Watch USS Recine Get Pummeled To Death During RIMPAC 2018 Sinking Exercise

[Winston]

My impression - for all of the stuff supposedly fired at it, the damage isn't nearly as great as I'd expect. Since anti-ship munitions are fused for damage below the waterline and some do a pop-up maneuver to dive straight down through the deck, maybe that's the reason.

Watch USS Recine Get Pummeled To Death During RIMPAC 2018 Sinking Exercise
RIMPAC executes its first land-based anti-ship missile barrage in a big way.
16 Jul 2018

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...-to-death-during-rimpac-2018-sinking-exercise

The Navy's biennial Rim Of The Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise is well underway and the Navy just posted a video of a sinking exercise (SINKEX) involving the retired Newport class Landing Ship-Tank amphibious ship USS Recine. The 5,100-ton displacement vessel was decommissioned 25 years ago but finally met its end on July 12, 2018, at the hands of a flurry of friendly missiles and torpedoes.

Multiple types of weapons were fired at the ship during the highly anticipated drill, which included land-based attackers for the very first time, and in a big way. A variant of the U.S. Navy's recently selected Naval Strike Missile was launched by the U.S. Army—which is also looking to acquire the weapon—from a palletized truck-mounted canister. It flew 63 miles to impact the target successfully.

Japan also unleashed four of its Type 12 land-based anti-ship missiles at the ship, which marked the first time Japanese anti-ship missiles were fired under the command of U.S. military assets.

According to Military.com, nearly half a dozen HIMARS guided-artillery rockets were also fired at the vessel. The push to migrate the hugely successful HIMARS into a maritime and even an anti-ship role is something we once suggested ourselves and have been following closely as of late. It was all but a given that it would be featured in some sort of live-fire fashion during RIMPAC 2018.

 

[cwbullet]

Neat video. The last explosion really lifted the bow quite a bit.

 

[JonathanOtt]

Neat video. The last explosion really lifted the bow quite a bit.

Broke her back. I wonder how long it took her to slip under after that?

 

[Nytrunner]

My impression - for all of the stuff supposedly fired at it, the damage isn't nearly as great as I'd expect. Since anti-ship munitions are fused for damage below the waterline and some do a pop-up maneuver to dive straight down through the deck, maybe that's the reason.

Basically true. Why waste the damage on the armor? It's the internals that need to be disabled in order to take a ship out of a fight.
Think back to that M1A1 that got stuck in the middle east and had to be disabled because it was in an unrecoverable position. The externals still look pretty good, but there are 3 neat little holes in the frame where anti-armor munitions penetrated and slagged the insides.

 

[Winston]

My impression - for all of the stuff supposedly fired at it, the damage isn't nearly as great as I'd expect.

Official Story On The Rockets The Army Fired At A Ship During RIMPAC Doesn't Add Up
Artillery soldiers reportedly used short-range practice rockets when even standard types wouldn't have had the range to reach the target area.
JULY 26, 2018

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...-fired-at-a-ship-during-rimpac-doesnt-line-up

Excerpts:

There have already been a number of notable instances where the U.S. military and its allies have demonstrated new and emerging capabilities during the latest iteration of the U.S. Navy’s biennial Rim of the Pacific exercise, or RIMPAC. But the available details about one notable portion of the event, the U.S. Army’s use of 227mm guided artillery rockets to help sink a decommissioned ship, simply don’t make sense.

The only problem is that this physically can't have happened. The U.S. Navy towed the ex-Racine to a spot approximately 55 nautical miles, equivalent to more than 60 regular “statute” miles, from the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The blunt-nosed RRPR, which the Army developed specifically for use in constrained training areas, has a maximum range of approximately 10 miles and contains no guidance system or warhead whatsoever.

With all this in mind, it would make sense for the Army to also use RIMPAC to experiment with longer-range versions of the 227mm guided artillery rocket, which would be especially useful in the open expanses of the Pacific. In June 2018, the service disclosed that it was working on just such as variant, the Tail Controlled Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, or TC-GMLRS, which has already hit a test target at a range of approximately 70 miles.

Whatever they used, they all missed. What appear to be the HIMARS rockets impacting near the target area with inert warheads can be seen beginning at around 2:00 in the video below:

 

[rharshberger]

It was my understanding from an article somewhere that the missle the Army used was a new surface launched version of a long range stealthy air launched missle that fits on the HiMARS chassis. The Naval Strike Missle has a 115mile range, and Wikipedia ( which is always gospel truth) says the US Army Pacific surface launched one in RIMPAC 2018's SINKEX.
The M270 and MGM-140 ATACMS both have ranges over 180miles.

 

[boatgeek]

My impression - for all of the stuff supposedly fired at it, the damage isn't nearly as great as I'd expect. Since anti-ship munitions are fused for damage below the waterline and some do a pop-up maneuver to dive straight down through the deck, maybe that's the reason.

The first shots at ~1:45 in the video would have been a "mission kill"--the ship could not have continued on its mission without a return to shipyard. It looks like the weapons tested were heat-seekers aiming for the main machinery stacks. No engine room = a long trip to the yard. It also blew out some shell plating along the way. Modern torpedoes are designed to explode under the keel to break the ship's back as seen later in the video. I wonder if that was a US sub, since it was at periscope depth. Our subs don't normally need to go that shallow.

 

[Zeus-cat]

Also keep in mind that the ship was decommissioned 25 years ago. So no fuel, grease, electrical system, personal belongings or ammunition were on the ship. Essentially, there was nothing that could burn or cause secondary fires.