JonesyJonesy, sir, can you bring more light on what means BAMS concept?
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/bams.htm
Not a problem. One of the US lads will be able to detail it more thoroughly but, effectively, BAMS – Broad Area Maritime Surveillance.
Its a programme designed to give the US positive control over its surrounding ocean surface environment. In concert with SBR(Low), if that project is still on the go, its going to offer the Yanks battlespace management over their maritime environment like no-one else has ever seen!.
Its essentially a system of interlocking and mutually supporting sesnor platforms including radar-equipped tethered Aerostats, OTH radar, manned MPA, manned AWACS, and HALE UAV’s. Of this the BAMS UAV component, potentially the most important segment, has recenty been awarded to a Global Hawk variant.
This is where the Chinese UAV becomes an interesting development. China has many of the components to build its own equivalent program but has always been deficient in actual airborne patrol assets. HALE UAV’s, if this design pulls through to a production model, are obviously of significant value stooging around, dull, routine high endurance patrol circuits overwater and now can carry very capable radar/EO packages for classification.
JonesyVery interesting!. Judging from the familiar look of the dorsal fairing possibly with SATCOM capability too. First steps for a Chinese BAMS system maybe. Very significant development if it proceeds through to an operational capability.
JonesyFact is, the bigger piece of crap you paint the AM-39 to be, the worse and poorer your own Navy looks, because it still managed to kick them twice. If they cannot handle to counter a weapon system *with a well-proven poor operational record*, then what can they do against more advanced threats?
How does that work then Flex?. They DID counter AM39 every time they attempted to defeat it?. Like I said our success rate with softkill was 100%. That being against a weapons system which everyone here is stating was revolutionary and new. Not too shabby if you ask me.
We took hits on Sheffield because we had one crewman aboard, in a senior position, who was an absolute liability and a hit on Glamorgan because her CO elected to take a risk. The hit on the merchant is no great achievement seeings as she was defenceless and realistically very little of a challenge to a guided missile.
You, with intellectual honesty, are judging the whole Royal Navy, as it was 26 years ago, on the strength of one PWO who was an idiot and a CO that took a risk?. You dont think that might just look a little desperate of you Flex???
JonesySchorsch
Not to dispute your point, but I think it is rather academic if the ship sinks or not, it is out of the battle. And that what’s counts, at least from the military point of view, is the continuation of the battle (history may only count the sunken ships and killed soldiers).
The Kamikazes didn’t manage to sink a single US carrier in World War II, still they sent a couple of them back to port to an extended stay.
To be honest with you I wouldnt dispute what you say. In modern terms a ship struck by a missile is out of the fight for the likely duration of most modern conflict scenarios so, in purely tactical terms, you are quite right.
That said though AM39 did not ‘sink’ any vessel in the Falklands directly – which was Phantoms contention and the point I was making!. Sheffield capsized under tow owing to the weight of firefighting runoff water still aboard her. Conveyor likewise. So whilst both sank following the effects of the missile hit neither was directly lost because of the missile impact and with better dc provisions both ships could have been saved – as the Stark was.
JonesyYou have to wonder why they weren’t far more conscious of such a threat to begin with. BACKFIRE, anyone?
BACKFIRE Sean – over the Atlantic?. Not covering the North Cape against US CVBG’s on SIOP tasking?. As I understand Soviet-era strategy interdicting the Atlantic sealanes was a job for the Red Banner fleet. Not the AV-MF.
JonesyIt may be due to better training or lack of tactics on the opposing side, or bad weapons or whatever else, but the bottom line is that in this case the Royal Navy lost two ships. End of story
The Royal Navy lost one ship due to poor damage control design due to a fire started by AM39. IF AM39 was the weapons system you seem to want to believe it to be how did USS Stark survive its encounter with a similar weapon?. The other ship lost to AM39 in the Falklands was not a Royal Navy vessel.
Face it the basic fact here is that AM39 in its block 1 form was not a very good weapons system. That does NOTHING to denigrate the Super Etendard as a platform or the men who flew it in Argentine service or anyone elses for that matter. It certainly does nothing to lessen the value of the men who flew, with almost inhuman courage, for the Argentine Armada and Air Force in the Falklands action and, frankly, I find it pitiable and juvenille of you to try and make that connection from what was a simple discussion about the merits of a weapons system with a well-proven poor operational record.
I assure you that after that conflict, the idea of an anti-ship missile equipped fighter or strike aircraft went up a lot higher on the list of priority threats for the Royal Navy (and indeed for all nations with a navy of some sort).
A very facile statement. Its a matter of record that the Royal Navy was optimised for mid-Atlantic ASW and was setup for an air-threat of primarily, pop-up, small volume sub-launched AShM attacks and the odd potshot at a Bear that would be talking to the subs (regiments of Kh-22/Backfires over the Atlantic being mostly a Tom Clancy storyline). The value of a tactical striker with a standoff ‘medium’ antiship missile was a new one for many people. I’ve never said any different.
What I said was, specifically, that AM39 was not, professionally, considered to be a the threat that its public profile made it out to be after the Falklands. This was for all the reasons indicated earlier and, to reinforce the message, softkill that was 100% mission effective. For a serving officer, such as yourself, I would have thought you would appreciate what that means!.
JonesyThank you Sir
Teniente Primero, unlike yourself, when I served I worked for a living!. There is no need for the ‘sir’!. 🙂
On the 25 may , I’ve been told that both Exorsets may have hit same targe (Atlantic conveyors) even dough they were aimed at different targets
That would concur with what I understand having checked last night. HMS Glamorgan and Ambuscade were both stationed out with the Conveyor standing off the carrier group. The Agaves would have shown two ‘large’ targets – Conveyor and Glamorgan – and one ‘small’ target – Ambuscade – in rough proximity. Easy to understand how that could’ve been mistaken for the two carriers and a close consort. Its entirely possible that the Armada pilots would’ve released on the two larger targets. Ambuscade reported one AM39 actually flying under her chaff cloud, but, it is unclear whether this is the weapon that reaquired and hit Conveyor or whether the shot originally taken at Conveyor was a straight-in hit.
On the atack on HMS Shefield both pilots lock on two different ships , seems to be that the one lock to HMS Shefield did reach target , the other one did not –
That is very interesting. The pilots reports from that attack indicated that both aircraft were in loose formation when they fired. One pilot reported seeing the others weapon release. Yet Sheffield was on her own on picket station. She had only recently relieved Glasgow on that station, but, Glasgow, by the time of the attack, was a good 20 miles away. Its difficult to understand who the second radar target was?!.
How close were those pilots on de may 25th to the carriers ?
I dont know whether this is public source information to be honest Enrique. It has been reported that Hermes was within 5nm from Conveyor when she was hit. I dont believe that either carrier had visual contact with the merchant vessel though so I’d put the range at more like 10-15nm and edge towards the bigger number there. Either way its undeniable that they did get close!
Jonesy[
Sir
On the exorcets launched from Super Etendard there are still doubts , on may the 25th both planes lock on a large size vessell thought to be a carrier , we know of one impact on the Atalantic Conveyor , the other one we are still searching for it -Or did it impact someone else ?
On May 30th when the last exorcet was launched they also lock on the larger size target thought to be carrier , on this there are a lot of different stories it depends on who you talk to is what you get in response , we still believe it may have made it to the carrier , we also think as it has happen as before none of them exploded , the impact itself caused some damage –
And on the HMS Shefield the samething , two planes lock on the target, launch , one impact the other preasumly went by without hitting –
Regards Enrique
Enrique,
The May 25th strike could only have picked up the Conveyor as the Carriers where farther to the South. Woodward had routinely placed large merchantmen upthreat of the carriers as an outer ‘passive defence’ screen…some would say ‘missile soaker’. The morality is a bit iffy on that one, but, he was playing a very cautious game. Woodward being always the submariner first and foremost!.
Its almost impossible to conceive that the Armada pilots would release on a carrier contact behind a radar target as large as the Conveyor. Even the most basic of weapon conversion training on AM39 would’ve stressed that the weapon would guide on the first large RF target in its seeker field of view. The Armada lads would have selected an attack axis without a huge great merchantman in the way if they believed it was there.
The only rational explanation for the hit on Conveyor is that they saw a big contact on their Agave sets that was roughly in the right position for the carrier group and, after something of an epic flight in a single seat light-strike type, launched on contact. I’ll have to check on who it was, but, one of the outer escorts stationed with/near the Conveyor, may have been HMS Ambuscade, caught the Agave and the AM39 seekers on her ESM kit and starting chaffing. Whether that caused one or both missiles to break lock is unknown but I’ve heard stories that at least one of the 25 May missiles was locked on to one of the escorts and missed. As I was told the story one missile never regained a lock on anything and the other reaquired on Conveyor for the hit.
As to the Exocet hit on Invincible, no disrespect intended, but forget it. My divisional PO in Fisguard Sqdn at HMS Raleigh was an AEM on Invincible in 1982. The nearest that hostile fire came to the ship was 25 May.
JonesyEnrique,
With respect we knew about the MM38’s from overflights as well as the work you’d done with the shore-based 6″ artillery!. Glamorgan had been given a ‘no-enter-zone’ to avoid the envelope determined as being covered by your Navy MM38’s. She was hit inside that no-enter-zone after her CO had decided to gamble on a short-cut. In short, had the ship followed the rules, the MM38’s wouldnt have been effective other than as sea-denial.
This is not to lower the credit due Argentine forces for their ingenuity though….we copied the basic principle ourselves as the Excalibur system – have a pic somewhere I think!.
the HMS Glanmorgan was hit that night on its way out , iv’e read that they saw the missil coming and tried to turn away from it , at that moment the missil impacted the area of the helicopter hangar –
Thats exactly right. She was coming back to the main body of the fleet after gunline and her CO took a rather cavalier course. As stated they were aware of the shore based Exocet threat and saw the launch. IIRC chaff wasnt launched as it wasnt believed it’d do any good given the range involved and, if the missile was launched seeker-active, may have served to draw the missile to the ship, so, the order was given to present stern aspect and hope for the best.
Scorsch,
On the other hand, the case that everything works well is the least probable in war. Guess what had happened if The Argis had considered their bomb fuses? Many more ships damaged or even sunk.
There is a big difference between systems failing under operational conditions for technical reasons (i.e Sea Wolf) and a ship exposed to additional danger by sloppy crew or needless risk-taking. I’m not about to second-guess Glamorgans CO – he knew what he was doing – he gambled….and lost. The Sheffield’s case is a different one entirely though.
Regardless of that it is a stated fact that in every case where countermeasures were employed by RN vessels, in that action, AM39 was defeated. That is a 100% fail rate against countering targets. For my money, whether they deployed 5 or 50 missiles all we needed to do was emulate the performance of HMS Glasgow’s warfare team and the Exocet threat was largely reduced. It should be pointed out also that better damage recovery provision in the Type42 design would have seen Sheffield survive just as the USS Stark would from her AM39 hit later on.
The Falklands campaign was a clear warning to all surface fleets that those little crappy missiles can really be a show stopper.
I think that was a popular impression rather than a professional one. For us it was a salutory lesson not to focus on just one enemy. The Russians didnt have an Exocet type weapon so we didnt have a hardkill defence against it. Then again we had softkill that we’d just seen provide an operational success rate of 100%!. So that wasnt a massive concern by itself as we knew what the countermeasure was…..inclusion of the US Phalanx system later on simply provided an added level of insurance.
The real concerns, for us, that came of of the Falklands was the lack of AEW to provide offboard and lookdown sensor coverage and the absolute nightmare hunting discrete diesel subs in shallow water. The sea-skimmer threat just didnt rate with those two!.
JonesySo……2 hits out of 5 launches………ok I guess…..specialy when those 2 hits sank a Destroyer and a Merchantman.
Not really when you consider that the only reason that they got those two hits was because the destroyer was inexplicably asleep in the middle of a declared fleet air raid alert and that the Atlantic Conveyor had no means of decoying the inbound.
If Shiney Sheff had acted on the HANDBRAKE call from HMS Glasgow in timely fashion and Glamorgan not decided to cut into the well-defined shore-based Exocet battery engagement zone no warship would have taken a scratch from Exocet in the conflict.
IMO a weapons system that was defeated as easily as AM39, save for situations of the target vessel being defenceless, is hardly a testimonial to its performance.
JonesyYou know, if you listen carefully, I think that you could still hear them partying in the Pentagon at this news.
Lets face it any airfield in Cuba operating nuclear capable Russian bombers is going to be saturation TLAM’d and CALCM’d to death very early in any strategic escalation so the actual threat presented by a couple of squadrons of Russian bombers exposed on Cuba is minimal. The shock value of letting the populace know that winged death is sat just across the water waiting to be unleashed is going to authorise many, many more Raptors!.
You sure this is a genuine Russian news piece?
JonesyHighly unlikely, given two decades of anyone with enough brain cells to locate the border leaving and a couple of wars (the first one of which hit the Iraqi Navy very hard- good old Sea Skua) I would be astonished if any of those skills still exist.
Dont know about that – there was a reasonably sizeable contingent of Iraqi Navy personnel still in Italy with the impounded corvettes that the Italians sat on and they were still there in the early 2000’s if I remember right. I’m not suggesting that full-trained crewmen could be found, but, what I am saying is that Iraq isnt incapable of producing the calibre of personnel required to man such vessels.
One of the major issues in Iraq at the moment is a shortage of skilled labour, sticking a good part of that on over specced ego corvettes in the Gulf would not be a great use of resources.
Naturally this is not a ‘right now’ solution. I said as much myself. It would take a few years to get their crews ready and to develop secure infrastructure for local basing. There is no possibility of flying in a couple of hundred Iraqi’s, showing them where the throttles and wheel are, and sending them on their merry way! 🙂
The point is that, when Iraq is once again at a point where it is looking to establish a more capable naval presence in the Northern Gulf area, these vessels would actually be a pretty good fit.
JonesyYeah…see I nearly did that. Then I thought about it again. I can see how Nelson is thinking here and he has a point!.
The Iraqi Navy was training up to handle some pretty competent Italian kit back before Desert Storm. Admittedly that was the thick end of two decades ago and the Iraqi Navy isnt a shadow of its former self, but, you dont entertain the concept of inducting modern warships if you havent the people to keep them going…normally. Some of those skills have to have survived somewhere.
With a good long lead time to get a couple of crews through HMS Collingwood and get some sea time in, when the security situation stabilises enough to base warships like these in country, these boats would actually be damn near perfect for Iraqi requirements in the northern gulf.
JonesyUSS,
Have little time at present to fully reply but just to pick up on a couple of points.
I don’t get it, the USN Nimitz class super carriers cost around $ 160 million (FY 1996, lets say $ 300 million as of present) to operate annuaylly, why should the Gorky cost that much?
The US figure reported by FAS is suspect. They quote the same figure, IIRC, for the Kittyhawk CV as the Nimitz CVN which is plainly absurd. Year on year costs for a CVN are skewed by the fact that they dont need fossil fuel for propulsion and, naturally, fuel burn is a key factor in operations costs. Costs for Gorshkov, otherwise, will be comparable with Kittyhawk as many of the same cost factors are present. The smaller airgroup and lack of cats will see Gorshkov being a bit cheaper of course.
Even going by your figures – $ 300m for Gorky & $ 200 m for european built IAC, a difference of $ 100 million per year, the Gorky turns out a much cheaper deal. Now, the Gorky costs $ 2.7 billion including a 16 MiG-29k airwing, while the cost of an IAC built in Eur, would cost about $ 4 billion according to your estimate, plus lets add at least another 2 + billion for the a/c (probly rafales).
No it doesnt – which is the whole point. In whole-life terms the Gorshkov will likely cost, over a 20yr service life, about US$8bn. Another solution that also costs US$8bn is, by definition, no more expensive – effectively what you are doing is loading the same spend on acquisition rather than support costs. The $700mn for 16 Mig-29’s isnt effected whether they would be embarked on Gorshkov or a European alternative. Airgroup costs would be the same if both were specced for STOBAR and both used MiG-29.
Rafale-M is, IMO, the premier carrier fighter in existence and it is expensive…who knows what kind of deal the French would’ve offered if DCNS got the carrier deal and the IAF MMRCA contest was dangled though?. As it is thats all fantasy-football of course but it is very interesting to compare an Indian Navy operating 3 Rafale-equipped evolved CdeG carriers, with money saved on the whole IAC project, and with an airforce sporting 120 plus Rafale compared to what will be now?. If I was Indian I would be disappointed in what was being achieved with my taxes!.
Jonesy$4B upfront extra is not the same thing as $4B extra spread out over 20 years. and there is no gurantee that Western ships cost half to operate vs Russian Ships of similar size. even in Civillian airlines the gap is 40% untill now at most. It is more or less $1m per day for operating six ships at maximum. I
Your point is a little elusive there Star.
$4bn is what it is whether its a short term spend over the build life of a vessel or whether its spent in the ongoing maintenance of the vessel. The money still has to be found. Usually a heavy capital spend like a carrier aquisition over a, say, 6yr build cycle is easier to find than the additional 100mn out of the recurring operations budget.
The capital programme would be one of few ongoing projects at that level of spend within a govt purview. With good project management the spend is easy to schedule. The Navy operations budget will be different and here a finite pot has to cover the deployments of every major and minor combattant in the fleet. Its at that level that the balancing act of what is possible and feasible for a peacetime navy to accomplish is determined.
I have not said, universally, that western ships are half as costly to run as Russian ones so dont try and put words in my mouth. I have said, in relation to this specific aircraft carrier, that its not unreasonable to put the costs of a 45k ton carrier (with the propulsion fit that it has) as roughly double that of a turbine-driven 20k ton CVS. In fact I’ve actually pitched low with the $300mn ballpark figure too as the CVS costs a bit more than £75mn (US$150mn) a year.
Swerve,
Official figures for Cavour are 451 ship crew, 203 for the air group, 140 for the command group (if aboard), & up to 416 marines (if operating in amphibious mode). Since the marine accommodation & command centre must be at the expense of something, I assume you could increase the air group a bit if she’d been built as a dedicated carrier. Shouldn’t make any difference to the ship crew.
Thanks for fleshing that one out. I managed to blur a few things together in my earlier post. I was assuming that the airgroup would be a constant for a set number of MiG-29’s and choppers no matter what. It will, naturally, be a fair bit larger than that the Italians embark for their vessel and it will have to include an extra 100 or so personnel for the STOBAR gear…arrester engine and cable handlers etc so I left it out intending to hilight later. My point was intended to be that even adding these sorts of extra’s to Cavours complement leaves you a long way short of the 1500 crew USS theorised as an upper figure!.
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