America Needs to Build More (and Better) Ships

Re:America Needs to Build More (and Better) Ships by Animats on Friday October 06, 2023 @05:02PM (#37796374)

Or even regular missiles. Right now, the Russian Navy is retreating from its ports in Crimea to ports out of range of Ukraine.[1] Two ships were sunk, and the rest are being removed before they get sunk. We're seeing this former hypothetical play out for real.

In the Ukraine war, we're seeing that systems which are mounted on trucks, or are even man-portable, can take out most high-cost assets - tanks, ships, aircraft, etc.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/satellite-imagery-indic...

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Re:America Needs to Build More (and Better) Ships by nradov on Friday October 06, 2023 @06:11PM (#37797030)

Which is why the US Navy is pivoting it's battle fleet away from littoral operations and back towards blue-water sea control. The concept is to launch stand-off strike weapons and interdict sea lines of communication outside the range of shore defenses.

It's also questionable whether the Russian Navy experience is even relevant. They are simply incompetent and poorly equipped. NATO has been feeding the Ukrainians real-time targeting data which gives them a huge advantage.

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Re:America Needs to Build More (and Better) Ships by fatherzine on Friday October 06, 2023 @08:10PM (#37797900)

A blue sea Navy is vulnerable to a growing number of long range weapons. On top of my head, nuclear EMPs. Hypothetically, a hostile great power military may be willing to blast above uninhabited Pacific, compared to above densely populated Europe / Asia. Yuck.

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Re:America Needs to Build More (and Better) Ships by nradov on Friday October 06, 2023 @09:43PM (#37798333)

The whole nuclear EMP thing is mostly science fiction. It's just not a serious threat to warships.

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Re:America Needs to Build More (and Better) Ships by grotorea on Friday October 06, 2023 @06:17PM (#37797061)

The Black Sea is smaller than the Pacific through. The theory I heard is that in an hypothetical US-China war the US Navy would be able to stay in the Pacific but far away from the coast.

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Re:America Needs to Build More (and Better) Ships by Animats on Sunday October 08, 2023 @03:20AM (#37808520)

> the US Navy would be able to stay in the Pacific but far away from the coast.

Google Earth view of Taiwan.[1] Spend some time looking at the geography.

- Taiwan is only about 100km from the mainland.

- Almost all the development in Taiwan is on the west coast, facing China.

- The developed strip is only 10-20km deep.

- The middle of the island is a north-south mountain range.

This was a good defensive situation until China built large numbers of truck-mounted anti ship missiles with more than enough range to cross the Taiwan strait, and a large number of warships able to operate over that range.

[1] https://earth.google.com/web/@23.88435184,119.65980108,35.12...

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