Category Archives: High Seas

Rear-Admiral Bob Auchterlonie and his career on the high seas will be honoured in the Comox Valley this Saturday.

The Cumberland native will be the latest person to receive a star on the Comox Valley Walk of Achievement. The Walk celebrates individuals from the area who have excelled in their chosen field. It is also to inspire young people and instil a sense of civic pride.

Once we get all the logistics done, we set up the day, says committee member Erik Eriksson. We do the ceremony and unveil the plaque on 5th Street.

The event is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. at the Sid Williams Theatre, before moving over to 5th Street for the unveiling.

Auchterlonies family has strong ties to the Comox Valley, and the family bakery was a fixture in Cumberland for decades. He attended Cumberland Elementary, Cumberland Junior and Georges P. Vanier Secondary. He later graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada in 1991 with a BA in economics. He also served as captain of the varsity hockey team.

Auchterlonie has had an esteemed career in the military, commanding ships and formations at every senior rank. He was commander of the HMCS Fredericton from 2007 to 2009, captain at CFB Esquimalt from 2012 to 2103, commodore of the Canadian Pacific Fleet from 2013 to 2015 and rear admiral of the Maritime Pacific Forces / Joint Task Force Pacific starting in 2018.

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He has also served four tours at the National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa. His educational background includes graduation from the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College and the Naval Command College at the U.S. Naval War College. He also earned a masters degree in defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, and is a graduate of the Senior Executives in the National and International Security program at Harvard. He is also a fellow of the U.S. GOFO Capstone and Pinnacle programs.

When he got appointed admiral and then when he became head of the Pacific fleet, it just rang huge bells for us, says Eriksson. We checked him and we found out his history and where hes from and what hes done, and it all came together and we figured this is totally the kind of person that should be honoured on the Walk of Achievement.

The Walk of Achievement started in 2006. Over the years, it has added a number of esteemed people from the Comox Valley community.

We got the support from all the municipalities, and its been going really well ever since, says Eriksson.

RELATED STORY: Local musicians inducted into Comox Valley Walk of Achievement

The list on honorees includes Red Robinson, Dr. Fred Leung, Stan Hagen, Jack Hodgins, Kim Cattrall, Iona Campagnolo, Stocky Edwards and Jock Finlayson. FMI: walkofachievement.com

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Rear admiral added to Comox Valley Walk of Achievement - vancouverislandfreedaily.com

Small surface ships will struggle in high seas

The sea is a tough place, and, given that stormy seas often damage ships and endanger sailors, the Navy has habitually worked to keep vessels out of harms way since 1944. But over the past thirty years the Navy has become so risk-averse that the U.S. surface Navy vacated several strategic-but-stormy seas.

That retreatand the general loss of sustained heavy-weather experience by the cost-conscious post-Cold War U.S. Navyhas had real consequences. As the memory of sustained, stormy weather operations faded under the weight of a tough anti-terror operational tempo, the number of U.S. sailors and other naval tastemakers who understood that battle in high seas demanded ships with particular sea-keeping features dwindled away.

So the question remains: Do tastemakers like Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper, who, in a February 27th letter to the House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, argued for more smaller surface combatants; greater reliance on lightly and optionally-manned ships, really understand that they may be arguing for a fleet that will be more effective fighting from a pier than out in the contested seas the future Navy is meant to secure?

Sea States Mattered:

Up until a little more than 18 months ago, almost an entire generation of U.S. sailors lacked experience sailing in the rough seas north of the Arctic Circle. In late 2018, Carrier Strike Group Eight was the first U.S. aircraft carrier battle group to operate in the Norwegian Sea in 27 years. The experiencealong with several othersshowed that the Navy had lost a lot of old operational secrets and practices needed to project power in stormy weather.

The same can be said for design. Back in the Cold War, naval designers grew surface combatants to, in part, better prosecute combat in the high seas. The enormous displacement of an old Cold War mainstay, the Spruance class destroyer, was controversial. At over 8,000 tons, the Spruance was twice that of Americas previous front-line destroyer, the Charles F. Adams class.

But back in the early 1980s, when the U.S. Navy was a bit more concerned about the impact of storms and high seas upon the operational capability of U.S. Navy ships, studies cautioned that even the Spruance Class destroyers were only fully operable 80 percent of the time at Sea State 5 and barely operable 20 percent of the time at Sea State 6.

Cold War naval designers had super-sized the destroyer, to, in part, fight better in high sea states. But while Americas giant nuclear carriers were barely affected by heavy seas, their escortseven the big new Spruance class destroyersstill struggled to remain effective.

Smaller ships have plenty of opportunities to struggle in high seas; in the open ocean of the Northern Hemisphere, Navy studies from 1982 estimated that the probability of seas of Sea State 6 or higher was almost 27 percent. The probability of Sea State 5 or higher was almost 50 percent. This was reflected in choices the Navy made as the Cold War wound down. The Navy shed frigates and other small ships at an enormous rate while retaining the Arleigh Burke class, a destroyer even larger than the Spruance class.

Sea States Still Matter:

Thanks to the end of the Cold War and comprehensive meteorological guidance, Navy ships couldand didset their courses for the best weather possible. With no threat, such risk avoidance made sense. And as China and Russia emerge, the Navy can no longer plan on operating in calm seas. The Navy must go to where the war isand today, as storms are becoming stronger and more frequent, the chances of a fight in higher, rougher seas will only increase.

Meanwhile, Pentagon technologists like Secretary of Defense Mark Esperan Army veteran, who, as Secretary of the Army, urged the a-strategic dismantling of the Armys sea transport wingis extolling the virtues of the low-cost, small ship Navy. Does the Secretary of Defenseor the Deputy Secretary of Defense, David L. Norquist, who has been charged to lead a comprehensive review and analysis of the Navys proposed future fleet force structure, actually understand the tradeoff between vessel size and high-seas effectiveness?

Certainly, frigates and small ships are usefulthe Navy certainly needs a far wider variety of vessels. Fundamental systems engineering questions risk being overlooked in the rush to propose exciting and fundable small-ship concepts. Right now, Washington think tanks are proposing fun-sounding baubles like 2,000 ton minimally manned vessels to serve as floating arsenals for carrier strike groups without really digging into the nitty-gritty operational feasibility of such new schemes.

The question is simple. If an 8,000 ton destroyer is unable to fully operate in Sea State 5 or higher, how well will a far more sophisticated and delicate 2,000 ton optionally-manned missile boat be ready to fight? How will these small vessels keep up with the carrier strike groups they are charged to defend? Have the sensitive technologies necessary for these small ships to fight actually been optimized and tested in real-world small-ship sea conditions?

Theres a reason why U.S. Navy surface combatants have gotten bigits because they need to do a lot of complex warfighting-oriented things. They must keep up with the carriers they defend and they need to be operational at high seas. Small ships can do lots of similar things too, but they cannot do as well at keeping up with an aircraft carrier in high seas and will have a hard time being operational in even ubiquitous mid-sized seas.

Small vessels are finebut they are no panacea. When the seas are big, the lighter, smaller and cheaper fleets favored by budget-minded technocrats risk becoming ineffective. For challenged navies, high seas are an immutable fact of life. But, for the past thirty years, the U.S. Navy has avoided them, and forgotten a lot. And now that a former Army paratrooper and a Certified Government Financial Manager are poised to fundamentally reshape the U.S. Navy, the Navy itself is poorly positioned to even try to express the deep operational risks posed by dramatic changes in naval composition.

In this headlong rush to leverage new technologies and hot new concepts, the fancy powerpoint slides that point the Pentagon towards a cheap, pint-sized and optionally-manned fleet still has a long way to go before being converted into operational reality. In particular, the Navy needs to explain these operational challenges to David Norquist. If they dont, David Norquist will do what his brother could not. While Grover Norquist has failed in his quest to reduce the U.S. Government to the size where he can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub, Grovers highly-regarded brotherif allowed to make decisions based largely on accounting principles and exciting powerpoint conceptsmay be set to do just that very thing to the U.S. Navy.

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The U.S. Navys Future Fleet Will Run Aground In Heavy Weather - Forbes

In 1960 Twentieth Century Fox released the film Sink the Bismarck! Based on C.S. Forresters bestselling book The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck, the documentary-style film tells a gripping and reasonably factual account of the most famous sea chase in history.

In an early scene, German Fleet Admiral Gnther Ltjens addresses the crew of the battleship as they head out to the Atlantic. With the typically bellicose posturing usually portrayed in American war films, Ltjens proclaims, Officers and men of the Bismarck! This is the fleet commander. I can now tell you that we are going out into the North Atlantic to attack the British convoys. We are going to sink their ships until they no longer dare to let them sail! It is true we are only two ships [Bismarck was sailing with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen]. But the world has never seen such ships! We are sailing in the largest, the most powerful battleship afloat, superior to anything in the British Navy! We are faster, we are unsinkable!

From that point on, the viewer is left with little doubt of the German warships invincibility and power. Yet this is not true. Bear in mind that the movie was made in 1959, a full 18 years after the Bismarck had been sunk. This has become the Bismarck legend. But most legends have no more validity than what one accepts at face value.

Like many other historical icons, Bismarcks power has been greatly magnified and distorted. What was once believe about Bismarck is pure fiction. In fact, rather than the most powerful battleship in the world, she was actually among the ranks of less heavily armed capital warships in 1941. True, her engineering and fire control, engines and gunnery were superb. But those factors alone do not warrant top billing.

The development of heavy warships since 1906 when HMS Dreadnought, the first all big gun ship, was launched was a steady climb in size and power. But it was most often a constant duel between size, weight of armor, speed, and gun caliber.

During World War I, the old tactic of battleships steaming in parallel lines battering away at one another ended with the epic Battle of Jutland. In four separate encounters on May 31, 1916, two huge fleets met off Danish Jutland in the North Sea. When it was over, three British battlecruisers had blown up, but the main force of the German High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet had suffered little crippling damage. Even when the biggest guns were employed, it was armor protection that mattered most. Unfortunately, some naval design experts had yet to grasp this fact.

All Jutland proved was that the old way of ending wars with battleships was over.

When the Third Reich dawned in 1933, Germany had already begun a massive shipbuilding program. Destroyers, cruisers and, most effectively, U-boats were constructed in great numbers, but the queens of the sea would still be the mighty battleships. Senior Kriegsmarine officers believed they could be far more effective at hitting and sinking convoys, the lifeline of the United Kingdom, than in dangerous ship-to-ship duels.

Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, commander of the Kriegsmarine, first commissioned the building of three Deutschland-class cruisers, Deutschland, Admiral Scheer, and Admiral Graf Spee. While officially heavy cruisers, they were euphemistically called pocket battleships. Each panzerschiff, or armored ship, carried six 11-inch guns in two turrets as its main armament.

Three 14,500-ton Admiral Hipper-class cruisers, Hipper, Blucher, and Prinz Eugen, each carried eight 8-inch guns in four turrets. Formidable in themselves, they were soon superseded.

The powerful 32,000-ton Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were launched in 1936. They each carried nine 11-inch guns in three turrets. A certain hazy sense of purpose surrounds these two ships. They were referred to at various times as battlecruisers, heavy cruisers, and even battleships. Since the battlecruisers were traditionally meant to act as fast scouts rather than capital ships, this betrays an uncertainty in the Kriegsmarine as to what their role was meant to be.

Not so for Bismarck, laid down in 1936 and launched at the Blohm & Voss Shipyard near Hamburg on St. Valentines Day, 1939. A beaming Hitler attended the ceremonies.

The German battleship Bismarck has long been regarded as the most powerful capital ship ever to go to sea. However, closer examination reveals that such may not be the case.

The new battleship was to be armed with eight 15-inch guns in four turrets and a dozen 5.9-inch rifles in six turrets. At 42,000 tons and protected by 13 inches of armor, Bismarck was the biggest warship ever built in Germany. With both radar and advanced fire control systems to aim her guns, she was capable of doing great damage to other warships and totally destroying any unarmored merchant ship with ease.

The Royal Navy watched her progress with trepidation. When war broke out the primary targets of the German warships were the Atlantic convoys that provided Britain with vital supplies of food and raw materials. They carried munitions, planes, tanks, food, supplies, and troops to Great Britains armies. If the vulnerable transports and tankers could be sunk, it was only a matter of time before Britain would fall.

However, Bismarck was not feared for her firepower alone. The British Admiralty worried over what she could do to convoys, Britains lifeline. The Royal Navy needed to stop her.

In the spring of 1941, Bismarck was undergoing sea trials in the Baltic Sea. When she and her consort, the Prinz Eugen, finally left the Baltic and Norwegian waters to head out to the Atlantic, the fate of Great Britain was uncertain. Already Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had sunk 22 ships totaling 115,000 tons. And they had nowhere near Bismarcks firepower.

In May, 16 convoys were out in the Atlantic, headed for the Mediterranean or the British Isles. Even with Royal Navy destroyers, cruisers, and battleships providing escort, they were all vulnerable to Bismarcks huge guns.

Bismarck was the all-consuming obsession of the British Admiralty. For six days, through good and bad weather, good luck and tragedy, two fleets and nearly a dozen individual warships tried to find, engage, and sink the German behemoth.

On May 24, the pride of the Royal Navy, the huge battlecruiser HMS Hood, met up with Bismarck in the Denmark Strait. When Hood and the terror of the seas met for the first and last time it really came down to the two biggest kids on the block slugging it out to see who was toughest. One was an old fighter with a heavier punch but a shorter reach, while the other was a young boxer who could hit faster.

Less than 10 minutes after they opened fire on each other, the mighty Hood received a hit that pierced her main ammunition magazines and exploded in a massive detonation that killed all but three of her 1,400 crewmen. What really mattered was not the size of the guns. It was range, armor protection, and accuracy. Hood and Bismarck carried almost identical main armament.

One of Bismarcks 15-inch gun turrets, this one named Bruno, looms above the deck assailors go about their business. Under close scrutiny, the broadside punch of the battleships heaviest weapons was only average among the warships of other nations.

Hoods loss was a deep blow to Great Britain, and it only served to steel British resolve. To the rest of the world watching the sea drama unfolding it seemed to prove that Bismarck was invincible. Sinking the Hood was a propaganda bonanza for the Third Reich. Avenging the Hood was a rallying cry for the British nation. Neither side could back down.

The Royal Navy scraped together every available ship, and in the end, by the sheerest luck and steadfast determination, two Royal Navy battleships finally turned Bismarck into a flaming wreck.

For more than 70 years Bismarcks superiority has been taken for granted. The 1960 film added to the legend, and in time it was taken as fact. But how did it start? Who was the first to make the statement that Bismarck was incomparable? Careful research among German and British archives from the Imperial War Museum and the Naval Historical Center reveals not a single public pre-1941 proclamation of Bismarck as the most powerful and/or biggest battleship in the world. Not even the Nazi War Ministry or the Propaganda Ministry seems to have made such a claim. Josef Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, certainly the master of deceit and spin control, would have been the logical one to say it, but he was too smart. Any naval expert would have challenged a boast of Bismarcks strength, and the Third Reich would have lost face.

The closest to such a claim was during her launching at the port of Kiel. Hitler proudly stated that Bismarck and her sister Tirpitz were the most powerful warships ever built in Germany. That too is not fully accurate. Back in 1916 during the height of the Great War, SMS Bayern was launched. She was the first of Kaiser Wilhelm IIs new superdreadnoughts. She carried no less than eight 15-inch guns, the same as Bismarck would carry 23 years later. Hitler seems to have forgotten this minor point.

The most the Germans could honestly say, if such a word would ever be recognized by the German Propaganda Ministry, is that Bismarck was the newest and most advanced warship in the world. After a careful study of the major warships of the time, it appears the mighty Bismarcks bark was worse than its bite.

Naval guns, by the spring of 1941, were as good as they would ever get. Their size and range increased from the early 12-inch cannon used on the pioneering HMS Dreadnought in 1906, growing by leaps and bounds by the beginning of the Great War. Soon, even 13.5-inch guns were overtaken by the massive 15-inch guns of the colossal Queen Elizabeth-class super-dreadnoughts. They set the standard in the Royal Navy that held sway for the next 20 years. But there were exceptions. For the sister battleships HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney, launched in 1920 and 1922, respectively, nine 16-inch guns, the largest ever cast by the British, were fitted. With three triple-gun turrets, they were later matched by the American Iowa-class battleships. They were the heaviest guns ever mounted on a British warship.

The battlecruisers builtby the British Royal Navy prior to World War I sacrificed armor protection for speed. It was this tradeoff that proved fatal to the great Hood, pictured here, in its brief battle with Bismarck and in May 1941.

The pendulum between more guns and bigger guns swung back and forth, partially due to cost and the configuration of the proposed vessels.

Thus, prior to World War II the newest battleship in the Royal Navy was the King George V with 10 14-inch guns in three turrets. The forward and aft guns were set in two ponderous four-gun turrets, while the last two were set in a high-mounted twin turret.

This illustrates the capricious nature of battleship design in the interwar period and the early 1940s. The 14-inch gun was the standard in the U.S. Navy, appearing on nearly every battleship from the USS Nevada until the launching of USS Iowa in 1942. Nevada carried ten 14-inch guns, while the later USS Arizona boasted 12 guns in four turrets.

Frances largest battleships, Jean Bart and Richelieu, each carried eight 15-inch guns. Italys capital battleship Vittorio Veneto had nine guns of the same caliber and rated at 40,000 tons and 780 feet long.

Of course, any examination of World War II battleships must include the Japanese super battleships Yamato and Musashi. Yamato had been launched by the time of the Bismarck chase but would not be commissioned until December 1941. At 65,000 tons, Yamato and Musashi carried nine immense 18-inch guns, the largest ever mounted on a ship. These were the apogee of battleship design, but both remained vulnerable to carrier-based aircraft and were sunk by U.S. Navy planes during the war.

To clearly illustrate how Bismarcks armament was less than equal to many if not most of the worlds major warships, it will be necessary to look at certain criteria. Main arma-ment, including caliber, weight of shell, and range are the most important criteria for a battleships guns, indeed its very reason for existence. Using a simple formula of the number of guns multiplied by the size provides a warships Total Gun Caliber (TGC). This is only meant as a means of ranking a ships gun size. Another formula, Total Weight of Broadside (TWB) is also used to help the ranking.

Many other factors need to be considered, such as range, rate of fire, fire control, and accuracy. Bismarck, as a new, highly advanced warship with state-of-the-art German engineering, was arguably technologically superior to anything in the Royal Navy in 1941.

After a careful look at the TGC and TWB ratings, some surprising results emerge. Japans Yamato, with a TGC of 168 ranks second behind the Japanese battleship Nagato at 198. Yet as TWB is rated the numbers are reversed. Nagato could fire a heavier broadside than her newer, bigger descendant. Interestingly, the U.S Navys Arizona and Tennessee had the same 168 TGC as Yamato, although their gun range and weight of broadside were inferior. Overall, Japans battlewagons rank highest while the United States and Great Britain hover above France and Italy. The mighty Bismarck, the terror of the seas as Johnny Hortons 1959 novelty song proclaimed, is dead last.

The Japanese battleship Yamato, shown in harbor during construction, along with its sister Musashi mounted the heaviest guns ever placed aboard a modern warship. These 18-inch can

Hood and Bismarck were evenly matched. Both had a TGC of 120 and a nearly identical TWB of 7.238 tons and 6.857 tons, respectively. In fact, Hoods shells weighed 1,900 pounds while her opponent fired 1,800-pound projectiles. Even with heavier shells, Hoods 29,000-meter range was 6,000 meters shorter than Bismarcks. Only Bismarcks range and gunnery was superior. In the end, it was a lack of armor protection that doomed Hood.

So how did the world come to accept the boast? Bismarck was only considered the most powerful battleship in the world long after she had been sunk. It was part of the legend. And the Royal Navy, having lost the vaunted Hood and then destroying the German behemoth, looked better if Bismarck had been the superior vessel.

The truth is, for just nine short days, Bismarck was the newest and most advanced battleship in the world. Sooner or later she would have met her match, as all boastful bullies eventually do.

Author Mark Carlson has written on numerous topics related to World War II and the history of aviation. His book Flying on FilmA Century of Aviation in the Movies 1912-2012 was recently released. He resides in San Diego, California.

This article by Mark Carlson first appeared at the Warfare History Network in January 2019.

Image:Bismarck in port in Hamburg. 24 August 1940. Bundesarchiv.

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Hitler's Super Warship: Was the Battleship Bismarck Really Supposed To Be Invincible? - The National Interest Online

Met ireann has posted new and updated weather warnings as Storm Jorge nears Ireland

Storm Jorge, the third major storm set to hit Ireland this month, is expected to extreme winds and rain across the country this weekend.

Read More: Four weather warnings issued across Ireland ahead of Storm Jorge

Met ireann meteorologists said that Storm Jorge is the seventh named storm of the season. It was originally named by AEMET, the Spanish national meteorological service, due to the impact of the storms active cold front which is forecast to bring severe gusts and strong waves to the northwest of Spain.

On Friday, Met ireann issued new weather warnings, including a Status Red (the most severe) wind warning for two counties in the west of Ireland:

Very severe winds associated with Storm Jorge (Hor-hay) on Saturday.

Westerly winds will reach mean speeds of 85 to 100km/h in places on Saturday afternoon with gusts of 130 to 145km/h, with an elevated risk of coastal flooding.

Valid: 1 pm Saturday, February 29, 2020, to 4 pm Saturday, February 29, 2020

Issued: 4 pm Friday, February 28, 2020

Severe winds associated with Storm Jorge (Hor-hay) on Saturday.

Westerly winds will reach mean speeds of 65 to 80km/h for a time on Saturday afternoon and early evening with gusts of 110 to 120km/h, possibly higher in very exposed areas.

Valid: 1 pm - 7 pm Saturday, February 29, 2020

Issued: 4 pm Friday, February 28, 2020

Strong winds associated with Storm Jorge (Hor-hay) on Saturday.

Westerly winds of mean speeds 50 to 65km/h on Saturday evening and early Saturday night with gusts of 90 to 110km/h expected.

Valid: 7 pm to 11:59 pm Saturday, February 29, 2020

Issued: 4 pm Friday, February 28, 2020

1. Southwesterly gales or strong gales will develop overnight on Irish coastal waters from Roches Point to Slyne Head to Rossan Point, extending to all Irish coastal waters and to the Irish Sea tomorrow morning.

2. Winds will veer westerly during Saturday morning and afternoon, increasing gale force 8 to storm force 10 and reaching violent storm-force 11 at times between Mizen head and Erris Head.

Read More: Snow and ice warning issued for the whole of Ireland

The new weather warnings come in addition to several other warnings that Met ireann issued on February 27. On February 28, some updates were made to the existing warnings:

UPDATE: Rainfall accumulations generally between 20 to 30mm expected during Friday and Saturday, but 40 to 50 mm possible in mountainous areas, with a continuing risk of flooding due to already saturated ground and elevated river levels.

Valid: 12:01 am Friday, February 28, 2020, to 11:59 pm Saturday, February 29, 2020

Issued: 11 am Thursday, February 27, 2020

Updated: 7:48 pm Thursday, February 27, 2020

Strong winds associated with Storm Jorge (Hor-hay) on Saturday.

Southwesterly winds of mean speeds 50 to 65km/h on Saturday morning with gusts of 90 to 110km/h expected.

Valid: 9 am to 1 pm Saturday, February 29, 2020

Issued: 1:39 pm Thursday, February 27, 2020

Updated: 4:09 pm Friday, February 28, 2020

Read More: Storm Dennis lashes Ireland with 75 mph winds

On February 27, Joan Blackburn (Deputy Head of Forecasting Division), Sinad Duffy (Meteorologist, Technology Division) and Eoin Sherlock (Head of Flood Forecast Division) offered these remarks regarding Storm Jorge in Ireland:

Storm Jorge (named by AEMET, the Spanish meteorological service) is the latest in a series of Atlantic storms this month and is due to affect Ireland from early Saturday. Rain will extend countrywide from the west tonight, before the storm arrives.

Storm Jorge (pronounced Hor-hay) is a storm centre which will undergo rapid cyclogenesis in the mid-Atlantic during Friday 28th February as it tracks northeastwards towards Ireland. It is then expected to fill slowly as it crosses over the north of the country during Saturday 29th February.

Storm Jorge is forecast to bring severe winds to western and northwestern coastal counties (orange wind warning) and less severe winds to the rest of the country (yellow wind warning) from Saturday morning into early Sunday morning.

Spells of heavy rain associated with Storm Jorge will worsen the flooding situation across the country. A yellow level rainfall warning will come into operation for Munster, Connacht and Donegal from tonight (Thursday night) to late on Saturday evening.

"Currently river levels are elevated across the country, particularly in the Midlands (Shannon catchment). Levels across the Northern half of the country are also high. Therefore, additional rainfall over the coming days will compound the flooding issues here.

"We are in a period of transition between Spring (High) Tides and Neap (Low) Tides. This means there will not be a large variation between high and low tides. The combination of high seas and strong winds or stormy conditions associated with Storm Jorge may increase the possibility of coastal flooding, especially in flood-prone areas along the Atlantic coast on Saturday (particularly when coincident with high tides)."

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New severe weather warnings issued in Ireland ahead of Storm Jorge - IrishCentral

Sea piracy, the stuff of kids stories and swashbuckling Hollywood classics, is still with us but modern pirates have none of the charm oftheir storybook predecessors. In 2009, for example, the MV Maersk Alabama was taken over by pirates (as portrayed in the movie 'Captain Phillips'), leading to the kidnapping of the captain and a bloody shootout involving U.S. Navy Seals.

At any given time, there are about 100,000 vessels at sea. Oil tankers, cargo vessels, fishing boats, cruise ships, and patrol boats crowd the seas, and many of them are loaded with riches that prove to be too tempting for seagoing criminals to pass up.

Although most ships won't be hit by them, pirates especially in areas where enforcement is weak play the seas as well, looking for easy targets, specifically among cargo ships and oil tankers. So far in 2020, there have been fewer than 20 incidents of piracy on the high seas, most of them concentrated in specific areas. No ships have been outright seajacked; in most cases, pirates who boarded ships were overcome by the crew.

However, shippers don't take chances they invest a great deal of effort and money inprotecting vessels. The shipping industry annually lays out billions in insurance and in rerouting ships away from danger zones, and then there are the expenses for the deployment of naval forces to protect ships, the hit to local ports for lost business, etc. The total annual cost of piracy prevention is as much as $12 billion.

One reason pirates are able to get away with attacks is their stealthiness. They sneak up on cargo ships and quickly board them before their victims have an opportunity to defend themselves, put some distance between themselves and potential attackers, or inform authorities that they are likely to become victims of a forced boarding.

A quick perusal of attacks shows that stealth is indeed the modern pirate's modus operandi. One attack off the coast of Nigeria saw robbers in a small boat approach an anchored tanker during STS cargo operations. Two of the robbers attempted to board the tanker via the anchor chain. Duty crew on routine rounds noticed the robbers and raised the alarm.

In another attack, Two unauthorized persons from two skiffs came alongside and boarded an anchored tanker. Duty watchman on security rounds noticed the persons on the forecastle deck. Alarm raised and crew mustered. Seeing the alerted crew, the persons jumped overboard and escaped. In a third attack, Five armed pirates in a small craft approached a tanker underway. Alarm raised and evasive maneuvers commenced. Armed security team onboard the tanker fired warning shots resulting in the pirates returning fire and then aborting the approach and moving away.

A cargo ship passes through the Panama Canal's Pedro Miguel Locks on the outskirts of Panama City in February 2018 Photo: AFP / Rodrigo ARANGUA

In each of these and many other reported attacks, pirates were able to approach their targets using small boats that evaded detection, using odd maneuvers and roundabout routes, often under cover of darkness. While crews successfully fended off the attack in each case, the danger of someone getting hit in the crossfire or the pirates actually succeeding always exists. Those stealth tactics, for example, were what enabled Somali pirates to hijack the Aris 13 oil tanker in 2017.

So how can ships avoid pirates? One way is to stick with the crowd. It's unlikely that a pirate skiff will be able to sneak up on a ship in crowded waterways, but there are going to be times and places where a ship may be alone.

In those situations, ships would likely rely on radar, which would give them insight into vessels and objects in the area. Unfortunately, most radar systems are designed to detect large objects that a ship is at risk of colliding with; they often miss small boats and skiffs, the vessels that have become the preferred method of pirate invasion.

A third possibility is to keep in constant touch with naval patrols and other security groups while in dangerous waters. But, often a patrol boat will be tens of kilometers away from a ship, too far to navigate to the scene of the crime when called upon for help.

Fortunately, new developments in vision and sensor technology are available to help deal with the piracy problem. Ships equipped with sensors that take in data about everything surrounding the ship, large and small, can alert crew and patrols that a pirate invasion is on the way.

Using machine learning, for example, a sensor-based system that detects a skiff would analyze its movements, and based on data from previous encounters, it would alert the crew that the kinds of maneuvers the skiff is making indicatethat it is likely a pirate vessel. Crew members could then take their positions to defend the vessel, or even take pre-emptive action against the offenders.

Using advanced vision technology, systems could more easily identify offending vessels. By recording speed and trajectory and matching the data with a map of the surrounding area, for example, a system could provide authorities with information on the likely whereabouts of offenders, making it easier to catch them before they strike again.

Long John Silver is long gone, but his criminal heirs are still plying the high seas quite successfully, unfortunately. Pirates who steal cargo or, increasingly, kidnap crews and hold them for ransom earn tens of millions of dollars a year. New developments in technology will hopefully put this scourge to a stop once and for all.

(Yarden Gross is CEO and Co-founder of Orca AI)

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High Seas Piracy Is Alive And Well. Can We Kill It? - International Business Times

Maneater is John Wick if Keanu Reeves had gotten whacked and his dog had to embark on a bloody campaign of retribution instead. You play as an ever-evolving bull shark pup with an axe to grind against a local celebrity big game hunter who goes by Scaly Pete. Pete, that surly cajun SOB, caught and gutted your mother while you were being born, killing her, disfiguring you, and thereby earning him a righteous chomping. Of course, Pete has his own qualms about the situation, primarily the fact that you tore off his hand on your way out of the womb and then promptly ate it as you escaped. Whatever, that dude's a jerk.

From the moment the prologue ends, your eventual showdown with Scaly Pete is set. But how well-prepared you arrive at your inevitable loggerhead is an entirely different matter. Maneater mixes the open world environments of GTA with light action RPG elements from Far Cry.

Players start as a newly-born bull shark who must survive the brackish waters of seven explorable Southeastern American delta regions. The initial stages of the game are rather sedate, with a focus on generally snacking on anything smaller than yourself. By predating on smaller animals like catfish and turtles, the player can quickly build up their shark's strength, collect valuable resources for levelling, and gain necessary XP.

Once you bulk up, level up, and evolve sufficiently, you'll be able to expand your hunting range further, eventually overlapping your territory with competing predators like muskogee, alligators -- even orcas. And then eating them.

Once your shark reaches adolescence you'll be able to accept various missions -- fighting off other apex predators, for example, or hunting a specific number of prey species to keep their population in check (yes that especially includes humans) -- in order to accelerate your XP gains.

If the prescribed missions aren't your thing, you can also just tool around looking for trouble. The game offers a number of optional tasks, goals, discoverable checkpoints, hidden resource boxes, and other secrets for players to find. And as soon as your shark hits its adolescent stage, the entire game map opens for exploration.

Your shark will also gain new powers as it eats its way through the seas, including developing a Thresher Shark-like tail whip; a sturdy casing of protective bone armor, or increasingly sensitive sonar skills. Hell yes your shark does sonar.

During my playthrough at a hands-on event in San Francisco last week, my shark's feeding frenzies eventually attracted unwanted attention from the local human population who invariably called out multiple waves of shark hunters (and eventually Coast Guard units) in an effort to end my reign of terror. It was not unlike the police response to earning infamy stars in GTA.

The difference being that, unlike GTA, Maneter has a set number of enemy waves to survive and if players can actually chomp, ram, tail-whip and thrash their way through those opponents, they'll afford themselves the opportunity to face off against one of ten local shark hunter bosses. Ingest all of those fishermen and you'll get a shot at Scaly Pete himself.

The game itself is fairly short -- around 8 - 10 hours for the primary quest alone and about 16 hours if you complete all of the optional missions, according to the developers. Maneater will be available for PS4, XBox One, and at the Epic Game Store for $39.99 on May 22nd, with a version for the Switch arriving at an undisclosed later date.

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Hunt the high seas as a hyper-evolved super shark in 'Maneater' - Engadget

It takes an hour from the surface of the Indian Ocean, descending 3,000 metres in a submersible research pod, to reach the bizarre creatures that cluster around hydrothermal vents on the seabed. Youre in a titanium sphere that is about two metres in diameter, says evolutionary biologist Julia Sigwart, describing her voyage to Kairei hydrothermal vent field, east of Madagascar.

The vessel is equipped with robotic arms, probes and cameras like a manned, underwater version of the Mars rover. In lieu of seats, theres a padded floor. So youre hunched up together with the two pilots who are driving it and manipulating it, she says.

With not even a loo on board, its definitely on the bijou side for an eight-hour working day, but for Sigwart, director of the marine laboratory at Queens University, Belfast, the experience is worth it.

As you go down the light fades out rapidly. When you turn off the lights of the submersible you can see all of the bioluminescence of everything thats alive in the water all around you big and small. Its like a beautiful starscape.

While much of the ocean floor looks like a ghost town to the naked eye, the concentrated patches of life around hydrothermal vents are as densely, if not as diversely, populated as coral reefs.

The vents are where mineral-rich hot water, between 300C and 400C (572-752F), bursts out from below the Earths crust, swirling into the cold seawater like black smoke. These smoking chimneys loom up at you, out of the blackness. Theyre just incredible, says Sigwart.

One current evolutionary hypothesis is that the special conditions around deep-sea thermal vents sparked the beginnings of life on Earth.

But these rare and vital ecosystems are under serious threat from deep-sea mining for minerals such as zinc, used for car batteries and mobile phone circuit boards, say campaigners. You might expect that in open water, which does not belong to anyone, the seabed would be safe from commodification, but in 2019 Greenpeace reported that 30 floor-exploration licences had been granted worldwide by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a UN body.

Deep-sea mining is the process of retrieving mineral deposits from the deep sea the area of the ocean below 200 metres, which is the largest and least explored environment on Earth, occupying 65% of the planets surface. Metals found there such as copper, nickel, aluminium, lithium, cobalt and mangen are increasingly needed to make batteries, smartphones and solar panels.

When will it happen?So far, 30 exploration licences have been granted by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a UN body. In total, 1.5m km2 has been set aside for mineral exploration (equivalent to an area the size of Mongolia) in the Pacific and Indian Oceans as well as along the mid-Atlantic ridge. No exploitation contracts have yet been allocated but they are expected to be given out as early as this year when ISAs Mining Code is expected to be approved. This will be a set of rules to regulate prospecting, exploration and exploitation of marine minerals in the international seabed area.

Why is it a problem?Critics are concerned mining could do huge damage to the deep sea and the creatures and ecosystems that exist there. Underwater ecosystems like volcanic mountains, hydrothermal vents and deep-sea trenches are still poorly understood. Many endemic deep-sea species could be wiped out by the creation of a single large mine, while more mobile creatures will be indirectly affected by noise and light pollution.

What can be done?Comprehensive studies need to be carried out to assess the potential damage to biodiversity before deep-sea mining goes ahead, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN). Fundamentally, the IUCN also says people need to recycle and reuse products so there is less demand for extraction of natural resources. Researchers have created a list of priorities for deep-sea conservation. The survey, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, included the responses of 112 scientists.

Phoebe Weston

Mining companies in Germany, China, Korea, India and the UK are among the recipients. Theyre not supposed to be used for commercial-scale mining, but several of the licences have been renewed and theyre into a second 10-year term, says Sigwart, adding that the ISA is currently developing a regulatory framework for commercial mining in the high seas.

The race is now on for Sigwart and other biologists to identify and learn more about the vent-dwelling creatures and lobby for their protection. Many are only found in these unique and isolated places. The vivid mottled orange snail, Gigantopelta aegis, has only been located in one area estimating 8km squared.

Elin Thomas, Sigwarts PhD student, has set to work assessing the vent species discovered so far against the criteria for the International Union for the Conservation of Natures red list. Because of its small, singular habitat and the threat of mining in the Indian Ocean, the Gigantopelta aegis is now classified as critically endangered.

Another colourful character on the vent scene is Alviniconcha strummeri, named after the Clashs Joe Strummer on account of its spiky shell resembling punk rockers. Its red list status is vulnerable.

In total, 15 hydrothermal vent species described fondly as super weird by Sigwart have been added to the red rist. The mythical-looking sea pangolin, AKA the scaly-foot snail, was the first to be identified as at risk (status: vulnerable). Resplendent in armoured skirts that would be the envy of any Roman centurion, the layers of black flaps around its foot, along with its helmet-like black shell, are a result of the very mineral riches that are attracting the mining industry.

The iron that precipitates out of the vent fluid, says Sigwart, is incorporated into the shell and the scales of the scaly foot. It hasnt grown an iron shell, but the available environmental iron on the surface has integrated into it.

The scaly-foot snail and Gigantopelta aegis are the most fascinating to Sigwart, because each has independently evolved a cunning way to bypass the whole kerfuffle of having to eat. All life around the vents depends on bacteria for energy. There are no plants, so the creatures have to either graze on slimy microbial mats, or eat each other. Rather than bother with any of that, however, these two evolutionary geniuses have an internal organ inside which microbes live, providing all their energy needs.

Its not all snails and germs down there, however. There are giant ghostly white crabs scuttling about, stalked barnacles, tube worms, shrimps and mussels. Different vent systems around the world have their own assemblages of animals. The first vents, discovered in the late 1970s, were in the east Pacific and are known for their metre-long lipstick worms.

In Sigwarts experience, people often assume these ecosystems are out of harms way, nobody can reach them. Its all fine. But its no longer fine, because now were on a path to developing commercial-scale deep-sea mining and vents are a target. We can no longer naively hope that the depths of the oceans are still pristine and untouched.

More and more, says Sigwart, its clear that they are already impacted by human activities. We find plastic in deep-sea sediments, the ocean circulation patterns are being altered by global climate change.

Crucially, she says, the tide is turning when it comes to scientists becoming more vocal about the animals that would otherwise stay out of sight and out of mind. Deep-sea biology is fascinating and exciting, and it inspires a sense of wonder in everybody, says Sigwart.

There are very few of us that have the privilege of actually working on these animals and habitats. We have a burden of responsibility to try to explain them to other people before the damage is done.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

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One scientist's mission to save the 'super weird' snails under the sea - The Guardian

Two Saco-based fishermen are looking to score a wicked big catch, before a nationwide audience.

Zack Plante and Charlie Boivin will be featured on the ninth season of National Geographics reality TV show Wicked Tuna, beginning Sunday. Plante and Boivin were filmed last summer competing against seven other boats fishing out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where the show is based. Theyll be seen fishing out of their 35-foot boat, Wasabi.

The point of the show is to see which crew makes the most money from their seasons catch, while highlighting the competitiveness and drama on the high seas along the way. Boivin and Plante are among three new crews on the show this season, competing against several other boats that have been on the show before. As the only boat from Maine, Boivin and Plante the latter of whom a news release described as ready to stir the pot went into the show with a little bit of a chip on their shoulders.

These veterans whove been on the show for a while think theyre much better fishermen than everyone else, said Boivin, 38, who lives in Lebanon. Fishing for bluefin tuna is not an easy thing, but I know were as good as anyone else.

The seasons premiere episode will be Sunday at 9 p.m. on the National Geographic cable channel. The season runs for 15 episodes, with new episodes each Sunday at the same time. There is no prize at the end of the show, just bragging rights for the crew with the biggest haul. Though boats that do well might be invited back, and the fame of being on the show presents money-making opportunities.

I know a lot of these other guys (on the show) are in the chartering business. Once youre known for being on Wicked Tuna, everyone wants to be on your boat, said Boivin.

Neither Plante nor Boivin are allowed to say what happens on their boat, or on this season of Wicked Tuna beforehand. While the show mostly features boats based in Gloucester, other Maine boats have been part of Wicked Tuna before. The Portland-based boat Erin & Sarah competed in 2016, captained by Pete Speeches of Scarborough.

Plante and Boivin are co-captains and the only crew on their 35-foot, 39-year-old boat, which is owned by Boivin. Like all the crews on Wicked Tuna, they fish for the massive bluefin with rod and reel. Early in the season, they can start catching them three miles out, but later might venture out some 40 miles, Plante said. The fish range in weight from 200 to 700 pounds, and it can take anywhere from 45 minutes to seven or eight hours to land one, the two fishermen said. A big fish can be worth thousands of dollars at the dock.

Boivin, who also works for a company that installs power line poles, grew up fishing in lakes and streams in southern Maine. But he got bored with that hobby and looking for more challenges, he started helping a cousin on his lobster boat out of Biddeford. He heard about tuna fishing from other fishermen, tried it and was instantly hooked. He bought his boat a fixer-upper and began fishing for tuna commercially about eight years ago.

Plante, 28, grew up in Springvale and lives in Shapleigh. Like Boivin, he grew up fishing in lakes and streams but never really did much ocean fishing. He was working for his fathers excavation company in 2013 when he was in a bad accident on his motorcycle he said a car hit him after running a stop sign that left him hospitalized for a couple months. He suffered injuries to his spinal cord, legs, knee, feet and jaw and took about three months to start walking again.

A couple years after the accident, he was helping a friend run charter fishing trips off the Maine coast. Through other fishermen, he met Boivin, who introduced him to bluefin tuna fishing. He too was instantly enamored of it. When not fishing for bluefin tuna, Plante fishes on a boat out of Boston.

So when someone sent Plante an email saying Wicked Tuna was casting new boats, he thought it was worth a shot to apply. As bluefin tuna fishermen, he and Boivin always welcome a challenge.

This is something we care about, Plante said.

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Saco fishermen compete on new season of 'Wicked Tuna' - Press Herald

Key point:Emplaced on islands dotting the Pacific Ocean, HIMARS and kindred missile launchers could give Chinese ships of war a very bad day.

The feel-good story of last month comes out of the U.S. Marine Corps, whose leadership has set in motion a crash effort to field anti-ship missiles for island warfare. Grabbing headlines most recently is the high-mobility artillery rocket system, or HIMARS. In effect, HIMARS is a truck that totes around a launcher capable of disgorging a variety of precision-guided munitions. Some can pummel ships at sea.

And devil dogs will grin. As will their U.S. Navy shipmates. Americas navy can use all the joint-service help it can get as it squares off against China and Russia in their home waters. The Marine Corps Hymn proclaims that marines are first to fight, and that remains true in this age of Eurasian seacoasts abristle with long-range precision-guided armaments and missile-armed ships and planes prowling sea and sky. But that fight will commence at sea, not on distant beaches. Marines realize they may never reach Pacific battlegrounds without first winning command of waters that furnish an avenue into contested littorals.

Marine Commandant Robert Neller is fond of telling his comrades they must fight to get to the fight. His logic is remorseless. And marines will take up arms in company with navy and merchant-marine sailors who man the fleet. Expeditionary forces cant even begin prying open the halls of Montezuma or the shores of Tripoli until they defeat hostile navies and batter down anti-access defenses. But it goes further. In all likelihood, the fight will involve more than just the naval services. U.S. Air Force aviators may bear a hand in future high-sea imbroglios. Even the U.S. Army stands poised to get into the action as soldiers prepare for multi-domain operations spanning the terrestrial, airand, yes, saltwaterdomains.

In other words, future fights promise to be joint fights that mesh capabilities from naval and non-naval services. In that sense, the future promises to be a throwback to Pacific campaigns of old. Its fitting, then, that marine magnates are peering both ahead and back in time as they orient the Corps toward todays challenges. They want to harness newfangled technology to help win the war at sea while returning the service to its maritime heritage after seventeen years of battling insurgents and terrorists on dry land. In so doing they intend to bolster the efficacy of American maritime strategy.

First, technology. Nowadays sea power is no longer purely a matter for fleets. To the extent it ever was: that a ships a fool to fight a fort is an old adage, not one of recent coinage. Nor is sea power an exclusive province of navies. It is a joint enterprise whereby seagoing, aviation, and ground forces concentrate firepower at embattled scenes on the briny main to impose their will on the foe. The logic is plain. More and more shore-based weaponry can strike farther and farther out to sea as sensor technology and precision guidance mature. Fleets are beneficiaries of fire support from that weaponry so long as they cruise within its range.

Or as General Neller puts it, Theres a ground component to the maritime fight. Marines constitute a naval force in a naval campaign; you have to help the ships control sea space. And you can do that from the land.

And you can do it best from the land you already occupy. Emplaced on islands dotting the Pacific Ocean, HIMARS and kindred missile launchers could give Chinese ships of war a very bad day. If positioned along the first island chain paralleling the mainlands coastline before the outbreak of war, marines and their joint-service and allied brethren could plausibly threaten to bar access to the Western Pacific and points beyond. And they could execute the threat in wartime, confining Chinese merchantmen, warships, and aircraft to the China seas to exact a frightful economic and military penalty should Beijing do things the United States and its allies hope to deter.

The Marine Corps missile procurement blitz will be instantly familiar to Chinas Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). In fact, the marines are mounting a version in miniature of the PLAs anti-access/area-denial, or A2/AD, strategy. Chinas armed forces want to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet and affiliated joint forces out of the Western Pacific or take a heavy toll should they try to break in. Advanced technology likewise super-empowers U.S. and allied forces. They could strew anti-ship and anti-air missiles on landmasses comprising the first island chain while deploying additional munitions aboard aircraft, submarines, and surface craft lurking nearby.

Land forcesmarines and soldiers, American and alliedcan anchor the ground component of U.S. maritime strategy in Asia. Like A2/AD, island-chain defense leverages the symbiosis between sea- and shore-based implements of sea power. Joint firepower will help expeditionary forces fight their way to the fight. Or, in the case of the first island chain, likely battlefields already belong to allies or friends. Island warriors only need to hold friendly soiland as military sages from Clausewitz to Moltke the Elder teach, tactical defense represents the strongest form of warfare.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Beijing ought to feel flattered indeed. And dismayed!

Second, culture. Sophisticated implements like HIMARS accomplish little unless used with skill and verve. The naval services are trying to rejuvenate martial cultures deadened by three ahistorical decades. Once upon a timein fact, throughout their history until recent timesthe U.S. Marine Corps and Navy assumed they had to fight for command of the sea before they could harvest the fruits of command. In other words, they assumed they had to wrest control of important waters from local defenders in order to render seaways safe enough to land troops, bombard coastal sites, or, in the air and missile age, loft firepower deep into the interior. They had to make the sea a protected sanctuary.

In other words, they assumed they had to do what naval services have done throughout history. Yet service chieftains instigated a cultural revolution in 1992, declaring in effect that the sea services were now exempt from the rigors of peer-on-peer combat. That year they issued a strategic directive titled . . . From the Sea proclaiming that, with the Soviet Union dead and the Soviet Navy rusting at its moorings, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps could afford to reinvent themselves as fundamentally different sea services. With no peer antagonist to duel and none on the horizon, they were at liberty to assume away their most elemental function.

Not only could the sea services drop their guard; the leadership ordered them to. And they complied. Tactics and weaponry for prosecuting major combat languished in the wake of . . . From the Sea. The services first lost their fighting edge during the strategic holiday of the 1990s, and then while waging irregular warfare in the years since 9/11. Small wonder the services find themselves struggling to refresh their cultures for the new, old age of great-power strategic competition thats upon us.

Few in uniform today remember the Cold War, when the prospect of battle was a daily fact of life. Preparing for strategic competition demands more than upgrading equipment or relearning skills grown stale. It demands that officialdom and senior commanders imprint bloody-minded attitudes on the sea services anew. Only thus will they extract maximum combat power out of new weapons and sensors, assuring hardware fulfills its potential.

And third, strategy. If highfalutin technology and the cultural counterrevolution pan out, the U.S. Marines and fellow services will have positioned themselves to execute a strategy that could give rival great powers fits. Look back again to look ahead. During the late Cold War, the founding chief of the U.S. Office of Net Assessment, Andrew Marshall, exhorted the Pentagon and the armed forces to fashion competitive strategies whereby they could compete at a low cost relative to American economic means while compelling the Soviets to compete at a prohibitive cost relative to their means. Over time the approach would render waging cold war unaffordable for Moscow.

Competitive strategy is a mode of competition worth rediscovering. The United States and its allies are developing hardware and methods for closing the straits puncturing the first island chain to Chinese vessels and aircraft. In so doing they can deny China the access it must have to transact commerce, diplomacy, and military affairs in faraway regions. And they can close these narrow seas with systems such as HIMARS. While HIMARS anti-ship rounds are not cheap in absolute terms, dislodging rocketeers from Pacific islands would prove far more burdensome for the PLA. An allied strategy can compel Chinese forces to fight to get to the fightflipping the logic of anti-access and area denial against them.

In short, island-chain defense is strategy on the cheap in relative terms. Its an approach that would conjure a glint in Andrew Marshalls eye.

Lets call it a Great Wall in reverse strategy, with islands comprising the guard towers and joint sea power stationed on and around the islands forming the masonry in between. The legendary Great Wall was built to keep out Central Asian nomads who ravaged China from the steppes. Properly fortified, an archipelagic Great Wall can barricade China within the China seasand thereby force the PLA to compete on allied terms at a fearsome cost to itself.

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The Marine Corps Has A Strategy To Beat China: Island-Based Anti-Ship Missiles - The National Interest Online

After taking over Catalina Island last year for an epic edition of Groove Island, Groove Cruise Cali returns for another sailing from Los Angeles!

Whether its the infectious atmosphere brought forth by the GC Fam or the fantastic artists they book, theres nothing quite like the party that happens on the high seas while aboard Groove Cruise. Now, after a successful sailing out of Miami earlier this year, Whet Travel has announced that theyll be returning to the West Coast with a fresh edition of Groove Cruise Cali.

This year, Captains who set sail on Groove Cruise Cali on October 15-18will be treated to 72-hours of nonstop music to dance the day and night away from over 50 DJs, plenty of artist interactions and exclusive experiences, and six costume parties to attend among other fun activities on board the NCL Bliss.

Related: Check out our interview with Whet Travels Founder Jason Beukema for a deeper look at what Groove Cruise is all about!

Speaking of the NCL Bliss, this ship for this sailing is one of the best in the fleet with over 30 unique restaurants appealing to any taste and an amusement park featuring a racetrack, waterslides, mini-golf, aqua park, and laser tag. There will also be single staterooms offered for those who are traveling to Groove Cruise solo or cant find a roommate to split with.

Register now for your chance to win a stateroom for two and get first access to bookings.

While were not sure who will be taking the stage during Groove Cruise Cali if past lineups are any indication then were sure its going to be a fantastic time. Expect plenty of house, techno, and trance to dominate the lineup and keep your feet moving, sea legs or not!

The public on-sale begins March 4 via GrooveCruise.com with online with payment plans starting at just $92! Dont forget to use code EDMIDENTITY for a $50 per person discount!

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Groove Cruise Returns to the West Coast with Groove Cruise Cali - EDM Identity