AKA NGAD or whatever we are calling it this week) shadow on the ramp before the crack of doom, and one hopes that one of the primary design priorities is … range … but for the near-term fight to come, we and our sister services will have to do with what we have to keep a proper distance from shore based weapons systems. We knew that in the Cold War, but then we got smart enough to be stupid. We will have to find range other ways – and in missiles, the Navy has a lot to be proud of.

This is where the Army’s decision to go Navy and buy the updated 1970s era TLAM (though that is just the shape and speed. The warhead and guidance is 21st Century smart) and the SM-6 is just smart as it can be. We have good (actually, very good) now as we wait for better later that may or may not come. We need to be ready to fight now, not a decade from now.

A final note to my fellow geeks and classics fans.

Do you know what "Typhon" is on slide above?

Based badassery and a superb name.

... the Giant-God whose power is to overturn oceans. ... the largest and most fearsome of all creatures, his prowess exceeded that of even the Titans and was enough to be regarded as the deadliest threat to Olympus, and was one of the few beings in existence whom Zeus openly feared. ... His true form is always accompanied by a massive and devastating storm, obscuring his body and making it difficult to see. However, it is said that his human upper half reached as high as the stars, and his hands reached east and west. Instead of a human head, a hundred dragon heads erupted from his neck and shoulders; some, however, depict him as having a human head, with the dragon heads replacing the fingers on his hands. His bottom half consisted of gigantic viper coils that could reach the top of his head when stretched out and constantly made a hissing noise. His whole body was covered in wings, and fire flashed from his eyes,

Scratch One Russian Navy Alligator LST

No one really knows for sure what caused the explosion this AM on the Russian Navy's 54-yr old Alligator Class LST Orsk in the Port of Berdyansk. What we do know was the accident/attack was livestreamed.

This video captures it best.

Time-lapse video showing the events at the port of Berdyansk this morning. Two LSTs left the port, one of them was on fire.

pic.twitter.com/5HljSBOhbQ

— C O U P S U R E (@COUPSURE) March 24, 2022

Just as a professional side note: BZ to the crews of the two Ropucha Class LSD for getting underway and out of the way - both of which seems to have fires of their own to fight.

What we do know is that the Russians liked to store a lot of things on the deck of an Alligator, as you can see in this pic of the Orsk's sister ship Saratov going through the Dardanelles. 

In this still, it appears that the explosion took place on or under the after portion of the deck storage area.

I'm not sure how long it takes to unload those ships, but the Russians put out this video two days ago showing the unload going rather well with most of the gear already gone;

#Russian large landing ship #Orsk and escorts occupy & unload at captured port of #Berdyansk, #ZaporizhzhiaOblast, southeast #Ukraine.#RussianArmy claim thousands #UkrainianArmy and sailors abandoned the port without a fight, leaving all infrastructure and facilities intact pic.twitter.com/jVCWy74lks

— Faith Reporters (@FaithReporters) March 22, 2022

There was, and continues to be, a lot of speculation as to the cause of this incident being some kind of attack by the Ukrainians via one of their few remaining SRBM or other weapons.  I have no more information than anyone else, but that isn't my bet. 

Heck, some are even blaming the video above as some PAO mistake in giving targeting data, etc. No. 

Everyone knew the ship was there and the unloading areas of the pier are easy to enter in to any precision targeting software from a paper map even decades old as they DON'T MOVE and thousands of people can see what is there from their apartment balcony.

No, my bet is - like the burning of our large-deck amphib the Bonnie Dick in San Diego almost two years ago - this was not caused by an attack. Probably an accident or something else internal to the ship. Perhaps sabotage, but that is low probability as well.

That being said, I had a flash of SRBM theory of my own when I first saw this ... and it brought to mind one of the nightmares LTjg Salamander had to ponder one day a bit over 31-yrs ago.

31-yrs is a long time in weapons development. Even in 1991, the Iraqis were using old Soviet Scud kit ... and yet they knew where the ports were that we were using; which piers we would use, etc. Again, they don't move. Anyone can see them.

Even in 1991 with old kit and ... well ... the Iraqi army ... they got close;

c.  February 16th Attack on Al Jubayl (Event 7 in Table 3)

Iraq fired a single Scud at the port city of Al Jubayl early on February 16th.[75] The Patriot battery positioned to defend Al Jubayl was undergoing maintenance at the time and could not engage the Scud.[76] The incoming missile broke up in flight over the harbor and hit in the water just off a large pier where six ships and two smaller craft were tied up. The missile’s impact also was about 500 feet from ammunition storage on the pier.[77] Figure 4 displays a map of the harbor showing the impact location.

Well in to the 3rd decade of the 21st Century we need to realize - regardless to what happened to the Orsk - that fixed ports are as vulnerable as fixed airfields to conventional ballistic missiles tipped with modern multi-spectral seeker-heads and other precision guidance that may or may not require external sources. These warheads are - how can I put this on this net - not dumb.

Especially west of Wake, deep in to our operational rear during a war in the western Pacific, our fixed ports, airfields, repair depots, storage areas, magazines - command locations - you name it - are all well within range of the PRC's rocket force's thousands of S/M/I/RMBs.

How can we mitigate that? Are we taking steps to mitigate that? Do we have enough BMD defenses? Do we have enough alternative places to keep the fight going?

Of course, as regular readers of CDRSalamander, you know the answers to these questions. What you need to ask yourself is why are you letting your government and your Navy continue to act like they don't exist in the reality we have?

---

UPDATE: Looks like the possibility that we are looking at a successful SS-21 attack by the Ukrainians after all. They have a limited supply, so carefully chosen target. From five days ago, the Russians themselves reported on a SS-21 attack on what seems to be the same pier;

On March 19th RT reported posted footage of the remains of a Ukrainian Tochka-U short-range ballistic missile reportedly at the port in Berdyansk which was said to be shot down, meaning Tochka-U’s were in range of the port a few days ago. https://t.co/jx4DmxsOkN pic.twitter.com/IQpxrbRo7f

— ELINT News (@ELINTNews) March 24, 2022

There is also this video from the other side of the port from the first video above that seems to show cluster munitions and a booster falling. If this video holds, the question is; do the Ukrainian SS-21's have the option to have the 9H123K warhead installed with its 50-cluster munitions released at 2,250m?

No sourcing, but this looks like submunitions. pic.twitter.com/SpjrI4k5e5

— John P. Jones (@J_PaulJones) March 24, 2022

Want More VLS Cells West of Wake Before 2030? This is the Way.

I joke now and then about “Make Auxiliary Cruisers Great Again” – but I am only partially joking.

What were Auxiliary Cruisers? On the surface, they were somewhere between pirates and commerce raiders, but they were also a way to get more armed ships with your flag on them in the mind of your enemy's planners, disrupting their Sea Lines of Communication (SLOC) (aka supply chains), and complicating their attempts to secure their seas.

Turning merchant ships in to warships is an imperfect act, but until your enemy achieves complete sea control, they have a good to acceptable track record of bringing more capability to the fight from the South Pacific to the Indian Ocean and other places they could make a nuisance of themselves. Also, they are better underway today, than waiting 24-months for a warship to displace water.

When we look at the challenge west of Wake, one thing most navalists have sobered up to is that we simply do not have enough VLS cells to cover the needs of area defense, ballistic missile defense, strike, and even ASW. We are not producing enough multi-purpose warships that carry enough VLS cells – or enough VLS cell carrying warships – to both bring the firepower we need or distribute risk to an acceptable level.

The USAF has a parallel challenge. Since I was a kid and people had plans to convert 747 in to flying cruise missile carrying aircraft throwing out ALCM like a Pez Dispenser does candy, they’ve been looking at better ways to launch stand off weapons without requiring such high demand/low density/high-cost platforms such as heavy bombers. Sure, they can butch up Strike Eagles … but what about their fleet of cargo aircraft?

In partnership with the U.S. Air Force (USAF), Lockheed Martin has deployed Rapid Dragon munition pallets from C-17 and EC‑130 aircraft and released surrogate JASSM-ERs in system-level flights conducted over White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. 

Rapid Dragon is a fast-paced USAF Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation (SDPE) program that has moved from concept to surrogate missile deployment in just 10 months.

The Rapid Dragon team conducted an airdrop from a C-17A Globemaster III and another from an EC-130SJ Commando Solo. In both flights, aircrews deployed a pallet at an operationally relevant altitude. Once stabilized by parachutes, the pallets released surrogate missiles in quick succession, each aerodynamically identical to a JASSM-ER.

If for no other reason than good old inter-service rivalry … can we iterate past the SA-6 on a USV to, well, looking at what existing cargo ships can be converted in to …. VLS farms.

Work with me here. Yes, I understand people who want unmanned surface vessels to operate like “loyal wingmen” with our surface fleet as VLS farms, but we are a long way from having the machinery, communications, laws, code, etc to make them a reality anytime in the next decade. I'll take them when they come, but they are not coming fast enough.

We cannot wait that long. We need a gap filler. We need to experiment like the USAF … but better.

Let me be modest here: what kind of merchant ship can we purchase right now that I can fit 256 VLS cells, bolt on a SeaRAM or two, a couple of 30mm, can cruise effectively at 20 kts but can also make 25kts at a minimum sustained maximum speed. 

Can you think of a better way to give the USNR some warships?  

Just imagine; six on each coast ready to get underway, fully loaded, in 2-weeks.

What Can a Navy Take From the Fall of Kabul?

What was Navy, was taken by the Army, loved by everyone ... and is hinting that we have some wonderful ideas about how to sustain operations in the Western Pacific against China, and it would be a shame if something happened to them.

Thinking a bit over at USNIBlog on things that go "brrrrrrrr."

Come ponder it out with me.

Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part LXXXVII

See that beautiful bird on the right? That was the late-great Pershing II of the Reagan Era that helped the Soviet Union fall apart.

It was exceptionally good for a nuclear weapon delivery vehicle with a very impressive accuracy. As it was nuclear only and we made agreements with an empire that eventually went away - we let that capability go.

The Chinese and others have not. They have hundreds of conventional short/intermediate/medium range ballistic missiles in their inventory ready to go. We have ... well ... pictures.

In the four decades since we decommissioned the Pershing II, a lot has happened. The Communist Chinese have - with our willing help - risen to challenge the USA. They have also had a great record of success stealing our civilian and military technology through a combination of old fashioned HUMINT, hacking, and flooding universities and research institutions with the money and grad students who get access to all sorts of records long filed and forgotten.

In most things there are distinct trends & "families" of designs. 

Pershing II has a distinct look, as do the CSS-5 (DF-17) & DS-26 - the two missiles that give the most bother to those in the USN looking at sustaining the fight west of Wake Island.

Form follows function et al, so this might just be good math doing its job, but the CCP's successful history if espionage shouldn't be dismissed. The Chinese desire to let others do their basic research for them is a hard habit to break.

Has anyone dug deeply in to the reasons that the CCP missiles we have grown to have such concern for ... have a familial resemblance to the Pershing II?

In a way, it doesn't matter. They have them by the hundreds while we are bragging that we can have a ship the size of a WWII destroyer toting around four foreign designed ASCM to ... tote them around.

Everyone needs to head over and read the Ballistic and Cruise Missile Thread report for 2020 by the  National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) in collaboration with the Defense Intelligence Ballistic Missile Analysis Committee (DIBMAC).

Here's something to kick things off ... and then look at the children of Pershing II below;

China continues to deploy nuclear-armed MRBMs to maintain regional nuclear deterrence, and its long-term, comprehensive military modernization is improving the capability of its conventionally armed ballistic missile force to conduct high-intensity regional military operations, including “antiaccess and area denial” (A2/AD) operations. 

Currently, China deploys the CSS-5 Mod 2 for regional nuclear deterrence. China has the conventionally-armed CSS-5 Mod 4 and Mod 5 MRBMs to conduct precision strikes. The CSS-5 Mod 4 (DF-21C) is intended to hold at risk or strike logistics and communication nodes, regional military bases and airfields, or ports. China has also deployed the CSS-5 Mod 5 (DF-21D), an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) with a range exceeding 1,500 km and a maneuverable reentry vehicle (MaRV) that gives the PLA the capability to attack aircraft carriers in the western Pacific Ocean. 

According to a Chinese CCTV report, the DF-21D brigades are capable of quickly reloading in the field and launching multiple salvo strikes within a few hours. During the PLA’s 90th Anniversary Parade in July 2017, China displayed a new MRBM designated the DF-16G, which China claims features high accuracy, short preparation time, and an improved maneuverable terminal stage that can better infiltrate missile defense systems. 

As part of its National Day Parade in October 2019 celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Peoples’ Republic of China, China displayed its DF-17 medium-range hypersonic missile.

 h/t Ankit Panda.

 

Nice Oil Trade You Have There. Shame if Something Happened to it

Have you been surprised that Iran and her Houthi proxies in Yemen have not gone after the Saudi's oil industry more?

What are your thoughts on home-grown cruise missiles and mines?

I'm pondering both over at USNIBlog.

Come on over and give it a read.

Bit by Bit, an ABM Capability Grows

 

Our Navy would be such a more powerful force if we had kept with the mindset of the Aegis and Standard Missile evolution. 

Bit by bit, step by step, increment by increment, baseline by baseline, we got a stronger, more effective Navy.

A few hiccups like in any  long running program ... but the success is undeniable. 

The latest example;

In a first-of-its-kind test, the United States has successfully used a small ship-fired missile to intercept a target Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), according to the Missile Defense Agency. The successful test shows the U.S. military now has another missile defense system capable of defending against North Korean ICBM’s aimed at the United States.

“The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), and U.S. Navy sailors aboard an Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) System-equipped destroyer intercepted and destroyed a threat-representative Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) target with a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA missile during a flight test demonstration in the broad ocean area northeast of Hawaii, Nov. 16,” said a statement from the Missile Defense Agency.

A target ICBM missile launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean traveled thousands of miles towards the body of water between Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States mainland.

MORE: US successfully intercepts ICBM in historic test

The destroyer USS John Finn that was positioned in those waters then fired an SM3 missile that successfully intercepted the target ICBM. The interceptor missile was directed towards its target using tracking information provided by an array of sensor systems designed to monitor any incoming missile attack on the United States.

There is a lot to do before this becomes a fleet-wide capability, but we are getting there.

An anti-ballistic missile capability afloat isn't just good for national defense and that of our allies, but as anti-ship ballistic missiles become more of a threat - it will be an integral part of fleet defense itself.

As challenging of a science and engineering accomplishment as this is, there are parallel challenges that need to be addressed. 

First of all is a depth of capability. A lot of modifications and improvements will be needed to our Aegis ships before more ships have this capability - if ever. Most with a naval background can figure out an outline of those details on their own.

Once that is done, then we have what has always been an gold-plated issue in the surface community  become a platinum-plated one - the most valuable square footage in the navalists neighborhood; VSL cells.

If you want attack targets ashore with TLAM or the coming hypersonics cruise missiles - and your submarines can't quite get everywhere with enough tubes as it is, you will need this surface capability. 

How many VLS cells can you fill with those weapons if you need to be able to defend yourself and others from one or two varieties of ballistic missiles and ASCM - not to mention an aircraft or two? Maybe leave a few cells for ASW ... perhaps?

Your standard issue Aegis Destroyer has 90 or 96 MK-41 VLS cells. You can do the math from there.

We lost two generations of possible evolution in surface warship development with the failure of DDG-1000 and CG(X). We really need to get off the ball sooner more than later with our next large surface combatant. We can also look at some fun ways to get more VLS cells to our Navy sooner ... but that is a post for another day, perhaps.

The Best Joint Programs are not Joint Programs

BZ to the Army for selecting some excellent weapons to tweak a bit to suit their specific requirements, and then add to their weaponeering tool kit.

As covered by Syndey Freedberg at the end of last week;

...the Army has chosen to mix two very different Navy weapons together in its prototype MRC (Mid-Range Capability) unit: the new, supersonic, high-altitude SM-6 and the venerable, subsonic, low-flying Tomahawk.

“Following a broad review of joint service technologies potentially applicable to MRC, the Army has selected variants of the Navy SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles to be part of the initial prototype,” says a Rapid Capabilities & Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) statement released this afternoon. “The Army will leverage Navy contract vehicles for missile procurement in support of the Army integration OT [Other Transaction Authority] agreement.”

That is programspeak for, "We need to get this capability forward as soon as possible. No, we don't have two decades to make our own stuff. Navy has already done the hard part and has some nice kit. Let's slap a Army sticker on it and get this moving."

Though it was owned by the USAF at the time, at the end of the Cold War we deployed to Europe the nuclear BGM-109G Gryphon Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM). Leverage that experience and modernize it, as the modern Tomahawk is to the old TLAM - but this time in a conventional mode - and you have a nice capability.

The SM-6 is already wired with a secondary anti-surface mode at sea, so this too should be an easy path.

Some of the usual suspects will get grumpy because, damblit, the US military has a new capability, but they should pack sand.

If you desire peace, plan for war - and these missiles play to our comparative advantage.

BZ to everyone on a sound decision.

The Market Will Tell You What You're Short of

For navalists, the very short answer to the question of, "How many carriers do we really need?" is "More." 

Why is that the answer? Simple ... look at the length of deployments and the foolish "double pumping" of the CVN we have.

"High demand - low density" is just a PPT way of saying we didn't buy enough of what we actually need.

Let's take that simple economics concept over to the Army.

What are they short of? Remember when we were naked to attack from the Iranians? We don't want to have that happen again.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Patriot missile batteries remain among the most frequently deployed units in the service, Army senior leaders have said previously. They’ve also acknowledged a need to ease the burden on soldiers manning those systems.

...

“Every Patriot unit assigned to the 32nd AAMDC was forward deployed during this period of time," Stewart said Wednesday at the conference. "More importantly, every weapon system in our arsenal, to include C-RAM, Stinger, Avenger, Sentinel Radar, Patriot, THAAD, all those were deployed forward during this time.”

Here is a question; our allies have a lot of air defense forces. How many of them have deployed to help us during this surge? 

In NATO alone, the Germans, Dutch, Spanish and Greeks have Patriot. The Romanians just got their last month, so we'll give them a pass.

The Army has been funding something ... but too much of that and not enough of this.

Imagine the requirements we would face in a war with even a half-peer.

The Secrets We Forgot to Tell Ourselves

Is 48-yrs long enough to consider something unclassified?

Well, why not. I personally don't care if this is exactly how it happened or not, this is a great story.

It reminds me that most people who served have a lot of events that to us were just an interesting day. We don't think all that much about it, but to others it is exciting.

This in one of those days. Via the OkieBoat website ... let's go back to 1972 and the Harry Navy at war;

In January 1972 the Oklahoma City steamed to the Gulf of Tonkin to do some "radar hunting." We were waiting for the chance to use the new RGM-8H missiles in the Ready Service Magazine. We were looking for another BAR LOCK radar in the vicinity of the Mu Gia Pass, although few people aboard knew this. We maintained a position about 30 miles off the coast of North Vietnam near Vinh (18° 43.6' N 106° 15.8' E) for most of the period from 28 January to 4 February, holding position within 2000 yards from a reference buoy, waiting to shoot. During this period we operated at Condition II AAW with the Talos missile battery and the 5"/38 guns manned, and with either the USS Decatur DDG-31 or the USS Mahan DLG-11 "riding shotgun" with their short range Tartar and Terrier missiles.

I was on-watch that night in the EW shack and was on the receiver and picked up the BAR LOCK ATC radar that the Vietnamese were using. I remember the incident pretty vividly... how long we'd trained to be able to pick up those threat emitters, determine the key characteristics so we could pass on just the kind of info that was used to program the TALOS that night. Some of the measurement gear was NOT part of a standard electronics package. A few OW-div buddies and I collaborated to put together a couple pieces of outboard 'off-the-shelf' test equipment (an audio signal generator and XY scope so we could accurately determine PRR frequencies of incoming signals). It was this set up that allowed us to pass on not one...but three of the frequencies that BAR LOCK was using that night (since it was a Frequency Scanning...FRESCAN...radar to allow it to determine bearing/range AND approximate altitude).

I remember passing parameters on to the fire control folks continuously as the missile was being prepared for launch (BAR LOCK radars were notorious for changing frequencies during operation). I remember feeling/hearing the launch... I continued to monitor the signal as the missile was in-flight. After a minute or so (I didn't have a stopwatch on it) I remember hearing a weird screeching... then the signal went silent. Apparently that was the precise moment of the impact/explosion that "killed" the radar.

RD2 Doug Rasor, OK City 1968-72

Everyone has their own view of an engagement;

On the night of the ARM engagement, I recall leaving Weapons Control immediately after launch of the missile and running up to the Fire Control Workshop above Weapons Control, where the AN/SKQ-1 Telemetry set had been installed and was receiving data [TLM] from the missile in flight. Having set the pre-launch parameters into the missile, after discussion with CDR Mel Foreman [Weapons Department head], I knew what to look for in the telemetry as regards the general flow of the missile flight regime. FYI, the AN/SKQ-1 data was projected onto light sensitive paper for subsequent development and analysis.

I saw the missile acquire the Bar Lock radar, and wing movements generating the lateral accelerations as the missile acquired and began homing on the target. Angle Rate Gate Enable had been transmitted to the missile prior to launch, so the missile had been fired to a point in space roughly 8 Kyds beyond the radar site, which caused the missile to reject possible “spoofing” targets beyond/to the side of the actual target. So the missile nosed over and dove on the target approaching from directly overhead and thereby maximizing the fuse/warhead effectiveness against the target. TLM was lost just prior to the predicted intercept so warhead fusing was not visible on TLM. However, all of the available TLM data suggested that the missile had homed on (and probably destroyed) the target.

WO1 Greg Dilick, OK City 1970-73.

I don't know about you, but I love a story with a happy ending;

However, at the moment we didn't know if we had hit the target. The Electronics Warfare people in CIC told us the radar signal had disappeared about the same time the missile arrived, but you can bet the BAR LOCK operators would have noticed if we had missed and shut down their radar! The next day our Weapons Department head CDR Foreman showed me aerial recon photos. The radar antennas were scattered all over Southeast Asia, and what remained of the trailer was lying on its side at the edge of a 30 foot diameter crater.

This was all classified Secret at the time, and our missile crews were told to keep quiet. Of course everyone aboard knew something was going on (missile shots were very noisy). I overheard one sailor say we had fired a nuclear warhead and he had seen the explosion! Such is scuttlebutt!

The next morning at 0004 (four minutes after midnight) the Oklahoma City left the operating area for Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin to rendezvous with the USS Coral Sea CVA-43 for personnel transfers. At 1339 (1:39 PM) we left the area and went to Subic Bay in the Philippines for R&R. The Chicago was in port when we arrived. Imagine our surprise when we learned that the bar girls knew about the shot before we got there! One of our first class POs told me that as they walked into a bar one of the girls saw the ship's name patch on his sleeve and started asking about the missile shot! So much for secrecy!

So you Vietnam Era Shipmates ... about those Subic bars ...

Losing Sleep Over Hypersonics

You are worrying about the wrong thing ... at least for now and the next decade.

Thoughts over at USNIBlog.

Come on by and tell me why I'm all wet.

From DDG-1000 to CA-154?

So, we have a rump, 3-ship class of land attack destroyer, the ZUMWALT Class, that was designed about a bespoke 6.1-in (nee 155mm) naval gun that we are not going to use because we did not have an economist or historian on the program team.

As such, and we don't have to even go in to the problematic manning and other issues, we have your classic white elephant tooling around with the most expensive 30-mm batteries in Christendom with nothing forward of bridge of any lethality unless you are an unfortunate Cetacean that can't get out of the way of its bow on the few occasions it gets underway.

Well, we spent billions of dollars borrowed in the name of children yet unborn to get these in the fleet ... what can we do with them besides relegate the trio to technology demonstrators, CAPT Commands, or missile possible sponges as we try to keep the Chinese Fleet from moving east of Oahu?

It seems smart people with hard jobs have been looking at options and they may have found a way to get something moving forward.

To get a better idea we'd need a few artists rendering informed by competent marine engineers - but before we start getting the blow torches and blueprints out, let's see what they have to say.

The Navy’s newest destroyer may fire a not-yet-to-be fielded Conventional Prompt Strike conventionally-armed missile engineered to hit anywhere on earth within an hour, service program managers said. The weapon, now being considered by Navy weapons developers for the emerging USS Zumwalt, will bring new attack options to the stealthy destroyer being prepared for combat as soon as 2021, Capt. Kevin Smith, Zumwalt-class destroyer Program Manager

OK, let's unpack this a bit. First of all, let's define the most sparkly item; CPS;

Navy Starts Conventional Prompt Strike Missile Program Evidence of the growing Pentagon interest in hypersonic missiles, several exploratory programs have been shifted into engineering development over the past year. In 2019, DARPA relinquished control over the Conventional Prompt Global Strike program, with the effort transferred to the Navy’s Strategic Systems Program. Now called Conventional Prompt Strike, the effort became a program-of-record in late 2019. The aim of the program is to examine a new intermediate range missile that can be fired from Ohio-class missile submarines that have been converted to launch cruise missiles (SSGNs) and Virginia-class attack submarines equipped with the Virginia Payload Module.
...
On 30 October 2018, the Navy flew the first CPS test, designated Flight Experiment 1, more than 2,000 nautical miles from Hawaii to the Marshall Islands. ... The Navy expects to conduct the CPS Flight Experiment-2 in 2020 and FE-3 in 2022. So far, there is no estimate regarding an introduction into service.

The CPS missile is not called a ballistic missile since it employs a hypersonic maneuvering body to carry its warhead, called the Common Hypersonic Glide Body(C-HGB). On 30 August 2019, Dynetics Technical Solutions (DTS)of Huntsville, AL, was awarded a $351.6 million contract to build at least 20 Common Hypersonic Glide Bodies for both the Army and the Navy. The Army’s counterpart to the CPS is the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW). Lockheed Martin was awarded a $347 million contract in September 2019 for this program.

So, that is what we are looking at. First step, we need to find a way to shoehorn the Virginia Payload Module (VPM) in to the Zumwalt.

Not sure you will be able to do that by the end of FY21, but we'll see.

There is limited real estate - believe it or not - in this Graf Spee sized "destroyer." As such, what presently is fallow ground looking for highest and best use?  That's right kiddies, those mothballed 6.1" gun mounts. Let's extract those.

How many VPM can you fit in that space?

Each VPM is 87" wide. I can't seem to find a good open source diagram to ponder with, but let's make some assumptions using these two as reference points.

For planning purposes, let's remove both 6.1" mounts. In place of the forward, lets say you can install 3 VPM. Where the aft mount is, because it gets a bit wider, you can fit 5; 3 down the centerline like you did with the forward mount, and then two to the side between the two closest to the bridge.

The VPM can hold 7 TLAM. Will CPS use up the same space as a TLAM? If we assume so, that will give you 8x7=56 CPS if you did a full load out.

That ain't nothing. That is something. Could we do that ship modification for the cost of a LCS? If so, I'd approve that ship modification if for no other reason than not buying more LCS ... but for my approval you'd have to do the right thing and classify this pocket battleship sized warship to what it actually is; a cruiser.

As this would not be an air defense cruiser, but a cruiser designed around surface and land attack, then let's call it what it is; an attack cruiser. CA-154 is the next available number. If you insist on keeping the redundant "G" then fine, CG-74 - but that is lame.

This has the potential of salvaging something of use. Also, being that the VPM was designed for submarines, it will be more than fit-to-purpose for the bow of that tumblehome hull. That thing will be wet.

Missile Defense at Sea and Ashore with Tom Karako, on Midrats

Not since the last decade of the Cold War have ballistic missile defense, land based cruise missiles, as well as short, intermediate, and medium range ballistic missiles received this much attention outside the compartmentalized and esoteric warfare specialities they belong in.

With the realities of our century bidding farewell to the previous century's INF limitations, you shouldn't expect the topic to fade away anytime soon.

Shipboard and land based missile defense are rising to meet the threat - using both established capabilities and new ones emerging from the lab.

For the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm to discuss these and related topics, our guest will be Dr. Thomas Karako.

Tom is a senior fellow with the International Security Program and the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he arrived in 2014. His research focuses on national security, missile defense, nuclear deterrence, and public law. For 2010–2011, he was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, working with the professional staff of the House Armed Services Committee and the Strategic Forces Subcommittee on U.S. strategic forces policy, nonproliferation, and NATO.

He is also currently an adjunct professor in the Strategic Studies Program in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and a fellow with the Institute for Politics and Strategy of Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University and his B.A. from the University of Dallas.

Join us live if you can, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at Spreaker. 

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

In DC, the Zombie INF Fight is Afoot

There are a few constants in the natsec environment we live in; elections have consequences, and nameless professional staffers with peculiar and questionable understandings of war have an unimaginable impact on our ability to have an effective military.

For you who were not around or interested in the Cold War, there was a very Eurocentric treaty that was/is almost a talisman to the established natsec cadres that infested the Beltway and still do - mostly interested in their personal egos, legacies, and pet fetishes. Of course, I'm talking about the INF Treaty of 1987.

The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty required the United States and the Soviet Union to eliminate and permanently forswear all of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. The treaty marked the first time the superpowers had agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals, eliminate an entire category of nuclear weapons, and utilize extensive on-site inspections for verification. As a result of the INF Treaty, the United States and the Soviet Union destroyed a total of 2,692 short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles by the treaty's implementation deadline of June 1, 1991.

The Soviet Union died over a quarter century ago, but to keep Russia from being too pouty, for decades we let it sit that they could pretend it was the mighty Soviet Union as we chased a Medieval death cult around the low-rent parts of the globe.

Russia, however, is Russia. So ...

The United States first alleged in its July 2014 Compliance Report that Russia is in violation of its INF Treaty obligations “not to possess, produce, or flight-test” a ground-launched cruise missile having a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers or “to possess or produce launchers of such missiles.” Subsequent State Department assessments in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 repeated these allegations. In March 2017, a top U.S. official confirmed press reports that Russia had begun deploying the noncompliant missile. Russia denies that it is in violation of the agreement and has accused the United States of being in noncompliance.

On Dec. 8, 2017, the Trump administration released an integrated strategy to counter alleged Russian violations of the Treaty, including the commencement of research and development on a conventional, road-mobile, intermediate-range missile system. On Oct. 20, 2018 President Donald Trump announced his intention to “terminate” the INF Treaty, citing Russian noncompliance and concerns about China’s intermediate-range missile arsenal. On Dec. 4, 2018 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States has found Russia in “material breach” of the treaty and will suspend its treaty obligations in 60 days if Russia does not return to compliance in that time. On Feb. 2, the Trump administration declared a suspension of U.S. obligations under the INF Treaty and formally announced its intention to withdraw from the treaty in six months. Shortly thereafter, Russian President Vladimir Putin also announced that Russia will be officially suspending its treaty obligations as well.

Well, hello everyone and welcome to the end of the second decade of the 21st Century. A lot has changed.

Russia, though a weak and tottering old bear up to mischief and still a bit dangerous, is not the Soviet Union. The threat as we move to mid-century is and will be China. China was not part of INF - again that was signed 32 years ago - so what has she been doing with what - on paper - is an incredible bit of tactical kit?

To achieve a preemptive strike against America’s military bases, China has procured a massive missile force. In fact, Beijing has the largest land-based missile arsenal in the world. According to Pentagon estimates, this includes 1,200 conventionally armed short-range ballistic missiles, two hundred to three hundred conventional medium-range ballistic missiles and an unknown number of conventional intermediate-range ballistic missiles, as well as two to three hundred ground-launched cruise missiles.

If we find ourselves at war with the rising power of China - and history shows we most likely will this century - their missile forces will be something we will have to address. By address, I mean fight. By fight, I mean destroy or be destroyed by them.

How do you eliminate them? Well, a defensive posture is not ideal, and we do not have enough ABM capability to counter that number inbound. We don't have enough TLAM either ... so what does that leave? TACAIR. Those are bodies. Expensive and hard to replace bodies.

You don't have to play too many rounds of this game to see the problem.

Let's back up a bit. What is the USA and Japan's comparative advantage over China? High technology, of course. The Chinese are very good at stealing other people's ideas and reverse engineering them - but that means as long as things advance, they are always going to be 1 to 2 generations behind the West and its auxiliaries. They also have a quality issue (more than we do) and an issue in running effective and coordinated operations.

Advanced technology and computing - and the multi-spectral targeting it enables - can translate in to incredibly accurate targeting without GPS or other external guidance. As such, in a conventional missile exchange, we just might have an edge to attrite their missile forces down before we have to commit additional forces that are harder to replace.

Outside China, there are other places high-precision conventional ballistic missiles would come in handy and would be very much in line with the American preferred way of war (ignore the foreverwars in Asia for a moment) - short, deadly, limited, and with low casualties.

Especially for punitive expeditions (Salamander's preferred approach to most affronts) - there is little not to like.

The world is not on a hair-trigger to global nuclear exchange any more, so that shouldn't be an issue either.

So, back to the point. We are out of INF. We have a modern problem that needs to be solved. One would thing that we would start to develop what China already has vast numbers of as they were never restrained by the INF - we need out own SRBM, IRBM and even MRBM forces.

No "missile gap" jokes please. 

You would think that this would be considered a serious shortfall in need of immediate action. It isn't like we have a bunch of Pershing II's waiting to be dusted off.

So, serious minds are turning-to in DC, right? 

Well, if you think that, you would be wrong. It would appear that the Majority Staff in Congress has decided that - for reasons best known to these unknown - they want our nation hobbled.

They are more in love with a dead treaty - or more likely just want to poke Trump - than they are with preparing for war.

For the details, I point you to Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) who got a sniff of what is going on and it running to the sound of gunfire.

Withdrawing from the INF Treaty is key to restoring a favorable balance of power in Asia. Yet hidden in this week’s spending bill is a provision that would strip R&D funding for conventional INF-range missiles. This is an awful idea and I’m introducing an amendment to push back. pic.twitter.com/PU3J9HXNge

— Rep. Mike Gallagher (@RepGallagher) June 11, 2019

I don't do this often, but who is your member of Congress? Have they looked in to this? Are they supporting Rep. Gallagher's efforts?

Call them and ask.