I must confess to being confused about your attachment to the issue of the use of flank speed. If you detect incoming (and depending on the count) then you have a series of minutes to take physical evasive action. What commander not in their right mind is not going to engage flank speed for the window of attack and for the duration (A+15??) of the attack. The whole idea is to cause as much disconnect as possible to any incoming that are using a number of terminal guidance modes. NOT taking physical evasive at flank speed to try and cause as much seapartion as possible from the point of detection appears to be cavalier and foolhardy. We aren't talking about a transpacific dash at flank speed, it's about physical evasion concurrently applied to other evasion and disconnection manouvres. I may be getting confused in what you are trying to achieve here, but you always appear to me to take a bipolar view of theatre "meeting engagement" when that is clearly not the case.

Somewhere on Strategypage is an article by Jim Dunnigan describing how the fleet never really overcame the problem of kamakaze tactics, and that even in this day it would be difficult to counter. And the attack on USS Stark reveals that even a ship that had been armed with three different weapons capable of shooting down a cruise missile was still vulnerable to a non-saturation type attack. While the nature of classical cruise missile attack was recognized (belatedly - I was a radical then and everyone said I was wrong about them too until Elat was sunk) and proper defenses and tactics were devised, the lack of actual attacks caused us not to even train ships captains in the fundamentals. [For some depressing reading, read the book by the captain of the Stark. He (correctly) says search radar does not detect cruise missioes. He did not know, and never learned even in post mortum analysis, that we don't depend on search radar to warn of cruise missile attacks. Because he did not know, his ECM station was not manned. If it had been, his unmanned weapons, none of which could bear on the primary threat axis, would have insured none of his hard kill defense layers would work. In spite of being years into a hot war, where most of the missiles fired hit bouys - so it was clear the enemy did not identify his targets well - he felt the US flag would protect him - even at night! His ECM and three hard kill weapons failed him - because he was not properly educated and did not organize his command for condition III sailing in an AAW configuration. The situation with ballistic missiles is much worse than that. In at least two forms, we can expect no radar warning. [The GPS attack aimed at the point in the sea we are predicted to sail to and the passive attack aimed at an electronic or heat emission.] There are very few radars able to detect these attacks and, if we use one of them, we by definition are not operating passively, so the position of the force is betrayed, and enemy passive missiles have a signal to home on. Most of our anti-aircraft and anti-cruise missile weapons are not effective against ballistic missiles. The new CNO says we have too many defensive weapons and wants to deactivate some of them to save money - not develop new or improved ones that cost more money. Most of all, we have the long habit of getting away with mental habits based on the experience of no enemy attacks. It is like not backing up your computer: on the average it does not hurt so you get in the habit of thinking it does not matter. Instead of facing this problem, and developing weapons and tactics that would turn your statement into truth, we are assuming it is true - when it most assuredly is not. I was not wrong about the SS-N-2 Styx and related threats in the 1960s and I am not wrong about the CSS family threat today. For a taste of what it is like (they have nothing like the right number of missiles nor even the right forms of guidance) see the extended Harpoon version of the Taiwan strait (on the harpoon web site) - using just a fraction of USNI database and a woefully incomplete computer simulation (you don't have to worry about lots of things, and the enemy is a computer, which you can always outsmart).

Using coast defense guns and anti-aircraft guns, Vietnam developed effective patterns for firing at a maneuvering target they could not track due to radar countermeasures. It was relatively effective against aircraft - the vast majority of which were lost to AAA because we didn't like flying in the effective performance envelop of SAMs on most occasions. Possibly the most extream example was the case of rocks, dynamite and piano wire used for "AAA" patterns when you had to approach from a predictable direction. But we always feared a lucky hit on a ship that disabled propulsion or steering, and we drilled a maneuver where the next ship in the line would take the damaged one in tow. To pass a high speed ship, send over a light line, follow up with a heavy hawser, and then match speeds at the moment the line goes taught was a feat of seamanship few would believe is possible - if you told them - and dangerous - if the line parts you will probably damage equipment and kill people. But we practiced it because pattern shots have some merit. That with 130 mm and 152 mm shells. Imagine it with half ton or 800 kg warheads!

To say "we cannot so they cannot" seems to be obviously false reasoning. Did we ever try? It is not one of our concepts. Rather, it is a Russian concept, dating from the 1980s. One Russian system we understand was working on this at the time the USSR collapsed. To think that a derivitive of it or inspired by it could not have beed developed in 15 years is possible only if you have a much lower opinion of Chinese technology than I do. In any case, Chinese claims for such a system are now 5 years old, and at least one major think tank is crediting them with it since 2002.

There are some fundamental issues of difference between the Stark incident and what is being brainstormed (in a restricted fashion) in here. The Stark was also a failure of command, a demonstration of operational complacency, and in extremis, tactical indolence. Current systems do have the capcity to detect CCM's, the response systems are there, the detection systems are there - and since Stark, the issue of approp alert in an environment is there. Stark also pointed to failures in command as much as anything else. IF you look at all the vessel attacks (incl Cole), there were some fundamental failings in procedures. Has the USN learnt from those failings? I'd argue yes. Are they more willing to look at obtuse solutions? Again I'd argue that they are more open minded across some areas. One of the things that the US military learns fairly quickly is to abandon some of those sacred cows. They're not perfect, but they react faster than most as they realise that they operate in a very fluid and dynamic environment where change is critical for survival. Will they lose ships and assets? Probably. Will the OPFOR lose more? Absolutely.

Regretfully, there is very little of this. We cut back the program to just one flight of one class. This class uses the very rare ER version of the Standard missile, and other ships cannot even feed it missiles to control with similar capability. [Think of the ER Standard as Terrier, the MR version as Terrier - insofar as the ER is a two stage missile and the MR is a single stage missile- both using the same guidance package.] PLA has converted some of its older SA-2s (think Nike Herculese class) missiles into simulators while it converted others into maneuvering (and low altitude capable) anti-shipping missiles. This permits them to practice both attack and defense in the real world instead of just in software. It looks like a few years later they came up with a conversion package (being retrofitted) for at least some of their ballistic missile families that explicitly are anti-shipping oriented. Our ABM programs are based on the assumption we are defending fixed land targets, not warships at sea, and we have not oriented them, nor our warship doctrines, to dealing with such a threat. Until we admit it is a threat, we won't do that either. Having seen equal unwillingness to admit "backward" Russians could make an effective cruise missile - until some even more "backward" Arabs sank and Israeli destroyer with them - I think it is time to consider the possibility we are just assuming there is no threat when, in fact, there is or shortly will be. I think there is and it will be worse shortly.

Reading about German and Japanese ideas in some (then) classified materials, I postulated passive data might be good enough to attack a moving ship at sea. This in Vietnam. Everyone was as sure as Jim no one knew their history like I did and it was a hundred to one shot anyone would try it. HMAS Hobart - famous for being taken out of action by USAF twice - was also taken out one other time. By NVA gunners, using passive data from radars that normally operated actively. Like the Japanese historically, the Russians designed a passive mode into their radars. And their long ECM schools (the first one lasts two years) covered how to link multiple sites for simultaneous bearings to solve the fire control radar. Worked good. This was thought to be the first successful passive ECM attack against a moving warship at sea in wartime in history.

I agreee with your data and know it before, it's about right. However, the problem is the supply fleets. Where will they come from? From Japanese bases? They are all within the range of China's attacks, including Gum istelf. So they are not quite safe to be used for the bases for supply fleet. The only safe base maybe Hawaii, which is quite far away to west Pasific. Then comes in the China's Subs. Without an AC gets involved, Anti-sub operation will be a headache. Mordern sub's arti-ship cruise missle can reach 50-100kms, and destroy's choppers are never enough to perform effective anti-sub operations, even with only a few subs in the half way.

Why not use maritime patrol aircraft? There is a Russian language joke among Bear crews: "We have sighted the enemy. Dosvedanya." Grim but probably true. It is the job of a maritime patrol plane to find the enemy and report. It does not have to get home to succeed. There is a picture of an IJN Emily off Okinawa, being shot down. The narrator opines "She had long enough to transmit position information, and thus to accomplish her primary mission." If you send out patrol aircraft, either they find a carrier or they don't. If they don't, it is not very likely they won't come home to try again. If they do, they can set up your attack with position, course and speed information. Now it does not have to be an airplane. It might be a submarine. Or a merchant ship. Or a ROC radar. [We use enemy radar to track enemy targets. Why cannot the enemy, whose mid career ew people have six years of training, do the same thing?]

I have yet to see examples of technical indifference on the part of US personnel re the capabilities of Russian systems. Similarly those officers are cautious about what China can deliver on - they are well away of Chinese capability in extracting mil solutions out of dual use technology (and usually are more than willing to blame Clinton for an abject failure in protecting the nation as such). Without fail, they recognise that the Russians have some very potent, if not superior capability. That includes people within ONR/NAVSEA. Again you relate incidents that occurred 40+ yrs ago as though the US is in a state of temporal flux and has not seen "the forest for the trees". The difficulty I have is that you either speak to the wrong people, or you have this compunction to appear as the harbinger of doom, and that know one in positions of influence and capability exist to exert change.