Japan unveils new carrier-like warship, largest since WWII

[workinwifdakids]

I'm not going to re-write what I wrote for added comprehension.

I've told you where I got my information, established my credentials, and did a little digging. I furthermore said it wouldn't have worked, and why.

The reaction has been "That wouldn't have worked!" followed by "Art Bell yuck yuck Art Bell."

Apparently there's a full moon.

[Aesop]

A photo of a horn glued onto one horse's forehead doesn't equal the discovery that unicorns are real.
Unless you'd like to buy into a share of my jackalope breeding enterprise.

One ship, which looks sort of like a trawler, has holes that look like torpedo tubes.
Some torpedos are nuclear.
Therefore all trawlers had nuclear-tipped torpedos ready to blow the entire fleet's carriers out of the water at the flick of a switch.

Unless I miss my guess, that's a triple syllogism, with a backflip on the dismount.

[workinwifdakids]

A photo of a horn glued onto one horse's forehead doesn't equal the discovery that unicorns are real.
Unless you'd like to buy into a share of my jackalope breeding enterprise.

Saying things like that hurt me. It's not just an unfair representation of what I've said, it's personally mean.

If you care about me, please don't say things like that again. I'm a human being, and I like to think we're friends.

[Aesop]

I'm not being mean, and that wasn't done in malice.
I apologize if I hurt your feelings.

The example you selected is implausible, and doesn't hold up to scrutiny. That site's authors should have known better.
I'm not impugning your intelligence or motives, just counselling a more critical evaluation of internet fodder.
Free sources (this one included) are worth what you pay for them, until proven otherwise.
That goes for everything from the old McLaughlin Group Show on down.

[workinwifdakids]

I'm not being mean, and that wasn't done in malice.
I apologize if I hurt your feelings.

The example you selected is implausible, and doesn't hold up to scrutiny. That site's authors should have known better.
I'm not impugning your intelligence or motives, just counselling a more critical evaluation of internet fodder.
Free sources (this one included) are worth what you pay for them, until proven otherwise.
That goes for everything from the old McLaughlin Group Show on down.

Thank you for your apology. I want to be more clear, if that's okay.

I saw things happen in my mind here that are my perception. My perception may not be accurate, so allow me to explain my thinking:

I thought I said that, during an advanced Soviet naval strategy masters course, the U.S. Navy's lead intel expert on Soviet / Russian navy strategy, tactics, and doctrine stated that the Soviet Union had one low-yield nuke aboard each trawler tasked with following a CBG. Their objective during a bolt-from-the-black order would be to get as close to an American carrier as they could and then launch. He further stated this was considered fact by the American Navy during the Cold War.

He asserted they had a gnat's hair above ZERO chance of pulling this off, given the evasion / defense tactics a carrier (battle group) has.

When I stated that here on this forum, someone (or several someones) said none of these trawlers were ever weaponized with anything, period. That was my perception of their statements.

I could have pointed us to the incident in - what? - '97 or so, in which a Russian trawler trying to track subs leaving Puget Sound was being tracked by a USN helo. The helo was lit up by a laser device / weapon, apparently fielded for the purpose of less-lethal anti-air defense. So we know the Russians outfitted their trawlers post-Cold War with less-lethal tech designed to dissuade overhead surveillance. I decided to respond with a picture of a trawler outfitted with a torpedo tube instead.

The purpose of the picture was not to say, "This is a picture of the trawler the DoD believes existed." The picture / article I used was intended to refute the statement "None of those trawlers were weaponized." If I didn't make that clear, it was my fault, and for that I'm sorry.

For the record, I stand by the assertion that some of these trawlers were tasked with a sort of "banzai" attack we saw against the USS Cole in 2000, except with a nuclear payload. I similarly stand by my assertion - and everyone else's - that it likely would never have worked. However, a fuller understanding of Soviet nuclear strategy would cause any critic to say, "Well, hell - I wouldn't put it past them to try."

Thank you for allowing me to clarify.

[randy]

I thought I said that, during an advanced Soviet naval strategy masters course, the U.S. Navy's lead intel expert on Soviet / Russian navy strategy, tactics, and doctrine stated that the Soviet Union had one low-yield nuke aboard each trawler tasked with following a CBG. Their objective during a bolt-from-the-black order would be to get as close to an American carrier as they could and then launch. He further stated this was considered fact by the American Navy during the Cold War.

I'm not doubting you were told that. I do find it, shall we say interesting, that you were told that in what I assumed was an unclassified civilian academic environment.

However, I, having held positions that included CINCPAC J2 weapons planning (including red on blue war gaming on killing CVBGs), support for Naval War College exercises of various types, and exercises at a level I'm still not going to talk about, all at the TS/SBI or above level, never heard a whisper of even a hint of this.

I'm not saying this as using myself as an appeal to authority. I'm simply pointing out that I've been in a position to have heard this, in a position where I should have been told this, and never seen anything even on such a tactic even as a "what if". (Of course, had I had knowledge of this, without an open source to point to, I would have just stayed out of this discussion altogether).

One possibility is that this was considered early in the Cold War, and had ceased before I got in the positions I noted in the late 80's/early 90's. The cold war lasted 50 years, with several generations of military personnel and systems and there were a lot of transitions on both sides during those years in strategies and tactics.

[Aesop]

Fair enough, workin.

Ignoring the anal-retentive, paranoid control-freak mentality of every Soviet officer from 1920-1990, let's grant the premise:
They armed trawlers with nukes, and entrusted a rotating baker's dozen captains with the keys to that car, and orders that they might, one day, be used as not-so-smart bombs.
Let's give it some more rope: the orders come down to execute.
In for a penny, in for a pound, let's be wildly optimistic: they achieve total surprise and success, and all our CVs are wiped out at a stroke.

Now what does that get them?

Best case for the Soviets, it's some rogue admiral with a brain tumor, nothing else flies, we go to Defcon One 15 seconds after the second flash right on top of a battle group, and in 15 minutes, the livid and pissed off NCA order a couple of SSBNs to erase the entire Soviet Red Banner Northern, Baltic, Black Sea, and Pacifc fleets, using but a fraction of the payloads of two boomers, and leaving us with the other 90% or so, plus all the missiles, and all the strategic bombers, most of which are now rapidly on their way to decision points for the entire Soviet Union.

We pause, and ask them if they've gone batshit crazy, or would they rather step in off the ledge. Or be annihilated as a species, while two or three four-star generals do rock-paper-scissors for who gets to push the button.

Worst case for them, this was the opener on a general first strike, and comes concurrently with us detecting hundreds of ICBM launches across the Soviet Union. About 10-20 minutes later, our missiles and theirs hit their ballistic arcs, pass each other going east and west, and a half hour later neither country exists. In our death throes, we send some special shouts out to Red China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and depending on when between about 1960-1990 this happens, maybe Syria and Libya too.

Not being blitheringly incompetent morons all the time, the Soviets have figured this all out, and can't see the point of starting a hand grenade fight in a phone booth.

They're also not too keen on the odds of chance, mishap, accident, natural disaster, sabotage, defection, or bad luck causing the arming of trawlers with nukes to be outted to the world, and facing the subsequent interception, gunpoint boarding, seizure, or sinking on sight of every Soviet vessel worldwide over the next three days, and 50 years of being a worldwide pariah.

This is an idea even Gilligan would recognize as too stoopid to try.
Only some guy in a cubicle where they pump in light and air would ever come up with it, and only hold onto it or express the idea out loud because they see crazy as a feature, not a bug. I don't doubt their sincerity, only their sanity.

And why I think the likelihood it ever happened is lower than the odds of Bigfoot riding the Loch Ness Monster up the Mississippi at high noon for a meeting with space aliens at the St. Louis Arch on live TV. And why I think the program was so secret, even the Soviets weren't aware of it.


But I'm open to reasoned counter-argument.
Just think of me as Admiral Fred Thompson in Hunt For Red October after noting that the Russians don't take a shit without a plan.

[workinwifdakids]

But I'm open to reasoned counter-argument.

You make a convincing case, buddy. I suppose something I ought to consider is that my mentor, despite his impeccable credentials, was quite simply wrong. I'd like to research it more right now, but I have two syllabi due Monday morning and the department changed textbooks. For another time, perhaps.

Regarding their lack of desire for, as you put it, "starting a hand grenade fight in a toll booth," the Soviets were different - hell, ARE different - from us. They have always believed, and continue to believe, that one can fight and win an all-out nuclear war. We have continuity of government. They have continuity of state. It doesn't mean they're right, but it means we have to think like they think, if we want to guess what they think.

Yeah.

[Netpackrat]

Worst case for them, this was the opener on a general first strike, and comes concurrently with us detecting hundreds of ICBM launches across the Soviet Union. About 10-20 minutes later, our missiles and theirs hit their ballistic arcs, pass each other going east and west, and a half hour later neither country exists. In our death throes, we send some special shouts out to Red China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and depending on when between about 1960-1990 this happens, maybe Syria and Libya too.

You reminded me of this. For some reason, I never seem to get tired of watching it.

They have always believed, and continue to believe, that one can fight and win an all-out nuclear war.

That probably has at least something to do with their definition of "acceptable losses" being somewhat different from ours.

[MiddleAgedKen]

Not to mention their definition of victory, which probably runs to: "No one can invade us ever again. 220, 221, whatever it takes."