June 18, 2017

Paper Navy Tiger

We spend $600 billion on defense and this is what we get?

In the middle of the night our U.S. Navy DESTROYER crashes with a ginormous container ship.

The commercial vessel (yes it's bigger, but it's a civilian ship) is lightly damaged, but the U.S. Navy BATTLESHIP (after having undergone a recent $21 million upgrade) has 7 dead, the captain injured, and it can barely make it back to its port except with tugboats for extensive repairs. 

WTF!

How does an battleship with the latest sensors and technology collide with a civilian ship--how did such a foreign vessel even get close to our navy ship let alone collide with it--was someone completely "asleep at the wheel?"

This is no joke!--this is our first line of defense in our ability to project force globally. 

What if this had been a terrorist ship laden to the hilt with high explosives or an Axis of Evil Iranian or North Korean fast attack craft or even a Russian or Chinese attack submarine--surprise!

Doesn't a battleship need to be ever-vigilant and -ready for battle? 

How can we fight sophisticated 21st century militaries with advanced ship-killer cruise missiles, torpedos, and mines, if we can't even avoid the essential sinking of one our own fighting ships in peacetime. 

Our brave men and women who take up the uniform to serve this great nation--and this country--DESERVE BETTER!

Does this paper navy ship with a punched hole in it represent a larger forgotten or war-weary military in dire need of modernization and genuine readiness to defend the beautiful and free America? 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal via The Guardian)
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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Andy,
I agree that it seems incredible and should be investigated but there could be a lot of factors to consider.

Those are very tight and busy shipping lanes so close proximity is required.

The ships in these tight lanes are very hard to maneuver (think 5 miles to stop in full reverse). Now, take 500 ships per day with this kind of tight/slow motion handling and that means that everyone has to do what they are supposed to and when they are supposed to OR bad stuff happens.. And when bad stuff happens, it looks like a pile up on the freeway - it's slower but your reaction time is 700 times slower too so...

So it might have been 20 ships involved in this wreck and those two might have been executing flawlessly and still just couldn't avoid the mayhem.

Then there's the damage to the destroyer.. bad right? but that container ship hit the destroyer's starboard side with it's bow (hard)... and the container ship would have been cruising at about 17 knots (20MPH).. Given it's weight, that's about a billion joules of kinetic energy that had to be absorbed by the destroyer.. Said differently, it's like someone detonated 550lbs of TNT just below the bridge... thinking of it that way, she doesn't look too bad.