sealordlawrenceHere’s my few thougths (incomplete) over the Soviet Carrier devolpment, that by passes this issue as well.
http://www.sinodefenceforum.com/professional-discussions/soviet-carrier-development-lessons-china-well-858.html
Excellent thoughts Gollevainen, certainly very well researched. Do you have any information on the proposal to make the Project-82 Stalingrad class into guided missile cruisers?
Everybody else feel free to jump in!
sealordlawrence100NM, the Kh-555 is supposed to have a range of 2-3000km and the Kh-101 3000km+ so whats all this 100NM about, if they really want to test the Typhoons make some remote controlled ALCM’s that turn around when they reach national airspace!:D 😀 😀
sealordlawrenceThanks for posting Wanshan, nice find.
sealordlawrenceI agree with Sealord, the willingness of the UK government to go to war over the islands should not be underestimated. No UK government would remain in power after losing the islands, and losing the islands would therefore be political suicide.
As has been the consistent response to this thread, the UK is not in too bad a position, especially since the war would be unlikely to go down the same way. Argentina’s aircraft, especially the A-4s, may be better equipped, but they wouldn’t get to fly around and over the British ships like they did in ’82. Overall, Argentine capabilities have progressed a fair bit, but British capabilities have advanced more, and any future conflict would be very painful for Argentina.
One question that remains to be answered – is the rumoured radar pod for the Harriers a reality (i.e. some testing done, and ready in an emergency), or not. AFM carried the story, and some speculation, but nothing terribly conclusive. I would think it would be an excellent capability boost for the Harriers, and address the problems of lacking Sea Harriers for the next few years, even if its only a stopgap.
I would be amazed if at the very least some sort of feasibility study to rapidly give the GR-7/9A fleet a BVR capability with some sort of radar had not been carried out.
sealordlawrenceThe swift always seemed to me to be a rather unfortunate aircraft, it fades into history along with its never to fly but nearly completed successor, the Type-545, without so much as a whisper. I was under the impression that the later marks solved most of the problems?:confused:
sealordlawrenceWasn’t sure how much of 1982 wasn’t a bit of “we don’t need any help” anyway (except for the minor details of pressing the French for Exocet code and US aid).
Don’t worry, I wasn’t being serious.
Its little historical titbits like that, that I love.:)
As to the actual topic, I cannot see how the Argentinians could invade the islands without serious loss of life, or an amazing capacity to build-up unnoticed. Even if they achieved that, I cannot imagine that they would be able to retain them, and recent foreign policy tells us UK Govt is not going to shy away from the fight, short of a Liberal election win. It might even provide the UK Govt with a way out of Iraq…….
No UK government could survive the loss of the Falkland Islands irrelevent of their political mandate or popular support.
sealordlawrenceNO. I guess they must be subservient like Tony B. Liar and send their soldiers to fight bush’s/neocons war.:D . How stupid of them not to do that.:rolleyes:
What?
sealordlawrenceAre NATO obliged to aid in such matters?
If so, would we have to help the Spanish if they invaded Gib?:diablo:
Take one look at the cowardice being displayed by must European countries concerning Afghanistan to see how effective NATO actually is.
sealordlawrenceOne of the biggest obstacles to any Argentine invasion would of course be the aftermath! After the fighting is over, and the islands are almost certainly back in UK hands, there would be sanctions placed on them, which would hurt their economy a lot!
In terms of stopping Argentine resupply though, do not forget that they maintained aerial resupply throughout the ’82 conflict, even after the taskforce arrived. Putting SSNs on station may make shipping supplies untenable, but you can still fly in supplies. Worse still, if Mount Pleasant airbase is still intact, then they would be able to commandeer civilian aircraft, and start flying in supplies on 737s, 767s etc… This would allow for a pretty rapid influx of supplies, which would need to be stopped as quickly as possible.
Of course the same is true in reverse, if the Argentines are too slow off the mark, then the UK could bring in supplies quite quickly. Even just using a handful of C-17s, a dozen C-130s, and a dozen chartered widebody airliners, Britain would be able to fly in a few thousand troops, lots of artillery, and air defence assets. The sad thing is that the UK hasn’t actually invested in proper air defence assets, i.e. an integrated SAM system.
It is not just a case of resupplying troops on the Islands, they cannot have any economic value if blockaded by the sea, and the Argentine fleet is unable to leave port for fear of death from below.
sealordlawrenceThe type 984 was a brilliant radar, when it worked. It suffered from being a valve (vacuum tube) driven piece of electronic kit. Valves are fragile and like lightbulbs can die unexpectedly. They also take up a lot of space and weight compared to any equivalent solid state (transistorised) equipment and proposals to fit a county class DLG would have included deleting the forward guns as weight compensation! There was a proposal in the sixties for a solid state version of the Type 984 (imaginatively designated type 985) but it never got past the proposal stage, as the ‘984 was associated with the carriers and the politicians were against anything to do with them. The ‘984 was thus declared obsolete in 1966 (despite still being the most advanced and capable radar in RN service) adding another reason for phasing out the existing carriers, ie they would need a lot of money spent on them to update their radar fit to keep them viable. The type 985 was also in competition with the Anglo Dutch type 988 ‘Broomstick’ radar intended for the CVA-01 class and the type 82 DLGs (Bristol class) and the latter was seen as more modern so ‘984 would have to soldier on in the existing ships until they themselves were replaced.
All correct, it should also be noted that the 988 would have been huge as well, see any of the models of the original Type-82 design with it to get an idea!:eek: Apparently the 985 was at one point proposed as a fairly easy upgrade for the 984, whether it would have been easy or it was just a marketing claim I dont know.:confused:
sealordlawrencePut two SSN’s around the Island’s and establish a total exclusion zone, then sink any ship that enters it, any Argentinian occupation would soon become untenable.
This makes the assumption that Argentina could make a successful invasion of the Islands, that is a false assumption, obviously friction would play a role but I can not think of a fraction low enough to describe the potential for an Argentinian success.
sealordlawrenceOh, that’s not what I’ve come across at all. From what I’ve read, it wasn’t until Kruschev came along that they were killed off. Now, I have read that Stalin curtailed the surface fleet construction to allow more steel to go to the submarines (Whiskeys in particular).
I think that if Stalin (and therefore, the program) had survived in its original for until 1955 (the next five year plan), then it would have been curtailed by Stalin anyway for lack of resources.
Anyway, I’ve been fascinated with it too for the past couple of years. I really think that it wouldn’t have fared well against the Western navies. It would have murdered anything that got within 100 miles of the coast, but any further out than that and US carrier groups would have been picking them off.
Logan Hartke
I will have to try and locate the book I read it in, but basically the ships were intended to have 8.66inch guns, basically becouse they were larger than the 8 inch weapons of US cruisers, however it was discovered that the Des Moines class would still be able to overwhelm them and that was the primary reason for their cancellation, you may be right about them being victims of Kruschev though.
It is the air strike part that I am really re-examining and I am gradually coming to the conclusion that it is not as clear cut as I used to think it was, particuarly in the intended operating environments in the North Atlantic and that most of the war experience of attacking major surface units involved vast numbers of aircraft attacking vessels with relatively poor air defence systems.
sealordlawrenceThe problem with the light fleet carriers, with the exception of the Hermes, Centaur, Bulwark and Albion was that they were unable to maintain fleet speed, making them less than useful as fleet carriers. The three cruisers were armoured, still capable of engaging Sverdlovs and could be made into comprehensive multi role ships rather than just ASW carriers. They were also capable of carrying a significant number of troops, made great command ships and their guns were very useful for shore bombardment.
sealordlawrenceOther question mark is around other surface combat orientation in Western navies. Would they have invested also in the earliest point to Anti ship missiles? Or would they have relyed on their airpower? What would have that mented for the early jet-age in aircraft carrier operations, that (atleast in US part) were so much hyped by the rivaly between the Air Force of Strategical strikes?
Also, If Krutshev wouldn’t have been on power, it would have been likely that the Soviets wouldn’t have invested so much on Submarines, and that correlates directly to the heavy ASW orientation in Western fleets. I think we would have seen lots of intresting desings in the ASuW role.
There is certainly lots of “What ifs” in this topic. Too bad that the internet’s active never-where desinger club seems to be so oppsessed with their Battle-ship romantics and Springsharps, and sofar I haven’t seen any real effort of redesing the western fleets according to different threat:(
Very true all round. However I would point out that Stalin had a very substantial submarine program underway following World War 2, and this absorbed the majority of the RN’s effort even prior to his death, a very large number of RN DDG’s were rebuilt as very well equipped fast ASW frigates, indeed one of the RN’s problems seems to have been the sheer diversity of the naval threat that the Soviets were providing.
It is very interesting how serious the RN’s concerns seem to have been about the capacity of carrier aviation to deal with the Soviet surface threat, the concern seems to have been two fold,
1) Weather conditions, especially in the North Atlantic, off the North Cape etc are notoriously bad and the prospects for being able to maintain reliable air ops from carrier in this environment seems to have been a real concern, The case of the sinking of HMS Glorious is cited as an example, what happens to an aircraft carrier if it is caught by surface ships whilst unable to launch aircraft due to bad weather. The huge range being pursued for the Stalingrads guns suggests to me at least that the Soviets had been looking at the Glorious example as well.
2) The effectiveness of modern radar guided AAW gunnery, the entire idea behind the Green Cheese/Buccaneer project was to keep the launch aircraft out of the range of the targets guns and even then the misslie itself seems to have been considered vulnerable.
My own humble opinion is that had it have not been for the death of Stalin we would have seen the same sort of ships deployed in the soviet fleet that actually were but they would have existed in larger numbers. I dont think the Soviets (from the perspective of a sea control/commerce interdicting doctrine) made quite as large of a mistake as some people suggest.
sealordlawrenceTaking account of that passion, and IF the program would have been fullified by at least some stance by larger capital Units, eq the pr.82 (even in their last missile configuration) and the Carriers, There is always question, wheter the West would have been so fast by scrabing their own Battle ships and heavy cruisers
That is where things get very interesting, in 1945 the RN made it very clear that they still regarded battleships as a vital part of the surface fleet and a class was proposed that would have been 60,000tons + with 9 16inch guns and up to 14inchs of armor, very powerful vessels but beyond Britains needs. What could have been decisive is Nuclear weapons, surface launched in the form of Blue Slug and air launched in the form of Green Flash (a nuclear armed Green Cheese variant/improvement) It is difficult to see how any amount of armor could have allowed a vessel to survive in a viable form after a direct hit from a nuclear warhead.
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