US Navy Ships of the Twilight War

[Tegyrius]

No need to apologize. Thanks for the clarification. You make a good point. Training and "real life" aren't the same thing. One can definitely draw the wrong conclusions about the latter based on the former. As you point out, sometimes, the underdog can derive false confidence from success in "practice" scenarios. I contend that it's the favorite that more often makes mistaken assumptions based on exercises/training maneuvers. If the favorite "wins", it bolsters overconfidence. If they "lose", they write it off to a fluke, beginners luck, or "we weren't really trying". In either case, when the SHTF, a rude awakening often awaits.

This. As someone who's designed, evaluated, or observed a handful of public safety exercises, I'll say that calibrating an exercise to the intended players is a delicate balance. Make it too easy, or make an exercise series too repetitive, and it becomes a pencil-whipping operation which no one takes seriously, and which generates no meaningful capability improvements (which are the ostensible point of said exercise). Make it too hard and your players go away demoralized, lacking confidence in their gear/training/leadership, and they learn nothing.

The need to demonstrate perfection in front of a political audience can be the worst possible factor in exercise design. In the public safety world, we emphasize that the point of exercises is to make mistakes and find failure points in safe, controlled, simulated circumstances so you can eliminate those problems before you're called on to do the same thing for real. Every time I run an exercise, whether tabletop or full-scale, I emphasize in my opening briefing that I expect and want mistakes - if everything goes perfectly during play, the exercise itself is a failure.

Based on discussions with law enforcement trainers with whom I've worked, as well as the few evolutions I've been fortunate enough to participate in, the same principles apply to force-on-force training in the LE world.

- C.

[Olefin]

History has demonstrated time and again that those who discount their opponents in peacetime usually pay a heavy price in war.

Stilleto69, keep in mind that the Iragi military c1991 was not the Red Army c1986. Yes, they used a lot of similar equipment (although the Soviets usually didn't export their very best) and doctrine (much of which the Iraqi military misapplied), but to conclude that the US Army would have whipped the Red Army because Saddam got spanked is like arguing that North Vietnam would have beaten the United States in a total war because they whipped the US-equipped and trained ARVN in a limited one.

This topic is dealt with extensively in this thread:

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpt=897&highlight=Defense+Red+Army

By that logic, wouldn't the OPFOR be half-assing it during those exercises too In that case, the conclusion that CAG's are vulnerable to submarine attack still stands up (if both sides aren't trying, and the OPFOR still manages to sink a carrier, it stands to reason they could also do it if both sides were trying). Or are you contending that only USN sailors don't take exercises seriously And, not to discount your nephew, but one person is a tiny small sample size. My little brother is career naval officer going on 20 years of service and he doesn't slack, or allow his sailors to slack, during exercises. You could poll the entire active duty USN about how hard they try during exercises and get a wide range of responses.



Discussions of canon are inherently subjective. One man's "improvement" is another's "ruining it". Every GM is free to revise their own T2kU as they see fit, but trying to "fix" it for everyone is a slippery slope. v1 canon is what it is. Some of us want to reconcile with canon as much as possible (I fall into that camp); some want to revise or even rewrite it. Neither approach is wrong, necessarily. It becomes an issue when folks start using value words like "should" or "shouldn't", or pushing their POV hard on others.

re CivGov naval resources, there must be a few, as canon has CivGov sending reinforcements to Yugoslavia relatively late in the war. I can't imagine that they'd send troop ships, un-escorted, across the Atlantic and into the hostile Mediterranean.

Keep in mind that the canon implies that the USN was seriously damaged during the war but that there were still ships left in operation even as late as 2001 - ie the ships that escorted the Omega evacuation, the remaining ships at Cape May and in the Middle East and Kenya. And the canon does confirm that there are warships available for the 1999 movements of troops by both CivGov and MilGov. Per the V1 guide there are a few warships available as escorts - thus there must have been USN units that declared for CivGov.

[Legbreaker]

Some of us want to reconcile with canon as much as possible (I fall into that camp); some want to revise or even rewrite it. Neither approach is wrong, necessarily. It becomes an issue when folks start using value words like "should" or "shouldn't", or pushing their POV hard on others.

That's pretty much my position too. Do what you like in your own group, but as a whole we should probably stick to making sense of what's already written rather than tearing it down and re-writing. More people will get more benefit that way and get a better understanding of the game world as a whole. From that understanding individuals can make their own changes with a higher likelihood of retaining an overall consistency and believably.

My view on this has remained the same for decades.

[Legbreaker]

It's worth bearing in mind that the Pact navies were virtually destroyed very early on in the war and there wasn't much left in the latter couple of years besides a few scattered commerce raiders. This isn't to say the NATO forces were must better off though.
Given the limited enemy naval forces, it's possible later war convoys could have risked the crossing without escort and probably have made it unscathed, perhaps even undetected nine out of ten times (or possibly better, who knows). A single lightly armed and obsolete escort may have been deemed more than sufficient to protect ten, twenty or more civilian vessels - it's often all that was available in WWII during the height of the Battle of the Atlantic....

With regard to exercises and training, failure is often a far better teacher than success. Even after 25+ years I still remember those times which resulted in a "loss" for the good guys quite clearly, yet the "wins" all meld together. Provided an honest and open discussion/debrief is carried out, everyone involved learns something and improves their abilities. Consistently winning just plays on confirmation bias and doesn't make the participants actually think.

However, consistently loosing does very little besides impact morale. Being "allowed" to win (when deserved) helps to cement good tactics and skills, and promotes critical thinking and imaginative problem solving.

[Olefin]

Leg I know you want to go with the almost fully destroyed USN but the reality of the canon doesn't show that. Most likely there are still a decent amount of ships left but they don't have the fuel left or the weapons available to make them fully operational. For instance the USN and the Soviets still had the forces left that came to blows off the coast of Mexico that left only the Virginia still afloat albeit very heavily damaged pretty late in the war. And the US and Soviets still have the forces that are afloat and fully operational in the Caspian and Persian Gulf even in the spring of 2001.

Also keep in mind the fact that for a lot of modern ships if you don't have missiles available that many of them are only armed with a single gun. That's why older ships would be reactivated - more guns means they are actually worth the fuel to deploy them in a world where guns are now the main weapon as missiles run low on both sides. That's why the Edwards is so effective off of Kenya - the USN had a lot of shells in stock and she is an all gun destroyer - and as such can still be fully effective and worth keeping operational whereas a more modern destroyer with only a single gun may not be

[Rainbow Six]

Leg I know you want to go with the almost fully destroyed USN but the reality of the canon doesnt show that.

Can you cite some evidence to back that claim up Your reference to the USS Virginia for example - the battle mentioned in Satellite Down dates from March 1999 and as you say yourself left the sole surviving ship very heavily damaged (specifically it would have sunk within an hour if it hadn't been beached) so I don't follow how that can be used as an argument against a heavily damaged USN

[Raellus]

I don't think that anyone is arguing for an "almost fully destroyed" USN. However, the USN was the largest navy in the world when T2K was released, yet canon lists no more than a dozen extant, operational USN warships and submarines (of the latter, The Last, no less), c.2000. I don't recall if any are mentioned by name, but Going Home does state that the convoy will steam with a few escorts. Olefin, you've mentioned an Adventure module listing a ship or two off the west coast of the US in late 2000. So yes, there are operational USN warships in late 2000, but there are far, far fewer than there were at the beginning of the war.

Therefore, to reconcile canon, one must explain why so few warships survived a few years of high intensity naval warfare. My post of the Bonhomme Richard fire was attempting to take a step in that direction.

Several posters have made some pretty outrageous claims on this forum over the years, regarding the capabilities of the USN. For example, on these very boards, I've read that CAG's are essentially invulnerable to air, submarine, and surface attacks, and that supercarriers can sustain multiple SSN or torpedo hits and remain operational. Neither of these particular arguments have any basis in fact. They're based entirely on theory and the claims of the defense industry and DOD (Consider the source. Of course, they're going to claim that the systems that they exchange for billions of dollars are extremely reliable and effective). These arguments ignore numerous historical examples of the vulnerability, unreliability, and fragility of modern warships and their weapon systems.

Argument: Nothing could get through a carrier's Aegis AA screen.

Evidence For: Defense industry and DOD claims. Result of simulations & exercises.

Evidence Against: In 1987, an Aegis cruiser mistook an Iranian Airbus for an attack fighter and shot it down. Clearly, the system is not perfect. Arguments that Aegis will be able to detect, target, and hit every supersonic SSM swarming a CAG from multiple directions of attack is simply wishful thinking.

Theory: A carrier can sustain multiple SSN hits and remain operational.

Evidence For: ...

Evidence Against: Look at photos of the HMS Sheffield, and the Atlantic Conveyor (comparable in size to a supercarrier). Each were hit and sunk by single Exocet SSMs. The USS Stark was hit by two (one of which failed to detonate) after failing to detect either missile. The damage almost sunk the frigate, and required extensive repairs. Furthermore, most contemporary and subsequent Soviet SSMs were faster, longer-legged and carried larger payloads than Exocet.

Theory: A submarine couldn't sink a supercarrier with a torpedo. First of all, it couldn't get close enough to fire a torpedo. Second, even if hit, it could remain operational.

Evidence For: ...

Evidence Against: Allied submarines have repeatedly penetrated CAG ASW escort rings and launched successful torpedo attacks against carriers. It's extremely unlikely that every one of those successes was a fluke. As for torpedo damage, just watch SINKEX footage. Modern torpedoes are tremendously destructive. The HMS Conqueror sunk a US-built light cruiser, the General Belgrano, with two 21 inch Mk 8 mod 4 torpedoes (3 were launched; keep in mind that these weren't even the most modern torpedoes fielded by the RN at the time). I don't recall any warship surviving torpedo hits during the last decade or so of the Cold War.

Theory: The Cold War Soviet Navy sucked. It would have stood no chance against the USN in a total war scenario.

Evidence For: The sorry state of the Red Navy in the decade following the collapse of the USSR. War games.

Evidence Against: This one is impossible to prove or disprove either way. However, based on the preceding arguments examined above, it would be Quixotic to believe that NATO navies, fighting the Soviets in/close to their own [USSR] territorial waters (as per Soviet Naval Doctrine) would have emerged anywhere near unscathed.

Since the game-play focus of T2k is small unit land warfare, most of this theoretical parsing of naval strength c.2000 is moot anyway. But the evidence available suggests that full-scale naval warfare in 1990s would have been quite destructive.

[Legbreaker]

Leg I know you want to go with the almost fully destroyed USN.

Umm, that's not what I said.

[Legbreaker]

Can you cite some evidence to back that claim up Your reference to the USS Virginia for example - the battle mentioned in Satellite Down dates from March 1999 and as you say yourself left the sole surviving ship very heavily damaged (specifically it would have sunk within an hour if it hadn't been beached) so I don't follow how that can be used as an argument against a heavily damaged USN

Also need to remember canon (1st, 2.0 and 2.2) all state in 1997

At sea the plan fares even worse, as coastal missile boats and the remnants of Northern Fleet's shore-based naval aviation inflict crippling losses on the NATO fleet. By mid June the last major naval fleet-in-being in the world has been shattered.

Rather clear there's not much left on either side isn't it....
And that's only about 9 months into the war, and a month before nukes started to be used. Given ships need fairly regular replenishment, repair and replacement crew, and most ports (any any vessels caught in them) are destroyed or heavily damaged by nukes, it's not looking good for ANY naval forces by 2000.

The argument for a strong, or even significant US navy simply doesn't hold water. Some ships certainly do still exist as can be seen in the middle east, but they're rendered nearly impotent by lack of fuel, ammunition, spare parts, etc.

[Spartan-117]

Also need to remember canon (1st, 2.0 and 2.2) all state in 1997
Rather clear there's not much left on either side isn't it....
And that's only about 9 months into the war, and a month before nukes started to be used. Given ships need fairly regular replenishment, repair and replacement crew, and most ports (any any vessels caught in them) are destroyed or heavily damaged by nukes, it's not looking good for ANY naval forces by 2000.

The argument for a strong, or even significant US navy simply doesn't hold water. Some ships certainly do still exist as can be seen in the middle east, but they're rendered nearly impotent by lack of fuel, ammunition, spare parts, etc.

I feel like half these sources contradict themselves.

USNAVCENT: The naval component, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (USNAVCENT), controls the last American carrier task force in the world, Task Force 76. USNAVCENT's main duties include keeping the Persian Gulf open and free of hostile warships and providing a sealift capacity for the transfer of personnel and supplies within the region. <<All hard to do without fuel/ammo<<

Also, if you don't want to sail around in big ships, you can always fly:

317th Tactical Airlift Wing HQ: Al Qatif, Saudi Arabia 357th Tac Airlift Sdn (180 men, 4 C-130s, 2 C-23s):
Al Qatif, Saudi Arabia
756th Tac Airlift Sdn (170 men, 3 C-130s, 2 C-23s): Bushehr
81st Weather Recon Sdn (150 men, 2 WC-130Hs): Ad Damman, Saudi Arabia
32nd Aerial Refuelling Sdn (160 men, 1 KC-10, 2 KC-130s): Ad Damman, Saudi Arabia <<They have KC-130 tankers, that haven't been canalized for C-130 parts... The Spice Must Flow!

Although heavily damaged by nuclear and conventional at- tacks, a few of the oilfields and refineries in the Middle East still produce oil. Most is consumed locally, but a trickle is exported by the various nations who control the oilfields. This trade in oil is slowing, as attrition reduces the number of ships available. What remains is now mostly with nations of the Franco-Belgian Union.
Military units receive fuel according to their individual mission requirements. Fuel is available on the open market (diesel: $7 per liter, C/C); gas: $12 per liter, S/S). Avgas is reserved for military use only, but can be had on the black market ($22 per liter, R/R).

[Olefin]

Can you cite some evidence to back that claim up Your reference to the USS Virginia for example - the battle mentioned in Satellite Down dates from March 1999 and as you say yourself left the sole surviving ship very heavily damaged (specifically it would have sunk within an hour if it hadn't been beached) so I don't follow how that can be used as an argument against a heavily damaged USN

The argument is that the USN was still operating such a task force off the Pacific as late as 1999 - thus the chances that the USN has ships available for escorting the MilGov and CivGov reinforcements to Europe and not just a oeramshackle destroyer as was previously said is pretty high. Ie the USN isnt completely down and out. And per the RDF and the notes that I used that Frank Frey posted there were definitely active US task forces still operational off the Persian Gulf and Kenya in 2001. And by heavily damaged I mean a USN that couldnt even provide a single escort ship for three divisions heading for Europe thru the Med.

[Olefin]

Also need to remember canon (1st, 2.0 and 2.2) all state in 1997
Rather clear there's not much left on either side isn't it....
And that's only about 9 months into the war, and a month before nukes started to be used. Given ships need fairly regular replenishment, repair and replacement crew, and most ports (any any vessels caught in them) are destroyed or heavily damaged by nukes, it's not looking good for ANY naval forces by 2000.

The argument for a strong, or even significant US navy simply doesn't hold water. Some ships certainly do still exist as can be seen in the middle east, but they're rendered nearly impotent by lack of fuel, ammunition, spare parts, etc.

Shattered doesnt mean destroyed - the Japanese fleet was shattered after Leyte Gulf - and still had operational ships that fought on with the last real sortie being off Okinawa by the Yamato. And the US didnt have most ports hit by nukes - Boston and NYs harbor were untouched by nukes as was several ports in the Gulf and along the Pacific Coast and elsewhere.

And the ships in the Gulf and Kenya are fully operational - they just used the ones in the Gulf to land opposed at Char Bahar and are doing operational patrols in the Gulf and the IO. The RDF specifically refers to the USN ships there as the last operational carrier task force.

[Rainbow Six]

The argument is that the USN was still operating such a task force off the Pacific as late as 1999 - thus the chances that the USN has ships available for escorting the MilGov and CivGov reinforcements to Europe and not just a oeramshackle destroyer as was previously said is pretty high. Ie the USN isnt completely down and out. And per the RDF and the notes that I used that Frank Frey posted there were definitely active US task forces still operational off the Persian Gulf and Kenya in 2001. And by heavily damaged I mean a USN that couldnt even provide a single escort ship for three divisions heading for Europe thru the Med.

OK, so the reality of the canon is actually that it accounts for what, maybe twenty to twenty five ships Theres seven in the RDF Sourcebook, five in the Korean Sourcebook, the John Hancock is mentioned in Going Home, theres a reference to Tarawa in the V2 Nautical Guide, the destroyers mentioned in Challenge magazine, and the Corpus Christi plus however many you put in Kenya (I havent read that so I dont know the exact figure).

Thats out of a US Navy that peaked at 594 vessels in 1987 according to Wikipedia. So were missing 569 vessels give or take a few. I just wanted to make sure that there was nothing in canon that I didnt know about that accounted for at least some of that number given your earlier statement, but it appears that there isnt, so the reality of canon doesnt really support anything (one could argue that if anything it supports the opposite view as something like over 95 % of the US Navys strength is unaccounted for. Thats a pretty big number).

Thats fine, its obviously up to each individual how they want to interpret what might have happened to those missing ships. FWIW Id be inclined to agree with the view put forward by several people that there are still sufficient ships out there not specifically mentioned to carry out escort tasks and what not (I don't know who used the phrase oeramshackle destroyer but it wasn't me), although again you need to pay attention to timing - FYI the Civgov reinforcement mission to Yugoslavia took place in probably 1998, maybe 1999 (theres a likely discrepancy in the US Army Vehicle Guide - the 76th and 80th Divisions are quoted as deploying to Yugoslavia in October 1998, at which point they came under the command of IV Corps. Same source states the 42nd Division deployed in the autumn of 1999, together with IV Corps HQ. So unless IV Corps operated without its HQ for a year thats probably a typo and the three Divisions deployed in October 1998. Having enough ships to provide an escort force in October 1998 doesnt really prove anything one way or the other if youre talking about Summer 2000 as your game point.

[Olefin]

I am talking about 1998-1999 - thats the Virginia battle, thats the escort missions for the last MilGov and CivGov reinforcements to Europe and Korea, thats the sailings for the convoys that brought the forces to Kenya that enabled the US to keep the refinery and port at Mombasa in operation. So they werent reduced to sending unescorted troopships for those ops. And earlier I posted the ships that are part of the forces based in Kenya which were based on Franks notes as well as my own imagining. They include a small patrol force, a naval task force centered on a missile cruiser and an amphib/support force that is there to provide support both for Kenya and for the forces in the Gulf.

[Rainbow Six]

I am talking about 1998-1999. thats the Virginia battle, thats the escort missions for the last MilGov and CivGov reinforcements to Europe and Korea, thats the sailings for the convoys that brought the forces to Kenya

OK, so we're agreed that excepting Kenya, none of this proves anything one way or the other about the possible state of the US Navy in the summer of 2000 (and the Virginia battle isn't really relevant as none of those ships survived, so again if anything it only supports the worst case scenario, i.e. the existence of a ship or ships in service in 1999 is not proof that the same ships are still operational in 2000) and the actual reality of canon is that somewhere in the region of 569 vessels are unaccounted for