SAN ANTONIO, Philippines — The Philippines’ president was on hand Wednesday as one of the U.S. Army’s best-known weapons missed its target — a decommissioned warship floating miles away in the South China Sea — during a live-fire exercise.
-WiscoDave
This statement concerned me when I read the story: “Shore-based fire against a ship is exceptionally hard,..." Not anywhere near an expert, so I did some looking and found this:
ReplyDelete"The guns of the coast artillery were built to match those carried by the warships of the era. The modern era seacoast guns were emplaced in protected concrete structures and were generally more accurate than those carried on the warships, the seacoast artillery could cause more damage to the ships than they could inflict on the defenses. As most nations did not want to risk damage to their expensive naval ships, the presence of seacoast artillery could deter an enemy fleet from attacking." [https://cdsg.org/coast-artillery-armament/]
YMMV but I sense someone (looking at you Lt.Col.) is lying their ass off. But then again, with geniuses like Fire Control Specialist Jhared Collins doing the math...
"Shit, I didn't carry the one. Maffs is hard!"
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My first impression too. Shore-to-ship is easier; there's only one set of movements to consider.
DeleteThey have computers to do the math. They probably had a radar set read the direction and range. So what went wrong? Are the plugs on the radar set and firing computer incompatible, so they had to type data from the radar into the computer - and effed that up? Or did the computer give them the right settings but they effed up in pointing the rocket launcher according to the computer data.
DeleteLong range hits on a ship moving fast under power is difficult - you have to point at where the ship will be, and often that requires guessing how they'll change their speed or direction while the rockets are in flight. But this was an abandoned ship that was just drifting. If you can't hit that, you can't hit _anything_.
Naval ships are immune to Army missiles. Maybe they should have called in Admiral Rachel Levine to blow it.
ReplyDeleteDiversity is our strength, latest demonstration. Hell yeah, git more wimmen and minorities into fire control. They'll show us.
ReplyDeleteBut did the naval personnel use all the correct pronouns? That's the measure of success.
ReplyDeleteFrom link - "The HIMARS’ failure to hit a vessel at sea wasn’t a big deal, according to Mannweiler."
ReplyDeleteSounds like kind of a big deal to me.
"In combat, U.S. forces would likely use a torpedo or Harpoon missiles against a warship, Mannweiler said."
ReplyDeleteThen why use the HIMARS? Waste of good money. But I guess everyone wants to play in the game....
Seems that the artillerymen were right on though....at least against a non moving ship.
Send the entire unit to the UKR front, they'll fit right in.
ReplyDeleteThe HIMARS is more expensive than the howitzers, right? I mean, a missile from the HIMARS generally costs more than an HE artillery round? And yet the howitzers hit what HIMARS missed. ROFL. Doesn't mean HIMARS is useless (I have no idea if it's useful or worth the money or not) it's just really damn funny. Sad, but funny.
ReplyDeleteIt's just taxpayer dollars, doesn't matter. /sarc
DeleteI am sure when the LTCOL went and talked to the weapons crews , he said boys and girls you did just fine. We never really wanted to hit that ship anyway.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure anyone here actually understands the concept of circular error probables or the idea of using a weapon outside its design characteristics.
ReplyDeleteDidn't we send bunches of HIMARS to Ukraine? The Ukrainian troops have even less training than the Filipinos.
ReplyDeleteWe should start calling the South China Sea the "West Philippine Sea" just to piss off the ChiComs :)
ReplyDeleteWho says the decommissioned ship was the target? If I wanted to send a message to China - and if I were the Philippines, I would - but without it being obvious to the rest of the world and able to plausibly deny a response from China, I might plant a dummy ship as a pretend target.
ReplyDeleteActually, this would be a stroke of genius because it throws deceit right back at China, the master of deceit.
Next, look for a report of a chinese fishingboat overdue or sunk.
If you want real difficult naval gunnery, consider the sinking of the destroyer USS Strong off New Georgia. The Japanese destroyer Niizuki fired a spread of torpedoes from a distance of 11 nautical miles, the longest torpedo kill on record.
ReplyDeleteDuring training, we fired 5 shipboard missiles at an approaching remotely-piloted F-4 Phantom. The first one did nothing. Reload! #2 made noise and smoke but didn't leave the rail. #3 launched and promptly fell into the sea. #4 followed a delightful corkscrew path to oblivion. Finally, #5 launched and connected with the target. Or so they told us. The whole thing did not inspire confidence in our ability to defend the ship.
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