sealordlawrence4 flat tops?. At most there’ll be a CVS or CVF plus the LPH deployed together?.
The carriers/LPH have other things to do besides carry ASW choppers. CVF may have rucks of extra space for as many pingers as we have, but, putting them on the carrier may not be tactically ideal in every circumstance. Being able to maintain a continuous chopper capability from the deployed screen, whilst keeping the big deck thirty miles back, could be useful in many situations.
Having a chopper on every escort may be the case but tying three escorts down prosecuting one contact, when we aren’t going to have many escorts to start with, is neither productive or sensible if we have the opportunity to create a better solution. Far better to have the chopper capability on the principle ASW ship and have the ability to prosecute multiple targets simultaneously.
Fair point I suppose, but we will see what happens.
sealordlawrenceWe landed the X-35 vertically on regular AM2 matting multiple times in the summer of 01. Would you not expect a flight deck to be equally or more robust?
Nope, it has been posted on this forum before that the decks of the new Japanese DDH’s are incapable of taking the F-35 so it seems reasonable to suspect that frigate decks would have the same problem.
sealordlawrenceGood for large scale conventional war like WWII. Almost useless for guerilla type conflict like most todays wars.
US would be able to seemingly win the war over Iran within days. But just like in Iraq, they would soon discover that they haven’t really won much.
Which is why there has been a sea change in the US military approach to post conflict environments and COIN doctrines.
sealordlawrenceI was too!.
4 flat tops (if neccesary) and every DDG/FFG can support a helo, seems sufficient to me.
sealordlawrencethe only carrier i can think which was canceled with the long leads order was the Malta’s. I am fairly sure the CVA was still in design phase and there were no order’s for items.
1952 carrier. Engines ordered, steel was to come from scrapped WW2 escorts becouse of a general shortage.
sealordlawrencethey ordered the Long lead items:cool: so the CVF is a much much safer position than its predecessors
Has not made that much difference in the past.;)
However the CVF’s should be the most survivable of the navies projects, time will tell.
sealordlawrenceI have only just spotted this thread and it is one that touches a raw nerve for me.
Trafalgar square is dedicated to Britains national hero and his most famous military achievement, it is a celebration of Britain vanquishing its enemies and as such it is also a memorial to all those who fell in the process. The fact that the vacant plinth has been used as little more than a display stand for talentless irrelevant junk is borderline offensive. I dont care what they put on it but it needs to be war related, a Sea Harrier might be appropriate or a statue of a Falklands posthumuos VC winner.
sealordlawrenceJust a general comment on these big defence projects and how the Ministry uses their purse, not in response to any of the posts on this last page.
Now military industry is like the dodgy local car mechanic. “Oh, the flux alternator popple axle is about to break and I need to replace it, and it’ll cost you another five grand. Yes I know I told you I’d fix the car for just five grand but this was unforeseen…”Now in some other trades in our free market, if you as a company manage to draw up budgets that consistently end up being so far off the target as BAe’s budgets on the Daring, Astute and so on, it will be your head on the block and you will find yourself hard pressed to get further jobs. You might have to finish the project without getting more money from the employing body, paying out of your own company’s pockets to get the job done lest you lose massive face if the employer takes you off the project and brings in someone else to finish it, or sues you for contract breach.
The problem for the UK MoD, of course, is that BAe is the only car mechanic, plane mechanic and boat fixer on London’s side of the channel…
Some say the MoD is tight-fisted. Well in some cases that may be true but I also say well done for at least trying to put the foot down and not throwing tax payer money at BAe every time they go over budget.
And that is all the governments fault. It was the UK government that thought it would be a great idea to have one massive national defence contractor. A very highly simplified history of the BAe/MoD relationship:
Mid to late nineties, BAe gets forced into fixed price contracts by the MoD and takes massive hits on several major projects.
Next BAe goes to America (the largest defence budget in the history of man) and buys everything in sight getting its hands on some juicy European firms as a bi-product (Bofors).
Then BAe returns to Britain and says to the MoD, now you pay us whatever we tell you to or we just go elsewhere, after all we no longer need your paltry budget. BAe can afford to go nuclear if it wants and start shutting things down left right and centre, just imagine what the tabloids would have to say. The government made itself a hostage to the very monster it created.
Thus the government only has itself to blame for the whole sorry debacle.
sealordlawrenceSo what if the missile can be “mod’ed”? Big deal. That’s a major rebuild of the weapon and perhaps the launch aircraft as well, and not something that’s going to be done within a couple days of hostilities erupting.
This isn’t like cutting down an 8″ gun and making it into a bunker buster, this is a reconstruction of a precision piece of equipment, not something Boris and Natasha can do in the field with a can opener, some duct tape, and a delivery from Missile Parts R Us.
Add to that the fact that Jane’s states that the R95-300 engine that powers the Kh-55 has a life of 9 years so it may very well be the case that there are far fewer missiles available than many here like to think.
Essentially this whole concept of Kh-55’s/Kh-101’s as AShM’s is pure fantasy from dionis without any evidence at all.
If one really feels the need to propose fantasy weapons systems then it might be worth looking at the possibility of modifying the rotary launchers used on the Tu-95MS and Tu-160 for Yakhont/Onyx/Brahmos. This would provide a greater stand-off range than the Kh-15 and still a reasonable amount of missiles.
sealordlawrenceThe problem with airstrikes on Iran is that the USA arent in full control of Iraq.
The best defense would be to use insurgents with manpads to target US fighters as they take off from Iraqi airfields.
A victory is of course impossible, but an asymmetric strategy may make it cost prohibitive.
Which is why the USN has the worlds most powerful carrier fleet and a huge arsenal of cruise missiles.
sealordlawrenceDefence against small sea boat threats is another argument in favour of replacing Phalanx, Goalkeeper etc CIWS weapons with a gun like the 57mm Bofors. The 57mm is indeed CIWS, it’s smart fragmentation rounds give it an anti-missile capability and it’s greater engagement envelope combined with these smart rounds easily counter it’s lower cyclic rate of fire. The Italian and French navies are going down the same road with the 76mm gun. Personally I’d love to see the RN replace Phalanx with the 57mm gun and RAM as protection for their big ships, but whether the money is there to do it is another question. Phalanx is vulnerable to saturation attack and it’s engagement envelope means ships relying on it are still in real danger from high kinetic energy fragments even if Phalanx makes an interception. Also, aren’t many of the big Russian anti-shipping missiles hardened against light callibre cannon rounds to counter CIWS?
Exactly my opinion, the trend is very much towards larger calibre CIWS with the 35mm Millenium ahead being at the lower end and the 76mm at the upper. Take a look at Oto-Melaras new anti-missile ammo for the 76mm.
http://www.otomelara.it/products/schedule.asp?id=prod_naval_development_davide_ge
sealordlawrenceOh look, quick reply seems to work now.
Anyway, I’ve just seen the online edition of Jane’s Missiles & Rockets, the article I mentioned referencing my discovery of the first KS-1A site in Google Earth imagery (the significance being that it offers the first proof of the system entering service outside of any identified test ranges) will be published in the February issue. Check it out, Doug Richardson did a very good job covering both the site layout and the discovery as well as a summary of the KS-1 and KS-1A. I thought it was going to be “this guy found this, now here’s what it is and what it’s about”, but it actually featured far more of my work and a bunch of quotations than I had expected.
SOC, myth, Legend!:D
Seriously though congratulations and good work.;)
sealordlawrenceAnd sending CVGBs to some of the most deadly anti-ship forces is also a great idea, I’m sure America can afford to do that! 😎
It’s too bad that they’ve also lost their designated F-14 deterrent to large air saturation attacks, I bet that’s a real stinker eh? :rolleyes:
Those Super Hornets are just amazing pieces of aircraft. . . 😮
Kh-15 launch range data is also inconsistent, with ranges from 150 – 250+ KM being sighted by various sources. More interesting is how good are those Standard/Sea Sparrow missiles at intercepting stuff coming in at Mach 4.
GarryB has also provided the same opinion as me about the mod ability of the Kh-55 / Kh-65. It’s logical. Your logic clearly isn’t working in this case.
Also, how is anything I provided a fantasy fleet? The only “fantasy” element to the listed forces above is their placement on Russian territory – ie, possibly using every single platform right at once. No one said that entire thing would swamp some ceritain number of US CVBGs, but depending on the position of the attack, some combination of the above forces could obviously be used. It’s hilarious how people always fail to discuss case specific scenarios, and always get carried away by garbage like “omg when is the Yakhont really gonna be on every plane in the RuAF? or how many ESSM ships there will be in 20 years..” or something similar . . And just how many fantasy ESSM ships are in service anyway to stand any chance at all to a saturation attack from mostly supersonic/hypersonic missiles?
GarryB has not provided any logic at all…..the point still stands that you are completely wrong and have no idea what you are talking about there are no Kh-65s in service and the program appears to have been stopped. There is zero evidence that existing Kh-55s can be converted into AShM’s. Time to stop avoiding reality and admit that you have got no facts at hand.
Would you care to tell us the current sortie rate, days at sea, operational readiness/proficiency and operational status for each one of the units you listed in your fleet?:rolleyes:
The range figures for Kh-15 are not inconsistant at all, all the most reliable sources quote the 150km figure and Janes puts it into context as 150km when launched from 30,000feet.
The Super Hornet is perfectly adequate for Fleet Air Defence. And sending the USN to engage Russian naval forces and anti-ship missiles would not be as stupid as you seem to think, after all the USN as it exists today was largely designed for that threat scenario. The Tu-160 as an anti-ship platform with existing (as opposed to ones that you have invented) and integrated weapons is stupid. It would involve putting Strategic Aviations most capable cruise missile truck within 150km of AMRAAM firing Hornets and ship launched standards.
It is you who has been talking trash: Tu-95’s launching Kh-22s, Kh-65’s in service, anti-ship Kh-55s……..all completely un-evidenced nonsense.
sealordlawrenceJonesy, I was referring to platforms not airframes.;)
sealordlawrenceIndeed they do make big spending targets, BUT, they are as close to politically untouchable as any defence program the UK has had in 30 years.
Very smart move to have them built in the new PM’s backyard. He cancels them = puts his consituents on the dole = he can forget re-election!
If the opinion polls dont turn he can probably forget re-election anyway.;)
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