JonesyDistiller
And at this point the whole project is cancelled due to unfinanceability…
Of course it is….it was finished after the commitee capability creeped Area AAW in!. The RN has no need for this all-singing-all-dancing escort anyway. It does however address the issues of those, deeply misguided, individuals who think T45 isnt sufficiently multirole (like a Burke) and it lets Planeman play with his, excellent, design software….which is the reason he’s been pushing for more outlandish and impractical solutions!.:)
Another thing: Why AW101, why not NH90 as ASW helicopters? If the USN can do the job with a 10 tonnes helicopter, why does the RN need a 15 tonnes model?
USN has lots of choppers and lots of platforms to deploy them on. RN doesnt. Look at the mission endurance differential between the Merlin and on of the new Seahawk variants. Merlin is a significant ASW force multiplier for us.
Another thing II: There is no way to simultaniously operate two 23x19m helicopters (AW101) on a wobbling cruiser/destroyer flight deck (for that the flight deck should be more like 35m wide, resp 50m long). And I don’t think it’s neccessary, since these escorts are never alone, so any emergency could be handled by other ships in the task force (e.g. the carrier or amphib).
With respect utter rot :). The aforementioned Tigers Class cruisers had dual spots on a narrower and shorter flight deck. I think the Shiranes had dual spots for SH-3 too. BAE’s artwork for its ‘global cruiser’ also had dual spots on T45’s beam. No argument that simultaneous flight ops would be weather dependent, but, at least dual spots are going to allow one airframe to prep whilst the other is landing-on, save waiting for the single spot to be cleared before unshipping rotors etc.
Were not going to have many of these escorts, nor a great many escorts of all description, if one of these vessels is on detached ASW duties from the main body it could easily find itself alone, or with minimal support, several dozen miles from any other available flight deck. We dont need outlandish thru-decks thats for certain, but, there is safety in the biggest conventional escort pad that the T45 can be practically stretched to!.
JonesyWhy go to the complexity and expense of creating a microcarrier to operate 3 Merlin?. You have 4 deck spots for a vessel with an airgroup of 3 aircraft?. Why?. As to an F35B – precisely what is that going to achieve on this ship?.
A very ‘cool’ design it may be but its absolutely nothing to do with meeting any requirement the RN would have for a Type 8x or any other escort for that matter.
The stretch, 170m, T45 is the much more realistic solution. As roughed out above – a 45-50m flight deck, on T45’s existing 21m beam, gives two spots for concurrent Merlin flight ops. This is quite sufficient as the ship would not fly off all three choppers simultaneously under any operational scenario I can think of. A 40m long hangar is going to provide more than ample space for the Merlins folded and for room to work on them. For ‘expeditionary cruiser’ deployments that airgroup would obviously be tailored to match. A single Merlin, plus either an FLynx or a number of UAV’s etc.
Forward half the vessel is standard T45 with the VLS increased to nine modules. The aft three modules all being increased to Sylver A70 for LACM/Aster45 as necessary. The remainder being A50’s for stock Aster30.
Absence of a VSR is mitigated by the Sampson and radar-equipped LE UAV’s. TA sonar and comprehensive ESM/COMINT round out the capability.
Unless you are deliberately trying to come up with ‘something revolutionary’ there really is no need to work harder than this to come up with a highly effective design.
JonesyJust to echo what Vern says about Eric L Harry’s books. ‘Arc Light’ is very good, but, ‘Protect and Defend’ is simply one of the best books I have ever read….easily on a par with the best Clancy or Bond ever produced.
Also got to agree that Larry Bonds earlier works Vortex, Cauldron and Red Phoenix are well worth it and in the same ballpark as Red Storm Rising. His newer stuff is losing ground a bit though – I read ‘Dangerous Ground’ a year or so back and wasn’t exactly gripped.
JonesyJust to echo what Vern says about Eric L Harry’s books. ‘Arc Light’ is very good, but, ‘Protect and Defend’ is simply one of the best books I have ever read….easily on a par with the best Clancy or Bond ever produced.
Also got to agree that Larry Bonds earlier works Vortex, Cauldron and Red Phoenix are well worth it and in the same ballpark as Red Storm Rising. His newer stuff is losing ground a bit though – I read ‘Dangerous Ground’ a year or so back and wasn’t exactly gripped.
Jonesyre propulsion, so running steam boilers off the GT exhaust is generally a good idea?
Its about the silliest concept I’ve ever heard of I’m afraid. High pressure steam is a very unpleasant thing to have on a ship. Its very corrosive and requires intimate maintenance lest something containing it let go. High pressure steam fittings never let go in a little, modest, fashion….they go bang…loudly and can hurt people!. When you have no alternative steam is a necessary evil…its a very powerful propulsion technology and, for bigger vessels, could still be considered viable, but, if you had another option you really would take it.
In the model you have it looks like the steam turbine would be included as a form of free ‘boost’ capability. The problem with that is steam plants need time to build up a steam head to turn the turbine. If your boost capability isnt at pressure when you need it the ramifications could be quite unfortunate.
GT prime movers with nice, reliable, economical aux diesels coupled to genny sets and IEP propulsion is as good as it gets for now. The stats from T45 are very stark in this regard – 40% more range than T42 on the same fuel burn on a hull twice the displacement!. Good enough for government work!.
JonesyIn a word yes. The air plot is generally assembled from various different sensors local and offboard. It isnt necessary for the MFR to emit to ‘gap fill’ for the superstructure masked arc usually though. This is because the LINK picture from another vessel, whos masked arc will differ, would fill in the blanks.
JonesyIf there’s ever a South Ossetia War #2, and the Georgians are really “built up” – then you can safely assume Russia is simply going to preemptive strike like the US did in Iraq, meaning the Georgian fleet is going to sink in port, and the Georgian military / air bases will get saturated by cruise missiles and tactical ballistic missiles.
All they are going to do with any buildup is waste a little more of the Russian MoD’s money on stand-off weapons.
I agree completely. There is absolutely nothing that Georgia or NATO can do to stop a fully weighted Russian attack on Georgia, with all conventional weapons at their disposal, being successful and swift.
Such an attack though could never be disguised as anything other than the wilful destruction of a sovereign neighbour state. Just as there is no justification, from supporting peace-keepers in S.Ossetia, that explains the towing away and sinking of Georgian Naval vessels. There is simply no way that heavy standoff strikes against strategic targets could be masked as ‘justifiable force in support of Russian nationals’ by a modest number of peacekeepers.
The Russian authorities would have to be prepared to pay a higher price in equipment and personnel before engaging in such action as well. Certainly a Nanuchka lobbing a couple of Malachit missiles should be little threat to a well handled Type143A to keep the naval example going. Any success Georgian forces can get into the public domain also being a significant risk for the Russians as a rallying cry to other states concerned about Russian foreign policy direction!.
Simply, as described elsewhere on this site, the concept of defeating Russia militarily is farcical for the Georgians. In truth its also unnecessary – all they need to do is to make the process of attacking Georgia uncomfortable to the point that it would take extraordinary provocation to actually sting the Russians in to action. That is easier from a place within NATO than outside it and is quite achievable.
JonesyPoint noted, but the response won’t be by any direct confrontation. The risk of escalation is far too high. There is also the issue of when Georgia will be granted NATO membership and if every member will agree after recent events. It is obviously being followed very closely by the Kremlin.
The issue of checkpoints could be negotiated away by the establishment of a buffer zone with an international or EUFOR peacekeeping force. Possibly something that the Russians are wanting or seeking to happen? With the buffer zones on the Georgian side secured by a peacekeeping force the Russians can simply withdraw to the disputed regions and it is essentially game set and match for the Russians.
TJ
I agree absolutely that this could be a dramatic win-win for Russia – with just the one caveat. They only get to do it the once. They’ve swatted a weak Georgia’s forces and exerted their authority. Problem is that they’ve been seen to be willing to exploit the situation. Rebuilding Georgia’s forces to a point where they will not be so easy to ‘swat’ next time is going to be seen as a good, relatively ‘painless’, move for NATO that probably is going to be careful to keep its forces outside of that ‘confrontation’ role.
Obviously I’m not suggesting Georgian F-22’s here, but, castoff units like the first half-dozen of Germany’s Gepard class FAC(M)s, being replaced by the new B-class corvettes, could be very easily and inexpensively provided to the Georgian Navy and would have the effect of not only replacing what the Russians destroyed, but, ramping up their combat capability by several orders of magnitude. Nothing that will forestall a full-effort Russian attack, but, something that will oblige the Russians to make a significant effort to oppose. That kind of effort across the board means that the Russians must either be willing the draw the saber, rather than a half-hearted rattling being sufficient, to be able to replicate their apparent successes seen here.
JonesyTEEJ
Justified or not. Under these circumstances who is going to challenge them? No U.S. administration is going to directly order U.S. forces to engage Russian forces and certainly not in the case of Georgia.
Point 23 of the released statement from the NATO Summit in Bucharest in April this year:
NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.
http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2008/p08-049e.html
The Russians, with events like the scuttling of the Georgian Combattante missile boat a couple of days back are now past any semblence of justifying this a peace-keeping support ops in Ossetia. That they are now disarming a neighbouring sovereign state is quite clear and, in my opinion, does warrant some form of response. NATO’s statement above is clear statement of intent and would, IMO, be a sizeable ruler over Russia’s knuckles.
JonesyPhants,
Sure its the primary mission of most fighters, but in an overall sense, it shouldn’t be the only way an fighter is judged.
This is the whole issue though isnt it. You judge the fighter by its ability to fulfil its primary mission….not its secondary functions. Obviously having multirole capability is a bonus and adds more justification to the claim of ‘best’ type. You cant say that a fighter is best because its a better bomber though!.
As for the Viggen commonality between variants, that may be true, but if it is then why not make one airplane do it all? Why change the designations? If you have an air base with AJ-37’s and all of a sudden the battle situation changes and you need something with an interception and BVR capability, do you really think you’d be able to convert them all to carry the Skyflash, and mount the internal gun, etc. in a reasonable amount of time?
Having one aeroplane ‘do it all’ leads to a complicated and maintenance hungry aeroplane given the technology of the day. Which may be fine for the US, but not so for others. I read, for example, a fascinating article online somewhere from an F4 maintainer that stated his 10 plane squadron had 120 men just to support the radar systems. Thats quite staggering, he did state that things got better later as the systems became more reliable, its still the kind of overhead that makes budgets creak though!.
If, as with Viggen, you have a high commonality between airframes then operating squadrons of two different types, of the same aircraft, on a base concurrently becomes relatively simple. Also it allows for the optimisation in training of the pilots of each type. You dont need to invent Miramar if all your air-air pilots are solely doing air-air!. I would accept that this means you probably need more aircraft than you would with the swingrole type, but, a complicated and maintenance-hungry type is going to need reserve attritional birds on squadron strength anyway!.
Maintenance capability is all well and good, but an easily maintained attack optimized AJ-37 isn’t going to do you much good against a incoming bomber or Soviet strike package when the only air-to-air weapon it has is the AIM-9 (keep in mind the AJ-37 never had an internal gun).
I’d expect an AJ-37 to do pretty well against any 70’s era Soviet bomber with AIM-9. Apparently, if you could learn how to play the AJ Viggens throttle, it had slightly better control response than the JA variant and could be thrown round quite frantically. The point is though that if your advanced swingrole type is in kit form in the hangar then its not about to do much about the Red menace sweeping over the field either – so maintainability is a very vital component of what goes in to making a ‘good’ fighter.
Seems that most air forces and fighter manufacturers don’t bother with even asking this question?
Now they dont. Back then, though, was a different matter. The technology for swingrole was still in its infancy and having optimised versions of an airframe was the norm. The F-4 started the change in that pattern…no argument there. My ‘problem’ with it was that it produced, in my opinion only, a very compromised design and an aircraft that ended up ‘jack of all trades and master of none’ in an arena where you really want to be the master to avoid getting blown into tiny little pieces.
To my way of thinking Viggen offered the better capability, in the timeframe, with the acknowledgement that the F-4 offered more versatility. Happy to agree to disagree on that one with you Phantom.
JonesyEcho
NASA? Possibly the last people to know about what the Russians have up there.
As it turns out you might be partially right on that. Used to be NASA Goddard’s Orbital Information Group that collected data on vehicles orbital tracks – for obvious reasons. Seems that its now USSPACECOM that compiles this data. This is an example, from astronautix.com, of the kind of output that space-track generates:
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1999 December 26 – Cosmos 2367 – Launch Site: Baikonur. Launch Complex: LC90/20. Launch Vehicle: Tsiklon. Mass: 3,150 kg (6,940 lb). Perigee: 404 km (251 mi). Apogee: 418 km (259 mi). Inclination: 65.00 deg.
Passive naval electronic intelligence satellite. The satellite was placed in an initial 147 km x 442 km orbit at 65 degree inclination. The US-PM’s propulsion module fired at apogee to circularize the orbit. Replaced the only previous remaining US-PM satellite which ended operations in November and reentered earlier in December 1999.
2001 December 21 – Cosmos 2383 – Program: EORSAT. Launch Site: Baikonur. Launch Complex: LC90/20. Launch Vehicle: Tsiklon. Mass: 3,150 kg (6,940 lb). Perigee: 404 km (251 mi). Apogee: 415 km (257 mi). Inclination: 65.00 deg.
Signal Intelligence Satellite. Launch delayed December 19. The booster put the satellite into an initial orbit of 145 x 405 km x 65.0 deg. At apogee the satellite ignited its own propulsion system to increase velocity by about 70-80 m/s and circularize the orbit.
2004 May 28 – Cosmos 2405 – Program: EORSAT. Launch Site: Baikonur. Launch Complex: LC90/20. Launch Vehicle: Tsiklon. Mass: 3,150 kg (6,940 lb). Perigee: 405 km (251 mi). Apogee: 417 km (259 mi). Inclination: 65.00 deg. Period: 92.80 min.
Original reported name Cosmos 2407.
2006 June 24 – Cosmos 2421 – Program: EORSAT. Launch Site: Baikonur. Launch Complex: LC90/20. Launch Vehicle: Tsiklon. Mass: 3,150 kg (6,940 lb).
==========================
Satellites, as we’ve discussed before on this site, are not easy things to conceal and there are no shortage of high resolution camera’s looking up anymore than there are looking down.
Cosmos 2421 was the last ocean recce sat the Russians had in orbit, it came down in Feb. The US-A radar sat programme was ceased in 1988 after reactor modules from expired sats, which were meant to be boosted into a high parking orbit, started coming back down!.
What are the 60-70 recon sats that are up there then? Surely they can not all be photorecon sats, or communication satellites.
Cosmos 2427 2007-022A 2007-06-07 —- Kobalt-M optical recce
Cosmos 2428 2007-029A 2007-06-29 —- Tselina-2 general purpose ELINT
Cosmos 2429 2007-038A 2007-09-11 —- Parus navigation sat
Cosmos-2430 2007-049A 2007-10-23 —- 73D6 Launch detect sat
Cosmos-2431 2007-052C 2007-10-26 —- GLONASS (thru to Cosmos-2436)
Cosmos-2437 2008-025B 2008-05-23 —- Rodnik comms (thru Cosmos-2439)
Cosmos 2440 2008-033A 2008-06-27 —- 71Kh6/US-KMO Launch detect sat
Cosmos 2441 2008-037A 2008-07-26 —- Persona optical recce
The above is a list of Russian launches going back 12 months. The lifespan of some of these sats is as little as 60 days. Surely they can be optical recce, navigation, comms, early warning etc vehicles. There are ELINT platforms but these are not naval-tasked recon assets they are pure electronic intel ‘ferret’ birds.
JonesyI said the F-4 was more versatile than the Viggen because of a larger variety of weapons it could carry.
An interesting observation Phantom. The F-15E is arguably more versatile than the Eurofighter – it carries more weapons of wider capability set. Is the Strike Eagle a better fighter than Typhoon. Anecdotally the answer is no….I’ve heard reports that Typhoon is a better performer than Strike Eagle by a considerable margin. By the same token can the Phantom be the better fighter if Viggen can beat it, comprehensively, in the air-air arena?. There is obviously little recorded out there about F4 vs Viggen DACT, but, there are articles where Viggen pilots have expressed confidence in being able to outmanoever Tornado F3’s and, as I understand it, RAF Phantom FGR2’s generally fared poorly against F3’s.
I think a major disadvantage of the Viggen (and the MiG-23/27 series) is the fact that you had to have a specific version for air-to-air, and a specific version for air-to-ground.I’m not saying either the Flogger or Viggen were bad designs, but if I’m an Air Force with limited funding, and I need a do everything airplane, then I’ve got to go with the Phantom, and that way I have one airframe that does it all. Russia and Sweden both had plenty of funding, and room for two different variations of the same type, but other nations may not have been as fortunate.
The differences between the AJ, SH and JA variants of the Viggen were largely avionics. Effectively it is one airframe that is doing all three missions unlike the significantly different attack Flogger and attack Mirage variants to their fighter/interceptor cousins. Barring the avionics I believe Viggen spares were completely universal across all variants. More importantly, for a small airforce, would be maintenance overheads. Now I’m not sure about other versions but the F-4K’s the RN had were demanding on that score. Viggen could field deploy with a ground crew of four men!.
I cite Israel as a key example. While they had plenty of air-to-air optimized Mirages and Neshers, they lacked a potent long-range strike capability. The F-4 provided this capability along with the capability to provide self-escort. (something taken for granted in today’s modern line-up of airplanes such as the Typhoon and Rafale).
Does long range strike automatically make it the best fighter though?. See earlier F-15E/Typhoon analogy. The primitive swingrole capability is, probably, the strongest feature of the aircraft, but, is all the complexity worthwhile when the whole package is compromised by the need to do everything at once. If having two mission-optimised variants of a single, less complex, design could do at least an equivalent job, and arguably better in some aspects, why bother with the multirole type?.
JonesyYou do realize that if they had a dire need for satellite targeting all of sudden, the Russians could probably launch a number of satellites of fairly short notice?
Also, the US-P family of satellites is now being replaces by the likes of Persona/Kobalt-M/Resurs-DK.
At the moment, Russia is operating approx. 60-70 recon sats. Probably mostly of classified nature.
You do realise Echo that the satellites you list are all optical reconsats?. Taking Resurs as representative it has a maximum swath depth of 40km!. You think its a practical idea to sweep the South China Sea or any other large body of water in strips 40km wide at a time???.
The last US-P satellite launched was allegedly old stock that was refurbished and wasnt fully operational on orbital insertion. I therefore doubt there are ready stocks of ocean recon sats ready to launch ‘at fairly short notice’.
The Legenda system, of which the US-PU deorbited in Feb was the last vestige of, is, apparently, being replaced by something called Liana which will be a passive-RF only capability that seems shrouded in mystery as to whether its even been scheduled for launch yet.
Currently, according to NASA, there are no Russian naval reconsats in orbit.
JonesyWhen did they start using ASM-1 in Japan and Gabriel in Israel?
Gabriel didnt go air-launch until the IIIA/S variant in 1982 and ASM-1, which I had completely forgotten about admittedly, not until 1980 and, IIRC, was first deployed on the F-1…I’m not sure when the F-4EJ had the weapon integrated.
JonesyPhantom,
Not the Viggen (which carried no laser-guided bombs).
You could as easily say though that the F-4 had no sea-skimming antiship missile whereas, in the timeframe, Viggen had Rb04E. Does one capability trump another?.
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