JonesyNot really Kilo its a perfect example of precisely that overkill. Here you saw an operation that in no way required the presence of a Carrier Strike Group, but, could not have been achieved solely by air owing to the need to hold the territory after the sweep operation. No matter what delusions air-heads have serious logistics comes, to an island, by sea…..end of story.
You also saw an operation against a limited opfor that resulted in the loss of several choppers including, if memory serves, a couple of AH-1’s, a Blackhawk and an OH-6 or two?. Early proof of the threat to rotary air in the trashfire envelope. Bottom line evidence that rotary-only is non-viable for Marine tacair support.
The USN aren’t going to get any more carrier strike groups than they have now. The force multiplier effect of independent Marine air able to undertake low order missions, where full CSG’s plainly ARE overkill as you note, is manifestly obvious. The cost saving, of not dispatching CSG’s, in both financial and operational stretch terms is equally every bit as obvious.
The Marines are very correct with their request. The point is a valid one regarding the weight issue of the aircraft of course, but, that should be the only obstacle the capability faces.
JonesyThe F-35B is a waste of money because the need for sealthy VTOL has never been demonstrated. thats it. no arguement. while if it comes online it will be nice, not having it could be worked around. and thats where your problem is:diablo:
The customer requirement, regardless of whether or not the requirement is valid, is for STOVL and surviveability. The F-35B addresses that requirement.
Why would it be justifiable?. Same reason that LO technology is justified everywhere else its been developed – passive defence against detection. Why is STOVL desireable. Same reason STOVL has always been desireable – deployability in line with the customer requirement.
There is no alternate workaround that meets the customer requirement. That is undeniable as all you lot on here have proven. Several requests have been made to illustrate the alternative….and the same answer always comes back. The USMC are wrong to set the requirement in the first place!. Which is, of course, no answer to the question.
Ben,
Yeah because we’d send an ESG into a combat situation without support from a CSG.
Right now that is near unthinkable. Any time the USMC goes into action a hugely expensive, and ever scarcer, carrier group has to go with it. Operation Urgent Fury, 1983, had the full Independence battle group assigned. Do you think that was warranted?. Perhaps, these days, a more flexible and realistic option for gradiated force allocation would be a bit smarter…..as the Marines are asking for?.
Unless, as some on this thread seem to be fixated on, the only people the Marines are expected to fight against in the forseeable future are the Chinese!!!.
JonesyJust to help reduce one fear for you Adrian there is no need to worry about an air launch SS-N-22. It never got built. You are correct Jonsey unfortunately the potential for the missile is keeping Russia, China and India still working on the project, its not completely dead.
ASM-MSS is as dead as the proverbial doornail. Air launched Brahmos/Yakhont is already in that space and, scant sources believed, air-launched Klub is in the pipeline….albeit a, potentially, long pipeline. Both of those weapons offer more than ASM-MSS. Needless to say though both of those developmental-stage weapons are different in nature to the Kh-22 class weapon that propelled USN focus on the outer air engagement zone thirty or forty years ago.
I don’t know the status on the MA-31 as a target missile?
Long gone would be the status following unsuccessful performances that would have been no suprise, apparently, to those who supplied the units.
The F-14/AWG/AIM-54 outlived their threat! While there are a few countries have aircraft that could launch a cruise missile attack, none can do so with a mass attack.
So if no-one could launch a long-range missile attack that had the slightest chance of achieving anything why would anyone deploy assets to even try?. It would be a pointless exercise. AWG/AIM-54 outlived its threat. Going forwards if the need to create a true outer air engagement zone happens again weapons like Meteor with offboard sensor direction will more than adequately fulfill it.
[I realize the F-35B cannot be canceled for not only the USMC needs it but the Royal Navy and, the Italian navy’s carrier Cavour (under construction) also need it.
You may wish to update yourself re the Cavour class carrier – http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/num/.
JonesyJust to help reduce one fear for you Adrian there is no need to worry about an air launch SS-N-22. It never got built. There were mockup’s of a concept weapon referred to as the ASM-MSS or Kh41 but no production weapon resulted.
Hopefully someone will correct me if i’m wrong here but I dont think air launched yakhont/brahmos has flown yet and thats being driven by the Indians.
The loss of the AWG/AIM54 combination from the outer air zone is no major issue seeings as the targets for those missiles were long gone before the capability was lost.
JonesyQuite significant – still an important and the most survivable way to target OTH.
RORSATs?. I would have agreed until the US SM-3 shot a couple of years back. Now, closely netted, HALE UAV’s in volume I’d say offer the only real surviveable possibility.
And how was the technology dangerous and unreliable? That’s as dumb as saying the USSR couldn’t run a series of satellites.
The power systems were unreliable. After their 70-day lifespan they were intended to shoot the reactor section into an alleged ‘safe’ parking orbit before the rest of it came down. Operationally the problem was the relatively large quantity of debris that they ejected with the payload stayed in the same orbital plane causing significant hazard to follow on sats. That is not to mention the wider problem that at least 4 satellites reactor sections failed totally and didnt go up…..but came down. Only pure dumb luck saw those reactors miss populated areas. You find the concept of dumping 50lb of uranium on some unsuspecting populace an acceptable risk for the operation of the RORSAT’s?. If so I’m rather glad the politburo of the day saw things a bit differently!.
Anyway we are moving away from the basic point here which was that Legenda was intended to operate a pair of active satellites and a pair of passive ELINT birds as its system components. That was last achieved, IIRC, in 1986 and the last active radar bird flew in 1988. Legenda failed as a system, significantly, in 1986 and almost totally in 1988. ELINT is a method of tracking ships at sea but, unlike the RORSAT component, it is totally dependent on the target emitting on something recognisable. The RORSAT had no such limitation which was one major reason why it was there in the first place.
Pretty sure I read somewhere that the USSR got real time coverage of the Falklands showdown via the Legenda system.
You did read that and Legenda did track the RN group. Apparently when the Task Group was on station in the south atlantic Legenda was able to follow them closing the islands and moving off until the seas got too heavy for uncluttered returns.
The concept worked Dionis I agree with that. The US are trying to do something similar with the concept at the moment with SBR. What I said was that Legenda flopped and it did. There were no RORSATs in orbit after 1988 and only half a system for two years preceeding that – where you say it flopped between 86-88 is academic.
JonesyThe only working Russian satellites currently on orbit that could provide some targeting information about the location of a CBG are probably the few ELINT Tselina-2. The world has moved on and now its not the 1980s, Russia don’t really need 10s of low orbit satellites to spy on US CBG and they on the other hand have absolutely nothing to do in the North. Russia in my opinion will move slowly towards something a bit smaller than the Queen Elizabeth. Right now Kuznetsov’s main and only task is to soldier on, train carrier pilots and the fleet, and stay operational until new carriers are built. It’s a bit like the ISS – the merit is not that much on what is done on board the station but the very presense, organization, and experience gained from continued operations.
Absolutely agree with all of that. Russian naval doctrine now, as I understand it, is aimed to provide control and sovereignty protection over Russia’s EEZ and territorial claims. A couple of medium fleet carriers in the northern and far east fleets is certainly going to be of massive benefit in servicing that requirement.
JonesyOh yes my whiskers are in pain! :rolleyes: (Not so much as yours due to the news from the last 6 months 😉 )
Youre the one whining about an insignificant point pal!.
The concept was certainly not a “flop” which is what you made it sound like. The US-A satellites were taken offline, likely to be replaced with a more reliable version. Then the USSR fell apart, go figure. Now, Liana/Lotos-S is taking over – and I believe the system is more multi-purpose. If it hasn’t already, considering these satellites are never fully identified upon launch.
Nice try to put a spin on it. Truth is the US-AM modernised variant was cancelled before the state collapsed because the whole technology was considered unreliable and potentially dangerous.
Liana being ‘more multipurpose’ is great but it’s not a RORSAT system is it?. Its an ELINT system with the same problems the US-P and -PM satellites had. So, not really a dependable ocean recon capability is it?. More multipurpose though!!
JonesyNo need for the spend on that one KG. We have plenty of those, but, ours come with a red cross and a Union Jack in the top left quadrant!.
JonesyWell, we will have to agree to disagree.
There is nothing to agree or disagree on here?. There is an objective truth at work….you made a statement that the Soviets wanted the same CATOBAR carriers that the US had. That statement is absolutely incorrect. Soviet naval doctrine as it was pursued had no place for them. The carriers they built served the function that they were designed to serve…..end of story. Whether US or French carriers were ‘better’ through greater flexibility, in this context, is utterly irrelevent.
Let’s remember that the Kuznetsov was to be followed by a Large Carrier equipped with both Catapults and Arresting Gear. Clearly, the former was a stepping stone to the latter.
No Scot that isnt clear because, despite the steam cats, Ul’Yanovsk wasnt a US style supercarrier either. The design was conceived to fulfill the same mission as the previous carriers – bluewater sea control/denial. Had Legenda and Mars-Passat worked there is every possibility that the evolution into Ul’Yanovsk would not have happened.
Yak-44 was being designed to provide sea control….not support naval strike missions ashore. Ul’Yanovsk’s waist cats were provided for the Yaks NOT the Sukhoi’s!. The carrier was still optimised to provide low-sortie rate, but, high endurance CAP sorties to form an outer air engagement zone backed with massed SAM defences in the group.
You must understand Scot that ship designs are not just plucked out of thin air or are mindlessly copied off others designs for the sake of having them. Ship design follows closely behind the doctrine of the service ordering the ship. USN carrier design follows US doctrine of engagement and forward presence. Soviet carrier designers had no brief to incorporate elements supporting those kinds of operations. They had a brief to build carriers that could provide a certain number of high-endurance CAP sorties at a certain radius from the carrier for a specific flying programme. They further had the requirement to make the carrier, always a HVU in itself, a very hard target to attack successfully. That the designers arrived at a 60k ton hull is nothing to do with carrier-envy of the USN it is down to the fact that they felt a 60k ton hull was necessary to get the job done.
I hope you get this now as I dont know if I can make it any clearer?.
JonesyNaval Strike Aircraft are far more capable and flexible than Surface to Surface Missiles launched by Escorts. So, the point is why tie so much into a Carrier like the Kuznetsov that offers so little.
Respectfully, the Russian (i.e. Former USSR) Strategy for such Ships is hardly an effective one.
Scot you are labouring an irrelevent point. Were the Soviet Air Defence/Heavy missile carriers as flexible as a Nimitz? No they weren’t. No-one contends that they were though.
This isnt a question about which doctrine was more flexible or more effective. You contended that the Soviets wanted CATOBAR fleet carriers. Well….they didn’t. They wanted the carriers they developed and for the purpose they developed them. In their single role they would, likely, have been very effective as closing the group would have been very difficult and the Flanker CAP plus deep MEZ would have made air attack a hard proposition.
Judging the ship against any other scale would be flawed…you might as well criticise a Nimitz for not being able to submerge!. You are criticising the ships for not being something they were never designed to be!.
JonesyIs China really that reliant on orbital assets for targeting? I was under the impression that they don’t have many suitable satellites (SAR or ESM, rather than EO) anyway, so they would probably use OTH-SWs for coarse surveillance, followed by fixed wing reconnaissance for targeting.
At anti-access ranges they dont have that much in the fixed wing inventory that has any endurance on station. Agree that OTH is their likely cueing system but they will need something to classify, track and stay in one piece while calling in the shot!.
Additionally, by escalating the conflict to include ASAT warfare the US would expose itself to reciprocation – China has demonstrated anti-satellite capabilities after all. Since they arguably stand to lose more from such a move, the US may chose not to exercise that option unless absolutely critical and accept the VLS payload penalty in the meantime.
I’m not sure the US do have more to lose in that scenario. Fixed sites in China….the first to be reduced by TLAM/CALCM…like OTH radar, airbases, SOC’s, fixed air defence sites etc dont need targetting assistance from satellites. They are well mapped already. Against that Chinese satellite capability would very definitely be critical to the enabling of the access denial systems employed. Purely in the short term initial, naval force entry phase, of combat the Chinese would most definitely need space-based assets more than the US would.
JonesyDeactivation of satellites —> flop is your personal and relatively baseless conclusion then.
All Russian military personnel who talk about the system never mention anything peculiar about it. This is the kind of stuff I know for a fact you pay no attention to because you have no Russian language capability.
I suppose it is a subjective term. To me though a system that spread radioactive debris across the north of Canada, the South Atlantic, just off the Japanese coast and all over low-earth orbit and is then discontinued because of its inability to operate safely cant be termed any other way than ‘flop’.
Apologies if that tweaks those sensitive little nationalistic whiskers of yours Dionis.
JonesySomewhat OT, but could this mission kill or resource diversion strategy perhaps provide a clue to PLAN thinking with respect to ASBMs? After all, SM-3 should be an available and effective counter, but the mere presence of a ballistic missile threat forces the VLS complement of TacToms and SM-2s to be reduced, increasing the CVBG’s vulnerability to air attack and reducing its strike potential.
As swerve says, a weapon does not need to be 100% efficient (i.e. perfectly effective every time against any defences arrayed against it) to be worthwhile, in fact this is a very rare exception. Stealth is probably a modern day example of a technology which temporarily came close, but even here the advantage is being eroded continuously.
In a way I’d say yes….but a qualified yes.
The ASBM is wholly intended to be an anti-access weapon. Strategically this is a very important distinction. An anti-access weapon is one predicated on its ability to engage an opponent BEFORE he can bring his weapons to bear on the firer. Thus the potential aggressor MUST be able to neutralise the anti-access weapon before he can even think of planning any kind of attack. It raises the ‘virtual attrition’ cost of planning an attack on the defender beyond the ability of most to make the attack worthwhile. The ASBM has therefore done its job by merely existing.
The problem comes if an aggressor can develop the ability to unravel a key part of the anti-access weapons system. This is what the USN has done with SM-3. With the ability to engage opposing LEO imaging reconsats the ability of the ASBM shooter to target the aggressor ships, at the all important anti-access range, is jeopardised until a more surviveable platform can be fielded to ensure the viability of the weapon system and reinstate the threat posed by it.
JonesyWhat Legenda flop? There’s no evidence of any of that.
Apart from the fact that the US-A RORSAT component, the important part, was shut down in 1986?.
Edit: ….or shut down in 1988 dependent on which source you accept and whether you want to take the date of the order to discontinue operations or the date of orbital decay of the last satellite!.
JonesyAssuming that the £5bn is new money extra and over the current planning for Carrier Strike etc I’m very tempted to follow Al down the SSN route. There is certainly vast amounts of sense in there. I’d limit it to two hulls though for a fixed £700mn unit cost as BAE claim to be able to do:
Item 1, Astute Class hulls 8 & 9 £1.4bn
I’m not concerned too much about the RN’s patrol capability near to mid term if the decision is made to move away from S2C2 and back to FSC with T26’s replacing T23. T23 gives me patrol hulls for now and T26 later. Multirole corvette hulls will make sense in the future, but, not right now.
Immediately I’m more concerned about the impending loss of the deployed C3I capability from the T22B3 disposal. T45 is supposed to offer C3 facilities, but, there are precious few of them and they can not be used similar to the deployment patterns of the 22B3’s. I would place an order with BAE for a follow on batch of 3 non-PAAMS Type 45 DDH variants. Flag facilities, COBLU, LACM, strike planning, UAV compatibility etc would all be key components in the design. With redesign costs unit price of £750mn should cover them.
Item 2, Type 85 DDH hulls 1-3 £2.25bn
ISTAR is the next big area of concern for the Royal Navy. We dont have much outside of what can be developed by towed sonar, chopper radar (soon not to include ASaC) and, eventually, what the carrier strike fastjets will be able to collect. This has to change and the remainder of the £5bn I’d sink into four UAV/USV projects. MQ18/Seaspray7500E, Mantis AEW.Mk1/AR.Mk1, Camcopter AR.Mk1 and Spartan ASW.
MQ18 is the situational awareness asset for routine deployed RN forces. Seaspray 7500E gives air-air, air-surface and SAR imaging modes and, at 110kg, is within weight limits flown non-stop for 24hrs by MQ18. Embarking a pair of these on any RFA with the spare hangar space or escort in a group gives persistent radar coverage and all weather imagery potential. Funding the radar integration would be potentially expensive, but, could be game-changing for the RN especially in deployments where we have no through deck presence.
Mantis would be the big ticket. BAE would be paid to develop two variants an AEW/Maritime Patrol platform with Searchwater and an Armed Reconnaisance platform both navalised and carrier-deployable. Early production radar-equipped vehicles would go to form operational ocean-surveillance squadrons for the basis of a UK BAMS programme mitigating the loss of Nimrod.
Camcopter AR.Mk1 would be a modest, low value, off-the-shelf purchase to provide OTH VISIDENT and overwatch for deployed escorts on MIOPS type taskings.
Spartan ASW would be part of the littoral environment sensor suite for the T26’s and T85’s for barrier ASW ops and is fairly self explanatory.
Item 3, UAV development and deployment strategy. MQ18, Mantis, Schiebel Camcopter, Thales Spartan. £1.35bn
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