As I’m sure many readers already realize, all national military forces conduct periodic war games and military exercises to test and maintain readiness. The result of a recent ”friendly” war game involving the USA and France, two NATO allies, was astounding and alarming. The exercise involved having a single French submarine attempt to penetrate the defensive cordon of warships around a US supercarrier and sink the carrier. I think everyone expected the exercise to end with one “dead” French submarine. It didn’t work out that way.
As the first link and second link report, the single French submarine not only successfully penetrated the defensive ring of warships and the carrier, but it also “sank” the US carrier, the USS Teddy Roosevelt, and several of its escort vessels in the war game. The third link focuses on this report being first posted on a French military website and then being quickly withdrawn from view (under US pressure to hide the incompetence of the US commanders?)
This report, which can be found at many locations via a Web search, is extremely disconcerting. Indeed, it is alarming. The USS Teddy Roosevelt was likely participating in the war game to test certain classified defensive systems that have been installed on the carrier, its screening vessels or both. Whatever they were, they didn’t work. If a friendly NATO sub can penetrate a US carrier battle group’s screening vessels and “sink” the carrier in a war game, this should cheer the hearts of everyone in the Russian, Chinese and Iranian military departments.
Indeed, the fourth link reveals details about a recent Iranian war game designed to simulate the sinking of a US carrier. I recommend readers take the time to watch the video that accompanies this link. It shows the Iranians took considerable time to build a realistic-looking replica of a US carrier and it includes the strike of an Iranian cruise missile against the replica carrier. The link reports the US discounted the Iranian exercise, and apparently didn’t take it very seriously. However, the fact that the US Navy failed in its mission to protect its own carrier against a simulated attack by a single French submarine in a war game makes it evident that the Pentagon’s confidence in its ability to protect its carriers may be based more on hubris than reality. The French sub assumedly used only standard torpedoes to “sink” the US carrier and some of its escort ships. China has built an entire panoply of new weaponry to sink US carriers. Besides torpedoes from submarines, China’s attack would include air-launched supersonic and subsonic cruise missiles, carrier-killing ICBMs, etc. Russia would also attack with air-launched and sea-launched cruise missiles. If a US carrier can’t successfully defend itself against a single friendly NATO sub using only torpedoes in a war game, how can the Pentagon say with a straight face that it can defend its carriers from a massive combined Chinese-Russian attack (which, as readers of this blog know, is certain to occur in the future when the prophesied Gog-Magog war of Ezekiel 38-39 is begun by a surprise attack by Russia, China and Iran)?
The fifth link is also not very encouraging about the current capabilities of the US Navy. It reports the US Navy really did lose a minesweeper when it had to be disassembled after it itself ran aground on a Philippine reef. The US had to pay damages to the Philippine government for damaging an environmentally-sensitive area. How did this act of sheer stupidity happen? Was the captain drunk on duty? Was the navigator unable to read a navigational sea-chart properly? This kind of stupidity should never have occurred. The US taxpayers paid for that Navy ship, but the US Navy lost the ship due to incompetent seamanship. Do any other US Navy ships also have incompetent officer crews? The defensibility and readiness of US warships is a very serious issue for US national security.
Another possible issue may be that morale is so bad in the US military with Obama as the commander-in-chief that US military personnel don’t have their hearts in their duties any longer. Perhaps President Obama and the US government should (A) retire the admirals and generals whose specialties seem to be implementing politically-correct, radical-leftist agendas in the US military, and (B) start advancing and appointing admirals and generals who actually know how to achieve and maintain combat readiness. It is my opinion that the top pentagon brass ought to care a whole lot less about making the military acceptable for homosexuals and trans-gender individuals and having women deployed in special forces units, and focus a whole lot more about making our military able to fight and win wars!
- http://www.news.com.au/world/us-supercarrier-sunk-by-french-submarine-in-wargames/story-fndir2ev-1227250666936
- http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.com/2015/03/french-submarine-sinks-us-aircraft.html
- http://rt.com/usa/238257-french-submarine-us-carrier/
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/11434660/Iran-attacks-replica-US-ship-in-military-drill.html
- http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31514221
