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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1304 thread views

Transnational Thursday for August 15, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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“He was told it’s like a torpedo—once you fire it at the enemy, you can’t pull it back again, it just keeps going until it goes ‘boom,’ ” a senior officer familiar with the conversation said.

A bit of an aside, but that's an incorrect comparison coming from the ukrainian's head of the armed forces. I guess that can be forgiven seeing he was a general, not an admiral. Modern torpedoes are wire guided, they can be steered, armed, disarmed, have their homing feature activated or deactivate, or detonated after being launched, provided the wire didn't break (which can happen during manoevers from the ship or the torpedo, from the torpedo tube being closed to reload, from distance, etc...). But broadly speaking, modern torpedoes are guided weapons. There are exceptions (lightweight torpedoes don't always have wires as they are often launched from the air) but yeah.

Which ones do you have in mind?

The NATO standard doesn’t appear to have a wire. None of the ASROC-capable missiles do, seeing as they fly a bit.

China might, except that design is alleged to copy another US design, which doesn’t.

The only ones I saw which consistently mentioned wires were the Swedish series.

Heavy torpedoes, like US/NATO Mk-48's, Russian SETs and UGSTs, etc...

The mk 48 has wire guidance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_48_torpedo

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