plawolfit takes everyone awhile to accept that this discussion is PURELY ACADEMIC doesn’t it? hehe… this thing is explicitly and unabashedly unrealistic, and we’re just doing it for interest’s sake. the rest of the world isn’t taken into consideration at all! not the world economy, not Wal-Mart, not india. and the F**king treehuggers don’t count also, so no talk about the environmental effects of sunken ships or oil spills or dead fishes unless they affect sonar performance or something.
well, why dont you make the waters around china a 1000 ft drop as soon as you leave the share while you are at it? there has to be a point where you just need to say, ‘stop, whats the point in this?’ if you want to have an acedanmic exercise with at least some parctical value, then there are constants that you need to factor in, and neutral trade is one of them. seriously, as i said before, if you want a ‘steral’ environment where you have little target aqusition and water depth issues, then you are better off ‘blockading’ india.
plawolfCrobato,
Jonesy is right, he has stated about a billion times that this situation is purely an exercise, let’s see it as a “cube in space with a piece of China-shaped land in it. Putting in the assets we need”. That’s what this topic is about (well not meant this way though).It would be more practical if the Trafalgars just dashed in, launched their Tomahawks at the port-facilities for the loading and discharging of Crude. This would put away your problem of identifying targets. And it would disable several tankers with every hit, since all those tankers than do not have a port to discharge. And going to another port will mean several days of delays and eventually very long rows of anchored ships waiting to discharge in front of a port. Better guard these anchorages then…. (Believe me, it can be very annoying to lay there, boring and a huge waste of time, certainly for the charterer of the vessel, it takes about 1 day to discharge or load a tanker).
IIRC, RN SSNs done away with their LACM ability years ago.
also, what you propose doesnt really reflect the importance of SSNs as jonesy is trying to do. firing curise missiles are fixed large targets like ports can just as easily be done by long range bombers with long range stand-off weapons or a naval surface taskforce using similar long range missiles.
plawolfWolf,
How do you come to that conclusion? To summarise all that we’ve discussed so far leads us to the conclusion that a small SSN team could operate inside of a 200nm coastal zone from a regional superpower with relative impunity. As a part of a discussion on ASuW that is a very significant conclusion to reach. What would be required for a surface force to survive in those waters long enough to perform an equivalent blockade? 2 CVN’s in each patrol area and, probably, the entire Pacific strength of the USN to back them up?. Do I need say anymore to prove the value of SSN’s in ASuW? No? Well thats my point made then!
have we reached a conclusion yet? 😮 obvious someone forgot to inform me of this development. :p
come on, so far, the only things we have agree upon is that the RN’s SSNs would be able to move around fairly freely up to, and to some degrees into the chinese EEZ without serious risk of being detected.
however, in order to perform the martine blockade missions you have in mind, the RN’s subs will have to do alot more then just silently sailing around, they need to fire weapons, and as soon as you do that, then the best silent subs will be easily picked up by nearby ASW assets. hence, in order to effective carry out a blockade mission (especailly THAT CLOSE to the chinese mainland), the RN SSNs will effectively relieve the PLAN of the need to find them using only passively means (its weakest point). so the question then becomes, can the PLAN position its assets effectively enough to have a very high probability of one of its ASW assets being in the right place at the right time to catch an SSN firing a fish, and then whether it (and any backup it can call upon) can engage and sink the SSN using passive and/or active detection means?
Wolf I hope you know that I hold quite a high opinion of you (in fact I’m in Newcastle on Thursday so if you want to continue this debate over a few beers then – message me!), BUT, this one gave me a real chuckle!. If you are proposing that virtually all China’s merchant traffic be routed along the Vietnam coast and into the Gulf of Tonkin to avoid the RN blockade then, effectively, you’d do a hell of a lot more thorough job of disabling Chinese maritime trade than the SSNs would!.
You’re the one that keeps pointing out the volume of merchant shipping we’re talking about and trying to focus all of it into one small area like Tonkin, get offload and onload cycles sorted AND get the cargoes distributed away from that area to the rest of China would be a logistical nightmare wholly without precedent!. Imagine if Crobato’s ‘chaos factor’ reared its nasty head in amongst that lot and you had a major collision in the assembly area – doesnt bear thinking about!. That is of course if the Vietnamese are happy with you using their merchantmen to shield your ships!
thus far i have been somewhat brief in my replies (perhaps a little too brief sometimes), usually only pointing out certain things without going into too much detail. that is not because i cant dot the Is and cross the Ts, but rather because i know that you are a very knowledgeable and intelegent individual, and so i expect you to be able to fill in the blanks by yourself.
as such, i would appreciate it if you can give me a little bit more credit and take a few logical steps by yourself to think what can be done to easily fill in any little details i might have left out.
so going back to the rought issue. well i never said that all the ships have to offload there. in fact what i said was “thats just clear water for all chinese shipping to pass safely through and then move up and down china’s coast….”
this means that what i meant was that that hole can be used as a gateway for all of china’s shipping to pass from the outside to the mainland while bypassing your blockade. and vice versa. now, there will be alot of ships going through the narrow strech of water between the mainland and hainan island, but thats only a small issue. hell, if worst comes to worst, they can always rought ships along the west coast of hainan island to aviod the bottleneck and still be under the nose of ASW airbases, meaning that if the RN decided to attack ships there, it will face most of the same problems as if they tried at attack ships within the EEZ of the mainland.
as for vietnam, well since you have no patrol zone there, then there is no real issue of anyone being used as shields. also, china’s merchant ships dont have to go within the EEZ of vietnam to get to the hole in the patrol zones, so there really little vietnam has to worry about, and also little they can do if they do have a problem.
How am I avoiding anything? I am talking about the correct employment of SSNs against an SSK screen. A wolfpack of SSK’s wouldnt be bunched up within a couple of miles of each other as its very hard for submerged subs to coordinate attacks, whilst remaining covert, and the chance of a friendly fire incident is, well, unfortunately high!. The defending subs would be most likely employed on an ASW barrier with boats at least one convergence zone apart. Stalking SSK’s individually is therefore not only entirely possible, but, would have to be the initial focus of the .
perhaps you are using the correct tactics for the SSNs, but what about the SSKs?
the whole focus of the tactic i prosented is that its not about SSKs stalking SSNs or vice versa. the SSKs will form a silent line under the water, and all they will be doing is sitting there waiting. this way, they will be quieter, and have longer endurace. time is on their side for this one, they dont have to sink ships to inforce the presence of the blockade, but the SSNs do.
RN SSN sonar and their operators are indeed top notch, but that doesnt mean they can perform miricals. modern SSKs are extremely quiet as it is, have them just sit in a place doing only the bair minimum to keep their postion will make them even harder to find passively. i’d say that the chance of an SSN running into an SSK in this situation is far greater then having the SSN find the SSK. then there is the issue of the SSK’s sonar and sonar operators.
with their boat close to stationary, sonar performace will be improved, so the chances of the SSK picking up a passive SSN passively is increased.
but the SSK is not relying solely on picking up the props of SSNs passively, they will get an almost exact fix on any nearby SSN as soon as it fires weapons at passing merchants. another advanatage to the SSKs is that merchants can be given orders to pass a specific place at a specific time, this means that the PLAN can concerntrate their SSKs in those specific areas to increase the probablity of SSN kills. if the SSNs attack, they’ll have to fight their way out of a well planned ambush, if they dont, the blockade is effectively broken.
numerous such postions could be found with the PLAN’s intemate knowledge of the waters there. a random selection of areas can be chosen for eash ‘shift’ of SSKs, with new attack plans being issued to captains when they come up for air to prevent the RN countering the ambushes.
then when you exacute the ambushes, you have large numbers of merchants move out via different roughts, some will pass SSKs laying in wait, while others are just making a run for it to further confuse the RN.
yes, there is an elemint of chance to it, but the numbers are heavily in the PLAN’s favour. all it takes is for one or two SSNs to wonder into a kill zone and fire at a passing merchant and the blockade if as good as gone. the odds against the RN is so great as to make it almost a certainly that the blockade will fail as a result of the loss of boats, and the numbers would suggest that the blockade will collaps sooner rather then later.
even if the RN gets a massive dose of luck, chances are all the captains will be pretty jitty and will not like to attack ‘hastly’ for fear of getting ambushed, this will significantly reduce the effectiveness of the blockade.
and thats just one strategy involving one asset the PLAN has at its disposal. you can have ASW helos and planes do random sonar bouy drops, or for the havos to just dunk once a while, and you increase the chance that the PLAN will get lucky; you can have surface ship groups doing ASW sweeps (remember, the PLAN will not be afraid to trade ships); you can have a mixture of the lot working together…
with so many units working together, the chances of firendly fire is high, as you pointed out, but there are many many ways of reducing the risk.
if you have all your boats in reletively fixed positions for one shift, and all the captains on patrol know where friendly units are, then chances are anything moving anywhere else is a hostile, and there is just no question of whos who if a torpedo just came out of nowhere heading for a passing merchant.
but even if there are friendly fire incidents, it doesnt really matter that much. the numbers (number of enemy, number of targets, number of neutrols, number of the odds against them) against the RN’s SSNs are simply too great
and the potentail reward even if everything goes perfectly is too little (the RN keep all chinese shipping out of one part of the sea just for them to carry on as normal by using another rought). the RN has far better uses for its SSNs then to send them off on near suicide missions with little concrete benefits.
One big problem with this is that whichever SSK you task in your cycle will be obliged to snort after its transit-to-station unless of course its either going to try and run a patrol with a depleted battery (not smart if it does manage to get a contact!) or it would have to be on a patrol spot so close to port that it can transit at patrol speeds (just a few knots) and be on statin with most of its charge intact. Then it would have to leave station early so that enough charge remained to get it ‘clear’ of any likely danger before it could snort safely. What you would have to have is something like 16 boats to keep 4 permanently on an ASW barrier just 100nm long. Now I know the PLAN has a good number of SSK’s but how many of them are really competetive?
well, i think a already partly answered that question.
the SSKs wont be going on station to patrol an area, but rather just to sit in a spot while merchants pass close by and wait for an SSN to go for the bait. this means that the SSKs can stay on station for far longer then they could if they were moving about all the time, and/or that they can set up station much futher from their bases.
also, if you have a ‘fluid’ picket as i suggested, then SSKs leaving station dont have to go all the way to base while submerged, they just need to head on over to the closest SSK post of a boat that just came on station (they can easily be given a list of nearby posts that will be used by the next shift of SSK when they get their original orders), and then surface and use their engines. in effect, bait for an SSN.
they dont have to stop every attack as you seem to think is a neccesity. all they really need to do is sink a very small number of SSNs (2~3) and the whole blockade will fall apart. and if doing so means loosing a couple of SSKs and merchants, well then, thats not really that big a price to pay is it?
you see, things get all so easy when you just have such a small task to do to win. i said i before and i will say it again, the RN’s SSN numbers are just too small to do what you propose. you need to at least double the number of boats on patrol to put up any credable blockade if you dont want your captains taking too many chances, and you need at least another 10 boats, ideally 20, to be able to maintain the pressure for a credible lenghth of time and also to reduce the part that the ‘chance factor’ plays in your operations.
So you think that, to use an aviation analogy, 20 MiG-21’s could batter down 4 F-22’s?. That is what we are talking of here as an equivalent. The SSN’s can choose the engagements they like the look of and disengage when they dont.
please, i know you prefer naval stuff, but even that should be no exuse for such an unrealistic analogy in representing the situation we have here.
it’ll be more like 4 F22s V 30 Su37s. even then it is biased towards the F22s since you cant factor in things like the superior knowledge of the combat environment, only being able to have a realistic chance of spotting each other after your well within weapons range and ‘sit and wait’ tactics i put forward etc. so i think a much better analogy would be 4 F22s with no BVR weapons V 30 Su37s with no BVR weapons. and the Suhois only need to down 2 of the F22s to win. 😮
also, you are wrong about the SSNs being able to choose and pick whichever targets they want. the only major deterrent power of a blockade is for merchants to know that they will be sunk if they go into a certain area. most will not be that bothered if only a very small number of ships go down on very rare occasions (wont be that much a departure from the life they are used to). there will also be major pressure being put on skippers by the PM if his deadline had passed for ages and nothing happened.
plawolfI’ve been going to CDF for long time, and from the stuff we get to read it is pretty clear (even for me 😮 ) that the PLAN is very weak in ASW. It maybe improving but its still very weak.
I mean how many dedicated ASW vessels/Aircafts do they hav and how good are they?
Do they have those long ranged SURTASS or even some Tactical Towed Array SONARs ?? :confused: :confused:
When it comes to the other vessels, I think only the Luhus hav at least a Variable Depth SONAR. (Don’t know yet what the new ships carry though)
well its just a strategy game. the PLAN’s passive sub detection might be crap, but for what jonesy is proposing, they dont need them at all. all they need to do is put a net out and wait for an SSN to fall in.
plawolfThat doesnt mean anything to say that an SSN can stalk an SSK because ofcourse its easy to catch when in transit from port or when running diesels. But when an SSK is trying to be quiet, there is no way an SSN will find it with passive gear.
Do you not see the inherent contradiction there Mixtec?. An SSK is only discrete for a specific portion of its mission profile, but, the rest of the time its anything but discrete!. So, provided the opposing SSN is only around while the SSK is on station with a full charge, the SSK is sitting pretty. Otherwise the SSN has the sonar advantage (much easier to mount a big transducer array and lots of power-hungry DSP banks when you carry your very own nuclear power station onboard) and the patrol endurance advantage to capitalise on it.
I’m not sure how widely known this is but large electric motors, such as those sat on the back of SSK’s, do generate an accoustic signature too. Usually on a fixed, specific, frequency tied to the operating cycle of the motor. This is a high frequency signature that is usually specific to a class or type of submarine. This signature is detectable, to a good passive sonar, and is as good as a reactor plant signature for type ID’ing.
In short SSK’s are effective within a certain set of parameters within a limited time window. They are very dangerous to surface escorts that are tied to a restricted geographical location without the benefit of up-to-date ASW sensors, but, against a decent SSN they are at significant disadvantage.
ah, again avoiding the realities of a real life scenario. 🙁
sure, one SSK v one SSN and there is no question, but one SSN v half a dozen or so SSKs a few miles from their base and you still think the SSN has an advantage?
all you need to do is to work out a shift system for the SSKs. they stay underwater in the target area running slient for as long as possible, when they need to snort, they head on back to base for a nearby port and surface, in the meantime, another SSK that has its batteries full move in (also running on silent) to take over, another comes in to take its place when its batteries start getting low and so on. you can see that with the numerical advanatge, i can easily maintain a 24/7 SSK slient picket inside the zones you marked. and since we are playing the numbers game, they dont even have to respond to every attack. just stay there until one SSN fires at the right distance…and this only needs to happen once or twice to break your blockade.
its just the classic large number of inferior weapons defeating a small number of superior weapons example. actually, its a little too easy on the SSK’s side to be a textbook example. :diablo:
plawolfWolf,
well, unless you can give a statisfactory reason as why chinese merchants would go through your blockade lines when they can easily avoid it as i have already stated, then your propsed blockade will simply never work. the only way to blockade china is to set a blockade zone fron vietnam to SK, and the RN dont have nearly enough SSNs to patrol such a large area.
I didnt think I’d have to dot every I and cross every T to make a very general point about SSNs, but, attached should be a map showing a rough outline of the patrol zones I’m thinking about. The East China Sea Shelf does make the east coast patrol zone the harder one – by some margin – but the arc of deeper water inside the Ryukyu’s gives the subs a secure operational environment. That is effectively the coverage from Vietnam to SK you were mentioning and 2 SSNs permanently on station in each zone plus, perhaps, a fifth boat on a reserve/roving brief tasked to respond to realtime intel or to short-notice gap fill will be sufficient to fill those patrol slots. It would also be supportable by the size of SSN fleet the RN posses.
Its not airtight by any stretch, hell, even the ‘famous’ USN blockade of Cuba had gaps and that was in their backyard. What it will do is put a heavy dent in China’s maritime trade – which is the point of the exercise.
As to the mining issue I’d tend to be a bit hesitant before I’d go there!. There is little wrong with the idea – the Yellow Sea is THE perfect environment for offensive mining. Also modern mines – like the RN Stonefish – can by configured to ignore certain accoustic profiles i.e that of the deploying platform. The naval analyst Stuart Slade published a terrific article on mine warfare which can be found here: http://www.warships1.com/index_tech/tech-068 which is well worth a read on the subject.
The reason I’d be hesitant in this instance though is that, no matter how well documented and charted they are, minefields tend to lurk around inconveniently after hostilities end. For the kind of limited action were talking of here, a punitive blockade, leaving a legacy like a few dozen mines dotted around is going to be very bad news in the long-term!. Not to mention the slight danger of technology-transfer if certain nations in that theatre were able to recover a mine as advanced as a Stonefish and reverse-engineer the sensor package!.
ahh, but the devil is in the details Jonesy, the devil is in the details. the patro zones you marked are FAR too great for only 5 SSNs to patrol effectively at all. and its far from water tight or even usable.
i know you dont like to get caught up in politics, but to ignore them altogether as you have, has created a scenario so removed from reality thats its merits are hard to find.
A) the patro zones you marked leaves a small, but critical whole at the southern most tip of china, beyound hainan island and up to vietnam. thats just clear water for all chinese shipping to pass safely through and then move up and down china’s coast as close as possible.
what are you going to do about it? cant set up another patrol zone cos you dont have any more SSNs, cant attack shipping out of the zones because of political problems, and of course the risk of being caught out in the shallows only a few minutes away from ASW planes and halos.
B) there is no way in hell that either japan or SK in particular will ever agree to allow you to set up the zones you marked, even if they are drwn perfectly and donw violate their waters. your northern zone will kill SK’s economy even more then china’s, you have effectively cut off all the western ports and will be forcing all their shipping to pass through the japanes EEZ, an unacceptable position.
also, if you checked a bigger map, you might find that japan has a string of islands that stretch halfway to taiwan, so cant put your military exclusion zone there, but shipping can pass, another gaping whole in you blockade.
the problem with a blockade is that it has to be air tight, or else you might as well not put it up in the first place.
the RN’s SSN fleet is perfect for the u-boat campaign that germany waged against the UK in WWII, and thats probably the benchmark the designers aim for. but as good as they are at that, they are utterly crap at the kind of selective blockade you have in mind.
even if you were to only discriminate between chinese and other merchants, you will still have a hell of a job, because there are just too many ships that HAS to pass through the waters you want to partol. thats just the fact of life here, and nothing short of the total destruction of SK and japan will change that, not even WWIII, because people have always got to eat and live.
seriously, if you want a realistic chance to prove that the RN has the ability to engage in ‘effective sea denal operations against even a regional superpower’ kinda opponet, you have a much better chance trying to blockade india. the IN might have a better ASW ability then the PLAN, but not by that much. and there, you have open waters, a much smaller, SINGLE zone to patrol and no real problem of too many neutrals flapping about, so the RN boats can do what the do best – set a no go zone and kill everything they find in it.
because unless you can find some solution about the target ID and boat numbers problems you face in the china scenario, then there is no real chance that your blockade will work. no matter how well you draw out the zones and how much political clout you ‘give’ the UK to get everyone to bend over backwards to accomodate your patrol zones.
plawolfgood eyes! heres the original picture for those of you who cant be bothered to go through the pages and check. 😉
looks like they are off the same plane, or rather model.
plawolfold fashioned idea, but here goes…
perhaps a first wave of RN SSNs, maybe even a Vanguard or two, could covertly lay mines in the approaches to China’s major ports – there can’t be that many of them, perhaps all those capable of handling VLCCs and up – while a small group of torpedo-loaded SSNs stands by to ride shotgun and also take care of the initial PLAN response when incoming merchantmen start exploding; targeting especially minesweepers, which i don’t think the PLAN has in significant numbers.
the minelaying SSNs, having laid all their mines, meanwhile make best speed to wherever they can UNREP (sub tender in mid-pacific, Pearl, Faslane, whatever) and load up with torps and relieve their escorts ASAP. then Jonesy’s deploy/relieve cycle can take place, and the blockade scheme implemented as well. all TW/SK/JPN/Russia-bound shipping could be restricted into strict lanes east of taiwan all the way to Kaohsiung/Pusan/Incheon/Yokohama/Vladivostok, and anyone straying too far east on a course for the chinese coast regarded as a blockade intruder and thus hostile.
the idea here isn’t as much to sink merchantmen as it is to intimidate them from entering major chinese ports; no sane merchant marine captain would risk his ship driving into a known minefield. it would also draw PLAN assets away from SSN-hunting to minesweeper escort, allowing the RN SSNs freer rein to enforce the blockade and look out for merchantmen quietly unloading via lighters at less-developed, unmined ports. of course, the SSNs ought to go after the minesweepers as far as possible as well, so the minefield lasts longer hehe.
an SSN-threatened merchant captain would feel jittery enough even in a PLAN-escorted convoy, but knowing that a minefield awaits him at the other end as well and the fact that the enemy is doing as much as he can to thwart PLAN mineclearing efforts might just make him lose his nerve altogether.
the weeks it took to certify Umm Qasr’s port mine-free last year, despite the fact that mineclearing efforts were totally unopposed, mean that mining alone would cripple maritime trade for quite a while i suppose. add to that an active “defense” of the minefields, and… well. you get it.
very good idea, and it is almost doable. however, a few potental problems you might face when trying out such a plan.
1) china’s main ports are some of the busiest in the world, meaning that if you want to lay mines, chances are a ship or two will hit mines within the hour if your lucky, not nearly enough time to lay enough mains to even partially seal the base off. also, if the situation has gotten to the point where the RN is mining china’s main comercial ports, i think that chances will be high that the PLAN will be expecting something to go down, and so will be on high alreat. this means that the ships laying the mines will be putting themselves in grave danger, as as soon as ships start hitting mines, then the PLAN is going to know that its a sub laying them, and that the sub is most likely nearby…
2) the water around china’s east coast is very shallow, meaning that even if somehow the RN SSNs were able to lay mines without being found out right away, there will still be areas where even large ships like supertanks can go but SSNs cant (well not if they dont want to be seen at least), so there will be weakpoints in the minefeild, which could be fairly easily and quickly expanded to allow for safe passage of large numbers of ships.
3) china has a large number of major ports, and you need to lay mines covertly at all of them at the same time, or else you risk walking into a trap if you mine one port and then move onto the next. if you only mine one or two, the effect will not be that great.
problem is the number of boats the RN have available means that it will be stretched extremely thin to that, if it can do it at all never mind have ‘shotgun riders’. also, increasing the number of boats operating increase the chance of the whole thing being blown open (just maths). so, if you are even a little unlikely, you can have mines going off in a short interval at different ports while all the subs are still busy laying mines. and then you risk having you entire SSN fleet being attacked and take heavy losses or even be wiped out on the first day.
4) mines dont have eyes, if you mine such busy ports, you are just as likely to sink packed passenger ferries as you are oil tankers (probably more so because of the number of ferries v tankers). the political fallout from RN subs covertly sinking passenger ships with the loss of hundred of lives is just impossible for any british adminstration to take. and if you tell china that yu are going to mine its ports, well the mission is over before it even began.
even if the RN were somehow able to successfully mine all of china’s major ports without any problems (and thats a very big ‘if’), you will not be able to attack minesweepers or reply mines. this is because in order to mine the ports, you have to get in close to the shore, possible is no one knew you were about to do it. but once the cat is out of the bag, you will be taking a grave risk to just go inside the chinese EEZ, and once you start shooting at things there, then chances are you’ll never come back out (read me earlier posts for more detailed reasoning).
you will not be able to relay mines once they have been cleared for similar reasons, and also because of the risk if running into out of your own mines in the process if the chinese were just clearing pathes for ships to go in and out instead of getting rid of the whole feild (as they are likely to do, in the short term at least).
also, i doubt clearing a path through a minefeild will take anywhere near as it did in iraq. the couple of months you were refering was the time it took to clear all the mines. and those mines were layed over quite a long period of time with little or no interferance. clearing pathes through a hastly laid mnefeild will be much quicker.
as such, based on the potental and probably risks and the effect, i really dont see laying mines as a very realistic option.
plawolfPLA,
On the contrary you’re not quite getting the point and I’ll try and explain why.
Wrong. Tankers, like pretty much all merchies, need port facilities to offload their cargoes. You cant just drop anchor in any little fishing harbour and throw a hose over the side running from the oil bunkers to a waiting queue of road tankers!. Likewise its a bit hard to get cargo containers or bulk material off a cargo ship without some fairly decent sized cranes.
This being the case a Chinese merchantman would have to make for one of several distinct locations on the Chinese coast i.e a port. No neutral merchant vessel would HAVE to pursue such a course. To get to SK or Japan neutral vessels do not need to head for the Taiwan Strait. They can use a sea lane that keeps them well clear of the danger zone. Chinese ships do not have that option, whichever routing a chinese ship takes it has, ultimately, to head for its destination port and will have to cross the blockade line at some point. No other nations shipping HAS to do that unless they are heading for a Chinese port.
well for one, there are dozens, maybe even hundreds of fairly large ports up and down the chinese east coast able to handle oil. they by themselves wont be able to off-load as quick as in peace time (because in peacetime they work in conjunction with the major chinese ports), but they will get the oil to where it is needed in the end, just a little slower.
secondly, what makes you think that a ship has to off-load wherever it reaches the chinese EEZ? as we have already established, the RN’s SSNs would have a very rough time operating in the chinese EEZ, meaning that merchants can pretty much move up and down the chinese coast to where they want as long as they stay well within the EEZ. so chinese merchants can just follow japanese and SK merchants as far as they like and then turn towards china anywhere along the east coast. once it has gotten into the EEZ, it can then chance course to go wherever it wants to.
navagation and overcrowed might become an issue, but they will only be an annoyance at worst.
Ask Severodvinsk, he’s a Merchant Marine officer-under-training, whether he’d choose to take his ship, crew and cargo through a naval blockade line when a safe, albeit longer, route is available along existing sea lanes to the same destination. I think you’ll understand then why picking out a goat from the sheep won’t quite be the impossible task you believe it would be for the SSN CO.
im sure he would take the longer rought, anyone would, but thats not the point. if you just have broken zones here and there, then your blockade is as good as nothing, ships will just go in between the wholes and get to safe waters, and they sail down to wherever they were headed. (and thats the longer rought, the shorter rought would be to just try and dart through a blockade in a straight line as you suggested)
Wrong again strangely enough. The blockade only works because the Chinese ships HAVE to sail into the SSN patrol zone. SSN’s can only control a bubble 80nm’s or so in diameter. This is sufficient for a pair of discrete boats to keep a blockade line 2-300nm long patrolled, but, not enough to hunt a naval taskforce over the expanse of an ocean on their own. This is veering off the point of the thread though!
well, unless you can give a statisfactory reason as why chinese merchants would go through your blockade lines when they can easily avoid it as i have already stated, then your propsed blockade will simply never work. the only way to blockade china is to set a blockade zone fron vietnam to SK, and the RN dont have nearly enough SSNs to patrol such a large area.
also, in the battle of the atlanctic, i was refering to the u-boat v RN engagements of WWII, when all shipping was headed for one destination and it was a see-all kill-all kinda task for the u-boats. only in such a scenario might the RN’s SSN fleet be able to cut china’s sea based oil lines.
plawolfPLAwolf,
the geographic realities of the region means its almost impossible to darw a box in which only chinese merchants sail and where everyone else is (well, not unless you call the chinese EEZ the box).
The map below (hopefully) shows the patrol zone that I’ve been talking about and the paths of the sea lanes in the area. Rerouting SK shipping to follow the track south of Taiwan adds extra time and expense for shipping lines but compared to the insurance premiums (if insurance is available) that would be incurred sailing through the blockade zone that expense would be tolerable. Japanese traffic already goes via the lanes south of Taiwan.
The only traffic that HAS to go through the patrol zone is shipping bound for Chinese ports and shipping heading for Taiwan. How they, the Taiwanese, would react is anyones guess but the outcry from SK, Japan and whoever else certainly need not be that loud.
The whole point of the thread is the discussion of the ASuW warfighting arena and the differing philosophy’s regarding the value of antiship misiles in Western and Eastern doctrines. What I’ve tried to illustrate in all this is how and (more importantly) why SSN’s are considered more valuable in RN doctrine than surface vessels with huge batteries of heavy antiship missiles for ASuW.
This being the case whether China will eventually field an SSN with modern SLCMs to threaten Faslane or if China can, overnight, lose all its maritime oil supply and suffer no ill effect is largely irrelevent. The fact is that any nation possessing even a modest fleet of SSNs CAN deploy them to the other side of the world and perform effective sea denial operations against even regional superpower level opposition. That is more my definition of effective ASuW than the question of whether a destroyer embarks 8 or 16 SSMs in its battery.
your not really getting the point. no sea lane belongs to anyone. anyone and everyone can use whichever they want (if any at all). as soon as you leave a lane or two open for japanese or SK shipping, then all that’ll happen in terms of a blockade is that chinese shipping will just move in and use those lanes as well.
also, as soon as you set an exclusion zone, your pretty much stuck with it, attacking shipping outside it will carry grave political and international reprecussions. remember the blegrano? now think how big an outcry will result from attacking unarmed merchants outside the zone.
this means that chinese merchants can just go around your zone and carry on on their merry way. your fault for leaving wholes open.
if worst comes to worst, chinese merchants can just go right up to the EEZ of SK and then turn east towards china, it might take longer, but everything will get to where its needed in the end. unlike the USSR, china is not restricted to a handful of usable ports by the whether. its entire east coast is effective one massive continous port, and you need to patrol it all to true cut china’s sea lanes off.
sure, RN SSNs would be unstoppable by the PLAN if it was the battle of the atlanctic, but its not, so unless the RN fancy its chances against all the asian major powers, it needs to ID every ship and then attack. so again, you have all the limitations and problems i meantioned earlier.
i have already ignored all of the political reasoning which would make what you propose effectively impossible, yet even based on purely operational conditions, the RN simply dont have the numbers needed to put any kind of meaningful choke on china never mind keep the pressure on until china is ready to give up, not by itself. maybe 10 years ago, but not today, nor in the forseeable future.
plawolfhmm, guess the people at key publishing dont like richards…;)
plawolfAs wd1 put it Pearl Harbour is extremely handy for such purposes and few in the RN are unaware of the history the USN has with us in ‘lending a hand’ even when they, perhaps, shouldnt have done!. 😉
ah of course, the US is always willing and ready to charge to britain’s rescue no matter what. just like in the falklands. 😉
if the RN were to try to impose a blockade of china without the white house’s approval, the USN is probably more likely to be escorting chinese merchants rather then to help the RN sink them. but thats got to do with politics right. :diablo:
This is the whole reason I was stressing the PLANs ASW limitations earlier in the thread though. The patrol area I’ve described is about 100 miles offshore and extends for about 3-4000 sq.miles!. Finding two discrete accoustic signatures in that volume of seaspace with their entire current ASW inventory would be a hell of a result and that only deals with one RN hunting ground!
well i understand your dislike of politics, but sometimes you have to consider them or else your plans are just utterly unrealistic.
japanese and SK merchants use the exact same lanes as chinese ones, thats just geograthy. so where are you going to put this ‘perfect’ exclusion zones of yours? put it too far south and you’ll be in someone else’s waters, and you also have every tom, **** and harry who got a boat passing through it.
put it too far north and your increasing the danger as you get closer to chinese shores. put it too far west and you leave a whole where chinese merchants can just go directly up to china.
put it too far east, you got increasing dangers of being found and also you are again in the lanes that everyone uses.
the geographic realities of the region means its almost impossible to darw a box in which only chinese merchants sail and where everyone else is (well, not unless you call the chinese EEZ the box).
the economic realities at play means that short of nuking SK and japan, they will have populations that depend on sea trade, so there will always be SK and japanese merchants sailing right down the length of china. the only way you can make it easier to find out who’s who is to force neutral shipping as far away from china as possible. but the further they sail from china, the longer their trips and the more expansive things get in SK and japan, meaning they wont go along with it. and if they dont want to go along with your plan, the only way you can force them out is to start sinking them, but as soon as you do that, you effectively lost the blockade and most likely most of the subs you send in to try and enforce the blockade.
the only realistic exclusion zones are nowhere near as large as you would like, and even then there will be plenty of neutrals in it.
[QUOTE]Remember the rule – SSK’s dont run. An SSK doesnt pull convoy escort simply as they have no value doing it. Running at 12+ knots with just a slow convoy will oblige a sub to snort every 80nm or so and will offer little extra ASW capacity to the convoy commander. You could route a convoy through a series of friendly SSK patrol zones in an attempt to provide a ‘sanitised’ transit, but, then were back to the SSN vs SSK advantages. The SSN has better ears and endurance. Also your using lots of SSK’s having them sitting on patrol spots waiting for a passing convoy to cover.[QUOTE]
again, linking back to the above covered topic. the only realistic exclusion zones will be much smaller then the ones you would prefer to have, so it wont need that many SSKs to provide a fairly conclusive covering line. depending on the size, there will probably also be independent SSK hunter groups.
as for SSN v SSK, well, one on one, no-one would argue with you, but in the situation you discrible, it will most likely end up being one v two or one v three, and thats a totally different kettle of fish.
Sub launched nuclear cruise missiles against a nation with 4 Trident SSBN’s?. Besides what does the PLAN have in the way sub launched strategic cruise missiles? Firing off which platform? The Hans? Please – the crew would be dead from radiation exposure long before they got near the Atlantic from what I’ve heard of those boats!. Other than that we maintain a towed-array patrol around Faslane and have done since the cold war days. Was good enough to keep the VicIII’s away and the Soviets had a great deal more practice and experience with long duration SSN deployment than the PLAN!
no, a couple of well placed conventional crusie missiles can easily turn a stationary SSN into a nuclear fireball. the sub dont even have to turn into an A-bomb to turn the surrounding area into a no go zone for centuries.
no matter how good the defences were during the cold war days, this isnt the cold war, and the RN has made substantual cut backs. also, long range precision munitions have advanced greatly over the years. china aready have sub launched antiship and cruise missiles that can be launched from any new gen PLAN boat with ranges in the hundreds of miles, soon there will be ones with ranges in the thousands of miles. even if the RN was at the size of it at the height of the cold war it wont be able to defent against that.
and the thing is, the UK cant really retaliate in kind and just have to take it.
That I have to agree with of course. Luck does play a role in these events but training, experience and technology minimise the effect and I’d match the RN up against anyone on those grounds.
well, from what i have seen, its the RN who will be needing a big dose of luck to pull the blockade off at all, and a great deal more to keep it up. and as you said, training, experience and technology minimise the effect of luck. :diablo:
plawolf😡 hey, have any of you guys been watching sky news just now? i really cant believe what i am hearing and seeing!
the three so call experts that sky news called in this morning to discuss the tragic turn of events in russia started almost immediately to try to blame the russias for what happened! ‘oh they started it all’;’it was really them who brought it on themselves’…:mad:
only one of these ‘experts’ remembered to meantion that what happened was an absolutely inhuman (inanimal too) and utlerly indefensible atrocity. but even then i was getting the impression she was just rushing past a pre-plan speech so that she can get on doing what she really wanted – to also bash the russia government.
i find this completely revolting and unbelieveable. the merits (or rather lack of it) of their arguments aside, how could anyone with an anonce of decency try to whitewash and sideline this incredable tragedy only two days after it has happened and before even all the bodies have been counted?! did we hear of anyone in the mainstream media say, ‘ the US brought it on themselves’ two days after 9/11.:mad:
plawolfthe new SSN HMS Jonesy can also undertake stealthy crewing and replenishment from a sub tender off US bases Guam, Okinawa or Japan. No need to visit the UK for that.
in the worst case, pearl harbor or diego garcia. 🙂
why dont you havet he USN do the fighting for the RN too? :rolleyes: the US wont allow foreign SSNs to use their bases in times of conflict agains someone like china. imagine the outcry back in the states if one of those SSNs when nuclear in a US port.
plawolfwhoa man! great debate going on here.
my twopence’s worth, though, is that an RN-vs-PLAN ONLY duel would be really far-fetched; british-chinese engagements like these typically only occur in james bond movies. in all likelihood the USN would have to get involved before the RN wades in. now this brings in CVNs plus 688s, Seawolfs and Virginias… and there isn’t much left to argue over, i admit.
the rolling deployments Jonesy envisages for RN SSNs between china and “home waters”, possible as they are despite the enormous distance and hassle, won’t be necessary; Pearl Harbour is much nearer to china than Portsmouth or Faslane.
that said, the ability of the RN to put a big dent in china’s maritime merchant trade without US involvement goes to show the massive, and often underestimated, power-projection capability of the modern SSN. even in WWII, while people celebrate big aircraft-carrier battles like Midway and Coral Sea, everyone forgets that subs sank the most ships, and crippled the japs by cutting off their raw materials from southeast asia and thus made winning so much easier. and ancient, clunky, dilapidated SSKs at that; imagine what a T-class or Seawolf could do!
pit the USN again any navy in the world and there is only one outcome. hell, pit the USN again all the navies of the rest of the world and it’ll still probably win. so whats the point?
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