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Ok, not me personally - the ship I was on did - simulated of course.
Back in '83, my ship was part of a huge multinational battlegroup. We sailed up past Alaska and came down by the Kamchatka peninsula, popping in and out of soviet water to see how fast they could respond and what they responded with. This is a common practice, the soviets did the same to us all the time.
Anyway, I was on the HMCS Provider - a Canadian AOR (floating gas station). 555 feet, buttloads of fuel and not a single weapon - unless you count all the beer in the three bars every Canadian warship has...
During one battle problem, the Provider was assigned the role of a Soviet Cruiser (I think we were supposed to be a Kresta) and we had three Canadian destroyers (frigates in reality) with us.
Anyway, during the night we snuck through the picket of US, Aussie, and New Zealand ships, managed to escape notice by the fighter cap, and fire three (simulated) torpedos into the Vinson and were awarded a kill.
How the hell could a freakin tanker built in the 60s and scrapped in 2002, with no EW capability to speak of manage to sink a modern carrier in the middle of a 30+ ship fleet you ask?
Simple - All those really cool 3D phased array radars and other electronic gizmos are TURNED OFF. You see, if you turn on a single active system, everyone in the same ocean (and probably in the other) knows exactly where you are. Until contact is made, none of that super-expensive high tech electronic warfare equipment can be used. Everyone relies on the ordinary seaman on lookout duty to spot threats. Thats right, the swabbie thats 3 months out of bootcamp is the front line detection system for the fleet...
So, don't forget - technical superiority is definately a great asset but, don't put ALL your chickens in that one basket.
P.S. If anyone here was in that battlegroup - we were the one with the "Open 24 hours, all major credit cards accepted" sign on the fwd mast ;)
Back in '83, my ship was part of a huge multinational battlegroup. We sailed up past Alaska and came down by the Kamchatka peninsula, popping in and out of soviet water to see how fast they could respond and what they responded with. This is a common practice, the soviets did the same to us all the time.
Anyway, I was on the HMCS Provider - a Canadian AOR (floating gas station). 555 feet, buttloads of fuel and not a single weapon - unless you count all the beer in the three bars every Canadian warship has...
During one battle problem, the Provider was assigned the role of a Soviet Cruiser (I think we were supposed to be a Kresta) and we had three Canadian destroyers (frigates in reality) with us.
Anyway, during the night we snuck through the picket of US, Aussie, and New Zealand ships, managed to escape notice by the fighter cap, and fire three (simulated) torpedos into the Vinson and were awarded a kill.
How the hell could a freakin tanker built in the 60s and scrapped in 2002, with no EW capability to speak of manage to sink a modern carrier in the middle of a 30+ ship fleet you ask?
Simple - All those really cool 3D phased array radars and other electronic gizmos are TURNED OFF. You see, if you turn on a single active system, everyone in the same ocean (and probably in the other) knows exactly where you are. Until contact is made, none of that super-expensive high tech electronic warfare equipment can be used. Everyone relies on the ordinary seaman on lookout duty to spot threats. Thats right, the swabbie thats 3 months out of bootcamp is the front line detection system for the fleet...
So, don't forget - technical superiority is definately a great asset but, don't put ALL your chickens in that one basket.
P.S. If anyone here was in that battlegroup - we were the one with the "Open 24 hours, all major credit cards accepted" sign on the fwd mast ;)