Watch USS Racine Get Pummeled To Death During RIMPAC 2018 Sinking Exercise
Citat: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.
Rounding out the international participants on the SINKEX was close U.S. ally Australia, which used one of its new P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft to launch AGM-84 Harpoon at the ship.
Last but not least, the Los Angeles class nuclear fast attack submarine USS Olympia also attacked the doomed amphibious ship. As we noted last week, the submarine had been loaded with a submarine-launched version of the Harpoon anti-ship missile—a weapon U.S. submarines haven't carried for two decades—in advance of the exercise.
In addition to firing the UGM-84 Harpoon, USS Olympia also launched a Mk48 torpedo. The torpedo, which often comes last during sinking exercises due to their devastating ability to 'break the backs' of even the hardiest combat ships, did exactly that. Still, it took about an hour for Racine to finally succumb to the seas, passing below the waves at around 8pm on its way to its watery grave 15,000 feet down.
