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Gunnery
For centuries, the main battery, or armament of naval warships was the gun. For most of that time, it was the relatively simple cast iron or brass muzzle loading black powder cannon firing iron cannon balls at relatively short ranges. With the invention of smokeless powder, coupled with the introduction of quality steel, gunnery in the span of two generations or so made incredible leaps in range, accuracy and complexity.
The 16” naval rifles of the mighty Iowa class battleships are probably the most famous modern naval guns, but for my money, the pinnacle was reached with the automatic Mk16 8”/55 caliber guns of the Des Moines class heavy cruisers.
Only three ships of the class were built (the rest were cancelled with the end of World War II) but the USS Newport News would go on to serve until 1975, the last of the all gun cruisers in US Navy service.
Since the big gun cruisers are gone, current standard US Navy gun is the rather anemic Mk 45 5” gun, in both its 54 caliber and recent 62 caliber varieties. The M45 tosses a 70 pound projectile about 13 miles, and has a rate of fire of about 15 rounds per minute.
The Navy has invested vast sums over the last 20 years or so developing the Advanced Gun System, a 155mm/62 caliber gun designed to fire the Long Range Land Attack Projectile, or LRLAP.
While the AGS and the LRLAP offer a substantial warhead with a range of about 59 miles, the problem is, the AGS can only fire the LRLAP. It cannot fire existing 155mm ammunition. That limits it to strictly a land attack role.
The Navy has been closely watching the performance of the Army’s guided Excalibur 155mm projectile. And they’re also looking forward to soon having a practical electromagnetic rail gun ready for sea. Now, a rail gun is pretty useless without ammunition. So the Navy decided to start looking for what could be used. They’ve basically decided to go with a subcaliber, saboted dart. The result if the Hypervelocity Projectile, or HVP.
But this is where our story gets kind of interesting. Since guiding a gun projectile is something that has already been figured out, the Navy and its contractor, BAE Systems, decided to make the HVP guided. After all, great range is not worth a lot if there isn’t great accuracy on the impact end. And while the projectile is a good deal smaller than a 155mm round, they still found space to pack in a small bursting charge.
The Navy also pretty quickly realized that such a projectile could easily be adapted to be fired from not just a future railgun, but also its entire existing inventory of 5” guns. Even better, a version for the AGS could be built. And why stop there? Why not build a version for the Marines and Army 155mm artillery pieces?
As Spill and I were discussing this yesterday, he brought up a very good point. While the program currently is for land attack projectiles, it’s not going to be very long before someone has the bright idea to use this as an Anti-Surface Warfare weapon. The gun has for many years been a secondary armament against ships, with the anti-ship missile forming the main battery. And while that’s likely to stay true, a 5” gun with a range of 50nm and a rate of fire of 20 rounds a minute is going to pose a real threat to any surface ship out there. One or two rounds probably won’t cause too much damage, but a series of hits would quickly place all but the largest ships out of action. Further, the HVP’s speed and small size means there will be little or no means to defeat it before it impacts the target.
It will be interesting to see what the next few years bring.
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Splodey
Give it a bit. It gets better.
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NavAir Infographic.
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Infographic: United States Coast Guard Ships
The United States Coast Guard, founded in 1790, during peacetime reports to the Department of Homeland Security in times of peace and through it’s history, during wartime reports to the United States Navy. The infographc below details all ships currently in inventory:
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Load HEAT- Cate Blanchett
Australian actress Cate Blanchett actually brings to mind more the term “alluring” than “hot,” but this is Load HEAT, not Load ALLURING. She’s one of those women who has unusual looks, and as is often the case, it’s taken time for her to grow into them. Finally at 45, she’s getting better and better looking all the time.
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Jetpacks over Dubai
Go ahead and pop this one out full screen. It’s gorgeous.
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Downed military aircraft reported in Waimanalo
This is a friend’s squadron. Hopefully the 12 Marines aren’t too badly injured. It’s been a tough week for Marine aviation.
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The USS Stark
On this day in 1987, the USS Stark (FFG-31) was operating in the Persian Gulf near the exclusion zone declared because of the ongoing Iran-Iraq War. An Iraqi Mirage F1 launched two Exocet anti-ship missiles at the Stark. Both impacted the port side of Stark. The first failed to explode, but flaming fragments of its unburned propellant ignited fires. The second missile’s warhead exploded.
The Stark was badly crippled. It would take 24 hours to extinguish the blaze. 37 American Sailors died, and a further 21 were injured. The Stark’s captain, Captain Glenn Brindel, would be relieved of command for failure to defend his ship. He shortly thereafter retired.
The Stark would limp under her own power to Bahrain, where she underwent temporary repairs alongside the destroyer tender USS Acadia (AD-42).
She would then travel to Pascagoula, MS for her definitive repairs.
After repairs, Stark rejoined the fleet until her decommissioning in 1999, and scrapping in 2006.
The Stark was non-mission capable after the attack. But she should have been a loss. The sterling damage control efforts of her crew were very closely studied by the Navy. Many lessons had been learned from the loss of HMS Sheffield in the Falklands, and had been incorporated into US Navy damage control training. And those lessons, as well as new lessons learned the hard way aboard Stark would be further tested in later years, notably aboard USS Princeton, USS Tripoli, and USS Cole.
Update: Here’s the report from the investigation.
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USS Constitution Drydocking
It’s rather fitting that the drydock that USS Constitution is using for its major overhaul is the one at the former Boston Naval Shipyard. She was both the first ship to use the drydock in 1833, and the last to use it before the yard was decommissioned in 1975. While most of the yard is now a historical park, the Navy specifically kept the drydock portion to service USS Constitution and the former USS Cassin Young, a museum ship also displayed at the yard.
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SUBROC
The introduction of nuclear power plants and the teardrop shaped hulls to US nuclear submarines in the late 1950s slightly overshadows one other important development in undersea warfare at that time. Sonar arrays on submarines became increasingly large. The size of an array is directly linked to the wavelengths they operate on. Larger arrays allow use of lower frequencies. And lower frequencies generally propagate further through water than higher frequencies. This, coupled with advances in passive sonar signal processing, extended the detection range against submarines from around 4000 yards to 50,000 or even sometimes 100,000 yards, or 25 to 50 nautical miles.
The increase in detection range called for an increase in weapons range. There was a limit to just how far a conventional torpedo might travel. Further, at long ranges, while a target might be detected, the precision of the plot was rather poor.
And so, like many other programs in the late 50s and early 60s, the answer was nuclear weapons. Where surface ships could use DASH to prosecute long range targets, submarines would have to use something that could be launched from a torpedo tube.
The answer was SUBROC, or Submarine Rocket, the UUM-44 underwater to underwater guided missile. Development began in 1958, and by 1965, it was deployed to the fleet. After being ejected from a torpedo tube, a solid rocket motor would drive it to the surface. The missile’s inertial navigation system would follow a precalculated ballistic trajectory. At the calculated time, the booster would be separated, and the warhead would continue to the impact point. There it would sink and then its W55 5 kiloton warhead would detonate.
Unlike ASROC, SUBROC never carried a torpedo payload. It was only available as a nuclear weapon. While training and testing rounds were fired, no actual nuclear testing of an operational warhead were ever conducted.
SUBROC was deployed until 1989, with the end of the Cold War. A proposed follow on weapon armed with a torpedo, Sea Lance, was cancelled due to technical issues, cost overruns, and the perceived reduction of the submarine threat after the collapse of the USSR. Today’s US Navy submarine force relies solely on the M48 torpedo for anti-submarine warfare.
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