‘New Roles for Submarines’ in the October 2004 issue of Miltech says
“According to US sources, a SEAWOLF at 25 knots is quieter than a LOS
ANGELES-class boat pierside.”

Is this believable???

Cheers,
Sunho

Well that was pretty much the goal for the program. At $US2billion a pop I hope they got it 🙂

Daniel

There are only 2 Ka27 on the photo, that’s normal complement of Udaloy class destroyer, which also participated in the exercise. Why should they be Chinese?

LOL. The same reason for a lot of stuff, because people want it to be so 😀

Daniel

Here is a Government report on the problems with the class from 1999.

http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/1999/collins.html

While this report from last year discusses the $A857million upgrade/rectification program

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2005/11/australias-collins-class-subs-submariners-on-track-for-upgrades/index.php

The A-5 was considered along with the TSR-2 and the F-111 for the RAAF in the late 1960s. It was the aircraft actually recomended by the RAAF investigation team due to its proven capabilities and immediate availabilty. The F-111 was chosen instead however since it was percieved to be the better long term choice. One of those rather rare examples where the politicans made the right choice when overriding the military’s requests 🙂

Still the Vigie was a beautiful aircraft. I personally think China’s JH-7/JH-7A bears an interesting resemblance to it and would love to see that plane given a stretch and some further upgrades to become the PLAAF’s new bomber 🙂

Daniel

The TOR-M1 might not be too great for destroying high flying bombers, but does the US really use those in Iraq? No.

Lots of Apaches, A-10s, F-18s, and what not. Spare the TORs for later (aka, after the initial bombardment by not exposing them), and see what happens to the US aircraft.

SOP for US aircraft these days is JDAMs and LGBs from 20k+. One needs a valid high altitude system and/or robust fighter force to force them lower.

Daniel

I’d be astonished if the US got anymore dedicated antiship missiles. They’ll modify some of what they currently have to be able to hit ships too but I don’t think we’ll see something with ship attack designed in from the beginning until they get something like HyFly and the like in service.

Well I think its more a case of giving the missiles a limited abilty to attack a moving target through the use of GPS and a terminal sensor similar in concept at least to that being tested to give JDAM the same capability. So theoretically the system could be used against a ship. Like I said though this is all of the top of my head and is therefore quite possibly full of holes 🙂

Daniel

TASM was witdrawn in the early 1990s and the missiles remanufactured to TLAM. The TACTOM variant is supposed to gain a measure of dual use.

Daniel

Something I’ve always wondered is you see ships under construction with rust all over them and ships at sea that have rust on them. Why would you want to make ships out of an alloy that is going to corrode (weaken and ultimately fail)? Obviously a stainless steel CVN is going to cost more than a few bucks but is the rust you see on ships pretty much trivial as far as structural concerns go?

Yes, with proper maintenance a bit of surface rust is pretty trivial. Added to that most of your standard “stainless” products have a tough time in the marine environment. Those that don’t cost even more, not just in basic accquisition costs buts also in penalties to do with issues of workability, welding etc. This is definitely IIRC stuff since its more than ten years since I my materials science subjects at uni and I don’t work in the engineering field 🙂

Daniel