Can anyone explain? Why did we let South Korea hit and sink the U.S.S. Oklahoma City?
It's called a sinkex. We do one or two a year and sometimes we supply the targets and sometimes other countries supply the targets. The targets are usually decommissioned former navy vessels, but sometimes it's a merchant ship. We let others have the kill shot sometimes as a diplomatic gesture. We still get all the data. In most cases the target is hit with all sorts of bombs and missiles which never sink it and then a single torpedo does the job. If you want to know why we do sinkex's...just do a little reading about torpedo reliability in the first half of WW2. It was a huge controversy and contributed to the loss of at least several boats.