From: Adam 

John Beamish wrote:
> How realistic is the assessment of the Sunburn and its
> strategic/tactical use?
>
>
> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7147.htm
>
> 10/26/04 "ICH" -- Last July, they dubbed it operation Summer Pulse: a
> simultaneous mustering of US Naval forces, world wide, that was
> unprecedented. According to the Navy, it was the first exercise of its
> new Fleet Response Plan (FRP), the purpose of which was to enable the
> Navy to respond quickly to an international crisis. The Navy wanted to
> show its increased force readiness, that is, its capacity to rapidly
> move combat power to any global hot spot. Never in the history of the US
> Navy had so many carrier battle groups been involved in a single
> operation. Even the US fleet massed in the Gulf and eastern
> Mediterranean during operation Desert Storm in 1991, and in the recent
> invasion of Iraq, never exceeded six battle groups. But last July and
> August there were seven of them on the move, each battle group
> consisting of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier with its full complement
> of 7-8 supporting ships, and 70 or more assorted aircraft. Most of the
> activity, according to various reports, was in the Pacific, where the
> fleet participated in joint exercises with the Taiwanese navy.
>
> [snip]
>
> � �Nonsense!� � you are probably thinking. That� �s impossible. How could a
> few picayune destroyers threaten the US Pacific fleet?� �
>
> Here is where the story thickens: Summer Pulse amounted to a tacit
> acknowledgement, obvious to anyone paying attention, that the United
> States has been eclipsed in an important area of military technology,
> and that this qualitative edge is now being wielded by others, including
> the Chinese; because those otherwise very ordinary destroyers were, in
> fact, launching platforms for Russian-made 3M-82 Moskit anti-ship cruise
> missiles (NATO designation: SS-N-22 Sunburn), a weapon for which the US
> Navy currently has no defense. Here I am not suggesting that the US
> status of lone world Superpower has been surpassed. I am simply saying
> that a new global balance of power is emerging, in which other
> individual states may, on occasion, achieve � �an asymmetric advantage� �
> over the US. And this, in my view, explains the immense scale of Summer
> Pulse. The US show last summer of overwhelming strength was calculated
> to send a message.
>
>
>

Drones will win.

Period.

Sunburn is a fast maneuverable drone.

Think Repulse & Prince of Wales vs Japanese bombers.

The massive complicating factor is the rise of the computer. Bill Gates
& Andy Grove, Linux Torvalds et al will probably be responsible for the
death of the battle fleet.

Good example of this is that you have no need to build any more warships
ever. People in Naval Uniforms simply don't seem to like commanding slow
plodding merchantmen.


Containerized weapons are coming just as they did to freight transport. We
already have most missiles being VL (Vertical Launch). We already have most
electronics being capable of be mounted in a container. We already have
demands for weapons systems to be multi-service e.g. UK RAF
& RN harrier forces have merged & RAF & AAC & RN Helo
forces look likely
to follow.

So a few containers on trucks = a "Area Air Defence system"
(AADS) & those same containers on a ship are still an AADS except that
the area is saltier & damper.

Ditto Sunburn & other such kamikaze drones.  Mount them on Destroyers
if you like however you can chuck em on a container ship or a truck or even
a train set up to carry containers.

A thought a number of people have proposed is the "container over board"
  thought i.e. if you had some anti-ship missiles in containers & they
were VL missiles & the container was sealed & would always float
with the missiles pointing up then you have a very impressive mine.

i.e. merchantman sails across advancing US CVBG or indeed where it knows
they will have to go.

Crossing the T so to speak. In doing so it slips these containers into the
water behind it. Containers are obviously decorated with std shipping line
markings etc but are possibly painted to look "very rusty".

CVBG sails into target area & a signal goes out. Lot's of "ocean
debris" suddenly send missiles arcing up & then sink thus hiding
any evidence.

CVBG gets a nasty shock with no "enemy destroyers" around to fire back at.

Adam

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