Two Sailors Injured When Drone Crashes Into US Navy Guided Missile Cruiser 109
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that two sailors were hurt when a drone malfunctioned and crashed into the Chancellorsville, a 567-foot Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, as the ship operated off the Point Mugu area of Southern California in an area where BQM-74E aerial targets are widely used. The drone was being used to test the ship's radar tracking when it malfunctioned, veered out of control and struck the cruiser. 'No sailors were seriously injured, but two sailors were treated for minor burns,' the Navy said in a statement. 'The ship remains capable of operations. However, it did sustain some damage and will return to its homeport of San Diego to have the damage assessed. The Navy is investigating the cause of the malfunction.' Chancellorsville has one of the most advanced air defense systems in the Navy, and the ship regularly tests missiles off Southern California. In late August, Chancellorsville successfully used an SM-6 missile to hit a target drone off Point Mugu. The cruiser stocks a variety of missiles, including Tomahawks."
Vaguely reminds me of a Phalanx test... (Score:5, Insightful)
Those navy vessels are dangerous places to work, even in practice.
Re:It damaged a warship? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between not sinking when struck by an object and being perfectly invulnerable to everything.
These ships are designed to simply stay afloat and remain at least partially operational if struck, not have some kind of magic force field that stops even the paintwork being scratched if struck.
This is the real world, not fantasy land. A 3 ton aircraft crashing into a warship is still going to cause a fair bit of damage. We haven't invented completely invulnerable metal yet.
Re:One of the most advanced air defense systems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Chancellorsville has one of the most advanced air defense systems in the Navy[...]
But it could not defend itself against a runaway drone. Very impressive.
Seriously, that drone was *supposed* to be in the area. You don't sail around in peace time with the system on hair trigger and shoot at everything you can or cannot identify just because it it gets close. You need to be REALLY sure before you shoot down something or really bad things can result.
Re:Vaguely reminds me of a Phalanx test... (Score:5, Insightful)
Military operations of ALL sorts are dangerous. . . You train and train and have safety procedures to mitigate things, but every so often Murphy's Law causes an accident.
There is a reason that the day I graduated from flight school, they told us to look at every face in the class, one of us would be dead inside of a year.
Three weeks later, one of my classmates died in a C-130 crash. It's a risk that military people accept: you CAN'T do military ops AND have complete safety. . .
Re:armor on the struck ship was disappointing (Score:4, Insightful)
With a modern large surface combatant like a cruiser, the idea is to prevent the missile from hitting it in the first place.
The CIWS should have been able to blow that drone apart with 20mm depleted uranium ammo.
But maybe it wasn't switched on.
Maybe the Navy does need to take a second look at the armor on these boats?"
A shaped charge waepon cuts through steel armor like a hot knife through butter. (like a larger version of an anti-tank missle.
This was a ship, not a boat btw, the navy does have some fairly tough boats, but they work best underwater.
Re:armor on the struck ship was disappointing (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe they've spent more time and money that you working out what will work best.
I strongly suspect (though I'm not interested enough to actually research it) that modern (and not so modern, battleships were going out of style long ago) anti-ship weaponry is deadly enough that the amount of armor required to defend against it would not be practical. Thus you instead make ships that are harder to it, and if one gets through the active defenses you are done anyway - so there's not much point in heavy armor.
You take the extra anti-missile defense system (of whatever flavor) that might stop you from getting hit over the extra armor that will be smashed through as it it wasn't there if you take the hit anyway.