SUMMONING THE PIRATE MINELAYERS
Well it does seem like an opportune time for the pirate fleets of mine laying craft to start plying their wicked trade in the reaches of the Red and Black Seas now, doesn't it?
It was just forty years ago that I found myself on a ship embarking mine sweeping helicopters in Jeddah, to take on the mines of August in the Red Sea and there are no friends in the Black Sea.
6 comments:
My last time on a Navy ship was in 1974. Flew out to the Nashville from Charleston for a minesweeping exercise. The first time I had seen helicopters do the job. Interesting.
why choppers and not drones?
Well a drone is unlikely to come back from pulling magnetic sweep tail slashed virtually its entire length and explain that, "no, it hadn't dragged the tail over a reef but that your boat drivers slashed it with the prop as they wrestled it back aboard."
Drones are stupid that way.
not to belabor the point, but...
is our current state of electronics/technology sufficient to place something in a drone (with a transmitter) flying 50-100 ft above wave swells to detect the metallic mass/elctronic trail of a sub?
I played ASW hard a long time ago using an SQR-15 Towed Array in the North Pacific with all of ASW assets but it was a long time ago. As I recall our cues elsewhere came from SOSUS and ashore. The SSNs in support of the operations would also clue us in when we lost contact but we were admittedly hunting without giving it away. There was little to no hope of making a MAD detection in open ocean searching unless you had a reasonably small and recent datum.
The good news, as such, is there are so few operational submarines now that it is probably possible to pick them up on their departure from Petrapovlosk or Murmansk and just trail them. I think Russia went for many years without a single operational boomer on patrol. That should be easy enough.
I am curious though about the Chinese Rocket Rising Mines. I never want to see one in person but they sound fascinating and work in deep water. Probably a real pain in the ass to sweep.
Post a Comment