Books about Pre-Dreadnought and Dreadnought ships as well as armoured cruisers usually do not appreciate their torpedo armament as essential, I've even seen it called "useless" in subject-specialized books.
Those warships of the roughly 1890...1910 era did indeed have a torpedo armament that was unlike the torpedo armaments used later, or on light warships and boats. They used fixed underwater torpedo tubes, facing port, starboard, bow and possibly aft, though not always in all these directions. The torpedoes had an abysmal propulsion, light weight, small diameter, small warhead, contact fuse and an abysmal range.
They were typically only a few knots faster than the ship itself and ran for a few hundred metres only.
The archetype was the Whitehead torpedo, so let's look at the Royal Navy's model of the 1890's:
It had about 700 m range at 26.5 kts mobility and a 59 kg TNT equivalent warhead with impact fuse.
So why were they installed, and quite often so?
My opinion is that you can actually see by looking at for example the most iconic capital ship of that period in question:
.
HMS Dreadnought
Do you see the bow? It's no clipper bow by far, clearly not optimized for seaworthiness. It's a ramming bow, with a protrusion below the waterline like ancient Trieres had.
Now imagine one such ship trying to ram another (in case of the Dreadnought, such a scenario would be a night or foggy scenario, for it was meant to fight at long distances instead).
The targeted ship would typically be able to dodge such an attack unless it's already crippled. So during the dodging the two ships pass very closely past each other. THAT is when the port or starboard torpedoes could be used by both the attacker and defender. They would act as deterrent, even in small quantity and with a small warhead (which would not face much in terms of underwater protection against torpedoes in that period).
The forward-facing torpedo tube could be used to shoot at one possible dodging route of the targeted ship before the captain of the attacking ship steers to strike on an alternative other dodging route.
The rear-facing stern torpedo tube could be used by a ship running away from a dodging attempt, shooting at the pursuer as the pursuer cannot reach it with a torpedo.
Now why were torpedoes mounted below the waterline with all the complications this causes? Later era warships (1920's and later) installed torpedoes on the top deck, same as the torpedo boats of the 1890...1910 period.
The reason was probably that the top deck was simply too high. I have no data on this for the ship-mounted torpedoes, but some early aircraft-launched torpedoes (dropped from up to 30 m altitude) needed about 400 m to level to the correct depth. Let's assume a torpedo launched from a battleship would be stable on the preset depth after 200 m. That might very well be a longer distance than to the target during one missed ramming attempt. The correct depth was important for two reasons:
(1) too deep means no hit whatsoever, for the torpedoes of that time had contact fuses, not magnetic influence fuses
(2) too shallow means that the water pressure at the (small) hole in the hull would be rather small. The water would flow into the target ship much more slowly, and the sailors would have more time for easier countermeasures.
Torpedoes eventually gained much better mobility in the 1904-1910 timeframe, but they were very expensive munitions (kind of like really expensive missiles today; battery-electric torpedoes of the late 1930's were the first quite affordable torpedoes). The shipbuilding practices of the great powers did not adapt to this immediately, and they kept using the old underwater torpedo tube arrangements into the First World War.
A LOT more about unguided torpedoes (though not this above) can be found here:
Naval gunnery was in a dismal shape during the last decade of the 19th century. The old extremely smoke-producing blackpowder (not really a "powder" any more at that time) propellants had recently been replaced by smokeless propellants (such as the hazardous cordite in the Royal Navy) and breech-loaded guns were being adopted for good, but the gunnery and artillery ship design was in a horrible state of affairs.
Expected useful firing ranges were short (less than 4 km against ships), as optical range-finding was in its infancy and there was no central fire control yet. The coal-fired boilers produced terrible amounts of smoke and many guns were placed so low even on battleships that fairly normal rough seas made them temporarily unusable as waves crashed into them.
The typical armament of an armoured ship of the time consisted of two or four large calibre guns (8"...13.5" calibre), with a substantial secondary battery of usually 4...6" calibre and soon some smaller guns specifically to shoot at the small (about 200 tons) and nimble torpedo boats.
This huge drop in rate of fire from about 5...15 rpm for 5...6" guns to 1.5...3 rpm for most heavier guns was in part cushioned by the reality of long-range gunnery post-1910, but this rate of fire and the huge cost, size and mass increase past 6" calibre led to a curious situation at first:
Ever since the 1860's there were many warships with a primary artillery of few impressive big turret guns and many more smaller and somewhat hidden casemate guns up to 6". The public perceived the primary guns as the defining firepower. Those guns may have penetrated heavy armour protection on other ships, while the smaller guns did not. The reality was almost certainly known to most warship-commanding naval officers and naval gunnery officers: The secondary guns were the main armament and the big guns were for show and possibly useful in coastal bombardment, or as a deterrence.
The small guns fired so much more often that they were bound to score about tenfold as many hits at the then-relevant combat ranges. The heavy guns fired so rarely that corrections after observation of fall of shot by the gunner were obsolete by the time the heavy guns were ready to fire again.
Smaller than 8" shells were also less likely to be duds when they hit some unarmoured part of a ship where a very large calibre shell fuses often failed to trigger even as late as during the Second World War.
Royal Sovereign (1891) 13.5" twin barbette
A most egregious example was the Royal Sovereign class, which had four 13.5" guns in twin barbette mounts. Those were unarmoured to save mass high up on the ship, to improve rolling behaviour and general seakeeping. (The ships of this class still rolled badly when introduced.)
These 13.5" guns fired one broadside salvo every 135 seconds only, (0.44 rpm), as they could only be reloaded in fore-and-aft position. They might not have fired more than four or five shots per barrel in a battle, for the unprotected crew would likely have been cut down by fragmentation and even shrapnel (that was still a thing in navies at the time and has recently kind of returned with the 35 mm Millennium gun and its AHEAD munition) by many small calibre hits at that point. Meanwhile, the Royal Sovereign's protected 6" gun crews could have continued the fight with 25 or more rpm in total (port or starboard).
You may think that those 6" shells wouldn't do much damage, but most parts of any warship were unprotected or at most protected against fragments and shrapnel. Fires could be started (there was still much flammable material and even oil lamps in use) and the heat and smoke could render the burning ship combat ineffective (secondary fires could even doom it).
Most direct damage done - even by hits of the heaviest calibres - would still usually be superficial, as the shells up to the First World War period usually used impact fuses without the delay required for explosions where they hurt the most (boiler rooms, turbine rooms, magazines deep inside the hull). Secondary explosions were rather flash fires in turrets or where turrets and their munition hoists if not magazines were very close to the side of the hull. The extremely delicate boiler rooms with all their pressurized containers and pipes were so rarely harmed that even badly-hurt ships could make it to home port if not finished off by a magazine explosion or torpedo hit.
A bit more about rate of fires; by the Second World War, these had been improved to maximum slightly more than 3 rpm for (German) 15" guns, about 15 rpm for some (American) 6" guns, about 20 rpm for (American) 5" guns and also for 4" guns. Army 3" guns had reached about 30 rpm before 1900 already, but many early naval 3" mounts fell well short of such rate of fire. The practical rates of fire on a warship in a gunfight were mostly MUCH slower.
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Let's pause with this military technology history wonkery and look at a still-relevant lesson:
The public was very much fascinated by and interested in its battlefleet (at least the middle and upper classes, especially in urban areas). Such huge armoured ships did cost a fortune each, and were a heavy fiscal burden even to the richest countries. Yet all this attention did not reveal the terrible flaws of the capital ships of the period, much less lead to civilian oversight pressure to work on those deficiencies. That push came largely from some high-ranking officers who especially in the Royal Navy thought the time was due to become an actual fighting force again. (The newcomer German navy had been in technology catchup and modernisation mode anyway and no such awakening experience.)
- - - - -
Thus improvements were made after the Royal Sovereigns; later capital ship primary artillery always had properly-protected turrets (many gun crews in the 4"...6" gun range especially on cruisers remained inadequately protected even against fragmentation), and a long time after (after the First World War) the last navies adopted proper and high-enough mounted secondary artillery turrets instead of casemates. There were also experiments with really high-mounted casemates in the superstructure.
The biggest change happened with regard to fire control and quantity of the primary artillery guns. The individual aiming was hopeless at long ranges, and thus fire control became centralized with gunners in turrets merely following orders about elevation and training as well as shooting the guns.
It was understood that simply giving more gunnery practise did not suffice; you needed to observe the fall of shot and correct accordingly. This required salvo fire and all guns aiming the same (or, if spaced much, at least using the same gun elevation). A mast top-located observer would see whether the water fountains were too far left, right, long or short and issue corrections. Eventually, the salvoes would straddle the target (shells impacting on or around the target) and the salvoes would continue without further corrections at highest possible rate of fire until the salvoes were observed to be off again or the target turned.
Mechanical fire control computing aids were introduced, communication devices were needed between fire control and turrets and optical rangefinders were introduced and improved until they could in theory measure distances to the horizon. Such (except the computers) was the art of gunnery by the First World War. This centralised aiming and firing depended so much on observation of the fall of salvoes that a rule of thumb began to dominate warship design; it took a salvo of at least six shots for a proper observation, and the guns better not be spaced very much (this led to a few capital ships with all primary artillery on the forecastle; Nelson, Rodney, Strasbourg, Dunkerque, Richelieu, Jean Bart). Some capital ships had 12 primary artillery guns and were able to shoot at two different targets with full fire control process simultaneously. This helped alleviate the issue of long spacing between turrets. Many dreadnoughts and super dreadnoughts were on the other hand unable to fire with a full 6 shell salvo in (nearly) all directions, although this had already been achieved with HMS Dreadnought (and the prototype battlecruiser HMS Invincible shortly after). They were thus rather a kind of ship of the line, optimised for broadsides only.
The so-called Pre-Dreadnought battleships with their mere two or four primary artillery guns were thus obsolete with the rise of centralised aiming and firing, and the appearance of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 is commonly considered to be the signal for this paradigm change.
Finally, by about 1910 there was no reasonable doubt any more that the primary artillery was actually the main armament of battleships. The other guns turned into self-defence weapons until battleships were turned into heavy (anti-air) escorts by the rise of the aircraft carrier in 1942 (then the secondary or even tertiary guns in the 40 mm...133 mm range became the main weapons).
Now back to why large calibre gun rates of fire weren't THAT terrible during the World Wars as it seemed (despite shooting even more slowly in practice than nominally able to): The cycle of flight of shot, observing, reporting, calculating, transmitting directions to turrets, turrets training and elevating according to directions and finally firing a salvo together took longer than the reload even of a 16" gun. Practical rates of fire were even much worse than nominal ones. The Bismarck was capable of shooting its 38 cm (~15") guns in 18 second intervals. That should have sufficed for about 45 salvoes in its battle with HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales. It fired off 13 salvoes only.
The nominal rate of fire was really only important at short ranges that required no observation and corrections, such as night combat at ranges of less than 4 km. Such ranges also devalued armour very much; horizontal armour would not be tested and vertical (belt) armour would be more easily penetrated as it was meant to protect at a greater distance only. This quick fire superiority scenario of a short range night battle allowed the really quick-firing American 6" guns to shine in the Guadalcanal campaign. Even the Japanese battlecruisers were inadequately protected against 6" shells due to their narrow belt armour.
(Now keep in mind that a ship such as the HMS Royal Sovereign of the 1890's would have made full use of its rate of fire, for it would not have the shoot-observe-correct fire control cycle. It would have made full use of 2 rpm rate of fire if it had had such a rate of fire. Its 0.44 rpm broadside rate of fire was thus exactly as bad as it sounds. The 2 rpm of some First World War-era main guns was not as bad, as the fire control process slowed them to less than 2 rpm during most of the battle anyway.)
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Fast forward to the Second World War period: What was the peak of warship gun duel gunnery then?
The peak in daytime would have been like this: An aircraft or small and nimble escorting destroyers would lay a smoke concealment to blind the enemy fire controllers (see excellent collection of photos here).
The own ship would use its radar and fire control computer for a first salvo or set of bracket salvoes, and a spotter (float)plane would issue the corrections by radio instead of the ship's own observers in mast tops. Top quality radars could even detect the impact slashes of big shells and shells had dyes of different colours so fire controllers could tell which salvo had been fired by which ship. Depth charge throwers ("K-guns") could be used to deceive enemy spotters to believe that the target was straddled when it was not (this was greatly complicated by the use of dyes and dependent on seeing the salvo being fired). It was also possible to group the artillery of one calibre into two
or three groups that shoot at different elevations in order to quickly find the
correct elevation by observing which impact group was more close to the target (bracket fire). Knowing the correct distance to the target and even the two ships' movement vectors accurately and doing all calculations correctly (including coriolis force correction) would not necessarily suffice to get the elevation right on first try: The temperature of the propellant, barrel temperature, air temperature, air humidity, how much the barrels were worn and wind also had an effect. A radar-only fire control without impact splash observation would have failed at medium and long ranges with the state of the art of even 1945.
Secondary artillery could use the same sophisticated fire control process as primary artillery.
The targeted ship would make evasive manoeuvres when straddled, degrading or resetting both the fire control process against itself and its own fire control process (if it has any and isn't completely blinded).
This combination of fire control and countermeasures rarely if ever happened in perfection. Smokelaying is tricky in windy conditions and some navies had good-enough radars only late in the war (Japan) or never (Italy). The battle in the Java Sea saw Japanese cruisers using the smoke+spotter plane combination, though. Radar-controlled fires were used as well, albeit sometimes with surprisingly bad results (the Bismarck was very poor at getting the elevation right, for example).
- - - - -
An aircraft carrier as a mere support ship without any torpedo bomber or (dive) bomber could still have had decisive impact on a battlefleet engagements of the 1930's by providing smoke, spotters (replacing the more fair weather-dependent floatplanes and flying boats) and fighters to chase off or down enemy spotter planes. This begs the question why some navies (Germany, Italy and mostly also France) neglected the aircraft carrier so very much. It was already a decisive asset without high performance aircraft (Morse radios/wireless telegraphs were already tested in aircraft during the First World War).
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Yet again, I saw no trace of public pressure on navies to correct such a deficiency during the 1920's and 1930's. The naval discussion in Germany was about the expenditure for the Deutschland class (the later so-called pocket battleships*) until dictatorship took over and public discourse was muted. A similar excuse can be given for Italy, albeit as far as I know their dictatorship would have tolerated pro-carrier enthusiasm while censoring negative critique. Their navy was barred from having aircraft in favour of their air force, so I suspect their naval top brass simply passed on a critical naval asset because it wouldn't have been fully theirs (the carrier aircraft would not have been navy-operated). I see no excuse whatsoever for France, which had a carrier arm that badly stagnated with the Béarn**.
So why were such severe shortcomings not corrected under public pressure in general? It wasn't just the dysfunctionality of dictatorships. The story of anti-air artillery during the 1920's and 1930's was a farce all around the world. The ridiculously poor quality and also ridiculously poor quantity of anti-air guns in that period was in stark contrast to the known threat of torpedo bombers of the Interwar Years. Their heavy and still very short ranged (low muzzle velocities) medium anti-air artillery was even too weak to protect their own spotter planes from enemy planes even only overhead themselves. Even ships such as heavy cruisers were often only equipped with four weak heavy anti-air guns and a couple machineguns. Moreover, several exercises thoroughly embarrassed navies, as they failed to hit the aerial target for extended times.
It's a general problem with (relatively) highly technicized armed forces in peacetime. Warfare against peer or better opposition may reveal their deficiencies, but most of the time armed services can hide their shortcomings behind the veil of secrecy.
It's a cautionary tale regarding how much top brass can be trusted by the public.
Drones are becoming smaller, lighter, cheaper for the same performance. They're also very likely to become smarter - smart enough that small, cheap, quantity-produced drones will exceed today's autonomy of killer drones and be able to identify and classify targets and make not only an attack decision, but also tailor an attack manoeuvre to the situation.
Drones will not only gain time to find targets by loitering, but also by simply sitting on vantage point from whence they can approach the next location or a target by ground or by air. There might even be drones that will use inland waters to hide.
What's going to be the art of war in an age of autonomous killer drones?
(1) A seemingly eternal rule in war is that no novelty is total. Never did one novelty become the only way of fighting.* Armies did not transform into all-machinegunner armies. Not all field army vehicles are tracked and armoured. Submarines did not become the only warships, Jules Verne's opinion didn't matter. Missiles did not replace aircraft fully. It's in my opinion a good call to expect autonomous war (killer) drones to co-exit with traditional forms of warfare.
(2) Specialised assets rise as a form of warfare becomes more sophisticated, but generalist assets prevail and in parallel. The benefits of specialization are huge, but limited and the uncertainty about the face of the next war makes versatility an important risk management approach.
(3) A look back at the early days of military aviation may help to anticipate how the flying autonomous drone armies will play out:
First, planes were used for observation and a little ground attack. Then the countermeasure of fighters appeared. Observers were armed for self-defence, and some evaded the fighter threat by flying very high. Bombers were armed as well, also armoured later, some also evaded to greater altitude or into the night and generally they received armour. Fighters responded by flying faster, higher, getting more armour, more firepower and sometimes sensors for night intercepts. Specialist aircraft appeared in WW2 for electronic warfare and pathfinding at night. Eventually, there were dedicated electronic reconnaissance aircraft, area search radar aircraft and tanker aircraft.
We might very well see reconnaissance drones that are semi-autonomous (radio link to user preferred, but able to scout autonomously until radio link is re-established) first, soon complemented by optionally autonomous killer drones of varying sizes.** Fighter drones with optimization for finding and killing other drones will appear, and the killer drone swarms will have to adapt with self-defence (not so easy for kamikaze drones, they can mostly counter by being cheaper than the fighters), better camouflage and concealment, more speed, agility and acceleration.
Specialist drones may appear for radio relay function, electronic reconnaissance, electronic attack, maybe even entrapment (hunting other drones like spiders with webs). Picket (early warning) drones may also come into existence, forming a detection corridor and a screen around human troops. Confirmation drones may appear that hurry to inspect and confirm a suspected hostile contact with better sensors than kamikaze or even sniper drones have (or by going real close while being cheap). Command & control drones with superior AI may serve as forward commander to a swarm that's got no reliable radio comm to a HQ with humans.
There might even be civilian interaction drones that advise and guide civilians to safety, maybe even prisoners of war.
Drones may differentiate into high altitude drones (flying so high that no missile or gun can economically kill them), above-treetop altitude drones, below treetop drones and drones which can even enter buildings and do their job indoors.
USAF strike packages often had no more than 40% of their aircraft carrying munitions to strike the actual target. All else was support and escort. Drone swarms may in my opinion range from 10...90% support, and the difference would come from the task; a terrain control swarm would have few strike drones, whereas a main effort swarm meant to annihilate large forces in a small area might 'zerg' with huge quantities of strike drones either saturating or held in reserve.
(4) It would be nice if we would simply ban the use of autonomous killer drones like NBC weapon use became taboo, but so far the governments focus on what advantages drones offer to themselves. Loitering munitions with partial autonomy are blurring the transition to autonomous killer drones.
Armed bureaucracies have a great potential for conservatism and sluggishness and are not good with money. They have a high risk to resist de-humanisation of war out of selfishness and overestimation of human capabilities. They also have a high risk of focusing resources on basic types of drones (scout & strike), and becoming overmatched by an aggressor that invested in more sophisticated swarms. This may even happen after they understand the issue, as pre-war funding for a drone war is all but guaranteed to be too small given the establishment self-interest of other force structure components.
(5) Force structure and tech isn't everything. Concepts of operation matter greatly.
Drone swarms could span the entire theatre of war or be segmented into multiple swarms. Either way, rules for interaction, cooperation, coordination and geographic limitations are necessary. Rules of engagement would be all-important.
You could also apply the concept of main effort, for example to gain supremacy in a geographic bottleneck, or at your capital, maybe at an important port or to gain dominating heights for heavy ground-based electronic warfare equipment to use. Too great concentrations of drones might be countered with area effects, especially EMP.
We know how to give orders to human troops, but the best technique for giving orders to more or less (semi-)autonomous drone swarms may be very different. I like to think that my own idea/concept about zones with different level of ambition (regarding tolerance of hostile presence) and different allocation of resources would work well.
(6) There will be drone war prophet celebrities that will develop and incessantly repeat catchy buzzwords and simplifying models. Some of them will be Americans, earn some good money with books and lack substance at closer inspection.
*: Firearms kind of achieved this, but it took many centuries and wasn't anything close to what some early firearms proponent of the 14th century AD might have envisioned.
**: Meaning general target drones, not those specialised on radio frequency emitters. Those already exist.
I didn't even know that electric can openers are a thing. My can opener perfectly bites into all cans and opens them in about three seconds and it's a 50...70 years old piece of stamped and bent or cast iron alloy pieces with a bit of rust.
Getting more powers, more toys, more possibilities is self-serving for law enforcement. Very few things are actually known to influence crime rates for sure. The up and down of crime rates is still mostly a mystery to researchers. Some seemingly unrelated things like long-term lead exposure of people appear to be much more influential regarding crime than policing, though.
Effective policing can depress crime rates only to some degree, and only some crimes (serial burglaries or serial robbers, for example) are understood to be highly susceptible to policing effects (not counting mere crime hotspot relocation). The best you can do for effective policing is likely not to give police such dystopian tech, but to enforce that it investigates a wide range of crimes properly and doesn't waste resources - neither on signalling nor on irrelevant stuff like bullying minorities, militarization or playing with toys.
Long story short: The NSA created offensive cyberwar tools, the Chinese got them really quick and used them to cause harm to Western computer networks. Offensive cyberhacking is shooting ourselves into the foot and there's close to zero even only debatable evidence for significant upsides of it.
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Let's have a look at what OSInt (open source intelligence) and an ordinary calm, non-partisan and reasoning approach can deliver in regard to super-important things that seem to be the realm of specialised subject matter experts.
Back on February 1st, 2020 I published (and it was written a few days before):
The big issue isn't that this one kills many people. The flu kills many
more in parallel. The big issue is that this one isn't understood yet
and might actually be much worse than the flu. At least the mortality
rate appears to be no more than a couple per cent so far.
A 'couple per cent' such as 3% could still kill more than both World
Wars combined when the infectiousness allows it to overrun the world.
That's why contagiousness is so important. Sick people being able to
infect others without showing symptoms devalues many containment
schemes, and to date it's still not known for certain how exactly the
virus can be transmitted. There's a very small chance that it may be
airborne.
I suppose the wealthy Western countries will be able to deal with it
even though we don't have a culture of wearing face masks to protect
others.
Poor countries on the other hand have much less capacity to deal with
outbreaks, and might not get much aid if we need our resources for
ourselves.
A while later on February 24th, 2020 I broke with the regular "Saturdays-only" blog posts to make an announcement.
The gloves and hand washing tips were the info given at the time, though missing the main transmission path of airborne particles. What I wrote about masks was OK given the available info, albeit masks eventually proved to be really, really important. Some super-specialized subject matter experts were (as it appears) more wrong on masks even months later.
So while the info given (or rather relayed) on countermeasures was ordinary and mediocre at best, the appraisal that this shit could become a really big mess was spot-on, and all this written in late January - weeks before most policymakers finally sprung into serious action outside of PRC, Taiwan and South Korea.
It's encouraging to me in a an already well-known way. I've seen before that my opinions on details change as I add more knowledge and thought on a subject over years, but the big picture appraisals are typically stable and withstand the test of time if tested at all. (And I don't want more of them tested!)
See the flying autonomous drone topic, for example. Around 2010 I was thinking that maybe shotguns should be a thing to defend troops against tiny bird-like or rat-like autonomous killer drones. I now don't really see much potential for troops self-defence against such drones except drones intercepting drones and troops trying to be in closed indoor spaces or behind protective netting. Later I focused on adapted remotely-controlled (and somewhat autonomous) weapon stations on all motor vehicles (except two-wheelers, of course) as a countermeasure to bigger multi-kg drones. The timely detection of tiny camouflaged drones seems nearly hopeless even in daytime.
What didn't change is that I see a likely revolution at the introduction of autonomous 'killer' drones of such sizes. I'd prefer to be wrong about this, but OSInt plus a calm, non-partisan reasoning approach led me to expect this. More about that later
"Der Anspruch auf rechtliches Gehör ist in Ermittlungsverfahren für
die beschuldigten Personen von größter praktischer Bedeutung. Er
ermöglicht es ihnen, sich gegen den Tatvorwurf zur Wehr zu setzen und
auf die staatlichen Ermittlungen zu ihren Gunsten Einfluss zu nehmen.
Insbesondere voreiligen, sich letztlich als unzutreffend erweisenden
Vorwürfen – und das sind, aufs Ganze gesehen, die meisten – kann die
Verteidigung effizient entgegentreten. Allerdings nur dann, wenn sie
darüber informiert wird.
Vor diesem Hintergrund erschließt sich die Brisanz des geplanten §
95a StPO-E: Dieser sieht die Möglichkeit vor, im Rahmen eines
Ermittlungsverfahrens Beschlagnahmen und die ihr vorausgehenden
Durchsuchungen bei Dritten vor den hiervon betroffenen beschuldigten
Personen entgegen den §§ 33 Abs. 3, 35 Abs. 2 StPO geheim zu halten,
ggf. bis zum Abschluss der Ermittlungen."
Es wäre bei weitem nicht das erste verfassungswidrige Gesetz, das von den Konservativen betrieben und verabschiedet würde. Bei der bisherigen Häufiung von erwiesenermaßen (per BVerfG) verfassungswidrigen (Legislativ-)Bestrebungen von CDU/CSU wäre eigentlich mal eine Beobachtung durch den Verfassungsschutz wegen dringendem Verdacht auf Feindlichkeit gegenüber unserer verfassungsmäßigen freiheitlichen Grundordnung angebracht.
