av8rmongo wrote:Donald M. Scheef wrote:This is not a bad an*logy. Since the development of high-capacity guided weapons, the following principles apply to naval warfare:
- If you can see it, you can hit it.
- If you can hit it, you can kill it.
In my opinion this is an oversimplification. There are as many encounters disproving each of these statements as there are proving them.
Paul
But how do you define "kill" in modern naval warfare?
I'm also a huge fan of 18th naval history. It took a lot of fire to disable an enemy ship. And destroying a single gun did little to the ship's firepower.
In modern naval warfare ships seem far more fragile. It seems you don't need to actually kill a ship to (easily?) take it out of action.
For example, we've all seen carrier crews walk the flight deck looking for engine-killing debris. I've always wondered if that was peace-time overkill but my brother in-law, a former carrier-based aircraft mechanic, said it was certainly not overkill. Debris is a serious threat to high performance jet engines. So imagine a naval battle in which a carrier's flight deck is only slightly damaged. Even if the catapults and arresting gear are intact, mere debris could take the carrier out of action for a significant period of time.
Ship electronics and sensing systems are also very fragile. "Killing" a ship may only require disabling a key sensor array.
And with so few primary weapons on modern warships disabling just one or two means the ship is out of the fight (many modern ships only have a single missile launcher, a single torpedo array, and a gun or two at most.)
Advanced hull design and damage control procedures may make actually sinking a ship a more difficult prospect. But maybe "mobility", "weapon", and "sensor" kills are much easier?
I don't know enough about the topic but based on my reading on the Falklands and Israeli actions ships seem both very lethal and very fragile functionally.