"Califbill" wrote in message
...

"F.O.A.D." wrote:
On 10/9/13 8:03 PM, Califbill wrote:
wrote:
On Wed, 9 Oct 2013 08:13:11 -0400, BAR wrote:

How soon you forget about the 40 year old French weapon called
the Exocet.

We have systems to shoot them down these days.

The massive damage was caused by ship design, not the Exocet
missile.
Build the superstructure out of a flammable alloy. Really great
warship
design. Not!


Are you saying a few "modern" Exocets with HE warheads in piercing
shells
won't blow up/sink a destroyer?

Probably not. And you would have to have a few. I think the Exocet
was
not a huge ship killer, ala Harpoon missile, but ignited the
superstructure.

separator

A well placed Exocet or any anti-ship missile might sink a destroyer,
but not a cruiser and certainly not a modern carrier.

Traditional Destroyer functions are typically performed by Frigates
now and are still considered to be the most "expendable" in a major
sea battle. They are designed and built as lower cost warships.
Frigates were the former Destroyer Escorts ("DE's") of the fleet.
DE's were re-designated as "FF" or "Frigate" in the 1970's.

Then there are DDGs ...Guided Missile Destroyers. They are still
based on low cost design. But that said, the USS Cole didn't sink
after having a huge hole blown in it's side at the waterline.
Compartment integrity and excellent damage control training saved it.

Guided Missiles Cruisers, most equipped with Agies systems and cruise
missiles are more valuable and are thereby designed to take hits.

Nimitz class carriers just are not going to sink, even with multiple
hits. Sure, a nuke will take them out, but that's not what they are
designed for.

You can't hit a US nuke sub. Nobody, including us, could find them
without being told where they were. I witnessed this in the earlier
versions on a ship equipped with very sophisticated, passive towed
array sonar. The sonar system was capable of hearing and
specifically identifying a surface ship hundreds of miles away, just
based on the noise signature. Land based SOSUS systems could detect
and identify for 1,000's of miles. There is a documented case of a
land based SOSUS system located in Bermuda positively detecting and
identifying a surface ship transiting the Straits of Gibraltar.

The DE I was on was equipped with the first of the mobile, ship based
passive towed array systems that was going through performance
evaluations. We could detect and identify virtually anything within
XXXX miles, including Soviet nukes. The Navy scheduled a test for
our ship to detect the USS Skipjack, an early nuke fast attack sub
that was quiet for it's time but was a marching band compared to
today's US nukes. We had a general idea of where it should be, but
after hours of trying to detect unsuccessfully, the test was
terminated. The Skipjack then surfaced about 200 yards off our port
bow.

The Passive Towed Array system is now a standard component on most US
anti-sub warships and are much, much more improved. The US nuke subs
today are also the quietest subs on the planet and are virtually
undetectable.