Carrier in the Yellow Sea
News that the USS George Washington was being deployed to the Yellow Sea prompted one Chinese forum to ask “what is China supposed to do to counteract the U.S. deployment of its megasized carrier in the Yellow Sea (“China’s front yard” as commonly said), which is seen by many military staff as an intolerable provocation on China’s sovereignty ? — knock it flat?” The carrier was deployed in part to send a ‘signal’ to China from President Obama that his resolve is unshaken by the North Korean bombardment of a South Korean island.
A statement from the Navy’s Seventh Fleet says the USS George Washington strike group will join with South Korean naval forces in the Yellow Sea for a joint exercise that will begin this Sunday and last through Dec. 1. In addition to the carrier, the cruisers USS Cowpens and USS Shiloh and the destroyers USS Stethem and USS Fitzgerald will also participate in the exercise.
But the background to the exercise is part of the story. The Yellow Sea is a relatively small body of water sandwiched between the Korean Peninula and the Chinese coast, which Beijing regards as its front yard. It is also the where the rival forces come to size each other up. The Yellow Sea was where a North Korean mini-submarine sank the Cheonan. More recently, it was where an island was bombarded by North Korea, setting off the current crisis. That crisis had been simmering since the sinking of the Cheonan.
In partial response to the torpedoing of the South Korean warship, an anti-submarine exercise had been scheduled for August, despite howls of protests from the North. “The South has warned the North it will not tolerate provocations during the five-day naval drill in the Yellow Sea, being staged in response to what it says was a deadly North Korean torpedo attack on a warship. This is the largest anti-submarine exercise in our military history, involving the army, navy, air force and marines,” a Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) spokesman told AFP.” The Chinese themselves engaged in muscle flexing in the area. According to Defence Talk, “China last week staged a large naval and air exercise on its southeast coast — just as South Korea and the United States conducted their own naval drill — and on Tuesday launched large-scale air defence manoeuvres.
Not only was the Yellow Sea a flashpoint between North and South Korea. In a larger sense is a testing place between the US and China, between anti-submarine warfare technology and littorally oriented submarines. Those submarines make it dangerous for a carrier to venture into enclosed waters. The USS George Washington had been slated to participate, but following the sinking of the Cheonan, its participation had been canceled. According to the Stars and Stripes of Aug 19, 2010:
U.S. Forces Korea spokesman David Oten said North Korea has been advised of the upcoming exercise.
The Navy announced earlier this month that the USS George Washington, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that operates out of Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, would be exercising in the Yellow Sea sometime this year but was not more specific.
Oten said Thursday the carrier will not participate in the upcoming exercise. The George Washington participated in last month’s U.S.-South Korea Invincible Spirit exercise in waters between South Korea and Japan, the first in a series of exercises being held in response to the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan.
As late as September 4, 2010 the ships slated for the exercise were: “the guided missile destroyers USS Curtis D. Wilbur and USS Fitzgerald out of Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan; the USNS Victorious, an ocean surveillance ship; a fast-attack submarine; and P-3C Orion aircraft from Patrol Squadron NINE, based at Kaneohoe Marine Corps Base in Hawaii, according to a USFK news release. South Korea’s navy participation was to include two destroyers, a fast frigate, a submarine, a patrol craft, and P-3C aircraft from Carrier Air Wing 6, according to the release.”
Still no carrier. Now for some reason the USS George Washington is back, and the political as well as naval stakes are higher than ever. A Major General Luo Yan is reported to have implied sending a US carrier into the Yellow Sea was like spitting in China’s face:
“George Washington” went to the Yellow Sea aircraft carrier to participate in the US-ROK military exercise, “indeed a threat to us.” The carrier of the detection, observation radius can cover in North China. Cover an entire aircraft carrier battle groups in North China, the Liaodong Peninsula region, far to detect Lanzhou. Joint military exercises in the Yellow Sea, as an aircraft carrier with a strong ability to detect early warning, “tantamount to seeing a sea of China overturned.”
US carriers are vulnerable to diesel electric submarines of the sort possessed by China and North Korea in confined waters like the Yellow Sea. Diesel electric submarines are relatively slow and short-ranged. On the open ocean they are too slow and short-legged to hunt and chase a carrier. They have to wait until a carrier blunders into its lair. But in confined waters, especially in those where the targets announced they are to venture, nuclear carriers give up their strengths, while submarines like those of North Korea can effectively become slow-moving, nearly unhearable mobile minefields waiting in ambush for the giant American naval airfields. The USN is aware of threat and practices against similar subs from South Korea and Japan.
Diesel electric submarines from Japan and South Korea stalked the U.S. aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan in the final phase – simulating a growing undersea worry as nonallied nations build up their stock of quiet subs in the Pacific. Speaking to reporters yesterday, U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Richard Hunt said the training encounters were still being reviewed, “but I will say that the Reagan did very well — moved quickly and smartly out there at sea.” He added, “The diesels (submarines) that came are incredibly capable and presented tremendous challenges throughout the exercise. (They) provided some of the best training that we had.”
Published reports are not encouraging. Some suggest the USS Ronald Reagan was sunk in simulated exercises against these stealthy subs. In the Yellow Sea there may be plenty of these conventional submarines and the line between simulation and reality will narrow indeed.
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However, the USN may have a few classified tricks up its sleeve. The Asia Times reports that China is afraid that a secret US anti-submarine surveillance system, integrating acoustic and nonacoustic data, has made the Yellow Sea “transparent”.
the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) – operator of the US spy satellite fleet – is planning multiple satellite launches, and China must assume that one or more of these new US surveillance satellites will help support US Navy efforts to locate and track PLAN submarines.
Satellites form a network along with undersea sensors and detectors fixed on the sea floor or drifting in the open ocean as well as devices mounted on other submarines, ships, unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs), aircraft, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). … In the late 1990s, sub-hunting satellites made headlines. An American scientist, Peter Lee, was caught and convicted of passing sensitive information to China about the so-called Radar Ocean Imaging (ROI) joint project which involved the United K and the US. A decision by the US Navy based on concerns about further disclosures about the nature and scope of the ROI project echoes to this day.
“Peter Lee’s case was they had this guy giving this very sensitive data to the Chinese on underwater detection of submarines. They ran into this case where the navy wouldn’t allow a court case against him because of the data. So they had a bargain plea, and he got off, basically. For stealing very high-level stuff, he gets probably, what, a couple of months in a halfway house,” former US ambassador to China, James Lilley, told PBS in 2004.
The deployment of the USS George Washington may be a chance for the USN to see whether its new ASW tactics and techniques work. Putting the carrier out there is like setting a giant piece of cheese for mice. China would probably give anything to know what the USN sees in the coming exercise, as they and the North Koreans will undoubtedly sortie their assets. If the USN has indeed made the Yellow Sea transparent they will endeavor to keep that capability secret against the day when they may have to use the knowledge in deadly earnest.
But it is a high stakes gamble. The USS George Washington may also be operating within the firing envelope of a Chinese ballistic missile designed specially to destroy aircraft carriers. There is no doubt that US assets are going to be looking for its targeting radars and deciding whether or not their secret countermeasures and defenses, perhaps even directed energy defenses, can handle it. As the Chinese general put it, assets from the carrier can look into North China and see what they can see. One of the things it will certainly be looking for is the DF-21/CSS-5.
Last week, Adm. Robert Willard, the head of U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), made an alarming but little-noticed disclosure. China, he told legislators, was “developing and testing a conventional anti-ship ballistic missile based on the DF-21/CSS-5 [medium-range ballistic missile] designed specifically to target aircraft carriers.” …
If they can be deployed successfully, Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles would be the first capable of targeting a moving aircraft-carrier (.pdf) strike group from long-range, land-based mobile launchers. And if not countered properly, this and other “asymmetric” systems — ballistic and cruise missiles, submarines, torpedoes and sea mines — could potentially threaten U.S. operations in the western Pacific, as well as in the Persian Gulf.
The Navy is running risks for information. At least the public can rest assured that these naval secrets will be kept confidential and not traded away in the process of diplomatic engagement with hostile powers in order to extract dubious promises. Even though diplomats fancy themselves guardians of the peace, in reality aggression is largely kept in check by individuals who have few illusions, some strength and many, many secrets.
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A carrier group is a powerful weapon indeed; but it is of no use whatever given a lack of will. Obama’s foreign policy of apologizing for past US actions, denial of American exceptionalism, desire to cut defense spending and dreams of a non-nuclear world are all the actions of a man who hates the US, hates American military power, does not wish to ever see it used, and has already indicated he will not support South Korea after North Korea has committed acts of war.
One can safely assume the deployment of the carrier is merely to make Obama look good at home. Neither North Korea nor anyone else has anything to worry about. The risk is of North Korea actively attacking and sinking a ship or shooting down aircraft, since North Korea knows full well it can do so with impunity. The USA under Obama is a paper tiger, nothing more.
I blame Clinton for the ballistic missile garbage and China’s leaps in the space race. Didn’t he give them satellite and rocket tech? I mean, hey, let’s just give our enemies GPS system for precision munitions! Effing brilliant.
The North Koreans pull some kind of crap every few years
I believe it was 1977 when the North Koreans killed two US Army officers who were in the process of cutting a tree limb that interfered with their observation post. One of the officers was from my home town, although I did not know him. There were plans to deploy a wing of F-111D’s to South Korea to “send a message” in response, and I was working on a very tricky piece of equipment that had a number of the 111D’s grounded.
Then I got notified that I was to drop everything else and that my primary duty was to investigate the loss of an airman’s flight jacket, valued at $27.00. And the 111D’s did not go to Korea.
The North Koreans never seem to pay. Kidnap Japanese civilians. Capture the USS Pueblo and then shoot down a USAF EC-121 right afterwards. Blow up an airliner. Supply Iran with Scuds. Shoot a missile over Japan. Sink a ship. Shell an island.
What did I say a couple of threads back about letting the losers win?
Let’s see. Develop a small, stealthy submersible equipped with attack drones that can be programmed to attack fixed targets or — when attacking moving targets or targets to be determined at the point of attack — could be controlled from the ship, from the land, from another ship, or from another aircraft. Once they are launched the ship can go silent and disappear. The drones can return to a land base, another ship, or rendezvous with the first ship in another location. Or they could be Kamikaze drones. Build a lot of them.
Perhaps develop a similar ship equipped with a large gun that could toss a precision guided smart shell several hundred miles. It could shoot and scoot. But all these vessels should have small crews and we should build a lot of them. But of course the admirals won’t like them (who wants to command midget ships?). And the START treaty no doubt banned the drones (they could carry nukes). But the State Department might have forgotten to outlaw the big guns (unless they are going to revive the 1922 naval accords).
Are you suggesting that China would actually declare war on the United States? Because that’s what an attack on the Washington would amount to.
Don’t think so.
One would hope that we are inviting any Nork craft to go into attack mode within range, or maybe we might anyway sink a couple of craft quietly and see if they squawk or react.
As to whether China would make an actual small attack and then claim accident or mistake – my worldview just does not include that. As for large attack on the carrier – I expect we might just “oops” in return. Not a game rational players enter voluntarily.
Say the Norks could nuke the carrier – would they, are they crazy enough to try it? I doubt it. And they know that we know that they know. Which is the real point of the exercise.
Unless things go wild.
At least the public can rest assured that these naval secrets will be kept confidential and not traded away in the process of diplomatic engagement with hostile powers in order to extract dubious promises.
Yeah, there’s at least that.
Slightly OT, but maybe not. Just wondering what the big ship capabilities of the Port of Taipei might be.
Picked up on the same quote as sirius, and right now have about 5% confidence in W’s assumption.
Also, BattleofthePyramids saying:
could not be more spot on. What could possibly go wrong?
China is building a blue water navy, and some worry that the Chinese navy will push the United States navy out of the western Pacific. This is arrant nonsense. The Chinese are not building a blue water navy, they are building a collection of blue water targets. A navy is not a collection of ships, a navy is tradition and culture. A navy is Drake and Hawkins taking their little ships against the Armada, a navy is a squadron hull down outside Brest, beating up against a northeast blow, keeping station month after month lest the Frogs cross their yards and come out. A navy is John Paul Jones crying he has not yet begun to fight, and Stephen Decatur sailing into Tripoli harbor and burning the captured frigate Philadelphia. A navy is Nelson putting the telescope to his blind eye, and Charles Stewart taking his 44 into the English Channel and beating the two Brits rash enough to attack him. A navy is the CSS Virginia sailing into Hampton Roads and taking on the entire Federal fleet. A navy is Foote taking his gunboats upriver under fire, and Farragut running the gauntlet past New Orleans. A navy is the USS Nevada, the only BB on Battleship row with steam up that Sunday morning, standing down the channel, big battle ensign snapping, trying for the open sea in a doomed attempt to get the Jap carriers under her 16 inch guns. A navy is Spruance launching his planes knowing they did not have enough gas to get back, and the Taffies attacking Jap battleships to protect the transports loaded with troops. Where is the Chinese Nelson, where is the Chinese Preble, where is the Chinese Halsey? Not since Zheng He in the early 15th century has a Chinese fleet left home waters. No, if the Chinese navy ever leaves port with hostile intent, they will very quickly become permanent residents of the bottom of the South China Sea.
The rolling sea is restless in the dark
The silent ships glow faintly as they move
With purpose past the looming darkened shore
Where guns and lighted matches lay awake
In fog the forty-four waits for the spark
The flash, the roar, the broadside that will prove
The enemy is there and what is more
He’ll fight for honor and for glory’s sake
The years, like seas, go silent on their way
The wooden walls have given way to steel
Sharp eyes in crows nest no more climb the shrouds
And wooden decks no longer spread with sand
The ships still sail, still anchor in the bay
A rating still stands silent at the wheel
The sun still shines behind the lowering clouds
The Navy still protects this golden land
During the Cold War what the US Navy really feared was air-launched cruise missiles. Fans of “Top Gun” probably don’t know the primary mission of the F-14 was to shoot down cruise missiles, not dogfight with MiGs.
Ground-launched ballistic missiles would now provide a similar kind of threat, but it is getting more practical to shoot down ballistic missiles. No one really knows until there is actual shooting.
That was GREAT, walter –but we gotta watch that stolen march –or stolen tech march –for an example, a few hundred Spencer repeaters (6th & 7th Michigan in Custer’s brigade) stopped JEB Stuart’s 5000 horse pincher planned to come up behind the AOP line and meet Pickett’s Charge at the stone wall, and for that day at least transferred in one fell swoop all the ANV’s past glory to the army that beat that glory.
Walt – the IJN had no traditions, no Drake, Hawkins, or Nelson, but gave us a run for our money 70 years ago and just about won. We trivialize the risk at our own peril.
…they had Togo of Tsushima –but that was about it –
@Tom the Redhunter
Japan’s naval tradition may not be as long as Britain’s or even the U.S., but they certainly have/had a solid tradition before WWII. Read about Admiral Togo Heihachiro and the Russo-Japanese War.
China’s attempt to build a navy is more similar to Imperial Germany’s attempt to match the British Fleet pre-WWI. They can build the ships if they want, but that doesn’t mean they have the skills, knowledge, and leadership to use them as effectively as the USN.
The Yellow Sea is wide & deep compared to the Gulf of Oman, to say nothing of the Straits of Hormuz. If the US Navy is not ready for the Yellow Sea, then it is Game Over.
However, I can’t see how deployment of the George Washington does anything to make Obama look good — or to scare the North Koreans/Chinese. If nothing happens during the exercise, everyone will ignore it. If something goes wrong, Obama will have painted himself into a Carteresque corner. There is only the risk of further downside for Obama, with no potential for gain.
Bottom line — this deployment looks like movement substituting for action. And putting brave men’s lives at risk for no good purpose.
t @ 10: Fans of “Top Gun” probably don’t know the primary mission of the F-14 was to shoot down cruise missiles, not dogfight with MiGs
I knew it was not meant to dogfight (with guns) but to carry standoff weapons. Didn’t know its primary target was ever cruise missiles. Didn’t know it could find or hit one, or ten, or as many as might need to be hit. If that really was the mission – was it ever really realistic?
Fascinating post, Wretchard.
Still, I don’t like the looks of this. If something were to happen to the carrier, what exactly would Obama do about it? I can imagine all kinds of red lines and tipping points here, domestic as well as foreign.
The entire Obama administration looks like an extended psyops campaign against the American people.
Do you suppose that the Yellow Sea deployment of the GW has anything to do with the mysterious missile contrail seen off the coast of California last week?
Surely, Obama isn’t trying to “save face?”
The Japanese didn’t have a naval tradition? Tell that to the Russians and see what sort of a response you get.
Walt makes a good point. There’s a lot more to a navy then the number of hulls it has. Try to imagine a Chinese fleet operating in the Gulf of Mexico in support of Venezuela and you’ll pretty clearly see the difference between the two navies.
As for North Korea, and by extension China, the U.S.S. George Washington in the Yellow Sea is a nice touch of theater, but what I would be doing is stopping and detaining North Korean merchants in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean to remind them we are fully capable of interdicting shipping if we so desire and there isn’t a damn thing they can do about it.
Togo famously said, ‘after victory, pull your helmet tighter’.
Josh, yes. I had an Uncle who was an F-15 pilot in the first Eagle squadron formed. They routinely shot down Cruise missiles while the Air Force tried to find a way to hide them or at least make them more difficult to shoot down. Cruise missiles, like UAV’s are just specialised target drones. They are not fast and they don’t make any attempt to stay alive, as humans do. Easy targets.
Pakistan supports the CIA’s UAV campaign. If they didn’t, they would have F-16′s shootijng down the UAV’s. Unmanned aerial vehicles can only survive when they have fighter support or in the absence of hostile fighters. They are good for killing the natives, but real nations just send up fighters to shoot them down.
Sending an aircraft carrier is Sooooooo 17th century. While an CV is not exactly the same as a Ship of the Line, the mental process behind the dispatch of either is the important point they share.
This is the 21st century and the natives are no longer awed by ‘big canoes’. Shock and awe requires stealth bombers today. If the Obomination wants to catch the attention of a host of evil doers, put a JSOW thru Kim’s window tomorrow morning while he is sitting on his throne, having his morning constitutional. The drone campaign against the Terrs in Pakistan has already established targeted assassination both morally and practically. Expanding that program to include despots, tyrants and dictators is the logical and inevitable next step.
17,18, extended psyops against the bitterclingers, for sure –
if the California contrail WAS a missile, WAS PRC, then the shelling of the island was probably coordinated with it, and amounts to a bread crumb trail luring the Washington to right where it could incite the communists’ peoples.
leveraging the Sino-Russo pact to drop the Dollar in their between trade? Which in turn, leveraging the peaking Euro crisis? You know, Moe Strong lives in Beijing now, and his suckbud Soros has just very very publicly ‘cut loose from Obama’ (ha ha hahaha –read ‘inoculated Obama and the Democrats’).
But that’s crazy, right? Why would PRC want to body-blow the Dollar?
I guess I also don’t get the game theory. Maybe i’m slow, but right now, I’m with Kinuadrach/15.
What good is making the yellow sea transparent for the USS GW, if she can’t fight back or get out of the way? Assume we can see where every diesel sub is right now. Either the USS GW has the ability to outmaneuver or has enough defensive support to stop a threat or it doesn’t. If the USS RR couldn’t do those two things in exercises, why would the GW be able to now–and isn’t it giving up an awful lot of information to DPRK and China if it can?
The value of the USS GW being there is its ability to see into China. The game theory seems to be to threaten China for not being willing to push down on DPRK. But if that’s their strategy anyway, then the DPRK causing a US incident isn’t a problem for them, so how does China lose here? But it seems we have a great deal to lose here.
Nah, I’m pretty sure the contrail was from an airplane.
Here’s a good explanation based on the evidence:
Los Angeles Missile Contrail Explained in Pictures
Josh@16
Oh yes. The F-14 beat the F-111 in that competition. The F-14 was a second rate fighter in the traditional sense and a world-beater at its job. The problem faced in the outer air battle was an incoming raid of, say, 5 regiments of Badgers and Backfires armed with, say, 2 Kingfish each. That means that Ivan was about to fire about 210 ASM at you. Kingfish was not a specially hard target, it was just mighty fast, about 30 nautical miles a minute.
The answer? Hack the bombers before launch. So F-14 was something to carry a very powerful radar and very long range AAM.
F-14A could track up to 24 targets simultaneously with its AWG-9 advanced weapons control system and attack with up to six Phoenix AIM-54A/C missiles, while continuing to scan the airspace. The plane could also function in some ways as an armed mini-AWACS, supported by the AWG-9′s superior radar range, with tracking capabilities exceeding even that of the Air Force’s F-22A Raptor. Combined with the Phoenix missile, it could track 24 targets at extremely long range and destroy six of them with its AIM-54A/C Phoenix missiles before they can even track the Tomcat itself. This is the U.S Navy’s fleet defence doctrine and one of the reasons why the Iranians decided to adopt the plane instead of the newer F-15A Eagle. Armaments also include the AIM-9 and AIM-7 missiles.
Now it’s critical to remember that AIM-54 was a gravity dart. The F-14 fired it, and it zoomed very fast under extreme acceleration to a high altitude. The motor burned out in a couple of seconds, and the AIM-54 coasted from there. It’s range was over 100nm and it attacked the bomber from above. As it was coasting, it left no smoke plume.
The problem was that bombers cannot manoeuvre (neither can missiles), so AIM-54 was of little use against fighters. The rule of thumb is that the missile needs three times the G capability of the target. AIM-54 was a 4-5G AAM. Fine against bombers. For a 6-9G fighter, … well, that’s why modern AAM exceed 40G in manoeuvre!
The backstop for the outer air battle was always the SAM shooters in the screen. Project Bumblebee (started in 1945) gave the USA Tartar, Terrier and Talos for point defence, short range and medium range missile defence respectively, with the fourth missile, Typhon, for long range defence (read ‘take out the whole, regiment of Sov bombers with a nuke at a range of 130nm’). They all worked but they were costly, and by the late 60s tartar was short range defence, terrier out to the horizon and Talos out to 100nm. Typhon worked, was out to 200nm, but it was a 5 ton SAM and needed a nuclear powered 50,000 ton hull with a second reactor just to power the gigantic radar.
So Typhon was told ‘no, go back to the drawing board’… and they renamed it Aegis. Now Aegis, with Standard missile (basically a Tartar equivalent SAM on a Terrier equivalent booster) has replaced Tartar, Terrier, Talos and Typhon.
But it’s still better to shoot down the bomber before he launches.
markL
Canberra
15. Kinuachdrach
If something goes wrong, Obama will have painted himself into a Carteresque corner. There is only the risk of further downside for Obama, with no potential for gain.
Well, as long as we’re wargaming here, how about this for a worst-case scenario:
1. The Norks and/or the Chinese attack and sink the carrier, with massive loss of life.
2. Half of the U.S. population is spitting mad and wants to unleash the nukes right away, while the other half–the “blame America first” types–say “It was our own fault for being so provocative. Too bad about the
baby-killerssailors.”3. Obama does something no American President has done since 1941: He goes to Congress to ask for a formal declaration of war. It passes.
Now we have President Obama with full emergency wartime powers, and the American people will have taken a giant stop towards open civil war. And George Soros would be loving every minute of it.
THe most important question may be this. What are the Rules of Engagement that the submarine accompanying the aircraft carrier operates under? Every carrier has its faithful shadow, the fast attack submarine. If a Chinese or DPRK submarine is detected within the formation or talking an attack position on the formation will the submarine attack? If they do not then we are conceding that the US cannot operate in those North China Sea waters, which are international waters, except on sufferance.
I don’t know… I’m kinda with Kinuachdrach @ 15—Obviously Obama is playing to a domestic audience to some degree, but after that…
What does sending the GW do? Impress the Chinese that we are willing to enter the Yellow Sea (which is their Caribbean) big-time, so they should be impressed enough to lean on the NoKos?
I get the idea of testing their response and systems, but coming on top of the Fed trying to inflate their currency, if I was in the PLA and a little bit paranoid I might feel like the US is pushing me too hard and I have to push back…
I’ve always been of the opinion that when you do something ineffective and say you’re “sending a message,” the message you’re sending is that you aren’t doing anything effective. Whether in personal life, at work, or internationally.
I would rather see either a stern note (useless but not likely to get out of hand) or bomb the shit out of the NoKo artillery that did this (a “proportionate” response that also shows that some things will not stand.
Putting a carrier battle group in harm’s way and dragging China into something that they probably aren’t directly a part of, because we want them to do what we won’t or can’t (restrain NoK)— to make a useless gesture, given Obama’s track record of not standing tough and our own experience in exercises with how vulnerable a carrier is to subs in confined waters, is an open invitation… I just don’t feel good about this.
Prior to WWII the USN had routine ‘wargames.’ Unfortunately these exercises were ‘coded’ as gunnery shoot-offs.
Comes the Campaign and the Navy finds that absolutely nothing from the pre-war exercises is helpful.
——-
Today, all DoD exercises are intended to replicate actual battle — to the extent possible.
Towards that end, US forces are ALWAYS handicapped one way or another. A typical handicap would be throttle restrictors in turbine engines. Our latest and greatest stuff is not normally ever used in any wargame.
[ In the late 80's one of our ASW patrol squadrons used war-rated sonobouys. They were costed out at $500,000 per pop -- and a single aircraft spreads them like bread crumbs.
The officers involved were reprimanded - -and basically kicked out of the service]
So when you read that the Indian Air Force stomped all over our visiting team — be understanding.
…well, just lately, we’ve has Dennis Blair forced out as NID replaced by someone named Clapper, perhaps a SecDef Gates ally (whew!).
Next, weeks ago, NSA Jones resigned “unexpectedly” with a stricken “look at my eyes, i feel sorry for you citizens” mien in the Rose Garden, replaced by a deep dem apparatchik name Donilon (whom SecDef Gates had earlier called ‘a disaster’ if so-named).
Deputy National Security Advisor Brennan was just a month ago called out by a pretty solid group of national security pros (now we know why Mr X was pooh-poohing Frank Gaffney), who want him to resign or someone to fire him quick.
Brennan –counterterror czar –goes back to the Aldrich Ames situation, where the CIA split along the lines of should the Jack Devine (Brennan ally and a possible Kerry Director of CIA, now exporting ‘legal’ dual-use tech –hope not biotech –to Riyadh out of *cough* Jacksonville, FL) shop in Rome have caught Ames much much sooner, or not. I don’t think the red-white-blue Wild Bill Donovan CIA soldiers trust Brennan as far as they could throw him, but then, Obama likes him so that lack of trust don’t take genius.
Anyhoo, this don’t look so good, i don’t think. No one in their right mind would expect this admin to ever play anything straight –that’s why they always looks so haunted and guarded –because they ARE haunted and guarded. Some comrade might slip and spill the beans –
The Dong-a Ilbo reports that North Korea has suggested it may open fire on another US “provocation” in the Yellow Sea, hinting strongly that the proposed naval exercises are tantamount to an invasion of its territorial waters. The Associated Press says North Korea has declared that the planned exercises are pushing the peninsula to the brink of war.
One of the cardinal rules of conflict is that brandishing force past a certain point carries the risk of using it. Put your foot on the crisis escalator and your trousers may snag on the steel teeth. We meet our old friend again, the expression that “don’t let your mouth write a check that your ass can’t cash”.
Part of this dynamic is now out control because whatever President Obama’s intentions may be, North Korea and Murphy get to vote in how it all turns out. Doubtless the risks are being managed, but in those cold waters, surrounded by electronic signals and acoustic indications, and intel data coming in faster than than human being can take it in unaided, how much is certain?
The problem is not the provocation.
Those are International Waters. Supposed to be the right of all nations to have their ships enter, travel, sit idle, whatever.
To threaten shipping or military vessels in international waters is an act of belligerence that in past has resulted in the belligerent treated as “hostis humanis generis” — enemy of all mankind, same as pirates.
No, the problem is not any provocation by us. The problem is having a gutless puke as CinC who has flinched, fumbled, or fouled up every time he’s fetched up against a challenge.
If he had shown the slightest bit of command presence in the two years since his election — that is, any evidence our adversaries could look at and see that they would regret his response if they screw with the USA or its allies —- he might not be facing so many lit powder kegs now.
MF, he’s so slow on the uptake because first before anything he’s got to wait to wait on the unions to let him know what’s in it for THEM.
The worry then is that someone at Union Hall has picked up an old Stars and Stripes and read about the shipyards roaring turning out Liberty Ships –and someone else has figured ‘no China, no Walmart’ –these are the worries — that Richard Trumka and Andy Stern have sent Washington to the Yellow Sea.
What are the defensive layers that surround the carrier? Just listing from guesses, group floating forces with anti-land based missile capabilities on continuous alert, group recon and attack submarines creating a sub-littoral anti-torpedo net. If the US submarine fleet is as dominant as we assume, that really is a huge and effectively controlling factor. Add to that superior satellite imaging capabilities and of course superior command and control with superior trained personnel up and down the chain of command and it would seem that the military situation is under control. The real game now is in the political maneuvering, i.e. We implored China to control NK after the sub attack. Now, we have political license to move a carrier group into the Yellow Sea without any real protest. NK knows neither China nor the US want an escalation, so it has a rather high threshold to play with, however, if China does not want the US to be able to play in its “front yard”, it will have a strong motive to keep NK in check. The carrier move is a direct message to China – “Muzzle the dog on your front porch.”
China is very image oriented, they are desperate to control the image. That is a political/diplomatic weakness that is being exploited here. NK would be able to do none of its “brinksmanship” maneuvers without its big protector behind it – they may be somewhat delusional about this fact. China is the power behind NK, therefore use NK’s belligerent acts as a fulcrum upon which to put maximum pressure on China’s weakness. Someone’s thinking straight.
17. Rickl
“The entire Obama administration looks like an extended psyops campaign against the American people.”
Yep, a campaign in the Left’s Culture War on America in particular and what’s left of western civilization more broadly.
The Soviet cruise missiles the F-14 would defend against were very large by today’s standards. Basically they were the size of fighter aircraft and did not fly low altitude TFR-type attack profiles.
The USN’s first choice for the role was the F-6D Missileer. Think of an A-6 armed with AIM-54 and you have it about right. In fact, as late as 1970 the USN was saying they could take the A-6 and by using the same basic airframe do ever mission a carrier aircraft needed to do. Meanwhile, the USAF was thinking of doing an F-6D type of aircraft using a C-5A loaded with AIM-47 missiles, which was an early AIM-54 with nuclear warhead capability.
McNamera correctly realized that at best the F-6D was a one–mission airplane, at best. Combining it with a USAF concept for a very low altitude supersonic attack aircraft yielded the F-111, a pretty good execution of a very bad idea. When the F-111B proved to be unsuitable for aircraft carrier use, due to weight, among other things, Grumman took the swing wing concept and same engines from its 111B and made the F-14, another pretty good execution of a very bad idea.
As for Walt’s stirring comments at #9: All true, but with long range missiles the PRC Navy does not have to be very good, or so they think, anyway. As some people have said, totalitarian regimes love missiles because they think they don’t require competent motivated people to operate them, being robots.
We have on one hand the Islamic fascists, who eschew sophisticated weapons for motivated suicidal people instead and the Socialist fascists, who know they cannot depend on people and prefer machines. While we try to mix people and technology in just the right proportions.
testing.
Gosh! I can’t add anything of substance, so I’ll resort to my usual poetic comparisons…
First, my radical feminist friends are in a tizzy. By sending the carrier, Obama pulled his manhood out of his shorts, and flopped it down on the game board. No nuance, no foreplay,just Wham! The buzz among the Social Justice crowd in the UC system is deafening.
Last, the brand “North Korea,” like the one “The New York Times,” is lagging and its utility to China is fading. Nucular blackmail and “Plausible Deniability” are sooooo nineties. Faced with the loss of the NK front, China may take desperate measures to salvage some utility from the proxy before it is completely useless. This is giving me much cause for alarm.
The Chinese getting “their stuff touched”
I hope the Commi in Chief allows the US Navy to carry the mission through.
The non shared grandfather of my cousin’s was on HMS Amethyst, up the Yangtse. They got the ships home, but lost around half their crew doing it. Even the ship’s cat continued fighting after being wounded. He went on to take out the Mao Tse Tung of rats.
29) Blert,
“Comes the Campaign and the Navy finds that absolutely nothing from the pre-war exercises is helpful”
That’s just because they didn’t pay attention. For example, the pre-WWII wargames where a carrier task force executed a sneak attack on the Panama Canal.
Sfblue @ 35; “use NK’s belligerent acts as a fulcrum upon which to put maximum pressure on China’s weakness. Someone’s thinking straight.”
I beg to differ. “Someone’s thinking straight”??
Any plan has to account for the fact — the historically undeniable fact — that sometimes the other guy does not react as you think he ought to. Or that sometimes Mother Nature intervenes, or Murphy chimes in, or a PC-promoted female officer suddenly decides to treat her USN ship as a drag racer.
Dangerous! Dangerous! Dangerous!
Meanwhile, the peons back in the US who are supposed to be impressed with Obama showing off his Long Dong are much more interested in the continuing Bristol Palin/Dancing with the Stars controversy.
For Obama (and therefore, unfortunately, the US and by extension the entire Western world), this is all downside/no upside.
All a CBG is with the RoE that is in place is a big fat floating target.
If The CV is shot at we all know the permission to return fire will NOT be ordered and the ship and it’s crew placed at risk as a weak show of force.
get that ship outa there if it’s not allowed to defend itself and my bets are the CV is NOT allowed to defend itself by orders from the POTUS.
We build carriers,and an entire Navy to what, sit in some port all the time? No. The armed services are not developed to simply hand out bags of rice with USA stamped on them after a tsunami hits a resort.
Ultimately the service are there to do combat. To kill and to die,but much better to kill. So what say we sally forth into the places of danger and engage these foreign cultures that we know have us in the crosshairs.
I realise I keep saying this but another war is a certitude. Lets take ‘em down before they reach parity.
It is apparent it will be decades before we gain the financial leverage we once enjoyed, if we can regain it at all. Endless diplomacy means constantly giving ground to advisaries so the historically rational default position is to strike them before becoming a vassl state.
I have a bad feeling about this for a number of reasons already well-expressed by other commenters on the thread. Such as: using the “face” card against China when we probably know far too little about how weighty that card is with them (will they shrug? boil over? smile and point to the IOU’s we’ve given them?). Such as: putting a prestige/strategically highest-value naval asset in harm’s way, in relatively constrained waters that are no doubt humming with hostiles. Such as: restricting the RoE so that the demonstration doesn’t go hot, even with the Norks and Murphy working hard to confound our plans.
My bad feeling is also based on the demonstrated lack of will of the Wimp-in-chief. Which others have noted also. But his lack of will is not just the common-or-garden spinelessness; I think it’s tied in to his pathological narcissism. It would be interesting to know how he handled conflict and aggression as he grew up. I suspect he is stuck in classic bully mode: he will hit people when he’s sure of success (not being detected, dominating his victim). If pushed, he will cave, pretend it never happened, or appeal to someone stronger to fight for him. Assuming that kind of hardwired response would be activated in this crisis, where does it leave us if the PRC or Norks push back? There is no big brother around to bail him out. He may feel unable to cave, since this is all about “face,” and he has none he can afford to lose. Pretend it never happened? With the whole world watching?
Could be a meltdown, with quite unpredictable effects on his pResidency and on the geopolitical mix. Stay tuned.
We could wear out a set of crocheting needles worrying about just how to help NK save face etc. I am not in the least interested in concerns involving just what face we can help them save.
I’m focused on the best way to kick their ass. And yes we might lose some ships, several thousand military, some aircraft etc…nothing new there and thats why they are there in the first place …. to fight and sometimes to die.
Somewhere the confrontation will come to blows. Get some balls, hunker down and lets eliminate NK as problem. I think you’d be amazed at how quickly the political landscape would change.
No false choice here but is it better for us to crispy up a few hundred thousand NK’s and thus remove a third rate power with nukes or watch their tyrants slowly starve them to death while continuing to blackmail their neighbors and the western world?
Nuke ‘em..
Habu #46: why don’t you tell us how you really feel?
My only reservation with your proposed approach is that the pResident lacks the ‘nads to get the job done. Which makes it more likely that our moves will be misread, we will be pushed this way and that, and like August 1914 we end up backing into a cataclysm for which the Fool-in-Chief and the world are completely unprepared. If we’re going to go that way, let’s at least get our stuff together so we achieve our objectives at minimal cost.
And as somebody else suggested, a JDAM through L’il Kim’s bedroom window might be just the ticket.
All the active/ex/ret Navy people who comment on the Navy milblogs (I’m an ex-zoomie)are in pretty much agreement that our current ASW capability is SERIOUSLY degraded. The carrier-based S-3 Viking has gone away for budgetary reasons and the land-based turbo-prop P-3 Orion is half-way out the door w. it’s all jet replacement not yet on the scene because of teething problems that may be impossible to fix, (e.g., they can’t make an anti-sub torp work that can be dropped from the higher altitudes at which the S-8 will work.And worse still, it was designed w.o. any MAD gear.) Worse, much of the P-3 fleet has been side-tracked in supporting land ops in AfPk so we are woefully behind the power curve in aircrew ASW currency as experienced aircrews retire and FNGs get little or no practice.
Don’t let official USN PR snow you….right now we pretty much SUCK at ASW. Best estimates I can get from the ASW crowd is that it would take a minimum of a 2-year work-up until we could achieve proficiency and the level of our former capability EVEN IF we brought back the S-3 and reconstituted the P-3 to full strength solely dedicated to ASW–but of course we’re not doing ANY OF THOSE THINGS.
Good luck in the Yellow Sea, fellas….
PS: Sure we have ship-board ASW capability and attack sub escorts, but the CORE of the ASW effort around which everything else is built is airborne, with greater reach and, speed to tgt area and loiter time over that of helos, ships and subs. We are currently operating with seriously degraded capabilities.
16. Josh
Many of us seem to have varying opinions as to what the mission of the F-14 was, but I can only offer my semi-dated referent. On the Kitty Hawk, circa 1980 in the Persian Gulf (Iranian hostage crisis), we were concerned about Exocet missiles not from airborne delivery systems (we thought their F-14s out of maintenance), but from the French La Combattant II small, fast missile boats. Never saw one. We were worried about them however, and it was postulated that we could place manned, weapon system operable, hangar queen F-14s on the flight deck to bolster air defense necessities.
Mostly, however, I remember the F-14 coupled with the Phoenix was designed to handle multiple inbound platforms and splash them way out from the carrier – long before their cruise missiles could be launched.
As to engaging cruise missiles with a manned platform, I would suspect that super-sonic missiles would pose a really difficult problem. It’s hard enough one-on-one.
Being an anti-submarine warfare guy in P-3 aircraft, I think I was the only one in the Navy who thought getting rid of the Barbel, Bonefish, Blueback diesel-electric submarines was a very, very bad idea, considering the technological possibilities in stealth, battery technology and now the “air independence” capability that is now achievable. All submarines are hard to catch acoustically. Diesel electric subs on battery are ghosts – especially in the littorals, or in the vicinity of merchant traffic, close shore anomalies, or a warship’s self-generated noise. All that coupled with the very diverse tasking by P-3 crews in Iraq and Afghanistan have left many airborne ASW crews with less time to train on boats that we will fight.
I pray that short-sightedness does not bite us in the butt – the loss of a carrier, even by mistake or miscalculation in the Yellow Sea would be monumental.
And worse, demoralizing…just what this President might relish.
49. virgil xenophon
The best anti-submarine warfare platform – by a wide margin – is another sub. And yet a difficulty…all our nucs are incredibly quiet and virtually undetectable. But a diesel on battery makes even less noise. However, my last experience was at the ASWOC in Keflavik in 1988, so things may have changed a tad.
The best Littoral anti-submarine platform is a helo with dipping sonar. It is too noisy for acoustics to work all that well, unless we’ve been able to develop some signal selection technology I’m not aware of. Of course, that all depends on the strength of the sound source. A “fart in a windstorm” analogy. But the ASW helo generates its own sound source with active pings that return if an object is present. I have never seen two dipping helos in contact lose contact with an adversary – never. No matter their speed or deception. While on the Kitty Hawk 2 SH-3s (each over 20 years old at the time) found a target in our baffles and tracked him for over 5 hours until the last relieving crews had to return because of low fuel and distance back to the ship.
Walt@9: ”… A navy is not a collection of ships, a navy is tradition and culture. … “
(1) Walt, your prose is as powerful as your poetry. I remain continually in awe in your compelling power to convey deep and often subtle meanings –cutting to the core of the issue on topic and topic – day after day. .
(2) I’ve encountered a fair number of people who are antinuclear. Some have deep convictions, but no passion – they will give public witness to their feelings every August 6 and otherwise demonstrate what they believe is ‘the proper thing to do.’ One senses in them a calm sadness. Others appear to be giving expression to personal discontents. One senses that their angst is real, but nukes only provide an excuse to express it in public, no more. Still others, perhaps the majority, appear to be lemmings, following their current ‘party line.’ One senses that if dear comrade leader were to praise nukes tomorrow, they would reverse their stance without blinking or a second thought.
But there is one antinuclear group which, from what I have seen, stands well apart from all the others. Those in this group only display their feelings in private conversation – never, never ever in public, but one senses in them a passion, a genuine deeply-felt hatred toward nuclear weapons unlike that which one senses in any other group..
Members of this group share two characteristics, the rank of Admiral and an appreciation of the vulnerability of their service to these weapons.
(3) Josh@6 asked: ” Say the Norks could nuke the carrier – would they, are they crazy enough to try it?”
Fortunately, neither NK nor any other state has crossed the nuclear weapon threshold since Pakistan did, back in 1987. While North Korea has completed a necessary step in obtaining nuclear weapons – obtaining a sufficient amount of fissile material – it has not yet demonstrated nuclear weapon capability.* So, your question is premature. However, if it were not, I fear that NK has taken Obama’s measure, and if they had a nuclear weapon stockpile, I suspect the answer to your question would be ‘yes’. Worse, they would not need to be crazy to arrive at that answer.
If NK actually had nukes, it would be an act of criminal negligence to place a carrier battle group in that confined space. .
(*Claims that NK has gone nuclear overstate the reality and are based on the estimate that NK separated enough Pu239 for roughly 8 weapons. It is a big step between raw material and finished weapon. For perspective, also consider that if we assume that estimate to be in the ball park, NK has apparently now used ¼ of its fissile stockpile in the two tests in 06 and 09, neither of which brought them across the threshold to a working nuclear device.)
Dear ScenarioA,
Please give references for your assertions about NK fission weapon capabilities. It would be nice to know what sort of weapons test they conducted in ’06 and ’09 that would have expended one-quarter of their fissionable stores other than an actual detonation. (Of course, it is possible to rig a contraption that will detonate, but which is far too ungainly to serve as a weapon, except if you can actually sneak up and crush your sleeping opponent under the treads of the massive ground transport…)
I haven’t heard or read, for instance, that NK has ever tested a “dirty bomb”, although there were reports in September 2004 of a huge explosion which is said to have registered about 3.6 on the Richter scale, approximately the blast effect of about 800 tonnes of HE. My puny research has never found confirmation that any atmospheric radioactivity was detected downwind from the reported Sept 09 blast and “mushroom cloud.” Still don’t know whether it was a detonation or fire, intentional, accident or sabotage, coincident with some other seismic event.
———-
About the deployment of a “SuperCarrier” — Am I crazy to believe that our ballistic missile subs (“boomers”) are fully capable of targeting and destroying any installation in North Korea suspected of housing nuclear weapons or manufacturing facilities? AND from a substantial distance, not requiring them to drop their metaphorical trousers off the coast of NK in the Yellow Sea?
Of course, we have no idea what conversations are being exchanged by our super-brained leader with his opposites in China or North Korea.
All the talk about using attack subs and ASW aircraft to locate and “neutralize” the sneaky NK submarines, seems predicated on an escalation to a shooting war between USA and NK. Well, an attack by a US sub on a North Korean sub might never actually be known or confirmed by NK.
Would the disappearance of one of their subs give them pause, think you?
Well, if we somehow force China into a war, that kinda takes care of them holding all our debt, doesn’t it? If a financial meltdown is inevitable, maybe someone’s figured it’s better to do something now than later. Make them look like the bad guys.
The likelihood of the USN having many secrets from the Chinese is small. The Chinese intelligence services have dedicated tremendous efforts to penetrating US military security. Their efforts have not gone unrewarded. Just a couple of years ago a Chinese espionage cell was caught, after having provided their handlers with detailed information on Navy secrets for 20 years. It was said at the time that the for those 20 years the Navy had no secrets, the Chinese had it all. I would be very surprised if the Navy had much in the way of secrets today. Counter espionage in this country has been and continues to be a tragic joke, particularly in connection with the Chinese.
Not to take counsel of fears, but –i wonder, can we detect sea floor ambush nukes –waiting in the choke points? Waiting to jiu jitsu that incredibly powerful US threat detection?
***
T/55; –maybe that –the weakness of a two party biannual election open system in protecting itself against politicization of the intelligence services (all an adversary needs is a few friendly congressfolk to gravitate toward the proper committees –take a look at Sen Willaim Fulbright, Bill Clinton’s sponsor BTW, but aside from that) –is one of the things our two main adversaries are talking about when they tout the superiority of their own political systems.
In all this worry about either China or North Korea deciding that attacking a US carrier is a good idea aren’t we missing a rather simpler message?
In July the US and South Korea had planned joint exercises in the same area that involved a carrier operating in the Yellow Sea. China protested and the carrier was dropped from that joint exercise.
Now, shortly after the North Korean artillery attack a carrier is entering those waters after all. Could it be just a message to China that if they can’t reign in North Korea we’ll be less accommodating to their concerns?
From the Chinese perspective North Korea going pear-shaped is about as far from a a win-win situation as you could get. The economic slow down in the US has almost certainly idled factory workers in China. Several million North Korean refuges pouring across the boarder is hardly in their interest.
Just for supposin’s sake, let’s say the Chinese or Norks take out a carrier.
How many carriers can we surge to sea in a maximum emergency within, say, two weeks?
Right. So we lose about fifteen percent of our carrier capacity with several theaters to watch.
At that point, there are two questions; Do we go to war? How, short of nukes?
A third question: If the Bad Guys reduce our conventional forces–considering various theaters which need to be watched and the reach our conventional forces have–to a certain level, we have that choice and what are their bets on our choice?
Yeah. When I was a grunt, we didn’t like nukes, either. Thought they were unprofessional.
All in all, I’d prefer not to go to war with Obama as Commander in Chief.
Neither the Chinese or NorKo will attack the carrier. Too much to lose, when they can continue to play the current game to their advantage.
A lot of speculation, I think.
Pull out a map and look at the Yellow Sea. It’s a big place. Now look at the depth of the water. There’s a lot of “there” out there. Yes, it’s not as deep as the Philippine Sea, but we have lots of experience in shallower waters.
The Carrier Strike Group is not going to be placed in a location from which it can be easily attacked by the norKs, it’ll be placed so that it -a- provides combat leverage against the norKs -b- is visible to a South Korean audience -c- is visible to shipping in the area -d- is visible electronically to the Chinese while it has a good deal of sea room.
And it is defended by a robust screen of assets, in depth, not all of which are visible to the naked eye or radar.
Our intent is not to provoke or otherwise alarm our Chinese “friends”. You can assume this message has been communicated to them, in writing and in person by our Ambassador.
Our intent is to let our allies, the South Koreans (and the Japanese) know we’re there, primarily, and to let the norKs know we have the big stick at sea. Once the Carrier Strike Group is at sea and the embarked airwing worked up, they will fly nearly all the time (with occasional breaks during which alert aircraft will be ready on deck), and will be supported by USAF aircraft and capabilities from Guam and South Korea.
The stick is only the “visible” presence. We don’t use just the Navy – they’re backed up by a powerful USAF presence on Guam not too far away and on the ground and in the air over South Korea. Our Army brigades, on the ground in South Korea, are a powerful presence as well, as the brigades which back them up in other locations.
The enemy, or even the unfriendlies, as the saying goes, gets a vote in what happens, naturally. You can assume the Chinese understand that we have no particular desire to call them out. We do have a desire for them to sit on their nasty little friends to the south.
All this presupposes the political will to use the forces thus arrayed. While I do not trust this administration in the least, I must assume – that word, again – that they are not, in the end, total fools. Reality has a pernicious way of focusing attention, basketball games notwithstanding.
Break break
Carrier Strike groups have an enormous capability to surge on demand. Don’t let the “peacetime” whining you hear get in the way of understanding just how fast they can go to sea when the chips are down.
USN Anti-submarine capabilities are still there – certainly not as proficient as when we were operating against the Russians on a daily basis, but its there.
MF@53 asked: ” Please give references for your assertions about NK fission weapon capabilities”
We are extremely fortunate to have reports in the public domain by Hecker (on his visit to NK following the test) and Garwin (on his analysis of the test) on the 06 test. These are primary sources. Both are easy to read and instructive because they give flavors and insights into reality which tend to be washed out (and often replaced by spin) in secondary sources and the media..
Hecker’s report is at http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/hecker1106.pdf
Gawin’s report is at http://people.reed.edu/~ahm/Courses/Reed-POL-422-2009-S3_NP/Syllabus/EReadings/09.2.PRK_GarwinHippel2006A-Technical.pdf
For the 09 test, we find the comparison of the seismic waves for the two tests by the CTBTO (another primary source) at:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/dprk/2009/dprk-090525-ctbto01.htm
MF@53 then said: ”It would be nice to know what sort of weapons test they conducted in ‘06 and ‘09 that would have expended one-quarter of their fissionable stores other than an actual detonation.”
The tests were assumed to be actual detonations. How else do you test? My arithmetic was that if we accept they had enough fissile material for 8 cores and used two cores in the tests, then they had used 2/8 = ¼ of their fissile material. .
Garwin gave an interesting interview after the 06 test in which he admitted that he and others had been wrong when they assumed that NK had become a nuclear weapon state.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/qa-richard-l-garwin-expert-on-nuclear-weapons
Two interesting questions and the responses are reproduced below:
Question: How significant is this test, given that the mainstream intelligence view for several years has been that North Korea already has several nuclear weapons?
Garwin: I said that myself, as a member of the nine-member Rumsfeld commission. We judged in 1998 that they had one or two nuclear weapons.
On balance, given that we’ve been assuming the North Koreans have a small nuclear stockpile, and considering that this test was not as successful as they were looking for it to be, how would you assess the significance of this event?
Garwin: I would say that they are not quite as far along as we thought and probably they thought.
Read the whole interview.
I have read all the comments. I find a lot of interesting insight into missile fins.
What fills my mind are these thoughts:
1. Why on earth would China want a unified, Capitalist, democratic state on its border?
and,
2. If China finds that prospect antithetical to its core interests, aren’t our diplomatic, military show of force and political maneuvers seriously deluded?
–can you imagine a China with our system of governance? Every two years the relationship with NoKo would be debated in the clear, total participation by all citizens and policy adjustments by de-facto referendum?
Then the giant black hole of missing info –the theme of so much of the thread –would not exist. Really two different worlds, you betcha!
Yet so many people want just one world –and guess which one it is they want?
Wonder why that is?
It is a characteristic of periods of prolonged peace, at least in the twentieth century, that we need fictional war. One of the examples is the military techno-thriller of the Seventies and Eighties which faded out when the real thing happened in the Gulf, although Clancy managed to extend some imagination.
One critic said that the number of movies where we were the good guys in Viet Nam might have convinced the unwary that we’d won there.
The military techno-thrillers were generally poorly written, with the weapons frequently having more character than the characters.
However, in order to get to the place where the authors could let off their weapons, they had to get from the here (there) and now convincingly to the critical situation where neato new stuff went boom.
Without exception, the lead-ins were beautifully done. The logical sequences were hard to counter. The various happenings, accidental as well as intended, were within the bounds of historical analogy.
Unfortunately, none of them resembled in any sense the origin of any war, large or small, in living memory.
John Keegan tells us in his history of WW I that Moltke discovered that the forces he could command could get to Paris well enough. But he needed maybe another 150k guys to take the Paris fortresses. He couldn’t get them. The Great General Staff, ops and logistics guys without peer, couldn’t get him another battalion. Every road, railroad car, crossing point, water point, truck, horse, wagon, was maxed out. He was screwed. So the Kaiser said, “Your father would not have….” And Moltke penciled in his missing formations and went ahead with a war the loggy guys could and perhaps did tell him he’d lose.
Hitler convinced a bunch of pros they could beat the combination which had beaten them twenty years earlier.
The Norks, listening either to Dean Acheson saying Korea was out of our sphere of interest, or because of the rat fight of Nork politics, decided a jaded, war-weary west would allow them to invade.
The Argy junta, probably thinking that Queen Elizabeth and Mararet Thatcher, being women, were incapable of bashing about in spit-shined stomping boots and could never contemplate fighting, much less winning a war.
The point is that presuming rational self-interest on the part of the Norks or Chicoms could be a loser’s game. There could be accidents, or there could be concerns they have that we would think risible, but worth a shot to them. What, exactly, is their self-interest? Not what do we think is their self interest, and not what we think they think is their self-interest.
It is said that one of the French kings had two kinds of foreign policy, one normal and one apres la fistule. Anybody talking to the Chicoms’ urologists?
…wonder if they’d first hit our Afghan command –?
Question for Habu–do you think Obama will give the USN the rules of engagement you are assuming? If not, does this move make sense?
If we pulled back from deploying the GW group in the Yellow Sea after the Cheonan, what does it mean that we are going to do that deployment now that tensions are even higher? What are the Chinese to make of that? Yes, these are international waters, but will anyone care if the Chinese sink the GW or we attack and sink their sub(s) before they can get a shot off?
What do we think the GW’s role and mission are? Wretchard’s original post goes on at considerable length about testing Chinese capabilities—well, that would have made sense before the Cheonan, maybe even after the Cheonan. But now? With RoE that either make the GW a sitting duck OR put us in the position where the Chinese and NoKos can force us to fire the first shot? And Obama’s history of weakness, etc., almost a goad to the Chinese and NoKos to to react aggressively? Weakness creates challenges.
I hope there’s something going on here that I don’t know about, because what I do know does not make sense.
One characteristic of being the military top dog is that it forces the opposition to think – and think of ways they can use limited resources to hurt you.
One example (in a published work, so safe for me to write it) is a couple of 200-kiloton warheads dropped (or smuggled) onto an appropriate point on Cumbre Vieja. Bye bye, American and Canadian West Coast. And this one is probably deniable, if done right.
68. Fletcher Christian
Ooh, I like the way you think. But you mean East Coast, not west.
Our President could guarentee the safety of the carrier simply by stating unambiguously that if attacked our response will be nuclear.
Of course he won’t.
Obama thinks nuclear weapons are unequivacally “evil”, except in the hands of the Iranians.
rickl – You’re right. My bad. Writing posts while tired and in a hurry is a bad idea.
One more; how many nukes of that sort of size would it take to set off San Andreas? Or Yellowstone?
Of course, Al Qaeda doesn’t want deniability. Their preference for spectaculars is one of the things keeping us safer than we might be. There are all sorts of ways of killing anything up to millions, or doing massive economic damage, or both, with very little effort – properly applied.
There’s a lot of commenters here with specific Military knowledge, so thank you for your input. I’ve learned much from your comments and links.
The GW is there as a dare. It’s meant to do a couple of things in my mind:
Demonstrate our commitment to SK and Japan. If our host of commenters here are correct, this ship is in mortal danger from multiple sources, and could very well be sunk if the other side decides to do it. If that happens, we’re talking all out nuclear war before too long.
I can’t picture a scenario where one of our ACs is sunk, and we pass diplomatic notes back and forth expressing our displeasure, or fire a couple of cruise missiles at Pyongyang. I hope China doesn’t believe that will happen either.
There would be tremendous pressure for a real butt kicking response, i.e. a nuclear attack on NK. If we do that, we’d better be prepared to fire the rest of our arsenal as well. I could envision that if, say, India and PAK had an exchange it could be contained without a general war. But if the USA nukes NK this will not be contained. It’ll inevitably lead to an all out war.
Demonstrate to China that things are getting extremely serious, and that they’d better reign in their “client” before the SHTF. I think this will fail. The Chinese are going to do something to avenge this insult, and I’d guess that one of the things will be to reaffirm their commitment to NK, even if they tell them to tone it down for the time being.
They’ll likely take this one, with appropriate complaints, and then turn their attention somewhere else, like Taiwan. This is going to be an ongoing thing with them – even if we appear to win this round, it’s just one round of a very long fight. For that reason I think we’re doing the right thing here, because we’ll have to do things like this many times in the future. I wish we had a different CIC, but it is what it is.
Remember the plane they brought down in response to our bombing of their embassy during the Balkan war. That was small potatoes, and I think the Chinese see this as a direct insult, and a rebuttal of their overall plan, which is to replace us as the pre-eminent power in the Western Pacific. They’re not likely to attack the GW, but they’re not going to take this lying down either. Tensions will increase, and we have to be ready for them. Taiwan is an obvious target, so I’d expect something there in the near future.
This story may explain the bit of IT muscle flexing the Chinese
did to reroute US government net traffic through their servers briefly earlier this year.
Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Ambitions
Typhon worked, was out to 200nm, but it was a 5 ton SAM and needed a nuclear powered 50,000 ton hull with a second reactor just to power the gigantic radar.
Every nuclear surface combatant ever built had two reactors. The Enterprise had eight, of a type similar to the one true cruiser reactor used onboard the USS Long Beach (CGN-9). (The CGN-9 had two reactors, in case previous sentence isn’t clear). The Enterprise and Long Beach, IIRC, were originally to have a phased array radar, like the Aegis, but the technology wasn’t all there yet.
The nuclear destroyers, all were powered by the D2G reactor plant. During the Ford Administration, all the nuclear guided missile destroyers were reclassified as cruisers. Cruiser envy, I guess.
The Nimitz class ships needed only two reactors. Four separate spaces for 2 reactors and 2 engine rooms. A reactor could be down and the other plant could run all four main engines, and make almost 25 knots. An engine room down, not as fast, limits of propeller shaft torque.
I suppose with a diesel and batteries, a sub could get by on one plant. The surface ships have diesels in case of a dual plant scram, but the diesels are sized for bare minimum electric needs until a reactor can be refired.
Some of the nuke surface ships, like the Bainbridge, Truxtun and Long Beach were retirement age, but Clinton’s massacre of the military saw the rest of the surface escorts scrapped, so a nuclear carrier can no longer sorty at full speed (in excess of 30 knots) to a world trouble spot with anti-air and anti-sub escorts, but must run no faster than the slowest oiler to UNREP the escort ships.
“..the diesels are sized for bare minimum electric needs until a reactor can be refired.” Hence the term, “Nuclear Powered”.
Way more than enough electricity to successfully restart the plant and maintain house loads.
Now if you want to take away all the diesel and all of the turbine generators, you could have a loss of all AC. But how difficult would it be to cause that much damage?
I’m pretty sure the George Washington doesn’t have chains welded to the battle group. If the carrier needs to go, it goes. The battle group can show up a couple of days later.