More Persian Gulf shenanigans
Quote:
A suspicious incident occurred Friday when two armed Iranian vessels approached the USS Essex with a top U.S. general on board. Gen. Joseph Votel, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) commander, was aboard the amphibious assault ship to observe flight operations when two Iranian fast-attack boats approached – one crossing in front of the Essex and the other traveling along its side, the Associated Press reported Friday.
“I really appreciate you arranging for the Iranians to be here,” Votel said, jokingly, to crew members aboard the Essex.
The Essex was on a routine patrol mission in the southern Persian Gulf. Votel was unsurprised by the Iranians’ presence, as they noticed the Essex’s presence and questioned it over radio traffic.
https://americanmilitarynews.com/201...nder-gen-votel
PROCEEDINGS Magazine - Redesign the Fleet
Quote:
The U.S. Navy’s current fleet design does not match today’s conditions, much less those expected over the next 20 years. Today’s fleet—a mix of ship types that are simply evolutionary improvements and larger versions of designs from two or more decades ago—is too small, and the ships on average are too large. It is time for the Navy to make broad, significant changes in the fleet’s design.
The rapid rise of global connectedness—and the technological progress and proliferation that it has sparked—raises new challenges for designing a fleet with the capabilities required to execute its missions across the globe. The ability to detect warships at long ranges or even globally is no longer a U.S. monopoly. Commercial space sensors are burgeoning, and their data is available in the marketplace. Many nations have sophisticated military space programs, distributed networked sensor fields, and long-range unmanned aerial vehicles that can search far from shore. Sensor capability is advancing faster than the ability to elude detection. Long-range precision-guided weapons are proliferating and can be brought to bear in numbers against what these sensor systems detect. Weapon speed is increasing while weapon signature is decreasing.
The current fleet was not designed with this threat environment, where losses likely will be significant, in mind. The fleet concentrates too much capability in too few manned hulls that are too large. Not enough are forward deployed to provide sufficient firepower to achieve warfighting success. And the fleet is too expensive per unit to be able to afford enough capacity to meet global requirements and wartime resiliency.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proce...qDAgYmzonMQnn0
Another ship, another navy
AdamG,
A friend forwarded the link to this accident and it is a grim reading in places. It appears that those who ordered the ship to sea will avoid any repercussions.
A RN ship, the Antarctic patrol ship, HMS Endurance had an accident and the Officer in Charge (not the Captain who was on Xmas leave) has written two articles on their experience (a third has yet to appear). There was a National Geographic documentary on their patrol, but has yet to be found (which he explains in Part Two).
Part One:https://wavellroom.com/2018/12/16/ma...hms-endurance/
Part Two:https://wavellroom.com/2019/01/05/ma...-2-priorities/