The USS AMERICA Sunk!

Ok, slow down. Don't get your underwear/panties in a bunch here.

As part of SINKEX, in April of this year, the US Navy will be towing the decommissioned USS AMERICA about 50-300 miles off the Atlantic coast for testing and eventual sinking, at the cost of $22 million versus being scraped at a cost of $65 million.

According to the US Navy:

"No one has been able to land a [big] punch on an American [aircraft] carrier for over half a century," StrategyPage notes. "There is no practical knowledge about exactly how sturdy, or not, these big ships are."

NAVY SINKS 'AMERICA'

As such, the US Navy plans to...

...batter the America with explosives, both underwater and above the surface, watching from afar and through monitoring devices placed on the vessel.

These explosions would presumably simulate attacks by torpedoes, cruise missiles and perhaps a small boat suicide attack like the one that damaged the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Navy To Sink Retired Carrier USS America

That, she said, will allow the Navy to "improve the survivability of future aircraft carriers."

Sinking the America

Furthermore (and this is what I want to know), is that the US Navy has stated;

Certain aspects of the tests are classified, and neither America's former crew nor the news media will be allowed to view them in person, Dolan said. The Navy does not want to give away too much information on how a carrier could be sunk, Pat Dolan, a spokeswoman for Naval Sea Systems Command, said.

NAVY SINKS 'AMERICA'

Now, the thing that I want to know is that it is a fairly well-known fact that the US Navy acquired some SUNBURNs from the Russian manufacturer (for comparing and developing the GQM-163 Coyote, to be delivered to the US Navy this year), minus guidance system, seeker system, and the actual warhead, though information (estimations) abounds on them. No big deal, right? Well, my thinking on this is that the US Navy, during the media blackout of this testing event (SINKEX), will be testing those SUNBURNs on the/a typical US carrier: the USS AMERICA, to see how 'she' will hold up to them or not.

Here are some past ATS discussions on the Russian SUNBURN:
Russian SUNBURN anti-ship missile

Thoughts or comments welcome.




seekerof

[edit on 17-3-2005 by Seekerof]

Seekerof,

Father Wingate of Trumpeters Mission has a whole nother twist to this little excersise. I wont bore you with the details but he says a destroyer will be hit (not this one) in order to get Americans to continue backing this war on terrorism.....and THIS ONE is being used for practice.

Now, dont shoot the messenger, ok? thanks! I laughed when i saw this because of his interview on Coast to Coast last night.

www.coasttocoastam.com...

Seekerof
I was unaware the US had acquired any Sunburn missles.

If they have, they should most definitely test them against the carrier (since that would be the most likely target in a real engagement). The Sunburns can apparently sink a carrier with one direct hit, mid-ship, using a conventional warhead. The speed of the missle is the key factor, not the explosive power.

Remember the comic character The Flash? He used to knock guys out, even other super heroes, simply because he moved so fast, the kinetic force delivered by his fist was unstoppable. The amount of force delivered to a target by, say a 1 foot square impactor, moving at mach 3, is..ample. In theory a Sunburn armed with a simple inert warhead should have sufficient kinetic properties to sink the carrier by compromising its integrity and folding the boat like a fortune cookie.

I hope they do test the Sunburn against the America. Then we can finally put to rest the guess work and work off of hard data.

More likely, they're just going to test demolitions munitions, like the type used in the attack on the Cole. I think they know the Sunburns sink carriers, and want to know how the big boats stand up to more common, conventional terrorist methods of attack.

IMHO, unless the SUNBURN is well placed, one SUNBURN alone will not sink a US carrier. Way to much damage control and watertight compartmentalization on a carrier for starters.

The SUNBURN is fast and powerful, but has a fairly good sized RCS, is susceptable to being downed.

The best use of the SUNBURNs capabilities would and probably will be if it is used in a consorted, coordinated effort [a saturation attack], where multiples are targeted and fired at a singular target, which is probably the likely scenerio if used against a US carrier.

The advantage of the Coyote [sea skimmer] over the SUNBURN will be its low RCS coupled with relatively high speed [Mach 2.5 at sea level and 2.3/4 at 13 ft above] and decent warhead versus the SUNBURNs high speed, good sized warhead, with moderate to high RCS.

As to the US acquiring those SUNBURNs [from the manufacturer-minus seeker, warhead, etc], I have no real news source on this, but information was given anonymously through a Naval Department Munitions Specialist when I was in service. His indications are that a number under ten were bought, but enough that they could be used for comparison efforts and research purposes. I think that this is or will be one of the draw backs of Glasnost and the fall of Communism in Russia and those Eastern European satellite countires, Ukraine, in particular.




seekerof

Even if the missile sinks the carrier, there will be the caveat that there were no damage control teams to try to prevent the loss of the ship. Unless, of course, the damage is really catastrophic and damage control would have been pointless.

I'd also wonder if they would test any supercavitating torpedoes. If I were a Navy captain, those are the things that would give me nightmares.

Anyway, sounds like an interesting test.

This is exactly what the USN should do. Load up the America with standard armament of phalanx cannons and the missile launchers. Then set the weapons to react like normal, all automated and then lauch a barrage of missile, in waves, at the carrier to see how the defensive measures work. See iof any missiles get through. From what im told, nothing gets through the phalanx, nothing.

Train

Posted by Seekerof
IMHO, unless the SUNBURN is well placed, one SUNBURN alone will not sink a US carrier. Way to much damage control and watertight compartmentalization on a carrier for starters.

The 3M80/Kh-41 MOSKIT [SS-N-22 'Sunburn'] is capable of delivering a 200-kiloton nuclear payload, or: a 750-pound conventional warhead, within a range of 100 miles.

From linked article
The U.S. Navy might just have been rendered obsolete to the point where it's ships are sitting ducks in a nuclear target gallery, rather than State of the Art fighting ships capable of defeating any foe in the world. If just three of these missiles, each one with a nuclear warhead of 120,000 tons of TNT, in the air just above the fleet, and detonated them, an aircraft carrier, all of its Aegis cruisers and all support ships, would be annihilated instantaneously.

Source

Posted by BigTrain
See iof any missiles get through. From what im told, nothing gets through the phalanx, nothing.

The Phalanx defence system is out-dated and is currently being replaced with Rolling Action Missile(RAM) systems.

From linked article
The Sunburn’s combined supersonic speed and payload size produce tremendous kinetic energy on impact, with devastating consequences for ship and crew. A single one of these missiles can sink a large warship, yet costs considerably less than a fighter jet. Although the Navy has been phasing out the older Phalanx defense system, its replacement, known as the Rolling Action Missile (RAM) has never been tested against the weapon it seems destined to one day face in combat.

Source

I think the US want to test it's new RAM system against an incoming sunburn. It's common knowledge that Iran posses the sunburn missile and if US ships were attacked in the Gulf it would be a devasting defeat for the US.

From linked article
US naval commanders operating in the Persian Gulf face serious challenges that are unique to the littoral, i.e., coastal, environment. A glance at a map shows why: The Gulf is nothing but a large lake, with one narrow outlet, and most of its northern shore, i.e., Iran, consists of mountainous terrain that affords a commanding tactical advantage over ships operating in Gulf waters. The rugged northern shore makes for easy concealment of coastal defenses, such as mobile missile launchers, and also makes their detection problematic.

Source

Thats probably why they've put a media ban on the test results. They could turn out to be rather embaressing.

Interesting and nothing compares to real data. The Sunburn is currently the biggest threat the USN faces aside from submarines. It would make for some intersting viewing and I would be interested to see how many it would take to sink it. Anybody who has seen footage of a Harpoon or a Tomahawk hitting a #, its a pretty impressive amount of damage.

The RAM testing would make sence, but you would not really need to do it on a carrier any floating platform would do.

When the Navy is going to do it??

Hmmmm.....I wonder if the Navy has any SS-N-22's still in inventory?




Weee! Sounds like it's gonna be a "blast"..........

I for one like the idea of loading up the Phalanx and Sea Sparrow launchers and trying to defend the America by remote control. Then
we could see what a joke both systems are. I was with the Forrestal when she had her sea trials after coming out of SLEP in 1985. During these trials both the Phalanx and Sea Sparrows were tested. The Phalanx when it worked shredded the target drones, but more than one test was cancelled when they couldn't get the system to work. The Sea Sparrow on the other hand was just a joke. I personally watched one launch pop out of the box and go right into the water. Another time one launched went out about a mile and hung a u-turn and came back at us, crossed about 300 ft. above the deck went a mile in the other direction and exploded. I for one was glad that we were never in a situation where we had to rely on either of those systems.
I almost forgot one other thing about the Phalanx. It can't track a slow target. Our helicopter squadron used to have to fly patrols just in case some one came after the ship with a Cessna 150 full of explosives.
By the way it is the Rolling Airframe Missile and it is just replacing the Sea Sparrow system. The Phalanx is alive and well and last I heard it has had a severe upgrade to its reliability.

Jim, good points about the first testing. It's true, everything has bugs that needs to be worked out. As im told today, and read, the phalanx is completely automated, tracks by itself and can engage many targets while firing at others. It even has the ability to determine, while its firing, if the rounds fired will hit the target or not, before they hit, so as to target other craft. As for the rolling missile launcher, I have trouble believing it will be more effective that a phalanx spraying 100 rounds of depleted uranium a second for close range syustems. Why not use both systems, the phalanx for close in support and the rolling for ranges exceeding 2 miles or so. No need to replace the phalanx, its just to badass. Plus, the more complicated a system becomes, the more likely for problems. I think they should release video of the phalanx wasting like 15 targets coming in all at once!

Train

To the best of my knowledge, we never were able to acquire the SS-N-22 from the Russians, although Clinton did try.
We did get a much shorter ranger version, and I believe it's guidance system lacked the violent manuevering capabilities that make Sunburn so difficult to hit on approach.
The one we got was Kh-31. Technically ours are called MA-31s- they are test drones. We didn't acquire too many of those either- at least not initially. I'm not sure if we ever got more.

www.wealth4freedom.com...
I know this link is very alarmist and probably not the most reliable in the world. I'm taking their word for very little, except for their statement that we acquired Kh-31s.


The problem our defenses have with Sunburn is the sheer speed of the missile. You've got 25 seconds to identify the target, compute it's path, and fire countermeasures. In many cases there just isn't time to put guns or SM-2s on target against it. Scramjets and stealth technology are only going to make threats faster and harder to see as we go forward, and whatever we develop to deal with the sunburn will likely prove inadequate very quickly. I would not be quick to choose a standard countermeasure as the answer. I'd be looking for ways to make it harder to target our aircraft carriers- for example by projecting a wall of plasma-stealth equipped devices (you couldn't give the carrier itself plasma stealth because of the heat involved) to break up the carriers radar image, then projecting a false target elsewhere.
Looking at ways to defend during the missile's final approach is too limited. I think we need to look more at stealth, especially keeping the enemy from knowing where to aim their missiles to begin with. In situations like the gulf, where a strait controls access, we need to develop ways to break the enemy's hold on strategic positions. The recent years in which the Marine Corps has been called "A b*tched up Army, talking Navy lingo" are going to have to end in order for the Navy to cope with situations such as that in the straight of Hormuz. The Marines need to be equipped and prepared to secure or infiltrate positions which command sealanes and implement countermeasures such as jamming enemy communications, advanced methods for locating and destroying antiship missiles and radar, setting up detection systems to forewarn the navy of incoming threats, etc.

Update: as of April 19th:
The USS America has left for SINKEX.
Carrier Ex-America Departs Philadelphia




seekerof

Since it's may, anybody got any idea what happen to the USS America now? the test is on april 19 right? so anybody got any doc. or anything about it?

They really did sunk the USS America on the 14th of May!

Navy Sinks Aircraft Carrier
USS America As A 'Test'
5-22-5

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - The retired aircraft carrier USS America is on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, sunk by the Navy in a series of explosive tests that upset some veterans.
 
The 84,000-ton, 1,048-foot warship that served the Navy for 32 years rests about 60 miles off the coast and more than 6,000 feet down, according to Pat Dolan, a spokeswoman for Naval Sea Systems Command.
 
She did not give a location, but the Navy previously said the explosions would take place off North Carolina.
 
Dolan said the America went down May 14, finally flooded after the series of explosions over 25 days. No announcement was made at the time.
 
Dolan did not immediately return a telephone message left Friday by The Associated Press.
 
No warship this size or larger had ever been sunk, and plans to sink the America caused controversy.
 
"Not a day goes by that I don't think about it," said Lee McNulty, president of the USS America Foundation, which wanted to turn the ship into a museum. "Of all the carriers, that one should have been saved, just for the name America."
 
The America launched warplanes during the Vietnam War, the 1986 conflict with Libya, the first Gulf War, and over Bosnia-Herzegovina in the mid-1990s.
 
The Navy said in March that the explosive tests would provide valuable data on survivability for the next generation of aircraft carriers, which are now in development.
 
Since its decommissioning in 1996, the America had been moored with dozens of other inactive warships at a Navy yard in Philadelphia.



 

It survived the blasts for 25 days!!!!!!!!

What a champion, i can only imagine how many missiles and torpedoes it took to finally go down. I wish I could see photos, but we know thats not happening.

Train

if it can survive 25 days of explosions, imagine wat the next generation of aircraft carriers can do. but remember that the reason it survive for so long is all those compartments in the carrier, the Navy wanted to see how much it can take with all the doors shut tight. if an operational carrier is hit by missile, its out of the game with junks on the top deck and the command center destroyed or damage and radar out, it be a sitting hulk.

Originally posted by BigTrain
It survived the blasts for 25 days!!!!!!!!

What a champion, i can only imagine how many missiles and torpedoes it took to finally go down. I wish I could see photos, but we know thats not happening.

Train

No where does it state that "Missiles" or "Torpedoes" were used on any of the reports I've seen. It was probbly just a controlled explosion that made it sink slowly, since they wanted it to become a corral reaf. If to much damage was done to it, then they'd not be able to do that.

You don't make a reef in 6000 ft. of water. She was most likely sunk that deep for safety. If they would have done it in shallower water there might be a hazard if some of the charges they used didn't explode and to keep some idiot SCUBA divers from killing themselves trying to dive on the wreck.
What has been forgotten is the fact that a carrier may be very hard to sink you do not have to sink it to put it out of action. Look at the Forrestal fire off Vietnam in the 1960's. It put the ship out of action for several years. The US only has 9 or 10 active carriers at this time with another 4 or 5 in storage. Problem is that the shipbuilding capability of the US has left to go to hell and the facilities to repair a damaged carrier or reactivate a stored one is almost non existant. Throw in the lack of trained personel and aircraft a mission kill might be even better than sinking a carrier.