U.S. military war planners are batting .000 the last few decades, and there’s no reason to think things will be any different for pending engagements with China, Russia, and Iran. From Fred Reed at fredoneverthing.org:
From military illiterates in Congress and political generals in the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel of the Potomac we hear noises about an upcoming war with China. This war, it is thought, will be chiefly naval with America’s carrier battle groups doing the heavy lifting. The carriers, it is further thought, will strike terror into the Chinese. Perhaps Better thinking would help.
A bit of history:
Wikipedia: In 1967aboard the carrier USS Forrestal, an anomaly caused a Zuni rocket on an F-4B Phantom to fire accidentally, striking an external fuel tank of an A-4 Skyhawk. The flammable jet fuel spilled across the flight deck, ignited, and triggered a chain reaction of explosions that killed 134 sailors and injured 161. At the time, Forrestal was engaged in combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin, during the Vietnam War. The ship survived, but with damage exceeding US$72 million, not including the damage to aircraft.
The Zuni is a small five-inch ground-attack rocket suitable for such things as destroying trucks. This trivial weapon, all by itself, caused damage that rendered the carrier useless for over a year in the repair yards. The warhead was roughly the size of the suicide-drone warheads used in the Ukraine. That’s all it took.
Washington, looking to start a war with China, which has vast numbers of antiship missiles, many of them hypersonic, might reflect on this.
We could say that the disaster on the Forrestal was a freak accident. It was. An “anomaly” means that the circuitry was badly designed, badly maintained, or badly employed. It is not likely to recur. However, almost any missile,or naval gunfire, can burst an aircraft’s fuel tanks. An aircraft carrier is a large bladder of jet fuel wrapped around high explosives. This is worth remembering.
