Lewis Page – The Daily Telegraph Nov 16, 2024
There’s been some discussion among those interested in military matters lately, regarding the most recent trials by the US of its “Quicksink” technology. A Quicksink bomb was used recently to sink a retired US big-deck amphibious vessel, a ship that would be regarded as an aircraft carrier in most navies. The perennial suggestion has been made, yet again, that aircraft carriers have been rendered obsolete – that aircraft carriers should no longer be “a pillar of our defensive strategy”.
Obviously there are a lot of people in the Western defence world who are against aircraft carriers, and they have every right to their opinion. But it might be helpful all the same to look at just what Quicksink is, what it’s for, and how relevant it actually is to the aircraft carrier debate.
First, Quicksink is not a bomb: it is a piece of seeker technology added to a smartbomb guidance kit, the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). A JDAM tail kit is attached to one or another kind of ordinary dumb aircraft bomb, turning it into a smartbomb. Normal JDAMs are equipped with inertial and GPS satnav guidance, and steer themselves as they fall using their tailfins so as to hit a set of coordinates with great accuracy. A Quicksink JDAM is different in that it has a seeker which can lock onto a ship beneath it and guide the bomb to hit that.
For the most recent test, the US Air Force took a normal dumb bomb, the 2,000-pound BLU-109/Mk 84, and added a Quicksink JDAM to create a Quicksink GBU-31. This was dropped from a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber to hit the former USS Tarawa, which was also struck by other weapons, and “helped to sink” the old ship.
The information that an aircraft carrier – or any ship – can be sunk if it is hit by heavy aircraft bombs is hardly new, however. Nor is Quicksink new: it has been demonstrated previously in 2021 and 2022. Tests using various other JDAM variants against ships date back to 2004, and aircraft bombs were sinking ships more than a century ago.
Nor is Quicksink intended for use against aircraft carriers. An aircraft carrier has very strong air defences, provided by its own aircraft and its group of escort warships. Even a B-2 stealth bomber would probably struggle to get near enough to a carrier that it could drop free-falling bombs on it: and no nation in the world apart from the US possesses long-ranging stealth bombers anyway.
If China or Russia managed the extremely difficult feat of localising a British or American carrier and sent aircraft to attack it they would not be carrying free-falling bombs, but stand-off missiles of one kind or another – or perhaps no aircraft would be sent. Instead China might launch long-ranging ballistic or hypersonic weapons from land thousands of miles away. The carrier would quite likely not be where it was expected to be by the time the attack arrived, and its defences would be likely to shoot the missiles down even if it was, but at least the attackers would not be on an impossible suicide mission with a Quicksink equivalent.
Quicksink is not intended for attacking aircraft carriers, or indeed any warships with serious air defences. The value of Quicksink is that the US has huge stockpiles of JDAMs and 2000-pounders, and they are cheap as chips compared to ship-killing missiles like the new Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) or the Tomahawk Block V-a.
In the event of China mounting an invasion attempt against Taiwan, there might be hundreds or even thousands of Chinese vessels in the Taiwan Strait, most of them troop carriers or logistics vessels – probably including many civilian ferries and the like. Even the mighty USA would struggle to afford a big enough arsenal of LRASMs, Tomahawks and similar advanced weapons to sink them all.
What the US might manage to do, however, is suppress Chinese air defences in the vicinity of the Strait. Chinese radar planes and fighters might be shot down, Chinese warships sunk and Chinese land-based radars and missiles destroyed. Then US planes (or drones) could move in and shower thousands of cheap Quicksink JDAMs from the sky to cripple the swarming invasion flotilla. If the US couldn’t make the airspace above the Strait completely safe, its stealth bombers and stealth F-35C carrier planes could still, perhaps, survive in it and drop Quicksink JDAMs in large numbers without running out of weapons. Drones might still be sent in, even if they suffered losses. The smartbombs’ guidance would mean the US aircraft could fly high, above the threat from basic close-in air defence weapons such as guns or light missiles.
So Quicksink is a good idea: but it isn’t new, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the aircraft carrier debate.
There are in all truth many grounds on which to criticise Britain’s aircraft carriers: most obviously the fact that they don’t have catapults. This means that they can only operate the cripplingly expensive F-35B jump jet, which isn’t as good as the other, cheaper F-35 variants. Even if it were true that having no catapults saved us billions (it isn’t true – this was a fiction concocted by blundering Ministry of Defence bureaucrats over a decade ago) the catapult decision would still be costing us money, not saving it. The extra expense of the F-35B – and the fact that it is our only modern, fifth-generation fighter jet – means that our carriers don’t usually have any planes at all, and we have never been able to equip one with more than eight jets. This, aboard ships designed to carry 36.
As the ships cost only £6bn+, however, it’s hard to describe them as a major pillar of our defence establishment. The landbased fourth-generation Typhoon fighter, which arrived well into the fifth-generation era, cost £23bn – and that’s in 2011 money, so think £33bn today. To give that figure a frame of reference, it’s about the same as the projected cost of replacing the national nuclear deterrent.
No, carriers are not a major pillar of UK defence.
Police refuse to pursue the sender of a Swastika to Jewish group
Story by Steve Bird
police force refused to prosecute a man who sent an image of the Star of David intertwined with the Nazi swastika to a Jewish students’ organisation, on the basis it was not really offensive enough.
Cambridgeshire Constabulary concluded that the image, sent on social media to the Union of Jewish Students, was not “grossly offensive” and therefore not a crime, it has emerged. As a result, the incident was reported as a non-crime hate incident (NCHI).The case came to light as Essex Police investigate Allison Pearson, the Telegraph writer, over a social media post. Her case has brought into sharp focus the way different constabularies enforce hate laws and the way NCHIs are used.
A police spokesman said ” well jews should stop killing people, and anyway we already have enough to do
In August 2024 Colin Jackson 45, a lorry driver from pinner was questioned by police at his home
because he poked out his tongue and pulled a face at Jews leaving a synagogue, he was issued with a caution.
Aircraft carriers can never be obsolete.
A carrier group is like a floating island. Each deck of every vessel is the same as the soil of your nation. Drop a dud bomb on that deck and you’ve attacked the nation.
The fact that a carrier can be destroyed matters not. In the Pacific War, Japan and the USA sank each other’s carriers with total abandon. We were at war and they were the national territory of the USA and Japan.
As it was in the 1940s it shall forever be. Extend the nation or shrink to nothing. The carriers are strong and staffed by brave warriors.
— US Naval Carrier Sailor, 1968-1972
Wars are not fought seriously; aircraft carriers were always sitting ducks, and Nazi Germany with the U-boats, which WERE being serious, showed that all our ships were too
Since they have a hard enough time actually getting out of dry-dock… and, when they do, they invariably ‘spring a leak’…
I’d have to say that Royal Navy aircraft-carriers were “rendered obsolete” a looo..oo…ong time ago…
without any “help” from advanced “hostile weaponery” fired in their direction… 😏
white man technology appropriated & turned against him by the Yids and wogs
Modern tech has rendered most surface ships obsolete ever since the sinking of the HMS Sheffield by an Exocet missile during the 1982 Falkland Islands War.
I was posting about how aircraft carriers and soon fighter jets are obsolete here years ago! Due to advances in missile and drone technology, large slow moving and expensive vessels have become obsolete. It is clear today that economics of war is extremely important and when unchecked it can even break the back of a former superpower! Copycat militaries that follow the same path as US who are unable to think outside of the box will end up wasting their resources and money. Legacy systems designed decades ago never had to deal with drones or advanced missiles. The smallest threat to an aircraft carrier can be a small stealth drone with enough explosives to take out the main radar on the bridge, this can render the vessel “mission unworthy” and repairs likely would take months.
Notable past incidents with US aircraft carriers:
1- 1966 mishandled flare causes fire that spreads to the whole forward half of USS Oriskany.
2- 1967 a Zuni rocket (about the same explosive power as a mortar shell) misfired causing cascading explosions and massive fire.
3- 1969 similar incident involving a Zuni rocket, USS Enterprise’s deck engulfs in flames.
4- 2020 massive fire on USS Bonhomme Richard while it had just finished upgrades and while it was still in the docks happened and they could not contain it! USS Bonhomme Richard had an ironic Slogan: “I have not yet begun to fight!”
This level of vulnerability is not reasonable for such expensive vessels with the need for so many trained and skilled people onboard that could easily lose their lives. There is a Hollywood style belief that CRAMs can shoot down all incoming projectiles which is completely false!
While both China and India made new aircraft-carriers not long ago, Russians had a rude awakening after their flagship Moskva was destroyed with two missiles, and having used drones to great effect they are unlikely to invest in new large ships again. In fact the whole purpose of an aircraft-carrier is to enable air-strikes far away from your lands, this is something that drones and ballistic-missiles can do much more efficiently as Iran and the Resistance Axis, in particular AnsarAllah (Houties) have demonstrated; with no risks (no pilots) and way cheaper! You can look up the hourly cost of keeping an F35 in the air, it does not make sense. Worst yet, Iranian passive beyond-horizon radars can lock on these stealth fighter jets anyway as happened in US/Zion failed attack on Iran and some Russian enthusiast are quick to credit everything to Russia!
Based on stated goals and naval doctrines of IRGC and even Iran’s regular navy, it is clear that Iran is building smaller drone-carriers and multi-purpose ships. US is trying to the same, they likely converted an Alaska Class oil tanker into their first Expeditionary Mobile Base and named it USNS Lewis B. Puller, but this is not enough US military is run by corporations and above all the BlackRock.
“Converting ESB-3 to a commissioned warship (USS) will allow U.S. Central Command and 5th Fleet the flexibility needed to meet challenges in the region,” Navy spokesman Lt. Seth Clarke
So since ~2014 US have been considering more economical solutions!
Speedboats are very effective in shallow waters, such as in Mandab strait or Hormuz strait, however IRGC is not only keeping its speedboat doctrine but also taking them to open waters. IRGCN has vary fast boats with extreme firepower on them. The range of missiles on them along with their speed and agility makes them very effective. Main threat to speedboats are helicopters and drones, for this reason IRGCN has made speedboats specifically made for air-defense. Furthermore Iran’s multi-purpose vessels and drone carriers can deploy speedboats. The unique catamaran Soleimani Class ship can carry 3 speedboats inside and can deploy them from the rear crane. While Iranian ships and weapons are known for being cheap yet effective, this particular ship even has a Sina remote surgery robot in its medical compartment, so a doctor can perform a surgery operation on the ship remotely from somewhere else. Sina tele-surgery robots are a competition to US made Da’Vinchi tele-surgery robots and as expected they are way cheaper and they don’t have costly replacement parts that are used in each operation. So the ship is cheap but it does have a remote surgery robot that in the future can be connected to AI. Amazing stuff really.
There are old speeches by former IRGC commanders explaining that the era ahead is cybernetics and in systems’ theory it means the 5 traditional sources of power for a country namely: Military, Economical, Political, Cultural, Technological will be subcategories of just two things: Energy and Data/Information/Intelligence. They defined Iran as the heartland for the foreseeable future due to control on energy and US as the brain-land due to the control over Internet and flow of information throughout the world. This new era has its own weapons and everything else becomes obsolete! So Iran focused primarily on development of missiles, drones and radars… in turn all US did was to ruin Iran’s image through the mass media but today it has clearly backfired! Nobody believes Iran’s missiles are “Photoshoped” any more! US military has been led by a bunch of fat Zionist corrupt scum who only care for profit, the result is clear, badly out of shape and everything is obsolete! A B52 bomber for example is only good for propaganda since still much of the world has not updated their thinking, it is only to show that US is still powerful in the eyes of the vassal states and the population, it does not deter Iran.
So allow me to say it like it is, Iran is THE world’s top missile and drone power with awesome radars! everyone else follows behind. As for nukes, they are overrated and I will explain again why in another opportunity.
Netanyahu is not stupid he has been trying to bypass Iran with western defined alternatives trade and energy corridors, but after October 7th they failed. Did you know both China and India were competing with one another to develop Zion’s port of Haifa? Yes, every Hezbollah missile and drone attack on the this city and in general on the north is painful for many! North of Zion was supposed to be a Silicon Valley that will produce robots for the Saudi NEOM city, and chips that was supposed to be planted in your head! All of that made in Zion! They had all their plans fixed but darn pesky Hamas and Hezbollah ruined it! No more Silicon Valley… so they are giving everything to the head project manager (Netanyahu) to fix it before it is too late but Resistance Axis can’t be fixed!
So with Trump, they may try to cool it with Russia so they can focus on saving Zion and defeating Iran. NATO Turkey, Jordan and even Egypt are waiting to send forces and invade Syria, maybe even as fake Muslim “peacekeepers”. If Iran’s Op True Promise 3 damage and cripple Zion sufficiently, you can be certain they will start their invasion of Syria.
my two tomans
balderson–Monty Python already mixed a swastika and “Star of David” hex in Life of Brian, and cleverly made Jewish rebels sound like Shop Stewards in the Unions
two tomans–it was because of nukes that the West stopped developing weapons and counter-weapons in the old style (the summit had been reached) and hoped for better Diplomacy, but lower down the food chain the mice can keep fiddling with the “conventional” materials