Arctic/Offshore Patrol Ship AOPS

[Navy_Pete]

What’s really funny is when warships try to be electronically something else act like a warship. Nothing like an AIS “fishing boat” scurrying to and fro at 25 knots to get somebody that has any semblance of a tactical plot interested.

We once 'posed' as a cruise ship during Joint Warrior on one of the 280s with a shit tonne of decorative lighting on the upper decks (which may have included a fake palm tree) music and possibly a banyan. I don't think anyone was fooled but if you are going to drink the JW coolaid and pretnend to belong to some made up country at war with another made up country may as well have some fun with it.

 

[NavyShooter]

On the Gatineau in '95, we snuck up behind a tanker - less than 300 yards away at night following them to get closer to a US CVN. We got to about 80 miles, then started a 'sprint' towards them. As I recall, for 'exercise' purposes, we were given an 8 pack of Harpoons which we 'fired' at CPA - 5 at the CVN and 3 at the Tico in company.

The Umps declared that 1 hit the Tico and 3 hit the CVN, and put it out of service for 3 hours.



The games we play!

Deceptive lighting is something that mostly fell off the table in the late 90s in my experience.

 

[Furniture]

You might be surprised. Lots of emissions control scenario you end up bumping into each other. This is why USV's are so challenging, you don't want your radar on to be detected by the enemy, but you want your radar on to detect USV's and other ships as well. Tough decisions.

Between NVGs and IR, as well as airborne and satellite based sensors, I doubt two SAGs would actually get too close before one of them knew about the other.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but on the balance of probabilities I doubt the Nav lights would be the main issue.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

At least during tactical manoeuvres, you have enough people watching to avoid conflict, unlike a domestic tranist where the crew mistakes a tanker for a rock.