Should the UK get F-35C?. Absolutely not!.

Simply because until EMALS reaches IOC aboard a US carrier the Royal Navy will not have a vessel able to operate F-35C. The CVF’s will never, ever, see a steam catapult because they are just too expensive to install, maintain and operate…especially on an IEP propelled vessel with gas turbine prime movers.

EMALS, as it stands today, isnt even guaranteed to produce a viable launch and recovery system for naval aircraft as big questions remain about the electromagnetic pulse created by the launch cycle and what impact that would have on avionics, guided weapons and shipboard systems.

F-35B is still a quantum leap in capability over Harrier GR whatever. It allows for simple land and sea deployment with pilots not being forced into keeping up cat/trap deck-qualifications to be able to operate from the duty carrier – which fits in with the model that the RAF like. Against that some loss of top end performance, the loss of a couple of hundred miles in range and the inability to carry a 2000lb weapon internally are things that are insignificant in real terms.

We should also remember combat in whatever form is rarely 1 v 1 and in the case of the Typhoon and Lightning.

Which is precisely something I was going to add in myself. The ‘first look’ component need not be ownship-restricted. An E-3 or whatever could get an aspect detect, on even an LO type, before the target gets a bead on the Typhoon. With discrete datalink the Typhoon could be in the look-first slot. With Meteor the first-shot criteria is a better-than-evens chance too.

Many permutations exist but the actual mantra itself is undeniable.

Garry

There were probably a significant portion of the population of many countries in the region who might have thought the better of Saddam just because he stood up to the west.

The populations of those countries that had not recently been at war with him and weren’t concerned by Iraqi military expansionism you mean?! LOL.

Since 1990 I’d say more than 150,000 Iraqis have died because of the US forces… I didn’t say anything about civilians… they have been bombing and sanctioning that country on and off for almost 20 years now.

So you are still stretching the point that any of the above is the equivalent to detonating a nuclear weapon on a city the size of Pyongyang and annihilating 2.5mn people at a stroke. Nice try Garry but you really are flogging a dead one here pal.

Yeah, they have never fabricated a situation to justify anything before…

What if they have?. Does it alter the fact that Mutual Assured Destruction does not work when that destruction is not mutually assured???. Does it mean that the North Korean Dear Leader would actually hold off the launch of a nuclear warhead at US citizens for fear of a US nuclear reprisal when he can be fairly sure that it would not come, directly, against his own populace!. Is that ‘fear’ of a reprisal in the NK leaderships mind as effective in stopping a ballistic strike as NMD?. Simple answer!.

But they could simply replace most of the batteries and fuel systems with a nuke and when it fails to manouver much while in orbit they can claim there was a fault… and leave it there till they need to detonate it.

If it fails to maneover in LEO its orbit will decay and the thing will re-enter uncontrolled anyway. If a ‘failed’ satellite somehow manages to keep its orbit up it will certainly draw interest!.

Rule 1 in the process of design… look at other similar products already available if available and look at their design solutions to see if their solutions solve the problems you are trying to solve. Don’t reinvent the wheel and if someone has already solved a problem don’t be afraid to steal their idea and save time.

Did I say it wasnt a good idea for the Chinese to lift the US design?. My point was that if it was so easy to develop the small-form warheads then a nation with China’s resources wouldnt have had to bother ‘shopping’ on the American market would it?!.

I am not talking about going from 7km/s to 0 with one burn.

Now you’re not….you DID suggest stopping an orbiter over the target and letting it ‘plunge’ back to Earth though!. Garry and his wonderful migrating goalposts again!. 🙂

The 7km/s velocity is on a specific trajectory that without Earths gravity would take it off into space.

Correct…the common way to describe this though is reversed from the above. Seeings as Earths gravity is a fairly reliable constant the description is usually that the 7km/s must be established, and constantly corrected, to maintain the vehicles orbit in the face of gravity and atmospheric drag.

A force applied by rotating the rockets so they point away from the earth so that rather than speeding up or slowing down the satellite they change the direction of the satellites flight path so that instead of travelling at 7km/s perpendicular to the ground it starts to descend towards the earth.

I think you meant parallel not perpendicular there…but yes to a point you are right. An OMS burn pushing towards the planet will result in a lower altitude orbit whilst maintaining a higher velocity than doing the same thing with a braking burn. The OMS burn will have to use more fuel and thrust for longer as it is pushing continually against 7km/s of inertia that wants to keep the satellite on its present trajectory. The braking burn is only initially acting upon 7km/s inertia as, during the braking manoevre, the inertia decreases. This is back to earlier point of hefty delta-V’s and satellites that are not easily confused for anything other than weapons systems!.

If you can make the orbit eliptical enough that the object touches the top of the atmosphere at its lowest point then the drag will eventually reduce the orbit of the object till it reenters. An object already in a low earth orbit if it had its orbit changed from circular to eliptical would almost certainly go low enough that it would reenter on the first huge dip into the atmosphere…

The only way to create that eliptical orbit, that I can think of, is with a burst of speed along the initial orbital trajectory…i.e to give gravity a harder job catching hold of it for the swingback. Essentially the same concept as the gravity slingshot effect that NASA uses for boosting exploration satellites out on their way. If it is feasible then you are talking about adding extra time to the orbital interval which is, already, knocking on an hour and a half anyway. That time is plenty for someone to calculate the trajectory, determine the re-entry point, and alert NMD…IF the re-entry could be guaranteed on the very next orbit!.

No, the bad guys really did win on 11/9, but an uber defence system that will keep all the little boys and girls in the US of A tucked up and perfectly safe from everything the nasty world can throw at them is a Joke. Before 11/9 with no rogue state or even non state entity like Al Quada had no ICBMs and no nukes yet they still struck the heart of the US. The US wasn’t safe then and it isn’t safe now… nor will it ever be. It is just a fact of life… get over it.

…and who said otherwise?. I said, repeatedly and so far without counter, that the ICBM threat is one that is developing and, currently, has no countermeasure. Whatever the state of the rest of the US defences it can at least mount a response against other threats surely you are not so obtuse that you can recognise this point Garry?!.

What is there to wonder? The west combined spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year to maintain the capability to attack anyone anywhere. Is it really that hard to work out that the little nations the US and the West like to play with… the pawns in the chess game of life might actually want to be able to strike back in some way no matter how small. They know to actually strike back would be suicide, but the fact that they can strike might make the West a little more willing to talk about issues and negotiate settlements rather than use the bullets and the bombs to impose their will. It seems regime change is too quick and easy and the only way to prevent it becoming standard policy is for all the so called bad guys to get nukes…

Soo Garry’s anti-western rant no. 4562 out of the way – how does that little diatribe relate to the point that, despite the vulnerability the US ‘demonstrates’ to unconventional attack many states are in the, very expensive, process of developing IRBMs and ICBM’s?.

So why isn’t Russia or China or the UK or France or Germany or Japan or South Korea scrambling to get missiles to defend themselves from ICBMs?

Russia already has an equivalent capability to the US NMD, China is probably trying to steal the Russian systems plans, France and Germany cant afford it, we’re hoping to sneak in under the US umbrella courtesy of Fylingdales and South korea have a lot more to worry about from TBMs than full on ICBMs. Next question!.

Why? Why should NATO care whether Russian missiles are on ICBMs of IRBMs. I doubt the targets will be effected. In fact using IRBMs rather than depressed trajectory ICBMs would probably make warning time longer as the IRBMs would be travelling slower.

Which was quite my point. Western Europe at least would be little bothered by the Russians abrogating INF. The Russians can point whatever warheads they like at us I’d doubt anyone here really cares anymore. The fact is that the Red Army is not going to get anywhere close to the Fulda Gap anymore so, militarily, Russia is, over here, viewed as a paper tiger. Russia’s only ‘power’ now comes from her energy exports not her military. Thats why I said – let them abrogate whatever they want, by using such obvious nonsense as the US NMD system to abrogate INF though they really would show themselves up as being shameless opportunists and liars!.

If they also had one in Cuba or Canada then you might have a point.

If the Russians were concerned about missiles coming from Venezuela then perhaps they would’ve liked missiles in Canada or Cuba. Cuba is in fact a very good indicator here Garry. What use would Russian interceptors in Cuba be in countering an American missile strike on Russia?. Probably about as much as interceptors in Poland will have on Russian ICBMs!.

Why? ICBMs are a strategic weapon system. ABMs effect ICBMs therefore ABMs have a strategic effect and effect the strategic balance. Now they could employ US tactics and mount a pre-emptive strike, but changing their force structure so that the ABM site will be overwhelmed and therefore negated is a natural and sensible reaction. The alternative is to sign no strategic arms limitation agreement after the Moscow treaty expires in dec 2012 and then just build a hell of a lot more ICBMs to simply overwhelm the ABM system in Poland.

Which ICBM’s are going to fly over Poland Garry?. Ones going to America go over the Pole not over several thousand Poles…easy mistake anyone could make I guess!. How many Russian missiles exist that could targetted at the US at present?. NMD is no more of a threat to the Russian first-strike than the Moscow ABM screen is to the US first-strike.

Considering the US stated in 1990 that NATO would not expand into WP countries nor to former soviet republics, and that there would be no US bases in former WP countries, I’d say suggesting the Russians are not negotiating in good faith is a very bad joke. Of course this US base in Poland is a bit like the US radar bases that have sprung up in Latvia and the other baltic states… it is all a big game of golf with enormous mysterious golf balls all over the landscape… sorry who is acting in bad faith again?

Right and which Treaty was it the US signed that said, no matter how the global security situation changes in the next 2 decades, that it would never seek to base forces at useful strategic locations around the globe?. How is it bad faith when the object of the US deployments in Eastern Europe is so glaringly obviously NOT anything to do with Russia!. Abrogating the INF Treaty on the basis of a limited NMD system that is clearly not going to dent Russian nuclear potential though….thats cynical and very clearly bad faith!

Garry,

Why? That would get him the greatest respect in the ME from those countries the coalition was basing its attacks from.

Those countries that had joined with the US and were actually in the process of engaging him militarily you mean?!. The point, and Husseins rationalisation, was for Israel to do the dirty work of splitting the coalition for him. They could not be relied upon do a good job of that militarily if they’d just suffered a massive chem weapons strike.

They are happy to kill over 150,000 Iraqis over what? There weren’t any Iraq connections to AL Quada anyway…I think you overestimate the American “feeling” for the lives of non-americans.

Funny…I thought it was insurgents bombs that had killed most of the civillians over there – didn’t think that US forces had lined 150,000 civillians up against the wall and pulled the trigger?. Really should watch the news more I guess!. I think you are trying your usual obfuscation routine attempting to equate civillian losses over a 5 year period with, what would be, the impact of their culpability in, at a stroke, wiping out a city of 2.5 million people and not even be guaranteed of actually killing the perpetrators of the original crime. No, MAD only works when national survival is at stake and there is no way that anyone short of the Russians is in that league.

So reaction times are not relevant? The first warning of an attack could be nuclear explosions in space… the EMP effect ionises the air and while hardened systems will survive your radar is suddenly pretty useless for the next 30 minutes or so… The ABM system itself can be targetted too.

With what delivery platform for your ‘nuclear explosions in space’?. Clandestine warheads squirrelled away amongst all the Iranian and North Korean communications and weather satellites?. Oh wait….how many satellites have Iran and NK got up in the first place??? There was that little fact that early generation fission weapons can be quite bulky too?. Back to Garry’s wonderful fantasy world eh?.

The fact that they don’t doesn’t mean they couldn’t. Normally a reentry burn is required to slow the satellite down and lower its orbit till it starts to hit the upper atmosphere… that drag does the rest. A more powerful deorbit rocket than normal could easily be used.With extra shielding the too steep is no longer a problem and would likely improve “aiming accuracy”.

A more ‘powerful’ retro-rocket???. Improved aiming accuracy???. You realise that you are talking of imparting a delta-V equal to a vehicles orbital velocity in order to get it to behave as you state???. Orbital velocity, in LEO, is something like 7KM/s and more than that for a more massive vehicle such as that you are ‘inventing’ for your warhead delivery system!. 7Km/s is as close to 23000ft/s as makes no odds and, for context, the Shuttles whole OMS system can put out sufficient thrust for a delta-V of about 1000ft/s….its usual deorbit burn is at about a quarter of that!. No Garry your concept of hitherto unknown nuke-bearing orbiters suddenly descending on an unsuspecting US, bypassing BMD, is fanciful at best!.

Who said it needed to be a decaying orbital path? It could orbit two or three times to get to the perfect bus release point and it will likely be orbiting the direction opposite to what is expected for a direct attack.

FOBS works on the concept of decaying orbital path thats why its called a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System!. A deorbit burn followed by 3 or 4 orbits to see it re-enter over the target is how the system works. Unless USSPACECOM is on strike that day catching a target that is due to re-enter over US territory should not be too much of a stretch for them given that its one of their primary functions even in peacetime! 3 orbits on a 90 minute orbital interval gives a window of over 4 hours to make the intercept…if NMD cant respond in that time there is something very wrong with the system!.

Yeah, cause any comms satellite Iran or NK could build would be tiny…

If they bought a commercial satellite body from any number of international vendors then there is no reason to expect it to be much different from any other nations satellites that do the same job. In fact it would be a little odd if they did, deliberately, stick with an ‘indigenous clunky’ design when you consider launch capabilities and costs. Would certainly draw attention from those people who watch such things!.

If their intent is to blackmale or dictate to the US, whom they knew had an ABM defence system why waste time making ICBMs? . A letter bomb that bypasses the stick shield and of course introduces doubt as to who was responsible makes much more sense if your intent is to actually hurt the US. If it is to gain influence then having nuclear weapons alone would suffice without the expense and complication of building ICBMs.

What danger is there in a warhead that is not reliably deliverable. All other delivery methods for an early-generation fission type nuclear device have countering systems already deployed – they are not foolproof by any means, but, they exist and could quite conceivably intercept the warhead and prevent its detonation. The ballistic inbound is the ONLY delivery method that, currently, they have no defence against and it happens to be the simplest to deploy once a state possess them. As to why a state would build them when they know the US has an ABM operational….well…that is precisely the point!. The hope is that they would not…and in that case BMD has won from the kick-off.

So wasting money now building an ABM system on the off chance that a so called rogue state might be capable of developing an effective ICBM and a decent warhead to go with it is stupid. By acting before the so called rogue states you are saving them a lot of money because they will change tactics…For everyone who is pro ICBM in Iran and NK and others there will be someone who is pro cruise missile, or bomb in the container ship, or on the airliner. Building an ABM system will take power from the pro ICBM group and give it to who knows who…Investing huge amounts to get a reliable ICBM and a reliable warhead only to find the US has built an ABM shield gives them the choice of building more ICBMs or changing technologies and would cost them more. Just building an ABM system now will save them money and simplify the problem.

Again Garry thats the desired result. Let, whoever, develop a cruise missile there are E-3’s, Aerostats, ground and sea-based radars and plenty of interceptors based in the US that can defeat that threat. Let them go down the container ship route – there are intelligence agency’s, naval services, coastal surviellance systems etc that can defeat that kind of threat. The ICBM is the only system that circumvents every other form of conventional defence…if the factions in target countries that oppose ICBM investment use the BMD as an argument against missile development then BMD is successful and worth a large sum of money!.

Trident

That’s the point, it was actually a smart move with possible benefits in the long run.

Ahh but its already been stated ‘why would a tinpot dictator wish to bring a military strike on his own country’ the point being that it would erode his power base and be unlikely. MY whole point was that said tinpot dictator will invite a military strike on his own country whenever it is in his interests to do it!. If that tinpot dictator was to possess a small number of ICBM’s capable of reaching a target set in the US what do you think the US’s priority targets-of-interest will be?. Attacking strategic missiles involves the whole concept ‘use-or-lose’. Without BMD the US is hostage to the ICBM armed nation with the least fail-safe deployment protocol!.

I struggle to see any long run (nevermind benefits) in getting the US to nuke your country. Food for thought: in 1991, Hussein was quite capable of using chemical WMDs in his attacks on Israel – he didn’t.

Seeings as his intended aim wasn’t to kill large numbers of Israeli’s thats little suprise. The very last thing he would want would be an Israel immobilised by heavy chemical weapons attack.

As pointed out earlier, a WMD strike on the CONUS will accomplish *anything but* the unravelling of a Western coalition – more likely than not, it will have the opposite effect and in a very decisive way. So I don’t think it’s a valid comparison.

Never for one second did I say that a nuke strike on the US would have a fragmentary effect on NATO or any other organisation. I used Hussein as an example of dictators who ‘would not jeopardise their own position by inviting an attack’ have done precisely that.

It could be argued that missile defence (in an ICBM context) is superfluous against a nation-state opponent if you have a sufficiently credible retaliatory capability against him. And the US deterrent is about as credible as they come.

Here you are relying on deterrence being credible though. I think that the only form of real deterrence around is MAD and that still only plays between Russia and the US. Think about it – if North Korea did manage to screw a 20kt fission device into the nose of a Taepo Dong variant and land it on Hawaii are the US morally going to be able to incinerate 2.5mn people in Pyongyang when its odds on that the villains of the piece would certainly not be there?. No of course not. Conventional deterrence does not work in asymmetric warfare – thats been widely accepted.

Deterrence now has to come from the law of diminishing returns over the opposition. That being the removal of the chances for success of a strike deterring the launching of that strike. What is the point of incurring the attention of the US’s conventional war machine when you will get nowhere closer to the goal of a successful strike on the US in doing it?.

Garry,

But then of course a country that has a long range ballistic capability could easily launch a satellite into orbit… with an on board nuclear device ready to detonate over the US blinding all those wonderful ABM systems to the following BMs… or indeed deorbiting bombs that were a part of what were believed to be satelites. Even a perfectly functioning ABM system could not stop that… just like the Maginot line couldnt stop an airborne attack over it.

A perfectly functional ABM system should be perfectly adequate to intercept any satellite in LEO or GSync. The rest is just surveillance and monitoring. Satellites do not deorbit, stop and drop straight down to earth!. Likewise a FOBS does what it says on the tin – FRACTIONAL ORBITAL bombardment system i.e a decaying orbital path that places the space vehicle on a re-entry path overtop of target – both are going to provide an orbital track that very plainly makes them a threat!.

USSPACECOM and NASA work hand in glove watching satellites and launches. there’s plenty of fascinating stuff on the net of how much they know about all the vehicles up there!. A ‘comms sat’ mysteriously requiring a heavy lift booster instead of more conventional launcher might draw attention as would, perhaps, a ‘weather satellite’ with unusually large onboard propellant tanks etc. Dozens of things that a professional organisation with more than 3 decades of looking at satellites might just decide is a bit skoshy and worthy of marking for future monitoring.

An ABM system will be expensive to build and maintain and is too easily bypassed or defeated

This follows on from your later point though about how difficult it really is to get a viable multistage weapon up and bouncing. If the opposition, whoever they may be, have a look at that challenge with the view that once they reach their goal they can actually influence the US then its a worthy goal to strive for. If they look at the challenge and then realise that, even if they do get a multistage ICBM operational, its still going to be useless until they can invent MARVs or build up a force of a hundred or more then there is a great disincentive to actually follow it all through. Virtual Attrition plain and simple.

Hahahahahaha… you suggest that building an ABM system will actually make the US safe from Iran and NK until Ir and NK can build an ICBM sufficiently sophisticated enough to defeat the ABM system.

No Garry I suggested that a US ABM system would stop the types of ballistic missiles that a state such as Iran and N.Korea could reasonably be anticipated to develop or acquire within a relative timeframe. I suggested that ABM is not the universal panacea to stop WMD attacks, but, it is the only one that can reliably stop a ballistic strike!.

And when Russia decides that 2,000 warheads is not enough to ensure it can penetrate such a defensive shield after a first strike to a level necessary to achieve deterrence and of course China decides it needs thousands of warheads instead of hundreds too will you feel safer?

Why would Russia decide it needed 2000 warheads to penetrate a defence based on 75-100 Ground Based Interceptors?. One would think they were rather more familiar with the precepts of limited ballistic missile defence seeings they have such a system in service.

It would be much cheaper to fake some tests and make fake deployments and state that an ABM system is deployed. Hire George Lucas to do the special effects.

Quite right – though the same could be said of most weapons that rely on deterrence for their primary effect. I read a piece in New Scientist from about 94 that said a great proportion of Soviet fusion 80’s-era fusion warheads were inoperable because they’d never been serviced properly and would’ve fizzled if ever actually deployed. Didnt stop people still being scared of them!.

Would the 30 minutes warning they’d get from a truck mounted missile Like TOPOL be enough to do anything? Let alone the minutes warning of a satellite over the Pacific coming towards the US suddenly fires a rocket to deorbit over the CONUS.

Topol is a missile with a ballistic trajectory NOT a satellite launch aiming for orbital insertion. Both go up with detachable terminal stages and thats about where the similarity stops. De-orbit burn to atmosphere interface isnt quite as swift a process as you try to make out there Gary. Odds are that the orbital track would have to be shifted to bring the re-entry path on to target as well. Its not quite press-a-button and drop a satellite on someones head!.

The irrational actor model is a concern that is born out of the very real experience of suicide bombers. The idea being that ideologies with a different concept of death may obtain WMD and associated delivery systems through failing states or revolution. In my opinion, with the possible exception of Pakistan this is not a viable scenario. Pakistan is no where near having a delivery capability to hit the US

This is not quite the point I was going at and thanks for illustrating so clearly that I didnt get the message out Jon!.:)

The point was that during a simplex situation few tinpot dictators will act in such a fashion as to jeopardise their own power base – that is a given. The scenario I painted above sought to differentiate from the simplex situation though.

The best example I can cite would be Saddam Husseins attack on Israel during Desert Storm. The simplex calculus there, for Iraq, was hit Israel = Israel hits us back and ten times as bloody hard!. Logically therefore the last thing that any tinpot dictator would ever wish to do. The calculus of that situation was very different to Hussein however. Attacking Israel and suffering the full force of their retribution was likely to unravel the coalition attacking him and, in the long run, offer him a way of keeping his head and his throne. Logic – after a fashion and if you are willing to gamble at those stakes.

Ahmedinejad, as example, is aware of the antipathy his own ‘electorate’ has for him and is, quietly, hoping for the US or UK to do something provocative that will let him wrap himself in the flag and rally the masses. This was the whole point of the RIB incident last year. Acquiring nuclear weapons and a delivery system that presents an abiding threat to the US mainland creates the focus on Iran that gives Ahmedinejad the leverage to try and rally his populace. Rhetoric such as his ‘blast Israel of the earths surface’ speeches do the same thing. He may view these things as securing his power base with his nations religious conservatives and mobilising his populace to his side, but, to western observers they are the rantings of a dangerous lunatic…something that fits his agenda nicely as well.

The first principles of crisis management involve the identification of dangerous symbiotic spirals such as this and their immediate dismantling. That is why the fizzled outcome of the HMS Cornwall incident was so important as the cycle of indignation, confrontation and escalation was chopped off diplomatically before any serious harm could be done. What it does show, however, is that such flashpoints exist all over the place and with a threat system able to deploy nuclear warheads and, most importantly, complete an engagement cycle within just a few hours that the sense of developing a system to remove the ballistic missile option from the crisis progression is manifest.

Interesting thread on the state of relations and economics on the Southern American continent. You’ll forgive a facile observation but the discrepency in views and apparent goals stated by the contributors here seems to torpedo the credibility of your ‘United States of South America’ vision to a very large extent MiG-23. I dont think you can get around that no matter how many pictures of ‘indigenous’ Southern American cars, helicopters etc you post up.

To the point anyway – joint Brazillian/Argentinian SSN’s. Both have some experience building HDW designs or mods thereof….neither has actually designed a boat from scratch. The French are willing to chip in with some assistance all well and dandy….do you think they’ll fax over the Barracuda engineering blueprints at the merest request?. Nope!.

The scale of the engineering challenge here CAN NOT be glossed over. SSN’s, before you even get close to cutting steel for the hull, have to have a comprehensive support infrastructure built up ashore. You cant simply lash together a suitably sized modified SSK hull, drop in a nice compact reactor module, head it out to sea and then start thinking about things like shore facilities!.

Simply put the amount of work involved here cannot be understated and even that huge effort will only create a first-generation boat. The PRC have been in the nuke game for decades and they are only just, open source media to be believed, getting to a point in sub design that the superpowers were at twenty years ago.

Simply put it is great news, for them, that Argentina and Brazil are looking at developing SSN’s – both nations naval services have a requirement for deployed, high endurance, sea denial capability and the SSN is the natural platform. To imply that the project is anything other than a long-term feasibility exercise at this point is greatly exaggerating your chances!