> Despite the very heavy investment in warship survivability measures, this makes one wonder just how little damage modern combatants can sustain without being immediately crippled.
The essence of the article.
The essence of the article.
The frigate was in a peacetime "basically in my home harbor" configuration so it's not like the ship was all buttoned up in preparation to take battle damage nor was the crew on any sort of alert.
Had they been in a more "normal for situations where you might get shot at" state of alertness they wouldn't have blundered into hitting a tanker and if they did it wouldn't have sunk them.
There's a reason these accidents happen in friendly waters and not the area of the world where you have both oil tankers and unfriendly forces.
Someone needs to take a very hard look at this.
Furthermore, just plowing head on into something is way more survivable for a ship than a side swipe. I would say it actually took less damage, albeit more dramatically visible above the waterline.
The Chinese combat ships were at a much higher level of combat readiness, and hence a lot more crew who knew what they were actively doing and had their stations prepared accordingly.
The Norwegian vessel had most of her crew asleep and we're navigating in friendly waters.
In this instance, the excuses given are always:
* the small number on watch did not provide enough people to effectively commence damage control,
* the poorly trained crew did not close bulkheads as they evacuated from berths,
* the design did not have sufficient redundancy.
This ignores that all navies now:
* run lean crews and ultra-lean watches, relying on automation,
* training standards are dropping everywhere due to cost, and far fewer seafarers enter naval service with prior experience,
* ships are becoming more automated and cost-sensitive, so new frigates like the Type 26 (that will replace the Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates) or the upcoming US DDG(X)-class are likely to have significantly reduced redundancies and damage-control capacity, given tonnage is increasing by 40+% but crews are shrinking.
And the article goes on to say that the ship's watertight doors and hatches would have save her from sinking, if the crew had bothered to close those on their way out.
If you are miserably incompetent at the very basics of both design and operation, then "investing" in more advanced stuff is just a cool-sounding waste of money.
Above the waterline, it is common to have “loops” of passageways for movement of equipment and people (including casualties). Firemain stations will be spaced along such a loop because they are used to both fight nearby fires and dewater the compartments below.
You could mass produce something like that for less than 100k from stock standard parts.
In general such things would only travel relatively short distances, be relatively simple to conceal and probably relatively easy to have not too big radar cross section.
The drone aspect, however, is not in play I don’t believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinyo_(suicide_motorboat)
I'd imagine a larger boat would be even easier to sink.