Don’t you just love the infighting and chicanery of military procurement? If it wasn’t so costly in tax payers money it would be amusing.

The sad thing is that the government only really has itself to blame, this is what happens when you only have one defence contractor.

We may assume in the worst case, that Pakistan or China develop a fully functional MIRV.

In such a case, as the Indian BMD can detect 200 targets at a distance of 600 kms, the main MIRV module and its path can be captured on radar. If separation does not take place beyond 80 kms, the entire MIRV module can be neutralized in the enxo mode itself, by Pradyumna.

However, if the separation takes place before that, then individual Pradyumna interceptors for the enxo mode and interceptors for the endo mode may have to be fired.
That a few separated missiles can be individually detected is clearly evident from the diagram posted by Nick_76 in post #544 (top of this page), which highlights to a high detail, even the debris of the destroyed target.

In fact, it may be interesting to note that the Indian BMD itself performs a sort of saturation attack against the incoming targets; every target is allocated 2 missiles each in the endo and exo modes respectively. Thus, liquidating MIRV targets should be possible.

This system can not intercept ICBM’s or missiles with a range greater than 2000km. Thus China can already penetrate it.

This web page suggests that Japan will not be buying the Typhoon but will instead be upgrading it’s F15s. Is this true?

http://www.air-attack.com/news/news_article/2909/US-ban-forces-Japan-to-modernize-F-15-fighters.html

Basically Japan wants the Raptor so they are suspending the F-4 replacement program for a few years in the hope that it will be made available, personally I would not be surprised if the F-35 ended up in Japan now.

See, there is life beyond STOVL vs. CTOL in the CVF debate!:D

On C&C, I say make them fleet flag ships, depending on cost I’d be minded to fit Sampson too if the money is there, as it’d give them a massively enhanced battlefield control capability without relying on escorting T45’s and could potentially act as an emergency back up to airborne AEW. On self defence, I agree with the probable use of only CIWS (Goalkeeper, Phalanx or Sea RAM) and close in cannon.

It will be interesting to see how the French ships get fitted out, CdG has a very impressive armament of VLS ASTER-15, I wonder whether they will go down that route again? Or if they will do a fitted for but not with job?:confused:

Actually that is probably too close to the truth for HMG. It certainly sounds about right.

The recent history of BAe goes something like this, they became the sole defense contractor in the UK (more or less, there are/were others but BAe is the only one that counts) It began a whole bunch of contracts, they all went over budget and the government ordered fixed price contracts on which BAe invariably lost money. BAe then went away and bought itself a vast American empire before returning to the table to proudly announce that they no longer needed the UK MoD becouse they had a vast US buisness. And so we are where we are today, BAe can hold the UK MoD hostage.

whats interesting is that the chevaline worked in part, because the ussr was limited to 100 interceptors around moscow and hence a specific threat envelope was available to defeat, for the system to work.

it also seems to be focused against radars in specific. now with todays technology, entirely new penetration aids would be required against long wave iir seeker equipped KKVs, not to mention with the exponential growth in digital processing, radars would be harder to spoof and decoy.

i am very surprised that the brits declassified this program, which suggests that a chevaline follow on is in service, then!

or that the threat perception has changed so much that a viable nuke deterrent against russia is no longer necessary (i doubt it).

the LRTR/ Mfcr combo in the indian test was able to plot the tracks of the various debris post collision.

a low res pic is here. seems to reinforce the fact that in this era, even more advanced penetration aids would need be deployed.

interestingly this is the view from the mcc which the radars link to. the green line and black lines are supposed to be the missile vs the reentry module which the interceptor took out. all the clutter is the debris and individual tracks of each.

wish there was a high res pic released publically

the official video released has a sanitized view with all the details snipped out. it just depicts one ballistic trajectory of the missile being intercepted by the ballistic trajectory of the interceptor and both continuing.

Well the UK certainly does not max out its tridents warheads so there should be plenty of spare space.;)

Ultimately the best penaid could just be more MIRV’s, again I quote the Ohio SSBN example, maxed it has 288 warheads.

Opinions are fine and everyone is obviously entitled to one. Problem is though opinions need to be based on good information for them to be of value. People who base their opinions on faulty or incorrect information and then proceed to demand that their opinion is as valid as anyones elses deserve to be held in contempt!.

This issue is not to be confused with any generic STOVL vs CATOBAR debate either. This is very specifically whether STOVL is suitable for the UK’s Carrier Strike requirement. As stated there are operational circumstances where CATOBAR would be the absolute necessity.

No its because you are ambiguous in what you state. What you say above is precisely what I said in stating that Asymmetric warfare is the future. Yet when I say it I’m wrong, myopic and all the rest!?. You now seem to agree that no belligerent state IS likely to appear before the CVF can be mid-lifed, so, can I assume you accept my point that the UK MoD weren’t ‘wrong’ in emphasizing Carrier Strike over Sea Control missions?.

I’m sorry SL but again we rock back to the original points being made. An F-35C deploying CASOM is striking at about 750nm downrange from the carrier. The only way we are supporting that strike is from strategic, not tactical, intel as we have no way of organically generating tactical intel at 750nm from a carrier group. So we are shooting at fixed targets from 750nm…we can do that now with TLAM.

I NEVER said you had stated that the carriers were principle sea control platforms. I said you were damning them for not being so. you yourself said that the RN had its requirement for the carriers wrong and that we were ‘sacrificing’ capabilties to save money.

Thankyou for making my point so clearly – we are not going to fight the Desert Storm campaign on our own with a CVF and three squadrons of F-35’s of whatever type so that action can be discounted. The Falklands operation even with ‘only’ F-35B’s and a STOVL CVF is a VERY short campaign, so, again that action can be discounted!. As for Op ALLIED FORCE I dont think I spotted the threat that was keeping a carrier hundreds of miles offshore – in fact, IIRC, we had T22B2’s on Op SHARP GUARD that was patrolling 40nm’s off the coast!. In all three cases the STOVL CVF group would’ve been perfectly capable of undertaking all missions that a CATOBAR group could.

As demonstrated above SLL the threat-reduction exercise on this one is quite straight forward. It demonstrates, clearly, the capability level necessary to meet the requirements layed down by the Carrier Strike mission. As described above the extra expenditure on CATOBAR over STOVL will be the £hundreds of millions territory and it is very hard to justify that spend when you consider the other platform requirements the RN has.

We NEED T45 hulls 7&8 as insurance against long term mechanical casualty/accident to any of the hulls 1-6. Likewise an additional 1 or 2 Astutes for the same reason. We NEED C3 to be a competent, if austere, warship not some glorified OPV. We really do not need Hawkeyes and ALRE kit taking funding away from these programmes to no great operational benefit.

You are right Jonesey opinions do need to be based on good information…unfortunately you are an extremely arrogant individual who is unable to see that those of others might be as well.

Again you have made yourself look ridiculous with regards to potential threats, how do you know there will not be a another Desert storm type campaign in the future. You persistantly ignore the lesson of history that disagree with you, as the above rant proves once again, the Falkland proved perfectly well the threat posed by even limited shore based AShM assets, yet you ignore this. This is a perfect demonstration of the fact that threat reduction is straight forward, quite the contrary this demonstrates that it is very dangerous to put escorts close to shore, remember what happened to Glamorgan? or is that one of those bits of history that you do not like?

Your notion that the UK does not use strategic intelligence assets and the thus these vessels will only undertake tactical operations is completely wrong. I know for a fact that the UK has made numerable air strikes during campaigns using strategic intelligence. Stop saying they do not, it is wrong. Furthermore special forces and other HUMINT assets can provide real time intelligence from more or less any range. Again you are wrong. You also ignore the loiter time issue that is so important for the very CAS/COIN ops that you wrongly think are the only operations that the UK will undertake in the coming decades.

Again until you can actually quantify the cost issue stop talking about sacrificing escorts you have yet to provide any realistic figures and this just highlights your desire to talk in vague generalities. At the moment this is merely scare tactics on your part, claiming that multiple escorts would be lost without providing any figures, very tabloid of you, but entirely in line with your attitude.

Another example of you not knowing what you are talking about, do you know the difference between peer rival and state? If you do go and re-read my previous post and you will find that I have pointed out very clearly that it is entirely possible that a belligerent state will emerge within the next 30-40 years even if it is not a peer rival. Indeed that paragraph in the above post makes no sense at all and shows a lack of understanding on your part. For example, Argentina was not a peer rival but it was a belligerent state and it emerged as such in a very short period of time. This is the same example I used in my previous post that you chose to ignore becouse it proves you wrong. A state does not have to be a peer rival to be belligerent. The point stands, the UK may very likely face non terrorist/insurgency scenarios in the future. To do as you do and suggest that it will not is completely absurd.