Difference there is between the words ‘dont’ and ‘cant’. Following your OPV logic dont becomes cant….so you actually arrive at the situation you appear so contemptuous of in inescapable fashion. Surely then, by your own logic, the Euro navies are buying the objective ‘right’ vessels as it preserves the capability to take action….even if they can never actually agree to use it. The only tangible obstacle to the deployment of those assets, in a meaningful strategic manner, is a lack of political will.

The small number of assets and units means they can’t for anything other than extremely short periods of time and then still require US augmentation for critical capabilities.

Libya was a great example with one partner (Denmark?) pulling out prematurely (sounds bad in more ways than one :eagerness: ) and other partners ran out of munitions.

Also there was an obvious deficiency in ISTAR, UAVs, tankers, and other critical assets.

Even in Mali, Uncle Sam had to come to party for things such as UAVs, tankers and transport.

European military capability is poor – they struggle with small ops ala Mali or Libya, and have no capability of tackling something more serious ala Syria or Iran on their own. The US can do these types of ops by themselves, though prefers Coalitions for political reasons.

Remember the point about it only needing one player not to get the ‘COIN only’ memo?.

And the Flankers and Kilos had no real impact on defence procurement elsewhere. Brazil is busy spending money to get ready for FIFA World Cup and Olympics whilst FX program continuously gets delayed and M2000s run out of hours.

Colombia’s response to Su-30MKK was to buy Kfirs to replace ancient Mirage 5s (or where they 50s?) whilst pumping money into anti-narcotics operations.

And even with Chile buying nearly 50 F-16s and KC-135s as well as Type 23s and M class frigates did not make either Peru or Argentina go on a spending splurge. Argentina’s military continues to decline whilst Peru’s main focus is keeping existing assets afloat with new investment in COIN/counter narcotics (Mi-35 and Mi-17 as well as Mi-25 upgrade).

Mali does, Sierra Leone didnt if you want to use specific examples…secure offshore basing was very handy for Palliser. Outside of those specific cases logistics for any large mechanised force will come by sea or via a sea-land bridge. That means, if the opponent has an airforce or even a few radar sites and shore missiles, you need to screen big grey boats. You arent doing that with OPV’s are you?.

If the opponent has a few radar sites, an air force and shore AShMs the Europeans don’t get involved without Uncle Sam’s overkill capability.

Even for Sierra Leonne, an AWD wasn’t required.

I will apologise that I missed that somewhere…what is ‘auxilliary’ let alone cheap about ASW???.

It’s cheap and auxilliary compared to the massive offensive firepower maintained by the US in form of carriers, ampphibious assault ships, ship/sub launched cruise missiles and larger combat vessels.

Hmmm yes the Venezuelans choosing Flankers and Kilo class SSK’s….clearly they planned on facing much trickier insurgents than most!.

So you picked the one country that was being run by a tin pot dictator with money.

What about the countries who brought Super Tucanos, Hinds, light utility, observation and other aircraft primarily for counter-narco-terrorist work. Brazil, Peru, Colombia etc etc have all spent considerable amounts on fighting internal threats and only limited amounts on foreign threat protection – it’s why the average fighter plane or ship in that part of the world is considered young if it’s 1980s vintage.

Apart from the initial phases of both Iraq and Afghanistan where TLAM, DDG’s, SSN’s, Aircraft Carriers, amphibious forces, air superiority fighters, stealth, heavy bombers, heavy armour, mechanised infantry, heavy artillery and basically every component of the all-arms battle was employed. Without those initial phases of course there being no COIN phase following on?.

Hey all that was done by USA and it was all offensive and typical of US overkill.

Wonder what purpose Spanish or Dutch destroyers had there?

Eilat is also name of a Sa’ar 5 corvette (pennant number 501).

Though it was Hanit that got hit by an AShM in 2006.

As for the small number of airforces… How many of those nations that don’t have air forces, do have submarine arms? Exactly…

None.

As stated Son of Desert Storm is a piece of theory, stepchild of Somalia is a reality.

Nice example of Belgian AF, they weren’t going to beat the Germans, but do you think that with some crappy cheaper plane, in higher numbers they would have held back the luftwaffe? Nope, they would just have lost more planes and lives without any chance at all. The Hurricanes gave them at least a chance to get a dent in the Luftwaffe.

They couldn’t dent the Luftwaffe in any meangingful way.

Navies are by definition a waste of money if you look at it. They have been for a long while, but some day it might prove its worth. How many navies have ships that are just tied up alongside with an availability of maybe 30% at sea, that is to me a very low use of resources as well. There are also too many people onboard these ships, but that’s how it is.

In an era of shrinking Western defence budgets (and this started in some countries in 1970s), navies need to be more cost effective and useful.

As for that Hezbollah attack on an Eilat class, there you had your light frigate in harm’s way. Do you think the same would have happened if it was a Daring?

The Daring also would’ve suffered a hit as apparently the Israeli ship’s self defence systems were switched off.