The Navy Thread

Another potential conversion for the Ohio-class SSBN? But even so, refueling/resupplying a submarine while it's out at sea is a major pain in the ass. Far easier and more efficient to do so in port. (It's hard enough to do with an aircraft carrier, which has cranes and stuff built into its superstructure...)

Maybe a Milk Cow airship would be better, they can just hover down above the sub like a mother jellyfish.

Umm, no. Ever seen The Hunt For Red October? That one scene where they're trying to lower Jack Ryan from a helicopter onto the USS Dallas? In the middle of the North Atlantic? In the dead of winter? In gale-force winds? Fuhgedaboudit...

Besides, transferring fuel through a flexible hose is one thing. A cargo net of supplies or a two-ton torpedo is quite another. I mean, it's certainly possible, but nobody would do so willingly except in an extreme emergency. Especially since it leaves both the sub and the tender extremely vulnerable to attack.

edited 15th Mar '17 10:02:48 AM by pwiegle

Obviously, the solution is underwater refueling

A submersible zeppelin!

A nuclear powered submersible zeppelin!

And in other news, I've returned from vacation from Hawaii. It was fun.

I got to see the Pearl Harbor historic sites up close. USS Missouri is undergoing renovation/preservation work and they has a project planned for USS Bowfin too.

A number of Navy ships were in harbor or pulling into harbor that day. One of them was USNS Guadalupe a big floating gas station.

I got tons of pics until the Missouri at which point my phone ran out of space and battery partway through. Even saw the Aviation musuem but couldn't get pics. (They has a F-14!)

Once I get my pics transferred to Imgur I'll post a linky.

US Navy bringing back the Ram Jet Missiles.

The cherry part of this article is the Navy used internal design and mostly off the shelf stuff to do it. The result was a fast and cheap design process. Minimal red tape from the Congress critters trying to divvy up development and manufacture among their states and no milking of the program by contractors or contractor fights over being awarded.

The missile has an early ready fleet ready estimate of 3-4 years.

Does this mean we can have a technological counterpart to P-800 Oniks supersonic cruise missiles? Perhaps maybe lighter or with better warheads for the same weight and range in total?

Who knows. Missiles with both range and speed however tend to be larger missiles in the first place. The original RIM-8 Talos surface to air missile packed a 450+lb Continous Rod warhead or a W-30 nuclear warhead, final model had over 241km of range, supersonic speed of mach 2.5, flight ceiling just under 25km, but it also weighed 7,800 lbs. 4,400lbs of that was the booster package to get the missile up to speed so the ram jet could start. Now that is older technology as in late 1950's era technology.

The goal of the program is to make something like the Oniks. That is the booster is integrated into the missile body itself, a super sonic speed somewhere in the range of mach 2-3, and appropriate warhead. Oniks is as heavy as it is because it has the booster still, which is ejected when spent out of the missiles combustion chamber. The warhead is rather nasty. A 500lb SAPHE warhead that is meant to penetrate into and then blow the guts out of the target. The SAPHE design allows it penetrate more deeply without any nose based fusing get smashed to bits.

edited 21st Mar '17 4:03:10 PM by TuefelHundenIV

A series of multi-angle shots of the Rail Gun during test firing in November of last year. It is blasting out the blunt nosed projectile. Damn is that a bulky installation.

Say it with me now! RAILGUN BATTLESHI-*dodges torpedo*

In which a US Navy officer somehow messes up a Jeopardy question on which service was founded on October 13, 1775.

In his defense, the Navy has more birthdays than the Marine Corps. I want to say one of the "birth of the Navy" origin stories centers on Continental Army troops lead by Benedict Arnold. So yeah, history gets weird during revolutions.

Air Force traitor! You are not supposed to defend the Navy when they fuck up!

Au contraire, as the senior service (in terms of warfighting capability), it's our responsibility to look after the lesser services.

ROFLMAO.

^^ My ass! Air Force hasn't ever won a war in its history! It's always been Army and/or Marines who score the final objectives!

Ahem, Japan would like to have a word with you.

It wasn't Air Force who took the surrender of Japan. And there wasn't even a United States Air Force at all at the time. It was United States Army Air Forces.

US Army I'm sorry what was that last part?

USAAF was the direct predecessor of the USAF. Their personnel folded over directly into the new organization a couple of years after the Japanese surrender (generally accepted to be the direct result of the USAAF's bombing campaign of the home islands).

If the Marines get to claim the birthday of the Continental Marines, an organization disbanded something like a decade and a half before the founding of the USMC, I think the USAF can claim an organization that we can claim direct continuity to.

The Marines get to claim that because there was no new branch established, no culling of personnel from existing stuff to build the new one. The Continental Marines like the Continental Army (and Navy) simply changed names with the end of the War and the building of the new country.

So no, you don't get to claim squat Air Force!

Sure, the Continental Army just changed names. If you consider a single regiment and an artillery battery an army.

The Continental Marines changed their names to The Civilians because they were disbanded in 1783. The US Marine Corps wasn't established until 1798 (along with the US Navy). As I recall, the only organization to have actual continuity was the Army (although the National Guard claims lineage back to the 1600s, fun history fact).