I don't travel today as I once did. Would love to board the USS Reagan. I still can't get used to the idea of women on ships. So I must be 12 years older than you are. I try to stay younger by chatting with older people. LOL Al, an actual friend served in the Navy and rose to the rank of Commander. He was in some secret operation in Mexico in WW2. His time on ships were really on boats chasing Nazi subs off the east Coast. Al is around 97 and e mailed me today.
I have seen pictures of carriers making extremely hard skew turns where the entire ship heels dramatically. I've wondered the purpose of those turns. Of course they have to do them when no aircraft are on the deck to avoid aircraft sliding off which is fully possible. But then if you have missiles incoming that you can't intercept, I figure aircraft (or deck personnel even) going into the drink are of secondary concern.
I am a pilot. I supposed that the navy tied down the valuable war planes until the last moment. When I was on the flight deck of the Enterprise with the E-7 personnel chief of that ship, I think I recall him telling me below the deck surface are guns that defend the ship. I suspect such guns can kill incoming missiles.
IIRC the only "guns" the Enteprise (or other carriers) have (aside from a handful of 50 caliber machine guns for dealing mainly with small boats like zodiacs) are the Phalanx CWIS.
Yeah and that gun can be aimed at incoming missiles. The .50 cal probably fires far too slow I doubt the navy relies just on them though. I suspect in any threat, the war planes commence take off. They have some ultra good weapons.
True. IIRC if all the aircraft are flown off and the aviation fuel lines are shut down then the fire danger aboard in case of a missile or bomb declines dramatically.
Flight deck of USS John C. Stennis doing a high speed turn during her acceptance trials in 1995. It gets better. EXTREME RUDDER TEST! U.S. Nimitz-class aircraft carrier makes high-speed SUPER-TIGHT TURN!
I do understand they are too fast, it is written in the missile description . My question is why do we consider them too fast, and too fast for what? When the target of intercept is falling on your head, we are talking about simple geometry. Place a material object on a path of another material object. What exactly does not permit us to do so? The computing time takes too much? The old electronics takes too much time to send-receive-compare-decrypt-analyze-build a solution? The proximity fuses are too slow to react when the target zooms by? The shrapnel will not reach the target as the shrapnel cloud is not designed for such speeds? I cant even guess, I have asked a formal developer of AA missile guidance systems, he could not answer . And that’s a high class specialist… The only proper way to hide from an active ping is the thermocline or piknocline or something alike. Where two layers of water with different characteristics meet, like salt level, temperature level, e.t.c. (this will reflect ping and screw sounds back) This means, that the deeper I dive, the better are the chances to find thermocline or maybe even two. If you want to ping a boat under a thermocline, you need to have a strong (large, heavy) sonar system like the one on a destroyer, and these are like 200km away from us (the Oscar is firing from 200km). Or you need to lower the active sonar buoy from a helicopter. Not just in to the water, you want this sonar to go below the thermocline. And the sonar line is usually around 150-200meters long. So again, the sub is likely to dive deep. I would say this cant be true or a standard maneuver… But I have just found a film where the missile hits the water just before hitting the target , seems it went too low, crashed, the debris can be seen coming out on the other side of the target. (I mean the first missile).
I read that in a book, sounded like a typical book plot device to me. Might as well instead flood all ballast tanks to submerge most of the ship, then after hit purge all the tanks and raise the impact point higher in the water.
Once again, it is related to the missile itself and the RADAR system used. PATRIOT uses a fairly short range missile. It is highly effective within that range, but a target has to be in the bubble before it can be targeted. Both the main RADAR system must not only get a hard lock on the target, it must be strong enough for the return "bounce" from that target to be seen from the seeker head on the nose of the missile. That means in other words it must be within "danger close" range. Not unlike firing artillery on top of your own head to take out enemies on the perimeter. And remember, PATRIOT is not really in a position to protect itself, it is not there to protect itself. It is in place to protect another asset (say a city or a military base), and it is generally on the outer edge of that base. So if that ICBM is targeted at say BIGCITY, and the PATRIOT site is located at PAD1, and PAD1 is located 20 miles to the south, then it does not take much to realize how long it takes the incoming missile at MACH 6+ to travel those 20 miles. Sorry, I really do not know how to break this down much easier, other then just saying "it can not do it". You may not like it, but that is math. And as a general rule, air defense sites are most commonly placed behind the defended location. Because unless you are discussing something like an ICBM, behind is better strategically than in front of.
