U.S.N. sailing

We know the famous U.S.S. Constitution, the world's oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat. Is there any place in the modern U.S.N. for motor/sail boats? Something that would combine a PT boat (although with modern armament)...

With a sailing yacht...

Red Path 44

The purpose of course, is to provide me a really cheap surplus boat after the navy builds thousands of them. Then, she could come...

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Update: Would it make any sense?

At its peak, the U.S. Navy was operating 6,768 ships (about 11% were PT boats.) As a reminder, even with all of those ships, if it hadn't been for our code breakers and some fortune, we could very possibly have lost that war. Today it has 288 ships with the numbers projected to go down. 10 carrier groups (down from 11) can't cover the oceans of the world so we often find ourselves out of position when trouble starts. The loss of a single aircraft carrier ($4.5b not counting aircraft) from a single missile would be a severe blow to our navy further limiting our ability to fight on several fronts.

The PT boat had more "firepower-per-ton" than any other vessel in the U.S.N. With 16 rockets and 16 reloads they had as much firepower as a destroyer's 5 in (130 mm) guns and were dirt cheap in comparison. We could afford to build a lot of them for the price of a single aircraft carrier, but with a much wider footprint.

PT 658, with a planing hull that is still in use today, is an example from WW2 which had 2 officers and 14 crew. Full-load displacement for some PTs was up to 56 tons. The very smallest regular navy ships are 1,000 to 2,000 tons.

The downside of these vessels was logistics. They could burn up 3000 gals of fuel in 6 to 12 hours. To mitigate, why not consider a smaller boat with sails and modern electronics added?

Assume one small officer cabin and 3 hot swap bunks for up to seven crew. It has two 2000 hp engines and 2000 gals of fuel but most of the time operates on sails and could easily be mistaken for a pleasure boat. They may even have an unarmed civilian version available to add to the confusion (or not.) It has no torpedoes using concealed missiles instead. Normal cruising speed is 5 to 10 knots under sail (designed to roll up in seconds) and 30 to 40 knots with engines. It has a steel hull capable of surviving RPG hits. The crew is armed, plus has a number of man portable anti-air/ship/tank weapons in storage. Guns and cannons would also be included on mounts that raise them from concealment for use. The low speed under sail is mitigated by the fact that these ships can be prepositioned if we have enough of them. Nothing is faster than already being there. Another mitigating factor is that the crews would swap out leaving the ships on post. Even satellites have limits to what they can watch. Where one of these squadrons are posted you would have 24 hour coverage (assume a squadron operates as a 25 mile circle with a 50 mile intel range) of about 49,000 (3.14*125^2) sq. miles of area . Putting some electronics at the crows nest at the top of the sail mast gives it more seeing range than a conventional PT boat.

It operates as a squadron of 12 boats and a larger supply boat (this has only one engine and operates under sail almost 100% of the time.) Hundreds of squadrons could fill a niche that currently only 3 U.S.N. ships [do not] fill at a lower cost with greater capability.

Primary purpose for being

The key to the usage of these boats is an advanced communications network with software that allows a controller (perhaps on a regular navy vessel) to know the exact position and situation of every boat, with both a squadron and world view (and any intermediate level) and the ability to use the fixed missile assets in a coordinated manner. It would replace and surpass many of the capabilities of the 3 littoral ships currently in the U.S.N. 10 squadrons would cost about the same as one littoral ship ($460 m.) with much less operational costs. Actually, they would work very well in combination with littoral ships (which provide other air and sea assets.)

The navy would like to have over 50 littoral ships. For the same cost they could have 500 squadrons or 6000 sailing PTs which would offer the navy much more flexibility in assignments.

Some have suggested a ship of this type would be an easy target for pirates in speedboat with RPGs. Which is funny since taking these out might be one of the primary uses for these boats. The point is our regular navy is unsuited for littoral waters and can't even cover most hot spots [or potential] around the world.

To suggest these ships are not survivable, consider what the navy has to say about their current littoral ships: Pentagon's director of Operational Test and Evaluation found that neither design was expected to "be survivable in a hostile combat environment" and that neither ship could withstand the Navy's full ship shock trials.

During WW2 many Japanese warships would not operate in water that had PT boats because it was too dangerous for them. With modern missiles, the same would be true today. On land, we don't just use MBTs. We also use APCs which carry a pretty good punch themselves. While the regular navy can take on anything they might have to face, that doesn't include shallow water.

Like it or not, we need expendable ships.

On an unrelated note, this is what my brother makes by hand from popsicle sticks and old underware...

My phone has a really lousy camera. I've got to get a better one.
You can not really appreciate the details in this model.