You'll all be sorry when I die of caffeine deprivation.

littoral

That's one of the US Navy's big fears. No one has a deepwater Navy that can touch ours. We have half of the world's aircraft carrier and ours are the biggest. We have the largest nuclear submarine fleet. The best anyone can hope for is local superiority in an area for however long until the US can send enough Carrier Battle Groups into an area. That being said, those are deep water ships. Get too close to the shore, the advantages start disappearing. Carriers are big targets, especially since they are basically just big tankers of aircraft jet fuel, with current estimates having one being able to take 3-4 missile hits before going up in a fireball. In the ocean, you can spot a missile platform (a ship, a sub, a plane) from a distance off and hopefully kill it before it launches. Especially since they will need a lot of platforms launching a lot of missile to get past missile defence. But when you get close to shore, finding the launch platforms becomes incredibly difficult. Do you blow up every pickup truck within two hundreds of the shoreline to make sure none of them are packing? Plus, in shallow waters near shore it becomes very easy to spot submaries, and you can't zap the sonar platforms (helicopters, ships) because close to shore, they can just run cables to get the data.

So the submarine warfare and the carrier group factions of the US Navy (that have been getting the lion's share of the budget since the 60s) have decided that someone else needs to take the risks, and are pushing for the surface ship faction to get some new toys. The surface ship guys, on the other hand, are just glad to actually have their own section of the budget again.

Close to shore is the equivalent of an urban environment for the Army. Perfect for the naval equivalent of guerrilla warfare.

One theory I've read about says that in the future, any surface ship anywhere can be located by satellite and immediately targeted by long-range missile. According to that view, the only warships will be submarines.

Actually, they are working on that. The US Navy and Darpa are working on a type of laser sensor that will be mounted on satellites, to detect the slight bump in the ocean that is caused when something displaces water underneath it, like a sub. Or a whale. Which is why they are still working on it, since it is embarrassing to depth charge whales...

The problem is that sending stuff into orbit still costs too much. Building a satellite that can spot a ship isn't that difficult in the scheme of things. Getting it into orbit is hideously difficult, especially if you are someone that most of the civilized world doesn't like, and you have to be willing to let someone else handle your satellite before launch, and the worry that they mess with it. That was one of the worries during the beginning of the 2nd Gulf War, that Iraq would find somebody to sell them satellite photos of US troop movements, and supposedly there was a lot of behind the scene threats to make sure the Russians, Chinese and French private companies (the most likely sellers) to honor the embargo...

Which is also why they are working on stealth ships, but at the moment the big problem is IR, ships show up as a hot spots on the ocean's surface, especially outside the tropics, and for the moment it appears there isn't much a solution for it...

I had a childhood cat who ADORED messing with dogs. There was a nighborhood lab he'd taunt into chasing him around a tree, and then turn the tables so the dog was running in circles trying to flee the murderous cat to the point of exhaustion. (Dog wasn't the brightest bulb.) The dog would finally give up and sit there whining while Sky sang his war cry and continued to scare the crap out of the poor canine.

We tried to break it up as much as possible out of pity for the dog, but between the dimness of that poor dog and the determination of that cat.... Well, they got the hose turned on them more than once.

I have no idea why the dog never once just went home and got away from the cat.

Huh - very interesting, CaBil. What do you think of the idea that US carrier battle groups are actually much more vulnerable to submarine attack than the Navy admits? (I think it was a year ago when a Chinese submarine snuck into the middle of a US carrier battle group and then surfaced. Big embarrassment for the US Navy.)

ION, Tired of paying through the nose, Americans try praying at the pump

"Lord, come down in a mighty way and strengthen us so that we can bring down these high gas prices," Twyman said to a chorus of "amens".

"Prayer is the answer to every problem in life... We call on God to intervene in the lives of the selfish, greedy people who are keeping these prices high," Twyman said on the gas station forecourt in a neighborhood of Washington that, like many of its residents, has seen better days.

"Lord, the prices at this pump have gone up since last week. We know that you are able, that you have all the power in the world," he prayed, before former beauty queen Rashida Jolley led the group in a modified version of the spiritual, "We Shall Overcome".

"We'll have lower gas prices, we'll have lower gas prices..." they sang.

Maybe God can stick some more oil in the ground when we're not looking....

I have never found labs to be anywhere near the brightest bulbs in dogdom. Labs' mental processes mainly consist of: "Can I chase that? Chase! Food! I love you, I love you." A big yellow cat drove the dog mad last week by sauntering down the driveway, taking about 10 minutes to go 15 feet.

NO THANKS TO YOU PEOPLE.

I can rarely get coke machines to accept my dollars in person, Dana, much less after it's been squashed through the internets.

"We'll have lower gas prices, we'll have lower gas prices..." they sang.

Pete Seeger just threw up in his mouth a little.

I totally hit the ground running this morning, but now I need a nap....

I'm not really sure this belongs in Press or whatever, but work is sponsoring a couple of teams in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life.

Anyway, I know we've had a bunch of "Cancer sucks!" around here-too much, in fact too much. Part of what we're doing is lighting a luminaria for people we have lost or who have been touched by cancer. I haven't lost anyone to that particular disease, but I know some of us have.

I'm donating $40-that's 8 luminaria. If anyone would like me to light it in honor of their loved ones, e me and I'll put their name down.

There was a nighborhood lab he'd taunt into chasing him around a tree, and then turn the tables so the dog was running in circles trying to flee the murderous cat to the point of exhaustion. (Dog wasn't the brightest bulb.) The dog would finally give up and sit there whining while Sky sang his war cry and continued to scare the crap out of the poor canine.

I think I've told this before, but a friend had a little Scottie puppy that loved to chase their cat. The cat would get annoyed and run upstairs, McGuffey would follow, and then the cat would casually saunter about halfway back down. Leaving McG trapped, because his wee little puppy legs were to short to go down the stairs.

It wouldn't surprise me. Each Carrier Group is supposed to have at least one, possibly two attack submarines giving it cover, but they can't get too close to the Carrier and the rest of the Battle Group because of fratricide concerns. If you are willing to throw away a couple of submarine to get at a carrier (which actually would be a reasonable trade military wise) it should be possible (though the difference between possible and likely relies on training, equipment, personnel and luck.)

The easiest way would be park some submarines ahead of the projected path of Carrier group, and let them turn everything off and become black holes in the water. Attack subs tend to be passive listeners to avoid giving away their positions, making it hard for them to find a diesel sub if it is turned off (unlike nukes, who always at least have to keep their reactor pumps on) and the Carrier escorts try to keep their own active sonar off, because your own sonar can 'paint' friendly subs at ranges far beyond the ship's ability to detect enemy subs. If you have a sufficient number of submarines that can keep quiet when told to, achieving a shot should be possible.

That is part of the reason everyone is so hot for hyper-cavitation. Fire one of these, no one has time to react to stop it from hitting a Carrier. Thus the US Navy wants them, because using one as a counter torpedo may be the only thing that stops one.

I am actually not sure if the Navy would wargame it out, since the submarine and carrier factions are fighting over the budget pie. For the carrier faction, there is no upside to wargaming it out. If they win, they gain nothing, if they lose, the submarine faction may get points in the next budget battle. And any radical redesign of the Carrier would delay the replacement of the next retirement, dropping the size of the Carrier fleet.

Worse yet, the Navy and Air Force has be getting worried. Due to Pentagon politics, it's budget is cut roughly in thirds. So right now the Army and Marines are getting hammered, since they are expending equipment like there is no tomorrow in the Middle East, whereas the Air Force's and Navy operational tempos are less. The Army is spending millions, if not billions, weekly just replacing worn out equipment, and they are falling behind. The Navy and Air Force are spending their thirds of the budget on the next gen aircraft and ships. While the budget supplemental are mostly for the Army/Marines sooner or later some bright guy in Congress is going to realize that we could maybe live without the F-22 for a couple years, or that the future cruiser isn't really needed to fight Al-Qaeda, since they do not seem to be challenging our naval or air superiority. The logical conclusion would be to reallocate some of those funds to stuff we need now.

Logic has very little to do with the Pentagon's budget wars...