Interested Amateur

Soryu-class SSK In the June 2010 Proceedings article, " The Right Submarine for Lurking in the Littorals ", Milan Vego, of the Naval War College, lays out a case for a US Navy SSK.   Advantages include, Better suited for operations in shallow, confined waters. Sufficient sensors and weapons for operating in these regions. SSNs are three to five times more expensive than SSKs. Less problematic to home-port SSKs abroad. Sufficient range and speed for operational deployments, if home-ported near their operating areas. Another Naval War College professor, James Holmes, laid out similar arguments at the National Interest, " Diesel Submarines: The Game Changer the U.S. Navy Needs " and " U.S. Submarines: Run Silent, Run Deep...On Diesel Engines? " He adds, Procuring and operating a common SSK with allies would show the US has "skin in the game" and demonstrate US resilience and resolve.  However even if not common, home-porting SS...

Gulfstream G550 Conformal Airborne Early Warning (CAEW) aircraft Much has been written on the Chinese A2/AD bubble.  It's clear from the literature that operating outside the first island chain is not as safe as it used to be.  There are a multitude of air, sea, subsurface and ballistic missile threats.  The threats grow in number and variety the closer you get to the Chinese coast. ASBMs, surface-delivered AShMs, submarines, and air-delivered AShMs from long range bombers and fighters like the Su-30MKK all contribute to this dilemma.   In addition, gaining and maintaining air superiority over Taiwan and other areas inside the first island chain will be increasingly difficult.  US and allied air forces in the region will likely be outnumbered at the beginning of a conflict, so maximizing effectiveness of every aircraft and every sortie will be paramount.  One key force multiplier in any air war is advance Airborne Early Warning (AEW).  The ea...

Much focus today is on hypersonic and ballistic, long-range munitions.  However there is still a significant need for a large number of boring, subsonic cruise missiles, especially to fill VLS cells.  The Tomahawk cruise missile has performed well in this role, but it's getting long in the tooth. It has three major shortcomings, It has no RCS shaping to speak of, which makes it vulnerable to enemy IADS.   It doesn't have sufficient range to allow ships to operate in "safe" waters when an enemy has a extensive A2AD system and hold at risk more depth of enemy territory. It only carries a 1,000lb warhead.  This limits its ability to strike hardened and deeply buried targets, as well as large infrastructure targets like bridges. (which can require 10 or more 2,000lb class warheads) To fill these gaps, I propose we build a Next Generation Cruise Missile (NGCM).  The notional requirements are as follows, Fits in a Mk57 VLS cell  Carries either a Mk84 or BLU...

Multiple, recent papers from the Navy think tank community 1 has espoused the benefits of solid state lasers (SSLs), electromagnetic rail guns and hyper velocity projectiles (HVPs) to increase the magazine depth of Navy ships when defending against cruise and ballistic missile strikes. LaWS on Ponce However none of these technologies has come close to shooting down even simulated cruise missiles.  At best SSLs have shot down small, light weight UAVs. BAE HVP Current HVP programs haven't even done this.  They are still heavily in the research phase. The one exception is the OTO Melara Strales/DART program, which appears to be far closer to production.  However, it is purely a Close-in Weapon System (CIWS) replacement.   It's unclear to me how many successful tests of this system have occurred. OTO Melara Strales 76mm gun OTO Melara DART munition Before we "bet the farm" on the transformational power of SSLs and HVPs to allow ou...