Leave for a couple of hours and I come back realising I’m getting stalked by a rabid poodle – now that’s what I find so ridiculous, it’s comical. I’m sure the top admirals of RSN and Israeli Navy would agree! 😀

The hyperventilated yowls of the poor, sick canine are quite irritating so forgive me if my thoughts don’t come across as they should as I try to round up my arguments as to why the FACs are failures, and just as importantly, in what sense they come across as failures.

Rarely have I seen an example of someone who seems so pathetically pleased with his such poor examples of jibes and inadequate wit.

In your mental paralell universe you may see yourself as some kind of comedian, but in reality, its just sad and a waste of other people’s time to weed out. Cut the BS and stick to the subject.

FACs grew out of the 1870s French Navy’s Jeune Ecole argument for poussiere navale, or ‘naval dust’. Part of the idea that small, heavily armed vessels could take on larger, more powerful warships. FACs embody that idea, by being heavily armed, small, fast, cheap and therefore numerous. FACs were sold by their manufacturers as the nemesis of larger warships like corvettes and frigates. That was the promise. That, was why FACs are such failures. The battle of Bubiyan is concentrated on precisely because that battle proved just how incapable FACs are in handling that task. Granted, the force disparity in the battle of Bubiyan is so great that the final outcome wouldn’t be in doubt. That’s not the point. The point is that the FACs were totally ineffective against the ship-borne helis which could have been fielded by a opponent far less sophisticated and resource rich than the UK or US.

Serval highly knowledgeable and respected members have already tried many times previously to show how this total distortion of reality is completely irrelevent as anything other then a case study of how not to employ FACs. I would ask you read their posts and actualy try to see what they are trying to say instead of merely blindly repeating the same rubbish time and again.

I see you have also completely ignored the force multipliers in that case despite what I wrote before. Guess you were too preoccupition trying to devise some insult instead of reading what has been written.

It is undeniable that the Iraqis manning the Kuwaiti TNC-45s and 57s were less than able to fully fight their ship. Even so, the engagements illustrated the inherent shortcomings of FACs that even a well crewed FAC won’t be able to overcome. In some instances the Lynxes hovered less than 3km from the FACs to fire their Sea Skuas. Their sophisticated swedish FCRs were simply unable to track the Lynxes. They were functioning – but they never got a track of the helis to guide some return fire. The threat was deemed so insignificant the UK Lynxes didn’t even bother to mount jammers in subsequent attacks, preferring instead to trade them for a greater Sea Skua loadout. A further proof of this is the total lack of countermeasure response of the FACs to the Sea Spray radar despite being armed with ESM. Maybe the Iraqi crew didn’t know where the countermeasure button was? Not likely, but it is everyone’s right to believe. 😉

I would refer you to Wanshan’s posts as you clearly have not read a thing he said.

The Iraqis could have sent out a Burke, and it would have been spanked just as hard. That’s why that particular example is so worthless.

In addition, you are approaching the issue from entirely the wrong angle because FACs, by their very nature, are not self-sufficient surface combatants that can fight off attackers, but are assault weapons. They rely on their speed, and increasingly these days, their stealth and long range missiles coupled with off-board targeting to engage hostiles BEFORE they can arm and vector in dedicated kill platforms to take out the FACs.

To argue that FACs are useless because specially equiped helos can spank them when they know to expect the FACs make as much sense as saying B2s are failures because any fighter who has one in his sights can shoot it down easily. Its entirely irrelevent.

So we can see that FACs are ineffective – unless backed up by air support. Add off-board sensors and command and control to that. One then goes back to the original rationale for FACs espoused by their shipbuilders – the ability to handle better equipped warships, on the cheap. Once you factor in the costs required to make the FAC mission-capable, the whole rationale goes ‘poof’. Costs just got displaced elsewhere. On top of that you have paid the additional price of limiting your vessels to your coastal waters. Put another way, if that you had invested that money in corvettes/frigates, you would have gotten much better capability for pretty much the same amount of money. Oh, and remember, money is finite.

Oh please. Since when has anyone but the mentally challenged or those with agendas ever taken manufacturer’s claims at face value? What was the claimed success ratio for the likes of the AMRAAM and what was the shot-kill ratio in combat? Does that mean the AMRAAM is worthless?

What more, your arguments on support asset also defy reason. Or do you think just buying a top of the line destoryer is going to make you top dog compared to an adversary who has less sophisticated destroyers but a far superior sensor support infrastructure?

If you just send a destroyer, even one as capable as as Burke or Type45, against some modern FACs with long range missiles that cost a fraction but have decent off board sensor support, the destroyer gets spanked pretty much every time.

Canines never deal with money, so that rabies infested poodle didn’t quite take that factor into account.

I would suggest you cut the crap and stick to the point instead of embaressing yourself more with such poor attempts at wit.

Small point to think of. What advantage does a FAC tasked to take on larger warships have over coastal missile batteries and anti-ship tasked planes?

Against coastal batteries, you have far superior range and surverability as well as the ability to engage the enemy in their ‘safe zone’.

Against airborne strike assets, you have a far better chance of getting closer to give your missiles a better KP, as well as a greater chance of surviving the attack since modern destroyers are very capable against air targets, both in terms of detection and engagement. Whereas small, stealthy surface targets cannot be detected as far because of radar horizons without serious off board airborne sensor assistance, and most anti-ship missiles, especially the long ranged ones, are geared to take on large surface combatants and their success rate against small FACs are hard to determine but are unlikely to be stella.

By the way, if by some 4 legged logic one comes by the idea that helis require off-board sensors to look out for FACs, then I recommend finding out more about APS-143 and APS-147, just to name 2 search radars mounted on helicopters perfectly able conduct wide area search for FACs. hey really can be used, even on ASW missions.

And their chances of spotting targets 200KM out? Even if they can do that, how high would they have to be? Might as well erect a neon sigh saying “we are over here”. And 200KM is not even the max range of some of the missiles available. Once you factor in re-arming time and flight time to get within firing range, the distance you need to spot FACs at increases significantly again.

And that is not even considering the fact that FACs will, or rather, should never be sent out against major surface combatants alone. How many helos does a destroyer carry and how many missiles can they carry apiece? Send in twice as many FACs (which still carry a fraction of the crew and cost less then the destroyer) and your much vaunted helo screen is breached even if they do manage to detect the pack 300km out and achieve a 100% hit rate with their missiles at 200km from the mothership.

But don’t tell that to your poodle, especially if it is rabid. They have a tendency to yelp even more. Just wait and see. 😀

Arh yes, never one to miss any opportunity to wow us all with your level of maturity. :rolleyes:

Tornado, Mig23/27, anybody see a trend? :diablo: J8I and B52.

XXJ?

Interesting pictures posted over at sinodefence.

There are no markings or distinguishing features to ID this as being Chinese, but from it second picture, its clear that this design has progressed a very long way. And I have not seen a design like it from any of the other major powers, which leaves only China.

Er – what Chinese lands is S. Korea occupying?

I know about the piddling little islands in the far south of Japan China claims are Chinese.

Lets not get sidetracked with THAT pile of mess shall we?

Jonesy mate, your entire argument is based on a few foundations that may well not hold true.

The waters around China are very busy normally, but that is not necessarily going to be the case in the event of war.

A simple declaration of a military exclusion zone of 5-600km around Taiwan will sort that out pretty easily. If you are civilian and want to pass through that area, there are pre-set, 5km wide channels you can use. Deviation from those zones will result in an unholy number of AShMs coming your way without warning. Sink a couple of stubborn merchants and the rest of will fall in line neat as you please.

After that, anything outside of the civilian lanes are considered hostile and sunk on sight. See how easy it is to take a key weakness out of the equation?

But if the question is Do you believe , than I would say its a leap of faith.

But seeing is believing , they should release some actual test footage of this new extraordinary weapon system called ASBM.

The PLA has no interest in convincing anyone outside of anything. They would release tidbits here and there to give you enough info to be worried and not take them for a pushover to dissuade aggression, but they will not outright prove a capability unless its in their interests to do so, as that will remove all the uncertainty and remove the descending voices from allowing the development of countermeasures.

Learn to live with this one lads….its a pretty much no-win situation.

Forgive me, but that was spoken with quite some arrogance.

Laws are made by men and can be changed by men, there is nothing untouchable about any law, especially not outdated ones that are clearly abused to break the spirit in which they were written.

The issue is not China trying to make EEZ territorial waters, its about China trying to limit foreign military activity within EEZs. When put like that, it doesn’t sound nearly as belligerent as your claims of Chinese intent make it sound does it?

Looks like not even Jonsey is above a little ‘spinning’ from time to time.:p

You, along with everyone else arguing the Chinese position here, does not know the difference between EEZ & territorial waters. Read what Tigershark has posted, e.g.

Consider the implications. The freedom to navigate, lay cables & pipelines etc in EEZs is guaranteed by the law you claim says the opposite. Surveying is implicitly one of those freedoms (can’t lay cables or pipelines without some idea of where you’re laying them, good charts are desirable for navigation, etc), & I’m sure it’s explicitly mentioned as one of the other “lawful uses of the sea . . .” elsewhere.

You don’t need permission to survey outside territorial waters.

And one of the key principles behind these lawful uses is that its for peaceful purposes.

The aritcles posted by Tigershark says nothing about laying mines being illegal, but do you think it would be a legitimate use of the EEZ if a Chinese ship sailed merrily 12 miles outside US naval bases seeding mines that are inactive but can be turned live with a signal?

Intellegence gather is no so overtly hostile, but can be even more deadly in the event of war.

This goes back to my orignial point that the US only follows the letter of the law and breaks its spirit. If this was any national court, legislation would be brought in to close down these loopholes, but this is the UN, and so nothing can be done unless China has something to trade, as Jonesy pointed out so clearly.

And people wonder why China is putting so much money into its military – you get bullied if you are weak, and your grievances will not be heard until you are in a position of strength to force the US to take notice and horsetrade. :rolleyes: