TurbiniaSo how do you think procurement processes work? You can just imagine it, we dont need challenger 2 becouse we have the best tank crews in the world so we will just buy Rover-75’s instead and they will be perfectly capable of destroying enemy armour. :rolleyes:
I must have missed all the M1A2’s, F-15’s, F-16s, and tornadoes being used by the Iraqis and the Taliban. :rolleyes:
So how does one determine over all capability, well its fair to say that if you equip a competant but no outstanding unit with Aster and an outstanding unit with a 20mm Oerlikon of WW2 vintage the Aster unit will be more effective, so once again human factors and material factors working in equal measure to determine the overall capability of a system. 😉
Don’t be dumb, we’re talking about air warfare vessels intended to defend against air attack, if your argument is that a Type 45 is useless as the Taliban don’t have F16’s then you should be arguing that the whole concept of air warfare combat vessels is pointless. These vessels have been designed to guard against air attack and if you look at the sort of aircraft and air-surface weaponry in question you’ll see that a lot of countries use the same equipment, look at 1982, both sides shared an awful lot of equipment, including Exocet, Sea Dart, the FN-FAL rifle, GPMG’s, the same bombs, Type 42 destroyers etc. And your comments about Rover 75 cars and Oerlikon guns are just reducing argument to the inane, if you know anything at all about the systems being argued about (namely Sampson/Aster, APAR/SM-2, AEGIS/SM-2) then you’d know all of them promise to be excellent systems in their intended role and that in action the marginal differences between the three systems will be far outweighed by differences in tactical doctrine, leadership, training, war maintenance reserve equipment stocks etc.
TurbiniaMore ilk. :p
As for the comparison, please keep in mind the different roles the respective navies want their vessels to play. The RN has been and will continue to be a navy that is actively pursuing British interests on the seven seas. The FGN, before reunification, had been part coastal defense and part receiving allied convoys on the European side of the Atlantic along with other NATO partners, such as NL, DK, N. The former East German Volksmarine was merely coastal defense, its role being to hold up NATO forces long enough for the Soviets to intervene.
Nowadays, the FGN´s mission has changed, but not to the point where it will, and is intended to be, a full scale global role navy protecting its nation´s interests worldwide. Many RN missions would be specifically prohibited by the German constitution. Coastal defense these days goes farther into the Atlantic, shipping lines to continental Europe will have to be protected, and the German Navy will more likely than not become a part of a future European defense alliance, sooner or later. Whether the UK and the RN will also participate in that endeavor is rather doubtful. Thus, the FGN needs far different vessels than the RN.
Which ship is “better”? – both, for their respective owner. I can remember back in the end-80s, when the then state-of-the-art AEGIS cruiser USS Ticonderoga was creamed by a bunch of German and Danish (not-quite-so-state-of-the-art) PT-boats during a maneuver in the Baltic Sea. The Tico´s weaponry was far superior to the PTs´, but the cruiser´s role was simply not the small, crowded Baltic. For the role it was intended to play in the US military planning, however, it was the “best” vessel money could buy back then.
EDIT: @ GUNNER 5″: GRUß AN KIEL!!! 🙂
Arrrgghhh, a plague of ilk!! 😀 😀 Good to see you here Tom. And good comments.
TurbiniaThe UK does still need further shipyard consolidation (unless the yards can survive on commercial contracts) but whilst all the yards agree on this they all equally agree that it has to be the other yards that take the pain. The politics of which constituencies the yards fall in make it a minefield. VT seem to be the most competent of the UK ship builders, BAE are the one with financial muscle, I’d imagine the former Yarrow yard on the Clyde and the Barrow yard are reasonably secure, but I’ve no idea about the others.
TurbiniaSomething to consider, in most potential modern conflicts human and technical support qualities will be a wider difference in military performance than hardware. Many potential opponents are equipped with very similar equipment from a handful of multi-national arms suppliers, and performance differentials between much modern equipment is pretty marginal. This thread is a classic example, is APAR or Sampson better? Who knows, and essentially it’s a pointless question, both systems will probably meet the needs of their customers very well, and since both are air warfare systems the performance counter point to argue about is not so much how they would fare if fighting eachother but how they fare against air attack. Now who here would be volunteering to test the qualities of APAR/Standard SM-2 or Sampson/Aster by climbing into a F18 or whatever to test them out? In war where both sides use essentially similar weapons it will be the leadership and human qualities of crew and who has the engineering and technical expertise to keep the systems operational and at high efficiency that make the difference.
TurbiniaI agree, there is no way the Israeli Navy could operate in either the Red Sea or Gulf without active Arab support, unless they have a monumental shipbuilding program of tankers, supply ships, air warfare destroyers/frigates etc. and that is unlikely to happen.
TurbiniaHmm, I thought as much, damned Ilk :p
In the words of someone we both know, Carry On!
Unicorn
At least on this board we’re free of a certain psychotic model salesman with a chip on both shoulders about us 😀 :diablo:
TurbiniaIsrael’s likely opposition would be countries like Egypt, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and possibly Jordan. Some of them would be met with naval action in the Medi, but others would need any naval group to passage through the gates of hell or Hormuz, probably making a forced package, and would need a huge support tail of tankers (once you start intensive air ops the fuel demand increases massively, not just for the aircraft but for the vessel) and replenishment ships, and would need a strong escort group as any naval forces in the Gulf or Red Sea are sitting duck targets to aircraft operating from Saudi, Egyptian or Iranian bases. Israel just doesn’t have the escort vessels (the Sa’ar 5 are seriously limited in endurance and lack the air warfare capabilities needed to provide good area air defence) or supply capacity, not to mention forces operating in the Gulf or Red Sea would probably operate in isolation from the rest of the IDF. Really, at the moment the only navy in the world capable of extended expeditionary ops far from home not as part of a multi-national force is the USN. This would make sense if they wanted to operate with the USN, but the diplomatic baggage of Israel would far outweigh the contribution of a LPHD I think.
Interesting info on the IDF Somali base, thanks.
TurbiniaSwan Hunter should never have been lead contractor for these LPD(A) vessels, if they’d been sub contracted to build two hulls with a bigger company as lead they may have done better. The reborn Swan’s didn’t have the resources and project management skills to bite off something this big, at least not yet anyway.
TurbiniaHmmmm
Do I know you? 😉
Unicorn
As members of the ilk it is our duty to spread across the Internet reducing all other boards to the levels of Buzzards 😀 Your stories of the RAN O boats were fully in keeping with my views on military effectiveness, I’m not saying the O & P boats were bad boats, but at the same time they were nothing special either, what made them so effective was the training and spirit of the RAN crews, you could put those guys on almost any boat and they’d do something great. On the other hand I’ve seen navies where you could give them something like a Gotland, Collins or T212 SSK, or a Seawolf or Astute SSN and within six months it’d be so much junk.
TurbiniaYou can’t take crewing and engineering out of the equation, any weapon is only as good as the operators and the maintenance it recieves. On warships and combat aircraft the maintenance is critical, it doesn’t matter how good the design is if it is about to collapse, and a lot of military forces just do not have the skills (or crew management) to maintain and operate the systems. Also there is budget, a lot of countries spend a lot of money on weapons they then can not afford to operate with the result they rust away and are just so much scrap metal. Combat efficiency needs practice, training and realistic exercises to develop, and again this all costs a lot of money. A lot of highly impressive looking warships around the world are militarily useless due to management and crewing deficiencies, other forces operate designs considered poor with great effectiveness. Of course the technology of the ships is important, but without the right management and crewing it comes to nothing. I’ve seen a lot of warships and fighter aircraft that were still listed as active on lists and the pride of their forces that were basically junk. And when you look at history, tactical doctrine, resources and leadership quality have mattered more than technology. On another board a guy has been recounting some of the exploits of the RAN Oberon SSK boats which were incredible exploits, now who would honestly claim the O & P boats were anything special?
TurbiniaHMS Dreadnought for pre-1939
IJN Takao type heavy cruisers for 1939-45
Ticonderoga class AEGIS cruisers for post war
Arleigh Burke AEGIS destroyers out mof the current designs on the market
Turbinia4) It’s the crew that makes the capabilities of a ship, not its equipment. No matter how good and accurate that radar is, as long as you put a blind and deaf man in front of it, you won’t get any advantage.
Absolutely correct, crew quality is THE most important factor in military performance, and this makes comparison of many ships meaningless. You can look at a lot of designs operated by multiple users and the actual military worth of the different navies will differ hugely due to crew efficiency, maintenance standards, operating budgets etc. despite being nominally similar on paper.
TurbiniaThe Sa’ar 5 up as a good example of the hazards of over loading a small hull for the LCS to follow, it’s probably one of the worst designs of any modern warship. Stability is very marginal, zero room for growth, in fact worse than that there isn’t even room for the kit it was supposed to carry when they entered service and the weapons/equipment fit is meaningless as they can’t carry all of it and still operate effectively. The Sa’ar 5 is an object lesson in over loading a modest vessel with hugely over ambitious weapons and sensor fit and shows that at the end of the day, size does still matter. The LCS is intended for a specific role, operating in inshore waters and the weapons fit doesn’t need to match an AEGIS destroyer.
TurbiniaI agree 100%, please do not take my post as an attack as I agree with your sentiment. I did my time in the RAF and have a good idea of the fact that;
1) people in defence have to know when to keep their mouths shut
2) you can have very deep, detailed knowledge of some systems and very little about others
3) in my experience true capability and effectiveness of weapons almost never matches brochure claims and the media releases pushed by manufacturers
TurbiniaThanks for the info, I never really understood why the IDF wanted a baby carrier as they don’t need it for Medi ops and they lack the resources for long range expeditionary warfare with a mini carrier/LPHD. The Sa’ar 5 design has been a bit of a pig in a poke really, top heavy, no growth potential, cramped layout and nothing like the capability the brochures claimed for it. For the price they’d have been better either paying a bit more for a full blown frigate, or going for a less ambitious but realistic, heavily armed OPV/FAC. The T212/214’s should be a big boost in capability for them, they’re superb boats.
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