US Navy Detonates 40,000 Pound Bomb To Test Ship War Readiness; Triggers 3.9 Earthquake

a reply to: BlankUsername

Well if i had to guess a couple of active pings in the water would do it . It works so well that whales have panicked and surfaced to quickly and died so keeping it active is not a good idea. so instead of keeping it on and panicing them a couple of pings every now and them should get them to move along. You could also just make noise just like fishing you make noise and the fish leave. Im betting they would put spotters on ships as well but i dont know hat for sure.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: gortex

They donate smaller charges prior to the test. Those are designed to chase wildlife away before they donate the primary charge.

Like limpets, mussels, and various other speedy crustaceans?. Maybe shellfish does not count as wildlife. just dolphins, whales, sharks, mermaids, Patrick Duffy and various other fast-moving aquatic stuff.

I’m sure they are just testing a tsunami weapon.just like last time. It’s the ultimate cleanser. No trace and no questions. “ it’s a natural disaster.”

a reply to: Soloprotocol

The detonation is high enough in the water that it's not going to hurt most bottom dwellers. There will be some wildlife injured or killed, but it's minimized as best as it can be.

a reply to: karl 12

They do have the largest Navy. But quantity isn't everything. You can put a dozen smaller ships, capable of firing 4-5 missiles each against 2-3 larger ships, capable of firing 12-15 missiles at a time, and those larger ships are going to hurt you badly.

a reply to: Gothmog

Puerto Rico

originally posted by: Bigburgh
a reply to: Gothmog

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico had the advanced , classified , genetic lab from which the Chupacabra came from .
(did I get the spelling right ?)

Who cares about wildlife or using that money for good? Let's remind the world the US has the biggest d!ck!

a reply to: CptGreenTea


I beg to differ.

That was hardly the biggest dick on hand.







That is Biggus Dickus!

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: karl 12

They do have the largest Navy. But quantity isn't everything. You can put a dozen smaller ships, capable of firing 4-5 missiles each against 2-3 larger ships, capable of firing 12-15 missiles at a time, and those larger ships are going to hurt you badly.

Yes can't disagree with that and appreciate the post.

As for the Russian drill in the Pacific, the link is from a British tabloid but apparently 'Russia's defense ministry has announced it sunk an aircraft carrier just 35 miles off the coast of Hawaii'.

Russian fleet 35 miles off Hawaii practices sinking an AIRCRAFT CARRIER as US Navy strike group moves into the area and F-22 stealth fighters in Pearl Harbor are placed on standby.

link

originally posted by: underpass61
a reply to: gortex
I'm sure that have supercomputers that could perform an extremely accurate simulation of this. What a waste of resources and the environment.

Unfortunately even a super computer can not simulate the technician that partied late Sunday night watching football and getting hammered waking up hungover Monday morning, going into work, and under torqueing thirty-seven bolts on deck 3 aft port where aircraft armament is stored. Unfortunately the best way to test if it was put together up to spec is to test it in the real world before you put sailors on her. Would suck to be sleeping in the bunk and killed from a non-direct hit because Billy Joe Tech didn't tighten a few bolts and the shock wave sent bolt shrapnel through your kidney.

A computer modeler can't even accurately predict the weather, nor is it good at preventing or predicting human folly.

a reply to: BerkshireEntity


An interesting point, but there is still no substitute for live tests. But modern-day IT infrastructure does permit gathering, processing and data sharing. Naval shipbuilders and military vehicle manufacturers face competition with weapons systems development. Most notable, the design and production of the Bushmaster vehicle was influenced by live explosive tests done on the beast. The information gathered from IED strikes against coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq contributed to tracking down the terrorists and updating the Bushmaster's design.

Historically, one might the loss of the HMAS Sydney and the impact of ship/crew survivability.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Soloprotocol

All missiles miss at some point. There's no such thing as 100% effective. They have a significantly higher hit percentage, but everything misses at some point.

There's always a couple of damp squibs in every batch, but if they have the tech to fire rockets at distant planets and land with pinpoint accuracy millions of away I'm pretty sure hitting a ship the length of several football fields at distance is pretty much a given...most of the time.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

Look at how many times they miss with those rockets to other planets though. Of 48 missions to Mars, half of them have failed, or partially failed. Missiles have improved in leaps and bounds, especially over the earliest antiship missiles, but there are many hurdles to overcome. The biggest one is simply finding the ships. Even a carrier, as big as it is, is a very small target when it's well out to sea, over the radar horizon. It's not impossible, but it's extremely difficult. Then you have to get through the defenses of the group, which is not an easy thing to do. Easier, with hypersonic missiles coming online, but defenses will catch up, making it harder again until the next technology improvement.

originally posted by: BerkshireEntity
I agree with your statement in full. A waste of our taxpayer dollars to detonate a 40,000lb bomb when I'm sure we conducted similar tests in the 60's and 70's. As you said we can run highly advanced computer simulation testing. Maybe they are testing resilience of a new D dot D metal alloy made in zero gravity with an electrical.charge...oops oh well I'm sure that info is well known.

Get real. I do computer simulation for a living. You still have to test "real world". These tests are part of the cost of the ship's construction. With the Ford being the first in her class she's bound to get more testing. This will save money further down the line. I'm not even going to comment on "the metal alloy made in zero gravity". Take a Physics class.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Hypersonic or not, you still need a targeting platform somewhere to feed them data. In the future someone may get a hit on a carrier, once. After that any targeting platform is going to live a short, but, exciting life. In my opinion if a carrier gets hit, odds are that it will be making a Port Call someplace and will be targeted from ashore.

a reply to: JIMC5499

Satellite or submarine is about the best you'd get the sub would be short lived if it got close...satellite might be able to do the targeting for a while but ASAT devices probably exist to make that short lived too. Also jamming will probably be an issue progressing as the data still has to be transmitted to said projectile. If they ever get rail guns going properly that might be the best bet. All its needs is targeting info for a brief period and then boom...no stopping it and probably not enough time to dodge.

originally posted by: Soloprotocol

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Soloprotocol

All missiles miss at some point. There's no such thing as 100% effective. They have a significantly higher hit percentage, but everything misses at some point.

There's always a couple of damp squibs in every batch, but if they have the tech to fire rockets at distant planets and land with pinpoint accuracy millions of away I'm pretty sure hitting a ship the length of several football fields at distance is pretty much a given...most of the time.

Its way more complicated then actually landing on the moon. See the moon is easy to find where say a carrier is not. well, 1100 ft sounds huge in the ocean it's hard to find. Then there is the sheer size of a carrier 100000 tons of metal. That in itself makes it difficult to sink they attempted to sink a carrier.

The USS America was towed out to sea and bombarded with missile guns for 4 weeks in the exercise and wouldn't sink. They finally had to go onboard and plant explosives to get her to sink, here's a link

usmilitaryupdate.com...

So now we know they can take damage will discuss finding them in the first place. Ballistic missiles are extraordinarily complex instruments, and smart ones even more so.But it requires accurate information on where the target is provided it doesn't fail altogether. The South China Sea alone measures 1.4 million square miles and is only one of four marginal seas from which carrier air wings could launch attacks against China. I know everyone thinks you can just use satellites to track them but no you can not. But for argument's sake, they get lucky and spot it, They will launch where it was seen by the time weapons arrive. At 35 miles per hour, the carriers can be anywhere in an area measuring over 700 square miles within 30 minutes.

So how would china find it well they could attempt to use “over-the-horizon” radar located on land. The problem is its low resolution would not give you an accurate firing solution you know it's out there your just not sure where. They will generate several signals as it bounces off the water making it difficult to know which one was real.

So how about satellites in order to obtain targeting-quality information, the satellites must be placed in low-earth orbit (about 660 miles above the Earth’s surface). At that elevation they are traveling at a rate of roughly 16,000 miles per hour—which means they quickly disappear over the horizon, not to return for more than an hour. In order to continuously surveil ocean areas near China, Beijing would need to establish three parallel north-south tracks in low-earth orbit, and populate each of those tracks with dozens of satellites spaced to assure continuous coverage. So you would be looking at a minimum of 40 satellites and they would still only be looking at bands of the ocean. each band would be about 100 miles wide. A carrier could be just outside it and not be seen.

Their only option to hit a carrier with a ballistic missile is aircraft radar but here's the problem the US navy isn't going to allow that thing to sit there and guide in missiles. Then there is missile defence which I wnt go into but let's just say China has a very low probablility of sinking a carrier and would require the the same odds as winning the lottery.

a reply to: dragonridr

Very cool!

a reply to: RickyD

Our ASW capability has degraded since the 80's. They have no Outer Zone capability since they got rid of the S-3 and it isn't even a primary mission of the helicopters that they have.