The major issue with this is deck safety. Touching off powerful, jettisonable, rockets on a flight deck is something that would be frowned upon in most naval services.

This is mainly as the chances of a rocket detaching itself and charting its own course across a flight deck, occupied by all sorts of expensive and flammable equipment that would react badly to being struck by an errant RATO unit, are very significant. The problem being its a difficult thing to go through risk-reduction on….unless you clear the decks for every RATO launch….which could be an major limiting factor in a flying programme.

For something like a large HALE UAV that may be aloft for 20hrs there is some merit in the concept. One RATO deck event, or sequence of events, every 18hrs or so could likely be absorbed without too much in the way of disruption, but, any higher frequency than that is likely to be a real non-starter.

I dont even know why I’m bothering to do this?!

What they know about 3M-54E when the customer who are sold the actual sytem after years of indepth trials will not know the capabilities of Club to another customer.

3M-54E – when it works and IF its been accepted into service. Small kill dart terminal phase modest size capable of about M3?. Criteria for PAAMS(S) include the ability to track targets down to the size of a golf ball travelling at M3 against a multipath background. Aster rated to hit supersonic targets in EW environment and against multipath clutter background.

Contracts for large shipyards are already signed. No need to show exact location just like no one can see PAK-FA shape.

Thats why they are talking to the Ukraine to see if they can contract the old Nikolayev yards to build the new ships?!.

Surely optimistic. When u read some thing about conditions where Flankers/Foxhounds were developed. I am surpized they are taking 7 years for aircraft induction.

I’m not interested in what happened with Flanker or Foxhound. My point is that Echo is suggesting that a design that hasnt even flown yet could be in operational service aboard a carrier in 7 years. That, to me, sounds ludicrously optimistic.

How do u know they are not tracking ur boats?

The simple lack of sensors and a suitable sensor platform is the giveaway there.

Now u have become SAM expert. S-300 cannot be built the way Russians put the brains in it. Even if Chinese spent trillions on it and purchase all the Western tech from Israel. There is reason of more than 400 targets destroyed in single Salvo.

Expert is a bit strong but I have taken a screwdriver to a few!. S-300 is a TVM missile. Allegedly, though I’ve seen nothing more than educated guesswork to qualify it, TOP DOME is good for guiding a pair of missiles onto 6 targets simultaneously and thats it. It must be noted on a single threat axis only as well owing to its mechanical azimuth scanning. What was your point abot China, Israel and 400 targets downed per salvo?!

that they are putting nearly on every aircraft/ship/submarine with space based communication, survellence and navigation sytems.

Space based communication i.e satellite comms is nothing new, same for navigation. If the Russian Navy did not have those capabilities it would be a greater shock. Space based surveillance you dont seem to know much about going by other threads so i’d leave that alone if I were you.

Ja,

Where are you getting this about Osprey as a support jammer for a fastjet strike package?. As a support platform to a vertical envelopment assault force embarked in other Ospreys and chopper gunships yes I can see that. V-22 is cruising at what 250-300knts though. The fastjets are going to be there and gone by the time their EW support is halfway to target!.

Where did you hear that TOSS was going to demand a pressurised cabin for V-22. It was my understanding that the whole concept of TOSS (never expected to write that with a straight face!) is that its a rapid-fit pallet to a stock V-22 for organic ISTAR support as and when required. Hardly tracks with having specialised airframes?.

People in the loop no longer absolutely need to be in the airframe. IMHO having the full strike planning cell aboard the command ship in place to view and evaluate realtime intel as its gathered from your ISTAR asset is much more valuable than a couple of ops in a modest-sized airframe downlinking interpretations of the same feed.

Swerve….fair comment…my apologies, sir!.

Hehe.

Let’s touch a couple extra topics… has any thought been given yet officially to a renewal of the (overseas) patrol fleet? I.e. not only the Floreals, but also the P400s and three or four singular trawlers acquired for patrols in the South Seas. Pretty much the only newer class in that regard (Flamant) is stationed in the mainland French EEZ. Same question goes for the (forward-deployed) Champlains.
I know some of these (in particular the P400) are only 20 years old, but they presumably wear out relatively fast with their kind of workload overseas.

This is actually a really interesting question as the MN has fallen into the block obsolescence trap with both of the patrol classes.

The oldest Floreal completed in 1990 which, at 18 years old now, isnt too bad and you’d look to a 25yr lifespan at least out of a hull even if built to commercial, not military, standards. The problem is that the 6th and final unit, IIRC, completed just 2 years later and so the whole class is going to require replacement within a very short space of time from the leadship retirement.

The situation with the P400’s replicates this but follows the block obsolescence problem even more acutely as all 10 hulls were built between ’83-’85. All the hulls are within just a few years of what you would class as the end of a fair service life.

At first observation the P400’s seem to present less of an issue to address than the Floreals. CMN still offer the basic P400 in the Vigilante design and have sold a couple to Brazil recently in the form of the NAPA-500 class boats. Directly replacing the existing P400’s with new builds wouldnt seem to be an absurdity unless the boats have been unsuccessful in service….something there is no evidence of that I’ve ever seen…apart from a few initial teething troubles?.

Which costs are we addressing here though?. Operations budget or Procurement?.

15% off the ops budget is easy….we are doing it now….get one of the newer European navies that are integrating with NATO like Romania or Poland to take over our slot in SNMG-2 with vague promises of picking up our obligations again if the need where ever to arise…..blah…..blah. There’s one deployment off the board and a hull or two that can be dropped to extended readiness state.

Regressing decisions on MASC back a few years would hurt very little in reality and, in fact, may open up a huge range of extra UAV options as systems reach operational maturity and manufacturers look to exploit existing air vehicles.

IF it looks like EMCAT is going to transpose into a deployable capability in the second half of the 2010’s there may be a half shout for pushing CVF back a couple of years and re-examining the Joint Force Harrier structure. Certainly 75-80 F-35C’s or Rafales would be a cheaper option than 130+ F-35B’s and switching the later batches of Typhoons in to replace GR9 in the RAF would seem to offer little real pain for them and streamline their support requirements. I’d be willing to bet money on a sudden large package of training assistance offered from the USN where we to start talking about taking on 80 -35C’s as well.

As to escort hulls we need to rationalise how and what we deploy anyway. If we use the T45 as a yardstick it seems to offer, as by product of IEP, considerable efficiencies in operation over preceeding COGAG vessels. Either way we go (a) with a hull derived from T45 for C1/C2 or (b) a T45-lite for C1 and a common C2/C3 we are going to end up with hulls that are cheaper to send out than T23’s and T22’s….very much so with the latter option I think a 15% reduction in the Ops budget is almost feasible with the switch to IEP alone (the reduction in AAW DDG’s by 50% not hurting there ofc!)

Off the shelf MARS also stands to reason and, for that type of vessel, we shouldnt be too shy about sending work overseas. UK shipbuilding is going to be fairly well catered for for a couple of decades. Good designs exist in a few places, buying one like BMT’s Aegir and sending it out to S.Korean and European yards on a straight commercial tender makes sense. BAE have in fact proposed something similar to this though I’m a little sceptical as to how much of a role they need to be having on what looks like a fairly simple process!.

Bottom line is that 15% would not really need to stetch us that far near-term or long-term. Mid-term is another issue though. There will have to be some expenditure to shift the current Cold War remenant force structure over to something, akin the the Marine National, that is set up for low-threat long-endurance patrols at extended range from home basing as much as it is for warfighting. Just needs a little vision and a bit of creativity in Whitehall…and landing space for the flying pigs!.

So u can count number of satellites in each launch? and life of Satellites is as good as best or better in some cases than anyone else. I would keep ur delusions for times to come.

Yep of course you can count them. The launcher type would give half the game away in the first place. Ocean radar reconsats are not little lightweight comms birds – they are a bit more substantial than that and, to carry a piggyback ‘secret’ radar sat of a new and unheard of design, would require a reasonably heavy lift capability. Why would someone send up a heavy lifter half empty….hmmm….might be worth getting the optics on that one as it reaches orbit!.

No argument that Russian sats stay operational about as long as everone elses. Thats not the point I was making – the fact remains that there is no point going back 5 years in the records because there will be very few satellites still alive in LEO from that time.

You can accuse me of delusion when you are talking about ‘secret’ radar satellites that you have been utterly unable to point towards a single shred of credible evidence is even under design let alone ‘secretly’ orbitted?. You once ‘reliably’ informed me of how there were 50 of them in orbit spying on the Japanese fishing fleet, IIRC, I am still waiting for the list of those 50 platforms Star?. I suspect I will be waiting a considerable while longer?.:rolleyes:

Making it clear you didn’t understand what I was saying.

OK so, if I take you at your word, your comment was unrelated to the deployment then and just a spurious and shallow comment that lack detail and any real credibility?. OK – you say so pal.

Offensive is only part of the equation. Just as the Navy is only part of the whole military.

Ships serve doctrine. Look it up. See if Kirov or Slava fits the bill.

Those subs are also part of the Navy – so the reduced number of surface ships since 1985 isn’t exactly tragic.

….but you can hardly use them to attempt to patch up the dignity of the surface fleet?.

Legenda was only part of the guidance system. There’s no reason to believe some of the new satellites don’t incorporate some satellite component for the SS-N-19. Technology has gone a long way.

Yes Legenda was the surviveable part of the guidance system. Which new satellites?. When were they placed up?.

The GLONASS birds are listed in dual purpose (military/civilian). That leaves 40 satellites which you haven’t accounted for. (Well maybe 30, since I recall you showed me info on 10).

Thats on the proviso that your initial value for the number of satellites actually operational in orbit is the same as the number that are in orbit. Quite a stretch of the imagination. Satellite lifepans, in LEO, are more usually measured in months than in years. Some Russian recon assets thats actually days not months!. Nothing new and unrecognisable has been put up recently and there have been no mysteriously unscheduled launches to have carried these new assets into orbit….over to you to substantiate new ocean recon assets Echonine.

Plane,

The initial targeting issue is moot. You can fire an ARM using exactly the same launch triggers as a regular AR anti-ship missile.

Its a LOT more complex than that I’m afraid. IF you have a target out in the clear blue, with no clutter or non-hostile vessels, emitting on an identifiable military radar set I’d agree that firing an ARM or an ARH skimmer etc is a moot point. The chances of having a target such as that described are extraordinarily small. I dont know of any developed western navy who’s surface warfare officers ops manual doesnt start with the words, in big friendly letters, ‘Dont Emit’.

As I stated, and Crobato has alluded to, the idea for the side attacking the ships is to get those vessels to transmit on anything identifiable for long enough to develop a track. Simply put because that is the only chance, outside of some very good passive sonar assets, that a target ID can be derived with a wide-area sensor. The contest is between a navy that can develop its battlespace picture with offboard or passive assets and an opponent striving to present an unlocated/unidentified enemy with a serious enough threat to get him to unmask.

And the multi-platform solution you describe is truly a best-case scenario that only relatively few navies can hope to emulate for many years to come. If your enemy is USN, well whatever you try is up against stiff competition, but if your neighbour has a modest navy, well 24-7 UAV coverage and good comms discipline are well, less likely.

Again not such a simple issue to sketch over, Plane, only a relatively few navies have the capability to be aggressively acting in another countries waters beyond the scope of friendly ground-based airpower in the first place…friendly airpower being in this context a source of offboard information that would be tapped well in advance of any intent to use ownship sensors!.

Any Navy that will be in a position to put a task group in hostile waters would, by definition, have counter-detection as its first and over-riding concern. The first principle of naval manoeuvre in opposed waters is the denial of information to the opponent…even if that limits your own tactical options. This is simply because having your naval assets sunk is a lot more limiting!.

Crobato,

Generally its better just to shoot the thing down with a gun CIWS. If its drawn to the CIWS radar it will make a beeline to the gun which allows for a head shot.

No its better to not be found or to decoy off any speculatively launched inbounds that have ‘got lucky’. As soon as you initiate contact with a radar-guided CIWS you are identified. After that point you are in an attritional situation whereby you have to hope that the opposing force cannot bring sufficient firepower to bear to saturate your, very finite, defensive potential. The only other alternatives are to try and decoy with the group ‘identified’ by the enemy and detach a manoeuver group to exploit while the decoys get pounded on or turn, run and try again on another threat axis.

Nicolas, Planesman, you can troll out a fleet’s SAM defenses to activate by sending out a first wave of AshMs, UCAVs and even target drones (e.g. Coyotes), then follow that up with the HARMs.

AShMs and target drones are pointless. If they are non-threatening its too easy to ignore them.

You need to develop the technology and send out UAV’s or high-endurance UCAV’s. The Chinese are, seemingly, starting down this path to an extent and its going to be fascinating to see if they can really exploit the technology they are developing.

GlobalHawk/Mariner kind of UAV’s, radar-equipped, mass produced and supported by a similar air vehicle UCAV packing dozens of Viper Strike type glide munitions with IIR or MMW seekers. The operational concept would be that you have dozens of them at any one time along your coast on racetrack orbits in sensor ‘belts’. Maybe one band at 200nm out then another at, perhaps, 400nm. The UAV’s equipped with swarm logic such that any one detecting a threat to itself calls for all of the other nearby vehicles to concentrate around its position in a, say, 200nm radius circle.

What you do, with such a UAV arrangement, is force the naval group attempting theatre entry to engage those search assets as a precursor to any theatre entry. Any attempt at deceptive manoever stands the risk of detection and very short notice engagement with clouds of small, passive, smart projectiles saturating and mission-killing your pickets whilst identifying targets for conventional follow-on assets. The alternative, the widespread engagement of the UAV’s, requires considerable application of force and is readily identifiable even if you just observe UAV’s dropping off the scope!.

Chaff always interferes no matter what. Blinding is not necessary but a degradation of your own radars and datalinks is still a result. Does not change if thrown to the side anyway.

No YF is quite right here. Chaff is tuned (cut) to the frequency of the sets its trying to defeat. No-one uses chaff that would interfere with the frequencies used in their own search sets. This is for the same reason that people dont knowingly use jammers that are tuned to the same frequencies as their own systems!. Sort of a basic premise in EW is that its bad to degrade your own systems and can lead to much sulking in ops rooms!.

This form of linear phase array either only scans in elevation or horizon, and is commonly revolved around a pedestal for a 360 degree coverage and scan.

You are talking about a mechanical rotator search radar. Such a set can be used to illuminate a chaff cloud for bounce-effect as it will appear to have the same interval as the original search asset anyway!. Thats not what YF is talking about though, he’s talking about a full PESA/AESA set capable of beamsteering and/or multiple beamforming. In the latter case it could be conceivable to have multiple chaff clouds illuminated by several different frequencies and all ‘sources’ equally freq-agile. Without doppler to rely on thats a smart ARM that could guarantee a legit target strike.

Personally I find anti radiation homing to be overblown in its effectiveness as an anti-ship guidance method. It has advantages and weaknesses just like other seeker methods.

Couldnt agree more with that sentiment…with the one additional comment….that, irrespective of all other consideration, any targetting method that absolutely depends on the target being complicit must be viewed as one with a great window of vulnerability to deception.