Inside China: Admiral says China can destroy destroyers? true or not?

There was an infamous war game conducted years ago where a U.S. admiral in command of a bunch of speed boats and fishing boats sunk the fleet of a U.S. admiral in command of destroyers and etc. The former had numerical superiority so IIRC he just zerg swarmed and attached explosives to the side of the ships. The victory was completely one-sided, and it was so humiliating that they tried to suppress the results. The victorious admiral was given harsh words for making a mockery of the war game. Adm. Zhang made reference to the exact same strategy of zerg swarming with small fast boats and explosives, so he must be at least somewhat familiar with that war game. A lot of the small speed boats were sunk, but overwhelming numerical superiority won the day. The cost damage inflicted against the destroyers/other "serious" navy ships (they were all sunk) vs the cost of the speed boats, explosives, and men was exponential.

Originally Posted by s002wjh

i have hard time to believe someone in the position of adm will say stupid things like this? so is this true or not?

Inside China: Admiral says China can destroy destroyers - Washington Times

Originally Posted by s002wjh

i have hard time to believe someone in the position of adm will say stupid things like this? so is this true or not?

Inside China: Admiral says China can destroy destroyers - Washington Times

022 Missile Boats is the low cost Zerglings in the Zerg Swamp. guided by C4SRI assets.

infact I think it is piossible to rig the missile boats so that they do not require any crewing. Set in autopilot go on a course, launch missiles at a particular coordinate and go home...

he's entitled to his opinion

his comments were not my favorite, and this is not the first time foreign and anti China news outlet used his comments as propaganda material, even if taken out of context

This has to do with the old Maoist doctrine that tried to build something like a naval guerilla force. So far the idea of zerg swarming has been pushed for a very long time in naval warfare, it's a continuation of the Jeune École ideas that in actual combat failed miserably with all kinds of speedboats and torpedoboats. So far the options seem limited to terrorism, mining and espionage with such boats while asymmetric capability is subsurface or above the surface, but not with attacking crafts on the surface. The Russians had their own try at this with shipkilling missiles, but even these needed surviveable paltforms with enough SIGINT support. I don't believe small boat swarms are a feasible solution for this problem except on paper.

mass deployment of missile attack boats has its own use, situation like Iran or North Korea when asymmetry capability however small is valuable and the deployment area is suitable, especially Iran

in Soviet Union's case, they can not really on such strategy, for if the battle has shifted to the coastlines, they are already at the end of the line

the thing is during conflict any US destroyer will supported by other platform. sate, recon, sub, carrier etc etc.

Originally Posted by s002wjh

the thing is during conflict any US destroyer will supported by other platform. sate, recon, sub, carrier etc etc.

I think the point is that if you ignore the swarms of fishing boats and speedboats, they'll sink you with explosives. If you use up most of your munitions sinking those boats before they sink you, then you won't have enough left over to defend yourself against the real military threats. In a sense, the value of your munitions is significantly greater than the value of your targets. They're like decoys, except they can sink you.

As I have already said, this is a tactic that an officer of the U.S. navy had successfully used against his competitor in a war game. It was a humiliating defeat for his competitor.

The lesson we all should have learned is that asymmetric warfare can be overwhelmingly successful when used simultaneously with conventional military assets.

Originally Posted by gjy2105

I think the point is that if you ignore the swarms of fishing boats and speedboats, they'll sink you. If you use up most of your munitions sinking those boats before they sink you, then you won't have enough left over to defend yourself against the real military threats.

Well no. Small vessels like speed boats can be neutralized via large caliber machine guns. When you factor in .50 MG bullets vs number of speed boats, the cost effectiveness heavily favors the bullets.

Since speed boats have a limited range anyway, self-rising sea mines would be far more effective than modern versions of "fire boats".

Drone submarines, on the other hand, is a whole other matter.

Look. I'm only telling you what one U.S. naval officer did to defeat his conventional opponent in a war game. His opponent couldn't sink all the speed boats quickly and reliably enough to prevent some of them from reaching his ships. Once they reached them, the fight was essentially over. It was an unambiguous defeat.

Originally Posted by gjy2105

I think the point is that if you ignore the swarms of fishing boats and speedboats, they'll sink you with explosives. If you use up most of your munitions sinking those boats before they sink you, then you won't have enough left over to defend yourself against the real military threats. In a sense, the value of your munitions is significantly greater than the value of your targets. They're like decoys, except they can sink you.

As I have already said, this is a tactic that an officer of the U.S. navy had successfully used against his competitor in a war game. It was a humiliating defeat for his competitor.

The lesson we all should have learned is that asymmetric warfare can be overwhelmingly successful when used simultaneously with conventional military assets.

i think a 3k round/min vulcan gun can track a missile than it can be use against speedboat. heck few heli with suffice bullet will plug off speedboats like turkey shooting.

could you provide a source or something, where did you heard it? maybe situation was different, no other support or near some coastal shallow water, don't know

Asymmetric warfare, hell yes.

Paul K. Van Riper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper (born July 5, 1938) is a retired officer of the United States Marine Corps. Since retirement Van Riper has served on several advisory boards and panels. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.
At the time of his retirement, Van Riper was serving as the Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Virginia.

Van Riper is critical of the current transformation efforts in the military, especially changes originating from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He gained notoriety after the Millennium Challenge 2002 wargame. He played the opposing force commander, and easily sunk a whole carrier battle group in the simulation with an inferior Middle-Eastern "red" team in the first two days. After the simulation was restarted with different parameters, he claimed that the wargame had been "fixed" to falsely validate current doctrine of the US Navy.[2] He is also critical of post-war Iraq plans and implementation. On April 24, 2006, he joined several other retired generals in calling for Rumsfeld's resignation.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lt. General Paul K. Van Riper, used old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World War II light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications.
Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected.[1]
At this point, the exercise was suspended, Blue's ships were "re-floated", and the rules of engagement were changed; this was later justified by General Peter Pace as follows: "You kill me in the first day and I sit there for the next 13 days doing nothing, or you put me back to life and you get 13 more days' worth of experiment out of me. Which is a better way to do it?"[2] After the reset, both sides were ordered to follow predetermined plans of action. After the wargame was restarted, the war game was forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory. Among the rules imposed by this script, Red Force was ordered to turn on all his anti-aircraft radar in order for them to be destroyed, and Red Force was not allowed to shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue Force troops ashore.[3] Van Riper also claimed that exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue Force, and that they also ordered Red Force not to use certain weapons systems against Blue Force and even ordered that the location of Red Force units to be revealed.[4] This led to accusations that the war game had turned from an honest, open free play test of America's war-fighting capabilities into a rigidly controlled and scripted exercise intended to end in an overwhelming American victory.,[3] which meant that "$250 million was wasted".[5]

Due to his criticism regarding the scripted nature of the new exercise, Van Riper resigned his position in the midst of the war game. Van Riper later expressed concern that the war game's purpose had shifted to reinforce existing doctrine and notions of infallibility within the U.S. military rather than serve as a learning experience.
Van Riper also stated that the war game was rigged so that it appeared to validate the modern, joint-service war-fighting concepts it was supposed to be testing.[4] He was quoted in the ZDF–New York Times documentary The Perfect War[6] as saying that what he saw in MC02 echoed the same view promoted by the Department of Defense under Robert McNamara before and during the Vietnam War, namely that the U.S. military could not and would not be defeated.
Responding to Van Riper's criticism, Vice Adm. Marty Mayer, who ran the war game and who was charged with developing the military’s joint concepts and requirements, stated the following:[4]
“
Gen. Van Riper apparently feels he was too constrained. I can only say there were certain parts where he was not constrained, and then there were parts where he was in order to facilitate the conduct of the experiment and certain exercise pieces that were being done.
”
—Vice Adm. Marty Mayer
Navy Capt. John Carman, Joint Forces Command spokesman, said the war game had properly validated all the major concepts which were tested by Blue Force, ignoring the artificially imposed restrictions placed on Van Riper's Red Force which led them to succeed. Based on these findings, John Carman stated that recommendations based on the war game's result on areas such as doctrine, training and procurement would be forwarded to Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[4]

Originally Posted by Kurt

This has to do with the old Maoist doctrine that tried to build something like a naval guerilla force. So far the idea of zerg swarming has been pushed for a very long time in naval warfare, it's a continuation of the Jeune École ideas that in actual combat failed miserably with all kinds of speedboats and torpedoboats. So far the options seem limited to terrorism, mining and espionage with such boats while asymmetric capability is subsurface or above the surface, but not with attacking crafts on the surface. The Russians had their own try at this with shipkilling missiles, but even these needed surviveable paltforms with enough SIGINT support. I don't believe small boat swarms are a feasible solution for this problem except on paper.

actually PT boats and Small gunboats did fine in coastal battles with Nationalists Forces, which mainly is a frigate/destroyer fleet, near chinese coast in the 50s.

Jeune Ecole isn;t a bad idea just because no one event in history has fully validated the idea.

Lt. General Paul K. Van Riper pulled it off with overwhelming success, using the military resources of an inferior Middle-Eastern country. So no, it's not feasible just on paper. This was a $250,000,000 war game.

Originally Posted by Kurt

This has to do with the old Maoist doctrine that tried to build something like a naval guerilla force. So far the idea of zerg swarming has been pushed for a very long time in naval warfare, it's a continuation of the Jeune École ideas that in actual combat failed miserably with all kinds of speedboats and torpedoboats. So far the options seem limited to terrorism, mining and espionage with such boats while asymmetric capability is subsurface or above the surface, but not with attacking crafts on the surface. The Russians had their own try at this with shipkilling missiles, but even these needed surviveable paltforms with enough SIGINT support. I don't believe small boat swarms are a feasible solution for this problem except on paper.

Originally Posted by gjy2105

Asymmetric warfare, hell yes.
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Geesh,

Just wish in real wars the enemy would oblige to do exactly what we wanted them to do.

Even the PLA these days frown upon these scripted events.